‘Gentlemen, we can’t say much about the wormhole construct, or the power source, as they are both proprietary technologies. What we can tell you is what it does.
‘The wormhole flattens space-time. It allows us to pass from one place in space to another, as though stepping from one room to another.’
The wormhole opened out onto Mars, which was instantly recognisable. It then opened out from high above New York City and then low down over Trevon’s House of Representatives. Lastly, it opened out inside a hotel coffee shop on G-eo: the hole was small, to aide in its concealment. He encouraged several Pathfinders to step up and look at the monitor, connected to a camera pushed up against the fisheye-sized wormhole, and to describe what they saw to the rest of the large class.
‘It pretty much goes where we want it to go, at any time, instantly, and its size is adjustable.
‘So, how does it work? Well, imagine this balloon is the universe. Before there were dimensions, gravity and time, there was nothing, no recognisable form.’ He held it up, drooping, deflated. ‘But then there was the Big Bang, which gave the universe its current form, its dimensions, gravity and time.’ He blew up the balloon.
‘This balloon is round, which the universe isn’t, but it’ll do to illustrate a point. If you want to go from one side of the balloon to another, you must travel around its outer surface, the surface of this balloon representing the linear nature of space and time.’
He then marked a cross on opposite sides of the balloon and connected them by drawing a line between the two in black-marker pen.
‘Until recently, if we had wanted to travel to the far side of the universe, we needed to follow a similar, linear line, point-to-point, but following space-time. Only now, we don’t need to. A wormhole flattens out the space-time between two points, like this’.
He placed the balloon on the table then flattened it in the centre so the two marks were now touching each other.
‘When you pass through a wormhole you actually cross space-time. You don’t disappear, you simply move from one point to another, immediately.
‘If we want you to go to a planet in the system around the star 47 Tucanae, catalogue number NGC 104 in the Globular Cluster, some 13400 light years away, you arrive now even though Earth won’t see you there until around the year 15625 AD.
‘We can only see you now through the wormhole.
‘You can see us now if you look back through it.
‘Once you’re there, if you look up through the stars with a powerful enough telescope, what you’ll see is Runnymede, some 13400 in the past.
‘In other words, no one will be here.
‘On Earth, Mammoths will still roam Europe and Siberia, man is only just learning to sow crops and herd animals and Cain has yet to kill Abel. So, aside from us, you are truly alone!’
It was hard to grasp.
He went on to explain how the hole was adjustable at the far location, that is, they could move it around. He told them of how they had practiced picking things off far planets by dropping the hole over things, then pulling them through from this side. He showed them how they could drop things though a wormhole, fire things through it, and sample the air on the other side.
He explained that much of the material they were using on the project had come through the wormhole when it was still at its original development site. It was quicker and cheaper than using the LMs. And more stealthy.
He told them that their exploratory work would begin from inside a pressure chamber. The purpose of the chamber was to prevent pathogens from the target planet reaching Runnymede. He warned them that positive pressure from the other side meant “blow-in” on this side.
‘You don’t want to be around when that happens,’ Dave had said. ‘Any blow-in is dealt with by incineration.’
They had misjudged the pressure on the other side a few times, but the incinerator had never failed.
Only after achieving positive pressure on this side of the hole did they introduce the bugcams and drones to map the local area. If that went well, they would then introduce the drilling equipment. Only when the company’s Chief Environmental Science Officer considered a planet safe, as was Trevon, G-eo and so on, would they ever open a wormhole from outside the chamber.
They hadn’t gotten that far as yet. And, besides, not one of the planets had the same air-pressure as Runnymede and they couldn’t risk a runaway exchange of atmospheres.
Dave went on to explain a recent adaptation of the widely known, but largely untested Drake Equation: 50% of all new stars developed planetary systems; 90% of the planets that formed in the “Goldilocks Zone” would develop life; 10% of those would develop intelligence, and around 10% of those would go on to develop interstellar communications. The current guess was that there were between 450 and 900 alien civilisations in our Milky Way.
‘And our galaxy is only one of several billion that we know of.
‘Now hold that thought in your head as you consider something else.
‘The resource companies selected the New Worlds out of a desperate need for resources. Back in the 2100s, it didn't matter that their populations couldn't survive or develop without Earth’s continued support. It only mattered that they could be mined or cultivated. Trevon, Constitution, G-eo and some of the others are flukes. They may be close to being settled unaided, but even now, after decades of planetary engineering, they still haven’t hit the G-spot for abundant life and varied crops. They’re still only Earth similar.
‘Project Last Horizon is different. We’re trawling the galaxy for Earth replicas, places rich in resources, where man can put down long-term roots, where settlements can thrive unaided, and industry can flourish. We’re going to where life is already abundant.
‘The chances, then, of meeting some form of intelligent life on these newer, more hospitable planets is higher. And even if there is only animal life, there will be predators.’
Finally, Scat had the answer to his two-day old question about the need for firepower.
116
Scat’s first Pathfinder mission was meant to be a very quick and simple one. He entered the brightly lit, oversized chamber, alone and suited up as for a Prebos belt-walk. From inside his suit he could hear the roar of the extractor fans as they continuously recirculated the chamber air. Above him, the furnace was ready to ignite, just in case the wormhole failed to maintain its positive pressure.
At the far end of the chamber stood the unopened and spinning disc of transparent liquid-like elements.
Ratti was conducting operations from the cabin built into the chamber, high up and to the left of the unopened hole.
‘Ready, Scat?’
‘As ever I will be, Carlo. Open her up.’
The outer-edges of the disc began to dance with light. Its inner surfaces shone like highly polished tubular chrome, turning in on itself in a smooth, continuous movement. As the eye opened, the liquid-like aperture appeared to increase in depth, becoming more three dimensional, akin to a camera lens. As it opened wider, the eye appeared to float, unthreateningly, inviting investigation.
Beyond the eye lay the surface of a planet, still referred to by its catalogue number, one of several planets orbiting the smaller of two stars, a typical binary system. Scat had been told of its precise location and distance from Runnymede, but he couldn’t relate.
While the eye opened, Scat kept his calm by focusing on the things he more readily understood; the tangible things. Between him and the hole lay his designated bugbot and a couple of drones; the bugbot fitted out with a range of sensors plus a PIKL and a neural disruptor. He could control these things, so he focused on them. It helped to stop his imagination from spinning out of control.
Previous drone surveys of the insertion area had recorded distant footage of several ambulatory life forms. They already knew that the planet was covered in a wide variety of vegetation, some of it quite large; analogous to Earth’s bushes and trees and that the air was breathable. Sever
al drones had been pushed out into local orbit, storing data for transmission each time the eye opened. They had shown there to be several climatic zones.
Lynthax had chosen a temperate area, midway between the planet’s equator and its northern pole, for the site of its first human visit. Scat’s ground insertion was to be onto a secluded glade within a “wooded” area a little way up a hill slope, the other side of which was a large vegetation-covered plain. Despite the drone’s remote encounters with life forms, he was advised that the likelihood of his encountering any of it while he spent his planned 15 minutes on the surface was about the same as a summer’s walk through the Yellowstone National park. Scat couldn’t give that comment any context. He had never been. In any case, how could anyone on Runnymede offer any kind of reassurances about what he might or might not meet?
As he approached the developing wormhole, he glanced up at the marble-sized power source, mounted in a ring at the top of a tall rod to the right of the hole. It appeared to be spinning within the ring but without touching it. He pulled his eyes away: Dave had briefed the Pathfinders not to look directly at it and never to touch it. Over a couple of crisp, cool post-training beers the night before, the trainer had told stories of researchers freaking out, security guards refusing to clock on, and electrical equipment being drained of power when in proximity to it. Apparently, no one liked being near the thing.
‘Just don’t get close and don’t be drawn to it,’ he recalled Dave as saying.
But the urge to look at it again was strong so he checked the bugbot for a second time. He then knelt beside the drone and punched in his personal activation code, willing the eye to open fully to allow him to step through. Still, the spinning marble drew him in, and again he had to work hard to push it out of his mind.
Eventually the eye settled down. It would soon be time. He stood, checked that his belted equipment was buttoned and strapped down, and tried real hard not to look at the marble out of the corner of his eye.
‘Any time you’re ready,’ Ratti said.
Scat could feel himself wavering, losing his concentration.
‘Damn it, Scat! Focus. Focus!’ he told himself, taking three steps through the hole.
The new world opened out around him. In an instant, air from the chamber side of the wormhole rushed past him and onto the bushes ahead. He swivelled around to get his bearings and to check how far he was from the tall vegetation behind him, feeling as vulnerable and as disoriented as a dog dumped at the roadside.
As expected, there was the wormhole, through which he could now see the chamber, and around the other side of it, perhaps 50 metres away, was a bank of thick foliage.
He fiddled nervously with his solida-graf and located the bugbot that had followed him through the hole. He took local control of it and set it to defensive, cranking it up to maximum sensitivity. He then turned back to the view he had seen from Runnymede.
He was standing in a glade of flowerlike life on solid, dry ground. He knew he was in an area of rolling hills but couldn’t see further than 50 – 75 metres in any direction. The shallow valley was on his left, its vegetation canopy at eye level. Sunlight dappled the undergrowth in dark and light patches that moved as the canopy swayed in the light wind. Ferns and bushes, the larger of them passing for stunted trees if one overlooked the multiple trunks, rose up the hill towards him and covered most of the ground surrounding the glade. Through the “trees”, he could just about make out some rocky outcrops.
Directly above him the sky was blue but tinged with yellow closer to the ground.
On the other side, to his right, the bushes, or trees, nestled in thicker undergrowth, obscuring his view of the ground. As expected, the canopy climbed the hill as it rose to its summit.
‘No dallying, Scat. Sightseeing is for later on. Just run through the checks, get to the top of the rise, and come on back.’
‘Roger that. Just checking for Injuns, is all. Everything working to spec,’ he replied, looking down at his solida-graf.
‘Comms good. … Bugbot at 100%. ... Ground firm. ... Air pressure at 98% Runnymede normal. … Temperature and humidity as expected. ... Radiation normal. ... I’ll call the drones through and send them out to the three kilometre markers.’
Back on Runnymede, the dark brown, oval-shaped drones woke up, drew power from their fuel cells, flipped out their rotor blades and lifted their man-sized bodies into the air. In seconds they were both through the hole, rising to an unfamiliar sky, relaying a stream of data back to Ratti and his assistants.
Scat glanced up through the vegetation.
‘I’ll start moving up to the skyline. It looks thicker at ground level than we thought. No paths or animal runs. I can’t see the second sun; the atmospheric refraction is too intense.’
He felt odd wearing a suit in near-normal gravity and in an oxygen-normal atmosphere, but moving through the vegetation was cumbersome work so he was grateful for its air-conditioning. Occasionally he would look down at his solida-graf to check that it was still working. Of course it was. There were no immediate threats. It was quiet because it had nothing to say. He was just nervous.
After a few minutes of panting, he eventually reached the top of the hill, wishing he had stayed a little fitter than he was. The trees still blocked his view, but he could see the woods thin out, and the ground brighten up some 20 metres further on, just over the crest. To his left a tree rose from the ground, arched above him then plunged back into the ground on his right, sprouting flowers of red and leaves of all colours.
He pushed on, down a slight incline, and then arrived at the wood’s edge to a view he could only describe to himself as stunning.
The sky above seemed vast, the blue weak, and the thin, wispy clouds high. Off to his left was the second sun, a faraway star as bright by day as Venus is by early morning when seen from Earth. The hillside slipped away to a wide expansive savannah, dotted with low bulbous trees, a sea of thick ferns of red, brown, green, yellow, and white flowers tinged with blue. The vastness of the plain gave him a sense of freedom that he hadn’t experienced since his trips across the Gap Plain on Trevon. It was as close to a National Geographic movie of the Rift Valley as he would ever see in his lifetime. He felt right at home.
‘What’s the matter, Scat? Your heart rate and blood pressure have become erratic.’
The question brought him back to mission.
‘Nothing. It’s just more beautiful than I expected. Visibility now out to around 20-30 kilometres.’
‘Well, it was bound to be an improvement over Trevon, Scat. So, are you ready to breathe local air?’
‘I’m ready.’
‘OK, take it off.’
Runnymede had sampled the air, and they knew it to be safe, but only to the limits of human understanding. As with all new environments, there were bound to be pathogens that had gone undetected; unfamiliar gases as well. Despite the numerous tests on animals, the only true test would be for a man to take a deep lungful, in situ—just as man had on Trevon, Constitution, G-eo, Runnymede and all the other human habited planets in the OR.
Scat took off his helmet and continued to breathe normally as instructed, while Ratti monitored his blood gases. The smell of sap, pollen and decaying vegetation, dung and damp, musty, fertile soil saturated the air. There was none of the usual closed habitat smells of solvents, ozone, plastics.
‘Seems good, Scat. Nothing of note from your end?’
‘No. Nothing. All’s good. The air smells of shit.’
Ratti didn’t reply immediately. Data from a drone was distracting him.
‘We have indications of a large moving mass, Scat. Off to your right. One of the drones is flying intercept. Do you see anything?’
‘No. I’ll move around and see what I can see.’
Scat turned to contour around the hillside, keeping the wood line to his right. More and more of the plain came into view. The colours of the ground ferns seemed to change in waves, back and forth, as they bow
ed and flickered in front of a gentle breeze. Then he saw them.
Around a kilometre away, and stretching from the extreme left to the extreme right horizons, were several tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of four legged lifeforms whose mass formed a continuous slash of brown against the colourful ferns. They were walking slowly, 20 and 30 abreast, dipping their heads frequently in a manner that was repeated kilometre after kilometre along its length. He kept walking, hoping to see more from where the hill sloped away more sharply to the plain below.
His solida-graf began to bleep gently as it received data from the drone. Scat instructed it to throw up the images. As the close-up pulled into focus, he stopped dead in his tracks.
‘Do you see this, Carlo? Do you see this?’ he shouted excitedly.
‘No, not yet, Scat. We’re moving the hole over the hill to get better reception. What do you see?’
‘A truly wonderful sight!’
‘What is it?’
‘Meat!’
117
Cohen’s informal sources had revealed nothing. On every Western Bloc planet, it was the same. Cotton had been more methodical, but no more successful. There was nothing to indicate where the rebels had gone.
Cotton had initiated Operation Downward Stare. The G-eo government was extremely angry. They were uncommonly quick to offer Cotton access to their information-gathering agents.
He used Cyclops to trawl the visual data for the day of the disappearances. Cyclops stitched the hundreds of thousands of hours of video together from all the military, government, municipal and commercial surveillance cameras. Over the following few days it built a seamless 24-hour solida-graf motion picture of the city’s activities.
He then needed to see what was going on inside Tremont at a human level, so he ran the God Programme, a crowdsourcing tool. The GP trawled the web-based social networks, corporate security networks, municipal & store video, e-bank payment records, road traffic and electricity management systems, and other data banks. It then overlaid the cultural and economic characteristics of G-eo and the idiosyncratic behaviour of Tremont, its capital. After it had combined the two, it looked for outliers, oddities, and standouts. With that done, the GP ran its facial recognition software on every face captured by Downward Stare during that 24-hour period.