The agency scrambled to send a sounding rocket to the mesosphere to check the balloon’s findings. This they did on January thirtieth. Again, under normal circumstances, they would have sent the rocket through the part of the stratosphere the balloon had observed. Instead, these being abnormal circumstances, and fearing the worst, they launched it ninety degrees of the globe away. It found the same thing: dramatically enhanced levels of N2O and NO in the stratosphere and mesosphere. With a corresponding decrease in pure nitrogen and oxygen. The atoms were somehow bonding to form the N2O molecules.
Nitrous oxide was a common oxidizer for rocket and race car fuel, and an even more common anesthetic and analgesic. It was colorless, odorless, and non-flammable, and it was known to the public as “laughing gas.”
It took about thirty seconds before someone at NASA joked that the people of Earth were going to die laughing.
# # #
“Six weeks?” Nate Petan, the director of NASA, guessed. “Before stratospheric ozone depletion becomes a severe and likely irreparable problem. For perspective, nitrous oxide released into the atmosphere by humans is the number-one ozone depleter right now.”
“Could that be what this is?” Janus Gordon said. “Man-made?”
“Definitely not,” Petan said. “Man-made emissions obviously start from the ground up. This is affecting the whole mesosphere and part of the stratosphere, and it’s creeping down every day.”
“Could this stay confined to the mesosphere and stratosphere?” Conn asked. She was at the president’s beck and call lately, and she’d been summoned to Washington for this briefing of national security leadership by the NASA director. She disliked these briefings. She was there to answer questions about the Aphelials. But the good questions, she didn’t know the answers to.
“Doubtful,” Petan said. “The lower you go, the more O2 there is. There’s nothing to suggest this will just naturally peter out by itself.” Conn knew Nate Petan, and they had a good working relationship, from Conn’s brief tenure as the owner and chairman of Dyna-Tech. Conn also knew Janus Gordon. Their relationship was a bit more tenuous. “Besides, if it’s in the stratosphere, that’s a big enough problem.”
“So they plan to destroy us by depleting our ozone? Would that work?” Gordon asked.
“It will have a profound effect on the planet, yes. It would be haphazard and messy, but eventually, without ozone, we’re in big trouble. Everything you’ve heard about the depletion of the ozone layer is true. Without it, too much radiation from the sun reaches the surface.”
“So we stay indoors,” a NatSec woman said.
“Other animals and plants don’t have that luxury. UVB radiation at that level will damage reproductive systems. You’re looking at food shortages.”
“We can keep plants and food animals out of the direct sunlight, too, if we have to.”
“Believe me, we heard all this as arguments for not banning CFCs,” Petan said. Conn admired his patience. “But as more and more nitrogen and oxygen turns to N2O or NO, we won’t be around to see most of the effects of ozone depletion anyhow.”
“Why not?”
“What’s your pleasure? Nitrous oxide traps heat in the atmosphere, which means greatly accelerated global warming. The more N2O, the hotter. It makes vitamin B12 not work in our bodies, which can cause brain, spinal cord and nerve dysfunction. But most of us will die of oxygen deprivation.”
“But all the oxygen will still be there, just in a different form.”
“You’re likely aware that our bodies use O2. If all the oxygen is NO or N2O, there’s no O2.”
“Plants produce O2.”
“If there are animals breathing and feeding them CO2,” Petan said. “This is happening faster than plants can replenish the oxygen, as it is, and it won’t be three months before there’s not enough O2 at sea level. That’s longer than six weeks, but that six weeks before ozone depletion is the drop-dead date, pardon the expression, for doing something about this. And six weeks assumes no acceleration in the rate of N2O production.”
Gordon looked around the room. “Does anyone have another theory about this that lets the Aphelials off the hook?” No one did. “So. This is our chemical death.”
“Hard to conclude anything else,” Petan said.
Gordon looked pained and resigned. “I’ll brief the president. But once he hears it he’ll probably want to talk to you himself, and some of your scientists.”
“He’s going to be looking to NASA to fix this somehow,” Conn said.
“Don’t I know it,” Petan said.
# # #
Conn wore her flight suit this time.
She had a large duffel bag full of MREs, changes of underclothes, her drugs, three books, toiletries, and supplies. She could walk back to Sunnyvale if she forgot or ran out of anything, but that took hours. Hours there, hours back. So she was packed for three and a half weeks. She hoped it wouldn’t take that long.
“I’ve got to go to Mars,” she had told people, from the president to Persisting. “The Sidereals don’t live like it, but their tech is ultra-advanced. They might be ahead of the Aphelials. Remember the stealth module? Teleporting torpedoes. Gravity guns, like the one they used on us. Who knows how they might help us? And I know a way to get on their good side.”
She hadn’t intended to talk to Ryan, but Ryan found out—the feeds were still all over Conn—and called her.
“Why do you have to go?” he asked. Conn rolled her eyes. They were audio only. “This is the government’s problem. Let the secretary of state go.”
“Jeffrey doesn’t want the secretary of state, he wants me,” Conn said. “Besides, the president isn’t happy about it. He thinks it’s a waste of time.”
“What if it is?”
“Ryan, I have to try.”
“I looked it up. Mars and Phobos will be on the other side of the sun twenty-six days after you leave. No more line-of-sight.” Funny, Conn had looked that up, too, and packed accordingly. “You won’t be able to get home after that.”
“Then I’ll be back within twenty-six days.”
“I don’t want you to go.”
“You don’t get to want me to do anything,” Conn growled. “We’re not together.”
“We could be!” Ryan said. “No, listen. If life on Earth is only going to last another six weeks, what difference does it make what our long-term expectations are for a relationship?”
“We didn’t only break up because of long-term expectations, Ryan.”
“So? We can hang out together, and have great end-of-the-world sex. That would be the extent of my expectations.”
“Goodbye, Ryan.” She hung up before she betrayed how nice that idea sounded compared to going to Mars to save the world.
She’d said a lot of goodbyes. Now she toted her gym bag and breathing bubble to Dyna-Tech headquarters.
# # #
According to a poll, a third of Americans would be in favor of moving to Mars—of the army marching through the portals and kicking the Sidereals out. Never mind that the Sidereals’ network of caves and tunnels wouldn’t accommodate a third of Americans, or even, as far as Conn could tell, more than 2,500 of them.
She knew many powerful people were urging the president to kick out the Sidereals and move the most important parts of government to Mars. So far, the president had said no. He talked of not displacing one race to save another, and played up how advanced the Sidereals were supposed to be. Even if they attacked the army might be fish in a barrel for Sidereal technology.
Privately, he thought Conn’s mission was anything but a waste of time. She was to gather intelligence and report back on the viability of the plan to relocate the government there. She said she would—you don’t say no to the president—but she had no intention of being complicit in the forcible removal of the Sidereals from their home. That would condemn them to death, so that the most powerful and privileged could hide from the dying people they were supposed to serve.
<
br /> Protesters had gathered outside Dyna-Tech headquarters. Conn guessed two hundred. All wanting access to Mars. In Texas, it was worse. Conn avoided them—a line of police held them back—and entered the building.
She couldn’t help it, she always felt such a longing and sense of dislocation when she entered Dyna-Tech headquarters. It was like a home she had been forced out of. That someone had renovated and redecorated and made their own.
She had cleared using the portals with Dyna-Tech already, but she was directed to report to Skylar Reece before leaving. A power play. It was funny how a worldwide crisis could turn rivalry into cooperation, and yet not really change a thing.
She had a perfunctory visit with Skylar. Skylar gave her key cards that unlocked the portals and told them which other portal you wanted to go to, if the portal was linked to more than one.
Skylar dispatched her assistant to accompany Conn. To help, of course, not keep an eye on her. Did Skylar think she was going to steal office supplies on her way to Mars?
The two made their way to the converted loading dock where the portal stood guarded by armed security. There were no walls, no ceiling; built by humans to Yongpo’s specifications, it had to have unobstructed line-of-sight. There was a handsome chain-link fence around the dock, made less attractive by the barbed wire on top of it.
“Why put it on the ground floor, and not the roof?” Conn asked the assistant. “If those protesters decided to work together, they could overwhelm the fence and the guards and have access to the portal.”
“Well—there weren’t protesters when we built it,” the young man said. Conn had to concede the point.
The portal was intimidating. She’d traveled to and from the moon by portal, but it was still difficult to comprehend: ignoring the wait for each pair of portals to line up, she could walk to Mars in about thirty seconds. She would never understand the physics involved. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, the quote went. Also it made her feel like her trip to Mars had been a waste of months.
The assistant toggled a switch that powered the portal up. “Electricity?” Conn asked.
“There’s a solar array on the roof of the building.” The Mars, Phobos, and Stoll portals were all powered by the sun. She didn’t know how the Pelorians did it. And she never would.
She swiped the key card and, with a look around at the Earth that for all she knew would be her last, she walked through the portal.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Muscle
February, 2040
“Conn!” Jeffrey exclaimed. “You kept your word! Or Izzy kept hers.”
“You need to tell me you had nothing to do with killing Daniels,” Conn said. “And then you need to tell me you’re fighting against the people who did. That I’ll be fighting against the people who did.”
“You have my word, Conn—all of that is true.”
“First, I need your language,” Conn said. “No more Basalese, no more only being able to talk to you. I get to hear everything firsthand.”
Jeffrey looked pained. “Conn, we simply don’t have that technology. I can arrange for someone to teach you our language—”
“Jeffrey—” there was no Basalese word for his real name “—we’re not starting out as well as I’d hoped. I’ve heard about your technology. I’ve seen it. I’ve used it, thanks to you. I need your language, or this isn’t going to work. And you know I’m not stuck here if I want to leave.”
“How long can you stay?”
“Twenty-six days,” Conn said. “Call it twenty-five of your days.” The Martian day was forty minutes longer than Earth’s.
“And then you have to go—but you can come back?”
“No, Jeffrey. twenty-five days.” Conn told him that they would lose line-of-sight after that, and about the Aphelials.
“And you’re spending twenty-five of your last days alive here. Hm. You want something.”
“We need your help,” Conn said. “The sooner the better. If you know how to stop what’s happening to my world, please tell me, lend me the necessary tech, something—let me save my home. I give you my word I’ll be back when we’re safe.”
Jeffrey sighed. “I have a colleague who has a language machine. I don’t know how you’re used to getting a language upload.” Conn told him. “Well, this isn’t that advanced, or that portable. And it’ll leave you with a moderate understanding at best.
“But I’ll be completely honest with you now. I have no idea how the Aphelials are turning your oxygen into nitrous oxide. As far as I know, we have nothing that will counter it. You can believe me, Conn. If I were lying, wouldn’t my lie say we had something for you? Dangle what you need as motivation? One of my colleagues might know, and I’ll ask. Now, you decide if you really want to spend twenty-five days with us.”
Conn made a frustrated noise. “You must have something. Can you help me kill them?”
“All of them? Of course not,” Jeffrey said. “A spacecraft’s worth? Almost certainly. And if I’m in a position to help you within the next twenty-five days, I will do what I can. When I hear myself say it, it doesn’t sound like much, but that’s what I can offer you.”
# # #
The first order of business was to introduce Conn to Jeffrey’s “colleagues.” Then they would decide how best to use her.
They met in a dank, unimproved hollow far off one of the hubs. Five Sidereals were there, including Jeffrey. Conn made six. They all stood; there were no chairs or tables. The other four Sidereals were skeptical of Jeffrey’s claims about Conn’s physical prowess, and even of Jeffrey’s enthusiasm if it were true.
“We should resume construction on the clinic right away. She can help with the soup. She could even come to the council meeting—”
“Nobody goes to the council meetings anymore.”
“Because they’re intimidated!” Jeffrey said. “We can show them they don’t have to be.”
“But they do have to be,” a Sidereal said. “Once she’s gone.”
“She’ll be here through the vote,” Jeffrey said.
“You’re not suggesting—”
“I’m suggesting that we can have a fair vote, with everybody participating.”
Conn followed none of this. They argued for some time, then she heard one of them say, “Can she give us some kind of demonstration?” She felt like a circus freak. She turned away and went for a walk down the corridor.
Before she got far, she was startled by the appearance of a near-silent drone just above the entryway. It was a disk, smaller than a Frisbee, black, with the faintest purr if you knew it was there. Conn could barely see it.
“Guys?” she said. They came out into the corridor.
Some gasped when they saw the drone. One swore.
“Of all the meetings to let them spy on . . .” one said.
“I didn’t let them do anything!” Jeffrey said.
“Are you done? With your meeting?” Conn asked.
“We are now,” one murmured.
“Were you done?”
Jeffrey considered Conn. “No, Conn,” he said. “We had plenty still to talk about. But we can’t now.”
Conn took a step up the wall and lunged at the drone. She caught it with one hand, trying for two, but she came down with it. Now in two hands, she slammed it into the rock as hard as she could—which in thirty-seven percent gravity was hard. She flipped the wreckage over her shoulder and onto the corridor floor.
She turned and smiled at the coterie of Sidereals gaping at her. She strode purposefully back into the hollow. The group looked at one another, then followed.
# # #
They were building a volunteer clinic. Some of them told Conn that it was necessary because the three licensed medical practitioners in the settlement were expensive and couldn’t have cared for all of them anyway. Some told her they didn’t see the point—no one else was going to get a license to practice medicine because the barriers to entry put in place by
the presiding government were impossible to get through, and anyway, they had been intimidated into stopping construction twice now.
Construction had resumed, pickaxes expanding the cave while the first walls, made of what looked like drywall, were being fitted into slats on the ground on two sides of the room. It wasn’t long before Conn picked up a pair of goggles and a pickax and started swinging herself. She could swing a lot harder on Mars, but she found a rhythm exerting herself halfway. She was still out-axing the others.
“I take it no access to heavy machinery,” she said to a woman working beside her. The woman was startled, perhaps by the fact that Conn knew her language. She shook her head.
It was an hour and a half later when she said to Conn, “It makes doing the top third a lot of fun.”
“Sorry?”
“Having to ax through it by hand,” the woman said. “Makes doing the top third lots of fun.” Now Conn knew what she meant—she had started on the top couple of feet of the back wall herself, and swinging that pickaxe over one’s head was a chore. She smiled.
For two days Conn swung a pickaxe, and they were nearly done with the expansion by day three. Then the intimidation showed up.
There were six of them. Even as alien as they were, they looked like thugs. Their shoulder-swinging, arm-curling stride was how human-shaped beings moved when they were ready to commit violence, in any language, in any culture.
Conn put down her pickaxe.
“You all need to clear out, now,” the apparent leader of the thugs said. “We need this space. Go ahead. Go on, get your shit and get out of here—”
“Excuse me,” Conn said, shuffling to the front of the cave. She wondered how to look tough while trying to walk in gravity two thirds lower than she was used to.
A couple of goons nonetheless shrunk at her appearance. Conn didn’t think they had counted on her being there. She was at best an unknown.
“Got something to say?”
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