The Tragedy of Landingtown

I usually like to have a title for my stories before I post them, no matter their length or which draft they are, but I just can't think of one at the moment. I'm up for suggestions though.

The colonists had been settled into their new lives on Fabricius for almost a decade before they learned just how incomplete the scouts’ exploration reports had been.

Of course, it wasn’t all their fault; it was almost a tradition in the Old Space Union by the time Fabricius was discovered, after all, that only the dregs--or the extremest of greenies--of the military ever pulled exploration duty. Those members of the scouting team actually qualified to be on it were probably either fresh-out-of-the-academy privates who lacked the experience needed to detect potential problems in a new world’s ecosystem from the disparate clues, or were too busy trying to avoid the more unsavory members of their party to be able to make a thorough investigation possible in their allotted time frame.

Whatever the reason had been for the sparseness of the reports, Mayor Nitika Halliwell doubted that knowing it would help her now.

As she hurried to the Admin Dormitory dome from Landingtown’s Administration Hall, the jaundiced sky caught her attention. Its color had darkened to almost orange in the hour she’d spent meeting with the town council, signaling the imminent arrival of yet another “sulfur storm.”

Nitika trudged across the courtyard, her heart heavy as the breeze strengthened, lifting the ends of her hair from under the back of her filter mask.

The door to the Admin Dorm made a small shushing nose from all of the sulfur which had drifted over the threshold and blown into the hinges as Nitika walked through it.

“Hiya, Mayor Halliwell,” said Mr. Turner from the table in the common room, where he and his friends were holding their weekly card game.

“Evening, gentlemen,” Nitika answered without her usual smile after removing her mask and hanging her coat on one of the communal hooks installed in the dorm’s entryway. Heaving a sigh, she told the group of friends, “Meeting before dinner, guys. You might want to wrap up a bit early, or you’ll miss it.”

“Sure thing, Nitika,” Mr. Douglass answered. “Looks like ol’ Jimmy’s about to clean us all out anyway.”

With a nod, Nitika headed through the kitchen and dining units to the Media Control room.

From this room, to which only a few of the colony’s leaders had access, entertainment and news broadcasts could be channeled to every screen in the colony. Three walls were crowded with screens and control panels, some lighted, some not. Instead of accessing one of the dormant control stations, Nitika turned to the right as she crossed the threshold, reaching for the public access microphone. She flipped a switch, and her voice echoed throughout Landingtown.

“Attention all colonists: there will be an emergency meeting this evening at 1830. All adults must attend. Repeat: there will be a mandatory, full-colony meeting at 1830. That is all.” Replacing the microphone, Nitika rubbed some grit out of her eyes and made her way through the blue-and-white-striped corridor to her living quarters; she needed to slip into something not coated in sulfur dust.

*****

Over five hundred colonists crowded into the dining hall that evening as Nitika looked on from the podium. Screens covering the other three walls showed colonists gathering in Landingtown’s ninety-nine other dormitory dorms’ dining halls as well. Nitika waited silently, nodding occasionally to people she recognized in her own dome as they found their seats.

Finally, everyone was seated in all locations. Nitika pressed a button on the podium’s control surface, causing the lights to flash and a long tone to sound in all one hundred dorms.

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” she began when the din of curiosity had died down. She pressed another button on the podium, muting the microphone pickups from the other domes so that the quiet in Admin Dorm would help to amplify and clarify her voice for the other dorms’ speakers. “I thank you for coming, and wish I had some better news than that which I have to share with you tonight. Please hold all questions and comments until after I have finished explaining our current situation.”

Nitika paused for a moment, and then continued. “Our head meteorologist, Gary Jeffers, informs me that the wind storms which carry sulfur to us from the large deposits in the south are not expected to cease for another six standard months. In addition, our silo manager, Ms. Weldon, has informed the council that our barley stores will hold out only for another five of those months."

When the winds had picked up to gale force six months before, the colonists had thought nothing of it. Their habitat domes were built to withstand the harshest of conditions, and the prep team had anchored the domes’ supports in bedrock before any of the other colonists had been allowed onto the planet’s surface from the massive ships which had carried them from their myriad home worlds.

That is, they had thought nothing of the winds until any colonists caught even a minute in the wind caught nasty coughs, and the year’s barley crop started to die.

Had they known of Fabricius’s fifteen-year wind storm cycle from the exploration reports, the colony at Landingtown may have had a contingency plan. But alas, Nitika thought as she paused, meeting a few peoples' eyes, the reports were sorely lacking in any detail other than the facts of breathable air, edible plants, and soil compatible with Terran food crops.

That is why Nitika had called the emergency council meeting from which she'd returned less than an hour before. And though the facts were grim, the council's proposed solution was even grimmer.

Reluctantly, Nitika continued. “As you know, due to the heavy amount of sulfur dioxide in the air, our most recent crop has died before we could harvest it. This means that, even if we do manage to survive until the storms end, we will not have anymore food supplies available to last until the Space Union’s rescue ships arrive.”

Nitika closed her eyes until the rolling murmur of the incredulous crowd ebbed, then squared her shoulders and faced her fellow colonists again. A melancholy timbre colored her voice when next she spoke.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the council and I fear that, unless drastic measures are taken, our entire colony will perish with no survivors within five and a half months.”

This time, the reaction from just the five hundred colonists in the Admin Dorm was nearly deafening, and took almost ten minutes to die down.

When the cacophony waned, Nitika held up her hands. “People of Landingtown,” she said, “the council has proposed a solution which will help to save at least some of us long enough to receive aid, but this solution is a mixed blessing, at best. At worst, it is detestable. Therefore, we on the council cannot, in good conscience, implement this plan without your fully-informed consent.”

There was no good way to make her next statement, so Nitika elected for blunt honesty. “The council proposes the euthanization of a full half of the colony’s total population, with the exception of children under the age of sixteen and personnel whose work is absolutely vital to the survival of the colony.”

At this, there was another upheaval, but Nitika merely spoke louder to be heard over the noise.

“The decision, however, lies with you. I ask that all Dormitory Managers hold a vote in each dome, and comm the results to my office no later than Thursday at 1700.” At that, Mayor Halliwell of Landingtown, first colony on the planet Fabricius, took a deep breath, thanked her constituents, and asked for questions and comments.

A woman in the center front-row seat on one of the screens stood, and Nitika looked to that screen’s video pickup and un-muted its audio before calling, “Yes, Eta Dorm?”

“Ms. Mayor,” the brunette Eta Dorm Manager asked, “It’s all well and good to exclude children from this awful plan, but what will happen to those children if their parents are no longer there to care for them?”

There were sporadic head nods all around the room and on the screens as Nitika answered the question. “There will be sufficient time for parents to make arrangements with survivors for care of their children. Should the plan be carried through, the council has elected to leave the exact nature of those arrangements to either the individuals’ or the Dorm Groups’ discretions.

“But what about these so-called ‘essential personnel?’” one man shouted from the room in front of Nitika as she keyed off Eta Dorm’s audio once again. “Who’s to decide who makes the cut and who doesn’t? And for that matter, what’s to keep the list-makers from putting themselves on the list?”

“I assure you, Mr. Hogarty, that the council will be absolutely scrupulous in the selection of essential personnel. No one will be considered for the list, unless there is no one else in Landingtown with enough experience or training to do their job effectively. Furthermore,” she continued, “the list will be posted on the announcement screens of every dormitory dome, to ensure honesty in the selection process. I will have the final veto over any name on that list, and I will tell you now that my name will not be on it.”

Astonished silence greeted this announcement, just as an automatically timed bell tone announced the dinner hour.

“I’ll not keep you from your meals much longer, ladies and gentlemen. Dorm Managers, please organize a ballot among your people, and comm the results to me in two days. Thank you.”

Nitika shut off the view screens from the podium’s control board and stepped off of the stage, not hearing the debates and recriminations from her dorm mates over the muddle of her own thoughts.

*****

A week later, twenty-five thousand people--including Mayor Halliwell, half of the council, and half of each dorm’s average population--were injected with lethal amounts of Nembutal. The survivors held a large memorial ceremony for the brave men and women who had died to save the colony, and built a monument to their heroism in the center of Landingtown.

In the space just past perihelion of the Fabricius system, a Spyridon trading ship made its final, three-week approach to Fabricius, her cargo holds full of surplus foodstuffs to trade for Landingtown’s copious textile goods.