A Planet For Emily

CHAPTER FOUR

When The Max docked at Fin’s Reef Rods sent Suzanne out first, ostensibly to deliver a trolley load of assorted items in crates to the main store room, but also to see whether he was in trouble on various fronts – whether the behavior of the last cruise director had caused angst in the colony, and for missing the birth of the new baby girl, Emily. The sick bay of The Max was better than the in-colony facilities and had been expected to be available for the birth. As it happened the trouble with the previous cruise director had delayed him and Emily had been a few days early. To fulfill her mission, Suzanne only had to walk beside robot crew member Ira, pulling the delivery trolley, until they came to a woman with dark shoulder-length hair walking up and down beside a stack of crates, with a new baby on her shoulder. She looked distracted.

“Hello Suzanne,” she whispered. “I just got the message. I’m Carol and this is Emily.”

“Emily is perfect!” exclaimed Suzanne peeping at the baby’s face. “I never get to see new babies. They just aren’t allowed at Earth Station.”

“Lord, that makes things difficult for you and your fiancé.”

“It does. I had no idea what we would do, but now I want Richard and my mum to come out here.”

“Richard is your fiancé? We can chat in a moment. I want to go to the bathroom, the others are busy, and Emily won’t let me put her down. She starts crying.”

“Maybe I could hold her for a while?”

“Let’s try.”

Emily was gently switched from Carol’s shoulder to Suzanne’s and, after a brief wail, the baby decided that Suzanne’s shoulder was comfortable enough. Carol gave the double thumbs up and scuttled away. Suzanne was entranced, but she was alone with Emily for just a few moments before a short, youngish woman emerged from a hatchway.

“I’m Brigit,” said the newcomer, lowering her voice for the sake of the baby. “And I see you’ve met the most important person of all.”

“She’s just divine.”

Carol re-emerged from another hatchway, pushing a long-slung trolley with an open box on it that was the baby’s home-made crib.

“We’ll see if she’ll consent to go down in a moment.”

“How old is she – a few days?”

“Just five.”

“Oh my! Rods said you’d want her looked at by the scanners in The Max’s sick bay.”

“Yes, please. She seems healthy enough, but I’d like to go over later.”

“Sure. Rods is very sorry for missing the birth.”

“She was early. It was alarming. But it couldn’t be helped. Come through. We’ll unpack the crates later. We have so few visitors here.”

The ladies adjourned to a common area with chairs and a table. Earlier generations would have called the room small but to Suzanne it was vistas of space.

“We don’t have ‘a few’ visitors here,” said Brigit when they sat down. “We don’t have any at all, or when we do it's Sylvia. I don’t like to speak ill of your predecessor, but I will.”

“She was alright in her way,” said Carol, hesitantly.

“My dear, let’s not sugar coat, said Brigit, crossing her arms. “She was rubbish. A fast piece no good to anyone, least of all Rods.” Carol looked upset at this blunt analysis but did not respond. “You know she propositioned Andrew.”

“What?”

“Who is Andrew?” asked Suzanne.

“My partner,” said Brigit, “he and Jennifer are helping Rods load the ore. She said she wanted some fast cash.”

“Cash?” said Carol. “But Andrew’s got as much money as the rest of us.”

“He told her that, and that was the last he saw of her. He doesn’t know where she got the idea he had money, and I don’t either.”

“She tried to jack the ship. I think,” said Suzanne.

“Did she?” The two women asked in chorus.

“Is that why she’s gone?” asked Brigit.

“I hope Rods didn’t space her,” said Carol.

“He’s already threatened to space me if I disturb him, but I don’t think he’d actually do it.”

“Automated mining colony most likely,” said Brigit. “She can flash her tits at the android guards there and see how far it gets her. Dreadful places those.”

“Don’t think I’d wish it on anyone,” said Carol.

“We tried to tell Rods she was rubbish,” said Brigit, “but did he listen? Girl shows some cleavage, and they leave their brains behind.”

“Was she pretty?”

“Flashy’s a better term.”

“Very blonde,” added Carol. “But there are so few single women out here. What else is Rods to do but shop at Stacey’s?”

“Except that we have to put up with what he buys,” said Brigit. “But it is a shame – he’s such a lamb.”

“A lamb?” queried Suzanne. “I hadn’t really thought of Rods as a lamb.”

“Bit crusty sometimes,” said Carol, “but he’s really a lamb.”

From there the conversation moved to Suzanne’s fiancé, his job as a controller on the docks, to Suzanne’s mother, then to Suzanne’s very recent adventures and the possible fate of the Dawn Treader. The ladies listened in polite silence to Suzanne’s idea that Eve must be stranded on El Dorado if only they could find it.

“I really want El Dorado to exist,” said Carol. “Otherwise, Emily has no place to grow up but here, and this planet has no future.”

“None,” added Brigit.

“But you have heaps of space here. On Earth Station, this would be paradise for three families.”

“I was wondering about moving to Earth Station,” said Carol, “but that’s no good either it seems.”

“No,” said Suzanne emphatically, “no good at all and Emily wouldn’t be allowed. But what’s wrong with here?”

“It needs real investment to turn it into a colony,” said Brigit. “It needs massive upgrades in life support, food production, energy generation and support like medical services. It was never designed for any of that, just as a mining station but we got stranded here when the company we were working for went broke after Crossroads...”

“It seemed like a good deal when we came here,” said Carol.

“.. We’ve rigged up some food vats and the rest we can stretch for the six of us plus Emily but that’s it, unless some other group wants to invest. But ore from the mining colonies is cheap.”

“Three couples plus Emily?”

“That’s right,” said Brigit, “and without Rods and The Max we’d be screwed. He takes the ore out at cost and brings in stuff we need. He keeps gear here and does his repairs.”

“And fixes our equipment if we can’t work it out,” said Brigit.

“If either of those two jacking attempts had worked, we’d be dead,” said Carol.

“Either? The navy was one.”

“The fight on Lucifer III was another. If they could have got Rods down and hurt him, they’d have tried for the Max.”

“The rim can be such a tough place,” said Brigit shaking her head.

“What really worries me now is Emily,” said Carol. “She’ll have no one to play with when she gets older. There are children and babies on the other settlements...”

“And in the penal settlements, poor things…” added Brigit.

“But we can’t buy our way in. We need a place where you can walk on the surface, without getting too much radiation, and be able to breathe so that life support isn’t such a problem. Then everyone would agree to go there. We need El Dorado to be true. We need a planet for Emily.”

“I see,” said Suzanne, “a planet for Emily.”

Now in her crib in another room and not caring yet about these hopes for her future, Emily woke up wanting to be changed and fed.

Meeting the other inhabitants of the colony and general chat meant that it was some time before Suzanne returned to the ship with Carol and Emily in tow. She had barely looked in the sick bay during her brief time aboard The Max, but Carol seemed to know her way around, so she watched. After the med scanner had pronounced Emily to be in good health, Suzanne found Rods in the gym studying a holographic projection of a boxing match.

“Can I accept an invitation to dinner?”

“No problem,” said Rods, “we’re loaded but I always lay over a night here.”

“You’re invited too, of course.”

“Hmm! Have they finished kicking the memory of your predecessor around?”

“Don’t know if they’ve finished,” replied Suzanne cheerfully, “but she’s been kicked all over the mine shift, as they say out here.”

“You go on ahead just in case they want to get back to the subject. I’ll be along before they start serving. If you’ve been invited to dinner, incidentally, you’re already streets ahead of your predecessor.”

“Can I take something?”

“Oh right, um, take some of the vegetables you were raving about, and there‘s a proper cot for Emily they wanted and I forgot to send, and a couple of toys. Max knows where it is. It’s my present for the baby.”

“You know, Brigit and Carol think you’re a lamb.”

“A lamb? I’ve been compared to animals before but not to a lamb.”

When the crew of The Maxwell and the colonists were all wedged around the communal dining table, the conversation turned to the missing Dawn Treader.

“You know Rod has a list of possible planets they might have been going to,” said Jennifer, the third woman in the tiny colony.

“You do? But I haven’t seen it,” said Suzanne.

“Things have been busy since you came,” said Rods, “but it’s on the system, with that stuff your sister sent. Just ask Max for it.”

“I’ve seen the list, the quote and the poem but couldn’t make any headway,” said Andrew, partner to Carol, a thin man with the air of a scholar. “I’ll send you what I’ve done, but it won’t help you much.”

“You said they were going to Bell’s Curve,” said Geoff, Brigit’s partner. He was a plumpish, middle-aged man and leader of the group in that he was the only one who knew anything about mining or geology before the group came out there. The three couples got the job because of him. A Jennifer and a Wayne completed the party but did not have much to say for themselves.

“That’s what they told me,” said Rods. “I dunno why they wanted to go there. I even asked that captain, Robin, by link when he was here why they were going to a system with a gas giant, and he muttered something about getting his bearings.”

“What was he like the captain I mean?” asked Suzanne.

“He’s alright personally,” said Rods “and knows his way around a spaceship, I’m pretty sure. His mate, the second in command is Hospers – Rob and Hos. They’re romantic partners too. I met them when I did a couple of long runs two years ago. I was surprised they came out this way, and I was surprised that they didn’t seem to know anything about Bell’s Curve but I think the mention was just smoke.”

“You don’t think they went there?” asked Suzanne.

“No I don’t, and there’s certainly nothing there now. No wreckage, no distress messages. But for the life of me I can’t think where they would have gone.”

“You said jacking also wasn’t likely,” said Brigit.

“The passengers were colonists with their backgrounds checked and a lot of them would have known each other. No strangers. Hoss left us his manifest and passenger list in case he did get into trouble, and I’ve been over them. No obvious jackers or problems. Anyway, if the ship’d been jacked it would have turned up by now. The onboard AI has to be replaced for it to be of any real use so they’ve gotta sell – usually to the Oids or at the Oid planet and I’d have heard about it because they’d want to offer it around. Turn a quick profit. So far, nothing – and something should’ve happened by now, if it’d been jacked.”

After dinner Suzanne and Rods walked back to The Maxwell together.

“Can we take a look at a couple of planets on the list, on the next trip?”

“I run a spaceship not a tour bus,” grumbled Rods. “But after we get rid of the next lot of passengers, we can take a look at one that’s not too far from our route.”

“And can we install a spectro-spectrographic analysis package?”

Rods eyed her curiously.

“Is that what you were talking to Geoff about? We discussed installing his software before but it’s too high powered for the Max. It’s a geological package designed to look for minerals, and The Max doesn’t have the high-grade optics for that stuff.”

“He did say he thought he’d adapted a version for use by Max.”

“The Max – the ship is The Max, the AI is just Max – did he now, and he mentioned it to the newly appointed cruise director, rather than the captain?”

“He said he was going to talk to you about it tomorrow. He just didn’t want to say anything at dinner, but he thinks it may be useful in detecting signs of life.”

“Humph!”

They walked on in silence for a few seconds.

“Rods can I work at the bridge workstation instead of my room?”

“Why?” There was a suspicious edge to Rods’ voice.

“There’s more room on the desk and the chair is more comfortable.”

“Humph – suppose it doesn’t matter – but touch any of the controls or keyboards in any of the other control areas and your career as a cruise director will be tragically short.”

“I won’t go near them.”

“That’s what your predecessor said.”

“Oh.”

“Training tomorrow, after breakfast,” said Rods when they got to the passageway outside their cabins.

“Training in what?”

“You’ll find out soon enough. Don’t go outside The Max until I do. I set all security systems even here.” Rods opened the door to his own cabin and was gone. Suzanne realized just how tired she was, but first she would look at this list of worlds she had been told about. These included both the local names which mostly came from the imagination of the early explorers, and the official catalogue number.

She read:

Xeno’s Dive III 9257610

Fermat II 9888392

Everest Folly 9645819

Mickey’s Dive IV 9142891

Suman IV 9557141

Jupiter VIII 9322893

(“Busy system,” thought Suzanne.)

Honmen II 9980672

Schrodinger III 9765813

Porter’s Place II 9874336

Concord Down III 9934221

(“Hmmm,” thought Suzanne. “Blake’s poetry is about the American colonies.”)

Logan II 9546721

George’s Claim 9122445

Getty IV 9399221

Hamish II 9654983

Sabrina III 9224472

What a collection of names, thought Suzanne. What could Eve have meant?