“Of course, if you start with a small singularity it’ll require quite some time absorbing mass inside the target planet before it can really take off. In this case, about a hundred and thirty years. But that should be adequate, usually.”
“It almost wasn’t, in our case,” Teresa said, bitterly. “If we’d invested more in space, we’d have had colonists on Mars by now. Maybe the beginnings of cities on asteroids or the moon. We could have evacuated some of the life arks …”
“Oh, you’re right,” Alex agreed. “My guess is we’re unusually bright, as neophyte races go. Probably most others experience longer intervals between discovering radio and inventing spaceflight. After all, the Chinese almost did something with electricity a couple of times, Babylon and the Romans.”
Pedro Manella looked down at his hands. “Smart, but not smart enough. So even if we eliminate this horrible thing the nightmare may not be over?”
Alex shrugged. “I suppose not. We and our descendants, should we live to have any, are at best in for a rough time ahead. As a Yank might put it—” and his voice dropped to a drawl “—the galaxy we’re livin’ in appears t’be a mighty tough neighborhood.”
Manella’s face reddened. “You’re taking this awfully well to be joking about it, Lustig. Has the news driven you over the edge? Or are you saving up for yet another surprise? Maybe another deus ex machina to pull out of your hat, like last time?”
Teresa suddenly realized that was, indeed, what she was holding her breath for! He’s done it before … turned despair around with fresh hope. Maybe this time, too?
Seeing Alex smile, she felt a surge. But then he shook his head and simply said, “No. I have no new tricks.”
“Then why are you grinning like an idiot, Lustig!” Manella roared.
Alex stood up. And though he continued smiling, his hands clenched to a slow beat. “Don’t you understand? Can’t you see what this means?” He turned left and right, staring at each person in turn, getting back only blank looks. In frustration, he shouted. “It means we’re not guilty. We haven’t destroyed ourselves and our world!”
He pressed both hands on the table, leaning forward intensely. “You all saw what shape I was in, before. I was destroyed by this. Oh, sure, we might succeed in ejecting Beta—I give it a one in four chance now, the best odds yet.
“But what would be the point? If we produce the sort of men who’d drop something like that into the world, and not even care enough to go looking for it again? Would we deserve to go on?
“You all kept telling me, ‘Don’t take it so personally, Alex.’ You said, ‘It’s not your fault, Alex. Your singularity was harmless, not an all-devouring monster like Beta. You’re our champion against this thing!’
“Champion?” His laughter was acrid. “Couldn’t any of you see how that really made me feel?”
Every other person stared. The physicist’s reserve had cracked, and underneath now lay exposed someone more human than the Alex Lustig that Teresa had seen before this. A man, she realized, who had stepped deeper into the borderlands of endurance than most ever dream of.
“I had to identify with the makers of that thing!” He went on. “So long as I knew them to be my fellow humans, I had to take responsibility. Couldn’t any of you see that?”
He had started out grinning, but now Alex shivered, June Morgan started to rise, but then suppressed the move. Teresa understood and agreed. She, too, felt an urge to do something for him, and knew the only way to help was to listen till he stopped.
Listen humbly, for she knew with sudden conviction that he was right.
“I …” Alex had to inhale to catch his breath. “I’m smiling, Pedro, because I was ashamed to be human, and now I’m not anymore. Mere death can’t take that from me now. Nothing can.
“Isn’t … isn’t that enough for anyone to smile about?”
It was George Hutton who reached him first—who drew his shaking friend into his massive arms. Then, all at once, the rest of them were there as well. And none of their former jealousies or conflicts seemed to matter anymore. They embraced each other and for a time shared the horror of their newly known danger … along with the solace of their restored hope.
PART VIII
PLANET KILLER
Space was the fabric of its existence.
A skein of superdense yarn—knitted and purled in ten dimensions—it was unravelable. A deep well—sunk into a microscopic point—it was unfathomable. Blacker than blackness, it emitted nothing, yet the tortured space around it blazed hotter than the cores of suns.
It had been born within a machine, one that had traveled far to reach this modest basin, pressed into the rippling universe-sheet by a lesser star. On arrival, the apparatus set to work crafting the assassin’s tight weave out of pure nothingness. Then, in its final death throes, the factory slowed its progeny onto a gentle circular path, skating among the star’s retinue of tiny planets.
For two revolutions, the assassin lost mass. There were atoms in space to feed its small but hungry maw, but nowhere near enough to make up for its losses … loops of superdense brightness that kept popping out to self-destruct in brilliant bursts of gamma rays. If this went on, it would evaporate entirely before doing its job.
But then it entered a shallow dip of gravity—a brief touch of acceleration—and it collided with something solid! The assassin celebrated with a blast of radiation. Thereafter, its orbit kept dipping, again and again, into high-density realms.
Atoms fell athwart its narrow mouth—little wider than an atom itself. There were still very few real collisions, but where at first it dined on picograms, soon it gobbled micrograms, then milligrams. No meal satisfied it.
Grams became kilograms …
It had not been programed to know the passage of years, nor that the feast would have to end someday, when the planet was consumed in one last, voracious gobble. Then it would sit alone again in space, and for a time the solar system would have two suns … while the essence that had once been Earth blew away in coruscating photons.
Of all this it neither knew nor cared. For the present, atoms kept pouring in. If a complex, fulgent knot in space can be called happy, then that was its condition.
After all, what else was there in the universe, but matter to eat, light to excrete, and vacuum? And what were they? Just subtly different kinds of folded space.
Space was the fabric of its existence.
Without fuss or intent, it grew.
Worldwide Long Range Solutions Special Interest Group [ SIG AeR,WLRS 253787890.546]. Space Colonization Subgroup. Open discussion board.
Okay, so imagine we get past the next few rough decades and finally do what we should have back in TwenCen. Say we mine asteroids for platinum, discover the secrets of true nanotechnology, and set Von Neumann “sheep” grazing on the moon to produce boundless wealth. To listen to some of the rest of you, all our problems would then be over. The next step, star travel, and colonization of the galaxy, would be trivial.
But hold on! Even assuming we solve how to maintain long-lasting ecologies in space and get so wealthy the costs of star-flight aren’t crippling, you’ve still got the problem of time.
I mean, most hypothetical designs show likely starships creeping along at no more than ten percent of the speed of light, a whole lot slower than those sci-fi cruisers we see zipping on three-vee. At such speeds it may take five, ten generations to reach a good colony site. Meanwhile, passengers will have to maintain villages and farms and cranky, claustrophobic grandkids, all inside their hollowed-out, spinning worldlets.
What kind of social engineering will that take? Do you know how to design a closed society that’d last so long without flying apart? Oh, I think it can be done. But don’t pretend it’ll be simple!
Nor will be solving the dilemma of gene pool isolation. In the arks and zoos right now, a lot of rescued species are dying off even though the microecologies are right, simply because too few individuals were included in t
he original mix. For a healthy gene pool you need diversity, variety, heterozygosity.
One thing’s clear, no starship will make it carrying only one racial group. What’ll be needed, frankly, are mongrels … people who’ve bred back and forth with just about everybody and seem to enjoy it. You know … like Californians.
Besides, it’s as if they’ve been preparing themselves for it all along. Heck, picture if aliens ever landed in California. Instead of running away or even inquiring about the secrets of the universe, Californians would probably ask the BEMs if they had any new cuisine!
• CRUST
Fast approaching the scene of carnage, a detachment of the Swiss navy arrived in the nick of time. Sweeping over the ocean’s morning horizon, the proud flotilla unfurled bright battle ensigns, fired warning shots, and sent the raiders into rout at flank speed.
Rescued! The crews of rusty fishing barges cheered as their saviors hove into sight, the bright sun at their backs. Only moments before, all had seemed lost. Now disaster had turned to victory!
Nevertheless, Crat barely took notice. Amid the throng of filthy, sweat-grimed deck hands, climbing the rigging and waving their bandannas, he was too busy vomiting over the side to spend much effort cheering. Fortunately, there wasn’t much left in his stomach to void into waters already ripe with bloody offal. His fit tapered into a diminishing rhythm of gagging heaves.
“Here, fils,” someone said nearby. “Take this rag. Clean yourself.”
The voice was thickly accented. But then, nearly everyone aboard this corroded excuse for a barge spoke Standard English gooky, if at all. Grabbing at a blur, Crat was dimly surprised to find the cloth relatively clean. Cleaner than anything he’d seen since coming aboard the Congo, some weeks ago. He wiped his chin and then tried to lift his head, wondering miserably who had bothered taking an interest in him.
“No. Do not thank me. Here. Let me giff you something for the nausea.”
The speaker was white haired and wrinkled from the sun. And despite his age, it was clear that his wiry, sun-browned arms were stronger than Crat’s own soft, city-bred pair. The good samaritan grabbed the back of Crat’s head adamantly and lifted a vapor-spritzer. “Are you ready? Goot! Breathe in, now.”
Crat inhaled. Tailored molecules soaked through his mucous membranes, rushing to receptors in his brain. The overwhelming dizziness evaporated like fog under the subtropical sun.
He wiped his eyes and then handed back the kerchief without a word.
“You’re a silent one, neh? Or is it because you’re choked up over our triumph?” The old man pointed where the green raiders’ rear guard could still be seen, fleeing westward in their ultrafast boats. Of course nothing owned by Sea State could hope to catch them.
“Triumph,” Crat said, repeating the word blankly.
“Yes, of course. Driven off by the one force they fear most. Helvetia Rediviva. The fiercest warriors in all the world.”
Crat shaded his eyes against the still-early sun, wondering vaguely where his hat had gone to. By the captain’s orders, everybody aboard Congo had to wear one to protect against the sleeting ultraviolet … as if the average life span on a Sea State fishing boat encouraged much worry about latent skin cancers.
The first thing Crat saw as he turned around was the listing hull of Dacca … the fleet’s cannery barge and the green raiders’ main target. Deck hands dashed to and fro, washing down gear that had been sprayed with caustic enzymes. Others cast lines to smaller vessels nearby, as pumps fought to empty water from Dacca’s flooding bilges.
The greeners hadn’t had any intention of sinking her, just rendering her useless. Still, raiders often overestimated the seaworthiness of ships flying the albatross flag. Crat was too inexperienced to guess if Dacca’s crew could save the ship. And damned if he’d ask.
Near the factory ship, a UNEPA observer craft loitered, blue and shiny like something from an alien world—which in a sense it was. The dumpit U.N. hadn’t done a gor-sucking thing to stop the greeners. But should Dacca drown—or spill more than a few quarts of engine oil saving herself—UNEPA would be all over Sea State with eco-fines.
“There,” the oldster said helpfully, nudging Crat’s shoulder and pointing. “Now you can get a good look at our rescuers. Over toward Japan.”
Is that what those islands are? The mountainous forms were low to the northeast, like clouds. Crat wondered how anyone could tell the difference.
He saw a squadron of low-slung vessels approaching swiftly from that direction, so clean and trim, he naturally at first assumed they had nothing to do with Sea State.
Smaller craft spread out, prowling for greener submarines, while in thee center a sleek, impressive ship of war drew near. The nozzles of its powerful cannon gleamed like polished silver. Bulging high-pressure tanks held its ammunition—various-chemical agents that it began spraying over poor Dacca to neutralize the greeners’ enzymes. Although neither dousing was supposed to affect flesh, the new bath caused Dacca’s crew to laugh and caper, luxuriating as if it were a Fragonard perfume.
“Ah!” the old man said. “Just as I thought. It is Pikeman. A proud vessel! They say she never needs to fight, so fearsome is her name.”
Crat glanced sideways, suddenly suspicious. This fellow’s eyes glittered with more than mere gratitude at being saved from greener sabotage. There was unmistakable pride in his bearing. From that, and the thick but educated accent, Crat guessed he was no mere refugee from poverty, nor a foolish would-be adventurer like himself. No, he must have joined the nation of the dispossessed because his birthplace was still officially under occupation by all the world’s powers—a country whose very name had been confiscated.
Crat remembered seeing that look in the eyes of another veteran, back in Bloomington—one of the victors in the Helvetian campaign. How strange, then, to spot it next in one who had lost everything.
Shit. That must’ve been some dumpit war.
The old man confirmed Crat’s suspicions. “See how even at this low estate they must treat us with respect?” he asked, then added in a low voice. “By damn, they had better!”
The rescuing flotilla efficiently dispatched units to repair Dacca, while Pikeman turned into the wind to launch a tethered guard zeppelin. On closer inspection, Crat saw that the vessel wasn’t new at all. Its flanks were patched, like every other ship in Sea State’s worldwide armada. And yet the refurbishments blended in, somehow looking like intentional improvements on the original design.
Watching the cruiser’s flag flapping in the wind, Crat blinked suddenly in surprise. For a brief instant the great bird at the banner’s center, instead of flying amid stylized ocean waves, had seemed to soar out of a blocky cloud, set in a bloody field. He squinted. Had it been an illusion, brought on by his constant hunger?
No! There! The colors glittered again! The Sea State emblem must have been modified, he realized. Stitched in amid the blue water and green sky were holographic threads, flashing to the eye only long enough to catch a brief but indelible image.
Once again, for just a second, the albatross flapped sublimelay through a square white cross, centered on a background of deep crimson.
Naturally, during the melee the dolphins had escaped. Even before the Helvetian detachment arrived to drive them off, the green raiders had managed to tear the giant fishing web surrounding the school. Crat groaned when he saw the damage. His hands were already cracked from trying to please a slave-driving apprentice net maker, tying simple knots over and over, then retying half of them when his lord and master found some fault undetectable to any human eye.
The calamity went beyond damaged nets, of course. It could mean they’d go hungry again tonight, if the raiders’ enzymes had reached the catch already in Dacca’s hold. And yet, in a lingering corner, Crat felt strangely glad the little creatures had got away.
Oh, sure. Back in Indiana he’d been a carni-man, a real meat eater. Often he’d save up to devour a rare hamburger in public, just to dis
gust any NorA dumpit ChuGas who happened to pass by. Anyway, today’s prey wasn’t one of the brainy or rare dolphin types on the protected lists, or else UNEPA would have interfered faster and a lot more lethally than any green raiders.
Still, even dumb little spinner porpoises looked too much like Tuesday Tursiops, the bottle-nosed hero of Satvid kiddie shows. They cried so plaintively when they were hauled aboard, thrashing, flailing their tails … Crat’s gorge was already rising by the time cawing birds arrived to bicker and feed on factory ship offal.
Then, suddenly, had come the greeners—among them probably former countrymen of Crat’s. He recalled seeing well-fed pale faces, jaws set in grim determination as they harassed Sea State’s harvesters to the very limits of international law and then some. To Crat, the lurching fear and confusion of the brief battle had only been the final straw.
“Are you feeling better now, fils?”
Crat looked up from his makeshift seat, one of the coiled foredeck anchor chains. Squinting, he saw it was the geep again—the old Helvetian—come around to check up on him for whatever reason. Crat answered with a silent shrug.
“My name is Schultheiss. Peter Schultheiss,” the fellow said as he sat on a jute hawser. “Here you go. I brought you some portable shade.”
Crat turned the gift, a straw hat, over in his hands. Weeks ago he would have spurned it as something from a kindergarten class. Now he recognized a good piece of utilitarian craftsmanship. “Mm,” he answered with a slight nod and put it on. The shade was welcome.
“No gratitude required,” Schultheiss assured. “Sea State cannot afford eye surgery for all its young men. Nor can we count on U.N. dumpit charity.”
For the first time, Crat smiled slightly. The one thing he liked about this disappointing adventure was the way both old and young cursed and suffered alike. Only here at sea, a young man’s strength counted for as much as any grandpa’s store of experience.