The Pequod II

by Liam Hogan

The catamaran skims over the waters of Altair III. A shimmering shoal of native fish race to keep us company, breaching as arrow-headed darts. Though the day is perfect for sailing, it is tinged with sadness. This is the last voyage of the Pequod.

Even with nothing but the horizon to see, voices chirp in my ear, rightfully worried I might dawdle. One of those voices, adding solemn instruction, is alien. Vantarian. Bailiffs, come to oversee our eviction.

My jaunt wouldn’t be permitted at all if it wasn’t serving another purpose. Even then, I’m lucky to have drawn this bittersweet duty; there was no shortage of volunteers.

My solo mission is a far cry from the races we used to hold; our three catamarans, Pequod, Beagle, and the Flying Cloud, chasing each other across the wide, shallow ocean.

We approach a sensor buoy, the last. I tack, reef the sails, and glide to a stop, using a pole to hook the floating pontoon. Working quickly, the boat restless at rest, I unload the filtration cartridge and the datastore. The solar powered buoys communicate basic telemetry, but bandwidth limits mean they need to be visited every six weeks. It’s only been three weeks this time around. Instead of exploring the oceans, we should have been watching the skies, as the gas giant, Altair IV, loomed ever larger.

Data stowed, I ease out the sails and let the wind snap them tight. Behind us the buoy, pontoon unstoppered, glugs as it sinks out of view.

The Vantarians aren’t particularly happy with our littering. We’re doing the best we can, but there’s a limit to what we can boost back into orbit. They’re helping us with the fuel we’ll need for our interstellar journey, and have even suggested a few destinations, though they’re tight lipped about what we’ll find there.

It’s lucky we can leave at all. We were that close to declaring the mission a success and beginning colonisation, dismantling the James Cook to form a floating, rather than submerged, city. I wonder what the Vantarians would have done with us then?

We hadn’t known, when we discovered this watery world, that it was already taken. Not by the Vantarians, here merely as observers. That there was life was miraculous enough. That it could sustain humans, more miraculous still. And the squid-like fish, the most evolved life-form, were just that… fish. They even tasted like fish. Convergent evolution, apparently; similar oils and amino acids.

Then the Vantarians came and put us straight. The Altair system was off-limits. Home to a truly remarkable species.

On Altair III? we asked, surprised not to have discovered them for ourselves.

And Altair IV, the aliens told us.

The Altairans migrate. They spend centuries in the upper atmosphere of the gas giant. Then, every three hundred years, when the planets are in conjunction, they impossibly soar between them on vast solar wings, thinner even than my nano-fabric sails. Wings that are burnt off as they enter the Altair III atmosphere, plummeting into the seas, a one-way, final journey, adults returning to spawn where they were born, like salmon heading upriver.

And we humans are in the way.

I can see the James Cook now, the metal and glass dome where we grow our Earth crops all that sticks out above the water, being readied for lift off. I can’t be the only one who feels like we’re holding our breath. That membership of this newly stumbled-upon galactic fraternity might depend on us not having messed up the very first planet we visited.

We don’t know, can’t know, exactly what impact we’ve had. The fish we’ve taken. The microbes and other unintentional invasive Earth species we might have released. The planet has proven benign to us. Have we proved as benign to it?

The Vantarians tell us the interplanetary migration is one of the wonders of the galaxy. One of a kind, and dependent upon an ecological razor’s edge. The boom in sea life that feasts upon spent adult forms, in turn fuelling the rapid growth of Altairan young, in time to make the reverse journey before the planets grow too far apart… Many don’t make it, contributing to the meteor showers we have so marvelled at. The whole unlikely exodus is legendary. Sacred. Protected.

So, we are forced to leave. To take with us as much as we can carry and send whatever we can’t, our catamarans included, to the ocean depths where hopefully they won’t interfere too much.

We’ve tried to be good custodians, not for the Altarian’s sake but for our own, lessons learnt from a polluted Earth. But, as the Vantarians point out, it might only take the slightest shift in the ecological balance for a failed spawn. And with a failed spawn, the Altairan race, and perhaps the whole complicated boom and bust food-chain, might go extinct.

I furl the sails one final time, and stuff them into my bag. They don’t take much room. I quickly unscrew the name plate from the hull. And then, heart in mouth, I scuttle the Pequod, staying onboard until the very last moment, until water laps at my feet, before stepping onto the metal gantry and giving the sinking ship as big a push as I can.

The mast tips, one float filling faster than the other. With the lines secured, she slides silently into the water, joining her sisters.

It’s a shame we can’t watch the Altairans arrive from this planet’s surface, their vast wings shading the sun, their fiery descent, the frantic once in a lifetime mating. We won’t even be in orbit by then, because even that could disrupt their migration. We’ll watch from afar and getting further, a single micro-satellite all that is considered safe and prudent to leave behind.

And then we’ll depart the system, looking for a new home. One that isn’t occupied, not even once every three hundred years.

Maybe it’ll be another water planet. Maybe the nano-sails will be unfurled on a new catamaran, the nameplate amended to the Pequod III.

Maybe.