Zero Star

by Chad Huskins

  Sixty million years later, the first simple multicellular organisms evolved. They were all cell colonies of limited complexity. Then, just twenty million years later, a global glaciation took place, keeping the planet locked in ice for a few million years. Even when the planet passed between its parent stars, all that happened was that a few rivers were created to drive wedges between one mountain of ice and the next.

  Beneath the ice, all life waited.

  Eleven million years later, as the planet warmed again, there came the first fungi. Forty million years after that, basic corals and sea anemones.

  Eighty million years later, here came the march of the first tiny shell-forming and trace-leaving organisms. An explosion of life! All of it brought on by a sudden frenzy of sexual reproduction, as if the life hiding beneath the ice had been yearning to get out into the sunslight and mate again, to bask in the blue and white light and see the blue-ing skies, to frolic in that dance again beneath the two moons that were drifting farther and farther away.

  Here came the crustaceans along the Ring Continent, the mollusks, the chordates, and the brachiopods. The first plants migrated onto land in the Southern Islands, as if testing out all this business having to do with air and skies and suns, wanting to see what all the fuss was about. Fifty million years later, here came the fishes, the first lichens, hexapods and mites. Now there was enough diversification for there to be clear predators and clear prey. Just as life had diverged into male and female two hundred million years prior, now it marched off on different missions entirely.

  Not one species lived long enough to know it was happening. In one lifetime, all they saw was much the same as when they were born. They did not see the gradual changes, the gaining or the losses of hair or fins or appendages, the million-year shifts from one color to the next. All they saw was each other, and often not for long. Life blinked in and out of existence with terrifying expedience.

  Only Lyokh saw all this. Only he mourned the dead, and studied the living.

  ONE PARTICULAR LIFE-FORM, snake-like and long, began to develop on the Ring Continent. It evolved with giant sacks of hydroquinone and hydrogen peroxide that resided just at the back of its throat, which it used to spit into the faces of its prey to stun them. It also developed stumpy protrusions, which it eventually used to pull itself along on the ground. Those stumpy protrusions eventually became elongated, became arms and legs, and the little snake-like creature was now more lizard-like than anything else, keeping its tail, along with a few small protrusions on its back that served no purpose at all. After a few million years, those protrusions on its back became wide, leathery. They became wings, except that the lizards had not yet learned to use them to fly—they were just new, useless networks of extra cartilage and skin. Eventually, though, the lizard-things took flight, and became successful predators.

  Lyokh saw this, and knew that he was looking at the ancestors of the wyrms.

  Then, here came an asteroid, a large one left over from the beginning of the double-star system, and one that the big brother gas giant had neglected to deal with. It smashed into the planet, wiping out half of all life. It happened again ten million years later, and again seven million years after that. Each time life had to start all over again, dealing with clouds of debris that covered the sky for dozens of years. Whole generations of animals were born into a world where they never knew a blue sky. They must have wondered what the hazy black dome was over their heads, and why sometimes they could see two glowing lights trying to peek through. One blue, one white.

  But eventually the skies did clear, and after another thirty million years, seed-bearing plants began to flourish and develop into the first forests. Insects developed mutations that weren’t handy at all. Others developed mutations for flapping exteriors that gave them the advantage of flight, the ability to zip away from predators, and so they survived.

  A hundred million years later, the first viruses evolved to infect eukaryotic cells. Viruses had long been around, but now they had found a way to exist within the larger, hardier life-forms. Like the lizards that developed wings, the viruses had discovered a new way of surviving.

  Twenty-seven million years passed, during which time there was a slow march towards larger insects, larger fish, and more complex organisms.

  Plant-life swelled in size, and the reptiles proved to be capable of growing almost limitlessly, so long as their food source was limitless. The aforementioned viruses assaulted them, killing most of them on accident, thinning out the herds, getting rid of the weakest, getting rid of those least likely to adapt to change. Birds developed and grew large, as well, the random mutation that had given them wings proving useful at last.

  For ten million years this went on, virtually uninterrupted. For ten million years, life experimented with itself, the males and females trying to reconnect, trying to regain that “oneness” they had lost in the dim past. They mated intensely, which not only increased their numbers but also increased the amount of mutations flooding the planet. This diversification allowed one life-form to test itself against any other, the flyers versus the swimmers, the runners versus the hiders, the stingers versus the poisoners. It was an ongoing battle, an arms race that escalated the variety of life in untold stories of life and death.

  Then, one day, here came another big rock. The eight-mile-wide bolide had been floating out in space for twenty million years. For twenty million years it had gone about a figure-eight orbit, exactly like all the other planets. For twenty million years it had passed harmlessly around the solar system.

  Lyokh witnessed it hit during the double-sun season—that is, during the time of year when the planet was passing between the two stars, and it was lit from both sides. During this “season” the planet experienced no nightfall, the whole planet was warmed in both its atmosphere and by the number of volcanic eruptions, caused by earthquakes, which were in turn caused by the gravitic forces pulling the planet in each direction.

  When the bolide came streaking out of the sky, the planet’s animals looked up. The object flashing across the sky would be a very new thing to their eyes, never witnessed by the life-forms now occupying the planet. Not since the period of heavy bombardment hundreds of millions of years before had the planet seen this, and back then there had been no life to speak of, no one to see it.

  When it hit, the bolide impacted on a coastline of the Ring Continent, and with a force not to be comprehended. A crater two hundred miles wide resulted, and it came with an explosion large enough to engulf hundreds more miles in flame and smoke. Mega-tsunamis were sent up all around the globe, the largest in the planet’s history by far. All materials that were ejected out into the atmosphere were heated to incandescence upon re-entry, broiling the planet’s surface and igniting uncountable forest fires. The resulting shock waves of the impact caused earthquakes that cracked the surface and forged new mountains, and new volcanoes. Clouds of ash were sent up into the atmosphere, where they remained for nearly a hundred years.

  Most of the planet was kept in perpetual night, even in its double-sun season. The sudden destruction of carbonate rocks caused a colossal injection of carbon dioxide across the whole planet, leading to a greenhouse effect.

  The planet’s surface cooled for a hundred years, slowing down photosynthesis and killing most plant and animal life.

  Lyokh was horrified by the devastation.

  Eventually, the clouds parted, and the beautiful double suns could be seen in the sky again. One white, and one blue. Life slowly regenerated. Smaller animals now dominated the landscape, they had weathered the storm and survived because of their low energy requirements, making them the only ones capable of surviving on scarce food supply. Life peeked out of its caves and hiding holes like the victims of violence testing to see if their tormentor has truly, finally gone.

  Another twenty million years passed, and the animals continued to mate, continued seeking the “oneness” they would always miss. They spread apart, they fought one
another, they ate one another, they died, they mutated, they evolved into other things. In this way, Lyokh saw, they continually shed the skins of their progenitors, always advancing, always moving forward, never looking back. They couldn’t look back, for they had no way to chronicle anything, no means of speech, no way to pass on the tales of the violence that had preceded them, the violence that seemed to be always happening.

  Only Lyokh knew their past.

  Now plant-life returned in more bountiful ways, thankful for the sunslight. Diversification took on a whole new intensity. It was as if all life, having had to subsist on the merest scraps for so long in that cold nuclear winter, now sought to gorge itself on the wonderful banquet Nature had bestowed upon them. It was their gift for waiting, their reward for surviving, and they partook like gluttons. The injection of massive amounts of protein made them grow larger than ever before.

  One particular species emerged during this time. The lizard-things, which had been snake-things before, had survived the bolide’s destruction and gorged itself on larger and larger prey for countless generations. The process of speciation took them away from being lizard-like to bird-like. Now these giant birds lived atop the rims of volcanoes, their hides having evolved to endure intense heat, for their ancestors had been forced to huddle close to volcanoes during the nuclear winter, and only those that could tolerate it could survive.

  One other random mutation took place during this time, that of the gaseous sacks that had once allowed these creatures to stun their prey. Those sacks migrated deeper into the throats and bellies of the birds. For the time being, these vestigial sacks remained useless.

  Another ten million years of this. Ten million years of the reign of the titan birds, their beaks evolving into ten-foot-long hooks, the points sharp enough to penetrate the hide of even the largest herbivores. Ten million years of the birds ruling the skies. Ten million years of their massive, thirty-foot wings casting shadows over the land. After this period, all life on the planet would evolve with an instinctual fear of large things the sky.

  For ten million years they laid their eggs on the rims of the volcanoes, some of them falling into the lava, or else the fledgling offspring inside were boiled alive, but those that endured did so with the help of another helpful mutation: A tolerance, a preference even, for intense heat and sulfur.

  Intense heat and sulfur. Lyokh took note of that. The Fire Birds craved components that virtually all other life had not even sought when the planet had been at its coldest, its most brutal.

  And he remembered this, also. A little over four billion years had now passed since the two suns had begun their dance, and yet still, there was room to grow.

  FOR MILLIONS OF years, life continued to flourish on the planet of the Fire Birds. Life went far and wide, feeling adventurous. It leapt and sprang and swam and flew and ran, it chased and was chased. Life grew larger, for there was a long stretch when no major disasters rocked the planet. Life seemed to have no bounds. And with two suns in the sky to draw energy from, the new, hardier plants, which had evolved to survive on very little, now drank in more than they could possibly ever need. The process of photosynthesis intensified the diversity and caused plants to swell. The plant-eaters, therefore, had a larger banquet to choose from.

  Millions upon millions of years of free grazing took place, unencumbered by the stars or asteroids or ecological disasters.

  This only made the Fire Birds grow larger, for their source of protein had increased greatly. They grew to be upwards of thirty feet, with wingspans nearly twice as long. And like all species, the Fire Birds evolved along different lines. There were all shapes, all sizes. Some of them with spiky bone protrusions that jutted out jaggedly from their spines. Others had tails three times longer than their bodies. A few types developed short, muscular tails that could snatch prey off the ground as they flew by, or else whip at other Fire Birds who challenged their nest.

  This was a powerful sieve for the Fire Birds, a kind of bottleneck through which their many species were bound to pass through. The Fire Birds were angry and violent, highly territorial, and did not mind taking from others. In fact, they craved this struggle. This instinct burned in them more deeply than even the molten lava around which they lived and thrived. It was the same instinct that had helped them to survive the planet’s darkest years.

  The Fire Birds’ battles were horrors to witness. They collided in the air at tremendous speeds and tore pounds of flesh off of one another with their razor beaks. They beat each other to death with their wings and their tails. They clawed with their hind and fore feet, which had developed sharp talons. Over time, they developed a tendency for throwing their defeated enemies into the volcanoes, where their bodies burned and returned to the endless cycle of violence that was forging the planet.

  Thousands of different species of Fire Birds evolved all over the world. Some of those that developed in colder regions stayed near their volcanoes most of the time, hibernating either until a particularly warm season occurred, or until a huge eruption spread enough heat out across the plains to encourage hunting. Some along the equator, along the vast Ring Continent, found themselves in vast desert plains, and they learned to dig holes into the earth in search of lava veins, only coming out two or three times a year for a hunting excursion. Some, rather than hunt, had gone fishing, learning to hold their breath and spearing some of the more colossal fish with their beaks. These Fire Birds found homes in the planet’s many submarine volcanoes, most of which were arrayed around the Ring Continent, right around where the bolide had struck thirty million years prior.

  No matter where the Fire Birds went, though, no matter how much speciation took place, they all laid their eggs in and around their volcanic nests, near lava flows and sulfur pits, in the gullets of geysers and underwater heat vents. The incubation period for the eggs grew longer and longer, sometimes taking years before one would hatch, for the sheer size of the life inside required it to feed on tremendous amounts of heat. They had evolved with an ability unique to them, the process of thermosynthesis—they could gather energy directly from heat itself.

  In some ways, the Fire Birds were like plants, who derived energy from light. But they were also clearly animals, requiring tremendous amounts of protein, calories, and carbohydrates just to survive. This combination of biological processes gave them virtually limitless resources.

  And so they grew.

  TWENTY MILLION YEARS passed, during which time the planet continued on its figure-eight orbit and remained oblivious to the rest of the planets going through their own cycles. It rocketed silently through space, while on its surface the Fire Birds streaked across the skies and hunted and killed. For twenty million years, the Fire Birds remained perched atop their mountains, gazing down at all that they saw through smoldering eyes of yellow and red and purple. For twenty million years, the Fire Birds dominated the world.

  And they grew.

  And Lyokh watched. No longer screaming. No longer numb. Only fascinated.

  Then, one day, during a particularly cold winter, another change came to the world. The planet was on the far side of the blue star, which meant it was eclipsing the white star, making it a one-sun season. The planet had been turned so that the western hemisphere was facing the blue star, leaving the eastern hemisphere in total darkness, revealing a sky utterly free of any and all light pollution. Inestimable stars scattered across the darkness. Then, something brilliant streaked out from that darkness. A comet. One of such blue brilliance it drew Fire Birds all across the hemisphere out of their caves to see.

  As the comet approached the blue sun, its volatile compounds began to sublime, giving it an atmosphere. That atmosphere was being left behind as it raced along, forming a vast tail. The comet’s tail had been tugged on and elongated. The comet was towing two hundred thousand miles of particles and dust behind it when it came close to the Planet of the Fire Birds and bounced off the atmosphere. That was a line of cosmic dust seven and a half tim
es longer than the Planet was all the way around.

  The comet went streaking back into the black abyss, but it left a tremendous amount of itself behind.

  For several thousand years, there was a permanent blue haze to the night sky, which gave all the plants, animals, trees and mountains a faint shine. It took just ten thousand years for the dust to fully accrete into a thin, thin disk around the Planet’s midsection, forming an outer ring above the Ring Continent.

  Two million years later, here came another pass by the same comet, now diminished considerably. But this time it left even more of itself behind before rocketing back into space and crashing into the Big Gas Giant a hundred thousand years later.

  Six million years after its death, another comet came moving in from the farthest reaches of the solar system, and it hit right against the Planet’s atmosphere, at just the right angle so that it was completely destroyed before it could smash into the Planet’s surface. This brought another tremendous amount of dust to encircle the Planet, which eventually accreted and made a thicker, brighter outer ring, one of several layers, some blue, some gray, some brown.

  Now, the Planet of the Fire Birds had rings just like the ringed gas giants. For most of the year, the largest of the Planet’s moons appeared to be balanced on the edge of these rings, while the other moon hovered just about its middle, appearing to be sliced in half.

  The night sky was now a tapestry of colors and light, and would remain so for ages to come.

  And while these rings had been forming, the Fire Birds had watched silently, their smoldering eyes cast balefully on all that they saw, and perhaps they even began to take pride in the realms under their protection. Certainly, they learned to appreciate the power and safety in numbers, for now they had whole families of twenty or forty gathered around a single volcano. Some types of Fire Birds, like those in the sea, remained solitary, but the vast majority of them maintained whole flocks of their bloodline and were intent on the preservation of it.