Mars Needs Milkers

Long ago, Mars was a thriving, bustling planet. Its three billion inhabitants lived in peace and harmony, enjoying the fruits of an industrialized society. They had even ventured out into space, having managed to send their very first satellite into orbit. They had hoped to find their place in the universe. What they discovered was an asteroid.

They glimpsed it as it passed by the third planet at a leisurely 95,000 km per hour, the asteroid's mass causing only minor perturbations in their sunward neighbor's gravity. Earth's inhabitants did not notice this, the most advanced of them having only just mastered the casting of iron. Martians did not know that the blue planet held life, although many writers of speculative fiction posited that there might be. They often fancifully referred to their imaginary creations as little green men, for what else could live on a planet that was almost entirely covered by water?

The maths involved in calculating the asteroid's trajectory were fairly basic, even with the gravitational pulls of three moons—their planet lay directly in its path. Moving at breakneck speed, the Martian people used every minute of the twenty-four days they had to prepare for the worst, fully knowing that the worst was more than they could possibly cope with.

The asteroid did not hit Mars, at least not directly. It slammed into its largest moon, pulverizing it, millions upon millions of tonnes of rock splattered outward into the solar system—the birth of the asteroid belt. Not all of the collateral damage caused by the celestial nine-ball game ended up cruising towards Jupiter, however. A measly one-tenth of one percent of the impact debris was propelled planet-side, the vast majority of it vaporizing as it entered Mars's atmosphere. The remaining white-hot rock that had made it through was more than enough to destroy all life on the surface a hundred times over.

But not

below

the surface. Having had at least a little warning, the Martians had moved as much of their population, culture, and technology as deep below ground as they could in as many places as they could. It wasn't enough. Those who had been chosen to survive, smart and tough as they were, were no match for the buckling of tectonic plates and the violent shifting of the major land masses.

When all was said and done, only one group of Martians managed to ride out the cataclysm, in an enclave near the equator. Just one ten-thousandth of one percent of the original pre-Asteroid population of Mars survived to witness the birth of a second Stone Age.

Beaten, battered, and bruised, the remaining Martians did not give up, generation after generation clinging to life, clawing and scrabbling to survive out of sheer bloody-mindedness. And they did survive...just.

The few remaining clan lines—numbering just less than thirty thousand individuals—managed to carve out a life underground, a slow and laborious process. It took them almost three thousand years to restore their technology to pre-asteroid levels, but they did it, only to be hit with the final death blow—plague.

Like the asteroid, it did not affect them directly, the plague striking their animal population, specifically the ruminants. In three months' time every last mammal capable of producing milk was dead, the Martians' major source of calcium wiped out in a single season. There were still plant resources that they could turn to, but those resources were already strained. Conservative estimates, even with the implementation of stringent rationing, gave them slightly more than forty years to live.

Unable to feed their young, the Martians' backs were against a wall. An outside observer might wonder why Martian females couldn't make up the difference. They were certainly built for it, their mammary glands being quite sizable, a benefit of their planet's low gravity. On paper they should be able to, the males too, for Martians being clones by nature were built much alike, with only those key differences necessary to make procreation possible. But the ability to lactate, like other evolutionary traits such as prehensile tails or the ability to change one's skin color to match their environment, had been lost long ago.

Resigned to the certain death of their people and culture, a few Martians returned to the surface of their ruined planet, so that they might erect an antenna by which they might broadcast their plight to the universe, a beacon to attract anyone who might be listening. Of course they knew the chance of another species picking up their signal and being close enough to render aid in the time they had remaining was effectively zero, but still they had to try.

But effectively zero is not zero. They had only just begun construction on the antenna when an enterprising scientist thought it might be a good idea to listen first. To her astonishment, she heard a broadcast emanating only twelve and one-half minutes away—

the third planet held life!

Repeated forays upon the surface (wearing improvised pressure suits and using cobbled-together sensors) confirmed that their sunward neighbor teemed with life, and what was more the dominant life form was mammalian, not so very different from themselves.

Hope was kindled! The Martians rigged receivers on the planet's surface, watching and learning and studying every aspect of the alien beings, primarily by watching their television broadcasts, a primitive medium to say the least, though their black and white programming was possessed of a certain artistry.

The humans, for that was what the people of the third planet called themselves, were divided into two distinct genders. There were the males, who lacked functional mammary glands (as well as properly sized penises, if their artistic works were to be believed) and were generally bigger and stronger than the females, whose mammary glands were also similarly underdeveloped. And like themselves, the humans were omnivorous, sustaining—

gorging!

—themselves upon the flesh of their fellow mammals, especially the beings they called cows, whose milk was plentiful and evidently nourishing.

Could that work for them?

they wondered. Could they subordinate an alien life form and use it to sustain themselves? It would be a gamble, for in studying the humans it was learned that they were a violent, unstable people, though whether this was due to a flaw in their genetic makeup or an underlying psychosis triggered by their undersized sexual characteristics the Martians did not know. It was considered unlikely that the humans would simply give another life form their own livestock. No, they would have to take it for themselves.

Working with single-minded determination, a hallmark of clones, the Martians resurrected their long dormant space program, working from millennias-old engineering plans. It took fifteen years and many failures to get the first viable spacecraft ready for interplanetary flight. Many within the clans felt that England should be chosen as the initial landing site, as that was where the original television broadcasts had originated. Wiser heads prevailed, however, citing the need for secrecy, which would be difficult to maintain in light of that country's high population density. There was also the fact that the entire planet had only just emerged from the shadow of a destructive nuclear war, which meant that the whole of Earth would be on a heightened security footing. North America was chosen instead, due to its lower population density, but also because the television broadcasts coming from the area called the United Sates indicated a less sophisticated populace that could be easily manipulated should the need arise.

Ri'yah Qwixxen was tapped to command the first mission to Earth. She was chosen out of a field of nearly one thousand candidates, her ability to think quickly under pressure and arrive at creative solutions to complex problems winning her the captain's chair. She would have two spacecraft under her command: her own vessel, the

Jhoun'shu

, plus another one, the

Jhoun'xhe

, piloted by sub-captain Ma'shon Grraut, who would take command if her superior were incapacitated or killed (the asteroid had taught the Martians the value of redundancy).

The ships were small, crewing four apiece. It was primarily a reconnaissance mission, the objective to ascertain whether the humans' cows could be co-opted for their survival, for it was still unknown if Martians could even assimilate the milk of Earth cows.

Each ship had a cargo hold large enough to accommodate one breeding pair, should Ri'yah and her crew manage to retrieve viable specimens. When the day came for their departure, there were no ticker tape parades or speeches. The Martian people knew that this was not a journey of exploration, but a last-ditch effort at survival. It was not an occasion for cheering.

The take-offs went smoothly, the newer ion propulsion engines being vastly superior to the chemical rockets their ancestors had used. It would take forty-four days for the ships to achieve Earth orbit, observing strict radio silence every minute of their journey. They arrived without incident, injecting themselves into Earth orbit with the precision that comes from extensive preparation and persistent drilling. The first orbit was the most nerve-wracking—would the Earth people know they were there? Passive long-range scans had not picked up so much as a satellite, which the Earth people appeared not to have. They might have ground installations, thus making satellites obsolete or unnecessary, but the prevailing consensus among analysts was that Earth technology was still in its infancy.

For twenty-four hours they listened, monitoring all major radio and television traffic for any signs that would indicate that the humans were alerted to their presence. Everything appeared normal. Under cover of darkness, the two ships entered American airspace above the area called Arizona, using the clouds for additional camouflage wherever possible, and traveling at a rate consistent with commercial air traffic. All of these precautions should have been completely unnecessary, as their ships were coated with a radar-absorbent paint, but one could never be too careful when invading another planet. They began their descent over the Grand Canyon, an excellent navigation landmark. Their target was a place called Texas, which Martian Intelligence said had sufficient cattle that two among them would never be missed.

It was over New Mexico that the trailing

Jhoun'xhe

was hit, a nuclear blast directly beneath the ship instantly crippling its electronics and sending it into a nosedive. Unblinking, Ri'yah monitored her sister ship's descent until it crashed into the desert floor below. She did not shed a tear over her fallen compatriots. They had known the risks, and she had a mission to complete. Thinking quickly, she ordered a green alert followed by a course change—northeast, toward their backup target, an area called Wisconsin.

For the next three hours they awaited their turn. Ri'yah had no idea how the Americans could have spotted the

Jhoun'xhe

. All of their intelligence had indicated that the U.S. surveillance and detection capabilities were limited to radar and line-of-sight. She supposed their sister ship might have flown too low and inadvertently triggered a pressure mine, or perhaps some small patch of the radar-absorbent paint had ablated away from her hull during entry into Earth's atmosphere. It was also possible that war might have broken out again, she considered, though she was pretty sure they would have mentioned something about that on their radio. There was also the possibility that they might have flown over a nuclear weapons facility during a test, which she dismissed as nonsense—what kind of culture would be suicidal enough to detonate a nuclear warhead on their own soil?

Ri'yah cancelled the green alert once they made it to Wisconsin. That leg of the journey had been without incident, which was fortunate since weapons control had been damaged beyond repair by the nuke, as had their long-range communications array. They could still receive local traffic, but they lacked the power to boost a signal home, and Mars was not about to broadcast a message to them until they knew it was safe to do so. They were on their own.

They landed in a field, an expanse of farmland all about them and a house and barn close by. Again they listened to the local radio and television traffic for any news of suspicious activity in the area. Nothing sounded out of the ordinary, and sensors indicated no significant movement within a thousand meter radius. They also analyzed the outside air, finding it more oxygenated than what they were used to, but entirely breathable just the same. This meant that they could do without helmets, which would make communication easier. Lastly, they checked the air for pathogens—it wouldn't do to come all this way just to get killed by some flu bug. At midnight local time they vented the ship to atmosphere.

Having earned the honor, Ri'yah was the first to set foot on the alien world. It was a warm night, this hemisphere's summer being only weeks away. Despite her pressure suit being built to compensate for Earth's heavy gravity—two and a half times greater than what she was used to—she felt fatigued. Not by the increased weight but by the weight of history. Her people might well live or die tonight. If the Earth cows were not a viable nutrition source for them, they would perish forever.

The barn was a little more than two hundred meters away, barely visible in the moonless night. Ri'yah recognized it as such, having seen enough footage of Earth farms and ranches to last a lifetime. Moving cautiously, she and her junior officer Lieutenant Mi'rad Chuvan made their way across the field, leaving sub-captain Su'led Tri in charge. If anything untoward happened, if they were captured or killed, Tri would blast off for home and another mission could be mounted.

The yard that fronted the barn was lit by a single bulb, making concealment impossible, but being the middle of the night it was unlikely that anyone would be awake to see them. No, the real worry was whether there was a watchdog nearby. Ri'yah had seen footage of them as well; Intelligence had advised burning them on sight.

The Earth cow mooed softly when she opened the door. There was just the one cow in the barn, standing in an open-frame wooden stall. That was fine, as one cow was all they needed, at least for now. Leaving Chuvan as lookout, Ri'yah moved further into the barn, her suit lights giving off a soft glow, enabling her to navigate the dark space without fear of bumping into anything. The animal did not appear frightened of her, although milk leaked from its pendulous teats. Whether this was from fear or anticipation, Riyah did not know, but she was pleased that getting a sample would be easier than anticipated.

Moving slowly but surely, she entered the cow's stall. Trying not to spook the animal, she removed her outer gloves and retrieved a crystalline phial from her belt. Cautiously, she reached a trembling hand out and patted the cow, just as she had practiced on the mock-ups during her training. The cow snuffled but otherwise did nothing. Smiling, Ri'yah reached down and placed the phial beneath the heavy udder, then tugged on the dangling teat.

Milk jetted from the teat, coating the inside of the phial. Feeling emboldened, Ri'yah tugged again, and was rewarded with another stream of milk, the stuff of life, so freely available on this planet, but which had already cost the lives of four of her people. Another two tugs and the phial was full. From his post by the barn door, Lieutenant Chuvan watched as his captain retrieved the portable tester from her belt. It had one purpose: to tell them whether the toil, struggle and risks of the last fifteen years had been worth it, or whether the Martian people would end up a forgotten culture, perhaps like so many unknown others that had lived and died without having left behind evidence of their existence.

With bated breath, Ri'yah poured a minute amount of the white milk into the little funnel-shaped depression at the top of the tester, not spilling so much as a drop. It was a simple enough test, the little lights on the face of the unit telling them whether the milk would be suitable for their purposes. A minute passed without result, after which one of the lights illuminated: it was red. Ri'yah looked up to find Lieutenant Chuvan smiling back at her—

success!

Exultant, Ri'yah raised the phial to her lips and drank off the remains of the sample. Her triumphant expression vanished in an instant, to be replaced moments later by a rictus of disgust as she spat the milk violently onto the barn floor.

"Ri'yah?" asked Chuvan, no longer smiling. If his captain were poisoned, if the tester had been wrong, they might all be dead.

"It tastes...awful!" answered Ri'yah, bent at the waist, her hands on her knees as she continued spitting the sour-tasting milk out of her mouth. "We can't possibly subsist on this!"

Chuvan laughed. "That's what you're worried about, the taste? We can always—" but what they could always do was lost as Chuvan's head exploded into a fine mist of blood and brains.

"Holy shit!" crowed a voice outside the barn, followed by a confused, "What the fuck...?"

Her combat training kicking into gear, Ri'yah dropped to one knee, cut her suit lights, and drew her burner. Using the cow for cover, she waited, her eyes becoming quickly becoming acclimated to the darkness, which was little different than the underground caverns she had grown up in. The long barrel of a rifle appeared in the doorway of the barn after a minute, followed a few seconds later by the man holding it. He was tall and broad, and his skin had that strange pale pink coloration that most North Americans had, rather than the more attractive dusky blue of Martians. The Earthman kicked at Chuvan's foot, apparently unconvinced that obliterating a person's skull would be necessarily fatal.

Her orders were to kill only if the situation required it—she felt this qualified. She waited until the man took a few more steps into the barn before pressing the button on the side of her burner. There was only one setting. Ri'yah watched dispassionately as the figure of the farmer glowed red, every cell in his body, his clothing, even his primitive firearm, instantly reaching supernova temperature before losing molecular cohesion. The interior of the barn glowed brightly for a few moments as the farmer's body changed state from a solid to a red hot plasma in the space of a second. The energetic gas hung in the air for a few seconds, after which it began to dissipate, the red glow fading into nothingness, leaving behind a thin layer of molten glass on the dirt floor of the barn.

Revulsed, Ri'yah shook her head. So far this mission of discovery had cost the lives of five crew and one human, and all they had managed to discover was that the milk her people so desperately needed was entirely undrinkable. Cursing under her breath in Martian, she walked over to her fallen comrade, grabbed him by the leg, and dragged his lifeless body over to the puddle of glass that had been the farmer, then vaporized him as well.

She turned to the cow, which looked at her interestedly but without any apparent understanding. There was a length of rope hanging from the side of its stall. She supposed she could loop it around the beast's neck and walk it back to the ship. Perhaps the biologists back home could do something to make the animal's milk more palatable.

"W-Woodrow?"

Ri'yah turned on the spot. Standing in the doorway of the barn was another human, a woman this time, judging by her long hair and mode of dress, but more so by her mammary glands, which were clearly outlined by the light filtering in from behind her. They were rather larger than the ones she had seen in her training videos. In fact, they were almost Martian-sized.