Their Own Medicine

Steven Grimm

``Invade any interesting planets today?'' Ryan Barris chuckled as he took his wife's coat.

``The usual,'' she replied, removing her mittens and scarf. ``Just a bunch of rocks. No, there was one with some life, but nothing more than a bunch of naked nomads running around kowtowing to the local gods.''

Ryan chuckled again. ``They'll make good slaves for someone.'' He closed the closet door. ``Did you talk to Dyerson about a raise?''

``Yes,'' Amanda answered, walking into the living room and settling into a TV chair. ``He said he can't give pay increases to upper management with the unions breathing down his neck. The bastard told me to go on an acquisition! What nerve, telling a vice-president to go sit in a spaceship for three weeks!'' Ryan sat down on the couch and faced her. ``So do you want to go?''

Amanda rubbed her temples. ``I don't know. I mean, you know how I feel about the whole thing; I hate being cooped up like that, and I can't stand going through interspace. But it would mean getting the house... I need more time to think about it.'' ``I think you should do it. I mean, the mission is three weeks. The house is for life, and there'd be enough room to buy some kids if we wanted.''

Amanda leapt out of her chair and onto the couch. ``You trying to get rid of me?'' she asked, tickling Ryan in the gut. He reciprocated, and if they had been living a hundred years earlier, the rest of the evening would have saved them the price of a grade-A infant.

``Okay, ma'am, sign at the bottom.'' The clerk pushed some papers toward Amanda. It was a standard release form; she had helped to write its predecessor several years earlier. Nothing too unusual, just the obligatory waiving of medical liabilities and so forth. She skimed the text out of habit, signed and dated the last page, and handed it back to the clerk. ``All right, ma'am, everything looks okay,'' the clerk said. He obviously wasn't accustomed to dealing with people of her rank. It showed on his face and in his voice. He would be manning this desk for quite some time.

Amanda stood and walked out of the room, heading toward personnel transport. She wanted to get the whole business behind her as quickly as possible. The acquisition team would already be prepping for the mission, and they would be waiting for her by the time she got to the station. The sooner she was on her way, the better.

Personnel transport had her airborne within fifteen minutes; rank had its privileges. The plane docked with a transatmospheric shuttle a half-hour later, and she was on her way up to Lagrange point three.

Her haste had paid off: the acquisition team was still in briefing when she arrived. Luckily, Amanda had personally approved the takeover of the target planet, so she was already well acquainted with the relevant details. She was waiting on the carrier's bridge when they arrived. The first one onto the bridge was a rugged dark-haired man in his late fifties. He introduced himself as John Gately, the mission commander. Amanda was just shaking his hand when a bald woman entered. Her hands trembled slightly, and her eyes were extremely bloodshot; she was clearly a deadhead. Still, as long as it didn't interfere with the mission, it was her business. Amanda greeted her and learned that she was Tricia Morris, Gately's second-in-command. Gately and Morris silently checked all the flight systems.

The three were strapping themselves in for takeoff when a palefaced young man hurried in, apologizing to John for his tardiness. John introduced him as Mark Ashton, the technical advisor. Mark slid into the flight seat behind Amanda and buckled himself in.

Tricia flipped a switch on a panel in front of her. A few indicator lights came on. ``Crew ready,'' she said in the raspy voice typical of deadheads.

Gately pressed a button and a keyboard slid out from somewhere in the control panel. He typed a short command. A computer voice spoke: ``Prepare for acceleration. Interspace drive will activate thirty-two minutes after launch.'' Amanda shuddered at the thought of entering interspace again. Such terrible sensations. But it would only last a few minutes; the planet was only three hundred lightyears away. The floor started to vibrate. There was a roar from the back of the ship, and Amanda was pushed back into her seat. The acceleration was only about thirty gees, but even this close to the front of the ship, the dampers didn't compensate fully. The team, in a room behind the bridge, were getting much worse treatment. Amanda wished that they had put a fourth damper on the ship, so she could sit in total comfort while accelerating. But the cost was just too prohibitive.

The acceleration continued for a nearly intolerable thirty minutes. Then, abruptly, it ceased. The computer's voice came on again: ``Interspace precharge in progress. Entry in two minutes.''

``Hate interspace,'' said Tricia. ``Worse than bad patch.'' John grunted agreement. Amanda remained silent; there was no point in demonstrating weakness unnecessarily. After a moment, a high-pitched whine filled the room, and silent, cold darkness descended upon the bridge.

Amanda couldn't feel herself breathe, or hear the pound of a heartbeat in her eardrums. And soon... yes, there. It was a sort of wail, the parts of it that could be heard. In sight it manifested as millions of tiny points of light, dancing around in random patterns. Amanda's entire body tingled as her foot did when it fell asleep. A metallic taste assaulted her mouth, and a sickly sweet odor filled her nostrils. And the worst thing: unintelligible utterances, whispers with no sound, filled her mind. This was what the interspace pilots called ``the song of the stars,'' a misnomer which was perpetuated to great profit by the Star-pilots' Academy.

It was over almost before it started. The odd sensations diminished, and sight and sound returned. Amanda looked at the other command crewmembers; the little she could see from her seat was reassuring. It would have been very inconvenient to lose one of them to the songs, always a possibility on the even the most routine of missions.

Tricia flipped her comm switch again. ``Status?'' A male voice answered. ``One babbler, a shuttle mechanic. He was a redundant anyway, so we're fine. We're flushing him now.'' That would be that much less mass on the ship, not that it made any significant difference. Amanda heard someone blathering in the background; then a hatch closed and the voice was cut off. John looked at a couple of screens. ``We're almost there. The computer says we'll be in orbit in twenty minutes. Acceleration is only twelve gees, so you can all get up.'' This was purely for Amanda's benefit; everyone else had been through all of this hundreds of times before.

Amanda opened up all the straps and stood, stretching. Though the scientists insisted it wasn't a physical effect, interspace always left her feeling about an inch shorter than usual. She had little faith in their proclamations; they hadn't invented the drive and didn't really know how it worked. She walked over to a display and called up a scan of the planet. She knew all the information that appeared on the screen, but it never hurt to refresh one's memory. Amanda didn't believe that this would take the full three weeks, unless the anomaly in the southern hemisphere turned out to be interesting. The anomaly was a region of unusually high radiation levels. They would send a probe down to investigate before landing any people nearby, of course; no sense wasting employees when it wasn't necessary.

She instructed Mark to have a probe prepared. He hurried off the bridge to do her bidding.

``Why you?'' asked Tricia. ``Vice presidents usually stay Earth.''

``Money,'' replied Amanda. ``My husband and I want to have children, but they don't come cheaply.'' ``Try Ceres. Grade-B for half price.'' ``Second-rate bootleg babies? After this, we'll be able to afford grade-AA, or maybe even AAA,'' Amanda said. ``We don't want to settle for anything less than the best.'' ``System feeds itself,'' Tricia muttered, and walked off. Amanda shrugged. She saw nothing wrong. The rich could afford the best children, and the money stayed in the family because those children were capable of managing it. That was life.

Amanda skimmed the crew's records. She was surprised to note that Tricia had been a guard with the Beta Cassoni acquisition team; she was lucky to be alive after that disaster. There were no other people of note in the crew, just the usual set of B-types.

``Orbital insertion in two minutes,'' declared the computer. ``All shuttle and onboard systems are functional.'' Mark returned. ``The probe's ready,'' he said. ``Of course, we'll get a good look at the area before we land anyway. Our orbit will bring us right over it, and I'll be sitting at the scan station the whole time.''

``Good,'' said Amanda. ``Let me know if you have something interesting. I'll be in my quarters.'' She left the bridge and headed aft. Most of the acquisition team was still in the acceleration room, standing around talking. Nobody noticed Amanda passing by. She arrived at her quarters, which consisted of a spartan bedroom, food dispenser, and an alcove that masqueraded as a washroom. She noticed that someone had secured her suitcase to a wall; she had accidentally left it on the bed, and it would have flown across the room as they left L-3. She cursed herself for being so careless; at least one of the teammembers knew she was a landlubber. Amanda sat down on the side of the bed and rubbed her eyes. This wasn't all that bad. She was already here, anyway, with another interspace voyage under her belt and only one more left in her life, she hoped. She decided to lie down for a few minutes, and was ashamed to be awakened by Ashton's voice. ``...of some sort of alien spacecraft,'' he was saying. ``The survey report is pretty much on target; the planet has all sorts of rare minerals. The locals should be easy to round up. They're pretty primitive. They're spread out over all the big continents in little tribes. The tribes are all centered around brown things that are scattered all over the planet. My guess is they're some sort of religious idols or something. They might be worth a bit in the alien art circuit, so if you give the go-ahead, we'll take as many of them as we can fit in the cargo hold.''

``Yes, that's fine. Anything else?'' ``Well, only that the tribes and idols seem to be concentrated more heavily around the crash site than the rest of the planet. The anthropologist says that was probably because they saw the thing come falling out of the sky. Don't remember her technical name for it.''

``Very good, Ashton.'' Amanda got out of bed. She was going to have to go down on one of the shuttles, of course; that was part of her job here. Someone had to keep tabs on these operations. Usually it was some low management gofer, someone who wouldn't be missed if the whole mission was swallowed by a black hole or lost in interspace. A vice-president turned a few heads. The team would be watching her, though they might not let it show. She would make sure things went smoothly. IAC was certainly paying enough; the pay bonus for a VP was as astronomical as the destination. But most upper management lived comfortably enough that they didn't want to go so far out of their ways to make more money.

She walked into the acceleration room, where John was going over the exact acquisition plans with a few teammates. The first shuttle was to be launched in an hour; it would set down almost exactly opposite the planet from the alien ship, where there were very few tribes. If they were rounded up without difficulty, more shuttles would repeat the process all over the globe. A small science team was set to go down to the crash site in a little over two hours; there were occasionally some good devices to be found in the rubble and reverse engineered. The interspace drive was a prime example.

Amanda asked to be placed on the first shuttle; best to get this out of the way as soon as possible. Gately already had her on the crew list; she wasn't sure that she liked that. Tricia was on the shuttle as well.

Amanda went back to her room and changed clothes. The delicate silks and arborites she had on now would get ruined if she had to go out onto the surface for some reason. Instead she opted for a utility suit, with all sorts of pockets, thermal control, and buoyancy bubbles. The planet had slightly stronger gravity than Earth normal, and the bubbles would make standing up a lot easier. It was an impulse buy that had cost her a small fraction of the bonus she'd get for going on this mission, but that was still more than most people made in a year. She put on the suit (not a trivial task, as she soon found out; it stuck to the ceiling as soon as she had removed the lead weights, and she had to turn off the room gravity to get into it) and put the weights back into her suitcase. It was time to go already, so she headed for the shuttle bay. The bay was huge, large enough for the ship's compliment of twenty-five big cargo shuttles. Its ceiling had a matrix of holes, each the same size as a shuttle landing platform. At the top of each hole was a foot-thick sliding airlock door, beyond which was the vacuum of space. Tricia was waiting outside one of the shuttles. ``Ready?'' she asked as Amanda approached. Amanda nodded, and they proceeded inside. The two of them sat in the cockpit, really a formality since the entire flight would be computer-controlled. As soon as the seals were airtight, the shuttle lurched upward, carried by its platform. The shuttle entered its ceiling hole, and continued a couple of yards. When the platform had completely sealed the hole, the air was removed and the airlock door opened to reveal the planet hanging above them in the sky. Amanda felt dizzy for a moment; seeing a planet thousands of kilometers above her head wasn't something she was used to. She closed her eyes briefly, then looked down into her lap.

Tricia laughed. ``I did same, first few times.'' The shuttle lifted itself gently out of the airlock and moved toward the planet, spinning slightly so it would be right-side-up by the time they entered the atmosphere. Tricia reached into her pocket and took out a flat metal box, from which she removed what looked like a small dirty cloth. Of course, Amanda recognized it as a dermal patch, or more informally, a deadhead spread. ``You mind?'' asked Tricia. ``No, not at all.'' Tricia put the cloth onto her head and pressed it down with her hand. It stuck there when she reached down to put the box back in her pocket. ``Do you mind me asking how you got started with that?'' Tricia looked wistful for a moment. ``Beta Cassoni three,'' she said. ``Aliens wrecked minds. Noticed deadhead wasn't crazy. Put on patch just in time. Still feels good.'' That was interesting. Apparently the patches dulled whatever part of the brain the aliens had been attacking. Amanda hadn't heard that before. Of course, the whole Beta Cassoni incident had been hushed up with fair success.

The shuttle started to vibrate as it entered the planet's atmosphere, and soon nothing was visible out the cockpit window. Amanda sat back and tried to enjoy the ride. Then, abruptly, the window cleared and Amanda could see a horizon, which was rising more and more quickly. The ground rushed up to meet the shuttle; the brakes kicked in just as Amanda thought that something had gone wrong and they were going to crash. The shuttle landed safely, if not very softly. Tricia took the patch, which had turned white, from her head, and climbed out of the cockpit. Amanda followed. The shuttle team was already climbing out of the crew compartment behind the cockpit, assembling on the ground outside. Amanda looked around. Aside from a purple tint in the sky, it looked like any ordinary grassy field on Earth. The higher gravity produced a very strange sensation. Amanda felt twenty pounds heavier, but the buoyancy of her clothes overcompensated slightly, so that she could move around more easily than usual. The end result was discomfort; Amanda hoped that this would be over quickly. ``Okay,'' Tricia said. ``Tribe five hundred meters there.'' She pointed. ``Bring idol first, natives follow.'' Amanda was impressed. If that worked, it would save the effort of rounding the natives up and forcing them into the shuttle. They might follow the idol right into the cargo space. One of the team opened the cargo doors and went inside, then drove a cargo hauler out onto the grass. It looked deceptively fragile, with an extensible crane sticking awkwardly out the back, but with gravity dampers could haul several tons of freight, if slowly. The driver's bubble was completely sealed, and there were small projectile and beam weapons mounted on all sides.

Another person climbed into the bubble, and the hauler headed toward the native camp. The rest of the team was mostly guards, who wouldn't be needed at all if the natives entered the cargo space of their own volition. There were a couple of specialists, one of whom was picking blades of grass and digging in the dirt, depositing samples into little cases.

There was little to do now but wait for the hauler to come back. ``Everyone inside,'' said Tricia. ``Natives won't see.'' The crew, with the exception of the grass-picker, climbed back into the crew compartment. Amanda joined them; Tricia went into the cockpit for a few minutes before doing the same. Eventually the specialist finished taking his samples and climbed in, just before the sound of the returning hauler could be heard. Someone closed the door, just as a precaution, and turned on a viewscreen. It showed the hauler making its way back, covered with natives who were trying to rip it apart and not succeeding. The idol was a four-meter-high blob that looked like it was made of intertwined twigs and branches. None of the natives were touching it.

Tricia's plan worked perfectly. The cargo camera showed the hauler entering, and more natives swarming on it from outside once it had stopped. There were a number of stragglers outside; the guards left the crew compartment and herded them in. The cargo doors closed. Of course, two of the crew were in the cargo hold, but they were quite safe inside the hauler's bubble. Tricia punched a few buttons on the wall, and the shuttle lifted off. The natives all collapsed on the floor as the apparent gravity increased. The lot of them only filled a quarter of the cargo space.

Soon the shuttle was out of the atmosphere, traveling toward the mother ship. The first order of business, of course, was to unload the cargo, so the shuttle docked at a cargo lock. The hauler backed out into the main cargo bay, quickly followed by a horde of confused natives. A green gas billowed forth from one of the walls. As it engulfed the natives, they started to fall to the floor asleep, one by one. The hauler carried the idol to double doors on the side of the cargo bay, which opened to reveal a laboratory. The hauler's mini-crane deposited the idol there, then rolled back into the shuttle. The airlock closed. Soon the shuttle was back in its bay. Amanda noticed that most of the other shuttles were gone now, off to pick up more loads.

She wanted to go on another shuttle run, not so much for the pleasure of it as to make her report more interesting. It wouldn't affect her bonus, but come promotion time, the board would probably read whatever report she brought back from this mission.

John was walking into the shuttle bay, clipboard in hand. Amanda headed toward him. With luck, there would be room on one of the next few runs.

Before Amanda could get a word in, John held up the clipboard. ``I've got you scheduled for a drop close to the alien wreck,'' he said. ``I figured you'd want to go on two drops to spice up your report.''

Amanda was caught off guard; she wasn't used to being second-guessed. ``Why would you think that?'' John sighed. ``I have been on one hundred and fifty three missions with Interstellar Acquisitions. Twelve of those missions have been with observers who were high in management. Each one of them wanted to go on the first drop, then one more immediately after that; no more, no less. With all due respect, you don't really strike me as particularly different from any of the others. So I'm just trying to save us both some trouble and shuffling of schedules.''

Amanda had no immediate response; she wasn't sure whether she should be impressed or offended. ``All right, one more drop now sounds fine. When is it?''

``In about five minutes. Go get something to drink.'' Amanda did exactly that; she treated herself to a grape nutriade. Five minutes later, she was in the shuttle bay. Tricia was commanding Amanda's shuttle again. Amanda wondered who would sit in the cockpit with Tricia if there weren't a corporate observer handy.

The launch was a perfect duplicate of the last one. This time, Amanda could bear to watch the planet hanging overhead. The atmosphere was bumpier than before, but didn't make for a terribly uncomfortable ride. As the shuttle descended, Amanda could see the crater containing the alien crash site to her left. This part of the planet was heavily forested, but there were no trees for miles around the crater.

The heavy foresting presented a problem for the shuttle; the only large clear area was right in the middle of the tribe's primitive village. Tricia worked the controls for a few seconds, and the shuttle slowed, then stopped in midair. There was a slight bump ten seconds later. ``Sleep gas,'' Tricia explained. ``Natives run if we land. Gas them first.'' The shuttle touched down several minutes later, probably crushing a couple of natives unlucky enough to be caught in the middle of the open area. This was a larger settlement than usual, though, so a couple of natives one way or the other wouldn't make much difference.

Amanda and Tricia got out of the cockpit. The sleep gas had turned inert now, so the shuttle team could go about the business of collecting unconscious natives and piling them in the shuttle's cargo hold. As before, a few specialists took samples of the local plant life and topsoil.

This settlement's idol was about twenty meters behind the shuttle; Amanda walked to it for a closer look. At first glance, it looked like a four-meter-high pile of twigs. But upon closer inspection, Amanda could see that the twigs were woven in intricate patterns, abstract shapes. One, a sort of figure eight, caught Amanda's eye. This would do very well in an alien art auction.

Someone drove the hauler out of the shuttle and drove toward the idol. Amanda moved out of the way, watching the flimsy-looking crane lift the idol onto the hauler's flat bed. The rest of the team was finishing with the native collection. Amanda climbed back into the cockpit, where Tricia was playing with the controls.

``Something wrong?'' Amanda hadn't seen Tricia touch the controls more than once on the last drop. ``Nav computer down,'' replied the deadhead. She pressed a button. ``Morris to mother. Come in.'' A voice replied from somewhere. ``Mothership, Robertson here. What's up?''

``Nav computer funny. Can't get prompt.'' ``Strange you should mention that. Our computer just started freaking out, too. A couple of techies are working on it.'' He paused. ``I guess you can't really take off without a computer. If you can't clear it up in five minutes, call again and we'll send down another shuttle to pick you up. Mother out.'' Tricia tried to get some response from the computer, but couldn't coax so much as a blinking light out of it. Finally she punched the window in frustration, and flipped the comm switch again.

``Morris to mother. Come in.''

Robertson replied again. ``Things are really screwed up here,'' he said. ``The computer just started firing maneuvering thrusters at random. The techies are trying to bypass the computer so they can fire the thrusters manually. Our orbit isn't looking too good right now. We're computing a comm path back to Earth, just in case.''

Amanda stared at the control panel. ``Great,'' she said. ``Just great. Why do I have to be on the mission with all the bad equipment?''

``Not bad,'' said Tricia. ``Computer should work. Someone tampered.''

``Oh, that's even better. We have a saboteur. And I suppose he's on this shuttle, too, waiting to slit all our throats?'' ``Doubt it.''

Amanda started to climb out of the cockpit. ``Let me know when if you get it working.'' Tricia shot her a malevolent look, then turned back to the computer.

Amanda went to the cargo hold. The natives were still fast asleep, and would be for several hours. Amanda scrutinized the idol again, trying to find the figure eight that she had seen earlier. It wasn't immediately apparent as it had been the first time. In fact, hadn't the left side been a little fatter than the right, instead of the other way around like it was now? One of the twigs moved.

Amanda gasped and stepped back. What was this thing? Something touched Amanda's shoulder. She spun around, ready to strike whatever it was. But it was only Tricia. ``Gately wants you,'' she said, pointing toward the front of the shuttle. The two women climbed into the cockpit again. ``Barris here,'' Amanda said. ``What do you need?'' John answered. ``I am ordering all crew to abandon the ship,'' he said. ``We are starting to enter the atmosphere, and we aren't going to be able to get control of the thrusters in time to correct it. I've sent a distress call to Central. We can expect to be rescued in a day or two, assuming the call made it through interspace. If not, you're standing on your new home.''

``What? I can't accept that. Use every last one of your technicians if you have to, but make sure your next call gets through. I will not be stranded on this... this rock for the rest of my life.''

``There isn't going to be a next call. It takes ten minutes to compute a communications path through interspace, and in ten minutes this ship is going to be a blob of molten metal the size of corporate headquarters.''

Amanda bit back a reply; there was obviously nothing to be accomplished by continuing this conversation. ``Wonderful. All right. Keep me posted if anything else happens.'' ``There was one other thing. Ashton managed to translate a few documents that the science team found in the alien wreck.'' ``What do they say?''

``Your friends the natives, aren't native. They're some form of exploration team, or their grandparents were.'' He paused. ``Look, I have to go. Just be nice to these primitives. We may end up living with them for a while.''

In the cargo hold, the Benefactor rustled in satisfaction, and felt its brothers do the same. The first aliens had seemed so helpless, so stranded. The brotherhood had helped them, asking nothing in return; how could an intelligent being act otherwise? But these newcomers' minds were filled with so many new ideas! The brotherhood was the most powerful force in the world; now it seemed so obvious that everyone else should serve it, not the other way around.

Now that the newcomers' ship was destroyed, they would provide centuries of service to their new masters. Progress, thought the brothers. A sweet taste indeed.

Steven Grimm is a student at the University of California, Santa Cruz, from which he is taking a forced leave of absence for computer no-nos. He's at Sun Microsystems in the meantime, working hard to show them the true meanings of sloth and languor. His evil twin Spud is masquerading as moderator of comp.sources.atari.st and comp.binaries.atari.st, and is probably

He can be reached at the address koreth@panarthea.EBay.Sun.COM

Quanta is Copyright(c)1994 Daniel K. Appelquist.
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