“Personally I’m of the belief that this was Old Ma Nature’s plan in the first place. I see the Earth as a nest and humanity as the nestlings. That’s us, what we’ve been: fledglings bumping about in our nest. And Ma Nature, the mother bird, has been trying to feed us as fast as our greedy little beaks could snap up the food she’s regurgitated. But the bigger and the stronger we got the more we bumped around, until we just about shook the nest to pieces. We shook it, shit in it and fouled it up generally, until it could no longer support us. And the mother bird, Ma Nature, finally said, “Okay you lot, it’s time to fly. I’ve been a good mother but now you must fly away and build your own nests, your own worlds.” And that’s what we’re doing.
“But as for what I said about the home world—how maybe in a hundred more years it will be viable again—who do I think I’m kidding? The fact is it’s done, burned out, finished…I was never so happy to get the hell out of it! And that’s why I became an exobioecologist; because the way I see it there’s no future in Earth ecology.
“Okay, I realize that if I was an ecologist back on planet Earth I’d probably be burned at the stake for what I just wrote. But that’s because hope springs eternal and they’re all hanging on in there, hoping they can turn things around. Some hope! But me: I’m an exobioecologist, out here where Old Ma Nature intended me—intends us, humanity—to be, building our new nests on new worlds….
“So then…why am I writing all this stuff when I should be finishing my feasibility study and working on a report? Answer: because a silly vegetarian bitch who worries about wailing tree ferns has irritated the hell out of me, that’s why! God, I should never have gotten into conversation with her! She understands as much about alien life-forms as I do about her gravity drive engines—nothing!
“But on the other hand…well, some of the things Laurilu has said have sort of stuck in my mind. And once again if I was a Green—an ecologist on Earth—I would probably agree with certain of her arguments. Hell no, I know I’d agree with them—it’s just that they’re a few hundreds of years too late, that’s all!
“Okay, okay, let’s put her out of mind, but definitely, and try to work up some notes toward my feasibility report….
IV
RESTRICTED! RESTRICTED! RESTRICTED!
CLASSIFICATION: EXTREMELY URGENT!
ANOMALY 13: Secondary Report.
By: Helmut W. Silberstein Jr,
Comdr United Earth Station IV.
Dated: 12th Aug. 2407,
Time: 1032 Hrs.
To: Security List “A” only.
Retrospective:
Sirs, see my preliminary report, dated 5th Aug. 2407, in particular my request in re honoring the crew of Shuttle One out of UES IV.
While this was under consideration by Higher Command, I was ordered to recover Shuttle One into a secured bay aboard UES IV where a series of exhaustive tests were to be carried out by an investigative team out of Space Central Arizona. The investigative team would launch today at 1400 Hrs and rendezvous with UES IV at 1540 Hrs.
In the light of further developments—made specific in the report which follows—I now respectfully request that the investigation be held in abeyance and that a medical team replace the investigators. UES IV does have its own doctors, of course, but we lack a) a forensic pathologist, and b) a qualified psychoanalyst….
REPORT
Sirs, I have to report that:
About one hour ago, at approx 0930 Hrs, the automatic alarm in Shuttle Bay Five—the secured bay where Shuttle One is held in isolation awaiting inspection and investigation—was activated by a then unknown agency.
Despite that the UES’s sensors had failed to indicate any impact, and at first suspecting a hull breach, probably of meteoric origin, in accordance with Station SOPs I ordered a team to suit-up in order to enter the bay and investigate the occurrence. However, when it was observed that the computers had not registered any abnormal loss of atmosphere, I belayed the suit-up order and instead sent in the UES’s Rapid Reaction Team as a precautionary measure. All of this in just a few brief minutes.
Then, even as the seals on Bay Five’s hatch were removed, a garbled communication in the form of an SOS—a cry for help on a space-suit’s frequency—was received from within the bay; in fact from the vicinity of isolated Shuttle One. Patched through to me by the Station’s Radio Op, the voice was unmistakably Jim Goodwin’s. We do have a recording; suffice it to say that shuttle pilot Goodwin’s message was barely coherent and punctuated by much foul language. Also, he sounded utterly exhausted.
Within Bay Five and close to Shuttle One, both Goodwin and copilot Susannah Rafferty were discovered naked and in a mutilated condition. Their pressure suits lay nearby; pilot Goodwin had used his to make the call for help. Rafferty was dead, in a state of rigor mortis, and Goodwin was unshaven and hysterical. Moreover, the mutilations that the pair have suffered, of which Rafferty would appear to be the principal victim, are grotesque in the extreme. On that subject I cannot find words to properly express my feelings; the visuals that accompany this report may explain my reticence in this respect, also the urgency of medical/psychological assistance.
Sirs, I can offer no reasoned explanation for anything that has occurred here, other than to stake my reputation as a Commander of the Space Agency on this being the work of inimical ET intelligences.
And at 1047 Hrs, 12th Aug. 2407, I remain—
—Your Most Obedient Servant,
H. W. Silberstein Jr.
Comdr UES IV.
V
Journal of Laurilu Nagula,
2nd Engineer, United Earth grav-drive vessel
Starspike Explorer. Earthdate: 5th Jan. 2403.
“Hateful though I find it, still I couldn’t resist it. So today I went out again to watch them—if only for a minute or two—at their work. ‘Them’: Mike Gilchrist and his crew. Exobioecologist Gilchrist, who styles himself ‘a 25th Century Darwin, but far more important than the original.’ His reasoning: Gilchrist is not so much concerned (he says) with cataloging a multitude of species as with preserving one in particular—mankind! Egotistical bugger! But…I suppose in a way he’s right. That is why we’re here.
“Anyway, decked out in boots and protective clothing I went out into the forest to where the tree ferns flourish. From some two hundred yards away I could hear them beginning to wail, and I knew that Gilchrist and his gang of—but no, I shouldn’t say it, shouldn’t call them butchers; there, I’ve said it anyway—knew that they were stripping a tree.
“The wailing…makes my flesh creep. Mournful? It’s quite literally a dirge! Yet despite that I’m caused to cringe at the sound I’m reminded of the squirting cucumbers and of that shrub back on Earth with the heat-sensitive leaves. They are not—I mean definitely not—sentient. So why should I feel so passionately for the tree ferns? Or could it possibly be that I’m more truly ecologically-minded than Gilchrist?