THREE         

     The Haskins expedition had come to a harsh and inhospitable world four centuries ago. They were the Earth Confederation’s very first interstellar exploratory expedition, some ten thousand pioneer men and women dispatched in a slower than light-speed  starcraft for the express purposes of exploration and colonization. The binary star system of Alpha Centauri AB was chosen primarily because of its relative proximity to  Earth, and even so the members of the Haskins party--in the deep sleep of a cryogenic stasis designed to suspend normal human aging--took more than forty years to be awakened at their destination.

     The spectroscopic and spectrometric analyses of Earth’s scientists had indicated that the fifth planet orbiting Alpha Centauri B was likely Earth-like and habitable. The colonists’ mission was simple: locate and colonize any Earthlike planet orbiting Alpha Centauri A or B. If there were no such planet--or none that could be made habitable with the very limited terraforming equipment aboard the Green Horizon--then the colonists were simply to re-enter cryogenic hibernation and return to Earth.

     Coming out of their long cryogenic sleep, Haskins and his party had discovered that their craft’s star drive and life support systems had been damaged beyond repair when the Green Horizon  encountered an asteroid belt in the planetary system of Alpha Centauri B. Planetary scans showed that the star system had no Earth-like planets. The analyses of Earth scientists had been mistaken or cosmically outdated, as none of the eight planets orbiting the star would be capable of sustaining human life without comprehensive terraforming which was well beyond the capability of the Green Horizon’s available equipment and supplies.

     The craft’s damaged engines had barely enough momentum power to arrive at and attain orbit around the closest planet--the third from the star, Alpha Centauri B-III. The planet’s atmosphere was of a lethal methane-ammonia composition. But then, the starcraft’s failing life support systems would not sustain them for long. Not having any other apparent choice, Haskins ordered the astrogators to use the Green Horizon’s little remaining engine power to land on the planet.

     The ten thousand colonists--in the face of dwindling life support aboard their craft--worked round the clock to build a miniature domed compound large enough to house all the colonists and with a generator simulating an Earth-like atmosphere. The colonists’ erection of the atmospheric domed community settlement was an amazing feat. But the artificial atmosphere was not self-replenishing on an indefinite basis. The engineers estimated that with ten thousand colonists, the atmosphere would be exhausted within one Earth year. For all their efforts, the colonists had merely postponed certain death. It appeared that they had to become resigned to their fate and prepare to die.

     Haskins had sent out into space the first distress message which the Aurora would intercept four centuries later. He knew that sending the message was a futile gesture; obviously the message traveled so slowly through space that it could not possibly be intercepted by Earth or any Earth vessel within one year. The message might only be intercepted within the time remaining to the colonists if Earth--after the Green Horizon’s departure--had developed some radically faster form of interstellar spacecraft and if such a spacecraft were in a spatial position to receive the message. Talk about long odds, Haskins thought. But he transmitted the message into deep space just the same. 

      Then one day the alien scout craft came. Haskins and his second-in-command--Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Turden--had been on the observation deck of the control tower in the dome, watching apprehensively as the alien craft fired bursts of deceleration energy to bring the craft to rest atop a craggy knoll off in the distance and away from the human domed community. The aliens opened hailing frequencies and--with the use of inter-language translation equipment--the commanding officers of the human domed colony and the commanders of the alien craft communicated. The broadcast included video so that both groups could see each other, and Haskins and Turden viewed for the first time the bipedal lizard-like creatures in shimmering silver uniforms. 

     The alien lizards made a proposal.

                                 ***    

     “I will have no part of it,” said Haskins after the communication ended.

     “Is dying better?” demanded Turden.

     “At least we can die like men, with dignity,” said Haskins. “I think that I will assemble the colony, explain this to all of them, and then put it to a vote.”

     “And what if the majority votes against it?” Turden glared at him. “They will never turn themselves over to the lizards, once the lizards’ intentions are known. What is to keep the lizards from just taking what they want? Without the officers to help them manage the human community, they will enslave us all.”

     “They may do that in the end--even after our cooperation,” said Haskins. “How do you know that they will keep their word?”   

     “It is all we have,” said Turden. He also believed that the lizards wanted human leaders to manage humans because the lizards’ project entailed not only the present human community but all future human generations.

     Haskins looked at Turden in disgust. “Forget it,” he said. “I am going to tell the entire colony.”

                                 ***

     Only a few hours later the human domed colony was surrounded by more than a dozen of the alien crafts. Turden had re-opened communications with the commander of the initial lizard craft, and warned that Haskins would not cooperate and was seeking to rouse the other colonists to arms against the lizards.

     Then Turden, assisted by junior officers that he had persuaded to his position, opened the airlocks on the dome and then scores of the lizards--clad in pressure suits because the planet’s atmosphere was as lethal to them as to the humans--ran down gang planks from their landed crafts and streamed into the dome. The human resistance was futile, as only a scattered hand-full of the colonists had managed to arm themselves upon Haskins’ warning and call to arms.

     The lizards fired off energy bursts from their weapons--turning the resisting colonists into seared-flesh fireballs, rolling and thrashing about the decks as they were burned alive, screeching. The other human colonists soon threw down arms and surrendered.

     “You filthy bastard!” cried Haskins. He was a large and powerfully built man,  and he would have easily choked Turden had not one of Turden’s lieutenants brought down the stock of a rifle onto the back of Haskins’ head, and for Haskins everything went black.

                                 ***

    The colonists were easily corralled. The domed community quickly came to assume the nature of a prison compound, the companies of lizard guards forcing the colonists--both men and women--to first strip completely naked and then to don coveralls of a grey drab alien fabric. The lizards fastened electronic necklaces around the human necks. Turden understood that the necklaces were capable of receiving remotely transmitted signals that could alternately transmit feelings of great pleasure neurologically--analogous to an orgasm--as lizard commands were obeyed. And excruciating pain, insanity, and death--in that order--whenever lizard commands were resisted. Haskins was made a prisoner in the same fashion.

     Haskins and the rest of them watched expectantly to see what would be the fate of Turden and his lieutenants after the other colonists were shackled and arranged in semi-circle standing formations in the center of the compound.

     Turden and a lizard commander stood facing one another. Haskins could see the fear etched into Turden’s face as it became drained of all color, Turden looking into the staring ochre eyes of the lizard commander. The creature wore a translator device about its neck. The edges of the lizard’s mouth peeled back in something that appeared--equally likely--to be a smile or a snarl as the jagged, pointed teeth were displayed.

     Then the lizard commander threw one of the energy-disbursement weapons into the air for Turden to catch in hand, a sigh of relief escaping Turden’s lips as a delayed chill ran up his spine. Some other lizard guards passed weapons around to Turden’s renegade junior officers. 

    The lizard commander spoke, emitting some gurgling, guttural sounds that were almost instantly translated--by the device about the creature’s neck--into the late twenty-first century English dialect of General Haskins’ time. “You have made a wise decision,” the lizard told Turden. “You are safe and will always be well-treated so long as you maintain your allegiance to us.”

     The lizard paused and cast a look over toward Haskins, who stood with hands tied behind his back, in the forefront of the shackled, grey-clad colonists. Haskins said something and then a murmur of jeers spread around the other human colonists. The sound was contagious, filling the chamber with the colonists’ unified hatred of Turden and the lizards.

     “It is regrettable that your former commander is not as wise as you,” said the lizard commander to Turden. “You must deal with him, and soon  . . . or we will have to deal with him for you.”

     The lizard commander’s true name in its own tongue was difficult for the Earth men to pronounce. Turden and the lizard decided that the closest translation into late twenty-first century English--which would come to be called “Colonial English” within Turden’s lifetime--was the sound of the word spelled phonetically as Cestu. So the renegade human guards of the Earth colony came to call the lizard commander Cestu. For the balance of his lifetime Turden would work with Cestu to manage the human colony.

                                 ***    

     Haskins was unable to sleep at nights. He would always awake in the darkened dormitory-like sleeping quarters. His eyes would adjust to darkness, and then he would discern the row upon row of beds in which slept the human colonist prisoners. For some weeks now he had been rousing various colonists and they would all huddle on the floor in the darkness, whispering. Haskins was seeking desperately to plot some form of organized resistance.

     The necklaces that they wore appeared not to be omniscient. No pain or death came at the mere mention of rebellion against the lizards. But Haskins still cringed at what he had seen done to one man who had, one day, refused to obey routine lizard orders to organize the compound in the dome to house the human prisoners. A lizard held a neural transmitter in its green, rough-skinned, six-fingered hand. The lights on the man’s necklace had flashed red and blinking, eliciting from the man a high-pitched scream.

     Still the man had refused to perform any requested actions from the lizard. The charges into his nervous system had become more and more intense until, finally, the man’s mental faculties were completely burned out. He was catatonic, a mental vegetable. The man having become a useless burden to the lizards, one of the lizard guards fired off an energy burst--searing the man’s flesh and igniting him into a fireball on the deck.

     Haskins had watched as the fire gradually died out, the air full of smoke and carrying an odor like roasted beef. The embers still glowed in the dead man’s blackened flesh. And then at last there were mere ashes.

                                 ***

     Even the sight of that had not kept them from talking in the night--as useless as it might have been. And then one night--shortly before the colonists’ sleep curfew--Haskins managed to slip away from the other colonists. The lizards and their human renegade compatriots were not looking in his direction; so Haskins made his way to the communications station in the former control tower. Neither lizard nor human guards were in the immediate area, as there was no interest in communications.

     Seated at the communications station, Haskins could see--over the surrounding metal balustrade--a contingent of lizard guards that had just captured a group of human colonists hiding in a remote area of the dome. The lizards roughly stripped naked the colonists--both men and women--and herded the colonists about. Then the lizards placed shackles on the still struggling colonists that shouted and cursed at the lizards. Haskins then transmitted into space the second message that Landry would view before arrival at the planet some four centuries in Haskins’ future.

     Then Haskins heard them, the steps coming up the metal stairs below the balustrade. A group of armed human guards swarmed onto the communications deck. At the forefront of the group was Turden.

     The man is a total coward, thought Haskins. Turden could barely force himself to look Haskins in the eye. “I’m sorry, Tim,” he said. “You know why we are here. I am told that I must deal with you, or they deal with you.” He paused and swallowed. “I had thought that you might rather it be us.”

     “You spineless son of a bitch!” exclaimed Haskins. “You are even worse than the lizard scum.” He paused, resigned to it all, accepting that he was about to die. “All of you--go to hell!”   

     “I am afraid that you will have to go there first,” said Turden evenly, but with a sigh.

     Haskins rose to his feet from the communications station and went to stand before Turden. Before Turden could step away, Haskins had spit in his face.

     “Enough,” said Turden, mopping away the spittle with the side of his hand. A couple of Turden’s lieutenants tackled Haskins and wrenched him to the deck. Haskins got himself up, dazed but still struggling and fighting back. He was running on adrenalin and the dazed feeling passed.

     He bloodied the nose of one man and likely broke the jaw of another. Then, finally, a half dozen of Turden’s men launched a coordinated volley of punches and kicks that felled Haskins.

     Haskins just managed to drag himself up to a kneeling position, glaring up at Turden who still averted his eyes. Turden nodded to one of his lieutenants. Then an alien weapon spewed a burst of energy and Haskins felt tendrils of fire and death enmesh him as he ignited and became a fireball on the deck.

                                 *** 

     The colonial engineers’ estimate--to the effect that the simulated Earth atmosphere in the dome could only last for one year with ten thousand colonists--was proving to be overly optimistic. The lizard captors--whose atmospheric and nutritional requirements were actually quite similar to Earth’s own lizards--were adding their own contribution to depleting the atmosphere and other resources of the human-constructed dome. It was now believed that the dome’s atmosphere and other resources, including synthesized food, would only extend another four months.

     But that was enough time. Under the control of the lizard and human renegade guards, the human colonists--donning alien-designed environmental pressure suits--left the human environment dome and began construction of a new replacement dome. The human prisoner labor force was building a new dome of alien design that far exceeded in scope and size the comparatively primitive and hurriedly built human dome that was erected after the Green Horizon had gone planet-side. 

     Construction of the new dome was completed in less than three Earth months in accordance with the alien design specifications which were provided to the human engineers. The lizard commander Cestu informed Turden that the dome’s atmosphere generator and other equipment were indefinitely self-replenishing so long as there was available fuel--and the human slaves would see to that as well.

     A schism of the human community into two disparate groups began during the remainder of Turden’s lifetime. Above ground, within a domed city, there was a human class of privilege. The people were gradually permitted to live, more or less autonomously, in the city’s luxury as each successive atmospheric domed compound--built by the human slave force according to lizard design specifications--became grander than the last, the ever-expanding transparent dome finally coming to house the dimensions of a sprawling, modern and beautiful mega-city with towering glass towers. The privileged human city inhabitants came in time to ride in anti-gravitational vehicles over an extensive network of streets surrounding beautifully manicured city parks.  

    These humans in the domed city ran the machinery required to maintain the dome, and also worked in factories within the city to manufacture the alien lizards’ starcrafts and weaponry which the lizards used to wage war against an interstellar civilization many light years away. This interstellar civilization included a stellar group bearing the very planet on which the lizard race had originated. The lizards which had enslaved the Haskins colony were rebels of that planet and its interstellar civilization.

     These rebel lizards also had a separate established home world and numerous outposts in stellar systems not too distant from Alfaron. The lizards were of a race of seasoned space travelers, having had for millennia a form of advanced interstellar and intergalactic travel similar to the Alliance’s quantum drive technology.

     The second branch of the human labor force on Alfaron consisted of humans who worked below ground, under guard, within and outside of the lizards’ domed underground city which had existed for centuries prior to arrival of the Haskins expedition. The humans often worked outside the environment of the underground domed city--clad in the lizard-designed pressure suits--to mine uranium ores and other materials which were used to power the domed cities both above and below ground. These humans--exposed to gamma rays and uranium radiation--were prone to cancer and radiation poisoning, and so died early deaths.

     The lizards forced the humans below ground to reproduce regularly and frequently so as to maintain the work quota. The lizard government also encouraged sexual promiscuity--even with a certain disregard of incest--among the humans in the above-ground domed city. In time the entire combined human population--both above and below ground--exploded exponentially from the original number of ten thousand colonists. The total human population was numbered in the millions when the starcraft Aurora arrived centuries later. 

     Andrew Turden believed that the lizards did not wish to recruit more humans from above ground to work in the mines. Instead, the lizards preferred to maintain the status quo as to the initial division of the two human communities. The lizards feared that the forced recruitment of humans--from the above ground domed city and into the mines--would spur rebellion. More, the structure of the two-tiered human society was useful to the lizards. So long as the privileged human class on the planet’s surface and within the domed metropolis was kept comfortable and content, that human class would only too willingly help the lizards maintain control of the human slave worker force below ground.

     Human society on the planet evolved so as to be stratified into the miserable life of workers below ground in the mines and the privileged aristocracy in the domed city above ground where the humans came to be content and no longer even required the presence of lizard and renegade human guards. As a final gesture of freedom to the humans in the above ground domed city, the lizard commanders--some two hundred years before arrival of the Aurora--would permit the inhabitants of the above ground domed city to live free of the neural neck collars. These humans came to be substantially unguarded; it was believed that their fear of the lizards would act just as effectively as the collars to guard and control them.

     The humans in the domed city above ground came to feel themselves superior to the mine workers. The privileged humans in the clean and comfortable city on the planet’s surface routinely reported to work in the alien factories. After work hours they indulged in the pursuit of art, literature, popular culture, and education; more, they even developed a propagandized culture which established a respect and esteem of the lizard government. The humans in the above ground domed city even had their own nominal government--in the form of council members descended from the original renegade officers of the Haskins colony. The council spoke for the people to the lizards and there was never any apparent problem.

     And so the four centuries and many human generations passed up to the time that Chief Prefect Jason Turden greeted the Aurora party.