Even in the noonday sun at the equator,
the cold was so bitter that Judsen kept his mask on. The star of this
world was a vague pale dot somewhere overhead. The spongy plants that
covered every square inch of ground had huge flat leaves to catch as
much of the weak light as they could. There were no trees here, for
reasons the exobiology team hadn't had time to work out. They weren't
able to investigate anything very deeply; they were here for a reason,
with a deadline to be met.

Nothing grew tall here, but simply clung
to the ground to avoid the wind. He could see for miles across the bare
landscape - behind him was the vague shape of the ship and its surrounding
temporary structures, off to his right was the restless sea, while ahead
were Mercer and his assistants. Mercer had requested the services of
one of the ex-military crewmen and now Judsen could see why: he was
shooting specimens of the native wildlife. Something about that angered
him. They were the first humans to visit this icy rock and the animals
were quite indifferent to them. Picking them off with a rifle was hardly
necessary.

'Commander,' Mercer said, nodding pleasantly
as Judsen reached them.

'Doctor,' Judsen said. He looked at the
scientist's accumulated specimens with faint distaste: small, fat, blubbery
rodent-like creatures covered in greyish fuzz. 'What's the verdict?'

He knew Mercer didn't like to be bounced
into snap judgements – that was probably partly why he'd asked the question,
Judsen realised. Sure enough, the taller man made an irritated noise
behind his mask. 'Positive, I think. Our metabolisms are compatible
- or can be made compatible, anyway.'

'You're proceeding with the land-based
option, then.'

'Yes. Marine would take too long to verify
in the circumstances. Do we have a revised ETA on the colony ship?'

'Six weeks,' Judsen said. 'But they'll
need an adjusted genome transmitting to them within three.'

'That shouldn't be a problem,' said the
scientist. 'With the new information from today, we should be able to
start prototyping within the next day or so.'

Judsen left them to it and started walking
back to the ship. Prototyping! His shiver for once had nothing to do
with the cold. As ever, he was grateful for the fact that – as commander
– his name was very low on the list of expendable personnel. So he imagined,
anyway, the computers were the actual arbiters of the list. His first
exec, Lukas, had expressed similar relief, not long after the mission
had started - but two planets later he had found himself selected as
prototype material. That had been a foggy water-world, warmer than this
planet, but darker and with even worse weather. He wondered how the
colony there was faring.

Back on board he instantly sensed a change
in the atmosphere, an increase in tension, a barely-hidden current of
panic. He knew at once what it must be.

'Message from Earth?'

Dutta, the comms officer, nodded. Judsen
could see how upset the man was. It must have come through as an open
signal, no identifier or formal sourcing, and been relayed all around
the ship. Damn. Perhaps he should have left standing orders that any
incoming communications be embargoed until he had personally reviewed
them... no, that wouldn't work. There was no point hiding from the truth,
and if he did attempt to suppress it he'd have a mutiny on his
hands.

He went to his quarters and viewed the
message on his personal console. Gods, it was even worse than he could
have imagined. The signaller had not identified themselves, and the
message was barely coherent – but coherent enough to spawn nightmares.
It was a desperate plea for the colony fleet to turn around, return
to Earth, help in any way they could. Mixed in with this were images
of a world in the final stages of collapse: mass starvation in the Americas.
Another nuclear conflict in Asia. Refugee ships being shot out of the
sky as they attempted to enter Martian orbit. Life support slowly failing
in the European shelters. 83% of the oceans now devoid of life, mobs
in the cities turning on individuals who'd been hoarding 'food' - pet
animals, or the bodies of their dead loved ones. Poison clouds drifting
across wasteland cities... The global population was down to less than
a billion. Mars was looking increasingly like a dead end, the resources
simply not available to complete the terraforming project. One ship
or the whole fleet, the solar system was beyond salvaging...

Someone was rapping at his door. 'Come
in,' Judsen said, slightly surprised to find himself so lost in thought.

It was her, of course. She closed the
door behind her carefully and then came to him. They held each other
for a long time in silence.

'I was starting to have doubts again,'
Judsen said. 'About the necessity of this whole thing. But now...'

Kana held him tighter. 'The time for
choices is over, Olaf. You know that.'

'No turning back. Literally or figuratively.
Right. I just wish...'

'Everyone on Earth had the situation
explained to them. They knew what staying behind would probably mean.'

Her detachment upset him in a way he
couldn't fully process. He hoped he was managing to conceal it. 'But
– they're still people.'

Kana smiled at him. 'Is it that? Or is
it that they're still people. Better to die as a baseliner than
– '

'No – no, I didn't mean that,' Judsen
said, thinking, isn't it? Isn't that exactly the point?

She went over to his bunk, smiling as
she started to take off her uniform. 'The time will come for all of
us. Even you, Commander.'

'Don't call me that. Not when we're alone
like this.'

She nodded an apology. 'So, in the meantime,
we should – I don't know. Make the most of being human.'

He went over to her. 'You make it sound
so sad and desperate.'

Kana shrugged. 'Isn't it, though?'

*

Discretion came a poor second to privacy,
but there had to be one or the other amongst a community as tightly-knit
as theirs, and the ship was too small for anyone to have a truly private
life. Judsen was almost certain his relationship with Kana was common
knowledge, just as he knew of a number of other arrangements that had
been made between crew members - none of which were strictly sanctioned
by regulations. But the only thing that mattered now was the colony
project, and unless something interfered with that he would ignore it.
He hoped his motivation wasn't entirely selfish.

They were summoned back to their duties
within minutes of each other. He was always on call, but Kana was a
little surprised as this was supposed to be a rest shift for her.

'Life support techs have their responsibilities
too,' Kana said dryly. She fastened her belt, kissed him lightly and
casually. 'See you soon.'

Up on the flight deck, he ran his eye
over the list of items which had accumulated while he'd been away -
some reports from the ultrafast scouts concerning which planet they
should head for next, others from the giant freezer ships which were
in turn following them. Mercer had confirmed that all the biological
and ecological data had checked out and they would start prototyping
ASAP. The computers had updated the list of which ship sections could
stand to lose personnel with the least impact on their efficiency, and
they'd received some more suggestions about automating minor systems
to reduce the need for crew even further.

He called up Mercer. 'Doctor, any population
estimate yet?'

'Nothing final, Commander. Predictions
for relatively extreme environments haven't had a great accuracy record.
Let's get a viable prototype first, shall we?'

'Very well. When will you start?'

'Enzymes should be ready in a few hours.
The subject is being informed now.'

'Okay.' He paused, found that he remembered
every previous similar occasion - some of them in tormenting detail.
'Who is it?'

An almost imperceptible pause. 'Technician
Kana Araki.'

Judsen's own pause was rather longer.
'Say again, please.'

'Kana Araki, sir. For what it's worth,
I – '

'The computers choose, doctor. We all
knew what we signed on for,' he said, not knowing how his voice must
sound. 'Keep me informed.'

*

She was in her cabin, clearing her personal
effects. There would be a short ceremony as the ship broke orbit, and
they would be jettisoned into the atmosphere. She glanced quickly at
him then went back to what she was doing.

'Don't,' she said quickly as he opened
his mouth. 'No special treatment, please.'

'I – I'd no idea. The computers – '

'They choose the least important person
to the running of the ship. They know how to make a person feel needed,'
Kana said. She sounded tired. 'We all know it'll be our turn sooner
or later, one way or another - unless we find some paradise planet or
miracle aliens or – '

'You know there's nothing I can do.'

Her eyes flamed at him. 'Are you saying
you'd put someone else in my place if you could? What makes you think
I would want that?' She took a deep breath. 'Olaf, Mercer knows what
he's doing. I'm not going to die. That's the whole point of this - living,
not dying. Earth is dying - here, things may turn out differently.'

'Kana... Kana, I - '

'If you never needed to tell me something
before, there's no reason to tell me now,' she said quietly. She put
her hand on his arm, squeezed it. 'For what it's worth, if I'd known
this would upset you so much, I - I would never – '

'Don't say that.' The words were oddly
difficult to say. 'Living is the point, remember.' He looked away. 'Can
I do anything?'

She shook her head. 'I've been expecting
this for a while now. It's almost a relief now it's come. I could have
wished for somewhere warmer, though.'

'I'll see you in Medical,' Judsen said.
He couldn't think of anything else to say.

*

Mercer and his staff gave Kana a comprehensive
medical and the process was judged ready to begin. It looked like the
scientists found it all thoroughly routine. Judsen was always present
at this point - technically, he was the representative of the colonial
authority – and was used to the look of tense stoicism the subject usually
wore as Mercer and his people attached the various drips and other tubes.
Kana seemed more impassive than most.

Her vital signs elevated a little just
after the initial infusion, but this was routine. The running DNA scan
started to register the first signs of changes in her baseline gene
sequence within the hour.

Mercer nodded approvingly. 'Success,
I think, Technician. You may go for now.'

'Thank you, Doctor,' Kana said, starting
to pull her crewsuit back on. She nodded to him and Judsen, left the
medical suite.

'Doctor,' Judsen said, didn't wait for
Mercer's response before following her.

She sighed wearily as he caught her up.
'We've had this conversation already, Olaf. And now it really is too
late.'

He looked away. 'You still look baseline
human.'

'Don't be childish. That'll change. My
skin already feels...' She shook her head.

'It's your imagination.'

'Maybe,' Kana said. 'But you heard the
doctor. I'm not the same species as you any more. I'm homo sapiens
arakii now.'

'My favourite,' he said with a cheeriness
he knew must sound forced. 'Do you want to do anything?'

'I just want to sleep. There's no point
in pretending to be human any more. That's over for me.' She looked
at him levelly. 'Sorry.'

*

He always had administrative work to
fill an evening when there was nothing else to do, and after that he
slept as well. In the morning he went to Medical to see how the experiment
was progressing, knowing it was his duty, hanging onto that.

Overnight, Kana's skin had paled to an
almost chalky white, and her eyes flashed a brilliant sapphire. Thin
fine white hairs were sprouting all along her spine, calves, and forearms,
and across her shoulders.

' – and the ship feels uncomfortably
warm,' Kana was saying to Mercer as he arrived.

'That's to be expected,' Mercer replied.
'You'll be living in temperatures around freezing from now on, remember.'

'That's it, apart from the obvious,'
she said, grooming the hairs on her calf.

'Nothing to worry about there, then,'
said one of Mercer's techs. 'Have you eaten yet this morning, Kana?'

She shook her head and the tech produced
a bowl of stringy grey meat soaked in a thin, pinkish fluid. 'Could
you try and eat this?'

Kana's expression indicated it tasted
as foul as it looked, but she finished it without complaint. 'Will this
be my staple diet from now on?'

'Possibly,' Mercer said. 'It's the flesh
of one of the local herbivores. All right; that's it for now, Technician.
We'll send for you in a couple of hours. Any problems or discomfort
in the interim, inform us immediately.'

Kana nodded, started to reach for her
crewsuit – then paused, and just took the communicator from the garment.
Wearing only vest and shorts she left the suite, apparently unselfconscious.
She gave Judsen only the small nod of recognition he required of any
crew member.

'She's adapting superbly,' Mercer said
before he could ask. 'Two more treatments and it'll be complete.'

'Excellent,' Judsen said flatly. 'How
long before she can go outside?'

'Another day,' Mercer said. 'If she keeps
making good progress.'

'Do you enjoy your work, doctor?' The
words escaped before he could think about them.

'I – hmmm.' Mercer was looking at him
coolly. 'I enjoy doing it to the best of my ability. I enjoy a successful
outcome. What are you implying, sir?'

'I – I'm sorry. I spoke out of turn.'

'Commander...' The scientist's voice
had an unaccustomed note of gentleness. ' If we had an alternative,
don't you think we'd be using it? Life on Earth will be impossible within
generations. Mars is barely self-sufficient, probably unsustainably
so. We don't have the resources to modify every planet to suit our people.'

Judsen nodded. He knew the rationale
of the operation as well as the scientist. 'So we modify our people
to suit the planets we find.'

'Human flesh is the only resource we
have too much of,' Mercer said.

'People went into cold sleep on Earth
as human beings and will wake up on an alien world as - something else,'
Judsen said. 'And they wonder why only eight percent of the population
chose to join the colony fleet.'

'The best alternative. Not an ideal one,'
Mercer said. 'Our descendants in all the xenomorphed colonies won't
be truly human, but there will be some shred of human DNA left in them.
Given long enough, who knows? The old form may reassert itself.'

'Maybe,' Judsen said. He remembered Lieutenant
Yesipova, half-crushed by only the ship's single G, squawking her discomfort
and shedding clumps of feathery skin. Crewman Schino, retreating into
his newly-formed carapace, blinded by the ship's lights. Lukas, confined
to a tank of water as his skeleton turned to rubber. Hundreds of colonists
had been modified to the same genotype in each case, once it had been
proven it could survive unassisted on the world it had been created
for. It would be tens of thousands of years before any of these worlds
achieved interstellar flight - it was absurd to imagine any of them
would truly remember their origins by that time, let alone recognise
their cousins on other worlds.

We are seeding the stars for a holocaust
beyond imagining, Judsen thought. Blind hatred, prejudice, slaughter
and extermination. Maybe the most fundamentally human part of us will
survive after all.

*

He spent part of the morning in a meeting
with the head of Ship Systems, discussing how to reallocate duties across
Life Support. It had been casually suggested, early in the mission,
that the whole crew be modestly xenomorphed to require less oxygen and
a lower mean temperature, but this had been flatly dismissed by Fleet
Command – a principled position that Judsen had never quite understood.

He went back to his cabin at midday and
was startled to find she was there. She had known his basic access codes
for some time – in more ways than one, he thought bleakly - but her
presence seemed at odds with her attitude towards him since - since
the experiment had begun.

She was asleep, curled up on the bed.
The white hairs had spread to cover all of the skin he could see, except
her face, the soles of her feet and the palms of her hands. It was much
thicker in the areas where it had first appeared: not hair, he realised,
but fur. Now he looked closer he could see the angles of her face looked
sharper, more pronounced, and her hands and feet were actually elongated.
He sighed.

Kana snapped awake at the tiny noise,
staring at him with instant, reflexive ferocity. He flinched back automatically
and the woman he recognised came partly back. 'Sorry,' she mumbled.

'It's okay. How do you feel?'

'Hot.' He noticed the air conditioning
was pumping cold air into the cabin, but she still looked uncomfortable.

'You should talk to Mercer about getting
a freezer suit, just for now,' Judsen said.

She sat up, wriggled. 'Was going to.'

'Why – what are you doing here?' He couldn't
think of a less direct way to phrase the question.

'Private.' She looked at the wall chronometer.
'Due in Medical now.'

He nodded. 'All right. If you want
to... you can come back here.'

Kana looked at him, but it was already
hard to identify the emotion on her face. 'Olaf – I was wrong – I ...'

Her communicator beeped. 'Technician
Araki, please report to Medical.' It was Mercer's voice.

'I understand. You should go,' Judsen
said.

She got smoothly up, stooping a little,
he thought, walking on the balls of her feet. Her hand squeezed his
briefly and then he was alone.

*

Within two hours a major data packet
came in over the tachyon beam, an update on the colony project from
Fleet Command, incorporating figures from all the scout, science, and
freezer ships, information on new xenoform types that had been generated,
updated guidelines on which types of planet were proving preferable
in terms of colony size, and so on. The situation back in the home system
was barely referred to.

It was evening before he had assimilated
it all, passed the relevant sections on to his department heads, and
written and transmitted the various responses that Command always expected.
By then he was too tired for anything beyond a brief check on the ship's
status and a meal. Everything was in the green, with only one item that
held his attention for more than a moment: they were taking Kana outside
in the morning.

*

He woke early, breakfasted, and met the
others at the airlock. Kana was definitely fighting the instinct to
crouch. She was wearing a freezer suit, but her elongated hands and
feet were thickly furred, the nails becoming dark claws. Her nose and
jaw were beginning to distend into a snout and her ears were pointed.
It looked like her naturally dark hair was thinning, usurped by the
white fur.

Judsen greeted Mercer and his team and
they started getting into their own heated suits, even as Kana fumbled
to remove hers. For a moment they were united in their discomfort as
they stepped into the airlock, then the exterior doors opened and the
Arctic blast of the atmosphere from outside hit them. They trudged into
the open, snugging masks and gloves more firmly into place. Kana skipped
lightly ahead of them, bent almost double, covered in thick pale fur
beneath her drab green vest and shorts. It was below zero but she showed
no signs of discomfort - in fact she seemed more lively and interested
in her surroundings than she had since the experiment began.

Mercer was monitoring her vitals on a
handheld readout. His expression was hidden by his mask and hood, but
he nodded to Judsen after a moment. 'Good so far.'

Judsen returned the nod. He noticed Kana
was looking at them, squatting on her haunches, leaning forward and
resting her weight on her arms. Her head was cocked, obviously indicating
interest, but... I don't even recognise her as another human
being, let alone my woman, Judsen thought. And my reaction to
that is...? I've been doing this for too long.

He was suddenly badly nauseous. To hide
his discomfort he turned away from the others. 'Proceed as you think
best, Doctor.'

The main object of the exercise was to
see if Kana could survive in her new habitat unassisted, and it looked
like she could - at least in the short term. Mercer asked her to exert
herself, and she was happy to oblige, bounding off towards some low
hills in the middle distance, on all fours part of the time, like a
true quadruped.

'I thought bipedality was the preferred
mode,' Judsen said as the white-and-green dot receded.

'Ideally. Here, though, the subspecies
will be predatory, so being a quadruped will most likely improve viability.'

'Will she keep her hands?'

'To some extent. Binocular vision and
the opposable thumb are the elements we always retain, of course. In
a marginal environment like this one...' Mercer shrugged. 'We have to
push the fundamentals hard.' He went back to studying the handheld.

Judsen left him and went back to do an
eyeball inspection of the ship's exterior. It looked like they would
be leaving soon, so he needed to get Ship Systems onto any obvious problems.
The great machine seemed intact beneath the layers of frost it had accumulated.
He allowed himself a moment's wonder as to where its final resting place
would be, when there were so few crew left the mission could not continue.
In theory, then they would all be transformed into the subspecies designed
for whatever planet they were on, and become part of the final colony.
He contemplated that, then went back inside.

Mercer's report was with him by the end
of the day - preliminary findings were that sapiens arakii
was wholly viable, another day and it would be definite. The science
team were already preparing the genome information for transmission
to the freezer ship, so they could begin to modify the colonists there.

I need to get some perspective, Judsen
thought. This is a positive thing, another world which will have humans
– post-humans – living on it, after Earth is dead and forgotten. Mankind
will survive, one way or another.

*

Initially there had been suggestions
of leaving some monument to the colony's true origins on each seeded
world, so that if they developed a technologically advanced civilisation
they might have some vague inkling of where they had come from. It had
been judged a waste of time and resources. Even giving the colony worlds
proper names was viewed as a pointlessly romantic affectation.

The xenoforms were to be given no record
of their parent culture, no material support at all. As Mercer had said,
they were short of every resource but human flesh. The colony would
begin without shelter, without tools, naked. There were no plans to
return to any of them - the great diaspora out into the galaxy, the
creation of new colonies, took precedence. Though some were scathing
of the fact that the vast majority of human beings had chosen to die
on Earth, the fact remained that there were still millions of colonists
to be placed somewhere. The carrying capacity of each world was yet
another thing to be considered.

The following morning Judsen went out
again to see Mercer. The scientist, his team, and Kana had come in at
dusk but gone out again at first light. As ever, Mercer's attention
seemed fixated on the instrument in front of him. There was no sign
of Kana anywhere.

'She's enjoying the freedom of movement
she now has out here,' Mercer said. He sounded pleased. 'Her speed and
stamina are formidable. Did you know there are bigger herbivores living
north of here? I think packs of colonists could successfully hunt them.'

Since when did people come in packs?
Judsen thought numbly. 'I see. Doctor, you know why I'm here.'

Mercer nodded. 'The freezer ship wants
a population estimate.'

'Yes.'

'This planet can't support a large predator
population. We will have to spread the initial colonists very thinly,
one group of ten or twelve every hundred kilometres or so...'

'This is sounding like a low number,
Doctor.'

'Overpopulation will just mean pointless
wastage, Commander. Wastage of human life. As I've said all along, this
place is a marginal environment. Ten thousand colonists at the absolute
most. Preferably six or seven.'

It was what Judsen had expected. He had
no objection; to him, this seemed like a terrible place.

'Let's see what Kana's doing,' Mercer
said.

Judsen followed him, using the signals
from the sensors on her body to trace her location. 'How are you doing,
Commander?' Mercer asked without preamble.

'What?'

'I'm chief medical officer as well as
head of science,' Mercer said gently, almost sounding amused. 'You seem...
withdrawn. This can't have been easy for you.'

Judsen harrumphed. 'I hope my performance
of my duties is still acceptable. Moving the mission forward is the
only thing that matters, surely? We have no alternative.'

'I would sound like a hypocrite if I
argued with you, I suppose,' Mercer said. 'The race has had its time
of freedom and choice and overindulged itself too much already. Old
habits die hard, though.'

'Kana said the same thing, not long ago.'

'A wise young woman. And here's one old
habit she's discarded.' Mercer stooped and grabbed a swatch of ragged
green fabric from the ground. They looked at it in silence.

'How do you rate their chances here?'
Judsen asked.

Mercer shrugged. 'Provided the climate
stays stable, they should survive. Beyond that...'

'There's no wood to make fire. Almost
impossible to use the vegetation for anything but food. Usable rocks
and minerals buried under permafrost and glaciers.'

'I don't predict a technically-sophisticated
culture developing here, true. But I'm not God. This is a new world.
Anything could happen here, given time.'

They crested a low hill. In the distance
a small herd of grey animals was browsing the vegetation. Between the
two men and the herd the ground rolled, and low to it crept the white-furred
creature Kana had become, lithe and graceful, hugging every contour,
eyes fixed on the nearest herbivore.

Judsen found he was holding his breath
and then suddenly the creature was a blur, the animals scattering clumsily,
already too late, predator barrelling into prey, knocking it down, jaws
snapping tight and driving sharp teeth into flesh and bone...

'You were saying, Doctor?' he asked quietly.

Mercer did not reply. They went down
the slope and across to where the Kana-creature was ripping at the flesh
of the kill. She glanced briefly at them and yapped once - acknowledgement?
a greeting? There had been nothing resembling speech in the noise. The
shape of her body, the articulation of her limbs, everything had changed.
Only the eyes and her odd, fingered front paws betrayed her heritage.

'You seem healthy,' said Mercer, matter-of-factly.
'Do you feel well?' The creature rolled her head and yapped again.

'Well, it's just a question now of whether
you want to come back to the ship...' A whine. 'You don't need to. The
transformation is complete and stable. Your eggs and stem cells now
carry the adjusted genome. You're ready for your life here.'

The creature did not respond, concentrated
on eviscerating and devouring the dead herbivore. Finally, she rose
onto all fours, pelt stained pink with the blood of the kill. She looked
at them, growl-yipped, then stared away across the tundra, almost in
frustration.

'It's all right. You can go,' Judsen
said. 'Good luck.'

The creature bobbed her head, turned
and sprang away across the flat landscape. In a surprisingly short space
of time she was out of sight.

'A brave young woman,' Mercer said, perhaps
a little awkwardly.

'You can only be brave if you have a
choice,' Judsen said. 'Let's head back.'

*

The next day the Araki prototype was
formally adjudged a success, and the process of passing on the modified
genetic information and other data to the freezer ship began in earnest.

Judsen reviewed the process when he wasn't
assessing what they were receiving from the scouts about their next
destination, a hot, wet, world of oceans dotted with rocky islands.
More promising than this place, perhaps. He found himself struggling
to concentrate, knew any fall-off in his performance would inevitably
be noted by the computers. An inefficient commander - a bad commander
- was at least as expendable as a Life Support Technician, he thought,
if not more so. It was procedure, not a question of choice. No choices
any more - it was written into the blood of the human race to struggle
to survive, even if that meant stopping being human at all.

He was drifting again, there was work
to do.

To hell with it, maybe there were still
choices after all. He got a bottle of whiskey from stores and took it
back to his cabin.

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