The Next Continent

by Issui Ogawa

  “Is he still inside?”

  “Of course. If we buried him he wouldn’t be able to see the stars. His body won’t decay.” Sohya had finished swapping the cables. He placed his palms together and bowed his head.

  “Don’t you mean he wouldn’t be able to see Earth?” asked Tae.

  “Wasn’t it you who said the stars were his destination?”

  She didn’t answer but leaned against him. Through the glazing on her visor, he could just make out a tear tracing down her cheek.

  “You didn’t cry when he died.”

  “I know. It’s strange. It’s taken me till now.”

  “What changed?”

  “We left him all alone for half a year. I wonder if we did the right thing.”

  “He’s not alone anymore.”

  Sohya started back for the rover. Tae swung round—startled at first, then embarrassed. Somehow she’d expected him to be angry with her. He motioned from the rover. “Let’s go. I want to get there by five thirty.”

  She looked at the core again, then toward the stars that would be Shinji’s forever. At the base of the gentle slope in the sunwashed desert, her palace seemed close enough to touch. Beyond lay a smaller crater. The distances were deceiving. The SETI crater was more than a kilometer away, but it looked startlingly close. A fiery disk and a thin crescent of blue and white hung in the blackness above the horizon.

  Sohya was right. The view was superb. Shinji would have many visitors. Tae was almost to the rover when a voice came on the comm.

  “Aomine? It’s Yamagiwa. Look, this isn’t exactly urgent, but I’ve got something to pass on to you. Johnson Space Center—”

  “Aomine here. I’m going to radio silence for a while. I’ll contact you on the landline from the vault. ETA is 0530 hours.” He started the rover over the ridge and into the crater.

  “What? Aomine, repeat, please.”

  Sohya switched off the transceiver. He took a comm cable from behind the seat and connected it to a jack on Tae’s backpack, then to his own.

  “Why did you switch off? Is that okay?”

  “No. But I wanted to be able to talk without people listening in.”

  They looked at each other in silence. Suddenly the darkness swallowed them. They were in the shadow zone. Sohya switched on the floodlights, which cast a sharp-edged cone of light on the downslope ahead. The inner surface of the rim was steep; on Earth it would have been a difficult descent even on foot. Sohya steered cautiously as they headed downward.

  “I was worried for so long,” said Tae abruptly.

  “About what?”

  “I thought you were angry with me. For what happened to Shinji.”

  “It wasn’t your fault. If it was, then I’m just as much to blame. Okay, I was angry with you at first. But later I realized I was really angry at myself.”

  “So you’re angry.”

  “How could I not be? But it’s over.”

  “I’m sorry.” A small voice. Sohya turned his head inside his helmet to look at her. “When he died, I didn’t mourn. Not really.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m not asking you to forgive me. But it’s really hitting me now. I just wanted you to know that.”

  “I saw you crying.” He reached over and drew her close. She stiffened, then relaxed against him.

  “Thank you, Sohya.”

  “It’s okay. Don’t worry anymore.”

  She rested her helmet against his shoulder. They hadn’t been alone since she’d arrived two days ago. In fact, they’d hardly been alone together in the past eleven years. Sohya broke the silence. “You’ve changed.”

  “Do I seem different?”

  “It’s the way you act. You’re not as pushy. The old Tae would have been obsessed with collecting money for Phase E. She would have driven a far harder bargain with Liberty Island for the heliostats too.”

  “Was I really so pushy?” Judging from her voice, she was blushing. She didn’t seem so self-assured now. Sohya was happy to see a spontaneous reaction for a change.

  “You’re more genuine. What happened? Was it your father?”

  “I still can’t relax around him.” Back into her shell, thought Sohya. Then she added, “But we’re both working on it, trying to get closer to each other. That’s huge progress.”

  “So what I said to you that day at Reika’s was right?”

  “I guess. All I could think about was doing something really big and showing my father up once and for all.”

  “It’s good that you finally realized that. But what now? How are you going to keep motivated enough to see this project through?”

  “That’s something I’m a little concerned about.” Her voice was suddenly tired. “It doesn’t belong to me now. It belongs to thousands of people. I’m wondering whether it makes sense for me to keep leading the project. I’m getting more help than I’m giving.”

  “Sounds like advice from your father.”

  “Yes…Yes, it does.” She looked up at him. “What about you? Do you have the energy to see this through?”

  “Are you joking? The Apollo missions were like mountaineers building cairns to show other climbers the way. Sixth Continent is a permanent base camp. I want to show the world what we can do.”

  “I envy your confidence.”

  “You said it yourself. People really can live on the moon. It’s not like Antarctica. It’s the real Sixth Continent.”

  “But what will I have to live for once it’s finished?”

  “You need another goal.” The rover swayed as it reached the crater floor. Its floodlights pierced far into the darkness. Tae noticed the color of the surface; it was different here, like a winter snowfield surrounded by a ring of mountains. Far off to the left, the beacon of another vehicle was moving rapidly away, toward Liberty Island.

  Sohya trailed a fingertip across the permafrost as it moved past underneath him. “Unravel the secrets buried in this crater. Wouldn’t that be a challenging new goal?”

  “But Liberty Island is already moving full speed.”

  “I don’t think they’ll find all the answers. Five or ten, maybe twenty years from now, Sixth Continent will be a major research facility. Maybe we’ll even mine the helium-3 that the Chinese are going after. There are so many things we can do.”

  “And where will you be in twenty years?”

  Sohya didn’t answer. He was Sixth Continent’s construction supervisor. Once construction was finished—what then?

  A simple declaration of their true feelings would have bridged the gulf between them. They both knew it, but they had let too many opportunities to say what needed to be said slip away. They had known each other too long. Now neither of them could imagine how honesty might change things, and it scared them both.

  They pressed ahead in silence. A few minutes later Sohya halted the rover. They were at the edge of a hundred-meter depression in the crater left by permafrost mining. He played the floodlights over their surroundings. The dragonlike bulk shooter, off-line and inactive, squatted a short distance away near the rim. A single multidozer stood motionless in the pit below.

  Sohya advanced down the slope. Moments later, the multidozer moved out of the pit, as if yielding to them, and headed rapidly away. A notch with a vertical wall about three meters high had been cut into the far side of the pit, and a massive frame surrounding an aluminum door was set into the wall of the cut. Sohya stopped nearby and climbed out of the rover, leaving the floodlights on.

  “This is the vault. We store hydrogen and oxygen in spent fuel pods here. Don’t try to open it with your hands.” He unreeled his suit tether and hooked the end under the bottom edge of the metal slab. It lifted up and inward like a garage door. Beyond was a sloping passage leading down into darkness. They walked into the tunnel.

  Seconds later, forty points of light flashed into brilliance above the rim of the crater. The area around the entrance grew brighter. But Sohya and Tae were already inside.

&nbs
p; [3]

  THE TUNNEL DESCENDED at a shallow angle for twenty meters. At the end, a room five meters square by two high had been carved out of the permafrost. Twenty or so spherical metal tanks were lined up on the floor, each nearly a meter in diameter.

  Tae looked at the smooth walls enclosing them. “This must have taken a lot of time. Was all that work really necessary?”

  “Long-term storage on the surface is slightly risky. A micrometeor might puncture a tank. The carpenter robots dug this after they finished shaping the blocks for the buildings. We wanted to keep them busy.”

  Tae laughed. “No point in letting them goof off.” She looked closer at a nearby wall. Lit by small spotlights set like epaulets into the shoulders of her suit, the fibers made the coffee-colored permafrost sparkle. “So this is how it looks.” She reached out to touch the wall. Sohya pulled her gently away.

  “It’s 220 below in here. Touch that wall and the cold could penetrate your glove and freeze the end of your finger. Is your heater on max?”

  “I think so. It’s pretty noisy.”

  “Don’t squat down either. You want to keep the joints in your suit open so the heat can circulate. Now let’s get some of these tanks out of here.”

  Sohya was about to hook the end of his tether to a handcart propped against the wall when Tae said, “Shouldn’t you contact Yamagiwa?”

  “You’re right. Totally slipped my mind.”

  She absently reached for her wearcom pendant before she realized it was inside her Manna suit. She checked the comm pad in the suit’s left forearm. “There’s no signal.”

  “The fibers block any signal. That’s why we have this.” He pointed to a small interface box in the ceiling. It was connected to a cable that ran down the wall and back up the shaft toward the entrance. He reached up and connected their cables to the box.

  “Control, Aomine. We’ve reached the vault. All conditions nominal. Sorry for being out of touch.”

  “Aomine! Are you all right?” It was Yamagiwa. He sounded worried.

  “We’re fine.” Sohya glanced at Tae in surprise. “What’s going on?”

  “We thought something might’ve happened to you. You’re underground, right? Did you notice anything on the way there?”

  “No, not a thing.”

  “That’s odd, because Liberty Island is focusing the heliostats right at you.”

  For a moment Sohya doubted his ears. “In the shadow zone?

  How? The sun is on the far side of the mirrors. They can’t send light down here.”

  “Unfortunately they can, if the heliostats are tipped at the correct angle. The output is limited but still strong enough to kill you if you get in the way.”

  “But what’s the point?”

  “It’s some sort of experiment. They didn’t let us in on it. The problem is we can’t contact them.”

  “Hold that thought, Yamagiwa. I’d better look outside.” Sohya unplugged the comm cable, motioned to Tae to stay put, and ran back up the shaft. He was more irritated than worried. Liberty Island. Great timing, guys.

  The shaft door was closed. This was strange. Sohya was certain he’d left it open. It wasn’t there to keep anyone out; it was to keep the shaft clear if the cut next to it collapsed. The up-and-over design was easy to open even if the frame was pinched by rubble. In the open position, it gave the entrance some protection against falling rock. Now it was closed. Had the wall above it caved in?

  He felt a spike of fear but suppressed it immediately; panic would only make clear thinking harder. Liberty Island and Sixth Continent could send all the help they needed. If he called for assistance, someone would arrive in half an hour at most. If he did nothing, someone would come anyway. The only question was whether he could open the door himself.

  Touching it with his glove was out of the question; in a few seconds, the cold would make even the tough covering of his gloves brittle enough to fracture when he moved his hands. One part of his suit could stand up to the cold: his insulated boots. Sohya gave the door a kick.

  What happened next was a blur. He was thrown backward by a force that felt like some wild beast suddenly freed from its cage. He slid a short distance across the frozen regolith, but in an instant his reflexes put him back on his feet. He had no idea what had just happened.

  The door was closed again. Sohya stared at it, dazed, and tried to remember. Some sort of blinding light had pierced his visor. For an instant, the door had opened wide. A gauzy substance, like a lace curtain, had been undulating outside. Then it had rushed toward him and knocked him off his feet.

  Sohya had no desire to open that door again. He backed away as if it were the only thing between him and some wrathful spirit. He ran back into the vault. Tae was still standing there, looking at the fibers in the walls as if nothing had happened. Sohya plugged his cable in. She noticed him and asked, “Did you see anything?”

  He ignored her. “Control, emergency! Something’s happening outside the vault, some kind of energy release. We’re trapped!”

  “Aomine! Johnson confirms Liberty is running a large-scale heating experiment in the crater. They claim they had no advance notice either.”

  Sohya’s and Yamagiwa’s shouting overlapped. After a pause, Yamagiwa said, “What happened?”

  “I saw something outside, a gas or maybe a vapor. It blew me off my feet as soon as the door opened.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. The door seems to be keeping whatever is out there from entering the vault. What is it?”

  Suddenly Sohya thought it might be better to disconnect Tae’s cable. He wasn’t sure he wanted her to hear what Yamagiwa was about to say. He reached for it, but she stared at him and shook her head.

  “Ground zero for the experiment is right outside the vault. They’ve got the heliostats focused on the notch we made in the permafrost. It’s the only place in the crater where there’s a goodsized vertical cross section exposing part of the ENG. The solar energy is releasing huge amounts of vapor from the permafrost. Don’t go outside for any reason.”

  “What do you mean? Tell the Americans to terminate the experiment!”

  “That’s what I tried to tell you. They’re not responding. There was an observation team in the crater, but they’ve disappeared.”

  “The rover that was leaving when we entered the crater,” murmured Tae.

  Sohya’s mind was racing, trying to derive a course of action from the information hitting him. “Then…override the controls and turn the mirrors away. Or send someone up the rim and redirect them manually.”

  “We can’t go anywhere. We’re bottled up here. There’s a solar flare warning!”

  “A solar—?”

  “An X-class flare. The proton storm will make things extremely hazardous anywhere there’s sunlight. I tried to tell you guys before you headed into the crater, but you cut the link!”

  Sohya’s spirits sank. Yamagiwa was right. He’d been trying to say something, but Sohya had had other things on his mind when he shut off the transceiver.

  “Does that mean we’re going to get cancer?” Tae was filled with apprehension.

  “Not right away,” said Yamagiwa. “An hour outside during a flare would expose you to a year’s worth of radiation. Definitely not healthy. But that’s the one thing you don’t need to worry about, Ms. Toenji. You’re in no danger in the crater. That’s why I said it wasn’t an emergency.

  “Everyone here is safe behind concrete walls. But the Americans’ inflatable modules don’t provide much shielding. They’re probably hunkered down in a shelter, waiting till it’s safe to come out, which would explain why we can’t raise them. But unless they hand off control to us, there’s not much we can do. The heliostats can’t be hacked into. The mirrors pack a lot of power. We didn’t want them getting hijacked.”

  “But why would they head for their shelter without stopping the experiment?”

  “Who knows? Maybe they wanted to finish what they start
ed before we got Johnson to override them. Or maybe it’s something they don’t need to monitor in real time. We just don’t know.”

  There was silence for a moment. “Sohya, stay calm. This is no time for panic. There’s another problem.” Yamagiwa’s voice was eerily expressionless. “The surface of the permafrost will sublimate first. From what you describe, it sounds like that’s already happening. But then the heat from the mirrors will penetrate the surface, maybe thirty or forty centimeters. At some point, heat will be coming in faster than the surface can radiate it away.”

  “Is the vault going to flood?” Tae asked.

  “No. The vacuum still means direct sublimation from ice to vapor. And if that happens too fast…” There was silence for a few seconds. “There’s going to be a detonation.”

  More silence. Sohya and Tae could hear someone giving Yamagiwa an update. Finally he spoke again. “We just reran the numbers. There’s no mistake. It depends on how tight the beam is focused, but even in the best case, the vault is going to come down. Aomine, are you listening carefully?”

  “I’m listening.” Sohya looked at Tae. There was a firm set to her jaw and her gaze was steady, but she couldn’t stop blinking. He put both hands on her shoulders and squeezed. “Are you okay?”

  “I think so.”

  Yamagiwa’s voice was cautious. “I want you to keep everything I’ve told you in mind. A lunar eclipse is under way as we speak. The Earth is moving between you and the sun. It’s going to cut off the light from the heliostats. The eclipse may be your key to getting out of this.”

  “Did it just start? The light was bright as hell a few minutes ago,” said Sohya.

  “Earth’s umbra touched the moon at 0531, but that was up near the equator. It hasn’t reached the south pole yet. The eclipse is going to be total, but just barely. Right now the moon’s apparent diameter from Earth is 33.2 arc minutes. The umbra’s diameter is 91.8 arc minutes. The south pole is going to pass just inside the southern edge of the umbra. That’ll be totality, but it will only last a short time. Even then, light scattering through Earth’s atmosphere will make things look red. It won’t be completely dark.”