Alien Cradle by Jeff Inlo (web ebook reader txt) 📕

Rath pointed to the brown and yellow landscape. His voice held a tone of vindication. "The same thing I saw when I first scouted this planet, nothing."

Lar nodded his head in agreement.

"This is exactly what I saw before," Rath continued. "I don't care how sick I feel, there's nothing down there to see."

Jack smiled. "Of course this is what you saw before; I brought you in at an orbit to mimic your first scout. This is the same flight path. What you see now is exactly what you saw before you initiated automatic landing. But I would like to point something else out. At a higher altitude, more of the surface would have been visible. If we checked the view screens at that point, the view might have been different."

Rath shook his head obstinately. "But I'm sure I made a visual check at initial entry during my first scout. Even if there was something to see then, I would have noticed it."

"Are you certain?" Jack questioned almost sternly. He did not press with hostility, but he offered his own explanation with a degree of confidence. "Remember how badly you felt. You probably did check you visual screens, but how much attention did you give them? Surely if this planet was covered with plant life, you would have noticed, but based on your discomfort, even you would have to admit that a small pocket, a trace anomaly compared to the full expanse of the planet surface might escape your attention."

Rath wasn't so sure. It sounded plausible, then again it sounded impossible. If there was life on this planet, he was certain he would have spotted it.

Jack interrupted with a stern command. "Set your ship for automatic landing sequences, just as you did during your first scout."

More out of instinct than obedience, Rath ordered landing site selection and approach. The Boscon Props shook the vessel as they gently lowered the craft for landing. Rath exhaled as he welcomed the sensation of the props beating against hard ground. When the ship settled into touchdown, he wiped the last few beads of cold seat from his head. Quiet settled into the cockpit as Rath shut off the engines.

Jack stared intently at the pilot.

"What?" Rath responded uneasily.

"Complete your check off and take us outside."

Rath shrugged, checked the atmospheric readings, and prepared for disembarking. He led Jack and Lar out of the starboard hatch. This time, he didn't hold his breath or run from the craft. He stood beside it, smelling the cooling metal. It threatened to bring back a touch of nausea, but he fought off any further sickness.

A lifeless desert welcomed them. Jagged brown rocks jutted up from the horizon in every direction. The surface was parched and hard. Dust, sand and rock; nothing more.

"Certainly not the garden spot of Fenrir," Jack admitted.

"I'm not convinced there is a garden spot," Rath countered.

Jack just smiled. "Take us on a walk. I'm sure you normally do a foot scout."

"Absolutely, but you're just going to see what I see now. Oh by the way, my portable is scanning for life signs. There's no reading. Nothing."

"I don't doubt that at all," Jack responded, sounding anything but defeated.

The three ambled for some time through the barren landscape. The scenery held rugged beauty, but no indication of life. Finally, Jack made his last request.

"Take us to the point where you obtained your load of emeralds and rubies."

Rath frowned and did not move.

Jack waved his hand almost apologetically. "Don't worry. I'm not trying to obtain any kind of evidence against you. I just want to retrace your trail. It's an order from the councils. It's the last step in verifying why you didn't find the Fenrites on your first scout."

Rath huffed a heavy breath but finally conceded. He brought them to a small pit where he had used the laser miner to scratch away the rock surface. He watched Jack carefully, still unsure of the coordinator's motives.

Jack just scratched an eyebrow. His narrow features appeared to thin even more under the heat. "Why don't we get back to the ship? It's hot out here and I'm getting tired. There's still much for us to see."

"Considerable challenges, considerable challenges indeed." Dr. Sinclair took a handkerchief and wiped the side of her neck. Warmth in the council room didn't create her perspiration, questions and concerns over the Fenrites raised her anxiety and the layers of flesh simply did the rest. "I suppose we should examine the most obvious problem. The growth rate of the Fenrites is expanding exponentially. The gestation period is much shorter than Dr. Eurobian estimated. Multiple births also seem to be the rule rather than the exception. Colonies are teeming with newborns and growing infants.

"For those of you that worried of the immediate repercussions of overpopulation, I have a leading report which puts some of those concerns to rest. The Fenrites will not starve. To their credit, they have found their own solution to the restricted food supply. They have examined the plant life instilled for them and found the crop which grows the fastest and provides the greatest nutrition. They are using this food source to its greatest potential. Our scanners are already picking up extensive tracks of land utilized to support current as well as future population growth. As they deplete that which was initially provided for them, the larger than anticipated harvests will more than compensate for the loss. In effect, the Fenrites are adapting to their explosive growth by farming much larger areas of land than we expected.

"This will of course alter Dr. Morgan's planned ecosystem. A much larger percentage of Fenrir's surface will be changed from desert into farmland. A small consequence. We have many scanning reports which will provide enough data to assert our claim of Fenrir's desert like conditions before this alteration. This new phenomena will simply be attributed to the stage of development the Fenrites achieved upon our discovery of their civilization. It will be considered part of their evolution and nothing more.

"Perhaps even more interesting, the Fenrites show particular skill toward utilizing the surrounding lands as efficiently as possible, but with a mind to future needs as well. While their main objective is to create a sufficient, reliable, and quickly available food supply, they are not ignoring other alternatives. They seem to be instinctively avoiding our own ancestor's agricultural mistakes which led to the potato famine and the dust bowl. I would theorize that they have actually retained a far greater percentage of the agricultural knowledge planted within their memory than we would have imagined. There is little else which would explain their instinctive actions to refrain from over burdening the soil and relying on a single crop. Perhaps their simple-mindedness and lack of independent thought allowed for such absorption, like pets learning a new trick."

Dr. Sinclair folded her hands and a frown creased her lips downward. "But now to the problem. We are uncertain as of yet as to the true life span of a Fenrite. Dr. Eurobian gives us some insight as to an estimate, but nothing that we can count on with any great reliance. Even if we take the short end of the estimate, the Fenrite population will still grow at a staggering rate. If such growth continues, they will eventually reach a point where there is simply not enough land to cultivate. While it is nothing that threatens them in the near term, in the long run they will face food shortages.

"Some of my associates have offered solutions, none of which I can support. From the ill-conceived notion of creating a predator to the vastly more compassionate, but no less damaging alternative of supplementing the Fenrites with food shipments from our own ag-planets. I assert that we must allow the Fenrites to find their own solutions as they have already shown a propensity to achieve. Let them deal with the problem and let us learn from it. That, after all, is the basis of this entire experiment.

"Food shortages may lead to other events which our colleagues from different councils are eager to watch. Monitoring riots, war, and the political development stemming from such calamities is just another form of understanding our own past. We must allow the different branches of the scientific community to observe their fields of interest.

"Remember, we are not here to solve the Fenrites' problem. A problem I must remind some that does not exist nor will exist for some time. We can make all the projections and estimations over what might happen a century or two from now, but that does not alter the basic intent of our experiment. We merely must watch how they deal with critical junctures in their own development. The variations and similarities will tell us a great deal about our own historical decisions. We did not create this organism to dictate its lifestyle. We proceeded with this grand experiment to watch the internal development of an alien civilization. To interfere, even with the best intentions, is to break the foundation which is the cause for the Fenrites very existence."

"Now, for some good news." She rubbed her hands together as she took a surveying glance around the council chambers. "We have the scout pilot that made the initial investigation of Fenrir, the only human to physically explore Fenrir before Inception. Due to some genuine luck, achieved by the forthright decision to have the Authority secure the system, the pilot was caught attempting to pirate gems from the planet. He never turned over his report to a local Exploratory Commission, and thus, there was never a need to intercept the planet from the Council of Colonization. We have detained the pilot for some time; even allowed health officers to conduct extensive tests to satisfy their own fears that there are no communicable diseases on Fenrir. Now, a close associate of mine is debriefing the scout pilot and clearly removing any threats that he might represent."

"Alright Mr. Scampion," Jack pointed to the flight controls, "why don't you get us airborne, but don't take us into orbit. I want you to keep us in the atmosphere for a little aerial reconnaissance."

Rath grimaced. "What altitude?"

"Set it for 15,000 meters. That should be high enough."

Rath voiced the order and the scout rumbled with life. The Boscon Props powered the craft into vertical lift off, then propelled the scout into a standard flight path at the proper altitude.

"Now, let's take a look at these terminal screens, shall we," Jack requested. "Please activate all exterior cameras and use them to scan the surface."

Rath grudgingly activated all viewing cameras and the far reaching landscape of Fenrir filled the monitors. A touch of vertigo struck him as each terminal flaunted their position high in the sky. He swallowed hard to beat back the growing unease. The only comfort he found existed in the drab appearance of the landscape. Brown and orange rock formations filled the terminal screens. The desert surrounded them and surpassed the limit of the camera range.

"See!" Rath nearly shouted. "There's nothing out there." He paused for a moment to let the display screens accent his point. After nodding his head, he let his anger flow freely. "What the hell is this all about? You tell us there's a life form down there, some kind of ape-lizard thing, and there's nothing here."

Jack said nothing. He just watched the screens.

Rath grew even more annoyed with the silent