Unbounded Read online

Chapter Four: Glow Canyon

  Mission Time: +260.99 Earth-years

  Tai glanced towards the barely audible sound of the sliding door. Ryder's figure was dark against the white habitat ring corridor. He stepped into the steel blues of the medical bay, and the overheads brightened above, following him as he walked towards Tai.

  "Hello Doctor," Ryder said.

  "Mr. Kask. How are you feeling?"

  "Well."

  "Good. You know the drill." Tai gestured to the scanning instrument. Ryder stepped onto the circular dais, and a set of encompassing rings descended from their receptacle in the ceiling. Once deployed, they moved slightly, adjusting their positions along Ryder's body and independently rotating their perpendicular axes at unpredictable intervals. On a console, Tai monitored the live data streaming from the scanner.

  "Do you really believe everything you said in the staff meeting at the end of the last mission segment?" Tai asked idly.

  "Yes."

  "Hm. I have to say, that view is a little too cynical for me."

  "That's your personal feeling. It doesn't affect its truth value."

  "I think you may have been mostly right, but so am I. Our views are not totally exclusive."

  "How so?" Ryder asked.

  "Well, big expeditions might be begun or financed by profit-seeking or status-seeking motives, but many people associated with the endeavors are also motivated by the pursuit of pure knowledge."

  "Because that knowledge might yield practical benefits."

  "Yes, but also because knowledge is desirable for its own sake. But I suppose that's a value judgment." Tai tapped the console. "Perfectly healthy." The rings slid back to their recess.

  "And I notice people tend to get more excited about certain subject areas of knowledge than others," Ryder said as he stepped off the dais. "Life, especially. It's just an extraordinary case of complex chemistry, yet everyone treats it with a kind of mystical reverence."

  "I would say it's self-evidently true that life is complex chemistry, but as such, it is the most complex phenomenon in the known Cosmos. There are more detailed, sophisticated definitions: but each is unsatisfactory in its own way; life is a little difficult to define because, until Cold Trove, we had a sample size of only one. It's hard to draw general conclusions from just one occurrence of a phenomenon. I think that's a big reason why scientists are so eager to find more instances."

  "Unfortunately for me, I'm not a scientist. Maybe that's why I think differently."

  "I sense sarcasm."

  "Because it seems like most of the crew feel it pitiful to be a non-scientist. I see how they look at me. No matter what I do to deserve respect, I'll never earn it in their eyes."

  "I don't think that's true. Maybe a couple people have been rude, but don't over-generalize. And don't worry so much what the others think--just do your job the best you can."

  Ryder nodded. "Thanks. Well, see you later." Tai smiled and nodded. Ryder went to the main corridor and made the long stroll to Command Sector.

  The sector was dim except for the glow of the consoles and Mbali's projected display. Ryder stayed near the door.

  "You confirmed our space-time position?" Mbali asked.

  "Yes," Anaru answered. "We're in a stellar orbit 1.156 light-minutes from Gliese 682. And we're in a four hundred kilometer orbit above a 0.463-mass planet."

  "Habitability?" She looked to Tangaroa and Tekoha.

  "In terms of potential biodiversity, it is marginally habitable," Tangaroa said. "But it would be hard, if not impossible, for a human colony to eke out a living. It's tidally locked with Gliese 682, and the only hospitable temperatures are found at the permanent day-night terminator. This zone of twilight is subject to constant winds, and ultraviolet light exposure is still a potential issue during flares, although those are rare for this type of red dwarf. Surface gravity is 0.77 g; the atmosphere is sixteen percent oxygen, with a mean surface pressure of 0.767 atmosphere. Tectonically active, one third the surface area covered by deep water oceans--though frozen over on the night side."

  "Wait a second, if there's oxygen, doesn't mean there has to be life?" Ryder asked. "I mean, oxygen doesn't naturally occur without some biological process like photosynthesis producing it."

  "Not necessarily," Tekoha said. "There are natural processes, like photodissociation, which can generate substantial free oxygen in an atmosphere. All we can say with some confidence is multicellular life requires its presence to operate."

  "Any other biomarkers?" Mbali asked. "Hydrocarbons or whatever?"

  "Yes," Tekoha said. "But the readings are ambiguous. We can't say for certain whether there is life just by looking at spectral lines of the atmosphere. We need to go down and look."

  There was a silence, and heads turned to Mbali. She bit her lip and looked down. Then she looked up again and spoke. "Okay, launch an oceanic probe. We can go down to dry terrain at the twilight zone and check it out, assuming Fai-tsiri approves. But I don't want to spend too much time here if there's no chance of establishing a viable settlement."

  Tekoha moved his hands over his console. "Probe launched," he said.

  "Tangaroa," Mbali said. "I want you to be on the team again, of course, but this time I shall be in command. Zhong will be at my side, and I shall defer in all matters of security to him. We don't know what dangers we might encounter. Prep the skiff and I'll be along shortly. Dismissed."

  Tangaroa gestured to various crewmen as he walked along the sector, and the others filed after him. Ryder fell into the line behind Zhong and followed him to the skiff bay. He walked around a Kea-class skiff, discussing its flight-worthiness with Ariki. After a few minutes, Mbali entered the bay and approached them.

  "Fai-tsiri approved the mission," she said to them. She signaled the team and they boarded the skiff. "Though our bodies could adjust to the planet's surface pressure, we'll use suits again to avoid having to wait for depressurization procedures."

  Ryder began recording as he climbed aboard, and sat next to Zhong. He put on an AR visor and connected to the skiff's external cameras. The skiff bay was steeped in red warning light as the air was pumped into storage tanks. A strobe light began flashing as the bay door opened and the skiff was gently shoved out on its rails. After they were released from the rails' clamps and the sky suddenly ceased its rapid revolution, Gliese 682 b centered in his view. He was looking at its permanent day-side, a cloudy hemisphere dominated by a single, unfading storm system. The enormous, white cyclone dominated the bright face, its black eye at the equator staring directly into the sun. As they spiraled around to the dark face, Ryder saw dim specks of light scattered along a short arc in the land of an unending winter night.

  "I see some lights on the surface!" he exclaimed.

  "Those are volcanoes erupting," Tangaroa said. "This planet has a much higher level of vulcanism than Earth."

  "Then what about quakes?"

  "The landing zone is a seismically inactive region, relatively speaking."

  Ryder turned his head to switch to different hull cameras. The night was too dark to discern much subtlety of shadings to the ice in the starlight. As they approached the terminator again, the ice grew darker, then broke into ragged tendrils reaching for the unmoving dawn. Dark land now dominated the surface. They broke into the light again, and he could clearly see surface features: winding rivers, long canyons, the little wrinkles of mountains. Then came a few white dots--a herd of clouds. Then more lines of clouds, marching in the same direction. They grew and merged to the spiral arms of the massive day-storm. Ryder flipped his vision to radio. The skiff's radar showed many small continents scattered over the ocean below the clouds. He flipped to infrared, then back to normal vision. They passed over the day-storm's eye; he could see multiple layers of clouds in the deep cylindrical wall--and at the bottom, a glint of sunlight reflected from a dark sea.

  The skiff circled the planet again, then entered the atmosphere. They made a steep descent towards the twilight
zone. The landing area was flat. The skiff touched down next to a long canyon, running east-west. The only sound remaining was the constant wind.

  "Kask, you have permission to disembark," Tangaroa said.

  Ryder nodded as he unstrapped his harness and went to the personnel elevator whilst the others loaded equipment onto the freight elevator. He sealed himself in the tube and underwent the sterilization and suit application procedure. Dim, reddish gray light entered the elevator from the bottom. He saw smooth sandstone below. Then as he emerged from the skiff's ventral hull, the horizon became visible. The sun was a hazy red spot through thick clouds which dominated the entire dayside horizon. Two thirds of the sky was clear towards the nightside. The elevator came to rest, and the door slid open. The air rushed out, and he stepped onto the eroded sandstone. He walked slowly out from under the skiff, fighting to maintain balance in the gale whilst avoiding mottled dark patches on the ground. He found a smooth ridge near the skiff and sat facing north, towards the canyon. He lowered his chin to his chest, resting, breathing, listening. Then he looked up.

  The wind-worn land was not a desert. It was a forest of long growths rooted to the ground, stretched out into aerodynamic shapes in the north-south direction to match air flow. Their sunward-facing ends were a glossy black, with the tone gradating to light brown on the night-facing ends. Amongst them, scattered randomly all over the rock, were dark circular patches, like a hardy moss. Ryder looked to the canyon mouth. The gap was filled with circular shapes he could not quite discern from his vantage. They were lit from below by a blue glow.

  He stood and watched the freight elevator lower, loaded with equipment. Tekoha was the first to jump off the platform. He took merely two steps before kneeling to examine the circular growth patches. Ryder walked over to him and touched his shoulder.

  "What?" Tekoha said without looking up.

  "Look," Ryder said, pointing. Tekoha finally raised his head and saw the giant forms sitting in the wind.

  "By the ancestors!" Tekoha exclaimed. He began walking slowly towards the nearest one. "They're ... exquisite," he said softly. Ihaia looked at Zhong, who nodded and made a gesture at Tekoha with two fingers.

  "Wait a moment professor," Ihaia said. He caught up to him and drew a toroidal hand-weapon.

  "What are you doing?" Tekoha scowled at him.

  "Going with you. If you're going to get close to something so big ...."

  Tekoha nodded impatiently. "Fine. Just don't go shooting anything unless it's about to kill me." They approached within four meters; Tekoha began laser scans from his arm-calc. "Fascinating. There's subsurface scattering to a depth of six centimeters; diatomic oxygen outgassing. I think photosynthesis is going on under the dark areas." He pointed to the base of the object. "Roots. It has quite a grip on the rock. This is definitely a sessile, photosynthesizing organism." They walked around it. "Perhaps the equivalent of a tree. I'm going to name it Arbor Te Kohai." Tekoha stepped forward and pressed an instrument to its flank. Ihaia looked back to the group of people still gathered near the freight elevator.

  Zhong was talking with Tangaroa whilst the other scientists gathered their tools from the platform. Ihaia pressed a button on his arm-calc so that he could hear the conversation through his earpiece. "... otherwise we should have left the probes to do the exploring for us," Tangaroa was saying.

  "Fine. Just so you realize it will be harder for me to guarantee everyone's safety when they go jumping off cliffs," Zhong said.

  "Zhao, we already jumped off the cliff when we left the Solar System." Tangaroa turned to the group and gestured to a pile of equipment. "Put on the lift-packs. We're going now."

  "Uh, Professor Tekoha--they're preparing to go down into the canyon," Ihaia said.

  "What?" Tekoha radioed Mbali. "I'm not finished here; you go ahead. This is the discovery of a lifetime."

  "Every discovery from now on will be the discovery of a lifetime," Mbali said. "Get over here now, Tekoha. You can examine that thing when we return." Tekoha folded his tools and walked back to the group with Ihaia.

  "I'll go first," Zhong said as he secured the harness of a lift-rig. "The rest of you stay here until I give the all-clear. But watch the drone cameras on your arm-calcs." Zhong was tapping his arm-calc as he said this, and a group of eight small drones rose from a nearby container; they attached themselves to the straps hanging from his shoulder harness and whirred above his head, lifting him a few centimeters from the ground. Zhong entered another command into his computer, and the drones brought him over the canyon mouth. He hovered in place for a moment, looking back at the group of people and equipment gathered at the foot of the elevator; they were watching the screens on their arm-calcs. Then Zhong looked down between his feet to a gleaming, narrow stream of water at the bottom of the canyon. The edges of the canyon were lined with dark blue fronds, all angled to catch as much bounced sunlight as possible from the hazy horizon.

  Zhong entered another command and began to descend slowly. The bright patch of Gliese 682 was eclipsed by the canyon edge, and Zhong's pupils dilated; his visor amplified the light admitted to his eyes. As he passed below the level of the fronds, he could see they were attached to stalks which grew along the canyon walls, rooted in some looser sediment below. There were other species of flora as well. Bulbous structures of fungal forms covered the rock walls, along with various vines. As he descended, the light grew dimmer, the wind gentler, and the air heavier. The fungal forms produced a blue bioluminescence which grew brighter the dimmer the ambient light. The pitch of the rotors' whirr changed along with the air pressure. Almost two hundred meters below the canyon lip, Zhong alighted upon a stony riverbank. The quad-rotors released the straps, which were then reeled into harness pouches.

  "I've touched down on the canyon floor," Zhong radioed.

  "And you see any possible problems?" Mbali asked.

  Zhong turned around slowly, scanning the canyon walls, looking and listening. He consulted his arm-calc. "There're quite a lot of sessile species, but I don't detect any movement; I suspect mobile forms are absent or rare. My main concern right now would be rain."

  "Rain?" Mbali prompted.

  "Yes. If there's a storm several kilometers away, we might not see or hear it, and flash floods could sweep through the canyon without warning."

  "Okay. I'll ask Unbounded to monitor the weather. Anything else?"

  "I can't account for everything," Zhong said, "but right now my threat assessment is there's minimal risk."

  "Acknowledged. We're going to start sending a couple people down," Mbali said. "I'm coming too."

  "Understood." Zhong walked to the river's edge. He could see the rocky river-bed through clear water. A whirring sound brought his attention upwards; Tekoha, Ryder, Mbali, and Kahu were descending on quad-rotors. They landed on the same side of the river as Zhong and retracted their harness attachment cords.

  "Looks like the rock is sandstone," Zhong said as Tekoha and Ryder walked up to him. "I don't see much soil, so I'm not sure if the plants' roots are for obtaining nutrients or just for adhesion to the surface. I don't see any animals yet."

  "Don't say 'plants'," Tekoha said. "Not until I've had a chance to study them more. Plants are a kingdom of life particular to Earth. These organisms are sessile, and some at least partly photosynthetic, but beyond that we don't know what characteristics they share with Earth flora. And besides that, many of them have the outward appearance of fungi, which is another Earthly taxonomic kingdom altogether different."

  "Okay," Zhong said. "I just thought it would be too awkward to always have--"

  He was interrupted when Mbali ran up to them. "I just saw something moving," she said.

  "Where?" Zhong asked as he drew his weapon.

  Mbali pointed. "Up there, at the edge of the second cave." There were four cave mouths about twenty meters down-stream and five meters up-slope. They approached the caves as a group, leaving the rotor drones at the drop point.

 
"What did you see, exactly?" Tekoha asked.

  "Something small, and lightly colored. Fleeting. I thought it was a stone at first, before it moved. It ran forward, then went back into the cave."

  "How fast?"

  "I don't know. Fast. Faster than a person can run, I think."

  "Did it make any sounds?"

  "No. But it was rather far away. Difficult to see, as I said."

  Tekoha nodded and consulted his arm-calc. He scanned the area ahead of them as they walked up the slope towards the caves. The rock was smooth, reddish-brown, and ribbed with striations underfoot.

  When they were about three meters from the cave entrance, Tekoha motioned for them to halt. "Let's wait here a moment," he said quietly. "I want to examine the sonic spectrum for noises from any cave animals there might be." They waited in silence whilst Tekoha examined his displays. The cave mouth was the second largest in the group, about eight meters in diameter and roughly circular. The largest was eleven meters wide. The mouth was black, save for dim, filtered sunlight and blue bioluminescence at the edge.

  "Do you mind if I use lasers?" Mbali asked.

  "Go ahead," Tekoha said.

  Mbali quickly scanned the cave interior to a depth of five meters. Smooth rock walls flashed briefly in the green light. "That's strange," she said, looking at the scan results.

  "What is?" Zhong asked nervously.

  "There's a large area of the cave ceiling with a thin deposit of carbon. Some on the wall, too. What do you suppose that means?"

  "It means we need to go in and take a closer look," Tekoha said as he lit the headlamp above his visor.

  "Hold on a second," Mbali said. "Kask and I shall go. The rest of you stay at the mouth. There's plenty for you to do out here."

  "I object," Tai said. "That's a risky task for an executive, and there other more qualified people to do it."

  Mbali held up a hand. "Objection noted. Kask, you're with me. Let's go."

  Ryder lit his lamp and faced the cavemouth. He entered with left forearm raised, the sensors on his arm-calc scanning continuously. He selected some parameters to display on the HUD of his visor, and Mbali seemed to do the same. They stood in a vestibule of smooth stone, about ten meters wide and fifteen meters deep. In the back on the right side, the wall curved around a corner, perhaps leading to a deeper chamber. One large spot on the ceiling of the vestibule was colored black. Mbali stood under it. A chemosensor snaked from her arm-calc and rapidly tapped the black stone several times, then retracted. She looked at the arm display.

  "Soot," she said to Ryder and knelt down to inspect the floor.

  "There was a fire here?" Ryder asked.

  Mbali picked up some pebbles and scanned them, then ran her fingers lightly over the stone. "Yes. Something small, like a campfire." She stood. "Let's go. I want to know what's back there." They went to the rear of the cave and rounded the corner. A tunnel about two meters wide curved to the right, and then back to the left. They turned the second corner into near darkness, and the cave ceiling lowered enough that they had to bend their necks. After a couple minutes of walking downhill, the walls of the cave opened up to a wider space. They swept their lamp-beams over striated surfaces. "Seems to have been eroded out by a subterranean river." They walked to the center of the chamber, and Mbali shone her light on Ryder. She tapped her arm, then said "Mute your comm-mike."

  "What? Why?"

  "Just do it."

  Ryder tapped his arm-calc. "Okay. Muted."

  "Thanks. I needed to talk to you in private."

  "It can't get any more private than this. What's going on?"

  "I would like to use your investigative journalistic skills on a confidential operation. You would report your findings directly to me."

  Ryder crossed his arms. "Okay."

  "You understand you cannot discuss the details of the operation with anyone else. You cannot even confirm its existence to anyone, not even Fai-tsiri. Understand?"

  Ryder hesitated.

  "This is important. I need to you confirm you understand."

  "It's your own personal operation. Understood."

  "And with good reason. I believe it's possible Fai-tsiri gives orders to someone else besides me. If so, my greatest fear is that there is a parallel, secret command structure on the ship. I need you find out if it exists, and if it does, what it is."

  Ryder huffed quietly. "What gave you such an idea?"

  "I lied in the ship-wide announcement about Nikau's death. It wasn't a personal dispute. Hemi was acting on orders from someone. I need to know from whom."

  Ryder was silent again. Then he said "Are you sure?"

  "Yes. One possibility is that there is a small, mutinous group who is undermining the chain of command. The more severe possibility is that Fai-tsiri is deceiving me, and there actually is another executive onboard."

  "But do you have any idea why Hemi killed Nikau?"

  "Not really. That's what I want you to find out."

  Ryder sighed. "This is--"

  Zhong's voice spoke into their earpieces. "Mbali? Ryder? Are you alright?"

  They unmuted their communication microphones. "Yes. Why?" Mbali radioed back.

  "You've been extremely silent for the last couple of minutes. Wanted to make sure you're okay."

  "Yep, we're fine, thank you. We're just exploring a large chamber."

  "Mbali. Look." Ryder's circle of light was focused on a smooth portion of the wall. Patches of color reflected back on the brown substrate. "What's that?" They drew closer. Slightly above their heads, caught in their headlamps, a series of crudely but colorfully drawn arthropodoid animals scrolled across the stone.

  "I see it, but I can hardly believe it," Mbali said.

  "We need the eyes of an archaeologist." Ryder tapped his arm-calc to send his visor camera output to Kahu. "Kahu, take a look at this and tell us what you think." There was silence over the comms for a minute whilst Ryder and Mbali slowly scanned the two-meter wide stretch of paintings.

  "Remarkable," Kahu radioed. "Some astonishing similarities to Earthly cave paintings. Lacking perspective but representational. Probably made by a paleolithic culture. Reminds me of Altamira. I have to get down there and see them for myself."

  Another voice intruded into Mbali's earpiece. "Unbounded to Mbali."

  "Go ahead Unbounded."

  "Probe telemetry reports contact with metazoan life on the oceanic abyssal plain."

  "Acknowledged Unbounded. Keep collecting as much telemetry as possible. Mbali out." She looked at Ryder. "We should go. We'll let the professionals take it from here, and you have things to do ship-side, I'm sure."

  Ryder nodded in the understanding of her code. They hiked back up the tunnel to the large vestibule, then exited the cave to meet the others in the canyon.

  "I suppose there's no point in convening a discussion panel this time. We clearly can't colonize. But how much time do we have before pushing off?" Tekoha asked.

  "How much time do you want?" Mbali asked.

  "Ideally, a lifetime," Tekoha replied.

  "How about twenty-four hours?"

  "You're kidding."

  "I'll talk to Fai-tsiri and push for forty-eight, but I don't think she'll go that high. Look, I'm not totally unsympathetic to your position. I'll advocate for you as best I can."

  Tekoha nodded.

  "Ryder and I are returning to the ship. The--"

  Tekoha interrupted her: "Be quiet a minute, please," he said, holding up his right hand whilst staring at the display on his left forearm. "I'm detecting some faint sounds now. Amplitude increasing. At this rate, they'll be in the range of human hearing in a few seconds." They held their breath and waited. Zhong shifted the weight of the weapon in his hand.

  After a moment they heard a distant tapping sound. Occasionally it broke into a scraping noise before it went back to a soft, punctuated concussion. It grew louder, and then a new sound began to overlay it: a rapid clicking or scrabbling sound. The or
iginal tap grew much louder until it was clearly dominant.

  "I recognize that rhythm," Tai said.

  "I do too," Zhong said. "It's very familiar. It almost sounds like--"

  "Galloping horses," Tekoha said.

  Running out of the cave came a dozen arthropodoid animals, each about the size of a human hand. They had pale, segmented carapaces from under which the tips of black legs poked. Clearly the origin of the scrabbling sound, the creatures scattered in all directions after emerging into the canyon, most running into the river. Then the source of the pounding rhythm emerged: two large quadrupeds, each as tall as a human. They were bilateral, with high knees and a low center of mass. Dark brown skin with accents of yellow markings stretched over endoskeletons. A large, bony cephalon had round, binocular eyes, as well as a small lateral pair. The head was dorsal to the thorax. Thin, anterior limbs manipulated spear-like tools. The spears were raised and aimed at the small arthropoids.

  "Don't move," Tekoha whispered to the other humans over the comms. "Don't do anything." The lead animal seemed to forget its prey and stared at the humans through the ventral eyes, creeping towards them cautiously with spear raised. Tekoha looked back and forth between his arm-calc and the animal.

  "Uh, Tekoha, do you think they can throw those spears?" Tai asked.

  "Everybody start backing away slowly," Zhong said. Tekoha nodded in agreement.

  For a few seconds, the humans backed away as the spear-wielder advanced. But the humans froze at an unexpected sound. A series of loud croaks emitted from the quadruped, starting and stopping abruptly with brief, higher-pitched scraping sounds.

  "What the ..." Mbali said.

  "It has a larynx," Tekoha said. "I believe it's speaking to us. That is language."

  "Language? How can you possibly know that?" Zhong said.

  "It's obvious, isn't it? The variety of sounds is producing an information density at least equal to our own spoken languages. I believe I can make out phones equivalent to our consonant-vowel dichotomy."

  "Then can you communicate with it?" Mbali asked.

  "Not without several months of cooperative effort," Tekoha said.

  "But it might decide to skewer us right now," Zhong said. The wielder shook its spear up and down.

  "Don't we have a translator of some kind, which is universal?" Ryder asked.

  "That is the most stupid question I've ever heard in my life," Tekoha said. "Universal translators are a physical impossibility. The phonetic symbols of language are arbitrary, and their meanings cannot be deduced by running them through algorithms. Not to mention we don't even know which sounds are salient and which are not in their language."

  "Continue backing up," Mbali ordered.

  "Although, maybe if I just switch on my visor's speaker and talk to them, they might get the idea we're people. We might be able to establish some mutual respect."

  "People? As opposed to what?" Zhong asked.

  "Mindless, lower animals. A potential food source," Tekoha responded.

  "Okay, I'll do it," Mbali said. She stopped her back-stepping and turned a speaker on so that her voice was audible beyond the face mask. "Greetings. I am Mbali, executive of the Global Unity spinship Unbounded." She paused. The quadruped quit shaking its spear and halted in its tracks. Mbali waited a moment, but nothing else happened. "We come from another world, looking for a new home," she continued. "We don't want to disturb you here; we were just curious about this place. We'll be leaving soon." She turned her speaker off. "I feel like an idiot," she radioed to the others.

  "Don't worry, you're doing great," Tekoha said. "Clearly your speech had some effect on the organism. It stopped moving. Who knows what's--"

  The animal whipped its spear back and launched it at Mbali. She dove out of the way as soon as she saw the first flicker of movement, and the sharp stick flew past them, into the river. The quadruped ran backwards to join its companions, and they all began squawking loudly and moving their bodies in a jarring dance.

  "Fall back!" Mbali ordered. They backed up along the river. After a considerable distance was between them, Tekoha asked "How far are we going?"

  "Until we're out of their line of sight. Then we call the lifters and return to the skiff." Tekoha gave her a sharp glance. "I know what you're going to say, professor. And you know my response. We are not prepared to interact with potential hostiles. We must safeguard the mission, above all else."

  Tekoha turned away from her and looked back to the intimidating aliens. He stared at them for as long as he could, until they were hidden by the curve of the canyon wall. The humans stopped retreating, and he walked up to Mbali.

  "Tekoha? What is it?" she asked. He had drawn his faceplate close to hers, and the only sound she heard in response was heavy breathing.