by Cixin Liu
Nothing happened. Even though the control cabin was tightly sealed, he should have been able to feel the tremors from the detonation. A line of text appeared on his wristwatch display:
Failure: The self-destruct module has been dismantled.
Hunter wasn’t even surprised. He had already intuitively anticipated that the worst had happened. He had been but a few seconds from relief, but the relief would never come.
Neither droplet struck their respective targets. Both brushed by Gravity or Blue Space at extremely close range—only a few tens of meters.
Three minutes after the attack alert was lifted, Joseph Morovich, captain of Gravity, finally managed to gather his senior staff at the combat center, in the middle of which was a giant situation map. No stars were shown against the dark expanse of space, only the positions of the two ships and the attack trajectories of the droplets. The two long white trails appeared as straight lines, but the data indicated they were parabolas with very low curvature. As the two droplets accelerated toward their targets in the simulation, their headings began to drift. The changes were small, but cumulatively, they resulted in the droplets barely missing their targets. Many of the senior officers had participated in the Doomsday Battle, and their memory of the sharp turns the droplets were capable of executing while moving at extremely high velocities still brought heart-stopping terror. However, the trajectories on the display were completely different: It was as though some outside force perpendicular to the attack vectors of the droplets had steadily pushed them out of the way.
“Replay the recording,” the captain ordered. “Visible light range.”
The stars and the galaxy appeared. This was no longer a computer simulation. In one corner, flickering numbers showed the passage of time. Everyone relived the terror of a few minutes ago, when all they could do was wait for death because evasive maneuvers and defensive shots were all meaningless. Soon, the numbers stopped changing. The droplets had already swept past the ships, but because they were moving so fast, no one could see them.
The display shifted to slow-motion replay of the high-speed recording. Since the complete recording, over ten seconds long, would take a long time to play through, only the last few seconds were shown. The officers saw a droplet pass in front of the camera like a faint meteor across the sea of stars in the background. The recording was played again, and froze when the droplet was in the middle of the screen. The image zoomed in until the droplet took up most of the display.
Half a century of cruising in formation with the droplets made everyone familiar with their appearance, and what they saw now shocked them. The droplet on the display was still shaped like a teardrop, but its surface was no longer a perfectly smooth mirror. Instead, it was dim and coppery yellow, as though full of rust. It was as if a magician’s spell of eternal youth had failed, and the marks left by three centuries of spaceflight had all appeared at once. Instead of a shining spirit, the droplet had turned into an ancient artillery shell drifting through space. Communications with the Earth during the last few years had given these officers some basic insight into the principles of strong-interaction materials. They knew that the surface of a droplet was held in a force field generated by mechanisms inside. This force field counteracted the electromagnetic force between particles, allowing the strong nuclear force to spill out. Without the force field, strong-interaction material reverted to ordinary metal.
The droplets had died.
Next, they reviewed the post-attack data. The simulation showed that after the droplet brushed by Gravity, the mysterious perpendicular force making small heading changes vanished, and the droplet coasted along its final vector. But this only lasted a few seconds. Thereafter, the droplet began to decelerate. The combat analysis computer concluded that the force decelerating the droplet was equal in magnitude to the force that had changed its heading. The obvious conclusion was that the source of the force had shifted from pushing at the side of the droplet to pushing from the front.
Since the recording was made by high-magnification telescopic lens, it was possible to see the back of the departing droplet. The droplet turned ninety degrees so that it was perpendicular to its own direction of motion and continued to coast. Then it began to decelerate. The next scene seemed to be taken from a fairy tale—good thing Dr. West was also present, or else he would again declare the others to be suffering from hallucinations. A triangular object, about twice as long as the droplet, appeared in front of it. The staff immediately recognized it as a shuttle from Blue Space! In order to increase its propulsive power, multiple small fusion drives were attached to the hull of the shuttle. Although the nozzles of the drives all pointed away from the camera, it was still possible to see the glow they made as they operated under maximum output. The shuttle was pushing against the droplet to slow it down. And it was easy to deduce that it was also the source of the force that caused the droplets to deviate from their attack vectors.
After the shuttle’s appearance, two human figures wearing space suits appeared on the other side of the droplet—the side closest to the camera. The deceleration caused the figures to stick to the surface of the droplet; one of them held some kind of instrument in his hands and appeared to be analyzing the droplet. In the past, droplets had seemed almost divine in the eyes of humankind, not belonging to this world and not approachable. The only people who had ever come close to touching a droplet had been vaporized in the Doomsday Battle. But now, the droplet had lost all its mystery. Without its mirrorlike sheen, it seemed ordinary, broken-down, older and less advanced than the shuttle and the astronauts—some antique or piece of trash collected by the latter. A few seconds later, the shuttle and the astronauts disappeared, and the dead droplet was once again alone in space. But it continued to decelerate, indicating that the shuttle was still there pushing against it, only now invisible.
“They know how to disable the droplets!” someone cried out.
Captain Morovich could think of only one thing. Like Hunter a few minutes ago, he didn’t hesitate to push the button on his watch. The error message appeared in a red information window that appeared midair:
Failure: The self-destruct module has been dismantled.
The captain dashed out of the combat center and headed for the stern. The other officers followed.
The first person from Gravity to arrive at the gravitational wave transmission control room was Old Hunter. Though he had no authorization to enter the cabin, he wanted to try to break the link between the controller and the antenna. This would at least temporarily disable the transmission system until he figured out how to destroy the controller itself.
But someone was already there, examining the control cabin.
Hunter took out his sidearm and aimed it at the man. He wore the uniform of a sublieutenant on Gravity, not the uniform dating from the Doomsday Battle that Hunter expected to see—the man had stolen it. Hunter recognized him from the back. “I knew Commander Devon was right.”
Lieutenant Commander Park Ui-gun, head of the marines on Blue Space, turned around. He looked no older than thirty, but his face showed that he had endured experiences that no one aboard Gravity could imagine. He was slightly surprised. Perhaps he didn’t expect anyone here so soon; perhaps he didn’t expect to see Hunter. Yet, he remained calm. With both hands half raised, he said, “Please let me explain—”
Old Hunter wasn’t interested in an explanation. He didn’t want to know how this man had boarded Gravity, and didn’t even want to know if he was a man or a ghost. Whatever the facts, the situation was too dangerous. All he wanted was to destroy the transmission controller unit. It was his only goal in life, and this man from Blue Space stood in the way. He squeezed the trigger.
The bullet struck Park in the chest, and the impact threw him against the cabin door. Hunter’s gun was loaded with special bullets designed for use inside the ship: They wouldn’t damage the bulkheads or other equipment, but they also weren’t as deadly as laser beams. Some blood ooze
d out of the wound, but Park managed to stay erect in the weightlessness and reached into his bloody uniform for his own weapon. Hunter shot again, and there was a fresh wound in Park’s chest. More blood oozed out, floating in the gravity-less air. Finally, Hunter took aim at Park’s head, but he didn’t get a chance for the third shot.
This was the scene that greeted Captain Morovich and the other officers when they arrived: Hunter’s gun was floating far away from him. The old cook’s body was stiff, his open eyes showing only white, his limbs twitching. Blood erupted forth from his mouth like a fountain, coagulating into spheres of various sizes drifting around him in a cloud. In the middle of the bloody, translucent spheres was a dark red object about the size of a fist, dragging two tubes behind it like tails.
Rhythmically, it pulsed in midair, and with every pulse, more blood was squeezed out of its two tubular tails. The object propelled itself forward like a crimson jellyfish swimming through the air.
It was Hunter’s heart.
During the struggle a few moments earlier, Hunter had slammed his right hand against his chest, and then, desperately, torn open his clothes. Thus, his bare chest lay revealed, and everyone could see that the skin was perfect, with not a single scratch.
“He can be saved if we get him into surgery right away,” Sublieutenant Park said with some difficulty, his voice very hoarse. Blood continued to spill from the two wounds in his chest. “Good thing that doctors don’t need to open his chest to reattach his heart anymore.... Don’t move! It’s as easy for them to pluck out your heart or brain as it is for you to pick an apple dangling from a branch in front of you. Gravity has been captured.”
Fully armed marines rushed in from another corridor. Most of them wore the dark blue lightweight space suits dating from before the Doomsday Battle—apparently they were all from Blue Space. All the marines were equipped with powerful laser assault rifles.
Captain Morovich nodded at his officers. Without speaking, they tossed their weapons away. Blue Space had ten times more people than Gravity, and just their detachment of marines numbered more than a hundred. They could easily control Gravity.
There was nothing beyond belief anymore. Blue Space had turned into a supernatural warship wielding magic. The crew of Gravity again experienced the shock they had last suffered during the Doomsday Battle.
More than fourteen hundred people floated in the middle of Blue Space’s spherical great hall. The largest portion, over twelve hundred, belonged to the crew of Blue Space. Sixty years ago, the officers and enlisted men of this ship had also lined up here to accept Zhang Beihai’s command, and most of them were still here. Since only a few individuals needed to be awake and on duty for regular cruising, the crew had aged only three to five years on average. They hadn’t experienced the bulk of the intervening years, and the searing flames of the dark battles and the cold funerals held in space remained fresh in their minds. The remainder belonged to the one-hundred-strong crew of Gravity. The two crews—one large, one small, wearing distinct uniforms and suspicious of each other—gathered into two clusters far apart from each other.
Before the two crews, the senior officers of the two ships were mixed together. Captain Chu Yan of Blue Space drew the most attention. He was forty-three, but looked younger, and he was the model of the scholarly military officer. Refined and calm in his speech and mannerisms, he even gave off a hint of shyness. But on Earth, Chu Yan was already a figure of legend. During the dark battles, he was the one who had given the order to turn the interior of Blue Space into a vacuum, thereby preventing the crew from death in the infrasonic nuclear bomb attack. Even now, public opinion on Earth remained divided as to whether Blue Space’s actions during the dark battle should be classified as self-defense or murder. After the founding of dark forest deterrence, he was the one who had resisted the heavy pressure of majority opinion aboard and delayed Blue Space’s return, thus giving the ship sufficient time to escape after the warning from Bronze Age. There were many other rumors concerning Chu Yan. For instance, when Natural Selection had chosen to defect and escape the Doomsday Battle, he was the only captain to ask to give chase. Some claimed that he had a different purpose in mind, wanting to hijack Blue Space and escape along with Natural Selection. Of course, those were just rumors.
“Almost everyone from the two ships is gathered here,” said Chu Yan. “Although much still divides us, we prefer to think of everyone as belonging to the same world, formed from Blue Space and Gravity. Before we plan the future of our world together, we need to take care of an urgent matter.”
A large holographic display window appeared midair, showing somewhere in space where the stars were sparse. In the middle of the region was a faint white fog, and the fog was etched with several hundred straight parallel lines, like brush bristles. The white lines had clearly been enhanced and stood out in the image. In the past two centuries, these “brushes” had become very familiar to people, and some brands even used them in their logos.
“These trails were observed eight days ago in the stellar dust cloud near Trisolaris. Please pay attention to the video.”
Everyone stared at the image, and the trails could be seen to grow in the fog.
“How many times have you sped up the video?” an officer from Gravity asked.
“It’s not sped up at all.”
The crowd grew agitated, like a forest struck by a sudden rainstorm.
“By a rough estimate... these ships are moving at close to the speed of light,” Captain Morovich of Gravity said. His voice was very tranquil. He had experienced too many incredible sights in the last two days.
“That’s right. The Second Trisolaran Fleet is heading for Earth at lightspeed, and should arrive in four years.” Chu Yan looked at Gravity’s crew with caring eyes, as though sorry that he had to deliver this news. “After you left, the Earth sank into a dream of universal peace and prosperity, and completely misjudged the situation. Trisolaris has been waiting patiently, and now they’ve finally seized their chance.”
“How do we know this is authentic?” someone from Gravity called out.
“I can attest to it!” said Guan Yifan. Among the small gathering in front of the crews, he was the only one not in a military uniform. “My observatory had also detected the same trails. However, since I was focused on large-scale cosmological observations, I didn’t pay much attention to them. But I’ve gone back and retrieved the recorded data. The Solar System, the Trisolaran system, and our ships form a scalene triangle. The side between the Solar System and the Trisolaran system is the longest. The side between the Solar System and us is the shortest. The side going from the Trisolaran system to us is in between. In other words, we are closer to the Trisolaran system than the Solar System is to the Trisolaran system. About forty days from now, the Earth will also detect the trails we’re seeing.”
Chu Yan took over. “We believe that something has already taken place on the Earth. More specifically, it happened about five hours ago, when the droplets attacked our two ships. Based on information provided by Gravity, that was the scheduled time for the Swordholder to transfer his authority to his successor. This was the opportunity Trisolaris had been waiting for for half a century. The two droplets had clearly been given orders before entering the blind zone. This was a long-planned, coordinated attack.
“I must conclude that the peace brought by dark forest deterrence has been breached. There are only two possibilities: The gravitational wave universal broadcast has been initiated, or it hasn’t.”
Chu Yan tapped in the air and brought up Cheng Xin’s picture on the holographic display. This picture of the new Swordholder had also just been obtained from Gravity. Cheng Xin stood in front of the UN Secretariat Building, holding a baby. Her picture had been blown up to be as large as the “brush” bristles, and the contrast between the two images couldn’t be sharper. The basic color scheme of space was black and silver—the depth of space and the cold light of the stars. But Cheng Xin resembled a Mado
nna from the East. A warm, golden glow bathed her and the baby, giving all those present the feeling of being close to the sun, a sensation that they had missed for half a century.
“We believe the latter scenario is true,” Chu Yan said.
“How did they pick such a person to be Swordholder?” someone from Blue Space asked.
Captain Morovich answered. “It’s been sixty years since you left home, and fifty for us. Everything on Earth has changed. Deterrence made a comfortable cradle, and as humanity napped inside, it regressed from an adult to a child.”
“Don’t you know that there are no more men on Earth?” someone from Gravity shouted.
“Humans on Earth lost the ability to maintain dark forest deterrence,” Chu Yan said. “We had planned to capture Gravity and re-establish dark forest deterrence. But we’ve just found out that due to decay in the antenna, the ability to broadcast gravitational waves will only last two more months. Believe me, this has been an incredible blow to all of us. We have only one choice: immediately activate the universal broadcast.”
The crowd erupted. Next to the view of cold space showing the lightspeed trails of the Trisolaran Fleet, Cheng Xin gazed at them, full of love. The two images portrayed their two choices.
“Are you really willing to commit mundicide?” Captain Morovich demanded.
Chu Yan maintained his serenity against the chaos. Ignoring Captain Morovich, he spoke to the crowd. “For us, initiating the broadcast is meaningless. Neither the Earth nor Trisolaris can catch us now.”
Everyone understood this. The sophons were permanently severed from home, and the droplets had been destroyed. Earth and Trisolaris thus had no way to trace them. In the vast, deep space beyond the Oort Cloud, even Trisolaran ships operating at lightspeed would never be able to find two motes of dust.