Armageddon

by Craig Alanson

  I laughed. “I can assure you, Doctor, there are no giant lizards down there to eat you. Besides, you’re not Ensign Rickie, you are the Special Guest Star for this week’s episode.”

  “Right,” he cocked his head at me. “That only means my death is more dramatic and doesn’t happen off-camera.”

  “Would it help,” I pointed at him, “if you weren’t wearing a red shirt?”

  He looked down at his University of Virginia shirt, then sheepishly over at me. The shirt was more orange than red, but he got the message. Holding up an index finger, he took a step back toward the door. “I’ll be right back.”

  I went down to the surface, and got a tour by the science team. To tell you the truth, Avalon could have been any of many other habitable planets, they looked similar to me. Except for a slight orange tint to the light when the star was setting over the horizon, and the thin line of the icy ring arcing across the sky, it could have been Paradise. Oh, except Paradise had real trees, not just oversized ferns. All I knew for sure was, it was an alien world. The plant and animal life on Avalon was different from anything I remember from my home planet. One thing we did not see was any evidence intelligent life had evolved there, or had even started to evolve. One of our biologists remarked something about a theory that ancient humans had nearly gone extinct a long time ago, because of a ‘genetic bottleneck’, when the early human population was so small there was a dangerously low level of genetic variation. I remembered that during our time on Newark, a biologist had said something about the Toba supervolcano blowing up thousands of years ago and threatening the few groups of humans huddled in Africa at the time. Both Skippy and the new biologist explained patiently to me that the Toba theory had been discredited, and they made me feel like a fool for mentioning it. I should stop talking about stuff I read on Wikipedia.

  So, Avalon was a nice place, full of giant ferns, no dangerous predators and no annoying insects like mosquitos. Whoopee freakin’ do. Maybe I was jaded from having landed on so many planets already. I wasn’t the only one, Simms and Smythe had begun to look bored after the first week. The science team, of course, were running around like giddy children. Seriously. I saw one of our biologists, a big burly Ukrainian guy with a wild beard and even wilder tattoos, go scampering across a meadow, throwing up his arms and whooping with delight. For a moment, I thought he had been stung by a native critter or some animal had crawled up his pants leg, then I realized he was merely overcome by happiness.

  It was nice to see someone getting blissfully excited. I wish I felt that way, wished I could feel that way. Maybe I had spent too many years worried about pissed-off aliens wiping out humanity. Seeing that guy so happy made me angry, until I understood the problem was with me, not him. Humanity deserved to be happy like that, rather than constantly looking at the sky in fear. That was the whole point of setting up a beta site, a place where humans could live and even flourish free from fear of murderous aliens.

  To my own surprise, I pulled my T-shirt off and ran across the meadow with the biologist, jumping and whooping and making a fool of myself. Damn it, I deserved a chance to cut loose and enjoy myself. What is that saying? Dance like no one is looking? That is good advice.

  I came out of the tent we were using for an office until a shelter was set up, and saw that Chang was standing away from the camp, looking at a stream that flowed to the east. Dropships had lifted off to take survey teams to do whatever they did. Looking at rocks and algae, something like that.

  “Eww,” I sniffed as I walked up to Chang. It had rained that morning, and the prevailing wind was bringing a scent like wet gym socks. That was the giant ferns, or primitive lifeforms like that. “We will have to keep that smell out of the sales brochures about this place.”

  He grinned back at me. “Setting up a beta site was a good idea. A good backup.” Then he lost the grin. “In case we lose Earth eventually.”

  “You want the truth? All this,” I waved my arm around the vista of green plant life around us. “Wasn’t a backup plan. It was the plan.”

  “Joe?” He lifted an eyebrow. It was still weird hearing him say my first name. It was also nice, because now I had a peer I could talk freely with.

  “During our Renegade mission, I told Simms that setting up a beta site was a backup plan, but really, it was our only realistic plan, right up to the last minute,” I admitted. “All the crazy shit we through back then was for nothing, unless we had a way to knock out those two cruisers. Until I remembered what Skippy told us about overlapping wormholes, when we were in the Roach Motel, I had given up on stopping those ships.”

  That drew a smile back onto his face. “Skippy warned us never to allow wormholes to overlap. Only you,” he clapped me on the shoulder, “would think doing that was a good idea.”

  “It almost wasn’t,” I reminded him. “You read our mission report?”

  “I did. You mean because the Dutchman was nearly lost? Joe, it wasn’t. Back, oh, I don’t know when it was. You were having an argument with someone about a football game. Your American type of football, not the real kind that is actually played with feet. The other guy said his team should have won the game if this or that had happened, and you said all that matters is the scoreboard at the end of the game.”

  “I hear you,” I knew he was trying to boost my confidence. “We got lucky,” I shrugged, and threw a stone into the stream.

  “No,” he shook his head emphatically. “That’s not true.”

  “Because Skippy says there is no such thing as luck?”

  “Because if that is true, the Merry Band of Pirates has gotten lucky a lot. The string of successes we’ve had, you have had, can’t be luck. Unless someone up there,” he looked at the sky. “Has put a thumb on the scale and been helping us all along.” He was not talking about Skippy.

  “Thanks, Kong,” I took a deep breath. The wet socks smell was fading as the local sun dried out the landscape.

  “You realize the only problem with using this world as a safe haven?”

  Was he making a joke? I couldn’t tell. There were a whole lot of things that could be a problem with Avalon, but none of them were major issues. “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Your idea to set up a beta site is that aliens can’t get here, even if they discover the location. They can’t get here because-”

  He didn’t need to finish. “Ah, shit. Yeah. I assumed they couldn’t get here, because only an Elder AI can manipulate wormholes.”

  “Now we know, or think we know, that the Rindhalu and possibly the Maxolhx also have Elder AIs.”

  “That isn’t the worst part. Hell, Skippy just showed the network how to connect way out here. All another AI needs to do, is ask the network what it already did. Shit!” I threw another rock, this time as hard and fast as I could. “I didn’t think this through, and now I’ve made the situation worse.”

  “We don’t know that,” he said quietly. “We don’t know there are any Elder AIs out there. All we know are rumors, and that the spiders used to have some sort of AI. Their AI might have been destroyed by a computer worm, like the one that attacked Skippy. We don’t know. All we know is, anything Skippy can do, another AI might be able to do.”

  “I’m not sure about that.” I told him what Skippy had said, about how he could now do things he had not been programmed to do. “Maybe other AIs don’t have the full range of awesomeness that Skippy has.”

  “I hope so.” He looked down at the swift-flowing stream, swelled by that morning’s rain. “Because the UN might abandon the beta site effort, if we’re not safe out here. We also have to,” he took a breath and looked up at the sky before continuing. “Consider that, someday, we might need to hunt down those other AIs and eliminate them. If they are a threat,” he added hastily, knowing Skippy was listening to us.

  “And if we can. Damn it, this could move up the timetable?”

  “Timetable?”

  “For setting up a colony here. No matter what we do, in a c
ouple hundred years, aliens will learn that there are no Kristang on Earth. We have until then to bring people here.”

  “Will timing matter, if the bad guys can get here?”

  “They might not be able to. Skippy told me there might be a way to disable the super-duty wormhole on this end. Shut it down permanently, like, not even the network could bring it back online. Disconnect it from its power source, something like that. We might be able to burn the bridge behind us. Ah, crap. This was starting out to be a nice day.”

  “Sorry I dumped that on you.”

  “I’d rather think about it now, than have the UN hit me with it later. Hey, I found a cooler of beer in the supplies.”

  “If you are talking about what is in the red cooler, that came out of a goat, it’s not beer. Come with me, Joe,” he slapped me on the shoulder again. “I’ll show you what real beer is.”

  “Chinese beer? Did it come out of a yak?”

  Nine weeks after landing on Avalon, it was decision time, so I called the science team together under a big tent we set up under tall dark ferns at the edge of a meadow. It was a nice day, a welcome break after two solid days of rain and drizzle. “We need to head back, the UN is expecting us and we don’t want to be overdue. You have all submitted initial reports about this planet.” I avoided using the temporary name ‘Avalon’ because part of the team resented that Eurocentric Anglo-Saxon name, or some politically correct bullshit I didn’t care about. The UN would name the place when we got home. Personally, I thought something like “Joe’s World’ or ‘Bishopville’ would be a great name, but I wouldn’t get a vote. “I have skimmed the highlights of the reports. Please,” I waved a hand to forestall a lot of discussion that simply was not needed. “All I need is a show of hands. Who is in favor of this planet being designated as at least a potential beta site?”

  Every hand went up.

  “Outstanding. Next, does anyone have reservations about selecting this site?” Oh, crap. Every hand went up again, and everyone wanted to talk. “Wait! People, please. Let’s make this simple. Who would not like to come back here to conduct further studies and help set up a colony?” A few hesitant hands were partly raised, with those people glancing around to see who supported them. “Keep this in mind,” I added, “those who object will not be returning to this world.” Slowly, all the hands went down. “Now we’re getting somewhere,” I grinned with relief. “You will all have an opportunity to speak with the Commissioners privately to express your concerns. A limited amount of time. Or you can talk with Skippy and he can summarize your views to them, they might prefer that. Remember, the final decision rests not with me or the Commissioners, or any of us here, it will be reviewed and voted on by the full United Nations.” That was not technically true, as the UN Security Council had set up a special subcommittee to study the beta site issue. I am sure that long after the beta site is fully populated, that committee will still have a generous budget to ‘study’ the issue, and much of that money will be stolen by officials in tiny countries you never heard of.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “That’s it?” I asked Skippy, after he spent three days exhaustively reviewing data from the ship’s sensors and the survey teams on the ground, plus probes we had sent out to map the star system. The science team had voted in favor of Avalon being considered for a beta site, but I wanted Skippy’s opinion. He was a lot smarter than any group of monkeys.

  “Yup,” he replied.

  “Something more detailed than ‘yup’ would be helpful, please.”

  “What can I say, Joe? Avalon is the idyllic vacation spot of the Sculptor dwarf galaxy. Unless you monkeys do something especially stupid down there, like getting eaten by a bear, it will be a great place to live.”

  He was joking about bears. There were no bear-like predators, nor were there animals like lions and tigers, oh my! Avalon did not have the whole Wizard of Oz scary forest thing going on, unless you considered giant ferns to be a forest. There appeared to be no dangerous animals on land, so accidents and stupidity would be the greatest danger to settlers. Colonists on Avalon would have a security team to defend them and miniature satellites to warn of approaching danger, though there sure didn’t look like there was any danger posed by the native life. For certain, someone was bound to do something stupid, just because we are humans and we can be stubborn and reckless. The type of people attracted to being settlers at the beta site would tend to be those who like adventure, so they would be more likely than normal to get into trouble because they seek the excitement of getting into trouble, but that would not be my problem. “Yeah, I’m not worried about bears. I’m not worried about anything that threatens individual people, my concern is anything that might threaten the entire colony. You don’t see anything like that?”

  “Nope. Since you are going to ask for me for more details, a full report of my analysis to date is available on your tablet right now. Since I know you won’t bother to read it, I’ll cover the highlights for you.”

  As Skippy is fond of saying, ugh. Professor Nerdnik went on for an hour with geeky details no one could possibly care about- Scratch that. There were lots of people who cared about the geeky details, people who were passionate about the geeky details. Our entire science team was like that, and God bless them for all the long hours and hard work they did learning all that stuff. We were lucky to have those people aboard the ship. “Skippy,” I interrupted him after a yawn that nearly dislocated my jaw. “Look, you could go on for hours, listing one by one how you didn’t find any threats in airborne pathogens, or in the animal life down there, and how Avalon’s orbit is stable and how plate tectonics create just enough volcanos to renew the surface soil, but not enough to threaten life with toxic gases. Let’s make this easy on me, and easy on you since I know you’ve been struggling to dumb this down for me-”

  “Ugh. You have no idea. It’s like I’m trying to explain multi-variable calculus to you, and I am limited to the level of ‘One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish’.”

  “Hey! That’s a good book.”

  “Yes it is, Joey. Maybe someday you will be able to read it all by yourself,” he said in a condescending Sesame Street voice. “Stupid monkey,” he muttered to himself.

  “How about this to make it easy; did you find anything unusual?”

  “Define ‘unusual’. I’ve never seen this planet before. Never seen this galaxy before, that I know of.”

  Sometimes talking with Skippy was like talking to a two-year-old. “Is there anything in the sensor data that you found interesting?”

  “Oh. Now you asked the right question. Yes, I found several things that interested me enough to dig deeper into the details. First, my initial assessment was wrong, slightly. I was not wrong, of course, that is impossible. The data I was using was incomplete.”

  “Uh huh. What was the data wrong about?”

  “There is a planet missing from the star system. Not missing, exactly, I do know where it went.”

  “Did it win a fabulous vacation cruise?”

  “No.”

  “Is its face on a milk carton?”

  “No! You dumdum. A gas giant planet was towed into an orbit close to the star.”

  “A gas giant?” My laptop had a chart of the system, I pulled up that file and studied it. There were two gas giant planets, each slightly smaller than Saturn and neither of them had a cool ring, which I found disappointing. We came all the way out to that dwarf galaxy, and there wasn’t even a ring to look at? That sucked. “The planet they towed, where did it originally orbit? How big was it?”

  “Well, Joe,” he snickered, having to pause while he laughed at his own joke. “It was,” he giggled again. “It was as big as your anus.”

  “Oh,” my face got beet red. “Very funny, you jackass.”

  “Seriously, it was roughly the size of the planet Neptune.”

  “This planet, is there a threat to us because it went missing, or did the Elders tow it inward so its hydrogen could stre
tch out the time the star is in its main sequence?”

  “You call me a jackass? Yes, you big dope, they sacrificed that planet to give the star a longer useful life. Thank you so much for spoiling my surprise. Where did you learn sciency stuff like that?”

  “I paid attention, when you told me the Elders did the same thing in the Roach Motel system. Plus, I looked up info about it and asked Friedlander about it.”

  “Doctor Friedlander, hee hee. I like his jokes.”

  “Me too. Ok, so the Elders used up a gassy planet to make the local star last longer. Why did they do that? Did they want to get a thirty-million-year mortgage, instead of a fifteen-million-year loan?”

  “Ugh, you are such an idiot. How the hell should I know why they did it? The odd thing about them going through all that trouble is that, other than that one planet missing, there is only one other sign that the Elders were ever here.”

  I made a guess. “Is this sign a crude note scrawled on a bathroom wall like ‘For a good time, call’-”

  “No! The sign is that Avalon doesn’t have enough water. It is complicated and way over your head, but basically the planet should have so much water, that the surface would be drowned in an ocean of ice that is many kilometers thick. That is why Avalon has a pretty, shiny ring, Joe. The Elders must have used mass-drivers to launch some of the excess water into orbit, and boiled off a lot of the rest. Eighty percent of the surface is still ocean, but land is exposed, and the oxygen-carbon cycle creates enough of a greenhouse effect that- Oh, why am I explaining this to you? Anyway, other than a missing gas giant planet, and Avalon’s lack of water, there is no sign the Elders were ever here.”

  “None? No sign at all?”

  “That’s what I said, dumdum. There aren’t any artificial satellites, if you don’t count the ice in the ring. Huh. That explains something.”