The Winds of Altair Read Free Page A

the uneducated, the untouchables, they had to send out their best and their brightest—to pave the way.
    The least desirable people of Earth could not be launched out into the interstellar void to fend for themselves. Not even the politicians were that insensitive. Robot ships were built to find Earthlike worlds, and then teams of the eager, bright, idealistic young men and women of Earth were sent to prepare these worlds for the colonists to come.
    To these young men and women, the politicians sang of challenge and commitment. "Tame the new worlds!" they urged. And the eager, bright, idealistic young men and women took up the challenge. Just as the politicians' social technicians had predicted they would.
    Jeff made his way back to the dome where he lived. He was twenty-three years old, an undergraduate degree in meteorology freshly awarded him. He had been aiming for a doctorate in weather modification when the call to "Tame the new worlds!" had overtaken him. After six months in the Village, he wondered if he had chosen wisely.
    He was slightly taller than average, yet no one thought of him as "big," not even he himself. Jeff had the broad shoulders and strong arms of a farm boy, and a slow, easy smile that often prompted strangers to think he was easy-going, perhaps even lazy. His hair was dark and thick, his eyes the gray of a stormy sea. His psychological profile showed him so close to all the norms that the social technicians thought him dull (only the psychologically weak or unusual interested them). They were quite surprised when their own computers picked him as the student best qualified psychologically to attempt making contact with one of the animals of Altair VI.
    He lived in one of the Village's domes with nearly three dozen other students. They were all within a year or two of his own age. Half of them were women. All of them, naturally, were reliable Church members, Believers who had been sent by their Church to tame this new world for all the Believers who were to come as colonists.
    All the students had taken vows of celibacy as a matter of course, just as they had while on campus. Sex was a powerful weapon for either good or evil; it had to be channelled properly.
    Their vows were duly registered with Bishop Foy, the spiritual and temporal leader of the Village. The vows were also protected by the network of security cameras that watched every dormitory room, every meeting hall, every corridor and chamber of the Village. And the cameras were backed up by dorm mothers in each of the Village's residential domes. The dorm mother in Jeff's dome was a flour-white giantess with the unlikely name of Bettina Brown. The students had quickly dubbed her Brunhilda. She was flaxen haired, fully two meters tall, almost as wide, and strong enough to pick up two students Jeff's size, one in each ham-fisted hand, and shake them until their teeth rattled.
    Between Brunhilda and the computer-monitored sensors, Jeff and his dorm mates had little chance for mischief. And little time. Their hours were filled with work, study, and prayer. Even though the gravity field drive made the jump to Altair almost instantaneously, Gunnerson's tug had to tow them for two months out to the edge of the solar system before the jump could be made, and then for two more months they spiralled inward to take up an orbit around the sixth planet of Altair.
    The time was spent studying planetology, planetary engineering, and all the other special knowledge they would need to transform Altair VI into a fully Earthlike world, suitable for large-scale colonization. And praying. Prayer was as much a part of their lives as breathing. They prayed when they woke up in the morning. They prayed before each meal and after it. Every task began with a prayer for strength and success. Every night ended with a prayer that their efforts to tame Altair VI might prove fruitful.
    But they might as well have saved their energy. Their first few weeks of struggling with