Imagine That: Justice

Each time he had been woken, he had enjoyed a new planet. Being a loner, he neither wanted nor needed anyone's company but his own. A better life for himself he couldn't imagine. And it was interesting, looking at each new planet that came along.

Yes, it had been interesting. Sometimes, he had faced very "interesting' moments. Moments when there were minor mechanical failures, or poisonous gasses, or viral infections about, which the mothership had no cure for. Some planets had been impossible to explore. Others had been too uninteresting to bother with.

But this planet seemed a good prospect. The mothership had already sent back the signal to earth: "Conditions on planet 68433. 95 are conducive to colonization", but even at the speed of light, the message would not reach its destination for many years.

Ed took soil samples and fed them into the analyzer. He knew he didn't have to do anything, least of all work, but he found that it gave him something to think about, beside himself. He tapped his fingers impatiently as the computer hummed quietly. The results began to come out on a sheet of paper. The two suns were nearly overhead now, warming the land, while Ed leaned against the gleaming equipment, and a gentle breeze blew across the purple valley.

"Home on the range," said Ed to himself, "Pity there aren't any deer or antelope to graze on it."

He took out some other equipment and measured the moisture content of the air, the mix of gasses and the gravity. They checked out pretty well. He really couldn't care less what the atmosphere was made of but he checked it, just incase there was a whiff of poison.

Suddenly, he noticed a movement, far away, at the veiy edge of the valley. He whipped out a scoper and trained it on the place. "Well I'll be darned!" he said, "There is life on this planet!"

He already knew there was plant life. Plenty of it. But none of his scans of the planet had picked up a single animal. This was a surprise. Ed hurried over to the loading bay and grabbed another box. He flipped it open and snapped a device into shape. The ultrascope. Built for long-range object identification. It had an onboard computer with a vast memory bank. If any animal came within its range, the device would give as close an identification as possible and suggest various possible facts about it. An invaluable tool for a specimen hunter. Too bad the man who was meant to use it was lying in a cold tomb in the ship currently in orbit round the planet.