Nimisha's Ship

She gave him an ironic laugh. "Except for a wormhole, Doc."

"Well, yes, but you had cleared your course with the Fleet, and they had no records of a phenomenon in that sector, had they?"

"No, they didn't. It's mostly used for their navy manoeuvres and testing since it's rather barren of stars and planets."

"Is that so?"

"It is!"

She was certain that there had been intensive searches for her while she had slept. Caleb Rustin, not to mention her mother and Cuiva, would never give up until they either heard the ship's death knell or found her. That was comforting, but she did want to make it back before Cuiva was Necklaced. She looked forward to that day: She'd be able to take her daughter more fully into her confidence and to examine Cuiva's natural aptitudes. No reason for the girl to be one of those gilded-or misshapen for fashion-dilettantes. Useless creatures. Her mother might have been traditional in every aspect of social behaviour and a devil for propriety, but she had never been vapid, stupid, or shallow. Boynton women had always been achievers.

The system, which Nimisha whimsically named Primero, adding its coordinates within the present sphere of the galaxy, was so close to "normal" that it was exactly what any exploration team would give all left arms to encounter. There were ten planets, the coldest, outermost few were frozen; then there was another giant, and while there was no asteroid belt between the gas planet and the fourth, the third was in the proper astrophysical position for being close enough to its primary to be habitable. It had three moons, the largest farther out, with two inner ones seeming to chase each other. Must wreak havoc with the tidal system. She decided to call the third planet Erehwon, partly after an old dystopic novel she'd once read and partly because it was "nowhere" backward and that certainly was her present situation. She hovered by the large moon to do the usual basic investigative tests, sending down an exploratory probe and waiting for its reports.

No holes in the ozone layer, the usual mix of atmospheric gases, sufficient seas, and nine continents, three with archipelagoes reaching out like broken fingers to the larger landmasses. Helm, in the AI's science officer capacity, agreed that the planet looked to be eminently habitable.

"Let's orbit and see what else we can discover," Nimisha said, toggling the log to include that order. She'd had the usual space traveller's briefing from FSP about not infecting indigenous sapients with too abrupt a contact with a space-faring race and what to do if-by any remote chance-she met other space-farers. So far the universe seemed very full of sentient species incapable of ever attaining that freedom.

"Shorter day, I see," Nimisha mentioned as they completed one orbit. "And no sign of what we tend to term 'civilisation' either."

"No, ma'am," Helm replied. "No artificial satellites. No pulses, no sonar or radar transmissions. Not even radio."

"Let's go in," she said.

The ship continued its inward spiral, quartering the planet's surface as it went. Daylight shone on a land teeming with small and large life-forms, jungles, forests, plains, and mountain ranges of considerable height and depth running like twisted spines suggesting their savage upthrust from basement rock materials. The nightside did not show any fires or the use of fossil fuels. The planet did have ore deposits that would certainly interest developers back in her native portion of the galaxy. That is, if they could establish that there were no sapient inhabitants. Further circling brought her over portions of the continents. Helm assiduously mapping, though Nimisha had turned off that screen. She tried viewing the surface at high magnification to be able to make out details, but it gave her a headache to see surface features speeding by that quickly. So she reduced the magnification and trusted Helm to call her attention to any anomalies. On the fourth lap, Helm spoke.

"Sensors read an unusual metallic mass on the plateau directly ahead."

Nimisha turned up the magnification, but they were too far out to determine what the anomaly was, other than something that perhaps ought not to be there.

"Mark it, Helm. Definitely needs to be seen."

On the seventh lap, another anomaly was discovered.

"Now that's ridiculous. We haven't seen so much as a band of humanoid nomads, but those two metallic blips are not indigenous to this planet. I'll bet my Necklace on it."

"Rash of you, dear Nimi," Doc said with an audible ripple in his voice.

"You know me, Doc," she agreed.

"Let's home in on the first anomaly, Helm. I think we've ascertained that this indigenous population is mainly composed of beasts. unlikely to be evolutionarily compromised by our presence."

"There is a third metallic anomaly, ma'am, and I am now reading a fourth."

"We'll have a dekko at those, too."

It was out of the bounds of possibility that all eighteen missing ships had landed on Erehwon, though that would have been a logical course of action, given its suitability for humans. This could be rather a fun adventure. Of course, the downside was that if they all had been stuck here-since they were still listed as missing-then she might be, too. Well, maybe some marooned male would be passable. Lady Rezalla would be furious when she learned of her daughter making any sort of an improper alliance. But celibate life was not a prospect Nimisha could contemplate with any joy!