The Great Destroyer

by Jack Thorlin

  If people could see the first contact unfolding in real time on a proper video camera, see her flawless welcoming of Earth’s first visitors, the event could become a “where were you when...” moment. In addition to being permanently etched in the history books, Eldridge’s name would be synonymous with the most widely viewed television event of all time.

  She said, “I understand the First Representative’s concerns. We had actually been considering adding a security person for the flight, so I would be happy to have one of the robots accompany us.” She had certainly not been planning to have a security person along, as she had just said earlier in the conversation, but framing the issue as her own initiative would eliminate the embarrassment of having to accept First Representative Flower’s orders.

  Henderson smiled in relief. “Excellent, I will inform Project Charlie at once of your decision. They will ensure that the robot is ready for the launch date.” He turned to leave, and Tanya said nothing as he strode out of her office.

  She turned to look out her window. The First Representative would announce the existence of the Superterrestrial ship in four days. The ship was large enough and close enough that it would have been visible for quite some time to the few amateur astronomers out there with moderately powerful telescopes. The fact that none had yet detected the ship was pure good fortune. It couldn’t be expected to last.

  First Representative Flower would get her moment in the sun with the announcement. She would be the one to deliver the news that humans were not alone in the universe, that another intelligent life form was on its way to Earth at that very minute. But Equality Minister Eldridge would have the moment of triumph when she and one colleague went into space to meet the Superterrestrials in front of a live worldwide audience of one billion people.

  Eldridge revived her computer from sleep mode and placed a call to her top aide, a fiercely loyal intersexual lawyer named Drew Murphy. In moments, Murphy’s face filled Eldridge’s computer screen. “Hello Tanya, how are you this afternoon?”

  Bags under Drew’s eyes suggested how hard he was working. Eldridge had tasked Drew to threaten, coax, cajole, and do whatever else necessary to arrange for a rocket that could send Eldridge up to meet the Superterrestrials.

  The Great Stagnation had, of course, long since led to the termination of manned—personned—space flight, but rockets were still needed to orbit communications satellites. With adequate rockets, the next step was cobbling together a simple vessel that could sit atop a rocket and, after the mission was completed, reenter the Earth’s atmosphere without disintegrating.

  Drew had quickly discovered that the electronic blueprints of the old American Orion capsule, which had been designed about seven hundred years earlier, was readily available. Eldridge’s deputy had even managed to find a few modestly capable engineers who could follow the design documents and build a new iteration of the venerable vessel.

  The engineers had been working for five weeks, and they were on track to complete the work in just three more days. Other engineers had worked off of the American blueprints for spacesuits, which were also on track to be delivered on time for the launch date in two weeks.

  “What do you think the Superterrestrials will look like, Drew?” Eldridge asked dreamily.

  Murphy looked to be at a loss for words. “I have no idea, Equality Minister. What do you think they’ll look like?”

  “They will look nothing like us, I expect,” Eldridge said with reverence. “We are merely naked apes, cursed with ugliness inside and out. The Superterrestrials... they will have no class structures or races. They will be without malice and greed. To have come this far, they must be very nearly gods.”

  Murphy responded, “I have heard another theory: the Superterrestrials will be roughly similar to us in shape and size. The evolutionary forces that pushed us to develop as we did are probably the same on most planets.”

  Annoyed, Eldridge asked, “And where did you hear that theory?”

  “I was in a conference call with Dr. Takagawa where the issue of the Superterrestrials’ capabilities came up. Ou said that the only way we know of life evolving requires liquid water and a planet that is not in tidal lock with its sun.”

  Eldridge wasn’t ordinarily one to trouble with details, but she asked, “What is tidal lock?”

  “Takagawa told me it is when the planet is too small or too close to its star. The gravitational force from the star is so strong that the same side always faces the star, leaving one side too hot, the other too cold. Such a planet probably could not have a circulating atmosphere and enough geologic activity to support intelligent life.”

  Murphy continued her recitation of Takagawa’s analysis. “To have liquid water, the planet has to have the right surface temperature and the right size and composition. A similar size to Earth would mean similar gravitational forces, which would suggest animals of similar sizes and builds. Comparable composition and temperature would favor the same evolutionary adaptations as we see generally present on Earth: predators and prey, resource scarcity, competition, and war.”

  Eldridge nearly shouted, “No! Competition and war are human failings. Any reasonably intelligent species would have moved beyond them. They are ruthless and cruel.”

  Drew’s lips tightened. “That was my reaction as well when Takagawa told me. She said, ‘That’s only logical, the universe itself is ruthless and cruel.’”

  * * *

  Three days later, an amateur astronomer surveying quasars found his view obstructed and, after checking to see that there was no smudge on his lens, changed the magnification settings on his telescope and took a picture of what he saw.

  Within the hour, Terran Alliance officials were inundated by millions of phone calls from citizens who wanted to know what the world’s government planned to do about the alien spaceship that was now closer to Earth than Mars.

  An hour and a half later, Equality Minister Eldridge watched on television as First Representative Flower sought to reassure the public.

  After taking five minutes to describe how and when the aliens were detected, Flower got to the meat of her speech. “Because we have known about the visitors for months, we have been able to take a number of precautionary measures to ensure that their arrival is a cause for celebration, not fear.

  “First, under the expert guidance of Equality Minister Tanya Eldridge, we have developed a peopled space flight capability for the first time in centuries. Ou and ou’s deputy, Drew Murphy, will rocket into space tomorrow aboard the TAS Empathy to meet the visitors and welcome them to our planet. I couldn’t be prouder of Equality Minister Eldridge, and I’m sure ou will represent our civilization with skill and courage. Every citizen of Earth will be able to watch ou’s mission live on the Ministry of Equality website.

  “Our experts agree that the Superterrestrials’ voyage is most likely one of peaceful outreach. As a purely precautionary measure, however, we have developed a number of defensive systems to better ensure the safety of the Terran Alliance. We will keep you and your family safe in the days, weeks, and months ahead of us.”

  First Minister Flower smiled reassuringly. “So continue to live your lives, love your amorfriends, and trust in your friends at the Terran Alliance. I love you, and remember: people are more important than things.”

  Eldridge flicked to the search engine channel on her display screen. The search engine displayed trends in real time, and she watched as nearly 65 percent of humanity searched for her name at the same time. This is it, she thought. This is all my dreams coming true.

  She glanced at an electronic calendar on the wall. On July 4, 2671, she would become not just the most famous, politically potent person in the world, but the most influential person in history. By welcoming the Superterrestrials and showing them that humans could transcend their wretched genetic legacy of hatred and violence, she would usher in a new era of sentient life on Earth.

  All that stood between Eldridge and the first representatives
hip was a flight in a space capsule, a hastily copied facsimile of a spaceship that had first flown over seven centuries earlier.

  Details, she thought to herself. She finally noticed her phone ringing, and she went to receive the first of dozens of congratulatory calls.

  Chapter 12: Igazi

  “What do you suppose the Supers will look like?” one of Igazi’s coworkers asked him excitedly. “Do you think they’ll look like snakes?”

  Igazi shrugged and took a sip of his beer. Another coworker asked, “Why would they possibly look like snakes?”

  Igazi’s friends and coworkers had gathered at his neighborhood bar to watch the first contact. The launch of the TAS Empathy—the first launch of human beings into space in centuries—had been viewed by almost everyone on the planet, turning into a mass media event to rival the Oscars, now nearing its 650th airing. However, even the launch paled to the attention focused on this event.

  The Empathy had spent two days in orbit, with ground control checking its systems and preparing to rendezvous with the Superterrestrial spacecraft. Telescopes on satellites, on the moon, and on the Earth itself confirmed that the alien vessel and the motley assortment of asteroids behind it was slowing, preparing to enter Earth’s orbit.

  The massive plasma screen television over the bottles in the bar showed the official Terran Alliance video feed from the event, drawn from cameras mounted outside the TAS Empathy. The Super ship was now only about a hundred miles away, and the Empathy’s cameras could discern many details now.

  The spaceship was a cylinder with a diameter of about a quarter mile and a length of about one mile, and it was rotating about its long axis. Dr. Takagawa and her team had guessed that the spin was most likely intended to create artificial gravity at the outer edge of the ship. If those in control of the ship wanted artificial gravity, it was likely that there were biological beings inside who, like humans, had evolved to live under the constant force of gravity.

  Knowing the speed of rotation and dimensions of the ship, Dr. Takagawa and her team could also calculate the gravitational force inside the ship, slightly stronger than that on Earth. Stronger gravity suggested that the Supers were from a planet slightly larger than Earth. The increased gravity of that planet meant the creatures there would need to be stronger than comparable Earth creatures to stand against the gravitational force. They would also likely be slightly shorter, given the increased power necessary for a heart to pump blood high up in the body against the weight of gravity.

  All that, Dr. Takagawa and her team deduced from the slow spin Igazi watched on the television in the bar in Cape Town. The analysis had subsequently been leaked by Terran Alliance officials eager to show that they understood the situation.

  The video switched to a shot inside the Empathy. The Equality Minister wore a white t-shirt with the emblem of the mission—a heart superimposed in front of the Earth.

  Igazi groaned, as did half the others in the bar. “We’d rather watch the alien spaceship than you!” the annoyed bartender mumbled loudly at the television.

  “Hello, viewers!” Equality Minister Eldridge said. “As the leader of this mission, I thought now would be a good time to tell you about the plan for the first contact, which will be recorded by our robotic camera. Show the people yourself, robot.”

  The camera rotated 180 degrees to show a robot’s head. The robot was evidently about seven feet tall, and its face was shaped like that of a human with a slight grin. It had two camera ports, but one was evidently empty and covered with a black patch, just as a human with a missing eye might have. The mouth was evidently a small speaker port, perhaps an inch diameter circle, but a fuller mouth had been etched on to maintain the humanoid appearance. It had small antennae on either side of his head to mimic the appearance of ears, though they looked like elfin ears because of their height and thinness. Its torso consisted of segmented metal plates, his arms and legs appearing to be cloaked in something like chain mail.

  “I am Charlie II,” the robot said in a monotone voice, though not one as obviously non-human as Charlie I’s. “I am the—”

  “That’s enough, robot, point the camera back at me,” Eldridge said, pointedly refusing to call Charlie II by his name.

  If Charlie II was offended, he showed no sign. The camera view rotated back around to face the Equality Minister and her assistant. “That’s better,” Tanya said. “Let’s discuss the possible gender issues triggered by the Superterrestrials...”

  The Equality Minister stopped mid-sentence and put her hand to her ear, listening to the Space Agency ground control in her earpiece.

  Her assistant said in a loud voice just short of a shout, “Look at the ship!”

  The television view shifted to Empathy’s external camera. A smaller ship had emerged from behind the Super cylinder and was accelerating to intercept the Empathy.

  The Equality Minister said excitedly, “An emissary from the Supers has launched from their parent-ship. Ground Control informs me that it will reach us in about three minutes. We are just three minutes away from first contact with the first real civilization in our galaxy, and as Equality Minister, I-”

  Watching from Earth, Igazi felt a peculiar sensation. He had not felt it often in his life in 27th century Earth, but it wrenched its way into his mind as easily as it did his ancestors. He looked around the bar, which was silent. People chewed on their fingernails, fiddled with their hands. One intergender individual had tears streaking down his face.

  Despite the assurances of its leaders and the words of a 20th century American President enshrined in the Terran Alliance Charter, the human race had rediscovered fear.

  Chapter 13: Takagawa

  Takagawa, Jackson, and Yazov watched the first encounter from mission control in Houston. Their primary task was to direct and monitor Charlie II, ostensibly just a camera robot.

  The Equality Minister was droning on about the wonders of meeting the Supers, but trailed off as the Super shuttle craft drew to within a hundred yards of the Empathy.

  The shuttle craft looked recognizably similar to the American space shuttle. It was moderately sleeker than the shuttle, with a small extra set of wings near the front called canards, no tail, and a single engine at the back. The light-brown vessel also had a reflective section above its nose that was evidently a cockpit.

  “We shouldn’t be surprised that it looks so much like something we could have made,” Takagawa noted. “Their engineers were presumably solving the same kind of design problems as we were when we developed the space shuttle all those centuries ago.”

  A Space Administration technician asked, “Why include the wings and canards on a spacecraft?”

  Emma had already considered that. “Those wings are for navigating in an atmosphere. The canards would give them additional control when flying in an atmosphere that’s thinner than they’re used to. It means they’re planning on coming down here at some point.”

  “Look at the cockpit!” the Equality Minister said excitedly on the radio. She was waving from the porthole as the Super ship came to within about a hundred yards of the Empathy, clearly moving to dock. “Robot, open the outer airlock door!”

  “Yes, Equality Minister.” Charlie II obediently pushed a button.

  A few feet from Takagawa, the chief ground control officer was evidently not happy about Eldridge opening the airlock. “Equality Minister, we don’t know anything about the Supers, we need to proceed slowly and carefully—”

  Eldridge replied with a hint of anger, “I am making our guests welcome! They are a civilized people and we don’t want them finding out how rude we are right off the bat, do we?”

  Lights mounted outside the Empathy were pointing to the docking fixture at the nose of the capsule, trying to indicate to the Super vessel that it should link up with the Empathy at the dock. With the airlock open, the Super ship approached the airlock instead.

  Seeing that a docking with the airlock hatch was impossible, the Super ship took
up station about fifty feet from the airlock, firing small attitude control thrusters to maintain position relative to the Empathy. After three minutes of inactivity, a port opened on the Super ship.

  Three figures emerged, brightly lit by sunlight.

  “Oh...” The Equality Minister said, a mix of disappointment and curiosity.

  Each figure was cloaked in light green spacesuits of some kind; their faces hidden behind opaque gold-tinted glass. Their shape was generally human-like at first glance, though the differences struck a dissonant note.

  Their feet were larger and more circular than those of humans. The other visible physical difference was size. The three figures ranged from about four to five and a half feet tall. They were wider than humans, however---squat, almost dwarfish.

  Jackson said, “Of course, it’s just like the shuttle. They had to evolve under similar conditions as we did probably. Evolution was solving for the same problems there as here.”