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Max shows us the central meeting area, which is exactly what it sounds like – a huge dome that’s apparently for meeting up and conducting business. A town hall, I suppose. Some benches are lined up along one edge with plastic crates piled on them; a middle-aged person with no feet perches on the edge of a table and consults a computer screen over one eye while a few other Hylarans talk to them. As I watch, they direct a toddler to go and grab a small wrapped package from a crate, which is handed to one of the consulting people. Some kind of resource distribution centre, then; makes sense. A ration system? Or are goods paid for with money? A mix of both, perhaps?
Along the opposite edge of the dome, plastic tables are scattered, where Hylarans eat and talk. They look like the one in our living dome, so it probably was brought in for us specifically, although it’s possible that they just have one kind of table in storage and everyone has a table in their home also. Here and there about the dome, people play games with each other, children skipping and darting about. I suppose it’s not really practical for them to chase each other outside.
The oxygen pumps run constantly, with people moving in and out of the dome through multiple doors. A wasteful setup. I suppose that they have a system somewhere that pulls oxygen from the air, so it’s not like they’ll run out of air, but it’s surely a waste of power. Not to mention wear and tear on the pumps. Even if the canvas integrity can’t be trusted, surely some airlocks would be more practical than this?
Of course, as soon as we enter, everyone stops what they’re doing to stare at us. We wave awkwardly.
“How long will this go on, do you think?” Tinera asks on our private channel.
“Probably at least until they can see our faces,” Captain Klees says.
“Our faces? Have you seen their faces? I bet we look like freaks to them.”
I shake my head, although nobody can see it through my helmet. “The colonists who landed here would’ve looked like us. We don’t know yet exactly when they died off, but the older Hylarans at least would’ve been raised by them. We’ll look like their parents and grandparents to them.” I can’t wait to be able to take the helmet off in public. Conversations are happening around us, and I want to hear them!
It’s not eavesdropping. It’s sociological research.
Before I can get a good look around the dome, a door opens, and a tall Hylaran wearing a multicoloured woven belt walks in. Max’s eyes widen.
“Well, we should move on!” Max chirps over the radio. “Captain Klees, I believe you wanted to make a report?”
“But I wanted to see – ” Tal protests, but stops when the Friend and I grab kes elbows and steer kem after Max.
“Well, that was transparent,” Tinera grumbles over our private channel. “I wonder what they were so worried we’d see?”
“Or what they didn’t want that person to see about us,” I say.
“Patience,” Captain Klees cautions. “We’re making friends, remember? We can’t make headway if we’re difficult, and if we charge off on our own without knowing what’s going on we’ll delay everything with a diplomatic nightmare. Let the liaison liaise until we have good reason not to.”
I analyse the belts of the people we pass, looking for patterns. Maybe different colours or designs denote rank or job or family? But no obvious pattern stands out. I file that away as a future cultural question to ask.
On our private channel, Tinera asks, “Are you guys as curious about the underground areas as I am?”
“I’d love to see their farms,” I say. “They’re not up here, so they’re probably underground, which would be easier to keep airtight. A famine that killed off so many suggests some kind of crash that they’ve recovered from; I want to know what happened. If it’s some kind of pathogen then we’ll need to account for it in what plants and algae we send down first.”
“Yeah, that’s what interests me,” Tinera says. “‘Easier to keep airtight’. If they have farms and power generation down there, if they’ve been here for decades, they have space down there for beds. So why are they up there trusting their lives to old canvas and oxygen pumps?”
Hmm. Good question.
“There may be something toxic underground that doesn’t come to the surface,” the Friend suggests. “We don’t know what the ground is made of down there. Perhaps it oxidises into a toxic gas that is more of a risk than the too-thin oxygen up here.”
Hmm. Maybe. There are a lot of gases that can kill through inhaling too much but are perfectly safe to grow crops in. You’d want an airtight place to grow crops, too, because the easiest way to keep nitrogen in the soil for them is to have nitrogen in the air that can be fixed down there. Earth’s air is mostly nitrogen; Hylara’s is mostly neon. Their food situation is precarious enough for there to be no aboveground plants in sight, not even decorative ones in the common area, and they suffered a famine, so food growing might be a delicate operation.
We pass our living dome and keep moving uphill, towards the radio tower. It stands proud against the reddish sky. Its enormous dish, pointing up at the sky and probably at the Courageous, looks recently cleaned. As we move uphill through the sand in our stupid clunky space suits, I realise the tower is taller than I expected, taller than it needs to be (at least I assume so; I don’t know anything about radio towers). There are a fair number of smaller devices attached to it that I don’t recognise or understand.
At the base of the tower sits a little metal building. It looks about the size of a single large room, and probably is. Hive comes out of the door and waves at us. I wave back, but I’m not really paying attention to them. None of us are. We’re looking at something on the far side of the hill.
A long set of rails climb up the neighbouring slope in what looks to be a perfectly straight line. The bottom disappears into a small metal building at the base that might be partially buried, it’s hard to be sure. Along their length, they travel through several metal hoops on their way to the top of the slope and then just… stop.
“Is that a fucking rail gun?!” Tal asks, awed.
Max laughs. “What is this, the pre-Neocambrian age? No, that’s a Hypati launcher. A rail gun that short wouldn’t send anything very far.”
“What’s it for?” Captain Klees asks.
“Climate control, mostly. It’s complicated. Should we contact the ship?”
We head inside the room under the tower. It is, of course, the control station for the equipment, and various controls and displays are arrayed along one wall. Along the opposite wall sits two beds and a little walled-off area, probably a bathroom. In the middle of the floor there’s a large metal trapdoor. It’s very clearly locked; the locking bolts are on the top, and visible. It looks like it might be airtight, although it’s hard to be sure.
“Welcome to the command centre!” Hive says dramatically. “Well, The monitoring station. Mostly we monitor weather and the mat – well, weather, from here. There’s always the risk of flooding.”
“I imagine there would be,” Captain Klees says in a very neutral tone.
“The higher-ups insist that the settlement is positioned properly so we won’t be in danger of any floodwaters, but that’s always a matter of rainfall not overwhelming the water channels. So we try to keep an eye on the cloud movements and the rain which, of course, we get a lot of.”
“Of course,” Captain Klees agrees. “When can we meet these ‘higher-ups’?”
Hive and Max exchange a brief glance, brief enough that I wouldn’t have noticed if I wasn’t watching specifically for it.
“Soon,” Max assures us. “But we need to be sure that everyone’s completed the viral treatments first, and that they work.”
“Yes, of course.”
Hive fiddles with some dials. “There you go! If you call through your radios on the ship’s frequency, we can send the message up.”
“Thank you. You wanted to know about bees, right?”
“No! No, there’s no need to bother them with that; it was just idle curiosity. I’ll ask when it becomes relevant.”
On our private channel, Tinera says, “Something really weird is happening, but I have no idea what it is. This feels like some kind of con. Are we being conned?”
“How?” I ask. “We don’t have anything. We know we have partial information, but they haven’t given us anything specific enough to be a useful lie, if they’re trying to deceive the ship.”
“Well, something’s not right here.”
“Plenty of time to figure it out later,” Captain Klees says. “For now, let’s let the ship know we’re not dead.” He switches channels. “Klees to Courageous.”
The ship must’ve been alerted to our call in advance, because the response is immediate.
“Receiving. Status?”
“Ground team are all alive and well, as I’m sure you’ve already heard. Is that Xanthe?”
“Yes. I’ll be your primary contact up here. Asteria will take over if I’m asleep. The cap – Captain Kae Jin wanted to do it, but her lungs might not be up to it.”
“And how is the captain?”
“No worse than she was this morning. The doctors are hopeful that there might be no more organ failures, but it’s too early to be sure. How are things down there?”
“Markedly different than what we expected. Two major points. First: the need for life support and pressure vessel materials aren’t nearly as critical as we’d assumed. The colony aren’t isolated from the Hylaran atmosphere. They drink the planet’s native water and breathe the planet’s air with supplemented oxygen and carbon dioxide.”
“What?! Why?”
“We have few details at this time. But they’re not all going to die immediately because we didn’t drop enough dome canvas fast enough. They seem relatively stable for now, although we haven’t examined food and power production yet. Which brings me to the second point; it might be a week or so before we can make much headway. It turns out that we might propose an immune problem to the residents. They have a treatment that should deal with it.”
There’s a bit of a pause before Xanthe asks, “An immune problem?”
“It seems that most of them have never been exposed to a virus before in their lives. There’s some concern over whether we might carry normally benign viruses that pose a threat to them. They have a treatment for this, apparently; it was an anticipated danger and prepared for when their ship initially launched.”
“And that’ll work?”
The Friend cuts in. “We can only trust their science on this. To this friend’s knowledge, the research into the effects of reaching adulthood with an immune system completely unpracticed against viruses is relatively unknown. Usually, test subjects raised in sterile environments have been killed by microbial infections before viruses can be an issue as they lack a microbiome to outcompete any pathogens they might encounter. Viruses shouldn’t have that particular problem, but this Friend is inclined to trust the Hylarans that any virus could pose a threat to them, and that their treatment will sufficiently train their immune systems to prevent this. One assumes that Antarctica did the research on this.”
“Do you need us to send anything down? Any vaccines and stuff?”
“Not currently. We already know that we aren’t carrying anything we have vaccines for.”
I ask on the private channel, “Half of our crew were genetically engineered in chronostasis and their blood presumably still carries the ability to engineer body cells. Is blood contamination from them a risk to the Hylarans?”
“Not any more than any blood contamination is,” the Friend answers. “That’s not a viral thing. But we should be careful with blood and avoid accidentally genetically engineering any Hylarans nonetheless.”
“Okay,” Xanthe says, “so canvas isn’t critical, and neither are food or medical supplies?”
“Our doctors are requesting cell substrate,” Hive says, “if you have that.”
“Anything specialised?”
“No, whatever we can grow human muscle on.”
“Right, that shouldn’t be a problem. Basic grower substrate can do that, we have that already for our own moss biotanks to make oil so we won’t even need to go digging around for it. Anything else?”
“No.”
“Okay. Ground team, what’s the nonhuman growing situation down there? Plants, animals?”
‘Alien life?’ is the real question there, I’m sure of it, but I answer the question asked thoroughly anyway. “We haven’s seen anything nonhuman. We haven’t toured the underground facilities yet, but there’s nothing up here. Zero nonhuman animals, no plants of any kind on the surface, not even decorative ones in the living domes. I can get you a more thorough picture after we’ve seen everything.”
“Nothing else?”
“No life in sight, known or unknown. Of course, I haven’t been sampling for microbes. I assume there’s bacteria everywhere.” I make a mental note to check that as soon as I get access to a microscope. I’m sick of being blindsided by assuming things that should definitely be true and somehow aren’t.”
“Huh. Hive, any particular reason for the lack of vegetation? Do you need plants?”
Hive and Max exchange a strange, tense glance before Hive answers, “the atmosphere is low pressure and very low in nitrogen. It wouldn’t support plant life very well.”
“We have engineered strains for that. We’ll send you down some basic pioneers that can survive your conditions. They won’t be particularly verdant with that level of nitrogen but they’ll survive. Once we get some proper terraforming experts awake, they might have a strategy for keeping nitrogen in that soil.”
“Our committee would need to talk about that,” Hive says. “We can’t just go randomly planting things.”
“Of course! We’ll send them down and you guys can figure out what you want to use and how. We’re not ready to wake terraformers yet anyway.”
“Are you waking people yet?” Captain Klees asks.
“We’re planning to wake our first round of colonists once we’ve started properly pipelining these resource drops, so probably in a week or so. Oh, Tal, you might be interested to hear that Teri’s been looking into the cerebral program for the colonists.”
“It’s working alright, isn’t it?” Tal asks, a hint of panic in kes voice. “They’re dreaming properly?”
“It’s working fine, so far as us non-experts can tell. But she found an altered version that we think might be Cory’s program for sending and receiving to the brains ke stole. None of us can make much sense of it, I suspect a lot of it is machine-developed and incomprehensible to human minds anyway, but – do you guys have reliable computer access down there?”
“We’ve seen a couple of computers down here,” Captain Klees says, “but not reliable access currently, no.”
“Okay well, if you get it, let us know. Teri wants to see if Tal can make sense of any of this.”
“Will do. Any problems up there?”
“No, everything’s going smoothly. Any problems down there?”
“Not as yet.”
“Great! We’ll arrange the next drop as soon as possible.”
“Good luck. Klees out.”
Max flashes us a bright grin. “Everything’s going great for everyone, then!” They don’t seem to notice Hive’s tense look. “Our haulers have finished retrieving and sterilising the contents of your drop pod. I imagine you’ll all want to rest for a bit.” They lead the way outside.
They’re not wrong. I certainly want a bit of time to go over everything. There are too many little things that mostly but don’t quite add up. There’s something here that the colony isn’t telling us.
What the fuck is going on?
Derin Edala 
I am greatly echoing Aspens sentiments. Hey! What the fuck!
I ain’t even gonna speculate anymore, just going to stare
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what the fuck!!! is going on!!!!!
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Hmm. “Mat” something …
Materials? Can’t imagine why you’d be monitoring the skies for those. Maybe there is some sort of alien life form after all?
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Two out-there theories:
1. Aliens, and the Hylara colonists are hiding the fact they’re trading with aliens.
2. The original colonists and their descendants are alive and not technically these people. This colony is the equivalent of the Lunari suicidal convict mining operations. Cattail, Max, and their people were genetically engineered to do the mining gruntwork since the Courageous and its convicts didn’t show up. That’s why they don’t have any old people. The “real” colony full of asshats who want to be space kings and their children trade rations for raw materials from the mining operations, and they communicate with the outpost via the radio tower. This rich people colony is either on planet or still in orbit. Cattail and Max and everyone else don’t want the Courageous crew finding out about their masters and joining them.
If the second option is true, sending the rich people colony raw materials is probably the point of the rail gun.
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I don’t know about the details but I largely agree with the second theory! These guys are not the only people on this planet, this is just one settlement of many. The “higher ups” that insist the settlement is safe from flooding are not in this village they’re somewhere else (safer) and other settlements have flooded before.
If their big rail-gun thing is for terraforming and materials, then that is port and explains why they have a port supervisor.
It also explains the co-existence of the autoclave and the hand patched old canvas material – as well as the highly processed food. And why they had a famine but don’t act like they’re desperate for resources: if the famine was man-made (Irish potato famine style) then they had the calories they just weren’t allowed to eat them.
Additionally(if this theory is true) then I don’t think our local settlement told these higher-ups about the courageous: that’s why they’re all so nervous and reluctant to accept materials and start planting thing – and also why they’re so reticent with information.
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oh i think you’re right on that second theory! these hylarans being the underclass does make sense with all their exposure to the environment.. i was thinking maybe the upperclass lives in the basement after all, but your idea makes more sense given the other hints we’ve seen.
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Ooh I’m definitely intrigued by that second theory!
Maybe the original colonists/higher class people are not even just in a different settlement, they are in those underground facilities because breathing the local air and drinking the local water actually is a health hazard. Either the upside people were engineered to be able to breath that air or it’s not immediately deadly, just unhealthy, and the downside peoe just don’t give a fuck.
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Second one is kinda my current theory too. I’m thinking it feels more like an early version of the eloi and morlocks in H.G.Wells Time Machine though. But with a few of the OG settlers (who engineered the populations above and below ground) now controlling and profiting off their ‘creations’.
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It could be that the heavily modified people *were* a surface-dwelling slave underclass, but there was some kind of uprising twenty-some years back that destroyed the vault-dwelling standard-human upper-class, potentially by poisoning the air underground. That might explain a lot. There are weird gaps in their knowledge and tech because there are some jobs slaves weren’t allowed to learn, and they only have what they’ve been slowly piecing together. They had started with the terraforming project but didn’t get very far before murdering everyone who knew what to do next. And they’re freaked out by the arrival of Courageous because they’re worried this is more Overseers arriving to reinstate the terrible system they just recently got out of.
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I love the second theory! It also explains Rainbow Belt Guy! Either the upperclass is dead, and the rest have to fill the holes in their knowledge, or they’ve settled somewhere else. I dond’t thinj the underground theories make sense, because then the Hypati launcher’s purpose is still a mystery.
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I’m thinking the “stones” falling from the sky due to the lack of moon(s) could be a thing here? It can have some tales inside (materials) and is also dangerous so the gun may be shooting at it or somehow redirecting it to protect the colony from impact?
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The thing about the bees rings odd. It’s like Hylara has a culture where the concept of asking for any help whatsoever, even if it’s just to inquire about what bee species they have, is treated as a huge horrible ordeal and super taboo or something.
They could’ve said “hey, can you wait a week before dropping people down? Not everyone is vaccinated against viruses you might be carrying.” And the crew on the Courageous would’ve said “Sure! Of course! We’ll wait a week because we’re reasonable people.” Cattail seems tense because the Courageous is taking charge over what supplies are dropped first and who’s revived first because the colony isn’t being communicative about what they want and need! Buddy if you want to have any say you need to say something!
I’d like to meet with this committee Cattail mentioned. They probably know what the colony needs and wants.
As I side note, I hope they wake up doctors (and convicts) first because there are going to be a lot more people with organ failure than just Captain Kae Jin. Also, that electrostatic field is going to get some regular use.
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I don’t know that it’s about asking for help in general, so much as asking for help from a group of total strangers who, technically, have the ability to obliterate your entire society from orbit. That would make me nervous too.
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…are they growing and eating human meat for some reason? I don’t think they’re eating actual people at least.
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If they had the ability to do that, chickens are probably less fuss.
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Yeah, by all means it would not make sense, but still it gives me bad vibes. only reason I could think for doing that is if they are left with literally only human genetic data.
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… Well, “substrate to grow human muscle tissue” is certainly a +1 for cannibalism of the vat-grown protein variety, but in a way that pushes me even further into the “I don’t care if y’all are partaking of human flesh on the reg” zone. That’s not people, it’s people by-product.
And they’d still have to be feeding it something, even if they’re asking for cell substrate now, so like. How is that more efficient than just directly asking for more food? Unless they’re somehow allergic to anything other than vat-grown people by-product.
Urgh, obligate vat-cannibalism. That would make for some logistical issues with famine relief efforts.
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Ooh, thought of another oh-no-maybe thing: There is alien life on Hylara, and whatever faction is calling the shots has decided to go with the Let’s Be Extinct plan that went along with all those carbon monoxide canisters on the Courageous.
… Oooooor, that faction has already tried to put that plan in action, and are now dead.
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You gave me an idea, maybe they are not eating people but an alien from the planet is and if they feed it regularly, the rest is left alive or possibly even gets something in return 😅
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They’re only interested in cell substrate that can grow human muscle tissue.
That… kind of sounds like they’ve gone past famine cannibalism and into some kind of ritualized human-meat consumption situation.
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Idk, my theory was that they were worried about industrial-style injuries such as Aspen has recent had.
They can presumably perform skin grafts, because that’s not too complex from what we can tell. But if someone needs major reconstructive surgery (idk, arm mangled in a rotary saw kinda business) some help rebuilding the muscles is probably good for speeding recovery? And growing muscle tissue quickly might just require a different nutrient mix than growing new skin tissue?
Like, I am 100% onboard teams ‘Something Shady’ and ‘Probable Cannibalism’ but (to me) wanting certain medical supplies isn’t necessarily why it feels like something shady is going on.
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A person with missing feet was mentioned.
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Not to be a killjoy, but… needing cell substrate to clone human tissue has a lot of much broader applications than ritual cannibalism, most especially medical reasons
Max said it was famine that killed a lot of the community, but if they had a plague or high rate of serious injuries, or even just their bioengineering leaves something to be desired and they have a high rate of needing transplants for muscle, skin, or organ tissue – all of which you could do from the same substrate. Eyes are very different because of the nerve connections and such, so not being able to do Aspen’s eye doesn’t preclude common muscle or organ transplants, which may also explain the autodoc
They could also just be asking about human tissue because they don’t want the Courageous to know what they’re actually looking to do, and it was that cell substrate which they’ve used from their original mission so they know it works
Or, of course, they’re gonna grow human flesh as nitrogen rich fertilizers and food for their farms 👀 we’re not hugely nutritious for direct human consumption
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oh, exciting!! this wasn’t what i was expecting at all. here’s hoping dr. kim is just creative out of desperation to keep these guys alive while exposed to the elements, and the people we’ve met so far want the Courageous to help them start a coup to end whatever awful setup they’ve currently got going on. i really want to like max but i want to know what they’re up to first!
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I wonder if the hylarans are actually aliens. They killed the original settlers and took their stuff and now they’re freaking out about the new settlers coming for them.
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The main problem with that is the total lack of a biosphere. At least in the area around the colony, there’s just nothing growing, it’s pock marked mud. If they were native hylarans, I would expect them to be part of a full ecosystem (even a recent disaster that wiped out the native ecosystem should have left some evidence behind, there would be weeds trying to resettle churned earth and moss spores colonizing rocks). Also, just… they’re odd, but still visibly human. If they’re actual aliens then they’re Star Trek Bumpy Head Aliens and I will be massively disappointed.
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I might be wrong but I think the Hylarans have been here a lot longer than two or three generations. I don’t think there’s anyone living who remembers humans from our solar system. I think Amy/Cory messed up the way the courageous was monitoring time and it’s been centuries from the Hylaran perspective. And also yeah idk what it is but there is clearly some major threat or issue that they are desperately trying to hide.
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Since we’re now in orbit, a new title for the story might be What The Fuck Is Going On: Unknown.
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Yeah TBH it kinda feels like we’ve just hit book 2.
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(it’s a Totally Normal Space Colony now.)
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It’s not Time to Orbit: Unknown in the sense that the time until orbit is unknown (we’ve basically known that since the beginning).
It’s Time to Orbit: Unknown as in [it is] Time to Orbit: [the] Unknown
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So glad to have moved on from a Very Normal Spaceship to a Very Normal Planet.
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Why the person without feet? Is this merely disability inclusion and visibility or is it plot? Aaaargh I hate waiting.
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could be straight-up rep. but, it could be a clue!
theory 1: the first few commenters theorized about this colony actually being a settlement of exploited workers who send supplies back to an owner class either underground or a railgun’s shot away, so this person’s disability could be a sign of being unable to afford diabetes treatment due to economic exploitation, or a sign of workplace injury due to unsafe working conditions.
theory 2: or maybe the hylarans’ unique genetic makeup gives them food/other allergies that make diabetes more dangerous/more prevalent/less treatable and led to the amputation being necessary. we’ve seen with aspen’s citrus allergy that gene mods can do that.
theory 3: or it could just be that theyre low on certain medical supplies (though the autodoc seems to work ok…)
theory 4: foot…cannibalism…?
theory 5: or maybe alien mud crabs got em!
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honestly, all of these are somewhat plausible 😅
I just found it odd that seeing the double amputee (or was it someone born without feet) didn’t cause Aspen to think about the medical supplies situation. It was just a bit odd.
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I don’t think the muscle is necessarily for cannibalism. The need for muscle might be connected to the famine in some way, but I don’t think it’s cannibalism. If they are connected, I think the famine might have caused large scale muscle degeneration and loss in their population which is not fixable by simply supplementing protein in their diets.
Maybe the person with no feet and the colony needing to grow human muscle is related in some way, yes no feet would point to diabetes, but maybe there’s something about being on Hylara that causes massive muscle loss and Aspen hasn’t picked up on this cause all the Hylarans they’ve seen also have this condition.
It might also be that their industrial manufacturing causes alot of injuries requiring muscle transplants or reconstructive surgery, which would explain the prevelance of handmade things like the soap and crocheted dome repairs and hand made environmental suit.
The need for regular reconstructive surgery but being low on materials for it might also explain why they didn’t give the ship a clear answer on whether or not they have the facilities for an eye transplant, they might have the facilities for transplants and reconstructive surgery, but only very specifically for muscle reconstruction. The doctor we’ve met might also be proficient in this specific area but not really other things, which might explain the reliance on things like the autodoc for what we’d consider general medicine.
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Hm. I guess they can’t really get into this with non-private communication, but I’m disappointed that the ground party didn’t tell the Courageous that the Hylarans are nervous about colonization.
I’ve got a bad feeling the not-railgun could end up shooting down the ship for some reason.
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On the bright side, it doesn’t seem to be something that can be aimed. So unless they have self-guided projectiles, it’d only harm the Courageous/drop pods in the a case of very lucky timing and orbital position.
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In addition to all the other spooky stuff, I keep getting hung up on the oxygen.
Hylara has basically breathable amounts of atmospheric oxygen; something astronomically improbable without life…but no visible plant life at all. Unless there are some seriously giant oceans on the other side of the planet full of algae, or some otherwise-hidden oxygenating life forms, that doesn’t add up. Where did the O2 come from?
Barring borderline-magical technology, I don’t think it could have been created by the Hylarans terraforming in a few decades. Terraforming probably takes ages and requires huge, visible efforts.
What if the Hylarans wiped out life on the planet with e.g. a genetically-engineered bacterio/bio-phage that isn’t picky about what it eats? That’d leave a lot of lingering oxygen after a near-total ecocide.
Would that be something worth keeping from the Courageous crew? It’s something I bet Antarctica has the tech to do, but the motivation is confusing: it seems pretty stupid to destroy your long-term oxygen supply for a short-term clean slate unless there’s something really colony-hostile about the life you’re wiping out, or unless you live somewhere else with a self-contained ecosystem (e.g. caves/orbit as other commenters hypothesized) and don’t need a functioning biosphere right away.
This gets pretty tenuous, but that might also explain the visible genetic divergence of the Hylarans: could they be engineered to resist residual biosphere-killing phages and then sent to live on the surface as a labor/raw-materials-production force? That’d explain why the highest tech development we’ve seen is medical equipment and everything else feels borderline-impoverished.
Even if none of that’s true, the broad thematic strokes of “something shameful or appalling happened here previously that is being concealed” and “there is either a political subgroup or as-yet-unseen external group of Hylarans with radically different circumstances and motivations that is being concealed” seem pretty heavily foreshadowed at this point.
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I think Hylara is in a stage similar to Earth’s Great Oxidation Event. Some bacteria discovered oxygen-producing photosynthesis and went absolutely hogwild changing the atmospheric composition into something completely inhospitable to the other forms of life that couldn’t handle lots of oxygen. The life that exists isn’t very visible to the naked eye yet.
Once life has a foothold, it’s very stubborn and hard to get rid of. I don’t think the Hylara colony has had enough time to cause a planet wide extinction. Plant life, even if you’re trying your hardest to get rid of it, is going to be hard to hide. Their technology isn’t far off from things Aspen would know about, which makes sense since their ships couldn’t have launched that long after the Courageous left Earth.
Whatever shameful thing happened, it’s obviously something the Courageous crew is expected to be upset about, or they’re afraid of something that they think the Courageous crew would be complicit in. I’m really starting to think these people are the genetically engineered slave race. Kim was asking about who the crew expects to be in charge and revival order. Perhaps they don’t want convict-labor happy colonists revived first anymore than the convict members of the crew.
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I’m still hung up on Cattail and the bees. How does Cattail know what bees are? Did they have bees, but they died out? Did they hear about bees in stories? Did Aspen’s books mention bees? Is the lack of bees related to the famine?
And who was that tall Hylaran with the multicolored belt? Are they part of some class of Hylarans that don’t know the Courageous arrived? If my genetically engineered Hylarans are a slave race theory is true, was that person the equivalent of a convict site leader?
The crew’s working theory about the Hylaran colony is that they’re from a faster Antarctican ship launched shortly after the Javelins to beat the Courageous to Hylara. They also sent a small satellite to Hylara that would kill the Courageous crew in case it reached Hylara first. To beat the Courageous, it was smaller and less supplied, banking on the Courageous resupplying their colony. Looking at the time that passed for everyone not at lightspeed, I calculated that the Hylara colony landed around the same time the Courageous was originally supposed to, so they didn’t beat the Courageous by much.
This working theory suggests that the Hylarans should be desperate for supplies since they’ve gone without a resupply for 60 years. However, the colony isn’t in desperate need of supplies. Part of that is they’re not bothering to keep their domes airtight, but if they are in desperate need of stuff, they’re not so desperate to ask for it (aside from something to grow muscle tissue).
If the Hylarans are a genetically engineered slave race, that means there’s an upper-class colony with even more supplies. They can’t be in desperate need either because they would probably just confiscate whatever they’re low on from the lower-class colony. If the Hylarans send materials to the upper-class colony via the not-a-railgun (and there’s not much else they could be using it for, I don’t buy the weather explanation), then the upper-class is probably not dead, because if they were there’s no need for the “port” to be supervised.
For the slave race theory to work, the faster ship had to have been way better supplied than expected, so the crew’s working theory makes less sense.
UNLESS it wasn’t a faster Antarctican ship that beat the Courageous to Hylara, but another Javelin. Another Javelin that was sent off course by hijackers to Hylara would be extremely well supplied and would take exactly as long as the Courageous was supposed to take to reach Hylara. With 10000 people going to Hylara, sacrificing 2000 to someone’s AI project isn’t that much of a loss to whoever was in charge.
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Another Javelin is a very interesting idea! And whatever plan was going on being very embedded in the Javelin program might help explain some of the other weirdnesses.
My other idea, working off of this and how weird a response the landing party got when they asked about the oxygen being evidence of life, is that there *are* aliens on Hylara, but they’re not from the planet. If there’s an alien colony living in sealed caves slowly working on making the atmosphere more viable for *them*, that would explain the lack of life and the presence of oxygen, and who else is on Hylara (because I think at this point it’s quite obvious that the human Hylarans we’ve met are not alone).
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That launcher isn’t how they send materials, its how they receive them.
The drop radius was too large for there to be another surface colony. “Ridiculously wide” Sam said. It might not have been centered on the actual location of the colony, and having it be so big does give the feel of “literally anywhere except over there” but if there were other people to avoid up top, it would be most logical to keep the pick up area small.
A large drop radius also implies familiarity with picking up cargo, and those flat vehicles seemed designed for it.
The “your biology” also implies there are unmodified people around. Doctor Kim’s “life and death” tattoos are a mark of status. She’s probably responsible for the health care of the original colonists.
I think it would be fun if these guys were modified with alien DNA while still being related to the first ship, but regardless I agree with the general conclusion that these guys are not all the people around, and that this group is considered lesser in some capacity.
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Discovered this story a few days ago and – like everyone seems to have – caught up incredibly quickly. It’s just too good to stop reading!
I was hoping that when I caught up things would be less mysterious than the status quo but I think I’ve learnt enough about Derin’s writing at this point to know that would never have been the case!
I’m very curious about what’s monitored in the station beyond the weather, why did Hive go back on themselves before finishing what they were saying?
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“Our doctors are requesting cell substrate,” Hive says, “if you have that.”
“Anything specialised?”
“No, whatever we can grow human muscle on.”
Oh no, they are on that “human meat” diet plan…
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What are you not telling us about the Materials, Hive? Very mysterious. 🙂 I just want them to have plants, why are they so shifty?
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after reading through all the comments, I’m warming up to the “the hylarans we’ve seen so far are an underclass serving (possibly less-modded) people underground” theory. I doubt that they’d grow human muscle for the express purpose of farming it for food, rather than only eating human meat to avoid wastefulness when someone dies, but — as another commenter pointed out — famine does tend to cause muscle wasting
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