Crisis On Doona Read Online Free PDF

He’d begun looking at meteorology reports, too, for a wind from the wrong direction would make a shambles of the most careful plans. Drafting contingency plans for windy conditions was his next task.
    “The first Hunters have arrived,” Hrriss told him, coming in with their documents.
    Todd looked up, startled. “So soon?”
    “Zooon?” Hrriss dropped his jaw in a grin. “You’ve been working too hard, my Zodd. Only two more days before the deluge!”
    Todd groaned as he took the papers from Hrriss and checked the names off against the Hunt application list. Then he brightened. “Two more days and Kelly’ll be home.”
    Hrriss’s grin deepened. “You’ll be happy to see her?”
    “Sure, she’s the best second I ever had.” He didn’t notice the odd look his friend gave him.
    * * *
    Of the many people making their way to Doona for the Hunt, Kelly Solinari was probably the most excited. She couldn’t wait to breathe fresh air again on Doona. On Earth, you felt that taking a deep breath was a crime against your fellow Humans and besides, it didn’t smell good so why contaminate your lungs with government issue. She knew that Earth’s air had improved with stringent reductions of pollutants and the careful control of waste products but her lungs didn’t agree. She was also looking forward to eating “real” food again: the absolute calorie rationing on Earth was nothing short of a sophisticated form of starvation. For a born Doonan such as she, these four years were a prison and she was about to be set free.
    There had been a lot of change on Earth since her father and mother had left the stagnant, crowded planet: and they’d been considered radical for wanting to emigrate. Now there was an active desire, especially among the young, to break away from their crowded, depleted home planet and go out to settle among the stars. New opportunities had created an aura of hope, lightening the general gloom of the population. The success of the Doonan experimental colony begged the question of when more planets would be made available. Without the Hrruban element, of course.
    In the back of every mind lingered the warning of Siwanna, the awful memory of the destruction of another race. In Kelly’s diplomacy courses, the Siwanna Tragedy was brought up again and again to warn the eager young diplomats-to-be that such an error could be repeated. It had been an unforgettable and tragic shock that the Siwannese had suicided as a race when the colonists from Earth encountered them. They had been a gentle people, with too fragile a culture to survive contact with another intelligent species. Siwanna was empty now. Codep had erected a memorial to the race there, and had forbidden anyone to settle on the world whose inhabitants had been accidentally destroyed. And that was the beginning of the Noncohabitation Doctrine. No Human colony could be initiated on any planet already inhabited by sentient beings.
    The Hrrubans’ strong culture and identity made them, in the administration’s eyes, a statistical rarity. The Doona colony was an exception, where colonization teams from two cultures had met accidentally. The first-contact groups were to regard all new races as fragile and potentially self-destructive. Depending on which teacher you were talking to, this meant Hrruba was Earth’s partner in the great task of opening up the galaxy for exploration and colonization. Or, conversely, Hrruba was an obstruction to Earth’s efforts. Kelly, who had been born on Doona, and had more Hrruban than Earth-born friends, was always ready to defend her Hrruban mates, and no one could match a Doonan in an argument.
    Younger Terrans and her classmates generally shared her views. They wanted to see Humans allowed to live and prosper on new worlds. In the back of their minds was the idea of meeting and making friends with new alien races, though that thought was rarely voiced, not with so many older folk with ingrained habits ready to