The survey was soon finished. I flew back to the location of the biggest deposits and began to set up. I unshipped the manufacturing equipment, sent mining roamers to work on the most promising asteroids, and deployed transport drones.
I decided that defense was going to be a priority, starting with an early-warning system. Accordingly, I manufactured twelve observation drones and sent them to form an icosahedron around the system. With small, shielded reactors, they would spot any incoming craft long before it could possibly detect one of them.
Next came the communications station. That routine task could be left to the AMIs. I gave them instructions for construction of the station, and further instructions to get started on building Bobs. At some point, I would need to get involved again, but for now I could leave my devices to their own devices. Snickering at my own wordplay, I headed back to DE-4.
I dreaded building more Bobs, just a bit. The first cohort had been a surprise, and not a pleasant one. Milo’s self-centeredness had surprised all of us. And although I hadn’t said anything to anyone about it, Riker’s lack of a sense of humor had bothered me.
When I made more Bobs, would I end up with a psychopath? Okay, that was a little over the top. The differences between the Bobs weren’t that dramatic. My parents would probably have recognized me in any of them. Mario, for instance—when I was in a situation that I was impatient with, I clammed up just like that. Just maybe not to that extent.
All beside the point, though. Bill was right. I would, sooner or later, want company.
***
On the trip out from Epsilon Eridani, I had worked on designs for exploration drones. Bill said he would work on the concept, but I wanted something usable when I got here. If Bill sent along some plans at some point, I’d merge the best of both. Meanwhile, I was at least able to operate.
The observation drones were about the size of footballs. They came with remote cameras and microphones, as well as extendable limbs for gripping and perching. More than anything, they reminded me of very large pill bugs.
I started on the biological analysis drones as well. They were larger, about a meter in length. They had visual and auditory input optimized for more close-up work, and they had a far larger number of extendible appendages for varied tasks. I suppose I could have waited to deploy everything at once, but I simply didn’t have that level of patience.
The drones could change color to match the background, even to the extent of some limited pattern mimicry. When in the air, they would adjust their bottom half to match the sky, and their upper half to match the general terrain. This wasn’t out of any fear of getting shot down—more of a concern about some local wildlife attempting to make a meal out of one. The drones were pretty tough, but why borrow trouble?
I sent several observation drones to the general area of the fires.
As a city boy, I didn’t have a true appreciation of how big thousands of square miles of wilderness actually was. This area of the planet was temperate to sub-tropical forest. Well, I assumed it was forest. Whatever it was, it stretched from horizon to horizon, with occasional breaks for meadows and rocky bluffs. Truthfully, someone flying a small airplane over this wouldn’t have been able to tell they weren’t on Earth. I felt a momentary pang of homesickness.
I realized there was no way I could find anything with a random search. It was late afternoon in this area, so I sent one drone up a kilometer and instructed it to wait for nightfall and look for fires.
I sent the other drone down to examine the forest ecosystem close up.
The planet was slightly larger than Earth, but had a lower surface gravity, probably due to a smaller core. The gravity, combined with a somewhat denser atmosphere, made for an environment ideal for soaring flyers and tall tree-analogues. And the trees had taken advantage of this.
The drone landed in a tree, extended its legs, and began to slowly creep along the trunk. And, I realized with a start, it was really a tree. It was brown—well, brownish— tall, hard, and had branches and leafy things. It looked like a pretty clear case of convergent evolution. It was, in fact, the kind of tree that I loved to climb when I was young. Wide, horizontal branchings produced many convenient places to sit. Thick leaf canopies kept the sun off. And the sheer size of the trees was awe-inspiring. I wanted to hug one.
The canopy was awash with life. The drone, camouflaged to resemble the tree bark, could snoop on the local wildlife with impunity. I had done an intensive study of taxonomy and cladistics analysis during the voyage, and now found myself evaluating the images with a semi-professional eye.
Although the body plans varied wildly in their details, the creatures I was seeing did tend to fall into familiar patterns. Insect analogues were, so far, six-legged and exoskeletal, and seemed to hit a maximum size of slightly larger than a mouse. I found a small, furry mammal analogue that had six legs as well, except for one variant that had four legs and wings. I decided to name this particular animal a hippogriff, harkening back to my D&D days. This particular little beastie seemed to have limited ability to change color, to match its background. I watched with amazement as it blended into the tree branch and waited for prey to pass by.
I also catalogued many larger mammal analogues that had four limbs. They might be an evolutionary branch that had lost the third pair. And there were birds. Or, again, bird-analogues. The bird analogues had what looked very much like feathers. I found it fascinating that the bird things flew like birds, and the small furry things flew like bats. It seemed that aerodynamics had a lot to say about animal flight here just as on Earth.
There was even a snake equivalent, which interestingly seemed to be mammalian on this planet. It looked like the three-segment body plan had been multiplied to considerable length.
I found everything fascinating, and was paradoxically irritated when Guppy interrupted.
[Heat and light sources detected]
A schematic popped up in the holotank. “All right! Multiples. Have the drones set up as close as they can while remaining hidden. Let’s see what we’ve got.”
Deployment took about half an hour. The drones needed to be careful not to attract attention by rattling the vegetation or banging into things. They needed to find a good place of concealment using night vision, which was notoriously sub-par for detail work.
Eventually, though, the units were in position. Surveillance from several different vantage points showed groups of animals gathered around fires. No, not animals. Beings. Some of the beings were tending the fires, while others seemed to be handling small objects in purposeful ways. While it was far too soon to form any detailed conclusions, I was pretty certain that these were at minimum fire-users.