Firstborn to-3

by Arthur C. Clarke

  Yuri and Myra were making lunch.

  It would be dried eggs, reconstituted potatoes, and a little Martian greenery, rubbery but flavorsome. Yuri suggested wine, a Martian vintage from a domed vineyard at Lowell, once remarkably expensive. But it didn’t seem appropriate, and he left the bottle un-opened. Anyhow it was poor wine, Myra had always thought, expensive or not.

  They worked together on the lunch, setting the base’s table and preparing the food, without once getting in each other’s way.

  “We’re like an old married couple,” Yuri had said, more than once.

  So they were, Myra supposed, though they had their spats — and though there had never been any physical intimacy between them, nothing save hugs for comfort, and you had to expect that of the only two human beings at the pole of a world.

  It hadn’t been a bad interval in her life, these last months. She had always been in somebody’s shadow, she thought: first her mother’s, then Eugene’s. She’d never had a chance to build a home of her own. She couldn’t say she had done that here on Mars. But this was where Yuri had put down his own roots, this was the world he’d built. And in these last months she’d been able to share his home with him. Sex or not, she’d had far worse relationships than with Yuri.

  But she missed Charlie with an intensity she wouldn’t have believed possible. As Rip day approached, it was like a steel cable tear-ing at her belly, ever harder. She didn’t know if Charlie would know what had become of her mother. She didn’t even have any up-to-date images, still or animated, she could look at. She had done her best to put this aside, to keep it in a compartment in her mind. Yuri knew, of course.

  She glanced at the clock. “It’s later than I thought. Only an hour left.”

  “Then we’d better tuck in.”

  They sat down.

  Yuri said, “Hey, I had a good morning, by the way. The Lowell guys finally sent down those replacement filters I asked for. Now our air ought to stay sweet for another year. And I shut down the reactor. We’re running on cell power, but it will see us out. I wanted that old tub of uranium to be closed down in an orderly way. I was kind of rushing to get it all done, but I mothballed it well enough, I think.”

  She could see that his work had pleased him, just as her own had pleased her.

  “Oh, there was another package from Paula, in the rover yesterday. She said we should open it about now.” He fetched it from the heap of equipment he’d sorted to find his filters. It was a small plastic box that he put on the table.

  He opened it up to reveal a padded interior, within which nestled a sphere, about the size of a tennis ball. A plastic bag of pills had been tucked into the box, under the ball. He put these out on the table.

  Myra took the sphere. It was heavy, with a smooth black surface.

  Yuri said, “I was expecting this. It’s coated with the stuff they make heatshield tiles out of. It can soak up a lot of heat.”

  “So it will survive the planet breaking up?”

  “That’s the idea.”

  “I don’t see what good that will do.”

  “But you understand how the Q-expansion works,” Yuri said, speaking around a mouthful of egg. “The Rip works down the scales, larger structures breaking up first. The planet will go first, then the human body. This little gadget ought to survive the end of the planet, even if it’s cast adrift in space, and it should last a bit longer than a suited human, say. Surrounded by debris, I suppose.

  Rocks popping into dust, at smaller and smaller scales.”

  “Are there instruments inside?”

  “Yes. It should keep working, taking data until the expansion gets down to the centimeter scale, and the Rip cracks the sphere open. Even then there’s a plan. The sphere will release a cloud of even finer sensor units, motes we call them. It’s nanotechnology, Myra, machines the size of molecules. They will keep gathering data until the expansion reaches molecular scales. There’s nothing they could come up with beyond that. Paula says the design goal is to make it through to the last microsecond. You could gather another thirty minutes of data that way.”

  “Then it’s worth doing.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  Myra hefted the sphere. “What a wonderful little gadget. It’s a shame nobody will be able to use its data.”

  “Well, you never know,” Yuri said.

  She set the sphere on the table. “And these pills?”

  He fingered the bag of pills dubiously. “Jenny at Lowell said she would prepare something like this.” Jenny Mortens was New Lowell’s doctor, the only one left on Mars. “You know what they are. It might be easier, this way, just to take them.”

  “It would be a shame to come this far and then give up at the last minute. Don’t you think? And besides, I have my mother to think about.”

  “Fair enough.” He grinned, and with a flip he lobbed the pill bag into a waste bin.

  She looked at her watch. “I think we’d better get moving.

  There isn’t much time.”

  “Right.” He stood, and stacked the dishes. “I think we can waste a little water and wash up.” He glanced back at her. “How are you feeling about using the suits?”

  They both wanted to be outside the base in the final moments.

  But she had been unsure about wearing a suit. “I do think I’ll want a bit of human contact, Yuri.”

  He smiled. “Quaintly put. Too late to be embarrassed now.”

  “You know what I mean,” she said, a bit irritated to be teased about it.

  “Of course I do. Look — I’ve fixed it. Come out with me into the suits and see what I’ve done. Trust me. I think you’ll like it. And there’ll always be time to come back inside if not.”

  She nodded. “All right. Let’s get this place shipshape first.”

  So they tidied up. After one last gulp of coffee — her last ever mouthful, she thought — Myra cleaned the dishes in a little of their precious hot water, and stacked them away. She went to the bathroom, washed her face and brushed her teeth, and used the lavatory. The suits had facilities, of course, but she’d rather not have to resort to that.

  She was running down through a list of simple human actions for the last time, the very last. She would never sleep again, or eat, or drink coffee, or even use a bathroom. She had begun to think this way since waking this morning, despite her best efforts to maintain business as usual.

  With Yuri, she walked around the station one last time. Yuri was carrying the black sensor globe from Lowell. They had already shut most of Wells down, but now they ordered the station AI to run the systems down to minimum, and to turn off the lights, so that as they walked they left gathering pools of darkness behind them. Everything was tidy, put away where it should be, cleaned up. Myra felt proud of how they had left things.

  At last only one fluorescent tube was left burning, in the EVA dome, illuminating the small hatchways through which they had to climb to get into their suits. They pulled on their inner suits, and Yuri passed the sensor ball out through an equipment hatch.

  “You go left, I go right,” he said. “If you need to scratch your nose, now’s the time.”

  They paused. Then they hugged, and Myra drank in his scent.

  They broke. “Lights,” Yuri called. The last tube died, leaving the station dark. “Goodbye, H.G.,” Yuri said softly to his base.

  Myra had never heard him use that name before.

  Myra opened her hatch, and with a skill developed over her months on Mars she slid feet-first into her suit. When she wormed her right hand into its sleeve, she got a surprise. The glove she had been expecting wasn’t there. Instead her hand slid into a warm grasp.

  She leaned forward. By her suit lights she saw that the glove of her suit had been cut away, and her right sleeve had been stitched to Yuri’s left.

  Yuri was looking out of his helmet. “How do you like my needlework?”

  “Good work, Yuri.”

  “The suits don’t like it, of course. They
both think they are breached. But the hell with them. The temporary seal hasn’t got to hold for long. Of course we’re going to have to do everything together, like Siamese twins. How’s your suit?”

  She had already run it through its diagnostic check. She looked over Yuri’s chest display, to ensure he hadn’t missed anything, and he did the same for her. “All fine, apart from bleating about the gloves.”

  “Very good,” he said. “So we stand. Three, two, one—”

  Their hands locked together, they straightened up. Her exoskeletal multipliers whirred, and her suit came loose of the dome with a sucking sound.

  Out of habit she turned, picked up a soft brush, and swept the dome seals clean of Mars dust. Yuri did the same. It was a bit awkward with their hands locked together.

  Then Yuri bent to pick up the sensor ball in his right hand, and they walked forward.

  It was pitch dark, and the snow fell steadily, shapeless flakes of frozen Martian air illuminated by their suit lights. But the ground was reasonably clear; they had got a path swept yesterday.

  A little robot camera rolled after them, even now recording, recording. It got stuck in a snow bank. Myra kicked it clear and it rolled ahead, red lights glowing.

  Yuri stopped, and put the sensor sphere down on the ground before them. “Here, do you think?”

  “I guess so. I don’t imagine it matters much.”

  He straightened up. The snow continued to fall. Yuri held out a hand and caught flakes. They looked like fat moths settling on his gloves, before they sublimated away. “Ah, God,” he said, “there’s so much wonder here. You know, these flakes have structure. Each snowflake nucleates around first a grain of dust, then water ice, and only then an outer shell of dry ice. It is like an onion. And it all falls here, every winter. Thus three global cycles, of dust, water and carbon dioxide, intersect in every snowflake. We barely began to understand Mars.” His voice had an edge of bitterness she hadn’t heard in him in months. “To some this would be hell,” he said.

  “The cold, the darkness. Not to me.”

  “Nor me,” she whispered, squeezing his hand inside their stitched-together sleeves. “Yuri.”

  “Yes?”

  “Thank you. These last few months, for me—”

  “Better not to say it.”

  There was a sound like a door slamming, transmitted to them through their suits. An alarm chimed in Myra’s ears, and lights lit up on her chin display.

  The ground shuddered.

  “Right on cue,” Yuri said.

  They looked at each other. It was the first real sign since the disappearance of the sun that something remarkable was happening.

  Fear fluttered in her throat. Suddenly she wished this were not happening, that they could go back into the station and carry on with their day. She clung to Yuri’s hand, and they bumped against each other in the bulky suits, like two green sumo wrestlers. Yuri twisted, trying to see the watch strapped to his arm outside his suit.

  The ground shook more violently. And then ice spurted around them, fine splinters of it. They turned to see, hands still clasped. A hab can had ruptured, and its air and water were escaping, instantly freezing in a shower that drifted down around the can’s stilts.

  “We’d better get a bit further away,” Myra said.

  “All right.” They walked forward, unsteady as the ground shuddered again. Yuri said, “It’s going to be a hell of a job to fix that rip.”

  “So call Hanse back.”

  “Bastard’s never there when you need him —ow. ” He stumbled, pulling at her so that she staggered too.

  “What is it?”

  “I hit my head.” They turned. An Eye hovered before them, this one maybe a meter across, its lowest point just below head height. “Bastard.” Yuri swung a punch at it with his free right hand. “Shit. Like hitting concrete.”

  “Ignore it,” said Myra.

  Just for a moment, the shuddering stopped. They stood together, near the Eye, breathing hard.

  “You were right to have us come outside,” Myra said.

  “And you were right to ask for a bit of ‘human contact.’ I think we got most things right these last few months, Ms. Dutt.”

  “I think I’d agree, Mr. O’Rourke.” She breathed deep, and squeezed his hand. “You know, Yuri—”

  The ground burst open.

  In the temple chamber, the tall woman woke. Slowly at first.

  And then with a start as she saw the Eye.

  “Shit, shit. It would have to be now, when I need a pee. Come on, Suit Five, you’re as dead as a dodo but you’re the best protection I’ve got…” As Grasper watched, she began to pull herself into her green carcass thing, and she placed a glowing pebble on the floor.

  “You’re leaving me again, Bisesa?”

  “Look, phone, don’t guilt-trip me now. We worked this out. You’re the only link back to Earth. And if Abdi succeeds in his program of power-cell manufacture you’ll be powered up indefinitely.”

  “Cold comfort.”

  “I won’t forget you.”

  “Goodbye, Bisesa. Goodbye…”

  “Shit. The Eye. What’s it doing?”

  Grasper was still standing, trembling but upright, gazing up at the washing lights, which cast complex patterns of shadows around the chamber. A fifth set of lines — a sixth set, disappearing in impossible directions—

  The tall woman screamed.

  Myra was lying face-down on a scrap of rock-hard water ice, her faceplate pressed against the surface. Yuri had fallen awkwardly somewhere behind her, and her right arm was wrenched back. She felt a pressure in her belly, as if she was being lifted up by an elevator.

  She struggled to raise her head. The suit’s multipliers whined as they strained to help her.

  She looked down, into Mars.

  She saw ice chunks and rocks and even sprays of magma, all illuminated by a deeper red glow from within. All this filled her view, as far as she could see, to left and right. It was like looking down into a deep chasm.

  And when she looked up a little further, she saw the Eye, maybe the same one, rising up before her, tracking her.

  The fear was gone. Clinging to the bit of ice, still squeezing Yuri’s hand, she felt almost exhilarated. Maybe they could live through this, just a little longer.

  But then a gout of molten rock like an immense fist came bar-relling up, out of the heart of disintegrating Mars, straight at her.

  The scar in space became transparent, so Bella could see the stars shining through it, their light curdled and faded.

  Then it cleared altogether, as if evaporating.

  She hugged her daughter.

  “So that’s that,” Edna said.

  “Yes. Take me home, love.”

  The Liberator’s blunt nose turned away, toward Earth.

  Released from their parent’s gravity field, Mars’s small moons drifted away from their paths. Now they would orbit the sun, becoming just two more unremarkable asteroids. The thin cloud of satellites humans had put in place around Mars began to disperse too. For a time gravitational waves crossed the system, and the sun’s remaining planets bobbed, leaves on a pond into which a pebble had been thrown. But the ripples soon subsided.

  And Mars was gone.

  63: A Time Odyssey

  A gate opened. A gate closed. In a moment of time too short to be measured, space opened and turned on itself.

  It wasn’t like waking. It was a sudden emergence, a clash of cymbals. Her eyes gaped wide open, and were filled with dazzling light.

  She dragged deep breaths into her lungs, and gasped with the shock of selfhood.

  She was on her back. There was something enormously bright above her — the sun, yes, the sun, she was outdoors.

  She threw herself over onto her belly. Dazzled by the sun, she could barely see.

  A plain. Red sand. Eroded hills in the distance. Even the sky looked red, though the sun was high.

  This felt familiar.


  And Myra was beside her. It was impossible, but it was so.

  Bisesa hurriedly crawled through loose sand to get to her daughter. Like Bisesa, Myra was in a green Mars suit. She was lying on her back, an ungainly fish stranded on this strange beach.

  Myra’s faceplate retracted, and she coughed in the sharp, dry air. She stared at her right hand. The suit’s glove was missing, the flesh of her hand pale.

  “It’s me, darling.”

  Myra looked at her, shocked. “Mum?”

  They clung to each other.

  It got darker. Bisesa peered up.

  The sun’s disk was deformed. It looked like a leaf out of which a great bite had been taken. It began to feel colder, and Bisesa glimpsed bands of shadow rushing across the eroded ground.

  Not again, she thought.

  “Don’t be afraid.”

  They both turned, rolling in the dirt.

  A woman stood over them. She was quite hairless, her face smooth. She wore a flesh-colored coverall so sleek it was as if she was naked. She smiled at them. “We’ve been expecting you.”

  Myra said, “My God. Charlie? ”

  Bisesa stared. “Who is ‘we’?”

  “We call ourselves the Lastborn. We are at war. We are losing.”

  She held out her hands. “Please. Come with me now.”

  Bisesa and Myra, still hugging each other, reached out their free hands. Their fingertips touched Charlie’s.

  A clash of cymbals.

  Afterword

  Recently the space elevator, as dramatized in Clarke’s The Fountains of Paradise (1979), has come closer to engineering feasibility.

  The details given here are based in part on a study funded by NASA’s Institute for Advanced Concepts program, and written up in The Space Elevator by Bradley C. Edwards and Eric A. Westling (Spaego, San Francisco, 2003). See also Leaving the Planet by Space Elevator by Dr. Edwards and Philip Ragan (lulu.com, Seattle, 2006), and papers by Giorcelli, Pullum, Swan, and Swan in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, September 2006. A recent study of the use of space elevators as energy-free “orbital siphons” is given by Colin McInnes and Chris Davis in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, vol. 59, pp. 368–74, 2006. We’re very grateful to Dr. Edwards for discussions on the relevant sections. His company “Black Line Ascension” may become a real world counterpart of our Skylift Consortium.