Harvest

by Olga Werby

  “What triggered the growth?” Ian asked. He too was on the bridge.

  “That’s the question, isn’t it?” Ben said. “While we were wrong about the origin of the fresh ice, the trigger would be the same, no?”

  “The signal,” said Liut.

  “We don’t know what came first, the signal or the growth,” Trish pointed out. “Let’s not confuse coincidence with causation. There was a trigger, but I don’t think we’ve found it yet.”

  “But our ideas about scouts and toeholds probes are no longer relevant,” said Vars. “If these things can multiply using local resources and build out whatever structures they need from that, then the original interstellar probe could have been just a small package of a few specialized nanobots capable of expanding their local presence via replication. The first alien ship to reach the solar system could have been a simple set of instructions, really. Cheap to make, cheap to send.”

  Back on the bridge, Evi joined the conversation. “We’ve talked about radio signals from Earth’s first broadcasts as a possible trigger. That would have been about two hundred and fifty years ago. If this artifact was already here on Mimas back then, it could have picked up those signals from Earth and sent a message to its home world.”

  “Then when it finally received a response,” Ben continued, “it sent another signal and started to build all of this just over a year ago.”

  “So you think the trigger is evidence of intelligent life?” Liut asked. “But haven’t humans been building structures visible from space for several millennia? The Great Pyramids, the Great Wall of China…”

  “Perhaps these things were blind to that,” Vars said. “Perhaps communication of information over the electromagnetic spectrum is what they were sent to sniff out.”

  “And then attack?” Liut asked.

  “Why would proof of intelligence merit an attack?” Ian asked. “That doesn’t make sense.”

  “I don’t think we’re thinking about this right,” Vars said.

  “Well, it’s your job to make sure that we do,” Liut snapped. She didn’t understand what that man was trying to do—stress her out? She was there already. They all were.

  “I can no longer see Alice directly,” Ziva announced. “She has now crawled into a curved part of the tunnel.”

  “Should we get her out?” Ian asked. “Alice?”

  “All is good,” Alice replied. “I’d rather keep going.” Her voice was even if clipped. Alice showed no signs of anxiety, despite her limited experience with the EVA equipment and the stress of crawling through the alien artifact.

  Vars envied her friend’s ability to control her fears. Personally, she was having a hard time just breathing and thinking at the same time. Ivan had to continually remind her not to hyperventilate or to stop holding her breath. Vars’s normal autonomic body functions were disrupted by insane novelty of it all.

  “Alice looks safe,” Ziva said. “Her heart rate is stable. The head cam shows identical formations all through the walls of the tunnel. No change at the turn. If fact, it doesn’t even look like the Mims are aware of us. I’m getting no interaction between the nanobot structures and our equipment at all. Even the patterns of fireflies haven’t changed. ”

  “Well,” Ben said, “I’m interacting down here. I’ve, uh… I’ve accidentally broken off a piece.” He sounded guilty.

  “I hope the bees don’t come stinging,” Ziva said smugly.

  “Nothing yet,” said Ben. “Should I take the piece back to the ship?”

  “Nothing goes into the ship,” Liut ordered. “We’ll monitor it, but I want it stored outside the ship, isolated. If it stays inert for a while, we can revisit this decision again then. How did it break off?”

  “Frankly, it just fell off when I trained the X-ray spectrometer on it. Perhaps it’s not happy with high-energy radiation?”

  “That would be a useful discovery,” said Liut. “The cold doesn’t have the same effect on these bots as it does back on Earth, per Dr. Matteo Volhard’s observations.” The temperature effects on nanobots back on Earth was one of the few bits of useful information Alice managed to receive from the Elders before communications were disrupted.

  X-ray effects were interesting, but Vars was having trouble following the team’s chatter; her focus was Alice. “Alice?” she called. “How are you doing? Alice?”

  Almost half a minute went by and the woman didn’t answer, but the sounds of her heart remained steady. And now, everyone was concentrating exclusively on the feed from Alice’s helmet-mounted camera. Per the tether, she crawled seventy meters into the side tunnel; and the walls still looked exactly the same as the outer walls of the structure. Why is she not responding?

  “Alice?” called Ziva. “Can you please respond? Just a word would do. Someone check the audio feed—”

  Ron’s voice cut in. “Sorry to interrupt you guys,” he said from back onboard ship. “But I think Ziva is wrong about those lights. They’re not the same. Look at them at a higher energy. From one of the stationary cameras at the base of the artifact, I’m picking up a few stray sparks.” Of course Ron was watching the lights—he and Ben had spent the previous night fruitlessly trying to decipher the patterns.

  “Ben?” Vars said. “Use your scope to look into the opening at the fireflies in UV and higher. Alice? Can you hear us? You need to answer. Now!”

  “There’s definitely something wrong with her audio feed,” Ziva said. “But we are getting good visuals of the inside and Alice’s bio signals are strong. The tether is taut...” She

  sounded unsure.

  “Give her a few dozen meters more,” Ian said. “Alice would have signaled for help, if she needed any. There’s no change in the tension pattern of the tether, is there? Still the same creep pattern?”

  “No change,” Ziva answered. Vars tried to force herself to relax. They were getting great data, and Alice didn’t take stupid risks. She would have signaled if there was something...

  Ben and Trish grabbed their equipment and slowly started to climb to the top of the structure. The low gravity and extons made it very easy to lift even the heaviest objects, but while the instrument packs felt light, they were still massive and thus unwieldy. In the time it took for Ben and Trish to make it to the top of the opening, Alice had moved another twenty meters farther into the alien tunnel. Her slow progress was steady, unchanged in pace. The video feed showed the same jerky motion based on her crawling movements. Her audio remained silent.

  Ziva and Glen helped the scientists set up their instruments, and soon they were all looking at the data output. Ron was right: there was another layer of activity at UV, and still another in the low X-ray range. How did they overlook monitoring the fireflies at all frequencies?

  “When did you notice the change?” Ben asked Ron.

  “As soon as I saw it, I spoke up.”

  “Time to get Alice out of there,” Ian called. Vars couldn’t agree with him more. Liut didn’t object either.

  Ziva and Glen started reeling in the cord connecting them to Alice.

  “It’s too easy,” Ziva said just after a few moments. Vars heard worry in her voice. “The tension is about right, but we should be getting more resistance. Even if Alice set her exton to trace her movements backwards and is just riding out, there would be snags and bumps…”

  They pulled faster, and past the turn in the tunnel the cord rolled without a struggle or even a tug. With a gasp and a flick, Ziva pulled out the camera that had been mounted to Alice’s exton.

  Just the camera. No Alice.

  There was a collective cry of surprise and horror.

  “When did we lose her?” Ian asked. “You guys saw her through the top just minutes ago.” His voice was unsteady. “We watched her every move on the screens here...”

  “I’ll go in after her,” Ziva said. “I’m the smallest
. I can make it.”

  “No,” ordered Liut. “We wait and try to contact Alice in other ways.”

  “You’re too big to fit anyway,” Glen said softly. “We should send a drone.” Or did he say “should have sent?” Vars wasn’t sure.

  “Alice! Alice! Do you hear me?” Ian called, but Alice was no longer physically connected to them—the tether had all of the data cords embedded in it. Ian’s audio calls were only traveling as far as Alice’s discarded head cam. She couldn’t hear them, and they couldn’t hear her.

  Vars wasn’t staying at the base of the artifact any longer. She started to climb. Ivan followed, keeping a close eye on her.

  At the top, Ben, Trish, Ziva, and Glen were all peering into the opening.

  “How is it that you didn’t notice the camera had detached?” Ivan asked.

  “There was no change in tension pattern,” Glen said. “And the head cam didn’t show Alice herself, it just focused on the tunnel walls. The video continued down the tunnel, and then, when we reeled in the tether, it moved back. We even continued to get her vital signs.” Those had cut off as soon as Alice’s camera was pulled out of the side tunnel.

  Glen and other Liut’s people were clearly upset, but they retained their professional calm. Vars wasn’t even trying—they’d just suffered their first casualty on Mimas. We lost Alice!

  “Let’s assume they got her the moment the fireflies changed their tune,” Ivan said. He was all focus now.

  “We keep making these assumptions about what sparks Mims to act,” Vars said. “Let’s just say that she was gone from the moment we lost direct visual contact.”

  “Either way,” said Ivan, “it seems likely we lost her before we started reeling her in. That means the camera, without Alice attached to it, was crawling down the shaft.”

  “It even maintained an appropriate rhythmic jerkiness,” Glen said.

  “And even the heartbeat,” added Ziva. “Damn, I would’ve sworn…”

  “We’re sending in a drone to look for Alice,” Ben said firmly. “Tether it, and stack it up with multiple cameras, like beads on a string, so none are ever outside of our view. Each camera monitors the one in front and the one behind, as well as all others that are in its field of view.”

  “It’ll take time to assemble that,” said Glen.

  “Then we’d better get started.”

  Glen nodded. “Let’s pool all of our personal cameras. We’ll all stay where we can be observed by our safety buddy. Complete direct visual contact at all times.”

  They all removed their head-mounted cameras and passed them on to Glen and Ziva, who attached them to a cord at regular intervals. Vars was impressed at how fast the thing came together—these guys were pros at improvisational engineering in space. It was the first time she had truly appreciated the team Major Liut had put together. She’d always known they were good pilots and mechanics, but this was different. Space deployment field readiness...

  “Ready,” Ziva said.

  “Let it drop,” said Ivan. And they all settled down to watch the cam-views and each other.

  One of Ben’s scampering drones pulled the assembly down the hole. Each camera shot forth several little gears that engaged with the walls and allowed the drone to pull it along.

  “They all can do that?” Vars asked.

  “Cameras are made to mount on different locations and to different devices,” Glen explained. “It’s easy to keep the attachment gears engaged in a makeshift drive mode. The assembly could go a hundred meters deep.”

  “We won’t be able to make them go that far,” Ziva disagreed, “but hopefully we won’t have to.”

  A hundred meters didn’t seem far enough. The Mims had gotten Alice. Vars didn’t understand how, but she felt certain of it. The question was what were the aliens planning to do with her? With all of them?

  The camera train moved slowly around the curve in the tunnel. It showed the same thing that they’d seen earlier through Alice’s camera. Vars would bet it was a perfect match frame by frame...and then the drone bumped into a wall. The tunnel into which Alice had turned was blocked. The drone tried to push through. Once. Twice. Then it sucked in its gears, and so did all the cameras behind it. There was nowhere to go.

  “That wasn’t there before,” Vars said.

  “Did we miss a turn?” Ivan asked.

  “No,” said Ian. “We’ve been comparing the footage from Alice’s cam with the view from the centipede cam. This is definitely the same tunnel.”

  “Or an identical tunnel,” Ben said. “We are looking at a fractal construction.”

  “But there wasn’t any other way to turn,” Ziva said. “This was it.”

  “Except there’s no Alice,” said Vars.

  “No Alice,” Ziva echoed.

  “Leave the cam centipede inside,” Liut said. “Glen and Ziva, you stay there. The rest return to the ship. We’ll take turns watching for Alice.”

  He didn’t mention that she had only four hours of breathable air left. He didn’t have to. They were all thinking the same thing.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Understand what?” Matteo asked.

  Sophie was addressing him through the glass window. Her arm was completely regenerated, though there was a slight gray tinge to her skin now.

  “I’ve studied the effects of upper atmosphere turbulence on sending genetic material from Earth into space...to populate the other planets in our solar system with life,” said Sophie. To Matteo, it came across as a non sequitur.

  “We know,” he said. “That was one of the reasons the Elders sent you here. Because of your…Sophie’s work on panspermia.”

  Phoebe whispered into his ear. “Is she talking as Sophie or as someone else?”

  He just shrugged—what did it matter at the moment? They were trapped underground, in an isolated lab, out in the remote northern wastelands, without communications with the outside world. If Sophie—or whoever this was—wanted to talk, there was nothing for it but to listen.

  “But I’ve been thinking small,” Sophie said. “Life can drift in interstellar space for millennia before hitting fertile ground.”

  “That’s a very old hypothesis,” said Phoebe.

  “Old doesn’t mean wrong,” Sophie countered. She stretched, moving each of her muscles in turn in a strange wave. It was still easier to think of her as Sophie...for now.

  “Did she just get taller?” Phoebe whispered.

  “Maybe,” he whispered back.

  “We no longer think it’s strange that Titan’s subsurface oceans have the same life as Earth,” Sophie said.

  “I don’t think anyone thought that was strange,” said Phoebe. “Not since we discovered life on Mars and found that it was identical, biologically speaking, to ours.”

  “But would you think it strange if life was the same on Rigil Kentaurus’s system?” Rigil Kentaurus was the A system of Alpha Centauri.

  “Alpha Centauri is only 4.37 light-years from us,” Phoebe said. “So perhaps not very surprising.”

  “What if we learned that life was the same throughout our galaxy?” Sophie pressed.

  “That would be surprising,” Matteo said. “The first life on Earth evolved about four billion years ago. And the stuff we’re discovering on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn is based on much later, more evolved Earth forms. Most even have mitochondria—”

  Sophie interrupted. “Using a conservative estimate, a mitochondria-capturing endosymbiotic event occurred around two billion years ago. Prokaryotes, of course, are even older.” Prokaryotes—“before the kernel”—were simple organisms that lacked structured nuclei and other cell organelles. Life forms discovered all over the solar system had examples of both prokaryotes and eukaryotes, which had membrane-bound organelles including mitochondrions. It was still an open question if there was one
late-stage panspermia event that carried both kinds of life off Earth or multiple events that dispersed life across the solar system at different stages of evolutionary development. “Even if we say this endosymbiotic capture was more recent,” Sophie continued, “say, a mere one and a half billion years ago, that’s still a lot of time.”

  “Who’s to say Earth was the birthplace then?” Matteo said. “Wouldn’t that be just too Earth-centric? Haven’t we moved away from ‘We are the center of the universe’ thinking by now?”

  “Good, good,” Sophie said. She popped a few new joints. The sounds made Matteo shudder, and Phoebe squeezed his hand. “So lets assume for the moment that life in our star system was seeded from elsewhere. What does that mean?”

  “Not much to us, really,” Matteo said. “Evolution still took place here on Earth. Perhaps the spark came from elsewhere, but we’re here now.”

  “But how convenient would it be, for us, if we could travel anywhere across the Milky Way and never run into food we couldn’t consume or atmospheres that were not too chemically incompatible?”

  “Then we would be living in a Star Trek universe,” Matteo said. “What are you driving at?”

  “The universe is relatively young,” Sophie said. “Life as we know it could have begun only about six billion years ago. Biology needed enough time to forge the heavy elements inside the stars and disperse them across the galaxy.”

  “Still older than the Earth and the sun,” said Phoebe.

  “But there had to be that first time, right?”

  “There’s always a beginning,” Matteo agreed.

  “Spoken like a true Seed,” said Sophie, and Matteo felt like she was mocking him...yet she was a Seed too.

  “What are you saying?” he asked again.

  “I’m saying, imagine a civilization that arose from the earliest seeds of life.”

  “Those people would have a few billion years on us,” said Phoebe.