Helium 3: Fight for the Future

by Brandon Q. Morris

  “Why are you here? Certainly not to criticize me for my voluntary isolation? First, this is my right, and second, there’s hardly anyone apart from you who would be interested in me or my research.”

  “We need you!” Shra repeated. “Urgently!”

  It took Mart some effort to hide the surprise on his face. Then he asked, “What could you need a socially disagreeable hermit for?”

  “You’re still one of our greatest thinkers, Mart. Even if you deny it, this universe still has surprises in store for us. I want to show you one of them and ask you what you make of it!”

  48th of Frien, 298

  The hangar with the flying machines felt like familiar territory by now. She rushed toward the group standing in front of the ship. They appeared to be waiting for something. Norok, the Supreme Explorer, was nowhere to be seen. She recognized Kitok and Lashok, and everyone greeted Kimikizu with friendly taps of their beaks. She just stood there while the others chatted. It was typical small talk. She only picked up a few snippets, and though she had nothing to contribute, she still felt wonderful.

  What could the reason be? Was it the novelty of the situation? Did Explorers behave differently than Navigators? Was it a male versus female thing?

  She stopped with these considerations because Norok had arrived.

  “I apologize, my darlings,” he said. “I had to say goodbye to the Supreme Leaders.”

  “Given that, you’re still pretty much on time,” Kitok said.

  Apparently things didn’t always go smoothly among the Supreme Leaders, with whom Norok would meet in his capacity as Supreme Explorer. Kimikizu was glad that she didn’t have to deal with them.

  “The problem is that everyone wants something different,” said Norok. “The Providers want us to look for supplies, the Navigators and Knowledge Guardians want as much data about the system as possible, the Protectors demand that we behave as inconspicuously as possible because they’re suspicious about how calm it’s been... But I don’t want to bore you.”

  “Did you reach a compromise?” Kitok asked.

  “We will covertly venture to the first gas planet to explore the possibilities for mining helium-3. Our path will take us through an area filled with planetary debris. There should be minerals of all kinds there, which we’ll investigate.”

  “And the three rock planets on the way there?”

  “When we cross their orbital planes, they’ll be so far from our route that we’ll hardly get to see them. We could fly at a lower speed, but then the entire mission would take too long for the Protectors,” Norok said.

  “How long will we be away?” asked Kimikizu.

  Everyone had turned to face her the moment she’d opened her beak, as if noticing her presence for the first time.

  “The Protectors insist that we be back on board in a week,” answered Norok.

  “But that’s completely impossible,” said an older, tall Iks, whom Kimikizu hadn’t met yet. “Even at the highest possible speed, we need a week to get there and back, leaving no time to explore.”

  “The generation ship will follow us, so it will be shorter on the way back,” said Norok. “But if we don’t start soon, we’ll never get there.”

  He turned abruptly and started to make his way to the ship’s entrance. Everyone followed without asking any further questions. Kimikizu thought to herself that this was how a true leader behaved.

  Kimikizu was given the same seat in the cockpit as on the last trip. Before lying down, she looked around anxiously. Whoever had to move because of her was probably not happy about it.

  Some of the Iks had noticed the worried look on her face. “Don’t worry, this is the guest seat,” said her neighbor.

  “Thank you. That’s a relief,” she replied.

  She was disappointed when they launched. It almost felt routine. Why did the novelty of such incredible experiences wear off so quickly? They were hurtling at insane speed through a narrow gap in solid rock, and the acceleration was pressing them so hard into the cushions that they could hardly breathe—but she didn’t find it particularly exciting.

  Instead, she was eagerly anticipating the debris that was some distance out there, orbiting the system’s star, along with the first planet’s massive cloud formations swirling with storms. She dreamed of flying there using nothing but her own strength, knowing it wasn’t entirely inconceivable that this dream might become a reality in the days ahead.

  Norok came to her spot after lunch. Kimikizu couldn’t keep her tail feathers from turning pink with nervousness.

  “A little exercise after the meal? You haven’t seen much of the ship at all,” he said.

  “Certainly, movement’s always a good idea,” she replied.

  Movement’s always a good idea. What a stupid thing to say! Why couldn’t she have thought of anything better? She unfastened the belt and got up as Norok waved to her with his wing and went ahead. They left the cockpit through the sliding door. The corridor beyond it was just wide enough for two Iks. Kimikizu tried to imagine the ship from the exterior, thinking there couldn’t be that much more room on either side.

  Norok pointed to a door on the left and one on the right.

  “This is where we have our workshop and a multipurpose room. Behind it are storage rooms.” He pointed up, then, as they continued down the hall. “And above us, too.”

  He tapped a button and the sliding door opened. “Now we’re entering the crew cabin area. We have enough room for a maximum of fifty Explorers.”

  Kimikizu saw a narrow room with three beds, one on top of the other.

  “Not very comfortable,” said Norok, “but it’s possible to tolerate it for a couple of weeks.” He closed the door and they went on. The passage narrowed. “And this is where we have the kitchen. It requires a little more space, which is why the corridor is so narrow.”

  He opened the door. There was one Iks in the room, moving frantically and ignoring them entirely, smelling strongly of anti-onion. Her crop enlarged, and she became hungry, even though she had just eaten.

  Norok closed the door again. “The cook has something to do almost all day long. I admire him,” he said.

  “Is he an Explorer?”

  “No, he’s one of the Providers, but he’s been flying with us for so long that he’s become part of the family. The fact that he always manages to keep everyone full and happy is really an achievement.”

  They made their way down the narrow corridor until it ended with a door.

  “Behind this are the warehouse and engine room. There’s no atmosphere there,” Norok said.

  Kimikizu had wondered why there was a big red light on the door. It wasn’t a standard door at all, but an airlock.

  “You’re probably wondering where the gym is.”

  She hadn’t wondered about that yet. But she did remember that Norok had asked her if she’d wanted to exercise, so she replied in the affirmative.

  “It’s under us.” Norok pointed to the floor.

  Only now did Kimikizu notice the buttons located on the side walls just above the floor. Norok bent down to tap one of them and a floor slab pushed to the side, revealing a way down. But Norok didn’t use the ladder.

  “Down here there’s a nice dust bath,” he said. “So, if you’d like to relax...”

  “How nice! And where are the washrooms?”

  “Farther ahead.”

  They continued in the direction of the cockpit until Norok stopped. “Segment B3,” he said. “Here’s the gym.”

  Kimikizu read the code number on the wall as Norok opened the door and climbed down the ladder. She followed. The lighting had switched on automatically. The room was wide enough to stretch out one’s wings.

  “There are two spots,” he said. “What you do is suspend yourself in the harness.” He pointed to a few straps hanging from the ceiling. “Wait, I’ll help you.”

  He showed her how to put the straps around the legs, body, and neck so that it was still possible to m
ove the wings. “Now put your leg through here and you’ll be floating.”

  She stretched her leg out in an effort to get it through the loop but was unsuccessful. So he reached for her leg and pushed it into the appropriate place. A shiver ran down her spine. No other Iks had touched the bare skin on her leg, not since the nurse had washed her when she was young. Hopefully Norok didn’t notice how strange the situation felt to her.

  “I know that it seems weird at first. But you’ll get used to it. Wait, I’m going to hook myself up, too.”

  There was a second set of straps that were significantly shorter and slightly offset from the ceiling. Kimikizu watched Norok. After a short while he was hanging behind and above her in the straps. What was all of this about? In the generation ship, getting exercise was a far less complicated matter.

  “Activate airstream,” said Norok.

  First Kimikizu heard the roar, and then the wind hit her from the front. She instinctively moved her wings to battle the airstream. On the front wall of the room in front of her, a screen lit up.

  “Do you see the numbers there? The system measures how far the current manages to drive you backward. The lower value is yours. Ideally, it will show a zero.”

  The value was currently three. She had to work harder. Norok had a one on the screen. Before long, she had outdone him and had hit zero. She made it to minus two, and then the airflow intensified.

  “If you go below zero, the wind gets stronger,” Norok said, gasping.

  This was quite the challenge. Kimikizu moved her wings faster. Again she managed to get to minus two. Norok kept his value constant at zero. Could she wear him down? She kicked it up a notch. Minus two, and the system shifted up again. There! Norok slipped to one, then two. But then he came back to zero. This was exciting!

  Kimikizu pushed herself even more. Now she wanted to see what the system was capable of. She sped up until she reached minus two again. The airstream intensified and Norok’s gasping followed suit. It turned up again, and then another time. Minus two, and the wind was blowing the feathers on her forehead straight up, but she realized that she had reached her limit. She was just able to hold at zero while Norok slowly fell back, first to one, then to 1.5, finally to two, and giving up on three.

  “Turn off the airflow,” he called out.

  Then they both dangled in their straps, exhausted and breathing heavily. Now Kimikizu would need a few minutes to recuperate. She would have loved to simply lie down in the dust bath with Norok, without any other intentions, but such a suggestion didn’t seem appropriate.

  Instead, she decided to tell him about her gravi measurements. There was nobody here to listen and make fun of her. It was the perfect opportunity. She told him about how she’d become aware of the bright spots, and what she’d assumed to be the most likely cause.

  Norok sounded somewhat incredulous. “Wormholes?”

  “Yes, it’s the only thing that makes sense here. If our measuring devices are so defective that they registered non-existent black holes, we may as well throw them away.”

  “You’re right,” he said. “It can’t be explained by technical errors in the measuring process. But wormholes? Don’t our Knowledge Guardians believe they don’t even exist?”

  “No, they just say we can’t produce them. We lack the advanced physics needed to do so. We can’t securely produce and store negative energy.”

  “So, you mean someone created wormholes? Do you understand what this would mean?”

  “Yes, Norok. It would mean that we are not alone in this system. Either someone has already been here, or someone else has come here now, along with us.”

  “But it means something else. If this someone can create wormholes, then they are technologically far superior to us. We wouldn’t stand a chance against their technology, Kimi.”

  “Then we should hope that the other visitors aren’t hostile toward us. Don’t some Knowledge Guardians argue that sophisticated beings must be inherently peaceful, because otherwise they would have annihilated themselves long ago?”

  “I don’t believe in that theory. That’s why I’d been hoping we wouldn’t come across any other intelligent life on our journey.”

  “But the self-destruction argument seems plausible to me,” said Kimikizu.

  “But it only applies if resources are limited. A non-peaceful civilization would exhaust these resources in a civil war. But if they were to discover wormhole technology just in time, the whole universe with all its resources would be open to them. They wouldn’t have to kill anyone because there would be enough for everyone.”

  “Then I hope that the visitors aren’t that kind of species,” Kimikizu said.

  “In the best-case scenario, your wormhole theory is incorrect anyway.”

  “That’s probably what the Supreme Navigator is hoping. And, why she gave me quite the lecture.”

  “Strorok’s Premise?”

  Kimikizu laughed wearily. “Exactly.”

  “That’s not the way to do it,” said Norok. “You can use it to kill every argument, apart from the simplest, of course. But I can understand it somewhat. We don’t want to spoil the happiness that’s come with a successful braking maneuver! And we have no alternative now. We have to stick it out in this system for at least the next thousand cycles.”

  “Maybe it’s just a little obsession of mine.”

  “At any rate, we have to keep an eye out, Kimi. If there are other living things here, they must have come from the outer system. And you don’t make that journey in four days.”

  “Or they do. And if they travel through space with wormholes, perhaps they’ve got other technologies that we don’t know about up their sleeves. But what if they’re peaceful? Imagine what we could learn from them! We should definitely establish contact with them.”

  “Let’s save that discussion for later, in the cockpit,” said Norok. “Nothing goes forward without the superiors’ permission. Plus, we still don’t know if your theory is correct and whether we’re really dealing with other living beings.”

  The Supreme Explorer loosened his straps and then helped Kimikizu with hers. While she was straightening out her uniform and feathers, he typed something onto the screen.

  “Oho,” he said. “You set the new record for the one that I broke here ten years ago.”

  Norok let her go ahead at the door to the cockpit. The others looked at her. She imagined what the team would think. Nothing happened, she told herself. I just broke the record. She hoped Norok wouldn’t say anything about it. It would be embarrassing.

  “Our guest, the Navigator, informed me of an interesting phenomenon earlier,” began the Supreme Explorer.

  All necks and beaks immediately turned in his direction.

  “It appears as if twenty wormholes opened in the outer solar system a few days ago.”

  “Twenty?” the Iks sitting on the far right asked loudly.

  “Yes, twenty,” said Norok. “The observation is not yet confirmed, so I ask for confidentiality. You’re finding out about it already because it is especially important that you record even the smallest deviations and react immediately. We may not be alone in this system. If this other species could manage wormholes, this would mean that they’re ahead of us technologically, and we can’t know if they will be peaceful toward us.”

  “Should we replace the sensors in the nosecone with the Gauss cannon from the arsenal?” asked the same Iks from his seat on the far-right side.

  “There will be time for that later,” Norok replied. “For now, it’s important to detect the danger, if there is one, as soon as possible. For this we need the sensors. All of them.”

  “But then we can’t defend ourselves at all.”

  “It doesn’t matter. The generation ship is what’s important. We have to warn the other Iks as early as possible if there is a reason to do so. Plus, as a single ship we wouldn’t have a chance against twenty opponents who are technologically superior to us.”

 
“You started out by saying that it was just a theory that hasn’t been confirmed,” said the Iks sitting directly next to Kimikizu.

  “That’s correct. The rulers suspect that it was instead a technical defect.”

  “Please don’t take this as a criticism of our guest, but isn’t it possible that we’re worrying about nothing?”

  Kimikizu looked at the floor with her beak down. She had known that this argument would arise. It would have been better if Norok had waited to tell them.

  “The possibility exists,” said Norok. “And I understand the leaders who are still keeping this information to themselves. They have to lead an entire race and give them hope. It would be unwelcome news if we were to discover that this system is not as uncharted as we’d hoped. But we’re Explorers. We owe it to our species to recognize all possible dangers before they threaten the existence of the Iks. We have always dealt with contingencies. Therefore, my urgent request is that you pay attention to every last detail! I’m going to leave the cockpit now and inform the entire crew of our suspicions.”

  Norok stomped once and then turned to leave the room. At first it was silent, and then the other Iks started whispering amongst themselves. They didn’t include Kimikizu, and she suddenly felt as excluded as she had at the beginning. But she’d already learned to deal with that when she had been relatively young.

  Kimikizu couldn’t tell how much time had passed, but suddenly Norok was back in the cockpit. She felt his presence as an invisible force radiating in all directions from where he was standing. He was not alone. Beside him was a very small Iks, just a little over half of Norok’s size. His tail feathers had gone gray, and he had lost all his forehead feathers, both of which must have been because of his age.

  “This is Grisok,” said Norok. “You explorers all know our Keeper, but Kimi hasn’t met him yet.”

  Grisok nodded to her and she nodded back. She hadn’t even known there was a Guardian on board. But of course it made sense to have someone with such great knowledge aboard an Explorer ship.