EL-MASRI: Do we have any people looking for the containers in that direction?

SPURLEA: Magda?

GANAS: We sent out five teams, and they all headed in different directions, so at least one of them is headed in an easterly direction.

EL-MASRI: Recall the other teams and have them go east as well. There’s a chance our supplies are in that direction.

SPURLEA: You think pirates are going to eject cargo, Chen?

EL-MASRI: I think whoever took over the Erie Morningstarwas interested in the ship, not the cargo. That’s why they kept the captain and the helmsman and made everyone else walk the plank. It’s entirely possible they tossed out the cargo with the crew. If they did, then we need to find it. We need those supplies.

GANAS: What about the survivors?

EL-MASRI: What survivors?

GANAS: Malik said that at least some of the crew in his container survived the landing. Do you want our people to go looking for them, too?

EL-MASRI: I think our first priority is looking for those supplies, Magda.

GANAS: That’s pretty harsh, Chen. These people literally fall out of the sky and crash-land here, and you’re not in the least concerned about them.

EL-MASRI: Look. I’m not going to apologize for the fact that when push comes to shove, I’m going to put the people of this colony before everyone else. This is why you all hired me as your colony leader, remember? You wanted someone with frontier experience, who was familiar with the tough decisions you have to make on the bleeding edge of human civilization. This is one of those decisions, Magda. Do we prioritize finding supplies for our people, who are healthy but won’t be very soonif we don’t get the soil treatments and seed stock and emergency rations that were in the cargo shipment the Erie Morningstarhad in her, or do we prioritize a bunch of people we don’t know, the majority of whom it would seem are injured or dying, who would be nothing but a drain on our almost nonexistent resources? I’m the colony leader. I have to make a choice, and I choose us. Now, maybe you find that inhumane, but at the moment, ask me if I give a shit. This soil here kills everything we plant in it. Almost everything that grows or lives here we can’t eat or is trying to kill us or both. We’re down to the last three weeks of stores, and that’s if we stretch. I have two hundred fifty people relying on me to save their lives. That’s my job. I’m doing it by telling our people to look for those cargo containers first. End of story.

SPURLEA: At the very least, you should ask him to try to describe where he landed so that we can narrow down where we’re searching. Wherever it was, he was able to walk to here from there in only a slightly better condition than he’s in right now. That means it’s not too far away. The more we know, the better we can find the cargo containers, if they exist.

EL-MASRI: You ask him.

SPURLEA: If I ask him, all he’s going to do is keep asking for painkillers. That was the deal: He talks to you, and when he’s done I’ll give him something. So you need to do it.

EL-MASRI: How long until you know about his blood work? Whether he’s got the Rot all through his system.

SPURLEA: I checked on my PDA while you were talking to him. The cultures are still growing. I’ll know for sure in the next thirty minutes or so.

EL-MASRI: Fine. Magda, please let the search teams know to focus east, and that we’ll hopefully give them more detailed information on where to look soon. Tell Drew Talford to send it wideband. It’ll be faster than you trying to raise every party one at a time.

GANAS: What do we do if one of the search teams happens to find the Erie Morningstarsurvivors?

EL-MASRI: Note where they are, but steer clear of them for now. Ifwe find the cargo containers with our supplies, we can go back and deal with them. But for now, let them be. We have other priorities.

GANAS: Here, Aurel. Make sure to record everything Malik says.

SPURLEA: Will do.

EL-MASRI: All right, let’s get back in there.

[Door opens, closes.]

DAMANIS: I thought you had forgotten about me.

EL-MASRI: We wouldn’t do that, Malik.

DAMANIS: That’s good to hear. I’m sorry to take up so much of your time. You must be busy as colony leader.

EL-MASRI: Well, talking to you has been helpful, and you can be a little more helpful to me still, Malik.

DAMANIS: How can I do that?

EL-MASRI: I need you to tell me everything you can about where you landed and how you got here from there. That will help us find where you landed, and might help us find the rest of your crew.

DAMANIS: I’ll tell you, but I don’t think you’ll find the rest of my crew. I think they’re all dead.

EL-MASRI: You said that at least a few of your crewmates were alive when you landed. You’ve survived so far. So it stands to reason some of them might have as well.

DAMANIS: Unh.

EL-MASRI: Why are you shaking your head?

SPURLEA: Malik, did something else happen to your crew before you came here?

DAMANIS: Yes.

EL-MASRI: Tell us about it. It could be useful to us.

DAMANIS: After we landed, those of us who were mostly uninjured started helping those who were worse off. There were about ten of us at that point. We went back into the container so we could see who was living and who was dead. The dead we moved to one side of the container. The living we moved out of the container so we could see how badly they were injured. About half had broken bones but were still conscious or still able to move around. The rest were either unconscious or not able to move because they were too injured or in too much pain. We went back into the container and took the clothes off the dead to make slings and braces, and to make bandages where people were bleeding or had open breaks.

SPURLEA: So, ten relatively uninjured, about ten or fifteen somewhat injured and the same number severely injured. The rest dead.

DAMANIS: Yes. May I have some more water?

SPURLEA: Of course.

DAMANIS: When we were done with that, those of us who were still uninjured got together to discuss what to do next. Some of us wanted to find your colony. We knew it was down here because that’s why we were over your planet in the first place, and were knew you couldn’t be too far away. But none of our PDAs survived the fall and we couldn’t signal you, or use them to keep track of whoever wandered off. Most of us wanted to build a better camp and get ourselves squared away, find some water and some food before we did anything else. I said we should move the dead out of the container and the living back in, so they would at least have shelter. One guy, Nadeem Davi, started talking about how we should consider the possibility of using the dead for food. We argued about that so long that we didn’t notice what had happened to the forest.

EL-MASRI: What had happened?

DAMANIS: It had gone dead silent. Like it does when there’s a predator around, right? Everything that could get eaten just shuts up and hides. We finally noticed it when we all stopped talking. It was dead silent except for our injured. And then—

SPURLEA: And then a pack of animals was on you.

DAMANIS: You knowabout these things?

EL-MASRI: We just call it “the pack.” We don’t call them anything else because we’ve never caught one by itself. You don’t see them, or you see dozens of them. There’s nothing in between.

DAMANIS: I didn’t know that. I saw them coming out of the woods and they reminded me of the stories my grandmother told me of hyenas in Africa. There were just so many of them. One or two for every one of us.

EL-MASRI: We lost fourteen people to the pack early on before we learned not to wander too far into the woods alone. We go out in groups of four or five and always go armed. They seem to have gotten good at recognizing rifles. We don’t see them as much as we used to.