Once he sealed the helmet to his suit’s neck ring, Brad went back through the short, cramped passageway to the hatch, hunched over slightly to keep his helmet from scraping the overhead. As he reached a gloved hand to push the button that opened the hatch, he saw that his hand was trembling slightly.
“Ready to open hatch,” he said.
A controller’s voice replied, “Clear to open hatch.”
Brad leaned on the button and the hatch slid up, almost noiselessly.
And there it was. Planet Gamma. An alien world that no human had set foot upon. To his staring eyes it looked almost like Earth, but not quite. The green grass waving slightly in the breeze was darker than any grass he had seen before. There were forested hills in the distance, also deeply green, and, far beyond them, craggy gray mountains that seemed to be floating on a bluish haze above the rolling horizon.
No animals visible. No insects buzzing. The only sounds were the soft sighing of the wind and Brad’s own breath gushing out of him.
“You are cleared to leave the shuttlecraft,” the controller’s voice prompted.
“Right,” said Brad. He started down the short aluminum ladder, stepping carefully in his heavy boots. Wouldn’t want to fall on my face the first time a human steps onto an alien planet.
He immediately remembered that humans had walked on New Earth, the planet of the star system Sirius, but that was an artificial world, constructed by the Predecessors and populated with humanlike creatures. That had been humankind’s first contact with aliens.
But here, this planet Gamma, this was a real, natural world populated by genuine aliens, creatures who had evolved here naturally.
And I’m going to make contact with them!
* * *
The thrill of landing melted away after half an hour of trudging across the meadow, sweating inside his biosuit despite its internal climate control. Mithra was an angry red dot high in the sky, glaring down at him. The woods that fringed the meadow still seemed kilometers away.
One boot ahead of the other, Brad told himself as he slogged away. The meadow seemed empty of animal life. Not even a field mouse or an insect. Maybe they’re frightened by my presence, Brad thought. Maybe they can sense that I’m an alien intruder and they’re keeping their distance. More likely the noise and shock of the shuttlecraft’s landing sent them all scuttling into their holes.
How will the humanoids react to me? he wondered.
Outwardly, Brad looked much like the bipedal natives of Gamma: tall and lean, the chalky surface of his biosuit spotted with irregular splotches of blue and purple, his head a conical cylinder with bulging eyes on either side.
It was easy enough to look up from inside his helmet. The one-way plastiglas was transparent. Brad saw the lopsided crescent of Beta halfway up from the horizon. He knew it was his imagination, but the planet seemed larger, closer than when he’d seen it from the shuttlecraft.
As he approached the woods, he saw that the trees looked different from any he remembered of Earth. Some of them had twisty, sinuous trunks studded with snaky branches and broad, flat leaves. Others were tall and straight, soaring skyward like redwoods, no branches until high above. Instead of leaves they seemed to bear clusters of pods, so deep a green they looked almost black.
There were bushes between the trees, but they were sparse enough so that they presented no real obstacle to his walking through them.
The ground was rising gently, Brad saw as he checked his map display, flashed against the inner surface of his helmet. It showed he was on the right track to reach the village they had selected as his objective.
“Emcee, are you there?” he asked, in a whisper.
“Yes,” came the familiar voice. “You are two point six kilometers from the center of the village.”
“Thanks.”
“You are welcome.”
Emcee’s politeness seemed almost silly. Brad wormed his arm out of its sleeve and took the water nipple between his index finger and thumb. The drink tasted flat, stale. One of his first tasks would be to test the water in one of the local streams to see if it was drinkable. If not, he’d have to drink water recycled from the suit’s supply.
Drink my own piss, he thought, with a grimace of distaste.
Something flashed past, to his left. An animal! Brad thought. Something small and furry had scampered into the bushes that hugged the bases of the big, straight-boled trees.
Even though he couldn’t see the critter now, Brad felt better, happier. He knew from the earlier uncrewed landing vehicles that the planet teemed with animal life. But actually seeing one lifted his spirits.
Now that he was in among the trees, he saw bright-colored birds swooping past, most of them high above, but a few lower, closer. Watching the darting flight of the lower ones, Brad thought there must be insects that they were chasing.
And from twenty meters above him, a small furry animal clung upside down to a tree’s trunk and chittered away at him. Grinning, Brad thought, A one-man welcoming committee. Then he sobered and guessed, More likely he’s scared, defensive.
The ground’s slope got steeper, and Brad began to realize that his suit’s weight was far from negligible. He was sweating heavily by the time he reached the crest of the rise.
And there it was: the village, down in the hollow below him. Slowly, awkwardly, Brad sank to his knees in the cumbersome suit, then flattened out onto his belly. He fingered the control pad on his left sleeve, and the electro-optical binoculars built into the helmet slid in front of his eyes.