"You risked Explorer lives for tobacco?"

"Don't squawk," Chee growled. "The High Council reamed me out enough, without you bitching too. Of course, all the council cared about was violating our treaty with the Sparks; they didn't give a flying fart for the Explorers… who all got back without a scratch, I might add. The council cursed and screamed, and next thing I knew, they were sending me to Melaquin. I suppose you agree with them."

"Your actions are difficult to understand," Yarrun replied. "Tobacco is grown on many Technocracy planets, not to mention the Fringes. It seems rather… extravagant to endanger Explorers and the treaty for something so easily available."

"Shows how little you know about tobacco," Chee answered. "The stuff our Technocracy grows is castrated and harmless — no tar, no nicotine, not a single carcinogen or addictive substance in the damned vegetable from flower to root. Sissy weed! On Old Earth, tobacco still has balls. It can kill you… will kill you if something else doesn't get you first. I like that in a plant."

He produced a match and swept it across the rough metal control pad set into the captain's chair. Prope and Harque drew in their breaths sharply. Ignoring them, Chee sucked on the pipe to pull the match flame onto the tobacco, then took a few experimental puffs. "I hate safe vices," he continued, shaking out the match. "Live your life on a limb, that's what I say."

"Begging the Admiral's pardon," I said, "but from an Explorer's point of view, inhaling weak carcinogens is a pretty candy-assed risk. Ultimately, you die in bed. Sir."

The bridge fell silent except for the soft hum of machinery. Prope's mouth dropped open in shock. Harque had his back to me so I couldn't see the expression on his face, but his hand stopped moving and hovered stunned over the instrument panel. Even Yarrun stared at me in surprise, his hideous face lit from below by the greenish glow of his data screen.

Chee met my gaze without rancor. "The wolf knows something the sheep will never understand. Is that what you're saying, Ramos?"

"The wolf pays for it," I answered.

"A big ante buys into a bigger pot," he said.

"The pot only grows big when there are many losers."

With a small laugh, he patted me on the arm. "Don't you just love arguing in metaphors? Makes you feel profound as a polecat. Even when you don't know what the hell you're talking about." He smiled. "Maybe we'll have this argument again someday."

"Maybe." If he could pretend we'd survive, I could pretend with him.

"Data on Melaquin coming in," Yarrun quietly announced.

Melaquin — The Story from Initial Probes

Melaquin (AOR No. 72061721)

Third planet in the Uffree system; one moon

Average distance from primary: 1.0 A.U.

Gravity: 1.0000 G.

Thermal Index: 1.0000 S.

Atmosphere: 21% oxygen, 78% nitrogen, .9% argon, .03% carbon dioxide. Other trace gases, e.g. methane, ozone, water vapor

Day: 24.0000 standard hours

Orbital period: 365.25 days

Axial tilt: 23.5 degrees

Surface: 78% water; four continental land masses; many islands, some approaching continent size; poles ice-capped

Life: Abundant green vegetation in 80% of land areas; abundant carbon-based microorganisms in atmosphere; quantity of methane in atmosphere consistent with large carbon-based animal life; sightings of motion in open plains suggest movement of large animal herds

Sentients: No illuminated cities visible on night side; no industrial pollutants in atmosphere; no unnatural EM transmissions; no visible roads or constructions; no visible dams or canals

Initial Response

A summary of the initial probe data replaced the star-scape on the main monitor. "It's rather like Earth, isn't it?" Prope observed. "Isn't that, uhhh, surprising?"

"There are two ways to look at it," Yarrun answered. "Given the vastness of the universe, it is highly probable that a close twin of Earth would exist somewhere; therefore, the mere existence of such a planet should not take us aback. On the other hand, the odds of such a twin turning up only a few thousand parsecs from the original planet… that is frankly unbelievable."

"Which means?" Chee asked.

"What else?" Yarrun shrugged. "There's something fishy going on."

"I just hope the continents don't look familiar," I muttered.

Conjectures

A. Prope: Perhaps we're really looking at Old Earth. Through some unknown phenomenon, we aren't where we think we are in space; or at least we're seeing into a completely different part of space.

Yarrun: The stars aren't in the right places for the Sol system. And the other planets are all wrong.

Me: Besides, Earth would show plenty of signs of sentient habitation. Cities, highways, all those nuclear waste dumps…

B. Harque: Maybe the computer is malfunctioning.

Chee: [After banging three times on the console with his fist.] Has anything changed?

C. Prope: Perhaps this is just an illusion, and some unknown agency is tampering with our very minds.

Me: So what do we do about it?

Chee: [Closing eyes and holding fingers to temples.] I disbelieve, I disbelieve, I disbelieve. [Opening eyes again and looking at Harque] Shit.

The Globe

"I think we have enough to construct a map of the day side," Yarrun said. He tapped a few keys and a globe appeared on the screen in front of us: north pole at the top of the view, south pole at the bottom. (By convention, all planets are assumed to rotate west to east; once you determine west and east, north and south fall out automatically.)

On the left of the display, two land masses were emerging from shadow at the terminator. One lay roughly in the northern hemisphere, one in the south. The positions of the continents reminded me of North and South America on Old Earth, but the coastlines were very different. For that, I was grateful.

The daylit part of the north continent formed a breast-shaped bulge jutting eastward into a crystal blue ocean. That sparkling blueness on the view screen was deceptive — the computer used color to represent water depth, not tranquility. On land, various colors represented types of terrain, splitting continents into patchworks of yellow desert, gray mountains, green forests. Every few seconds, a region of the map shimmered for a moment, as the colors were updated on the basis of more specific data. The effect always made planets look more cheerful than they actually were.

A narrow spine of mountains cupped the lower coast of the northern bulge, extending east into the water to form a tail of rocky islands and rounding northwest into the darkness of the night side. Inside that cup of mountains, the rest of the bulge appeared to be a grassy basin, broken by three linked lakes that emptied into a river flowing northeast.

The south continent had a concave coastline, gouged by a large bay slightly south of center. North of the bay, the land supported a tropical forest; south was a strip of hilly woodland along the ocean, but thinning to desert farther in. The lowest part of the coast offered jagged fjords, zigzagging down to the whiteness of polar snow.

"Designating those continents the western hemisphere," Yarrun announced formally.

The eastern hemisphere had two continents too. Most of the northern continent had disappeared into the night side. The remainder was an egg-shaped protrusion narrowing to a long peninsular arm that reached almost all the way down to the southern continent. The peninsula had once been mountainous, but the mountains were old and worn with erosion. The range continued back into the mainland of the continent, dividing it into plains to the south and forest to the north.