The Next Continent

by Issui Ogawa

  “I wanted to talk a little longer, but I didn’t want to take too much of Josh’s time. He told me to go to bed.”

  “He sounds like a considerate friend.”

  “He’s probably just worried the phone is tapped. If the media finds out he’s my friend, they’ll be pounding on his door.”

  Sennosuke said nothing for a moment. “Come take a look.”

  “Yes, Grandfather.”

  Sennosuke stepped away from the telescope. Tae sat down next to it. It was a Newtonian reflector. Its tube, twelve centimeters in diameter, topped an equatorial mount on a wooden tripod. The telescope was rustic in design and manufacture, without a tracking drive, cold CCDs, or other electronic devices. Other than the tube and tripod legs, all the fittings were bronze. It had the appearance of a well-loved object.

  Tae looked into the eyepiece. A circle of silvery white light struck her retina. Once she had blinked and allowed her eyes to adjust, the bright semicircular moon came into view. The telescope’s secondary mirror cast a faint shadow over the center of the image, but the lunar surface was in sharp focus—an intricate mixture of faintly yellow-tinged mountains and dark basins. Tycho’s white rays spread starlike from the crater. The surface was a profusion of overlapping craters of all sizes. It was the lunar southern hemisphere.

  “I wonder if we can see the multidozers,” said Tae.

  “I doubt that.”

  “Maybe we should put beacons on them?”

  “I doubt you could see them even then. They’d be lost in the light reflected from the surface. If they had lasers, you might be able to see them.”

  “Then let’s be sure to fit them with lasers.”

  “Can you make out the crater?” asked Sennosuke.

  The moon glided out of her field of view, then immediately returned. Tae looked up and saw Sennosuke making tiny adjustments to the telescope. He did not need to look through the scope to correct its orientation.

  “I couldn’t use this without your help,” said Tae.

  Sennosuke placed his hand on the tube with a nostalgic look. “I’ve been doing this for sixty years, you know. This used to be my only pleasure. I saw Sputnik and Halley’s Comet with this. I wanted to see the plume from the crash of Lunar Prospector, but now I know why I couldn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “You know—those threads. I hear they may have cushioned the force of impact and made the plume smaller. Once there’s a way to get to Eden Crater, I’d like to go see for myself.”

  “I wonder if you’ll live that long, Grandfather.”

  Sennosuke smiled warmly and patted the girl’s head. “I’m glad I decided to make your dream come true. Now that we’ve come this far, it really looks like I might be able to go.”

  “Then I’ll welcome you to my Eden.”

  “What about Kiichiro?”

  Tae looked away, sullen. “He wouldn’t come even if I asked.”

  “Not even via engraved invitation? You never know. Your father might actually be interested.”

  “No way. I’ll never let him set foot in Apple.” She obstinately shook her head. “He’s the one I’m trying to get away from.”

  “That’s too bad.” Sennosuke fell silent. He was the only one who knew the truth—that Tae’s father was the reason she had left Japan at an early age. He had showered money and education on her, but not the one thing she wanted most in the world. Nor was she able to hide her genius and wealth from the acquaintances she made in her travels: they ended up either flattering or avoiding her. She had no true intimates. Sennosuke was far too old to be a friend to Tae. All he could do was keep a careful watch over her from a distance.

  Tae’s baffling tendency to advance various outlandish proposals seemed to be her way of compensating for a lack of emotional sustenance. When she’d first said she wanted to go to the moon, that she wanted to build a wedding palace, Sennosuke had not known quite what to make of it. Even though Sixth Continent was just a means of luring people to the moon, he’d still doubted the wisdom of trying to do so in the first place.

  But when he considered his granddaughter’s upbringing, he felt he somehow understood. If she took charge of such a large project, the project itself would become the center of attention, and her immense wealth would fade into the background. Watching couples being joined at her wedding palace would help compensate for her loneliness. And if she succeeded, she’d be able to get back at her father.

  Yet it was all so heartbreaking—to pursue such a wonderful, imaginative goal all out of loneliness. Tae had participated at least a little in his stargazing hobby, and he was happy she was able to share in the simple delight of looking at stars in the night sky just as any other teenager might.

  “Tae, there’s something I’d like you to do for me.” Sennosuke had decided that what he was about to say was best for his granddaughter. “If you’re willing to make room for me on Apple, then I’d like to yield my place to your father. I’m probably too old to go anyway. Let’s invite him together, you and me.”

  She paused before answering. “I don’t want to. If you can’t go, I’ll use it for something else.”

  “Something else?”

  “A workstation with a cryptanalysis program, and a parabolic antenna.”

  “What would you do with that?”

  “Search for messages from extraterrestrial life-forms.”

  Sennosuke was mystified. “You don’t have to go all the way to the moon to do that. What’s this all about?”

  Tae’s explanation tumbled out in a rush. “The frequencies you can detect from Earth are limited—the ionosphere and the atmosphere get in the way. No one has launched a satellite to search for extraterrestrial life. But there are several proposals for detecting signals from unknown life-forms. If you have the right hardware, you can run the software. If the life-forms are reasonably close to our solar system, they’ll probably be sending signals toward planets that look suitable for life. But we may not be able to catch those signals from Earth. From the moon, we can monitor all frequencies without interference. I know this is kind of sudden—” She looked up at Sennosuke. “But it was always my intention, from the beginning.”

  “You could have at least told me.”

  “I didn’t want you to worry…you know, about my not having a friend in the world.”

  Sennosuke thought for a moment. “So, ‘from the beginning’ means not just the search for extraterrestrials, but…this whole project…”

  “Yes. I want to make friends. Sixth Continent, the wedding palace—everything is part of that plan.”

  Sennosuke was speechless. He thought he’d understood what his granddaughter wanted. And that was that; he’d merely imagined that he understood. Her goal hadn’t been to make people happy. It was all nothing more than a search for friendship, and to go to such unheard-of lengths to do so meant that, in a sense, she had given up hope of ever actually succeeding.

  Sennosuke knew there was no point in raising doubts now that things had proceeded this far, but he could not restrain himself.

  “Do you really think there are extraterrestrials out there?”

  “There are. There are no grounds for thinking there aren’t. The theory of extrasolar planetary formation was revised twenty-five years ago. In the Milky Way alone there could be more than a hundred million Earth-like planets. With that many planets, it’s unthinkable that there wouldn’t be any close to our solar system.”

  “I see. But why not search with a satellite?”

  “Would you greet them with a satellite? I mean, if they actually came? If you were back in the Edo period, Grandfather—in Nagasaki—and the first Dutch ship sailed into the harbor, would you go out to greet them in a splendid ship or in a rowboat? Which boat would get you recognized as a representative of the shogun?”

  “And a satellite is the rowboat.”

  “It is compared to the International Space Station. I want to build something even better. A magnificent Dejima Island. A pl
ace any visitor will immediately recognize as an international port.”

  “But why do you have to go so far to search for friendship? Why, young Aomine, for example—he’s important to you, isn’t he?” This was Sennosuke’s ace in the hole, but Tae’s expression didn’t change. She simply shook her head.

  “This is no reflection on Sohya. He doesn’t treat me as anyone special. I don’t know why. If he knew my goal was to search for friends, I think he’d help me. We’d look for them together.”

  “And have you ever felt an emotion called jealousy?”

  “Until I could scream. Those around me have so much that I don’t. But I think Sohya will put up with me.”

  “Tae…” Sennosuke sighed. “I didn’t realize you were so intent on this. I think we need to sit down and rethink things calmly. You needn’t go to such lengths to find friends. I know it sounds extreme, but you could cancel this whole project, cut your ties to ELE, and live as a normal young woman…”

  “Yes, that does sound extreme.” Tae wrapped her arms around the telescope. She picked it up, walked to the edge of the terrace, and held it out over the railing. “Grandfather? Could you bear to part with this?”

  “I don’t know what you’re getting at.”

  “You saw this in a shop in Hong Kong. You fell in love with it. It cost you three months’ wages. You’ve replaced the mirror coating every year for sixty years. Am I right?”

  “I’d hate to part with it. But I could if I had to.”

  “I could if I had to, too. But I’d really hate it.” With a troubled smile, Tae put the telescope back on the terrace. “I don’t want to lose the life I’m living. I think I’d have a hard time without money. I couldn’t read books, or buy clothes, or fly all over the world.”

  “Too used to all that to give it up now, are you?”

  “Yes. To be honest, it feels good having lots of people working on something at just a word from me.”

  She’s a Toenji, thought Sennosuke, though he didn’t want to say it. The same drive had enabled him to build Eden Entertainment. His son Kiichiro, ELE’s president, had the same temperament.

  “All right. Do what you want to do. You don’t have to see your father if you don’t want to. The two of you would probably just fight anyway.”

  “Thank you, Grandfather.” Tae walked up to Sennosuke and hugged him. He put his arm around her shoulders and squeezed her tight. “I’m so glad we had this talk. Things are going to get a little bumpy soon, and I needed some encouragement.”

  “What’s going to happen?”

  “Maybe something like a battle.”

  “Well, that won’t do. Shall I lend a hand?”

  “Not yet. I have a strategy. But I’ll probably need your help.”

  “You can count on me.” He stroked her hair.

  Tae’s wearcom chimed softly. She looked at the display.

  “Another phone call?” asked Sennosuke.

  “It’s my personal news feed. Whenever something about Sixth Continent pops up, I get an alert.” She read the text streaming across the display, then happily said, “Aha! Just what I was waiting for.”

  “Your battle?”

  “No, this is good news. It sounds like NASA is running into problems with that ‘Liberty Island’ of theirs. Their rovers are down.”

  “It’s not right to celebrate the misfortunes of others, you know.”

  Tae selected a video from the wearcom’s menu and hit play. “But, Grandfather, if the Americans don’t slow down a bit, it’ll be hard for us to win. Look at them. They’re so confident.” The tiny screen showed a press conference in the United States. A distinguished-looking American was delivering an impassioned statement.

  “WE HAVEN’T ABABDONED Mars.”

  Von Kármán Auditorium, Jet Propulsion Laboratory: the scene of hundreds of press conferences announcing dazzling achievements in space exploration. NASA Administrator Richard Ringstone was speaking forcefully.

  “We simply redirected Mars Ambassador to swing by Venus. We used the same roundabout route on the outbound leg.”

  Several reporters stood with raised hands. Ringstone pointed to one of them.

  “Mally, from AOL. I understand that a lot of the equipment designed for use on Mars is not usable on the lunar surface. Doesn’t that represent a significant waste of NASA resources?”

  “Not at all. The equipment will be preserved for future Mars missions. Even with the delays this revised strategy will entail, establishing a foothold on the moon offers long-term advantages. We’re fortunate that Japanese private enterprise has been so aggressive. They’ve demonstrated that water exists on the surface in an easily recoverable form. Factoring that water into our Mars exploration plans should make it easier to achieve them in the long run.”

  Ringstone pointed to a full-scale mock-up of Viking 1, America’s first Mars orbiter, standing in a corner of the auditorium.

  “That’s not all. Our lunar base will serve as a refueling point for missions to other planets. It could be used to build spacecraft themselves—even manned spacecraft. It can be a refueling depot, a production facility, and a home port for space missions.”

  “Zhang, from Xinhua News Agency. NASA’s Lunar Generator 1 landed next to the crater where Japan’s Sixth Continent consortium is constructing a base of its own. Is it NASA’s intention to piggyback on the success of Japanese industry?” The question was provocative, but Ringstone was unruffled.

  “That’s a groundless assumption. The moon does not belong to Japan. It belongs to all of humanity, and its resources cannot be monopolized by any one nation. We have an inalienable right to be there.” Ringstone looked stern but then broke into a smile. “Of course, we’re thankful for what they’ve done. If they find themselves in some kind of trouble, NASA will be happy to lend them a hand. If they lose their way, we’ll politely give them directions.” Ringstone’s self-assurance was magisterial. And why not?

  As the NASA administrator’s bald head reflected the lights from dozens of flashing cameras, he gave an elegant bow.

  “NASA’s moon base will be named Liberty Island. Hitch your wagons, everyone. The next continent is a big one.”

  SIX MONTHS HAD passed since NASA had broadcast its declaration of war to the world. From time to time, Tae replayed Ringstone’s press conference to strengthen her resolve.

  “Overconfidence is the enemy. NASA is the best of the best.” She looked up at her Eden, floating in the night sky, and whispered to herself, “Americans are so talented at making friends…far more than I am.”

  [2]

  THE GASOLINE-POWERED Chevrolet sped through the earlysummer sunlight of Pasadena and through the gate of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains.

  The driver, a blond woman in a fiery scarlet suit, jumped out and strode quickly into the Space Flight Operations Facility. As she hurried toward a room next to mission control, she was inputting data into the wearcom embedded in her sunglasses with her left hand.

  In her mid-thirties, Caroline Cadbury was operations administrator for NASA’s Liberty Island Unmanned Engineering Phase. She yanked open the door of the Unmanned Operations Support Room and bellowed, “What’s going on? All the boys are down?”

  Her team sat at their bank of consoles. They swiveled to look at her. One stood up: a tall, beefy man who looked more like a truck driver than a NASA controller. He was pale.

  “That’s right, Carol. All twenty-five rovers and five scrapers.”

  “What the hell happened? Did you have them playing football?”

  “No. There were no collisions. We were operating by the book.” Joseph Lambach waved his hands apologetically. He was the “driver” for the engineering equipment, though with the two-way communications delay he could not control their speed and direction in real time. The rovers’ AI programming let them move independently. Lambach’s job was to assign objectives—ordering the vehicles to move a certain boulder, grade a site to a certain
shape and dimensions, and so on.

  “If there wasn’t a collision, what happened?” Caroline was boiling with frustration. With her good looks, men tended to underestimate her, but this morning her fury was not showing her off to best effect.

  Lambach winced. “We have a power supply problem. The charging stations are down. The rovers can’t recharge their fuel cells. They’ve all gone into sleep mode.”

  “Show me the telemetry and any suspicious-looking video. Craig! Conference me with the rover tech supervisor at LPL!”

  Craig initiated a call to the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. Caroline threw herself into a chair and started reviewing the telemetry data on her wearcom.

  “I don’t understand. All the chargers are off-line. But we have five stations and five solar arrays. Everything’s networked. The only way this could happen would be if all five bridges were cut or all the arrays destroyed. Even a meteor strike should’ve left two or three stations online. Do we have video?”

  Her display switched to video. She used the wearcom’s controller, hanging like a pendant from the frame of her glasses, to page through the images. “I don’t see any evidence of damage,” she muttered.

  “It’s a long shot, but the circuits may have been damaged. The rovers’ motherboards were designed for Mars. It has an atmosphere. It’s farther from the sun. The circuits weren’t shielded for the intensity of the solar wind on the moon. But everything went fine during the simulations.”

  “Even so,” said Caroline, “the vehicles have redundant control. Self-diagnostic telemetry doesn’t indicate any problems. Wait a minute—what’s this?”

  Caroline marked the image on her display. One of the solar arrays, a long panel on an aluminum frame extending horizontally over the surface. The panel was nearly vertical. NASA had not had time to experiment with Sixth Continent’s spring-loaded deployment techniques. Instead, they used conventional rigid panels, tugged open in sections by a small rover, like an accordion. The panels had been proven on the ISS, and the rover had been developed for the Mars missions.