I hate rescue missions.

We were still four months out from Harvey's World when we picked up the first faint signals from the transponder on the Explorer's Lookout. I had been on watch, scanning the spectrometer on the EM bands while I transmitted a coded signal pulse and waited for the return squawk from the Lookout. Since we were tail-first, with full ion jets blasting away as they had been for five months, I was not really expecting to get much of anything, even if a Lookout was still functioning.

The ion jet is a marvelous device, but it does have this nasty habit of overwhelming and blanking out almost all electromagnetic radiation. They had always told me that the transponders were designed explicitly to cut through this static, but I had never really believed them until now. The signal was very faint, and it took about forty repetitions before I could confirm the Explorer's ID code, but there was no doubt about who the signal belonged to. Who else could be out here?

I hate rescue missions. I had never been on either a deep exploration, or a rescue. The only good thing you could say about rescues, besides the potential to save one of my fellow diaspora-mates, was that they were quick. Of course, "quick" is a relative term. We spend five months boosting at full jet at 0.6g's, then at the halfway point, we flip over tail-first, and decel at a slightly higher rate that peaks at 0.7g's near the end of the trip. They used to advise us to "Go Out, Young Man" and build a quick fortune. But how fast can you advance a career when each assignment lasts a minimum of twelve months, and perhaps as long as a decade? The only mechanism for rapid promotion is the unforgiving nature of deep space itself which thoughtfully kills off enough of your colleagues and superiors to open the ranks for advancement.

We had come within spitting distance of Harvey's World in only ten months. We weren't burdened by the accoutrements of a 5-year supply of survival rations and enough equipment and supplies to start a pre-colonial industrial survey colony. We carried reaction mass for the jets, a metric boatload of medical supplies, and enough repair parts to practically construct an entirely new Explorer-class survey ship. The two dozen crew members on the Explorer had made this same trip in twenty-two months, most of which was in the nauseating, bone and muscle wasting cushion of free-fall. Even their acel/decel was never more than a measly 0.4g's. It's no wonder they got into trouble; they were probably all as weak as kittens when they got to Harvey's World. Harvey's World is a little smaller than earth. It's really just a moon orbiting a banded gas giant, but the gravity is still 0.91g. Those poor dummies probably needed all the muscle they could muster. Heck, I knew I'd have trouble when we landed; 0.7g is not the sort of gravity field to make you into a muscle man.

After the computer had finally gotten around to confirming my identification of the Explorer's Lookout, I said aloud, "Mother." She responded in that horrible disembodied and passionless voice that I hate so much, "Working." Why can't they give these things at least some personality? They always talk in that steady, unhurried monotone that gets under my skin. "Record a message for the Captain when she wakes up," I said.

"Ready," said the computer.

"Record," I said. "Signal received 19:14:12 hours confirmed to be transponder of Explorer. Squawk codes match. Signal condition green. Whatever happened to them did not trigger a distress call. End message."

"Recorded and logged," replied the computer.

I went back to scanning the instruments. I pointed the telescope at Harvey's World again and took a look in the visible light band. At this distance, Harvey's would be a speck, overwhelmed by the Gas Giant, but our ion jet plume obscured my entire view so I couldn't even make out the Gas Giant. About the best I could do was check the photo spectrograph and try to verify the planet's constituent elemental analysis. The computer detected the presence of water, chlorophyll, nitrogen, oxygen, and a touch of methane on Harvey's World. "Not a bad place for a picnic" I thought.

Janet called on the intercom. "You got something, huh?"

"Can't sleep, Captain? Yeah. It's faint, but it's them. The Lookout is still functioning."

"Well, that's some good news. Have Mother get George up, and we'll have a meeting at 23:00 hours."

"Overtime again," I grumbled, only half facetiously. "OK, I'll get him up and hang around after you relieve me. In the meantime, I'll try to get as much info as I can."

Janet signed off, ostensibly to go back to sleep, but I suspected she would toss and turn for a few more hours until her shift began. She was supposed to have been asleep when I recorded for her, but obviously she wasn't or she wouldn't have called me back. I can't say that I feel sorry for her; we've all been suffering a bit of insomnia lately. Rescue missions, especially those that rescue ships that simply stop sending data without any clue about the cause of the trouble, are a bitch.

I opened the presentation file on our mission. It had our initial orders, all the telemetry received from Explorer before she went silent, a few pertinent events for our mission such as departure and expected rendezvous dates. Now at last I had some real data to add, even though it wasn't much.

I recorded the spectroscopic data. Water in abundance. Temperatures seemed to hover in the liquid water range. The O₂ level was too high to have been due to some static inorganic chemical process. Oxygen is too reactive to remain stable in its O₂ state without being constantly replenished by some biological activity. And the presence of chlorophyll obviously suggested that there was plant life. The trace methane was the correct amount to suggest the presence of animal life. This facet of biological chemistry always caused a titter in the Academy training classes. They tell me that the correct ratio of methane to oxygen in a planetary atmosphere is a wonderful tool to predict the presence of animal life on the planet. Imagine, the best way to detect animal life on a planet from a great distance is to identify intestinal gas in the atmosphere. It has an accuracy of something on the order of ninety-eight percent. I'm not a particularly religious man, but if this doesn't prove the existence of God, I don't know what does. It's the best cosmic joke there could ever be. If it lives, it farts!

I was ready for the guys at 20:15, and spent the next two and half hours relaxing. Janet walked in at 22:30, a half hour early of course. She looked horrible. I don't think she's slept well in the last month. It's funny, but I just never thought of her as "captain" material. She had guts, and was a heck of a scientist, but somehow I always thought she should have been doing some soft scientific cosmology or planetary ecology someplace. Rescuing lost ships just didn't seem her style. Yet, here she was, busting her can with the best of us (or, in my case, the worst of us). My other shipmate, George, was another one who didn't look the part. He had this muscle-bound soldier look. He was one-hundred percent "gung," with an awful lot of "ho" thrown in. Unless you saw him setting a broken leg, or analyzing a DNA sequence with his bare hands, or cooking up an excellent pseudo chicken stir-fry, you'd think he was some brainless army slug. I still can't believe that he keeps his hair so short. Heck, if the Captain didn't rag at me all the time, I probably wouldn't even shave.

"Hi Chief," George said with far too much enthusiasm and good cheer when he entered the control room at precisely 22:55. "Whatcha got?"

The Captain spoke up, "Let's do the whole thing, Chief, by the numbers. It'll help us keep it in focus."

"Ok," I grumbled. "The last six months not withstanding, I'm sure we haven't been able to keep this mission sorted out in our heads."

Janet gave me a dirty look. I canceled my smart aleck pose, and handed them both a set of printed data sheets and began the briefing.

"Harvey's World, not named after its discoverer, Jonathan Lowell, but after the proselytizer Samuel Harvey who conned us into going there." (Janet gave me another nasty look.) "Orbital analysis and long range spectroscopy had suggested a seventy percent or greater probability of life supporting environmental conditions. A survey pre-colony ship, Explorer, departed forward observation post Deep Star on January 17, 2106. Standard survey ship: twenty-four man crew, 0.4g acceleration. Arrived at Harvey's World on June 2, 2107. One crew member, one of the botanists, had a flare up of a previously undiagnosed chronic infection with streptococcus cardiosis, and died of a heart attack en route. Initial orbital survey for two months revealed large water oceans covering ninety-five percent of the surface. Most planetary energy comes from gravitational heating due to the presence of the Gas Giant and several other satellites. The variable gravitation pull of the other satellites in orbit around the Gas Giant flexes Harvey's entire core as they pass by, and warms the planet considerably. This, combined with the unusually deep oceans which act as an excellent planetary heat transfer machine, leads to weather that is remarkably constant and mild. Even though Harvey's is rather far from its sun and the daylight is fairly weak, the days are sunny and warm, with night time just a tad cooler. The terrain, what little there is of it, consists of gentle, rolling hills on several small continents. Surface covered with vast grass lands. No large tree-like structures. Large herds of herbivores. In fact, these herds were so large, they could be seen with the naked eye from orbit. No fires or electromagnetic radiation detected. No sign of any non-natural structures of any kind.

"They made a few short sub-atmospheric descents and sampled the air. It confirmed previous data and showed the presence of spores, pollen, and bacteria, as expected. Cultures of these items indicated neither overt toxicity nor allergenic properties. They left the Lookout in orbit and made landfall on one of the largest islands, about fifteen kilometers from the seashore. Reports from the surface were initially routine. They confirmed the presence of large, docile herbivores. No carnivores were detected. A few crawling insects and some protozoa in the soil rounded out the flora and fauna. Their last report was filed early on the third day after landing when everything hit the fan. Their last reports were essentially incoherent, speaking of an unexpected darkness. No distress signals, or signals of any kind, have been received since that last incoherent report. Crew members are now presumed to be dead, probably due to an alien biological infection. We are to rescue any survivors, determine the circumstances and causes of death of those we cannot rescue, and make recommendations concerning future colonization missions.

"My readings so far have confirmed everything Explorer reported. The large oceans, evidence of plants and animals, and that's about it. The Lookout is functioning normally. I haven't been able to get any other data from it yet. Only the squawk code has been able to punch through the ion jet noise. I'm hoping that we'll get some real telemetry in about a week or two." I paused. "Any questions?" I asked.

George said, "Captain, I wonder if we should shut down the jets and free fall for a couple of hours so the Chief can get his telemetry. It seems to me that the more we know earlier, the better."

"I'd like to also George," I said, "but we're already pushing the ballistic safety limits. Losing even a few hours of 0.7g would make our initial orbit too elliptical. I'd rather hold off and try to tease what signal I can out of the static before we starting jumping around on the jets."

"I agree with the Chief," Janet said. "We'll stick to our flight plan. We'll do this one slow and easy and by the book."

We all looked around at each other. Finally Janet said, "Ok. Thanks, Chief. Good report. We'll meet again when you have something more." We all looked into our hands, not making eye contact. Finally, George got up and poured himself a cup of coffee. Janet watched him do it, then got up and poured herself one too.

"No wonder you never sleep, Captain," I said. She shrugged and smiled. George said, "Well, I think I'll double check the anti-biologicals we have in the stores. I have this sneaky suspicion I'm going to need them in a couple of weeks." He left by the aft hatch, while Janet sat at the table which variously served as a conference table, dinner table, cocktail bar, operating theater, and psychiatrist's couch.

"So, what do you think?" I asked. She looked at me kind of wistfully. "I think we've got a heck of a tough job ahead of us."

"I know, but what do you think got them?"

"Well," she said taking a sip. "It's got to be one of a couple of things. Either there was an undetected infectious agent, or some type of hostile alien presence, or . . . " she paused and looked into her cup. "Or," she went on, "they went mad after drinking this coffee too long and killed each other."

"I vote for the coffee," I said solemnly. We both sat there for a while. The communications panel bleeped a few times as Mother once again, with infinite wisdom, determined that the transponder signal we were receiving belonged to Explorer.

"You've never been on a rescue mission before, have you Captain?"

"No," she said with a sigh. "This is my first. Hopefully, this will be my last. Most of my time has been spent doing near-body surveys for elemental analysis. I did a couple of biological assays on New Earth during the first couple of years after colonization. Then I spent about six months shuttling miners, merchants, explorers, and investment bankers around the known universe. But this is my first rescue mission."

"Mine too," I said. "I was kind of hoping to get a berth on one of the actual survey missions, so I guess this is almost as good." I laughed. Janet knew my story. I was a survivor. I had lost my ships and most of my shipmates in two fairly well known disasters. One of those had us drifting in orbit around a large asteroid for four months. We didn't resort to cannibalism, although the thought had certainly crossed my mind more than once. I like to blame my chronic "Space Fairer's Amnesia" on the poly-metallic plate that they used to rebuild the front of my skull. This disease I suffer from can be a real boon to one's sense of well being. I refuse to remember how I had to choose between taking this mission (for "therapeutic reasons" they suggested), or going back home to Baikonur. The real joke is that only the psychologist could call Earth "home." I've been gone so long I've lost half of my color vision. Heck, I can't see the color green anymore unless it's produced by a panel display. I even dress in spaceship grey these days. Maybe I needed this mission though. I know what it's like to be stranded and near death. I can't bear to think of any of my colleagues in that condition.

Janet asked, "When do you think you'll get some real telemetry from the Lookout?"

"I don't know. I'll start to get a little something in a day or so, but it won't be enough to learn anything. My guess is, it'll take about four weeks before we get any really good stuff . . . if there is any data to be had."

"Oh, there will be data all right," Janet said. "I'm sure of that. The real question is whether that data will tell us what happened. I just don't understand how we can lose all twenty-four people within twenty-four hours."

"Twenty-three people," I corrected. "Remember, we lost one en route."

"Oh well," Janet replied sarcastically. "That makes all the difference. You can lose twenty-three people on a stroll through the park."

With that, she got up, leaving her cup half full. "I'm going to check on George. You can finally get off that overtime that bothers you so much."

"Thanks," I said. "But actually, I'd just as soon build up the comp-time."

Janet ignored my remark, and said aloud to the computer, "Mother, I take the con. Follow me aft."

"Change in watch acknowledged and logged," the computer replied. God, that voice was horrible!