“Damn straight!” Sutherland shouted. “I think I’ve got that set to bag—”
“NO!”
“Be that way!”
“THE SPACE MARINE’S HYMN!” Berg suddenly bellowed.
“The what?” Top asked, his eyes wide.
“The Space Marine’s Hymn, Top,” Berg said, his face hard. “Come on, you know that one, right Top?
Berg put his hand over his heart and opened his mouth.
When Berg was finished the first sergeant’s mouth was still open at the butchery of his beloved Corps’ hymn but the Marines were insane.
“TWO-GUN! TWO-GUN!”
“Say again, Brain!”
“Allied Grapping SPACE MARINES! Oorah!”
“All hands! All hands! Prepare for maneuvering. Next stop, 61 Cygni binary system!”
“Clear the compartment, Space Marines,” the first sergeant said. “Lock it down. PFC Bergstresser, if I could have a brief moment of your time…”
24
“Stable orbit around 61 Cygni Alpha established.”
“Last stop, sir,” Bill said, sighing. “And I don’t expect to find much, here. Binary star system with Cygni Beta about a light-year and a half away. Since that right there would suggest not much planetary formation and given that they’re both dwarfs…”
“Got to look,” the CO said. “I’ll be in my office while what’s left of planetology does its thing.”
“Well, looky there,” Runner said, nodding.
“What?” Kristopher asked. He was watching the take from the secondary telescope.
“Two gas giants,” Runner replied. “Sending coordinates. Zoom in on the one marked Alpha. I have a feeling.”
“And your feeling is confirmed,” Kristopher said after a moment. “Lots of moons. Outer edge of theoretical life zone, though.”
“Yep,” Runner said. “But look at the spectra. We’ve got peaks at four hundred thirty, four hundred eighty, six thirty, and six seventy-five nanometers. All the chlorophyll peaks. It’s green everywhere! Zooming in on scope one.”
“Damn, Steve,” Kristopher said after a moment. “Now that is the forest moon of Endor.”
“We got us a name for the planet,” Runner said, picking up the comm. “Dr. Beach, planetology. We have a live one.”
“Jesus Christ, I refuse to make any predictions anymore,” Weaver said, examining the large moon the ship orbited. “What did we overlook? We passed up a couple of binary systems.”
The gas giant the moon circled was a super-massive Jovian, right on the edge of being a red dwarf and, thus, with its own radiated heat. In fact, the “planet” almost argued for the Cygni binary system being some sort of dwarf cluster.
But the moon was a treasure. The spectral analysis indicated that the biology was Chloro Alpha, the same as Earth and different from the Adar Chloro Bravo. Tectonic with limited but apparently deep oceans, the moon looked not unlike Earth with a bit less water and more land. There were clouds, oceans, mountains, and arid zones. But most of the moon appeared to be covered in massive forests. Of course, so was the Earth before it was cleared.
It looked, remarkably, as Earth must have looked prior to the late middle ages before humans got to clearing land on a wide scale.
“It sure looks inviting,” the XO said. “Let’s just hope it doesn’t have any of those damned crabpus.”
“Again, not going to make any predictions, sir,” Bill replied. “Nothing is weirder than reality.”
“Conn, Planetology.”
“Go, Planetology,” the XO replied.
“Got something interesting on the ground scope, sir,” Runner replied. “Set screen to Scope Four.”
The XO hit the keys and then shook his head.
“Jackpot.”
Clear on the screen was a city that straddled a river not far from one of the smaller oceans. It wasn’t much by modern standards but it had some streets paved with stone and some large buildings. The resolution of the scope was high enough that they could see beings and vehicles, apparently pulled by animals, on the screen but that was about all they could get. There was no detail of the beings moving on the streets except that they appeared to be wearing thick coats.
“Somebody had better alert Miss Moon that she’s up,” the XO said. “I need to call the CO.”
“This we have an SOP for,” the XO said, setting down a thick manual.
“I’ve read it, sir,” Bill said. “I actually was on the committee that recommended against using it, but that’s besides the point.”
“Why didn’t you want to use it?” the CO asked curiously.
“Mostly because it’s too restrictive, sir,” Bill replied. “If they’d given just the outline, I wouldn’t have an issue. But they tried to imagine anything that could possibly happen and have an SOP response. We’ve already gone way beyond anything in that manual. Among other things it does not cover tickling a giant crabpus to let the ship go or it would have recommended having explosives on board. Face it, sir, we’re going to be the ones writing the manual. I’d suggest going to the section on preindustrial contact, look at the outline and ignore the appendixes. Later, when we’ve got an idea what we’re actually doing, we can write an appendix that isn’t the dreamings of some NASA egghead.”
“Preindustrial, preindustrial, N-O… ,” the XO muttered. “They don’t have a chapter on preindustrial contact.”
“Low-tech?” the CO asked.
“Nope.”
“Savages?” Spectre added. “Barbarians? Slope-heads?”
“Nothing, sir. Wait! What in the hell is ‘developmentally challenged technology?’ ”
Bill sighed. “You begin to see my problems with it, sir.”
“The outline has six items,” the XO said. “Planetary space survey, cultural analysis, initial ground survey, limited communications contact, primary contact and a chapter on inter-tribal diplomacy.”
“Check out the planet and what you can find of the cultures from space,” Bill translated. “Check out the planet on the ground, find some savages cut off from your main contact to sell beads to, then find the main contact and establish communications. Don’t get involved in a war. Unless it seems strategically useful to us.”
“Do we have any beads?” the CO asked.
“Yes, sir,” Dr. Beach said. “As well as other cultural exchange items.”
“There’s a big warning about cultural contamination,” the XO continued. “Do we have a reg on that?”
“None written,” the CO said, glancing at the manual. “That’s a supplementary recommendation, not a reg. Commander Weaver?”
“Somebody’s been watching too much TV, sir,” Bill said, sighing again. “They don’t want us teaching the locals to make gunpowder or whatever. If we make contact, cultural contamination is impossible to avoid. Short-term effects can be devastating to lower-tech cultures, especially very stagnant ones. Long-term effects are usually progress to a level superior to their prior condition, but the PC crowd likes the cultures just the way they are. The noble savage and all that. And the intermediate consequences can be bad: wars, famines, disease. But the life of the average Japanese, today, is a hell of a lot better than under the Meiji. It’s a big philosophical argument.”