Tellustria had turned out to be a xenobotanist’s dream assignment. The planet was teeming with alien flora beyond Paul Edson-Woods’ most fevered daydreams—and there had been many such daydreams since the day that he found out he had been appointed as the “Chief Science Officer for Xenobotany for the American Union Space Force Mission to Tellustria.” It was quite the title, Paul thought, for someone who spent his days crawling through underbrush and collecting sticks and leaves and dirt.
Despite the grandeur of the title (that took up more than its fair share of the nameplate on his office door), his “teammates” on the mission (for, regardless of the rigid military structure of the Space Force Mission, that is how they had been ordered to refer to one another) referred to him as “Chief Gardening Officer” (both behind his back and, not infrequently, to his face). They were military men and women, there to do the hard work of establishing the very first human outpost on an alien planet and Paul was, as far as they were concerned, a distraction. His office and laboratory took up valuable space that could have been devoted to other more militarily-valuable purposes. He did his best to ignore their contempt by losing himself in his work.
In truth, as he reminded himself that morning, there was more work to do than he had ever anticipated. The small cup of MRE instant coffee that was heating up in his Space Force-issued InstaMug simultaneously reminded him of home and also of just how far away it was. Here was no coffee shop creation to be enjoyed over breakfast with a scientific journal article or newspaper to peruse, but a functional beverage intended only for rapid consumption and maximum energy. Still, the sheer novelty of the technology hadn’t quite worn off yet for Paul. He snapped the top onto his InstaMug, grabbed a breakfast bar from the basket near the end of his sleeping pod, and headed out for the day.
“Good morning, Teammate Sergeant Ericsson,” Paul said, passing the head of the cafeteria on his way to the hangar bay. Ericsson merely grunted in reply. The fact that he was one of the other most despised members of the Mission seemed to do nothing to draw him any closer to Paul, who would have loved nothing better than to have someone to share in his daily miseries. But all that would be out of his mind momentarily.
It was a short walk from his sleeping pod to his office, which had been situated near the hangar bay where teammates parked the orbital shuttles that went to and from the main ship (the very creatively named Explorer) carrying supplies. It was also where the planetary exploration drones came for refueling and maintenance. It was also where the handful of manned exploration vehicles were kept, but those were only ever discussed in hushed tones, if at all. What they were for and where they went and who flew them, Paul did not know and suspected he would be reprimanded were he ever so insubordinate as to ask.
“Good morning, Teammate Chief Edson-Woods, err, I mean Chief Officer of Science Teammate, oh, darnit, I mean—”
“That’s fine, Danny. It’s a ridiculous monstrosity of a title. And you know I don’t stand on formality. You’re here early.”
It wasn't often that his assistant, Daniel McCardan, arrived in the office before him. His official title was something like “Mission Specialist Assistant to the Chief Science Officer for Xenobotany,” but Paul wasn’t going to fiddle with all that. “Danny” had sufficed so far and there was no reason to change that.
“Yes, I was working on the samples from that moss you collected yesterday and wanted to finish before lunch today. I hope you don’t mind?”
“Mind that my assistant is going above and beyond the call of duty to get our work done? Of course not. It’d be nice if more people around here had your same work ethic. Then we might not have that pallet full of samples sitting over there in the corner just waiting to go on a shuttle.”
Work ethic, Paul and Danny both knew, had little to do with it. Like so many other things in the Tellustria outpost it mostly had to do with politics. Paul had had enough of politics long before he boarded the Explorer. A steady diet of 20th and 21st century political theory books during the lengthy outbound voyage had spoiled him on the idea of government altogether and, at first (to his later and enduring regret) he hadn’t exactly been discreet about his change of mind. It was a foolish thing for a man whose continued livelihood and day-to-day well-being depended so directly on the institution he had come to despise, but he was literally trapped. As far as any human knew, the Explorer was the only ship in the universe capable of making the leap between Tellustria and Earth. So when it came to his home planet, Earth might as well exist in an alternate dimension.
Tellustria itself was hardly a better prospect for striking out on one’s own. It had taken Paul months to locate a native plant (a berry was the closest earthly analogue) that he had confidence was edible for humans. It had turned out to be, sadly, far from what one would consider appetizing: nutritious if starvation was on the line, but it wasn’t going to be the feature on any chef’s menu any time soon. Anyone with designs on scratching out some kind of Tellustrian-alien-Robinson-Crusoe existence would have his work cut out for him, and that was aside from working out how to avoid detection of the Space Force, who had made any such arrangement effectively “illegal.” Paul hated the idea of “He who has the guns makes the rules” and it seemed like it got thrown in his face afresh every morning. Perhaps never more than that one morning—which seemed like a lifetime ago—but he forced himself not to think about that day any more than he absolutely had to. And he didn’t have to today; he couldn’t afford to really. He had work to do.
Danny had all the gear ready to go. They made one last check on a couple of tests they’d started running the day before (some “quasi-algae” thing, Paul was calling it for now) and then headed for the garage. The initial amusement had not quite worn off from the fact that human beings had the technology to hop from galaxy to galaxy, but still sent their scientists into the field in glorified golf carts—or at least the botanists, anyway.
“Watch out for potholes, you gardening guys!” the corporal working the garage that morning guffawed, as Paul and Danny turned to walk down the line of vehicles to the one they had been assigned for the day. Danny glanced over his shoulder, but Paul merely kept walking. Joking about the roads (since there were none to speak of outside the compound) was a running gag with teammates, but it took on a caustic tone when directed at Paul. “Good thing we didn’t leave building the roads up to you!” was a commonly-used yet equally uncreative line that never seemed to pass out of use.
They loaded their instruments and collection tools into the back of the vehicle and set off on the bumpy ride out to the edge of what had been informally dubbed “the Black Forest.” Unlike its terrestrial counterpart, the moniker was much more literal in the case of this Tellustrian “forest” that happened to be nearest to the Space Force compound. The trees (for no one had, to that point, thought of any better word to describe them) were, in fact, almost black. The primary goal for that day’s work would be to see whether a sapling could be successfully located and transported to the lab.
Because Danny had taken the driving duties that day, Paul did not notice when they reached the halfway part of their short trek. He looked up just in time to see them: the mountains of debris that had been left in the wake of humanity’s first act of destruction on the new planet. He put his hand on his assistant’s arm and Danny brought the vehicle to a stop. They both surveyed the scene in silence. Paul would not betray his thoughts, even to the one person on the planet he trusted more than any other.
The brief pause before they started moving again gave him just enough time to wonder, yet again, just why it had affected him so much. Very early on he had convinced himself that despite his convictions about the Tellustrian project going forward only by means of the American Union government forces, somehow it would be different if he were there. How quickly he had been proven wrong about that should not have shocked him, but it had.
“All right. Let’s go,” he told Danny quietly, who gave him a serious glance before setting the team in motion again.
“If we work quickly we should be back in time for a hot lunch at the cafeteria, you think?”
“Yes, probably,” Paul responded. He wished he hadn’t looked up when he had. He had lost his appetite and did not expect to recover it as early as lunchtime, but maybe that would change. Only time could tell.
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