Sing a Samba Galactica

SING A SAMBA GALACTICA

A Sci-Fi Thriller

STEVEN M. MOORE

Sing a Samba Galactica

A Sci-Fi Thriller

Steven M. Moore

Smashwords Edition

ISBN: 978-1-927114-41-4

e-Formatting by Carrick Publishing

Cover Photo Lake Tahoe © Can Stock Photo Inc. / Feverpitched

This e-book is intended for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be sold or given away to other people. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Logo Design by Sara Carrick

CARRICK PUBLISHING

Copyright 2012 Steven M. Moore

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance of fictional elements to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Other Sci-Fi Thrillers by Steven M. Moore You Might Enjoy:

The Secret Lab (Carrick Publishing, 2011)

The Midas Bomb (Infinity Publishing, 2009)

Angels Need Not Apply (Carrick Publishing e-Book 2012

Full Medical (Xlibris Publishing, 2006; Carrick Publishing, 2011)

Evil Agenda (Carrick Publishing, 2011)

Soldiers of God (Infinity Publishing, 2008)

Survivors of the Chaos (Infinity Publishing, 2011)

For more information, see: stevenmmoore dot com

Dedication

To the scientists and sponsors of project SETI…perhaps one day others will listen to signals from the stars and discover that human beings are not alone….

Part I

Gordon Takahashi

…where are they?—Enrico Fermi

ONE

Child in the water!

Mayor Clarke’s cry went out over the colony’s internet. Everyone sensed his anguish. Dr. Gordon Takahashi stared at the teacup’s shattered remains lying at his feet. The streaming video came next—a playback, thanks to the colony’s AI.

Takahashi watched Clarke and other returning picnickers reach for little Annie Li as she slipped through the railing and tumbled off North Bridge into the swift waters. The AI panned the bridge’s videocam to catch images of flailing arms and limbs as the river’s current carried the tot out of sight. The light from New Haven’s two visible moons, already low on the evening horizon, couldn’t push back the water’s darkness for very long.

She can’t swim! was Takahashi’s first thought.

The mayor, always in contact with the com hut through his personal wi-fi connection implanted behind his ear, beat the AI in putting out a general call for help. The doctor was already running.

***

Two choppers headed out, one along each side of the river. Takahashi flew in one bird with Janet Li, Annie’s surrogate mother. The pilot, Ines Garcia, was one of the colony’s civil engineers.

Li and Garcia had sprinted from the cafeteria where, throughout the day during her down time, the latter often held court and complained about the syntho coffee. He had started at the medical center, which was closer to the choppers.

They met him there. He was winded from his sprint and embarrassed the women were not. Theirs was still the first helicopter out.

Garcia, said Clarke, I have an estimate of the river’s current.

Billy, you do know how to keep cool and manage an emergency, thought Takahashi.

From the mayor’s data, Garcia was able to calculate where the current would carry the toddler and swooped to intercept.

There she is! said Takahashi, pointing to a figure seated on the wide riverbank among the tall, teal-blue grass.

They passed over Annie, who was wringing out her long blond hair when she looked up towards the chopper. Her mother waved, tears in her eyes. Garcia had to double back.

Upon landing, Takahashi ran to the tyke, examined her, and found her healthy. Her survival astonished him. The child had just learned to walk. There was no way she could have swum to shore. Yet she was unharmed and seemed amused by the incident. Her only physical wounds were marks on her tiny arms that looked like rope burns.

Takahashi needed to comfort mother more than daughter. Li was hysterical as she smothered her daughter with hugs. She was one of the first volunteers to implant one of the 10,000 fertilized ova the colonists brought with them. She loved little Annie as if she were her own. Takahashi was fond of her too, as he was with the many hundreds of babies he had delivered on New Haven.

They’re all my children, in a sense.

***

Over the next ten weeks, no one gave the mystery much more thought until other incidents occurred that seemed equally strange. Takahashi expressed his concern to the mayor.

So, who am I, Sherlock Holmes? said Clarke. If you’re interested in mysteries, solve them yourself. I don’t have time.

The irascible Clarke was not much taller than Takahashi. The mayor’s stocky build contrasted with the doctor’s wiry one, though, and he tended to be louder in voicing his opinions. The colonists had become accustomed to this ex-enforcer for the mob. He had so far performed well as the new colony’s mayor, so well he won easily in the first real election. The history of his checkered past on Earth was almost forgotten and rarely came up during the campaign Takahashi ran for his friend.

Clarke and Takahashi had become friends even before the trial aboard the colony ship Magellan, where Clarke, due to stowing away, was sentenced to the unusual punishment of performing the duties of temporary mayor. Consequently, it wasn’t surprising that Clarke and Linda Ting, the mayor’s new wife, often invited Takahashi over for dinner.

Such gatherings were informal, considering their simple diets, but that only meant people and conversation took precedence over food. All three were travelers of the Way and felt obliged to meditate a little before food and conversation. Nevertheless, they would often bypass ceremony in their impatience to discuss colony affairs.

This time their discussion concerned the strange happenings that had begun with Annie Li’s fall.

People are so caught up in their work they’re getting stressed out, imagining things, you know, said Ting. It’s a distraction for exhausted minds.

The doctor studied the woman for a moment. Last names rarely had ethnic significance. Both of them looked more Hispanic than Japanese, in his case, or Chinese, in hers. He had a relative from Okinawa somewhere in his past, for example, but his family ties were to the North American continent. He had never asked the round-faced beauty who had stolen Clarke’s heart about her origins and guessed she neither cared nor knew—most people didn’t.

Linda is good for Billy, thought Takahashi. He envied the relationship his friend had with her. They were both lovers and friends. I need someone like that. Fat chance.

He was not about to end the discussion with Clarke’s good-natured insults or Ting’s more thoughtful reasons. But the incidents are real, Linda. He began to count off the unexplained events on his fingers. There’s the case of Annie Li. We also have several cases of lost equipment reappearing. Then there’s the case of Raul Gomes waking up in his own bed after passing out in a drunken stupor in the middle of South Common. And so on. And finally, there’s your mystery creature. Don’t forget that. Why don’t we see more of him?

***

New Haven, the fourth planet in the 82 Eridani system, was a statistical anomaly in the short history of Earth’s colonization of nearby stellar systems. Unlike previous planets colonized in the Tau Ceti and Delta Pavonis systems, New Haven had an already established ecosystem. The other two colonized planets, while orbiting stars more similar to Sol, were in what might be called their Precambrian periods where prokaryotes of various forms—bacteria, algae, and so forth—floated in their oceans and on the oceans’ floors.

The primordial broth, thought Takahashi. Is it common to the history of every planet harboring life?

Many E-type planets had life but much of it did not progress beyond microbes. Any life beyond that was the exception rather than the rule, making Earth’s teeming biosphere very special in the cosmos. He knew back on Earth there were religions that considered these facts of theological significance. As a scientist, he knew that was the epitome of ignorance and arrogance. In our universe, there is nothing special. Things are just what they are.

If E-type planets with primitive life represent five-sigma events in the galaxy, and ones with more advanced life are seven-sigma events, the large number of stars still makes life ubiquitous. The burning question that bordered on mass hysteria in the 1950s on Earth was whether sentient life exists and is able to visit Earth. Now the discussion was turned upside down. Takahashi knew it was unwise to chalk up all their mysteries to ETs, so he only discussed this possibility with another good friend, Boris Malenkov.

The more complex biosphere on New Haven was both a blessing and a hindrance to colonists’ work. They didn’t need breathing masks since the atmospheric mix contained 20% oxygen, close to the same percentage as Earth’s, unlike the two other colonies. On the other hand, the other colonies easily introduced Earth flora and fauna, whereas New Haven colonists found local flora and fauna very competitive with Earth’s.

New Haven possessed abundant plant life, not unlike Earth’s in its use of photosynthesis. It was also home to a not so abundant animal life that filled the same ecological niches as Earth’s insects and smaller animals. Nevertheless, local life was more limited in the sense that overall there did not exist a multitude of species as Earth had now or in its wild biological past since the Cambrian.

All local life forms had a DNA code based on the same four amino acids as Earth’s, but evolution had taken very different turns in its choice of stereo isomers. Humans usually found local flora and fauna inedible.

One curiosity of the local biosphere was that they had found no large animals. The largest discovered so far and the most numerous was a furry, rodent-like creature about the size of a rabbit with six legs and two rotating eyes sitting on short antenna stalks. They thrived on many plants and were everywhere. They filled evenings with their plaintiff calls, which resembled a turtledove’s. They didn’t seem to have any predators, though, so it was interesting to conjecture what kept their numbers in check. Most people thought there must be a large predator not yet discovered.

In search of that predator in particular and any large animal life in general, biologists Ting and Harry Nie had gone with other scientists to explore higher elevations, thinking the dense forest canopy there would provide cover for larger animals. From a chopper, they discovered several large herbivores, but no carnivores.

Nevertheless, Ting had spotted something big and bulky traverse a shadowy clearing. Air was shimmering in the afternoon heat. Humidity was high and the temperature around 30 degrees centigrade.

The planet, at an ideal distance from its parent star, 82 Eridani, had a larger axis tilt that gave it more extreme seasons than Earth’s. The settlement was about 25 degrees north of the equator where the climate was similar to Stockholm’s. They were in the middle of a hot summer.

***

Takahashi remembered Ting’s conjecture that she had misjudged the creature’s size due to heat shimmer, but image processing on the video record confirmed something about two meters long and one and a third meters wide crossed the clearing, carrying something smaller in its mouth.

Scientists were elated—they had found their large carnivore. However, no more sightings had taken place since then.

Takahashi thought the problem was more general than the scientists’ search for large animal life on New Haven. Ever since the Annie Li incident, he had made unexplained phenomena a hobby of his. He had become the famous British sleuth’s New Haven reincarnation.

Or, am I Dr.Watson?

He knew Clarke thought he was wasting his time. The mayor only wanted the colony to move forward, which required everybody to do his job, including Gordon Takahashi.

Have you written that report on our adaptability to local microbes? the mayor asked the doctor, trying to change subject. I’d like to know if we’re going to have to start making and eating Earth cultures.

I told you that you didn’t have to worry about that. As long as our Earth plants and animals are doing well here, we’ll be fine. The two ecosystems can exist side-by-side as long as we don’t let our Earth system go wild. I’m not sure we have to be that careful, since New Haven’s flora and fauna have an advantage.

You’d better not tell that to Harry Nie, countered Ting.

Ting’s coworker was always concerned that Earth’s flora and fauna, especially microorganisms, would contaminate the whole New Haven biosphere. Takahashi thought measures they had taken to control this were unnecessary. He believed the spread of Earth organisms over the planet was only another form of terraforming and had said so in many meetings. He knew Ting was not sure who was right but he also knew they would agree their science didn’t have enough experience with these problems.

At any rate, just write the damn report, said Clarke. Takahashi often found the dumpy and imperious little man irritating. My friend Malenkov calls him Napoleon reincarnated. I need hard facts to convince Council we’re not heading for tragedy. John Wade’s bout with diarrhea has scared everybody.

As if that statement were a cue, a call came in from Wade, who was on duty in the com hut. All received it. Although directed to the mayor, it was on public channel, so it reached everyone’s personal wi-fi set.

Billy, I just received a check-in call from Malenkov. He’s out looking at those sink holes and geysers near Lake Placid.

Is he drunk again? Visions of Malenkov asleep on one of the lake’s white sand beaches, the scientist turning beet red in the summer sun, came to Takahashi.

He was cut off in mid conversation. I can’t rouse him on any frequency.

Takahashi had studied with Boris Malenkov. At Mid-Atlantic University, near Chesapeake Bay, Takahashi was an introverted and quiet premed student while Malenkov was an outgoing and boisterous planetology major.

While good friends, their professions separated them. Since their school days, Takahashi was often envious of Malenkov’s exploits with the opposite sex, but maturity changed envy to quiet amusement. In reality, they had little in common beyond their love of beer, old video shows from the 20th century, and Chesapeake Bay crab cakes. Nevertheless, as often happens, their bond grew over time.

At school and onboard Magellan, they were drinking buddies, often drinking late into the night while discussing the merits of some forgotten episode of The Lone Ranger or I Love Lucy.

Settling down to their respective routines in First Landing had not changed them at all. They both shared a keen interest in explaining the strange incidents that had been occurring in and around the colony and often talked about them over a frothy glass of Raul Gomes’ home brew.

Maybe Boris is Sherlock?

It was with more than idle curiosity that Takahashi accompanied Clarke and Ting over to the com hut. They wanted a better sense about what was happening than the one received over their personal data link devices.

***

Wade, now cured of his gambling addiction and a teetotaler, was always protective of his domain. Clarke allowed him his space. He had come after Wade once on Earth for his gambling debts, but now felt indebted to him for proposing that Clarke stow away on Magellan. Due to that decision, he had met the love of his life and found a new calling.

Wade, on the other hand, was still single, although Takahashi knew he was beginning to spend a lot of time with one of Gomes’ programmers. Raul Gomes, a feisty man who put more confidence in the colony’s main AI called Hercules than in any of his colleagues, didn’t approve.

You didn’t have to drop what you were doing. I’m capable of handling this, you know.

Wade was also Clarke’s height but in better shape. He often wore muscle shirts in summer, a habit that showed off his hairy chest. Takahashi thought he was egotistical but possessed valuable skills the colony needed. Most colonists did; some came with multiple skill sets.

Wade waved at the huge video screens. Ines Garcia took an RTV and picked up three other colonists with some firepower, just in case. Hercules has Malenkov’s last position down to two meters, thanks to the GPS satellites we have in orbit.

New Haven’s version of the Global Positioning System satellites transmitted position information to the com hut when a person did a routine check-in or when the person was linked to Hercules. The latter would record it in a database for later use. However, knowing where Malenkov had been to two meters circular error probability didn’t make Takahashi feel any better.

Equipment in the com hut offered the best Earth science had to offer, at least Earth science from 115 years earlier. Some components had made the long trip in crates aboard Magellan, while others were gutted from the starship’s own com center.

Ever since they left Earth, they had been receiving and transmitting information back and forth to the home world and the two other colonies. Information was transmitted at either end via com satellites with 25 square-meter phased array antennas that could broadcast a megawatt signal in tight microwave beams using spread spectrum techniques.

The information itself, of a modest bandwidth of 60 kilobits per second, was encoded digitally into a spread spectrum signal of 600 megahertz, making it impervious to most interference. The colonists laid out these satellites for communications with Earth, together with more conventional satellites, including the GPS, while still in orbit around New Haven.

Similar systems orbited Earth, of course, and around the other two colonized planets. Except for the tremendous delay due to 82 Eridani’s 20.9 light-years from Sol, it would have been possible for a person in, say, Los Angeles on Earth, to call up Takahashi in First Landing on New Haven. The delay meant person-to-person conversations were impossible, of course, so communications with Earth were reduced to patient computers whispering to each other via message packets.

Much more information came from Earth, of course, than was sent to it, but Hercules and his other computer slaves handled it all. Any colonist could use his personal wi-fi device or a more sophisticated holographic terminal to connect to Hercules and receive twenty-year-old updates from the home planet.

They all waited as Garcia and her crew drove the five kilometers to where Malenkov had last reported in. She kept up a running chatter over the rugged terrain vehicle’s noise, making light of the whole incident, but her tone changed as they neared Lake Placid.