Chapter Twenty

PACKING TOOK LONGER than it should have. The civilians all had their own ideas about what constituted essential—and most of it didn’t. Even after Caspersen had declared “if you can’t carry it, you can’t take it,” the problems continued.

The professor said the “lazy soldiers” should help carry some of the equipment since he couldn’t lift it all. “My tools are essential. All of them. Granges can help me. He’s not doing anything useful.” When Matt volunteered to carry some of it, the professor recoiled. “Someone competent.”

Kayleigh protested she shouldn’t have to choose between medical supplies for the team and her own research.

Caspersen conceded the point. “Johnson, you’ll help her, won’t you?”

Dr. Wu prepared a pack so bulky I would’ve had a hard time with it…and I’d hauled so many rucksacks in my day it was second nature by this point. She couldn’t even stand up straight under the weight. But she wouldn’t consider leaving anything behind either. “I did as you asked, Captain. Nothing here is unessential.”

Finally, Caspersen shook her head and told her she could take it under one condition. She had to demonstrate she could handle the weight and bulk by hiking up the slope behind us and back down again. She made it halfway.

Kim stared mournfully at his belongings, declaring the captain might as well be asking a parent to choose which child to abandon. He was joking. I think.

Only the geologists, Patel, Evans, and Robinson, seemed to have figured out a system. They divvyed up what mattered most to the three of them and a assigned a portion to each man.

The engineers proved less cooperative. Madison, Rodgers, and Lee had a collection of virtually identical gadgets and gizmos but were absolutely, positively unwilling to part with or entrust any of it to one of their colleagues. What started as unpleasant disagreement devolved to nothing short of all-out war, with degrees called into question, research belittled, and alma maters ridiculed. Had there been dueling pistols on hand, blood would no doubt have been spilled. Fortunately, Caspersen intervened before things got out of hand, and offered a good dressing down to each of the offenders. The recruits were damned lucky she’d gone into special forces, instead of pursuing a career as a drill instructor. Regardless, this did the trick, and the trio managed to return to their work with not much more hostility than the occasional snide comment back and forth.

Dr. Wilhelm Verner was the only one who seemed to have taken only what he could carry onto the ship. He packed and stood at the ready in half an hour, watching the rest of us with evident amusement.

Caspersen, on the other hand, had taken a good deal more than she could carry. And, naturally, all of it was practical and combat-oriented. She had a few spare rifles and extra ammo aplenty, most of which she divvied up between those of us with guns. It was the M60 that gave her the most trouble though. “You never know when you’ll need a machine gun,” she explained. How she’d smuggled the thing, much less all of its ammo, on board I hadn’t a clue. Nor did she elucidate, saying simply, “With difficulty.”

Transport proved difficult too. At close to twenty-five pounds, the gun itself wasn’t too bad. It was the ammo that really made for a hellish experience. Caspersen took the gun and as much ammo as she could carry while maintaining a good pace. Matt picked up the tripod and extra rounds.

In the end, we all whittled down our possessions until we had manageable loads. A few mornings after the professor, Russell, and Connor returned, we locked down the ship and undertook our first joint expedition.

*

OUR GOING WAS slow but steady. Steady because we wanted to pace ourselves for the journey ahead, and slow because the way down was long and perilous. Even a small misstep could have meant injury or death among the rocks and cliff ledges.

The scenery shifted far more quickly than we actually moved. One minute, we could see nothing but stone, and we progressed almost blind to the world beyond our particular vicinity. In the next, we rounded a bend to find ourselves staring into an open expanse of mountainside, overlooking the valley far below. I saw again the trees I’d first noted, great and grand in their own way, and oddly dark and spindly too. And at the next bend or dip in the trail, we saw nothing but stone again.

The journey down the mountain took the better part of the day, which was still a better pace than the professor’s team had managed. This came down to our grisly respirators; we could breathe as we went. We had to make a few stops along the way, as laboring under weighty packs was a new and unwelcome sensation to the civilians. Connor and Russell seemed more than usually fatigued, too, although they made no complaint.

The professor, on the other hand, did nothing but complain. Despite every warning, he’d packed more than he was comfortable carrying. And no sooner than we’d hit the trail, he began griping. It had reached a near fever pitch by time we were at the foothills.

The foothills were less “hills” than great chunks of rock and piles of gravel—green mounds that had fallen from the mountains above or been carried down by rainstorms to accumulate at the base. Here, though, there was something we’d not found earlier: soil. Though sparse and of poor quality, it managed to sustain a little vegetation. We found small, fern-like plants and a hair-thin, grassy plant growing in small clusters.

It was oddly relieving to see them. After so long in the barren heights above, even a little plant life cheered me. And the scientists? Well, one would have thought they’d found El Dorado or the Fountain of Youth. It was a nerd fest all over again.

Caspersen decided we should make camp among the foothills, probably because she didn’t trust her ability to pry the scientists from their study of those small, green-black plants. We had a good view of both the mountains behind us and the forest ahead here. Connor and Russell paid little attention to our rear but eyed the way forward with palpable discomfort. The professor shut up for the first time since we’d left the Genesis. He didn’t watch the trees the way the others did. He refused to even glance in that direction. But no one heard the cooing they’d reported. Beyond the sounds of our movement, the night remained still.

Caspersen took the first watch, and as the civilians slept, the soldiers and Marines traded shifts. All of us, that is, with the exception of Connor and Russell, who Caspersen deemed in need of a full night’s rest.

My watch proved uneventful. The rustle of the wind as it moved through the ferns, the shimmering silver of the moons overhead, and the deep shadows of the forest beyond were my only companions, and time passed quietly and comfortably.

We rose early the next morning and, after choking down our MREs, set out. Like the previous morning, the sun shone brightly, or as brightly as could be expected from a red dwarf. We had a clear sky overhead, too, a comfortable temperature to work in. So, despite the tense posture of our companions who had gone before, we entered the forest without reservation. There was nothing odd to be seen, and it was too fine a day to worry about ghosts.

The trees that had seemed so spindly from a distance actually grew great and wide, reaching far into the sky like massive woody pillars, unmarred by branches for the first two-thirds or so of their height. From there, they sprouted broad, impenetrable clusters of branches upon which grew sharp-tipped, spindly needles. Like most other living things on Kepler-186f, they were a deep green, bordering on black. A thick layer of dry needles carpeted the forest floor in ebony black, several shades darker than the living ones on the trees.

The sight inspired great discussion among the biologists as to how the trees might be classified. The fallen needles, flat and broad though they were, were highly reminiscent of Earth’s pine trees. Had we discovered a type of conifer tree? This was the breathless speculation, and it entertained them for a good, long while. The discovery of an old, dry cone nestled among fallen needles nearly sent half the crew into a dither, but Caspersen wisely cooled their scientific ardor by observing that time was of the essence.

The low-growing plants we’d found in the foothills grew more numerous as we delved deeper into the woods too. Little groves of dark ferns and creeping vines could be found between patches of shed needles. We discovered a new species of squat, flowering bush that produced red blooms of a sickly-sweet odor. If not for Caspersen’s insistence that we continue, I suspected we’d have seen a makeshift lab pop up on the spot so our researchers could analyze and dissect and study the unlucky shrub. Her singular focus on the mission spared it such a fate, and the little bush survived our gaggle of mad scientists.

We pushed on, with much excitement in our ranks. And, for the first few hours, we congratulated ourselves on our steady nerves and level heads. We heard nothing but our own footfalls, the occasional twittering of small animals, and the movement of the wind.

For the first few hours. And then it began. Irregular at first, strange and high in pitch and far overhead, growing more regular the farther into the wood we marched. Cooing? Whispering? Howling? Laughing? Hooting? Talking? We couldn’t tell, so convoluted and eerie was the sound. One moment, I’d have sworn I heard a man’s speech, and the other, some wild animal’s chirp. It was at once familiar and foreign, like the sound of a colony of animals abuzz with excitement at our approach.

Were they friend or foe? Was the noise a show of interest? Fear? Anger? Were they real, or figments of imagination? Were they solid, flesh and blood creatures, or something else altogether? Again, I could not tell. We could see nothing—no sign of life, animal or otherwise. And yet, the chirping went on.

Connor, Russell, and the professor, meanwhile, had gone pale as a winter morning. The civilians clustered together, and as if with one instinct, the military moved to encircle them.

We made a poor circle indeed—five soldiers or Marines and Matt tripping along behind Caspersen. He had the look of a lamb, frightened and small, trying to take heart outside the wolf’s den. Still, he had the guts to take his place alongside the rest of us. That was something.

And in the moment, I thought we all felt a little like lambs being led to slaughter. All around us, noises danced on the breeze, like phantoms hailing from some unseen source. I darted my eyes to the trees above, the foliage around, and back to the trees again; for all I could tell, we were alone. Utterly, completely alone. Except, the evidence of my ears told me a different story.

Caspersen gave a signal, and a few of us broke off to scout out the area. We trampled every bush in sight, looked behind every tree, into every patch of shadow. The sounds did not abate, and we returned empty-handed.

“Nothing.” I shook my head.

“Same here,” Granges confirmed. “Not a print, not a shadow.”

Caspersen nodded. “All right. Let’s move out.” Her posture told me every fiber of her being was on high alert, but her tone sounded calm, controlled, and almost reassuring. “We want to make that ship before the next century.”

“Keep going?” the professor whispered, his voice vacillating in unmasked terror. “But don’t you hear them?”

“I hear something,” she said. “But we need to get somewhere. And unless our friends are going to show themselves, we keep moving.”

“But is it safe?” Dr. Verner wondered.

“Maybe we should…wait,” someone else threw in.

“We keep going,” Caspersen said resolutely. “There’s nothing here, nothing that we can see. If it’s above us, we’ve no way of reaching it. If it’s somewhere else…well, whatever’s here, it knows how to remain unseen. Now let’s move. And keep your eyes on the trees.”