Book: Genesis
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H. Beam Piper >> Genesis
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Transcriber's Notes:
This etext was produced from "Future combined
with Science Fiction Stories" September 1951. Extensive research did not
uncover any evidence that the copyright on this publication was renewed.
A number of typographical errors found in the
original text have been corrected in this version. A list of these
errors is provided at the end of the book.
* * * * *
GENESIS
By H. Beam Piper
FEATURE NOVELET
OF LOST WORLDS
Was this ill-fated expedition the end of a proud, old race--or the
beginning of a new one?
There are strange gaps in our records of the past. We find traces
of man-like things--but, suddenly, man appears, far too much
developed to be the "next step" in a well-linked chain of
evolutionary evidence. Perhaps something like the events of this
story furnishes the answer to the riddle.
Aboard the ship, there was neither day nor night; the hours slipped
gently by, as vistas of star-gemmed blackness slid across the
visiscreens. For the crew, time had some meaning--one watch on duty and
two off. But for the thousand-odd colonists, the men and women who were
to be the spearhead of migration to a new and friendlier planet, it had
none. They slept, and played, worked at such tasks as they could invent,
and slept again, while the huge ship followed her plotted trajectory.
Kalvar Dard, the army officer who would lead them in their new home, had
as little to do as any of his followers. The ship's officers had all the
responsibility for the voyage, and, for the first time in over five
years, he had none at all. He was finding the unaccustomed idleness more
wearying than the hectic work of loading the ship before the blastoff
from Doorsha. He went over his landing and security plans again, and
found no probable emergency unprepared for. Dard wandered about the
ship, talking to groups of his colonists, and found morale even better
than he had hoped. He spent hours staring into the forward visiscreens,
watching the disc of Tareesh, the planet of his destination, grow larger
and plainer ahead.
Now, with the voyage almost over, he was in the cargo-hold just aft of
the Number Seven bulkhead, with six girls to help him, checking
construction material which would be needed immediately after landing.
The stuff had all been checked two or three times before, but there was
no harm in going over it again. It furnished an occupation to fill in
the time; it gave Kalvar Dard an excuse for surrounding himself with
half a dozen charming girls, and the girls seemed to enjoy being with
him. There was tall blonde Olva, the electromagnetician; pert little
Varnis, the machinist's helper; Kyna, the surgeon's-aide; dark-haired
Analea; Dorita, the accountant; plump little Eldra, the armament
technician. At the moment, they were all sitting on or around the desk
in the corner of the store-room, going over the inventory when they were
not just gabbling.
"Well, how about the rock-drill bitts?" Dorita was asking earnestly,
trying to stick to business. "Won't we need them almost as soon as we're
off?"
"Yes, we'll have to dig temporary magazines for our explosives,
small-arms and artillery ammunition, and storage-pits for our
fissionables and radioactives," Kalvar Dard replied. "We'll have to have
safe places for that stuff ready before it can be unloaded; and if we
run into hard rock near the surface, we'll have to drill holes for
blasting-shots."
"The drilling machinery goes into one of those prefabricated sheds,"
Eldra considered. "Will there be room in it for all the bitts, too?"
Kalvar Dard shrugged. "Maybe. If not, we'll cut poles and build racks
for them outside. The bitts are nono-steel; they can be stored in the
open."
"If there are poles to cut," Olva added.
"I'm not worrying about that," Kalvar Dard replied. "We have a pretty
fair idea of conditions on Tareesh; our astronomers have been making
telescopic observations for the past fifteen centuries. There's a pretty
big Arctic ice-cap, but it's been receding slowly, with a wide belt of
what's believed to be open grassland to the south of it, and a belt of
what's assumed to be evergreen forest south of that. We plan to land
somewhere in the northern hemisphere, about the grassland-forest line.
And since Tareesh is richer in water that Doorsha, you mustn't think of
grassland in terms of our wire-grass plains, or forests in terms of our
brush thickets. The vegetation should be much more luxuriant."
"If there's such a large polar ice-cap, the summers ought to be fairly
cool, and the winters cold," Varnis reasoned. "I'd think that would mean
fur-bearing animals. Colonel, you'll have to shoot me something with a
nice soft fur; I like furs."
Kalvar Dard chuckled. "Shoot you nothing, you can shoot your own furs.
I've seen your carbine and pistol scores," he began.
* * * * *
There was a sudden suck of air, disturbing the papers on the desk. They
all turned to see one of the ship's rocket-boat bays open; a young Air
Force lieutenant named Seldar Glav, who would be staying on Tareesh with
them to pilot their aircraft, emerged from an open airlock.
"Don't tell me you've been to Tareesh and back in that thing," Olva
greeted him.
Seldar Glav grinned at her. "I could have been, at that; we're only
twenty or thirty planetary calibers away, now. We ought to be entering
Tareeshan atmosphere by the middle of the next watch. I was only
checking the boats, to make sure they'll be ready to launch.... Colonel
Kalvar, would you mind stepping over here? There's something I think you
should look at, sir."
Kalvar Dard took one arm from around Analea's waist and lifted the other
from Varnis' shoulder, sliding off the desk. He followed Glav into the
boat-bay; as they went through the airlock, the cheerfulness left the
young lieutenant's face.
"I didn't want to say anything in front of the girls, sir," he began,
"but I've been checking boats to make sure we can make a quick getaway.
Our meteor-security's gone out. The detectors are deader then the Fourth
Dynasty, and the blasters won't synchronize.... Did you hear a big
thump, about a half an hour ago, Colonel?"
"Yes, I thought the ship's labor-crew was shifting heavy equipment in
the hold aft of us. What was it, a meteor-hit?"
"It was. Just aft of Number Ten bulkhead. A meteor about the size of the
nose of that rocket-boat."
Kalvar Dard whistled softly. "Great Gods of Power! The detectors must be
dead, to pass up anything like that.... Why wasn't a boat-stations call
sent out?"
"Captain Vlazil was unwilling to risk starting a panic, sir," the Air
Force officer replied. "Really, I'm exceeding my orders in mentioning it
to you, but I thought you should know...."
Kalvar Dard swore. "It's a blasted pity Captain Vlazil didn't try
thinking! Gold-braided quarter-wit! Maybe his crew might panic, but my
people wouldn't.... I'm going to call the control-room and have it out
with him. By the Ten Gods...!"
* * * * *
He ran through the airlock and back into the hold, starting toward the
intercom-phone beside the desk. Before he could reach it, there was
another heavy jar, rocking the entire ship. He, and Seldar Glav, who had
followed him out of the boat-bay, and the six girls, who had risen on
hearing their commander's angry voice, were all tumbled into a heap.
Dard surged to his feet, dragging Kyna up along with him; together, they
helped the others to rise. The ship was suddenly filled with jangling
bells, and the red danger-lights on the ceiling were flashing on and
off.
"Attention! Attention!" the voice of some officer in the control-room
blared out of the intercom-speaker. "The ship has just been hit by a
large meteor! All compartments between bulkheads Twelve and Thirteen are
sealed off. All persons between bulkheads Twelve and Thirteen, put on
oxygen helmets and plug in at the nearest phone connection. Your air is
leaking, and you can't get out, but if you put on oxygen equipment
immediately, you'll be all right. We'll get you out as soon as we can,
and in any case, we are only a few hours out of Tareeshan atmosphere.
All persons in Compartment Twelve, put on...."
Kalvar Dard was swearing evilly. "That does it! That does it for
good!... Anybody else in this compartment, below the living quarter
level?"
"No, we're the only ones," Analea told him.
"The people above have their own boats; they can look after themselves.
You girls, get in that boat, in there. Glav, you and I'll try to warn
the people above...."
There was another jar, heavier than the one which had preceded it,
throwing them all down again. As they rose, a new voice was shouting
over the public-address system:
"_Abandon ship! Abandon ship!_ The converters are backfiring, and
rocket-fuel is leaking back toward the engine-rooms! An explosion is
imminent! Abandon ship, all hands!"
Kalvar Dard and Seldar Glav grabbed the girls and literally threw them
through the hatch, into the rocket-boat. Dard pushed Glav in ahead of
him, then jumped in. Before he had picked himself up, two or three of
the girls were at the hatch, dogging the cover down.
"All right, Glav, blast off!" Dard ordered. "We've got to be at least a
hundred miles from this ship when she blows, or we'll blow with her!"
"Don't I know!" Seldar Glav retorted over his shoulder, racing for the
controls. "Grab hold of something, everybody; I'm going to fire all jets
at once!"
An instant later, while Kalvar Dard and the girls clung to stanchions
and pieces of fixed furniture, the boat shot forward out of its housing.
When Dard's head had cleared, it was in free flight.
"How was that?" Glav yelled. "Everybody all right?" He hesitated for a
moment. "I think I blacked out for about ten seconds."
Kalvar Dard looked the girls over. Eldra was using a corner of her smock
to stanch a nosebleed, and Olva had a bruise over one eye. Otherwise,
everybody was in good shape.
"Wonder we didn't all black out, permanently," he said. "Well, put on
the visiscreens, and let's see what's going on outside. Olva, get on the
radio and try to see if anybody else got away."
"Set course for Tareesh?" Glav asked. "We haven't fuel enough to make it
back to Doorsha."
"I was afraid of that," Dard nodded. "Tareesh it is; northern
hemisphere, daylight side. Try to get about the edge of the temperate
zone, as near water as you can...."
2
They were flung off their feet again, this time backward along the boat.
As they picked themselves up, Seldar Glav was shaking his head, sadly.
"That was the ship going up," he said; "the blast must have caught us
dead astern."
"All right." Kalvar Dard rubbed a bruised forehead. "Set course for
Tareesh, then cut out the jets till we're ready to land. And get the
screens on, somebody; I want to see what's happened."
The screens glowed; then full vision came on. The planet on which they
would land loomed huge before them, its north pole toward them, and its
single satellite on the port side. There was no sign of any rocket-boat
in either side screen, and the rear-view screen was a blur of yellow
flame from the jets.
"Cut the jets, Glav," Dard repeated. "Didn't you hear me?"
"But I did, sir!" Seldar Glav indicated the firing-panel. Then he
glanced at the rear-view screen. "The gods help us! It's yellow flame;
the jets are burning out!"
Kalvar Dard had not boasted idly when he had said that his people would
not panic. All the girls went white, and one or two gave low cries of
consternation, but that was all.
"What happens next?" Analea wanted to know. "Do we blow, too?"
"Yes, as soon as the fuel-line burns up to the tanks."
"Can you land on Tareesh before then?" Dard asked.
"I can try. How about the satellite? It's closer."
"It's also airless. Look at it and see for yourself," Kalvar Dard
advised. "Not enough mass to hold an atmosphere."
Glav looked at the army officer with new respect. He had always been
inclined to think of the Frontier Guards as a gang of scientifically
illiterate dirk-and-pistol bravos. He fiddled for a while with
instruments on the panel; an automatic computer figured the distance to
the planet, the boat's velocity, and the time needed for a landing.
"We have a chance, sir," he said. "I think I can set down in about
thirty minutes; that should give us about ten minutes to get clear of
the boat, before she blows up."
"All right; get busy, girls," Kalvar Dard said. "Grab everything we'll
need. Arms and ammunition first; all of them you can find. After that,
warm clothing, bedding, tools and food."
With that, he jerked open one of the lockers and began pulling out
weapons. He buckled on a pistol and dagger, and handed other
weapon-belts to the girls behind him. He found two of the heavy
big-game rifles, and several bandoliers of ammunition for them. He
tossed out carbines, and boxes of carbine and pistol cartridges. He
found two bomb-bags, each containing six light anti-personnel grenades
and a big demolition-bomb. Glancing, now and then, at the forward
screen, he caught glimpses of blue sky and green-tinted plains below.
"All right!" the pilot yelled. "We're coming in for a landing! A couple
of you stand by to get the hatch open."
There was a jolt, and all sense of movement stopped. A cloud of white
smoke drifted past the screens. The girls got the hatch open; snatching
up weapons and bedding-wrapped bundles they all scrambled up out of the
boat.
There was fire outside. The boat had come down upon a grassy plain; now
the grass was burning from the heat of the jets. One by one, they ran
forward along the top of the rocket-boat, jumping down to the ground
clear of the blaze. Then, with every atom of strength they possessed
they ran away from the doomed boat.
* * * * *
The ground was rough, and the grass high, impeding them. One of the
girls tripped and fell; without pausing, two others pulled her to her
feet, while another snatched up and slung the carbine she had dropped.
Then, ahead, Kalvar Dard saw a deep gully, through which a little stream
trickled.
They huddled together at the bottom of it, waiting, for what seemed like
a long while. Then a gentle tremor ran through the ground, and swelled
to a sickening, heaving shock. A roar of almost palpable sound swept
over them, and a flash of blue-white light dimmed the sun above. The
sound, the shock, and the searing light did not pass away at once; they
continued for seconds that seemed like an eternity. Earth and stones
pelted down around them; choking dust rose. Then the thunder and the
earth-shock were over; above, incandescent vapors swirled, and darkened
into an overhanging pall of smoke and dust.
For a while, they crouched motionless, too stunned to speak. Then shaken
nerves steadied and jarred brains cleared. They all rose weakly.
Trickles of earth were still coming down from the sides of the gully,
and the little stream, which had been clear and sparkling, was roiled
with mud. Mechanically, Kalvar Dard brushed the dust from his clothes
and looked to his weapons.
"That was just the fuel-tank of a little Class-3 rocket-boat," he said.
"I wonder what the explosion of the ship was like." He thought for a
moment before continuing. "Glav, I think I know why our jets burned out.
We were stern-on to the ship when she blew; the blast drove our flame
right back through the jets."
"Do you think the explosion was observed from Doorsha?" Dorita inquired,
more concerned about the practical aspects of the situation. "The ship,
I mean. After all, we have no means of communication, of our own."
"Oh, I shouldn't doubt it; there were observatories all around the
planet watching our ship," Kalvar Dard said. "They probably know all
about it, by now. But if any of you are thinking about the chances of
rescue, forget it. We're stuck here."
"That's right. There isn't another human being within fifty million
miles," Seldar Glav said. "And that was the first and only space-ship
ever built. It took fifty years to build her, and even allowing twenty
for research that wouldn't have to be duplicated, you can figure when we
can expect another one."
"The answer to that one is, never. The ship blew up in space; fifty
years' effort and fifteen hundred people gone, like that." Kalvar Dard
snapped his fingers. "So now, they'll try to keep Doorsha habitable for
a few more thousand years by irrigation, and forget about immigrating to
Tareesh."
"Well, maybe, in a hundred thousand years, our descendants will build a
ship and go to Doorsha, then," Olva considered.
"Our descendants?" Eldra looked at her in surprize. "You mean, then...?"
* * * * *
Kyna chuckled. "Eldra, you are an awful innocent, about anything that
doesn't have a breech-action or a recoil-mechanism," she said. "Why do
you think the women on this expedition outnumbered the men seven to
five, and why do you think there were so many obstetricians and
pediatricians in the med. staff? We were sent out to put a human
population on Tareesh, weren't we? Well, here we are."
"But.... Aren't we ever going to...?" Varnis began. "Won't we ever see
anybody else, or do anything but just live here, like animals, without
machines or ground-cars or aircraft or houses or anything?" Then she
began to sob bitterly.
Analea, who had been cleaning a carbine that had gotten covered with
loose earth during the explosion, laid it down and went to Varnis,
putting her arm around the other girl and comforting her. Kalvar Dard
picked up the carbine she had laid down.
"Now, let's see," he began. "We have two heavy rifles, six carbines, and
eight pistols, and these two bags of bombs. How much ammunition,
counting what's in our belts, do we have?"
They took stock of their slender resources, even Varnis joining in the
task, as he had hoped she would. There were over two thousand rounds for
the pistols, better than fifteen hundred for the carbines, and four
hundred for the two big-game guns. They had some spare clothing, mostly
space-suit undergarments, enough bed-robes, one hand-axe, two
flashlights, a first-aid kit, and three atomic lighters. Each one had a
combat-dagger. There was enough tinned food for about a week.
"We'll have to begin looking for game and edible plants, right away,"
Glav considered. "I suppose there is game, of some sort; but our
ammunition won't last forever."
"We'll have to make it last as long as we can; and we'll have to begin
improvising weapons," Dard told him. "Throwing-spears, and
throwing-axes. If we can find metal, or any recognizable ore that we can
smelt, we'll use that; if not, we'll use chipped stone. Also, we can
learn to make snares and traps, after we learn the habits of the animals
on this planet. By the time the ammunition's gone, we ought to have
learned to do without firearms."
"Think we ought to camp here?"
Kalvar Dard shook his head. "No wood here for fuel, and the blast will
have scared away all the game. We'd better go upstream; if we go down,
we'll find the water roiled with mud and unfit to drink. And if the game
on this planet behave like the game-herds on the wastelands of Doorsha,
they'll run for high ground when frightened."
Varnis rose from where she had been sitting. Having mastered her
emotions, she was making a deliberate effort to show it.
"Let's make up packs out of this stuff," she suggested. "We can use the
bedding and spare clothing to bundle up the food and ammunition."
They made up packs and slung them, then climbed out of the gully. Off to
the left, the grass was burning in a wide circle around the crater left
by the explosion of the rocket-boat. Kalvar Dard, carrying one of the
heavy rifles, took the lead. Beside and a little behind him, Analea
walked, her carbine ready. Glav, with the other heavy rifle, brought up
in the rear, with Olva covering for him, and between, the other girls
walked, two and two.
Ahead, on the far horizon, was a distance-blue line of mountains. The
little company turned their faces toward them and moved slowly away,
across the empty sea of grass.
3
They had been walking, now, for five years. Kalvar Dard still led, the
heavy rifle cradled in the crook of his left arm and a sack of bombs
slung from his shoulder, his eyes forever shifting to right and left
searching for hidden danger. The clothes in which he had jumped from the
rocket-boat were patched and ragged; his shoes had been replaced by high
laced buskins of smoke-tanned hide. He was bearded, now, and his hair
had been roughly trimmed with the edge of his dagger.
Analea still walked beside him, but her carbine was slung, and she
carried three spears with chipped flint heads; one heavy weapon, to be
thrown by hand or used for stabbing, and two light javelins to be thrown
with the aid of the hooked throwing-stick Glav had invented. Beside her
trudged a four-year old boy, hers and Dard's, and on her back, in a
fur-lined net bag, she carried their six-month-old baby.
In the rear, Glav still kept his place with the other big-game gun, and
Olva walked beside him with carbine and spears; in front of them, their
three-year-old daughter toddled. Between vanguard and rearguard, the
rest of the party walked: Varnis, carrying her baby on her back, and
Dorita, carrying a baby and leading two other children. The baby on her
back had cost the life of Kyna in childbirth; one of the others had been
left motherless when Eldra had been killed by the Hairy People.
* * * * *
That had been two years ago, in the winter when they had used one of
their two demolition-bombs to blast open a cavern in the mountains. It
had been a hard winter; two children had died, then--Kyna's firstborn,
and the little son of Kalvar Dard and Dorita. It had been their first
encounter with the Hairy People, too.
Eldra had gone outside the cave with one of the skin water-bags, to fill
it at the spring. It had been after sunset, but she had carried her
pistol, and no one had thought of danger until they heard the two quick
shots, and the scream. They had all rushed out, to find four shaggy,
manlike things tearing at Eldra with hands and teeth, another lying
dead, and a sixth huddled at one side, clutching its abdomen and
whimpering. There had been a quick flurry of shots that had felled all
four of the assailants, and Seldar Glav had finished the wounded
creature with his dagger, but Eldra was dead. They had built a cairn of
stones over her body, as they had done over the bodies of the two
children killed by the cold. But, after an examination to see what sort
of things they were, they had tumbled the bodies of the Hairy People
over the cliff. These had been too bestial to bury as befitted human
dead, but too manlike to skin and eat as game.
Since then, they had often found traces of the Hairy People, and when
they met with them, they killed them without mercy. These were great
shambling parodies of humanity, long-armed, short-legged, twice as heavy
as men, with close-set reddish eyes and heavy bone-crushing jaws. They
may have been incredibly debased humans, or perhaps beasts on the very
threshold of manhood. From what he had seen of conditions on this
planet, Kalvar Dard suspected the latter to be the case. In a million or
so years, they might evolve into something like humanity. Already, the
Hairy ones had learned the use of fire, and of chipped crude stone
implements--mostly heavy triangular choppers to be used in the hand,
without helves.
Twice, after that night, the Hairy People had attacked them--once while
they were on the march, and once in camp. Both assaults had been beaten
off without loss to themselves, but at cost of precious ammunition. Once
they had caught a band of ten of them swimming a river on logs; they had
picked them all off from the bank with their carbines. Once, when Kalvar
Dard and Analea had been scouting alone, they had come upon a dozen of
them huddled around a fire and had wiped them out with a single grenade.
Once, a large band of Hairy People hunted them for two days, but only
twice had they come close, and both times, a single shot had sent them
all scampering. That had been after the bombing of the group around the
fire. Dard was convinced that the beings possessed the rudiments of a
language, enough to communicate a few simple ideas, such as the fact
that this little tribe of aliens were dangerous in the extreme.
* * * * *
There were Hairy People about now; for the past five days, moving
northward through the forest to the open grasslands, the people of
Kalvar Dard had found traces of them. Now, as they came out among the
seedling growth at the edge of the open plains, everybody was on the
alert.
They emerged from the big trees and stopped among the young growth,
looking out into the open country. About a mile away, a herd of game was
grazing slowly westward. In the distance, they looked like the little
horse-like things, no higher than a man's waist and heavily maned and
bearded, that had been one of their most important sources of meat. For
the ten thousandth time, Dard wished, as he strained his eyes, that
somebody had thought to secure a pair of binoculars when they had
abandoned the rocket-boat. He studied the grazing herd for a long time.