The Paradise Mission

by Phillip Mann

Genres: Science Fiction; Alien Contact; Dystopian; Genetic Engineering

Synopsis

Long before Paradise was properly colonised and investigated, one young woman was sent to explore the strange new world. Her mission - to find and rescue the discoverer of the planet, a young man obsessed with finding alien species and protecting them from rapacious humanity. Crispin's initial reports were positive, but became increasingly infrequent and jumbled. And then they stopped altogether. But his life support systems show green, and his hard-earned knowledge is needed. Hetty must explore this new idyllic land, learn what she can about its tricks and dangers, and track down someone who may not want to be found, almost certainly doesn't want help, and might even be dead. But something is alive on Paradise...

Release date: May 29, 2014

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 240

Sample

It is above us, the big green planet called Paradise. We are now deep within its gravitational pull and are falling up into it. Falling steadily. Falling with controlled deceleration. I have been on many worlds and have made many landings, but I have never seen a world of such startling brilliance. Paradise glows, green as an apple. It is as if there were a light burning inside it

When I say ‘we’ I mean my Ship-that-Never-Sleeps and myself. We are a team, though I am the only one you would recognize as human.

The green light of Paradise fills my cabin. I am bathing in it.

Somewhere down there among that greenness is Crispin and I have come to look for him. For some time now, he has not replied to messages from our control centre on Proxima-over-Neptune, and the Space Council is worried. If something has happened to him… Well, I want to know. In one of his last messages, he said he’d found gold and needed more time before submitting a final response. Gold? Ha! Well I do not believe that. None of the other Explorers do, either. It does not sound like Crispin. He is up to something that he does not want to reveal. He’s buying time, is my guess. But for two months now, we have had no news. And believe me, that is bad news.

Crispin! How easily I can pull his face into my mind… with his untidy, tousled blond hair and quick blue eyes. Crispin… my friend… so often with a funny, puzzled expression on his face as though everything is a mystery to him. Crispin, my fellow Explorer, the one who is always asking me questions - usually ones I can’t answer – and who often seems so worried that I want to punch him. Sometimes, it is as if he can see things that the rest of us can’t and that makes him sad. I want to lift the sadness from him and occasionally I do… punch him I mean. And then, when he does laugh, I see the boy in him again. He knows I mean no harm.

He is actually only a year or so older than me, though age – as you will come to understand - does not mean much to us. Crispin just seems older and he is quite tall, too. We graduated from the Space Academy together and we completed our first three missions as a two person team, before going solo. That is why I know him so well. Oh, and I should mention that he likes dancing. True, but in an uncivilized way – leaping about, and sometimes he dances alone, which is a bit strange. It is as though there is something inside him that needs to be released. Are you getting the picture?

What else…? Let me just say that Crispin is always first to throw the dice, if you know what I mean. He takes risks too. Our work can be dangerous, and if I were ever in trouble, it is Crispin I would call on first because I trust him… and I think he trusts me too. In fact I know he does. In some ways we are closer than brother and sister. We are… I don’t think there is a word yet for what we are. If there is, then I don’t know it. Anyway… I don’t want to say any more about Crispin, for the moment.

Ten days have passed since I woke from my deep sleep. Yes, we still measure out time in days of 24 hours. Each day I have watched Paradise grow larger. I have watched impatiently as the details of its surface become clearer. Magnifying the image, I can see two large continents and myriads of islands, all separated by a green ocean. In the shallows close to the shore where the waved break, the sea becomes a pale lemon yellow. The two continents are patterned with lakes which reflect the sky, and rivers which tumble like threads of lace. I see mountains too, white with snow. But nowhere can I see the bright glow of cities at night or the straight lines which tell of fields and roads and plantations. If they were there we would see them. So far as I can tell, Paradise is a world without what we think of as civilization… though that does not mean that it is not inhabited. Far from it. That there is life down there is obvious. It is an active world, a dynamic world, an evolving world. And if Crispin is still alive, we – my ship and I – we will find him. That is certain. But you know, when you land on a new planet, you never know quite what to expect. Training can only prepare you for so much. Beyond training there is always the unknown, waiting. Am I afraid sometimes? Of course I am, and that has saved me on more than one occasion. The day one is not afraid is the day one retires, or worse.

My name is Hetty, and I am an Explorer.

Like Crispin and all the other Explorers, I was born deep in space, on an artificial moon above the planet Saturn. I have lived all my life in space. If you ask me how old I am I have no idea – and that doesn’t bother me. I am not old in earth years, but I am old in other ways, I think. When I travel between worlds, I hibernate. I don’t really age, and I travel a lot. But don’t let age worry you, or my strangeness. For I am human… in all the ways that count, and if you met me in the street you would not find me remarkable, except perhaps for my eyes which are green and my hair which is very black, and I wear it loose when I can. People do not like it when I look at them. They say my eyes are like those of a cat, and so I look down or away or up into the sky for I do not seek confrontation, and people are easily scared. But when we are alone, with only fellow Explorers for company, then we stare into one another’s eyes until we are almost hypnotized. The truths they communicate are clearer than words.

And you, you who are reading these words, who are you?

Do you find that question strange?

Let me tell you who you are. You are young, but not too young. And you enjoy adventures and finding things out for yourself. You have strong feelings and a desire to do something good with your life – though what that is you may not yet know. And you are clever too, and you want to ask questions, and you want the truth, that above all.

And how do I know all this? I know this because you exist in my imagination and I write to you as someone I would know as a friend, someone I could talk to, someone I could trust with my life.

You see, that is how we prepare these Responses - for that is what you are reading now. These are the first few paragraphs of what will become my official Response to Paradise. And I am sorry if they seem a bit dreamy and disorganized at present, but that is me and I am still not fully awake. In the pages to come I will detail everything of importance as I seek for Crispin. I will write to you as though writing to a loving friend who cares for me. And you will be at my elbow; a constant friend whether I am laughing or crying, joyful or sad. Of course, I shall edit it before I send it to the Aunties and Uncles of the Space Council. But for the moment it helps for me to be… well, just me.

If you ask me what we do, we Explorers, well I can tell you exactly. We visit worlds that have never been visited by humans. There are so many. Most are arid, but life is the most tenacious force in the universe, and it appears in the strangest of places and in the strangest of forms. Life exists in abundance, and we seek it out, and we respond to it. If that sounds complex, believe me it isn’t, but you have to trust yourself and you must be patient.

When we make land-fall, we begin to explore, and as we explore, we compose a record of what we find and we call it a "Response”. There are many types of response. There is a Harmonic Response and an Aural Response and a Chemical Response and a Visual Response… well, the list goes on and most of them do not really concern you or I. They are undertaken by the Ship-that-Never-Sleeps and she has all the equipment she needs, and jabbers to herself and sometimes to me when she warns me of danger. But I can over-ride her. I am responsible for myself. I am the one in charge.

My Response is the key to all responses for it comes from the Intelligence of the Heart. That is a phrase I love. It captures everything and was taught to me by my first teacher, the late Dame Hilda, of Anchor Hold-over-Europa, may she rest in peace.

Usually I make recordings when I am "out there", standing on a new world, and this response that I am preparing now will be no different, except that I shall be looking for Crispin. But sometimes, as at present, I like to lie back and just let the light from the planet pour over me and through me. My mind wanders as I join with the world, and I can tell you this already – Paradise is very powerful. I can feel it reaching and touching something deep in me.

There is one rule in our work which we never break. We never take samples of the life we discover. We come quietly. We explore gently. We depart leaving little more than our footprints and a single radio beacon which orbits above the planet and broadcasts our name, the galactic standard date of our visit and the name we have given the Planet.

That is our special honour. To name the worlds we visit. It. was Crispin who named this world Paradise. And now he has vanished.

Sometimes I am asked why it is ‘young’ people, like me and Crispin and the others, who are sent out to explore new worlds. The answer is again simple. It is because we are tough in ways which those who are older – many of them, anyway - are weak. We are not afraid of mystery and strangeness: we understand them. Mystery and strangeness are what we find whenever we make planet-fall on a new world. Ha! Many would go crazy, if they encountered the strange creatures and situations we find. But we don’t. We adapt. We watch. We m. . .