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

response. His anger allowed him to forget his discomfort. "How long are we going to stay up here? There's nothing down there."

Jack waited a few more seconds, and then looked to Lar. "What about you Mr. Smiel? Are you convinced there are no life forms on this planet?"

"I guess so," Lar confessed. "I don't see ... wait! What's that over there?"

"Where?" Jack asked calmly.

Lar pointed to a corner of the view screen. "That."

Rath turned his gaze to the point of contention. He stared at a spec of green. He blinked, but it remained.

"Can you zoom the lens anymore, Mr. Scampion?"

Rath stuttered. "A little."

He adjusted a control and the green spot filled a larger portion of the view screen.

"Why don't you change course and head in that direction? Keep your altitude at 15,000 meters, for now anyway."

Rath didn't respond. His attention remained fixed on the monitor.

"Mr. Scampion?"

"Yeah, I'll adjust the course."

As the scout vessel veered toward the anomaly, the green area began to grow, to encompass more and more of the landscape. Within moments, the shadows of plant life filled the entire lower portion of the bow camera angle.

"Gentlemen, let me introduce you both to alien life."

There was no true definition to the picture at this point. They were both too far and too high to determine what kind of plant life nestled itself into the soil, but the existence, as well as the spread of the anomaly, was no longer debatable.

Rath shook his head almost violently as he argued the obvious. "This isn't possible." He switched off the aft and starboard cameras and diverted monitors to sensor readings. He pointed to the screens with renewed vigor. "Look, there's no reading on the sensors. They're not picking up anything. This is some kind of trick."

"Widen the array," Jack advised.

"I am shooting a wide pattern array. I always ... this isn't right." He fumbled with the controls. He matched the board setting with the readouts. The manual controls indicated they were indeed on wide focus, but the sensor patterns themselves indicated a narrow band.

"What's wrong?" Jack asked with a look of concern.

"The sensors are shooting a band that doesn't match the controls."

"I don't understand," Jack noted innocently

Rath frowned before he explained. He slapped and twisted a few more controls, even requested computer analysis. "Check sensor integrity. Analyze beam pattern."

The computer replied instantly. "Sensor reflection within normal parameters. Wave structure uninterrupted. Beam pattern ten square kilometers."

"That can't be." Rath looked to Jack. "The sensor waves are only rebounding off a fraction of the planet surface."

"Can you increase the width?"

"Damn it, I have. I've got the controls on maximum. On these settings, I should be getting half the planet. There's nothing else for me to turn up. Wait, I can turn control over to the computer." He voiced the order. "Computer override on sensors. Ignore manual controls. In fact, shut down the cockpit board. Maximum scan of the planet for living organisms."

"Insufficient data. Unable to match readings."

"Readings? What do you mean insufficient data?"

Jack nodded. "That was the first reading received by an orbital scanner five star systems from here. An anomaly."

Rath barely choked out one last request of the computer analysis. "Define existing readings within known standards, ignore unrelated material."

"Chloroplasts. Carbohydrates. Amino Acids. Located within numerous complex organic compounds capable of metabolism."

Jack grinned ear to ear, but still his teeth did not show. "You see gentlemen. Alien life. That's why the computer couldn't relate its initial readings to anything within its data base. The most prevalent theory points to life which is quite similar to our own, but with slight differences in genetic makeup. Understandable actually."

Lar peered deeply into the view screens, trying to understand the magnitude of what he was seeing. "That's a lot of green down there."

"Well," Jack offered, "it's actually a good deal more than what was there a few standard months ago. It seems the inhabitants of Fenrir are going through a phenomenal growth stage. They appear to be learning new farming techniques, irrigation and other agricultural processes. It's not unlike what are own civilization experienced during certain times of new invention. They are farming more and more of the land, turning desert into the green fields we now see. We believe that is why the orbital scanners finally picked up the anomaly a few months back. If the Fenrite population had remained static, we might never have found them until after we colonized this planet."

"Why didn't I find them?!" Rath demanded.

Jack spoke with a reassuring tone. "We don't blame you. Stop torturing yourself. You put your vessel on automatic landing and the computer picked out the safest place. It would be like landing in the Sahara Desert on earth. You would have found no signs of life there, either. The problem was simply a sensor control. We'll have maintenance check it out when we get back in orbit. The Council of Technology wanted to take apart your ship about three months ago, but a decision was made not to. We wanted to run this test, but we wanted to run it with you. We had to have conclusive proof as to why your first scout didn't reveal this anomaly.

"You see, due to your somewhat unethical decisions to return to Fenrir, some councils believe you knew that there was alien life here. They believed you simply wanted to steal the emeralds despite the finding. A good deal of rebellion in a society will create that kind of cynicism. A review of your logs, however, indicated you never found the aliens despite your landing. This, of course, created a debate as to what happened. But we have our answer and there is no need for us to worry about your motives any longer."

Rath bit his bottom lip. He supposed he should have been thankful for the remark, an absolution of blame, but his emotions lie elsewhere. He stared at the growing sections of green on the view screens. He had been to so many planets. They were always the same, rock and dust, empty lands waiting to be raped by miners and colonists. He never returned to the planets he scouted because he didn't want to see the change. He didn't think he wanted to see the desolation forced into something different, something that was perhaps never meant to be, but he was seeing it now.

An alien.

Alien life.

That's what caused this change, or so he thought. He explored and scanned so many planets, investigated barren worlds. He never found anything beyond rocks and lifeless oceans of water. He was a scout; it was his mission objective to search out alien life. Here it was before him, and he was truly not prepared for it. A hundred new questions bit at him, a hundred new thoughts confused his previous convictions.

An alien!

Jack spoke as if he could read Rath's mind. "Would you like to get a closer look?"

Dr. Sinclair entered the following note into her portable:

Jack:

After you're convinced the jewel distributor no longer has doubts, send him home. Tell him he should remain silent in the interests of Regency Security. I've checked his profile, and I believe he will remain quiet and simply go back to his business on Janus. He may be an asset we can utilize in the future, but for now, it is better if we return him to his daily routine. He's been away from his business for a very extended period of time. Offer him whatever assistance he needs to quickly return to his life as it was.

As for the pilot, I'd like to keep him with us. He is motivated by money and a man like that can be dangerous. All it would take is one religious zealot with deep funded pockets and this scout may turn on us. Use your best judgment in convincing him it is in his own best interest to stay on.

I have one last request. A minor branch of the Council of Galactic Agriculture wants a sample of the Fenrite crops. Two members of the main department of agricultural are well aware that the samples will provide little benefit, but they do not wish to stall the request, fearing their reservations will appear suspicious. Please advise the Health Council to place a ban on the transportation of plant life until further study is conducted.

As always, treat this memo with proper security procedures. Deepest Regards, Dr. Elizabeth Sinclair

Rath glared uneasily. "Is this a good idea?"

"I have clearance for one low pass." Jack replied.

"How low?"

"Pretty much as low as you want. I was only authorized to land in the desert where you made your first scout, so we can't land again. But if you really want to get a good luck at our newly-discovered galactic neighbors, that shouldn't be a problem."

Lar perked up. "You mean we get to see the alien?"

"We'll be able to pick them up with the cameras on full zoom. What do you say, Mr. Scampion? Care to take us down for a look?"

Rath grunted, but he fixed on a grouping of the complex organic compounds as described by the computer. He punched in a low flight path, not the safest altitude for a scout, more like a skimmer route, but for one pass, they'd be alright. He gave one last command to the shipboard computer.

"Fix all cameras on the unclassified organisms, range four kilometers, bearing zero point zero five. Maximum magnification. Display on forward screens."

Jack glanced at the images every now and then, but he focused on the reaction of the two men with him. He smiled.

Lar sat wide-eyed and amazed. "Will you look at that? This is unbelievable. They're like two legged, walking lizards. They got faces like monkeys, but they're all covered in scales. I don't see any tails, do they have tails?"

"A few colonies in a different region have been reported to include tails," Jack said.

Lar's eyes darted about the many forms moving about the small compound nestled in a crescent of medium-sized trees. Small huts of branches, tall grass, rock and mud dotted the backdrop. "This is unbelievable."

Rath stared dead in the center of the screen. He said nothing. He thought of the last time he was here, on Fenrir. He remembered how he felt when he kicked that lonely rock. He thought he was alone, but apparently he wasn't.

The Fenrites couldn't ignore the hum of the scout vessel. At first, they sought cover. Some dove behind the cluster of trees which protected their village, others darted into their small huts. In time, however, they all grew curious. They moved about in search of the strange noise. Finally, they looked to the sky, to an area where they had never seen anything but clouds and stars before. There were no birds on Fenrir, but there was something flying toward them now.

They watched the craft sail by, they looked with an eye for detail, and they remembered what they saw.

Dr. Sinclair frowned at her associate. "You've seen the reports, haven't you? Of course you have. You know what's going on."

She shook her head as she glanced at the notes before her. Before her fellow council member could speak, she announced her own interpretations.

"Dr. Eurobian, you created the