The Sunspacers Trilogy (37 page)
Lissa was silent, unable to imagine the end of all human history. It seemed impossible that it could happen.
“And you think we’re actually being warned?” she asked.
“We can’t be absolutely certain, of course, but it seems so. And it appears we know the source of the signal. The coordinates lie in the outer solar system, where there doesn’t seem to be anything on the visual wavelengths.”
Lissa felt a twist in her thinking. She wanted to probe all the possibilities. “But why is the signal’s origin so near?”
“So that it would reach us quickly, given the slowness of radio waves. Maybe they had to be sure that we would receive the warning, given that we haven’t yet shown that we can send or receive tachyons.”
Lissa’s mind seized a conclusion. “Radio—perhaps they’re also trying to be
discreet,
by sending a signal that only we would notice. It wouldn’t travel far in the time we’ve been receiving it. Radio is probably no more advanced than jungle drums to an advanced civilization, so they wouldn’t notice someone trying to talk to us in that way.”
“You may be right. Perhaps someone is not supposed to give us a warning, but they wanted to do it.” Dr. Shastri smiled. “It’s still all guesswork, of course. I wonder who they might be, and how distant is their home world? The signal source may be only a relay.”
“One alien power doesn’t want us to be contacted,” Lissa said, “while another is doing it. I wonder why they care, either way?”
Dr. Shastri looked at her knowingly, and again Lissa knew what to say. It was almost as if she were remembering it, listening to some lost memory. “Well, I guess now’s the time to go out and find the source of the signal, given that we know where it is.”
Dr. Shastri nodded. “We’ll be taking the remote station out there to do just that, and work will continue on the tachyon receiver-transmitter as we go. It’ll be a long journey, and we’ll be out there for months. Perhaps if we find the source of the signal, we’ll learn something useful to our survival. It’s better than spending the coming decades watching for incoming cometary bodies.”
“But they may not come for centuries, even thousands of years. We’ll have time to prepare.”
“True. Or they may have already come, and this is an old warning. We don’t know on what time scale the nurturers, if we may call them that, are trying to warn us. Centuries may be only moments to them. We’ll have to go out and learn what we can.”
“How many people are going?” she asked.
“There are already some four hundred people inside the small hollow asteroid. More are on the way on this and other ships. We’ve tried to pick a cross section of the best student and professional minds.” He looked at her intently. “You will be given a chance to go home if you change your mind before we move the station into its outward course. You’ll be asked to keep silent. As far as anyone knows, the asteroid is leaving on a routine exploratory mission into the outer solar system. Nothing of our suspicions must get out until we know more. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go tell your colleague, Susan Falleta, what I have told you.”
“Susan’s aboard?” Lissa asked, feeling glad.
“Yes, she just made it.” He stood up, the door opened, and he was gone.
Lissa leaned back in the bunk and imagined what was going to happen. She reached out mentally and saw the great darkness of outer Sunspace, where the Sun was only a bright star, where countless dark worlds circled the Sun in slow orbits. The cometary halo was a great reef around the solar system, the last barrier before the ocean of interstellar space.
Something had put a transmitter out there, to whisper a warning across the short radio distance to the islands of life that were the inner planets. That someone or something had chosen radio to conceal its act of mercy. Radio was enough for such a short astronomical distance, ensuring that the signal would be noticed by a civilization that as yet had no other means of communicating across light-years.
Another idea came to her, like a friend with a warning. If this was all true, she thought, then something out in the galaxy may not like us, while something else thinks enough of us to want to help. And this was probably the first time in human history that a warning of this kind had not fallen on deaf ears.
“Of course, this may only be a routine warning,” Dr. Shastri said as they ate dinner at the Captain’s table. “We know that the solar system has to weather passage through the clouds of the galactic disk, which may be enough to slow up comets in the halo and send them Sunward. This signal may be a normal storm warning set up wherever a solar system seems to be harboring a young civilization.”
“I can’t quite accept such thoughtfulness,” Captain Ruark said gruffly.
Lissa ate her food slowly. Susan Falleta sat across from her. Dr. Shastri sat across from the Captain. Jerry Dubin, the First Officer, sat at Lissa’s right. Whenever she glanced at him, he smiled playfully, annoying her. Susan gave her an occasional look of sympathy.
“You’re claiming, Doctor,” Dubin said, “that billions of Earthly creatures perished in these cometary strikes?”
Dr. Shastri nodded. “It seemed to happen once every thirty million years or so.”
“Then what have we to worry about?” Dubin asked.
“This is probably the first time Earth has held a civilization capable of understanding this form of catastrophe,” Dr. Shastri replied. “It’s possible that a passing body, a dark star or something else, can also affect the cometary halo. Maybe it already has, and disaster lies only decades ahead. We must find out what kind of danger we are being warned about, if possible.”
“I see what you mean,” Captain Ruark said soberly. “We may be entering a cloud that will affect the orbits of the comets in our halo.”
“Or a black dwarf, a brown dwarf, even a black hole, might have sideswiped the halo. It doesn’t take much to shake it. Imagine a Christmas tree—anything can shake a bauble loose. Even a small change in a comet’s orbital velocity may be enough to send it Sunward.”
“But fortunately it will take years for a comet to reach the inner solar system,” the Captain said.
“I’ll bet it’s an old signal,” Dubin added, staring at Lissa. “Nothing’s going to happen.”
“We have to make sure,” Susan said firmly.
“Young man,” Dr. Shastri continued, “the Earth and Moon are peppered with large asteroid strikes. Earth doesn’t show it because of weathering and erosion, and for most of our history we didn’t know enough to notice. But look at the Moon. Luna is our memory. Now imagine literally millions of bodies coming into the inner solar system. We would have no defense. Even if this might happen centuries from now, that would not be enough time to prepare to deflect each object.”
“What if it’s ten thousand years or more from now?” Dubin asked.
“It would still be worth knowing
accurately
what the danger would be, and such knowledge would have to be passed down from civilization to civilization.”
“Ten thousand years from now we’ll be out among the stars,” Dubin said. “Earth will be worn out. We’ll have mobile habitats and new worlds to settle.”
“Don’t you understand?” Lissa demanded, glaring at him. “The danger may be nearer than that, and words won’t decide what’s true!” He stared back at her, trying to make her angry. She looked away.
“That’ll be enough, Dubin,” the Captain said. “Our job is to get these people where they need to go and maintain security.”
“Yes, sir.”
After dinner, Lissa relaxed in her bunk, listening to the distant drone of the ship and the white noise of the air ventilation. She knew that the ship’s path to Mars would be pretty nearly a straight line. Torch ships didn’t have to drift in unpowered orbits, counting on the momentum of an initial boost to bring them to their destination, as had the ships of the last century. A continuous nuclear torch could boost in time to meet, or even catch up with, a planet in its orbit. Halfway to Mars the R-20—the vessel had only a number, she had learned—would begin to decelerate, until the ship’s velocity was just enough to let it fall into an orbit around Mars. From there it would maneuver into the Phobos docks.
Lissa’s door buzzed. “Come in,” she said, then sat up nervously, afraid for a moment that it might be Dubin.
Susan came in. “May I visit?”
“Sure,” Lissa said, making room for her at the other end of the bunk.
“I want us to be better friends than we were back on Earth.”
“I’d like that,” Lissa replied, smiling.
Susan sat cross-legged on the bunk. “That officer, Dubin—he came to my cabin a few minutes ago.”
Lissa nodded. “I almost thought he’d come to annoy me”
“He’s right out of the Stone Age, isn’t he?”
“Sure is.”
“Not bad-looking. Just so sure of himself he can’t imagine everyone doesn’t see it. How old do you think he is?”
“Late twenties,” Lissa said. “But let’s not waste breath on him.”
Susan grimaced. “I agree. Are you glad you came?”
“I think so.”
Susan looked at her carefully. “You miss Alek, don’t you? And you still wonder what happened to you with him, don’t you?”
“A little,” Lissa said, feeling a flush in her face.
“Don’t worry, it doesn’t show. You were all he would ever talk about, especially when he thought it was hopeless that you’d like him.”
“Really?”
Susan smiled wistfully. “I was just a standin for you.”
Lissa felt a twinge of concern for the dark-haired girl. “Were you hurt badly?”
Susan shrugged. “Only a little. He was kind. I got over it. But it’s going to be tough on you.”
Lissa sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe I’ll feel differently in a month, maybe I won’t.”
“You can send cleared letters, I think.”
“I don’t want anyone reading my letters.”
“I think Dr. Shastri understands more about your problem than you think.”
“Does he have anyone?” Lissa asked.
“If he does, its very private. I’ve never been able to find out, not even in the official bio references.”
“Do you think Alek ever wanted to come to the Institute?” Lissa asked.
Susan wrinkled her nose. “I don’t know. He never mentioned it. He’s smart enough, but I got the feeling that he might have done other things. He said he didn’t like the usual colleges, even the best, so he decided to try something different, even if he didn’t know how he would fit in. Maybe I didn’t understand him, but that’s what I think he said.”
“You learned more than I did,” Lissa said sadly.
“But he
loved
you,” Susan whispered, looking straight into her eyes. Lissa looked away.
“Oh,” Susan said after a moment. “You were never in love before. You don’t mind my asking?”
“It’s okay,” Lissa managed to say.
“First time?”
“Not really,” Lissa said vaguely, “but the first time with someone I cared about, and who cared back.”
“Kid, you’ve got it as bad as I’ve ever seen. You’ll need a friend, even a jealous one.”
Lissa smiled. “Okay.”
“I’ll say this—you’ve got great control. I know the tears are there, but you’re putting them away real well. What do you do, swallow them?”
Mars grew larger on the screen over Lissa’s bunk. She read a few assigned texts and tried to relax, keeping to herself, even asking for meals to be sent to her cabin rather than endure First Officer Dubin. Susan came and ate with her sometimes.
The R-20 reached maximum speed, using up the light-minutes to the red planet. Lissa would look at the stars on her screen, imagining that each one was singing a silent song of its own. In a sense that was true. Each sun sent out the song of its spectrum, its pulsing magnitude, its own light-history. And around some of those far stars were other intelligences, singing their own histories—their hopes and fears, successes and failures.
The day arrived when Mars took up the whole screen. Phobos was just ahead as the ship drifted toward it. Lissa was in her bunk as the asteroid-sized moon came up. Mars was a giant red disk behind it, partially dark. Monorail train lines crisscrossed the surface, suggesting the canals once imagined by astronomers. Cities twinkled on the nightside, reminding her that nearly three million people lived on Mars and that the number was growing as more agridomes were built and plans went forward to terraform the desert planet. One day people would walk unprotected on the surface and breathe new air. Grass and forests would cover the land, and there would be rivers, lakes, and seas—and real Martians would go swimming.
Phobos covered Mars as the R-20 slipped into the gaping tunnel and was drawn into its dock cradle. Mars, she realized, would be especially vulnerable to strikes by comets and large meteors, since it had a very thin atmosphere; and being more distant from the Sun, it would very likely be struck sooner than Earth. A coldness went through her as she imagined the death of a world that was still struggling to be born.
Dr. Shastri, Susan, and Lissa hurried to board the small tug that would take them to the Institute’s remote station. A small tube car rushed them to the tug’s bay, and they entered through a circular side lock. Lissa and Susan struggled to use their feet in the slight gravity of Phobos. Dr. Shastri seemed used to it, skipping gracefully off surfaces as he gave them a hand and pulled them inside.
They made their way up to the control room, where they strapped into couches near the bulkhead. The small craft had no other accommodations for passengers.
“At least we’ll be able to see everything,” Lissa said as she adjusted her restraints.
The pilot came in, clanking on the steel deck with his magnetic boots. He was a short man, somewhat stocky, with black hair and a day’s growth of beard. Lissa took him to be in his middle thirties.
“Hello, folks, I’m Harry Lipsky,” he said. “I make this pile of junk behave. Doctor, good to see you again.” He sat down with his back to them, facing the screen.
The screen lit up. Harry punched in their course, and it appeared as a red diagram.
“It’s all automatic,” he said, “but I’m here to smooth out the rough spots and make repairs when the magic fails.”