The site that had been chosen for Serengeti base was on a plateau of sediments left by receding floodwaters, close to halfway down the long Raphta peninsula and somewhat west of center, between the shrunken Indian Ocean to the east and the new westward ocean being created by the opening up of the Great Rift, which the Kronians had named the African Sea. North of the plateau, a river flowed westward from a wasteland of shattered rock and dizzying chasms inland, and then turned south to run for some distance through hilly regions to the west and south before turning away again to meander across a marshy coastal plain. The location was judged high enough to be reasonably safe from freak inundations in the still unpredictable conditions, while still offering access for ground exploration over a wide operating range in all directions. Also, it had the potential for expansion to accommodate a sizeable number of evacuees from Kronia, should such a measure ever be decided on.
Keene stood in front of one of the now-assembled prefab laboratories, watching the six-wheeled "Scout" vehicle, just back from a survey excursion. It approached him across the strip of open ground separating the base complex from the landing area, with its gaggle of supply shuttles and personnel ferries down from the orbiting Varuna and Surya. Nearby, outside the storage extension to the lab block, some young members of the mission's Security Arm detachment were unloading a cargo container from one of the shuttles, at the same time getting some acclimatization to handling weights in Earth's gravity. Keene was wearing a surface cover-suit, hood pulled up against the dusty wind blowing down from the mountains to the east. The sky was a patchy gray, like much of the landscape, shifting and swirling and spitting a forewarning of rain. It was not the kind of climate traditionally thought of in connection with what had been the Serengeti Plain. The shifting of Earth's axis to bring the south pole closer had caused a migration of colder regions northward, with the result that the areas that had formerly formed South Africa were now bleak and snowy, with the ice cap extending to the new islands formed from rising ocean ridges south from the Cape. Conversely, Scandinavia and the northwest coasts of Siberia were warming and expected eventually to settle at temperatures comparable to those previously found in California and the American South.
Next to the labs were the Operations Control and Communications Dome and the workshop domes housing fabricating and machining areas. The Kronians built in the manner they were accustomed to. Beyond the domes, a radiation screening wall was being constructed around the open-frame structure of Agni, detached from Varuna and landed, with power connections coming through to distribution equipment installed in a power control house abutting the workshops. Agni could have powered a large town. It was there as a working test of the technology, and to be available to supply the needs of an emergency expansion program should a sudden migration of the Kronian population be forced. So the base was taking shape. Already, the orbiters and probes were surveying for a second site somewhere in the Americas.
Keene's limbs still felt like lead after his time away. He dreaded to think what it was like for native-born Kronians. It was easy to pick them out among the SA recruits, regardless of their height. They were the ones staggering under the weight of cases and boxes that those raised through their formative years on Earth, even after being away for most of their lives in some cases, were able to handle easily. Keene was doubtful as to the usefulness to the mission of an SA complement. There wasn't much in the way of Terran threats to be protected from. But there had been pressure to include them on the grounds that Saturn would be too far away to help deal with whatever unknowns might develop; and in any case, the experience would be invaluable training, and their military-style organization made them an ideal general labor resource in a situation like this. Keene turned his attention back to the Scout as it pulled in and halted in front of the lab block.
A couple of technicians that Keene didn't know well yet since they had traveled with the Surya climbed out and went back to the open rear section to begin unloading an assortment of animal cages and containers, trays holding various plants, and boxes of jars filled with rock and soil samples. Keene sauntered over to greet the figure in a padded work vest and Cossack-style hat with the backflap down that had paused at the step below the driver's door to secure a bundle of notebooks and folders that he was carrying against the wind. It was Pieter Naarmegen, also from the Surya. Pieter had been a biology teacher in Durban at one time and was with the mission because, in theory anyway, he had some familiarity with the region, and he'd had firsthand professional experience of Terran flora and fauna. He had a pinkish, wrinkly face that gave the impression of being weatherbeaten despite his living the past eleven years in the artificial environments of Kronia, and a short, grizzled beard that he trimmed to a point.
"So, how'd it go, Pieter?" Keene inquired. "You're not wasting much time. Your section of the labs isn't finished yet, and you're starting a menagerie and horticultural collection already."
"Hey, Lan. Pretty good. Well, you know how it is. There's so much going on out there that we'd need a hundred lifetimes anyway. Are we online here with the power yet?"
"The crew are just hooking up to the distribution system now. We'll be ready to go as soon as they've finished the shielding wall." Some of the file folders on top of the wad that Naarmegen was carrying slipped loose. Keene caught them deftly before the wind could carry them away. "It's okay, I'll bring them in," he said.
They walked together to the open double doors leading into the lab block. Inside, the technicians were setting the cages and sample boxes down on benches among others waiting to be cataloged and stored. Naarmegen took the papers into a partitioned area littered with boxes, pieces of furniture, desktop equipment, and miscellaneous paraphernalia that was in the process of becoming an office. Keene looked around while he waited. The boxes contained small animals like mice and shrews, lizards, a brown snake, worms and snails, various insects. He moved closer to contemplate some plant specimens standing in soil-filled plastic pots. They were drab green to dark gray, tough and leathery-looking in texture. One had cactus-like spines along the edges of broad, spade-shaped leaves. Another, purple and gray, growing from a partly-visible tuber, was putting out curly tendrils that were already feeling along the rim of the container.
"Strange-looking things," he commented as Naarmegen rejoined him.
"That's the interesting thing. I'm not enough of an expert to know if those forms are something new or just an unusual variety that happen to be suited to the new conditions. But what intrigues me is the coloring. It's widespread across all kinds of different species. They're getting as much energy as they can by absorbing all across the spectrum. If they did it a hundred percent efficiently, they'd be black."
"Would they have the right chemistry to process it?" Keene asked dubiously. "I thought most plants were specialized to absorb in the red." Which, of course, was why most plants used to look green.
"That's one of the things we hope to find out," Naarmegen said.
Keene stared at the growths reflectively. "Those changes didn't all just happen together by random guesses in the time since Athena."
"Exactly," Naarmegen agreed. "The programs to switch to the new environment were already in there."
It was an allusion to the Kronian version of evolution, which held that as with their findings in geology and planetary formation, changes didn't happen gradually over immense spans of time as had been previously thought, but in huge leaps, where whole new sets of designs and body plans seemed to appear abruptly to repopulate the Earth after major cataclysms. So maybe "revolution" would have been a better word.
It had long been known that species genera, and whole families appeared suddenly in the fossil record, fully differentiated and specialized, with no traces of the transitional and intermediary forms that gradualist theory said should be present in abundance; but in keeping with what had become so much the practice on Earth, only that which accorded with the theory had been deemed acceptable as fact, and so the difficulty was ignored. Hence, the billions of years required to make the traditional account of things sound plausible were not needed. That fitted well with the general picture the Kronians were putting together of things happening much more quickly and far more recently than had previously been believed. And this was just as well, since according to Vicki, the view among the Kronian scientists whom she worked with was that the traditional account wasn't plausible in any case, even given billions of years. The improbabilities involved were simply so huge as to be indistinguishable from miracles.
"So, do you think we'll be seeing new animals and things coming out of all this?" Keene asked curiously.
Naarmegen screwed up his face and peered into the distance, as if trying to read the answer off the wall at the far end of the room. "It's early days to say yet. But a lot of the niches are vacant now. It will be interesting to see what emerges to fill them. If I had to guess, I'd say we'll probably know within a few generations. Blind trial and error didn't remodel the whole biosphere in a few centuries after the Disruption and the Detachment. But if I had to guess, I'd say that Athena wasn't extreme enough to bring about anything that radical. I think what we'll get will be pretty much variations on what we know"
"Not extreme enough? Hell, it only just about wiped out life as we knew it."
"Not life. Civilization. Look around. I know it might sound crazy just at the moment, but Athena really wasn't the last word."
Despite his sarcasm, Keene knew what Naarmegen meant. The Kronians' current reconstruction put the detachment of Earth from Saturn configuration at around 10,000 years Before the Present, and identified it also as the event that had triggered the replacement of the giant Pleistocene mammals by the more familiar types of modern times. An even greater upheaval at some earlier date was believed to have ended the age of the giant reptilesinvolving a large impacting body as known since the twentieth century, but with more yet to the story. Whatever the exact mechanisms responsible, it was fairly generally accepted that on both these occasions Earth's gravity had increased significantly, changing the biological environment sufficiently to induce the appearance of totally new forms of life, not just variations of what had gone before. If such complete adaptations to the new conditions had expressed themselves in the short time scales that the Kronians maintained, then, as with the coloring of the plant specimens that Keene had commented on, the genetic coding must already have been present as components of programs that were immensely more complex than anything that had been suspected before.
Keene asked the obvious question: "So where did the programs come from? How did they get in there?" He had meant it to be flippant, but Naarmegen didn't reply until they had walked back out through the doors and into the open again.
"Answering that is one of the greatest tasks that Kronia has set itself for the generations ahead," he said. "Some say it's the most important single mystery confronting us."
It took Keene back to his meeting with Jon Foy in Foundation. So much to think about. "I often used to wonder why leaves were green and not black," he said, stopping to take in the scene of the hills around the base. "You'd think they'd have optimized by going for all the wavelengths available, wouldn't you?" He gestured. "Like those out there. And then, why settle for the lowest-energy end, the red?" Actually, it had been Robin who'd brought it up, but it made easier telling this way.
"Maybe it was something that hung over from the Saturn era," Naarmegen suggested. "When the Sun was remote. Maybe something near red was all there was." It was a possibility, Keene supposed.
He was about to say something more, when an alert tone sounded from the speakers commanding the area, signaling an announcement. "Attention. Attention. Descent vehicle due down in the Landing Zone in ten minutes. All personnel are requested to vacate the outside area. Descent due in ten minutes." It was a nuisance, but something they'd have to live with until sufficient ground transportation was available to service the larger landing area being cleared farther away. Until then, everyone had to be under cover during landings and launches. "I need to park the truck," Naarmegen said. "I'll see you inside."
"Sure. I'll be in Ops."
Keene walked across to the OpCom dome on the edge of the landing area between the ends of the lab block and the workshop buildings, and let himself in via a side door to the lower level. A steel-railed stairway took him up to the operations floor, with its clutter of consoles and equipment, and windows giving an all-round view of the landing area in front and the base complex to the sides and rear. Kurt Zeigler was down from the Varuna, supervising, standing behind one of the console operators. As was typical of the Kronian way of doing things, the routine was light on rules and restrictions, and a number of others who didn't strictly belong were also present, either having wandered in to see what was going on while taking a break, or using the operations center as a social gathering point until the general messroom adjoining the two dormitory blocks was completed. The operator in front of Zeigler was talking to a screen showing the head and shoulders of a man in a flight suit, with instrument panels and a figure at another crew station visible behind. Keene took it to be from the incoming shuttle.
"Retros to max. Commencing final. Vector coming around onto . . . ah, three-three-zero."
"You're on the beam, looking good. Wind at the pad is gusting twenty-five to thirty from the east. We're putting you down in slot G-3."
"G-3. Got it. Roger. Any coffee going down there?"
Keene spotted Sariena sitting with Adreya Laelye, the senior SOE representative, on a bench seat by one of the windows on the landing area side and went over. With the work involved in seeing Agni landed and brought online, he'd had hardly a moment to talk to Sariena since she came down from the Surya. She smiled tiredly at him as he joined them. "Lan, so they've let you have some time off at last. I'd forgotten what it was like on Earth. We're glued to the seat. I don't want to get up."
"Coming up those stairs was enough," Adreya said. "Zeigler took them two at a time. He's kept in good shape while on Kronia. It's obscene."
"You'll be doing it too in a couple of months," Keene told her, although he didn't believe it. He looked at Sariena. "Managed to rest up after the voyage?"
"Yes, finally. It was a very different feeling from last time. But I wanted to come down here, even if we're not in a position to get much work done yet. Damien and the others are staying up in the Surya until they've got proper working space set up down here." Sariena had brought a team of planetary scientists from Kronia. Damien was her assistant, left in charge of things up in orbit for the time being, by the sound of things.
"Gallian isn't down yet?" Keene queried.
"Not yet. I think he's still finishing some business with Kronia up in the Varuna." Communications delay to Saturn was a little under seventy-five minutes each way.
"We saw you coming out of the labs with Pieter," Adreya said. "Was that another load of specimens that he just brought in? His lab isn't even finished yet."
Keene shrugged. "I know. He can't wait to get started. Can't blame him, I guess." He paused, running an eye around to take in the other things that were going on. "He says he's already seeing signs of what could be catastrophic evolution."
"New genetic programs expressing themselves?" Sariena said.
"Exactly."
"Well, either they wrote themselves or something wrote them. Which exhausts all of Aristotle's logical possibilities." Sariena's tone conveyed that she didn't give much credence to the first.
"Touchdown in thirty-six seconds. She should be just breaking through," the operator in contact with the shuttle announced to the room. A screen beside the one still showing the flight deck brought the view outside the shuttle, of solid grayness dissolving into wisps and streamers suddenly, and then the blurred image of an already expanding landscape with a superposed circular grid centered on the plateau region where Serengeti base was situated. Several figures got up and moved to the windows on the front side of the dome. After several seconds somebody pointed.
"There."
Keene followed the direction and picked out a speck of bright light against the overcast. As it enlarged and grew brighter, the sound came of engines braking at full thrust.
The light elongated into the shuttle's exhaust plume with the ship taking shape and growing above as it slowed in its descent. It touched down a short distance from the other craft on the ground, and after a final flare of flame and smoke the engines cut.
"Switch to local tower frequency five-five-six. Serengeti control out," the operator said. Outside the window, the reception vehicles that had been waiting below on the edge of the landing area began moving out.
Adreya sighed. "You'd think I'd have seen enough of things like that, wouldn't you. But I never get tired of watching ships come in. It's so strange to be able to hear it! I'm still getting used to just walking out into air through a door, without a suit or anything. It doesn't feel natural."
"You might not appreciate it so much if the vaccinations don't work," Sariena cautioned. In the previous visit by Gallian's delegation, all of the first-time Kronians had suffered badly from infections and allergic reactions.
"You might not be the only ones this time," Keene told them. He could feel his own eyes and skin smarting from something he'd encountered outside. The atmosphere still carried sulphurous and hydrocarbon contaminants from Athena's tail.
While they were talking, he noticed that Zeigler, having seen the shuttle safely down and into its berthing slot, had noticed Keene with the two women and was on his way over. For the most part Keene had found Zeigler to be a remote kind of personality, giving a feeling of detachment and never quite mixing in with the confined community aboard the Varuna. It could have been that he took his position as Executive Officer a little too conscientiouslyalthough things like that didn't seem to inhibit Gallian from being his old jovial and informal self. Maybe it was just that Keene wasn't used to Europeans. He looked up inquiringly as Zeigler joined them.
"How are we doing with the power?" he asked Keene.
"Connecting to the distribution system now. Shayle's handling that part of it. I talked to her about a half hour ago. We should be running before tonight if they get the shielding finished." Keene made an open-handed gesture. "So, what do you know? I might actually have some spare time on my hands for a change."
"I'm sure we'll find some way to fill it. There's plenty to do. In fact, I was meaning to ask"
Just then, an operator at one of the other consoles in a different part of the room leaned forward abruptly to follow something on a screen, and then turned her head to call crisply across to Zeigler.
"Sir!" The tone was enough to bring immediate silence to the whole room. Zeigler strode across to see what was happening. His body stiffened, and all heard his sharp intake of breath, followed by a slow exhalation of astonishment. Keene was already over there along with several others before he realized he had reacted.
The screen was showing a transmission from one of the probe drones that had been sent out to reconnoiter the surrounding regions. It was looking down over a chaotic area of rocky slopes, piled boulders, and tangles of vegetation with a creek running down the just-visible edge of what looked like a larger body of water below. In several places, crude shelters had been made from roofs of thatch built over crevices among the boulders. And as the probe moved, changing the angle, several simple thatched huts appeared. Human figures were outside, looking up, including several children. Two more figures were just in sight at one edge of the view, mounted on animals that seemed to be about donkey-size. The probe was being directed from Survey Control up in the Varuna. A zoom-in commanded by the operator up there revealed them as both dark-skinned. One appeared to be fairly young, fierce in appearance, wearing a tied headdress, and brandishing some kind of weapon. The one riding next to him was older, white-haired and wrinkled.
"What is it, Lan?" Sariena called from where she was still sitting with Adreya by the window.
"It's coming in from one of the probes," Keene said. He found it was taking him a moment or two to absorb the message. After all the wondering . . . "It's found some, Sariena! It's found people out there! There were survivors!"