If Tomorrow Comes

CHAPTER 4

Isabelle Rhinehart yawned, stretched, and rose from her sleeping mat. She folded it, put it away in the karthwood chest, and padded barefoot from her privacy room into the atrium of the house. No one was there; it was barely dawn. Isabelle made herself a cup of tea and, still in her night shift, opened the teardrop-shaped double door to the terrace beyond. Leaning on the railing, she sipped her tea and gazed at the valley brightening under the rising sun.

It was so beautiful: all of it, valley and terrace and house. Her lahk had built it two years ago, when Tony’s job and Isabelle’s art and Nathan’s inventions had produced enough money. Well, mostly Nathan, and Isabelle was grateful to her lahk-mate, even though he was never home anymore and wasn’t that nice a person to begin with.

Made entirely of karthwood, the house sat on the top of a low hill. Karthwood, which it had taken Isabelle a year on World to stop calling “bamboo,” was the basic building material everywhere, and structures were designed for the natural curves of its hollow, tapering stalks, which were treated with natural salts against insects and weather. “Let the karthwood become what it chooses” was the construction motto, and what karthwood wanted to become was buildings with swooping curves, oval rooms, woven roofs lacquered against rain, sliding panels to open houses to World’s semitropical air. Karthwood had the tensile strength of steel, the compressive strength of concrete, and the beauty of natural wood. In addition, as one of the few lighter colors in nature, its warm tan stalks were a welcome contrast to World’s other vegetation.

But the fields and gardens were beautiful, too, in their more somber way. Vegetation used rhodopsin instead of chlorophyll; the darker coloration allowed less light reflection and more retention from World’s orange sun. Skihlla rose above the horizon, suffusing the valley with its delicate light and glinting on the river that flowed to the east of the house until, beyond several other lahks, it fell in shining stages to the valley. From the garden below Isabelle’s terrace rose the sweet, heady scent of pika¡ leaves, perfuming the moist air. And now all of it, the whole lovely life her lahk had put together, might not last.

Isabelle drained her tea, raised the cup to the rising sun, and said in World, “Mother World, you are beautiful beyond compare.”

“Bullshit,” a voice behind her said in English.

Isabelle turned. “Good morning, Kayla.”

“Yeah. Right.”

So this was one of her sister’s bad days. Kayla vacillated between staying in bed all day and complaining bitterly when out of it. Kayla had hated World for ten years, and it seemed to Isabelle that the hatred was growing. Isabelle recognized depression but had no idea what to do about it. Antidepressants did not exist on World. Medicine here, as on Earth, developed according to need. Isabelle, naturally robust, tried to be patient. But she had liked World from the beginning, even during the first difficult months of microbe-adjustment, financial dependency, and language ignorance, when the clicks and trills and inflected syllables of Worldese had swirled around her as incomprehensible as the insect sounds it resembled. Kayla still had learned no more than a few words.

She said, “I need help today, Kayla, in the studio, if you will.”

Kayla snorted. “‘Studio.’”

Isabelle hung on to her temper. “Please.”

“You’re just going to go on with this sham life as if nothing is going to happen? As if everything isn’t going to come to an end in a few more months?”

Isabelle lost the battle with her temper. “I thought that’s what you wanted! For World to come to an end!”

“Not us with it. Face it, Isabelle, when the spore cloud hits, everything ends.”

Isabelle didn’t answer. They’d been through this before.

Kayla gripped the railing and glared at the valley below. Figures moved, now, among the fields and gardens; bicycles sped along the roads. “Look at them, going to work like nothing is about to happen to them.” Then Kayla’s voice turned plaintive. “No, Izzy, I didn’t want World to end. What I want is to go home. Have you forgotten home? Green trees and a yellow sun and cars and computers and steaks and—”

“Have you forgotten home—the home you and I knew? Welfare didn’t exactly provide us with steaks or a car. Our cousin was shot outside the apartment building. Your child brought home a used needle he found on the sidewalk. The gangs—”

“So shoot me!” Kayla flared. “I remember the good stuff, and I don’t want to die next month! When the spore cloud—Austin!”

Isabelle turned. Her nephew stood there in the Terran pajamas Kayla had sewn for him and insisted he wear, blinking against the brightening day. His thin face showed nothing. Sometimes he tried to make peace between his mother and aunt, which always filled Isabelle with shame; a thirteen-year-old should not have to take on that role. Today, however, he merely said in a flat voice, “We are all going to die?”

“No,” Isabelle said, before Kayla could say anything. “You know we’re not, Austin.” She had explained it all to him more than once, even though once had been all that was necessary. The kid was smart. However, there was something of Kayla’s negativity in him, too, which worried Isabelle.

Austin said, “We’re immune, right. We’re Terrans. But Mom is worried about all the people here who aren’t. About everything falling apart and Worlders just losing it and going on rampages.”

Isabelle turned on her sister. “What have you been telling him? God, Kayla!”

“The truth. I’ve been telling him the truth about what happens when a society falls apart! As in, you know, history!”

“World’s history is not ours!”

“They’re human, aren’t they? That’s what you always insist!”

Kayla’s face shone with petty, pathetic triumph. Isabelle turned away in disgust, to find out exactly what Austin had been told and to correct it if she could. But Austin was no longer there. He’d gone into his privacy room, and when Isabelle whistled softly at the door to request entrance, he neither opened the door nor answered.

“Shit,” Isabelle said softly.

The studio would have to wait. This was more important. Isabelle sat cross-legged on a pillow outside Austin’s karthwood door and waited for the boy to come out.

He did, five minutes later, eyes wild. “Tra¡kal!” he cried in World. “On the radio… killed! A whole city—” He started to cry, tears flying off his face with the violent shaking of his head.

“Check weapons and then recon the area,” Owen said, and Leo and Kandiss jumped to obey, even though Leo wasn’t sure what “the area” actually was. The shuttle still burned, smelling horribly. They’d crashed beside a small, very irregular hill covered with boulders and purplish vegetation. Fallen rocks littered the ground, although away from the hill, the land was level. Owen had backed the civilians under an overhang of rock, almost a small cave. Zoe guarded them, weapon at the ready, even though Leo suspected she was having trouble staying upright. Dr. Bourgiba was bent over Dr. Sherman, treating his burns with something from Dr. Patel’s suitcase. If that was all filled with doctor stuff, then it was a good thing that Dr. Patel had refused to let go of it. It was something they still had, anyway.

What else did they have? As they performed the weapons check, Leo cataloged their resources. His 107A1, the .50 caliber long-range sniper rifle zeroed to him. Four Mk 19 SCARs, Special Forces combat assault rifles; one of those was fitted with a modular shotgun system for ballistic breaches. Four Beretta sidearms. Ammo and hand grenades—Christ, no wonder Owen had staggered a little under the weight of the duffel. The gear they had all been wearing, even Zoe, who must have gone back to her quarters from sick bay to put it on right after Owen had told her to stay in sick bay. Filter masks for everybody. One person who spoke Kindese. No fucking idea where they were, or what kind of OPORD Owen could put together.

Leo conferred briefly with Kandiss. They went away from the burning shuttle, in opposite directions along the base of the hill. The sun rose orange, and it wasn’t just the bright colors of dawn; it stayed orange. It looked larger than the sun on Earth. All the strange plants, broad-leaved and spicy smelling, were dark purplish. Leo felt himself adjusting to the lighter gravity.

Still no natives. Fields, with some sort of strange dark animal grazing in them. One raised its head, looked at Leo, and went back to chomping the purplish grass. Another trotted slowly toward a clump of brush and Leo saw a splash of pink paint on its rump.

A few of the dark, long-haired animals grazed on the hill, these with pale blue splotches on their necks. Choosing a spot with cover in case of ambush, Leo climbed partway up the east face of the hill. Light-colored, curved buildings in the far distance. A road, with something moving on it, too far to distinguish but the traffic was light and slow. In the very far distance, smoke rising from whatever the Stremlenie had destroyed.

And in the sky, two moons: one setting on the horizon and one fading in the growing sunlight.

He reported back to Owen. “No one in the area. Natives two klicks off on a road paralleling here, not approaching us, moving at approximately ten klicks per hour. Animals which appear to be similar to sheep”—unless you counted the fact that they had three eyes—“that don’t appear dangerous. Buildings two klicks away at eleven o’clock.”

Kandiss returned from the other side of the hill. “Settlement about half a klick away. Two dozen houses, people in the streets talking, agitated but not armed. No military installations visible.”

“Okay,” Owen said. “Someone’ll spot the shuttle fire soon, if they haven’t already seen it. Just so we are all clear: This is now the Kindred squad, Second Platoon, Bravo Company, Seventy-Fifth Regiment. The mission now is to secure the area and let them come to us. If approached with hostile intent, defend as necessary. If they want to send in a negotiator, he—”

“There won’t be hostile intent,” Bourgiba said, and Owen spun around. Leo caught the brief flash of chagrin on Owen’s face that he had not heard the doctor approach.

“Doctor, this is a military conference. Please return to—”

“There will be no hostile intent,” Bourgiba said, just as if Owen had not spoken. “Kindred have no tradition of hostility, let alone war. Their society is peaceful, matrilineal, with its first principles those of—”

“I have read the briefing materials,” Owen said stiffly. “Return to the others, please. Now.”

Bourgiba did not move. He said softly, “I know your duty is to protect us. But with the deaths of both Ambassador Gonzalez and her second, Wayne Henry—”

“My charge is to protect you,” Owen said. “And I am going to do that. Kandiss, escort Dr. Bourgiba back to safety.”

Kandiss, looking startled, took a step forward. Bourgiba said quietly, “That won’t be necessary. But, Lieutenant Lamont, bear in mind that this is a peaceful diplomatic mission to establish international and trade relations with the government on World. It is not about anything else, despite what happened here. It is especially not about what the Stremlenie desired, which was revenge. Against anybody, for any reason.”

Bourgiba walked back under the overhang.

Zoe walked up, her face stiff with, Leo thought, determination to hide weakness. Owen said, “Secure the area. Report any movement at all to me. Brodie, you take the top of the hill. Berman—”

Under the overhang, Bourgiba was talking to Marianne Jenner. Dr. Jenner turned her head to stare at Owen.

Oh shit, Leo thought. The last thing they needed now was some kind of military-civilian turf war.

For two hours, nothing happened. Leo lay in his listening-observation post on top of the hill, rifle ready. He was glad for the Army’s latest tech, a scope that could switch from a narrow field for accuracy at range to a wide angle like a spotting scope—especially good since he didn’t have a spotter. He spent the time sweating in the growing heat under his gear and thinking over possible scenarios, knowing that Owen was doing the same. The Kindred might blame them for the attack on the city. After all, how would the planet know which ship had fired on them? They might send their own ship, or more than one if they had it and why wouldn’t they, to sweep that red beam over this area, in which case all nine of them were toast. Or, Dr. Bourgiba might be right and they would send a negotiator to find out what happened. If they did, the negotiator might be a trick. Everybody in every city might be dead and the Rangers would have to defend the five civilians against looters or people bent on revenge or who-the-fuck-knew-what.

No, not five—four. The geologist, Dr. Sherman, was unconscious, and Dr. Patel said he would die of his burns.

Then what? The eight humans had no food or water, and couldn’t eat or drink what they found without risking disease.

Bright spots: Dr. Jenner’s son was some kind of high brass here. He wouldn’t want his mother dead. And the Kindred had starships, or a ship. If this could be straightened out, maybe the Kindred would take the eight Americans home. The scientists and doctors agreed that with such advanced civilization, the Kindred would all be vaccinated already against the spore plague, so if they could be made to see that it was the Stremlenie and not the Friendship that had wasted that city…

Leo was a little surprised to realize how much he wanted to go back to Earth. Being away for a few months had been one thing. Even going back to an America twenty-four years later would be okay; the Army was still there and it was the Army he wanted. They were his family, his brothers, his purpose. But if this played out so that he never got to go home…

Don’t think about it until it happens. And anyway—

Movement below.

“Group approaching north side of the hill,” he said through his wrister. “Five people. No visible weapons.”

“Transport?” Owen’s voice said.

“Bicycles.” That was a new one on Leo: enemy on bikes. After a moment he added, “Bicycles now abandoned. Group heading toward me.”

Owen said swiftly, “Brodie, motion them to halt until I arrive, and cover me. Kandiss, with me until the natives are visible and then hold position at the base of the hill. Berman, stay with the civilians.”

Brodie raised one arm and yelled, “Halt!” The people below him halted. Brodie sighted. Whenever Owen appeared, if any of the five Kindred raised anything like a weapon, Leo would take him out.

But—

Where would they carry weapons? The five people all wore dresses, even the men, pieces of pale cloth twisted around their bodies. Sandals on their feet, and carrying nothing. But again, this was an advanced civ and who knew what weird shit they had for weapons. Three men, two women. All tall, with coppery skin and black hair and huge dark eyes—too huge, like those sappy paintings of big-eyed kittens and dogs. Then one of them turned his head and through his scope Leo saw that the man’s eyes were not dark but light gray flecked with gold.

The man called up the hill, “I am Noah Jenner. Please lower whatever weapon you have, we are no threat. I’m here to welcome you to World.”

So this was Dr. Jenner’s son. He looked just like the Kindred, except for the eye color. Owen came around the base of the hill with Kandiss. Kandiss took a position behind a boulder as Owen went forward. Both had drawn their Berettas.

The hill was small and Leo had exceptional hearing; he missed nothing. “I am Lieutenant Owen Lamont, United States Army, in charge of this expedition. Are you here in an official capacity, Mr. Jenner?”

“Yes. Well, as official as possible.” He raised one hand, put it on his cheek, and pulled downward on the skin on his face—some sort of tension tic. Leo had seen his mother do the same thing.

Owen said, “If your delegation carries any weapons, place them on the ground now.”

“We have no weapons,” Jenner said. “Lieutenant, we want to talk to you. Did your… your military destroy our cities this morning?”

Pretty direct. Leo heard the strain and grief in Jenner’s voice. Those were dangerous emotions. He kept his rifle trained on Jenner.

“No,” Owen said. “A Russian ship fired on the planet, destroyed our ship, and then fired on our landing shuttle.”

Jenner turned and spoke to the other four people, presumably translating. Their faces crumpled, looking suddenly much more human. Jenner turned back to Owen. “Why would a Russian ship do that?”

Jenner knew nothing—how could he? The Kindred ship, with him on it, had left Earth ten years ago. Before the spore plague hit, before whole economies collapsed across the globe, before Russians died in greater number than anybody else, before the vaccine was found.

Owen said, “Revenge.”

“For what? All we did—”

We. Jenner considered himself Kindred, not Terran. Leo filed away this piece of intel.

“—was ask your help with finding a vaccine!”

“Some people didn’t see it that way,” Owen said. “Look, Mr. Jenner, I can fill you in on Terran history later. Right now, we have a problem, and so do you. Your planet is under attack, and our transport has been destroyed, both by the Stremlenie. We have the same enemy.”

Jenner gazed at Owen, and Leo couldn’t read the expression in those Terran-gray, alien-large eyes. Finally Jenner said, “Put away your weapons, Lieutenant. We won’t harm you. But I don’t think you realize that—”

“Noah!”

Leo turned his head the slightest fraction. Dr. Jenner was slipping and sliding over rubble on the rough terrain, Berman behind her. Ordinarily Zoe could have restrained Marianne Jenner with one hand, but Zoe had had surgery only two days ago. Behind both of them came Dr. Bourgiba, calling, “Ranger Berman! Don’t—” Kandiss, behind his boulder, looked like he didn’t know what the hell he was supposed to do. It was a zoo.

Owen said tightly, “Squad, stand down. Mr. Jenner, let’s talk.”

Salah sat quietly, listening as Noah Jenner deconstructed the universe.

Jenner sat cross-legged on the ground beneath the overhang. A short distance away, Zoe Berman “guarded” the other four Kindred, who sat in a huddle, not understanding the English being spoken but looking, Salah thought, more saddened than alarmed. One, an old woman, seemed to be the leader, but she hadn’t asked Noah or Salah to translate for her. She merely waited, the coppery skin of her face set in the deep crevasses of age and grief. Her waiting, however, had not an air of resignation as much as of patience, with the trust that in good time she would be informed of everything she needed to make whatever decisions were necessary. Meanwhile, she grieved silently.

Mason Kandiss and Leo Brodie were “securing the area,” whatever that meant under these circumstances. The rest of the Terrans listened to Lamont question Jenner.

“It wasn’t just the city you saw destroyed,” he said, and the grief of his expression echoed the old woman’s. “It was three of our four cities.” He named them, a litany of trills and clicks among syllables heavy with pain. “But we think the Russian ship has gone back to Terra.”

“How do you know?” Lamont demanded. He, alone, remained standing, looming over the others, his weapons glaring to Salah even in the dim and orangey light. The day was heating up, even in the shade of the overhang.

“We don’t, for sure. It could be on the other side of the planet. But—”

“Why can’t you detect it with satellites or probes or your own ships? We could, with the Friendship.” Lamont’s voice was controlled but relentless, each word coming out like a small bullet.

“Ship. Singular. It was also destroyed in the attack. It sat in Kam^tel^ha.”

This time Salah caught the name of the city: Beautiful-by-the-Sea.

“Your fleet consisted of only one ship?”

“There were two. The other, as at least some of you know”—he nodded at his mother, who sat beside him with her hand on his arm—“is contaminated with spores at the colony it was supplying.”

“And you only built two?” Lamont was not even trying to hide his skepticism.

“Yes. Two. We had no need of more than two.”

“A navy of—”

“It was not a navy,” Lamont said. “Or an air force. Or space satellites. We have no military, Lieutenant.”

“Uh-huh. So you’re saying you have no starships left to get us home.”

“That is what I’m saying.”

Branch Carter suddenly shifted his weight on the ground, and Jenner gazed at him briefly before turning to his mother. Jenner’s voice went reedy with strain. “I know you all thought that World must have an advanced technology. I thought so too, once. But I’m here to tell you that we do not. Our two star drives, plus plans to build the ships, were left for us, presumably by whatever race took humans from Earth to World 140,000 years ago. The plans were partly pictorial, partly mathematics, partly in symbols with a pictorial key or something like that—I don’t pretend to understand it. But there were texts, all engraved on some metal that did not decay—the same plans that Mee^hao¡ and his expedition left you on Terra ten years ago. And World understood them even less than you did. But we’d been left parts, too, in sealed containers that required a civilization far enough advanced to open. Including two star drives. It was sort of like…. like fitting together Legos. Or so I’ve been told. I wasn’t here then.”

Lamont said, “So you can’t build another ship.”

“We wouldn’t even if we could,” Jenner said. “We only assembled the last one because the spore cloud was—”

Claire Patel blurted out, “Why wouldn’t you build another one? If you could?”

“Building one was a tremendous drain on our resources, and a tremendous violation to Mother World.”

Claire looked confused, but Salah understood. They were now on religious grounds, or something close to religion.

“Violation?” Branch said.

“Mining substances, dangerous processing of them, radioactive waste—I’m not sure of the details. I’m not a scientist. But I know that the two ships were built only because of the spore cloud.”

“And when you left us on Earth information about the ships, you just left out that tiny little piece about jumping ahead fourteen years during the trip here.”

“We didn’t know,” Jenner said. “It was a shock to us to arrive here twenty-eight years after the Embassy left World. We thought we had twenty-four years before the spore cloud hit. We didn’t.”

Salah was doing rapid math in his head. But then, if the Embassy jumped fourteen years before it reached Earth and another fourteen returning here, and the cloud had been due in twenty-five years—

Jenner said, “Our calculations were wrong. We don’t have your accuracy with astronomical measurements. But we know now that the cloud will come soon.”

Salah said, “Our astrophysicist says—said—seventy-one days from now.”

Jenner bowed his head.

Marianne Jenner spoke for the first time. “You couldn’t accurately calculate the cloud’s arrival. You don’t have the physics to understand the ships you built. And you didn’t have the biology, the genetics, to research and combat R. sporii yourself. So you came to Earth with hopes that we knew more.”

“Yes,” Jenner said.

Lamont said, “But you’re—”

“No. We’re not. Listen to me, Lieutenant. We have one culture and only one, because the land area of World is small and because the Terrans brought here were small in number and, maybe, because we don’t have much genetic diversity. That’s what I’m told, anyway. There were wars early on, but centuries ago one person gained control of huge swaths of land, presumably with an army, and she went on to establish the start of the civilization we have now. That was Mother Lalo^. She was an extraordinary person, a… I don’t know what you’d call it. Plant worshipper? Anyway, she established the principles for her kingdom, which eventually became all of World, that we still live by. That we must live by, to exist on this one continent without exhausting its resources. Respect for the land, first and always, which you can think of as ecological reality. No violence. Nothing that would lead to revolution, which means nobody starves, nobody is homeless, nobody is exploited. Family is all, not material goods, and a family is responsible for all its members. Government is made up of family heads, and decentralized whenever possible. Also, we practice strict population control. All of this is…. the word is untranslatable. ‘Bu^ka^tel.’”

Marianne Jenner ducked her head, hiding some private expression. Salah tried to process everything he’d just heard. Jenner made Kindred sound like Eden. But these were humans, and Salah didn’t believe in Eden. He said, “And all this works? These principles?”

“Most of the time, with most people,” Jenner said.

“And when it doesn’t?”

“We have laws, courts, punishments. But nothing like you have on Terra.”

Lamont said, “Uh-huh. Mr. Jenner, about our immediate situation—”

Branch interrupted. “You must be mining ore. There are bicycles on your road!”

“Yes, we mine and manufacture and transport,” Jenner said, “but as carefully as possible.”

“Describe your level of tech, please. You have radios, don’t you? That’s why the Friendship couldn’t raise your ship while it was on nightside and we weren’t. Radios but no more advanced communication.”

Jenner smiled sadly. “Yes. And you are…”

“Branch Carter.”

Who now was, Salah realized, the closest thing the humans had left to an engineer or physicist.

Jenner said, “We have no space program except the ship that was destroyed in Kam^tel^ha. Radio and radio towers but not television. No phones—all communication over distances is done by radio. Electricity from wind, sun, water, and geothermal sources. Medicines but not laser surgery. Books, although we control how many are printed so as not to use too much paper. Think the 1940s, Dr. Sherman, and you’ll be about right, with some exceptions. Big exceptions. No, better not think 1940s.”

“Cars?” Salah said, despite himself.

“We could make them but don’t, because we don’t drill for oil. Most goods go by water; there are a lot of rivers. We have dirigibles—I came here by dirigible—but bicycles are the usual—”

“Wait,” Marianne said. “You spoke to the Friendship from the Kindred ship, Noah. I heard you. But now you’re here, and you said the ship was in the destroyed city.”

“The… the best word is ‘rotational mother’—sent me from Kam^tel^ha last night. Otherwise I would have been killed with the rest.”

She said, “And your… your wife and child?”

There was a wife and child? Salah had not known that. Jenner must have told his mother before he left Earth. Was she Terran or Kindred? Interbreeding should be possible, there wouldn’t be that much genetic drift in 140,000 years.

Jenner said, “That’s why I was sent away. Everyone is returning to their lahks before the spore cloud comes.”

“Lahk?”

“Their family groups. Large, as in extended families.”

For a moment, Marianne looked as if she’d been slapped. Her son had just said that his family was not her. Before Salah could look away, the expression was gone. She said, “But by now you’ve developed a vaccine, you’ve had ten years, everyone in such a cohesive society must already be vaccinated… We vaccinated all of Earth against smallpox in less than ten years!”

Salah’s stomach clenched. He knew what Jenner would say before he said it. So did Marianne and Claire, the other biologists.

Jenner said it. “We have no vaccine.”

Branch drew a sharp breath.

Jenner continued, “We tried. But we don’t know enough, not even with everything we learned from you on Terra, and we had to leave before you developed the vaccine.”

Salah’s stomach clenched. No vaccine, and the Friendship with all its supplies and databases destroyed. In another few months the spore cloud would cross paths with Kindred. The entire population, whose ancestors had been brought here before the spore cloud hit Earth the first time seventy thousand years ago, had no species immunity against R. sporii. There would be a few people with natural resistance, which was what had preserved the humanity of Earth even as it reduced the population to a few thousand in the famous “bottleneck event.” But only a few.

Salah had worked in hospitals when the cloud made its second contact with Earth. He’d done twenty-hour shifts in Jordan, trying desperately to save those who, due to millennia of genetic drift, had lost their species immunity or who had weakened immunity. Many died. “Only” 5 percent in Jordan; 7 percent in the United States; 30 percent in Russia, whose genome had lost that particular genetic lottery. They died gasping for breath, their lungs filling with fluid, until they literally drowned.

Civilization on Kindred would disappear.

Marianne closed her hand around her son’s arm. “You left Earth before we’d developed the vaccine. Ten of you. Many on Earth weren’t immune to R. sporii, so some of you may be vulnerable when the spore clouds hit. Noah, you might not be immune.”

Claire Patel said, “I have some vaccine. I brought it in that suitcase there. If you have any labs left standing, we might be able to synthesize more.”

Jenner’s already oversized eyes went wider. “You brought vaccine?”

Lieutenant Lamont said, “That’s not our mission. Our mission is to establish relations and return to Terra.”

Salah stood. He was aware that beside the young Ranger, he was short, a little bit flabby, old. Unarmed. He said, “We can’t go home, Lieutenant. There is no means to go home. Vaccines are our mission now.

“We have to save as much of this planet as we can.”