Damocles Read Free Page B

plasma bombs tore through universities and grade schools, laboratories, space stations, and medical labs all in the name of a God who supposedly abhorred science. They claimed they were “bringing down Babel,” but the news media gave them the label that stuck: Evang-jihad.
    Thousands lost their lives, including Aaronson’s husband. Earthers and colonials reeled at the horror, but the International Space Commission reacted decisively. Leveraging the worlds-wide outrage, they pressed for and received expedited funding for the controversial mission.
    Despite the uncertainty of the coordinates and the overwhelming probability that the mission would be one-way, a staggering number of officers applied to join the
Damocles
. The physical demands of such a trip were easily met by most fliers; it was the psychological profiling that thinned the herd. Wagner knew he needed men and women who weren’t looking for glory, who weren’t afraid of isolation, who hungered for discovery, and, most importantly, could say good-bye to whomever or whatever they would be leaving behind.
    Even before deep sleep, even before launch from Hyperion, the pressure of the mission had bound the crew together. Knowing at least a third of your species was praying for you to fail hardened a lot of rough edges among them. Each member of the
Damocles
crew had his or her own reason for being out here,for shedding light on the truth of their existence. Haters and jeerers and doubters were as far from them now as the believers, the optimists, and the supporters.
    Out here, the only signs of Earth and Earth-sourced humanity were the signs they had brought with them. Photographs and recordings, the Gro-Walls, and their own bodies were the only proof Earth had ever existed. Now they orbited another planet with another humanity and another set of beliefs about their own uniqueness. They drifted in silence above the yellowed atmosphere of the multisunned planet, listening and spying, trying to decode the culture and determine the best way to make contact. They all knew it could take months to bridge the gap between their worlds. It could take years to untangle the language and culture and technology, and they all knew that after all that untangling, it might only result in a humanity so violent and xenophobic that contact would result in their deaths. And if that was the verdict, if the collective intellect of the
Damocles
’s crew determined from the tonnage of evidence being gathered that contact couldn’t be made, they knew that they would retreat from orbit, shut the ship’s extraneous systems down, and go back into deep sleep. They would go on to the next planet and the next and the next until they either contacted another human race or ran out of resources.
    This is what all six of them had signed on for, and now, buried in their respective data streams, they all knew in their hearts they’d made the right decision. They welcomed the work, they reveled in the discovery, and they settled in for the months of work they knew awaited them.
    Then Prader got on the loudspeaker from the engine room and spoke the first sentence Meg had ever heard her utter without profanity. “Listen up, people. We have forty-eight hours to get off this ship.”



TWO
LOUL
----
    “Right there.” Po pointed a fat finger at the blurry magazine photo. “The Roana Temple. There have been multiple reports of sightings, unexplained tidal changes, dead fish floating up in masses. But the news doesn’t report it, and why?”
    “Because dead fish are ugly?” Hark nudged Loul in the ribs with a laugh. Hark and Loul might have some out-there ideas about aliens and government conspiracies, but their buddy Po put them both to shame. Po ignored their laughter as he always did and flipped through the wrinkled, glossy pages.
    “And here too, look. This guy right here got fired from his job with Search and Rescue because he made an official statement about unearthing the remains of a