Planetfall Read Free Page B

I’m on Earth again, like my brain cannot help but return to its default setting. Ahead of us the highest mountain nearby, dubbed Diamond Peak by the moreromantic members of the colony, will soon be tipped by the sun rising over that exact point. They have a silhouette reminiscent of the Alps. It’s only when I look at the details here—the way the seeds are shaped on the grasses we’re walking through, the slight sparkle of the silicates in the soil beneath our feet that give it a magical quality and the hard shells of unfamiliar creatures tucked between the stalks—that I remember we’re so far from home.
    The stranger has sunk to his knees, the exhaustion setting in now that he knows we’re coming to him. As we pick up the pace, he falls forward onto his hands, his black hair hanging straight. I can see his pack now. It’s a basic design from the survival pattern folder on the local server of each of the Planetfall pods. It has a built-in water filtration mechanism and a more primitive version of the porous fabric we use on houses in the colony, designed to absorb water and push it, via an osmotic mechanism, to the internal filter. He’s probably been living off dew and rainwater for the whole journey—and his own urine, if he had any sense in the dry spells. I have no idea what he would have done for food; there are gels designed to produce fast-growing fungi but not enough packs to sustain such a trip.
    He’s thin and his clothes are worn and patched in several places. We knew their printers would fail, and without access to the cloud they had no way to run complex diagnostics. None of the people in that group were printer specialists and so unlikely to have any specs or spare-part patterns on their personal servers. The clothes he’s wearing are basic survival patterns designed to be durable and breathable with a sensor net built into them designed to help the body’s homeostatic system in adverse conditions. The built-in transmitter must have failed; otherwise it would have pinged our network when he was five kilometers away.
    Mack and I break into a run when he collapses,disappearing in the tall reed-thin plants. While we run, I check the network to see who’s awake and whether there’s any talk of Mack and me leaving the gate, but no one seems to have noticed. The sun is rising and in a couple of hours the air will be teeming with insects. I don’t have any protective clothing nor repellents on me and I wonder how this man survived without them.
    I half expect him to be dead by the time we get to him, but the pack is rising up and down and his head is turned to the side. I think of the parasites and organisms in the dirt only millimeters from his mouth and nose and the millions of microscopic assailants he can’t possibly be protected against.
    â€œWe’re here,” Mack says as we stop and kneel down on either side of him. “You’re going to be all right.”
    â€œHi,” the young man says with a slight American accent as he struggles onto his hands and knees to tip back and rest with his backside on his heels. He sweeps his hair off his face and both Mack and I gawk at him.
    He looks like Suh. He looks like the Pathfinder.
    I can see her in his eyes, his lips, the shape of his chin and cheekbones. The genetic signature of her Korean heritage is written across him and I want to laugh and cry and kiss him a million times and hide my face with shame. He is an echo of her beauty. He smiles at me uncertainly and I see her again that day at the observatory, holding the piece of paper in her hands.
    â€œHoly crap,” she said and held it out to me. “It’s real. It’s a real thing. It’s . . . it’s a real place.”
    I took it and scanned the numbers, but astronomy wasn’t in my repertoire. Then I noticed a string of numbers that were more than familiar—just the sight of them made me feel