Happiness: A Planet by Sam Smith

light seared through their vapour trail.
    “Guns all functioning,” Drin tonelessly reported. “Set for effective range 4 kilometres.”
    “This is what we’re going to do,” Alger pulled the ship back up until it was pointing out to space. “We’ll keep the sun behind us and go out at maximum speed. Don’t bother about accuracy, just give ‘em an all round blast. Ready?”
    “Ready.”
    “Here we go then.”
    Both men tensed themselves for the acceleration. Alger depressed the throttle, gripped the control column. Drin fought forward to keep himself over the gun grips. They were in the black of space and still accelerating. Drin glanced from right to left, right to left. And still they accelerated. Their momentum was stabilising now. Drin looked all about him. Only the unwinking stars.
              “See anything?” Alger asked him.
              “No.”
    “We’re way beyond their moon.”
    From both his tone and the expression on his face Drin saw that Alger had expected to encounter opposition to their departure.
    “You stay on the guns,” he told Drin. “I’ll lay in a course for home. Stay ready for action.”
    Alger gave the ship its destination, told it maximum speed. The stars shifted before them, steadied. Alger, his hands still on the control column, scrutinised every screen.
    “Nothing,” he said disgustedly. He nodded to the console, “When we reach maximum velocity stand down.”
    They continued on the alert for another six minutes.
    “That’s it,” Alger grunted. “Nothing there.”
    Drin let out his breath, released the grips. Flopping back in his seat he wiped his palms on the padding. Sitting back up he flexed his shoulders,
    “What do you suppose happened to the other ships?”
    “Nothing.” Alger abruptly stood, with vehemence said, “They’ve all of ‘em done a bunk.”
    “But she saw two ships destroyed.”
    “You believe a girl who talks to animals?”
    Throughout the interview Belid Keal had cradled a small furry creature, had whispered to it; and the animal had appeared to understand her words. Come the end of the interview, when she had told of the ships exploding, she had wept into the animal’s fur. The animal had licked the tears from her face. Drin Ligure had never seen a stranger sight.
    “Why would she lie?” he asked Alger.
    “You get to sense this sort of thing,” Alger called on the mystique of undefined experience to give weight to his opinion. He was standing behind Drin’s seat, swinging his arms, working the tension out of himself.
    “But what reason can she have for lying?” Drin said.
    “Who knows. Maybe she didn’t want to go, cooked up that story so she could stay home.”
    Drin thought on that,
    “Where are their ships then?”
    “You’ll see. They’ll turn up sooner or later all over the place. These planet kids go mad when they get out here. Hardly surprising, after all that light and dirt.”
    Drin brushed some of the dust from his tunic. He still did not entirely disbelieve Belid Keal’s testimony. The memory image of that creature licking the tears from her face both repelled and fascinated him. The creature itself had seemed discomfited by her tears. And, in Drin’s own experience, people who told lies, to camouflage their falsehoods, tried to make themselves appear reasonable and normal.
    “What about the freighters?” he asked Alger, “They come to the planet, load their cargoes, and they go. But do they arrive?”
    “Soon find out when we get back.” Alger was tired of the topic, “My betting is they do.”
    “Say they were attacked though,” Drin persisted. “Why weren’t we attacked?”
    “She saw no guns.” Alger wheezed as he did some kneebends, “Just the ships exploding. That make sense to you?”
    Alger was talking himself into his new opinion. Drin, though, had seen Alger’s puzzlement when they hadn’t been attacked. His subsequent anger had been at himself for having believed what they