Castaway Planet by Eric Flint, Ryk E Spoor Read Free Book Online Page A

poor Harratrer.”
    Akira was silent for a moment. “Well, we’re only a few weeks from the Goldilocks Zone, if Sakura’s current estimates of speed and what the Nebula Drive can do are right. I checked our stores and what you gave me on his biology. We can keep everyone well-fed, even Whips, for longer than that. The ship was pretty well-supplied. And if there is a livable world, it will have an ocean that he can probably handle; remember that we made sure they had the adaptations to deal with wide variations in water salinity and mineral content.”
    That much was true, and just hearing Akira repeat the facts calmly helped to relax her. When the Europan Bemmies and human beings had established long-term contact, the relatively primitive aliens had turned out to be surprisingly open to understanding. They had shown little of the signs of culture shock that had plagued various human societies—although that was probably at least partially because the Interplanetary Research Institute and its sponsoring U.N. had managed to strictly control interactions with the aliens at first.
    The Bemmies, AKA Bemmius pelagica sapiens Sutter, were not identical to the similarly named aliens who had, sixty-five million years before, set up bases in humanity’s solar system and then nearly killed themselves off in a war, but were instead evolved descendants of lifeforms with which Bemmius secordii sapiens had seeded Europa prior to leaving the system. But evolution had taken them down a similar path, and to human eyes the two species looked very similar. The Europan natives had been fascinated by the idea of a real world beyond the sky—given that the most prevalent religion on Europa had been about gods that lay “Beyond the Sky,” which meant above the crust of ice that covered Europa, this was not surprising.
    It was impractical, to say the least, to have starships filled with water (for many reasons, ranging from sheer mass to electronics issues), so for a while it seemed that only a rare ambassador, scientist, or student from Europa might travel from their homeworld. But then one of the aging survivors of the first Europan venture, A.J. Baker, had suggested that—just possibly—the Europan Bemmies could be adapted to live in air and water, as had their long-vanished distant cousins. “We’ve seen what we can do with genetics in the last few decades—life extension, engineering healthy organs, engineering new versions of lifeforms for our own use—and it’s not like it’s a new idea. Heck, it’s the exact idea Bemmies used when they seeded Europa to begin with!”
    There was much reluctance at first, but to many people’s considerable surprise, once word of the idea got to the Europans, some of them practically insisted that this be tried, none of them more vehemently than Blushspark, the Europan Bemmie who had made First Contact. And with careful, painstaking work . . . the design had succeeded.
    She sighed. “I’ve figured out a way to wet him down without choking us on mist. It won’t work forever but . . . a few weeks, yes, though I don’t think he’ll be in top shape. Now . . . if there is a decent planet?”
    “I can’t give odds on unknowns. What I know of biology tells me that we will probably be able to find something to sustain us there.” He glanced at her with momentary concern. “That is, if you can keep our medical nanos going to filter out incidental toxins, and maybe convert some materials to any vital nutrients we’re missing like the vitamins.”
    She thought about that for a moment. “I think so. LS-5 has a good nano updating installation onboard, and I have my medical kit. I’m not sure we’ll be able to update them like we do at home, though, and over some time the concentration may drop. Medical nanos are strictly limited in self-replication.”
    “If you can get LS-5 to do so, I’d have it replicate some nanos now for a reserve. No telling what demands we’ll put on it later. We’ve