Jamie says the accounts of the exile colony are just another made-up story that people pretend to believe in—that one day humans will live safely and naturally on Hella. He says that a secret settlement doesn’t make sense. If all of us at Summerland Station are working so hard to minimize cross-contamination, why would we turn anyone out into the Hellan ecology? And if they were being exiled from us, then why would they care about honoring our rules?
No, even if it’s possible, it’s still impossible. There’s no way to survive outside any of the stations. There are way too many unknown things out there. Really big unknown things. The intelligence engines say that the life-expectancy of an unprotected human in the wild would be less than three days. Twelve if you could stay away from the local kill zones. But you’d still need food and water. There’s not a lot of Hellan stuff that’s been thoroughly tested and proven safe to eat. There’s a lot of stuff we think might be, but we don’t know yet. As fast as we can fab the necessary scanning equipment, we still don’t have enough lab people to do all the testing. Not yet. Mom says it’s something I could be good at. But the real job will take generations. There’s just too much that we don’t know.
* * *
—
0630.
I’d sat in on briefings before. It’s part of the certification process. Every time a mission team goes out, the student teams parallel their operations on simulators. I’d sat in on mission games since I was four. Hella-years, of course. Or nearly eleven Earth-years.
I’d simulated so many missions, I already knew the agenda, and the noise knows everything too. Well, almost everything. Mom likes to say that the noise doesn’t know what it doesn’t know. That’s its biggest flaw.
The briefings work like this.
First, context and purpose, so everybody knows why we’re doing this. “This is strictly routine maintenance of our northern on-site surveillance. It’s just a little look-see. But we are going out overnight because we’re also looking to increase our observations of nocturnal activity on the plains. I could say that we’re looking to clear up some anomalies, but everything on this planet is an anomaly. We just want to know what’s moving around out there after dark.”
Second, everybody reviews the route, so everybody knows where they’re going. This morning, Captain Skyler said, “We’re taking five trucks to monitor the migration. We’ll have eight crew in the forward vehicle, nine crew in the middle, eight crew in the rear. We’ll go northeast into the savannah as far as Big Bend, then north along the Dystopic River until we get to Flat Rock. We will not be climbing the rock. We’ll turn west, all the way to Little Jumble and then follow the foothills south and then southeast home. It’s a three-day ride, give or take half a day.”
Third, everybody reviews the specifics, so everybody knows what they’re individually doing. “We’ll be releasing the new drones every two hours and planting seismic monitors at these sites—here, here, and here. Sniffers and weather stations—here and here and another two up here if possible. Replace or repair these two remotes which have gone offline. Your checklists have been downloaded to your vehicles.”
And finally, safety instructions, because there are always safety instructions: “Nothing in this mission requires anyone to put themselves in harm’s way. We will take no unnecessary risks. You’re to avoid close contact with the herds and especially any of their outliers—those are the most dangerous. Over here, this red circle, Grumpy-Butt and his family are feeding off a land-whale. That should keep them happy for a week or two, but let’s give them a wide berth anyway.
“We’ve got high confidence that our local predators are tagged and located, but as always we can’t guarantee that there aren’t a few hungry juveniles wandering through. They’ll be following the migrations. Your monitors will warn you if you get within ten klicks of any of the locals, and the drones will be watching for tourists. As always, safety procedures take precedence over all other operations. Stop often, at least once a klick, and listen for thumps and sniff for trace. We’ll have six lifters sitting hot on the pad. If anything with teeth even grunts in your direction, holler and all six will be airborne in thirty seconds. I know that a couple of you have been calling this a ride in the park. It isn’t—it never is. And it never will be—at least, not in our lifetimes. And those who think that way won’t be riding out on any mission that I’m running. Any questions?” Captain Skyler stood next to the big display and waited.
Usually there aren’t any questions. Captain Skyler always publishes the mission objectives and briefing books a day or two in advance, and everybody assigned would have the appropriate checklists on their tabs. But today, a hand went up. Lieutenant Bo-Say. “I’m not clear about one thing. Why are we going out so far? Wouldn’t this be better in two operations? One close, one far?”
Captain Skyler nodded. “Ordinarily, yes. But time and cost analysis gives us a forty percent advantage. And we need to have all the monitors operational before the tenth of Curie. There’s an important birthday coming up, right, Kyle?” He turned back to the screen, pointed at the map. “It’s been a good year for the herds. Most of the calves survived. So we’re looking at an aggravated situation when they get here. Not just the herds, but the predator packs as well. If we run this operation now, we can go to Lockdown three days early. It’s about margin.”
That was the way Captain Skyler always talked. He talked about plans and consequences and cost-effectiveness and investment of resources and always with one eye on the calendar. So I didn’t understand why Lieutenant Bo-Say asked the question. Unless the question was about me and that’s why he said what he did. Why were they taking me along on a three-day drive-around? Wouldn’t it be better for my first ride-along to be a close perimeter check? Maybe the Captain was trying to make a point and the point wasn’t about me. Maybe it was about . . . I don’t know. He didn’t need me, he could have left me at home. Maybe this was about making a point to Marley—or her dad. Jubilee said that Captain Skyler might be running for a councilor’s chair next election. I need to pay more attention to those things. I’ll be able to vote soon, not on everything, but some things. I have Class 3 Certifications in six domains, I only need one more Certification for my 5th birthday to be a Passage Ceremony, that’s what Captain Skyler was hinting at.
Captain Skyler looked at his pad. “Suit up. We roll in fifteen.”
* * *
—
Three concentric fences surround Summerland Station. After the Big Break-In—I remember it because it was just before my fourth birthday, and I never had a real birthday party—the Council ordered planning for a fourth fence, but it got slogged down in arguments about whether or not we should establish a second summer station instead. Shouldn’t we decentralize? We’re three years past the timeline. But whichever side of the argument was right, it didn’t matter. We didn’t have the resources to do either. Not enough people. Not enough machines. Not yet.