Shadows in Flight, enhanced edition Read Online Free PDF Page A

creatures to pools and piles of protoplasmic goo."
    "So let's have several sedatives ready that can be delivered as a fog," said Bean. "And a good solid backup plan. An acid spray, for instance. Even if they're sentient or semisentient, if they come at us to kill us, we hit them first and leave them dead."
    "Carlotta?" he said. "What do we know about their ship?"
    "It's definitely older tech. And it's Formic technology -- no writing, but some major color coding. Lots of little motors, which is why they need to have all these maintenance hatches. Of course they had to eliminate a lot of doorage in later ships when they got up to relativistic speeds. This design wouldn't do at all.
    "I think they build the ship in space by attaching everything to an asteroid they sculpted into the shape we're seeing. Probably most of the metal in the ship's frame and hull came from the iron and nickel and such in the rest of the asteroid. But it's not the impermeable alloy they used in the ships that invaded Earth back in the 2100s."
    "They didn't need it yet," said Sergeant. "At only ten percent lightspeed."
    This ark showed that Formics sent out their colony ships with no defenses against attack, only a primitive collision shielding at the front. The Formics had turned out to be devastatingly formidable in war, but war was almost certainly not their intention when they came to Earth.
    "Nice to know," said Bean. "Fortunately, the argument never mattered anyway. What else?"
    "The huge pillars are structural -- the whole strength of the ship is vertical rising out of the rock, like a skyscraper. But they're also hollow. Rocket engines, and they carry fuel. Not radioactive, lots of carbon traces. It must be a very efficient fuel because even if the rock contains huge fuel reservoirs, it's not as if they can ever take this thing down to a planetary surface to process whatever carbon-based fuel source they use."
    "They don't need much fuel," said Bean. "It's a generation ship, so they don't have to accelerate much. Very slow burn until they reach cruising speed, and then nothing until deceleration."
    "No way to guess how much fuel they have left. This planet might be their last hope, or just a casual visit to see if it might do. The machinery I looked at was aging but it works fine."
    "Aging like a thousand years?" asked Bean.

     
    "No. More like a hundred years. I think everything's been replaced again and again during the voyage. Plenty of indications that there's been a lot of servicing over the years. But none recently."
    "Good work, all of you," said Bean. "I know there's a lot more in your reports, and I've scanned your data as you collected it. I think we have all the useful information we're going to get from the outside, and from that lump of rab that Sergeant brought back."
    "Rab," said Sergeant, giggling a little. "Rat-crab."
    "Half a rabbit," said Carlotta.
    "'Rab' it is," said Ender. "Until they tell us what they call themselves."
    "Now, when you go inside," said Bean, "you have to remember that Formic-based life-forms probably all have some degree of mental communication. Even if it's just a sharing of impulses and desires and warnings, they can tell each other what they need to know. So if any of the rabs notices you, they all know you're there. They might be smart enough to set ambushes. You have to be alert. And if it gets dangerous, get out. You are not replaceable. Do you understand me?"
    Sergeant nodded, Carlotta gulped, and Ender looked bored.
    "Ender," said Bean, "it looks to me as if you think you're not going in with the others."
    That woke him up. "Me?"
    "Three," said Bean. "I'd go myself, but you know my limitations."
    "But I'm the biology guy," said Ender.
    "Precisely why you need to go," said Bean. "Three for defense is the minimum anyway, but if you're there, you can learn things on the spot instead of waiting for them to bring things back for you to study."
    "But I'm -- I'm not trained for --"
    Sergeant looked at him