Analog SFF, April 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  “What?"

  “You know the Others on their home planet are technically immortal. That is, actually, they spend most of their lives as dead as a rock. But they are revived every now and then. Do something and then return to the dormant state.

  “This one is not that way, because it has to stay on the job until the job is done. The ten-to-the-seventh seconds figure, that's how long it has lived. Continuously, for 27,000 years.

  “And it envies its relatives for their periodic rest."

  In the dark cold, I broke into a sudden sweat. “It wants to die?"

  “To die, or to return to where it can have its long rest. I'm not sure quite which state it was referring to. Or whether it feels there is much difference."

  Maybe that was why Martians have such an ambiguous attitude toward death. It might reflect the attitude of their makers.

  “Should you prepare it for the possibility of exposure?” Paul asked.

  “As I say, I'm not sure. That might just make it push the button—or it might have been lying about that.

  “Let's not take the chance,” I said. “Let's hope her ‘authorities’ are more cautious than she was."

  Paul nodded, but his expression told how little hope he held out for that.

  * * * *

  10. Trojan Horse

  It took less than half a day. Unable to sleep, I got up around four and occupied myself answering mail that had piled up from family and friends. I was writing a note to Card when the screen chimed and a red exclamation point started to strobe in the upper right-hand corner.

  I asked for news but then toggled Life Today rather than the Times. Inch-high letters as red as the strobe: TRITON MONSTER THREATENS EARTH DOOM!! Martian Go-Between Reveals All!

  I started to read the story, but it kept blurring. How could they do this?

  The phone pinged and it was Paul. “Sorry to wake—"

  “I'm awake. I saw."

  “Jesus. What do we do now?"

  “I think the question is what is it going to do now."

  “Yeah. Damn. Meet me down at the coffee?"

  “There'll be a run on it.” I dressed in a hurry and pinned my hair out of the way.

  He was waiting for me with a cup. I got one sip and both our phones went off simultaneously.

  It was Ishan Jhangiani, the Earth side Science Coordinator. “This is a general announcement. I want everybody, human and Martian, to be at Earth A, on Mars side, or Assembly A, on this side, in forty five minutes, at 5:30. I'm afraid this is a matter of life and death."

  The combination of tepid coffee on an empty stomach and bad news sent me rushing to the head. After I'd emptied that out I felt better, but my skin was cold and greasy and my hands were trembling.

  Paul came out of the other head, and he didn't look much better than I felt.

  I looked into my cup. “I'd like to have one cup of coffee that was actually hot before I die."

  “Better do it now.’ He sat down heavily. “Sorry."

  “Gallows humor's better than no humor at all.” I looked at my wrist. “We've got forty minutes.” I nodded at the ladder.

  “No, I couldn't. Thanks, but I couldn't.

  “Me, neither, actually.” I rubbed tears away. “I could kill that bitch!"

  “We should've grabbed her and thrown her to Red."

  “Yeah.” I laughed, but it didn't sound like a laugh. “Not that it would change anything.

  Speak of the devil—my phone pinged and it was Red. “Carmen—comm says there's a message coming in from Triton. I think we should be at Earth A as close to now as possible."

  “We're down at the mess,” I said. “Beat you there.” Paul nodded and stood and followed me up the ladder.

  Only Oz and Moonboy were there before us. Oz gave me a wan smile. “Josie will be along. She takes a few minutes to wake up."

  The cube was on, but it was a blank blue. “Red said they're getting some communication from Triton."

  “Maybe it will be ‘Send me the head of Dargo Solingen.’”

  “Wonder if she'll be here."

  “No. Jhangiani invented ‘house arrest’ and put her under it. She's locked in her room with no contact with the outside world. Josie or I come by every three hours to take her to the head and give her bread and water."

  “She'll sue. If any of us live through this."

  “Let me be a character witness,” Moonboy said. “I've been her special little project for about ten years.” I wondered how many of us there were.

  Ishan Jhangiani appeared on the cube and looked at us. “No Martians yet?"

  “Red's on his way, Dr. Jhangiani. He said there was a message?"

  He nodded. “It started five or six minutes ago. We're recording—” His image suddenly dissolved in a shower of static, and the room lights flickered.

  Paul crouched instinctively. “Shit. What's that?"

  “Hello?” Jhangiani's voice came out of the swirling white noise. Then his image returned. “That was...” He inclined his head and touched an ear. “Oh my god ... do we have a picture?"

  The cube went black and then showed a familiar sight, the Hubble planetary camera's view of Neptune, an almost featureless blue ball accompanied by the tiny pale circle of Triton and specks of light that were Nereid and a couple of other small satellites.

  Then Triton exploded.

  The pale circle suddenly was a ball of intense white, that grew brighter and brighter, and then the screen went white with static.

  It darkened again and an unfamiliar voice said, “This is real time."

  The view was the same as before, but the dot of Triton was surrounded by a glowing circle, visibly expanding as we watched.

  Red was standing in the door. “What's happening?"

  “Maybe you can tell us,” Paul said. “The Other evidently did something interesting."

  Jhangiani came back into the cube. “That explosion reached a brightness of—27 magnitude. For a moment, it was slightly brighter than the Sun."

  “Forty times as far away,” Paul said. “So for a moment, it was putting out 1600 times as much energy as the Sun. How could it do that?"

  “Perhaps Red can tell us,” Jhangiani said. “This is the message it sent, a few words of English and then the slowed-down Martian.” He nodded at someone. “We've sped up the Martian for you."

  The David Brinkley voice again: “I monitor your news broadcasts, of course, and the most recent ones have forced me to make a decision. I am sorry. You already know too much.” Then there was about two minutes of accelerated Martian. And then static.

  Red didn't say anything. “What did it do?” Jhangiani asked.

  “It ... went home.” He hugged himself. “It may have literally returned to its home system. Or it died. The words could be the same. As if, if someone goes to Earth, he could be going to a planet or being buried.

  “On going home, it destroyed every trace of its technology that was on Triton. It didn't want to risk humans finding it and copying it."

  He paused and continued in a halting monotone. “It did this even in the knowledge that soon there will be no humans alive on Earth. The hundred on Mars will presumably live."

  I swallowed back bile. “What's it going to do, Red?"

  “It's already done.” He rocked back and forth. “I'm sorry. I swear I didn't know.” He shook his head.

  “Didn't know what, Red?” Oz said. “Is there anything we can do?"

  “I'm a time bomb. A Trojan Horse. The Other wanted me on Earth, or nearby, before it turned on the beacon that started all this. So that ... if things didn't work out, I could be forced to put an end to it."

  “How can that be?” Paul said. “Even if all your mass was turned into an explosion—"

  “I mass about a hundred kilograms. By em-cee-squared, that comes to nine times ten to the eighteenth joules. That's equivalent to twenty hundred-megaton nuclear weapons.

  “Earth could survive that, since we're 22,000 miles away from the s
urface. But fusion doesn't begin to describe the forces involved. Could fusion have accounted for the Triton explosion?"

  “I guess not?” Paul said. “No, of course not. Did it say how big ... how destructive you could be?"

  “Enough to boil away the ocean on the side of the globe we're facing. Blow off a lot of the atmosphere."

  “When?” I asked.

  “Days.” He shook his head. “Maybe two, maybe three.

  “The energy doesn't come from here. It's bleeding off a thing like a black hole in an adjacent universe. We've been using it domestically since we first came to Mars."

  “The mysterious power source for all the machines,” Oz said. “The light for the hydroponics."

  “I suppose. I knew nothing about it until today. But the Other says it had another thing like me on Triton, and it only drew off power for a couple of hours, concentrating it for the explosion. This will be orders of magnitude more."

  “With all due respect, Red,” Moonboy said, “we should lock you into the shuttle right now and fling you as far away as possible."

  Red agreed. “That might be the most practical course. Or you could kill me, or I could kill myself, in case the collection process requires me to be alive.

  “But the Other didn't say anything about either possibility. It could be that I would explode prematurely, automatically, if I died or left the vicinity of Little Mars."

  “Which might be desirable,” Sophie said, “if it caused an explosion with less force. We ... would die, but the Earth might be spared."

  Red nodded. “I can't say, one way or the other."

  I tried to listen with Dargo's skeptical ears. The Other might have been lying to him. Or Red might be lying to us. “It could just be a test,” I said. “The Other observing to see how we react to this extremity."

  “If it were a human or a Martian, I would say that was possible.” Red shook his head. “Not the Other. I don't think we have any hope in that direction. Moonboy is right; I should be sent away. But I don't know that I can go far enough in two days."

  “I have an idea,” Paul said. He licked his lips and stared straight ahead. “Let's put Red on the other side of the Moon. Get three thousand kilometers of solid rock between Earth and the explosion."

  “Ha ha. Perfect. I'll do it now."

  “You're not doing it yourself. You need a pilot."

  “Paul..."

  “We don't need the whole shuttle; just the Mars lander. We'll compute the right time for a slingshot transfer and have it blow the separation bolts. We do the transfer and I come in ass-backwards, kill velocity, look for a place I can land with skis."

  “It's suicide,” Moonboy said.

  “No, I can do it; plenty of smooth areas on Farside. I'll take a few weeks’ life support. If Red doesn't blow up, the Tsiolkovski will be coming in with a pilot next week. She can come get us."

  “You don't have to be aboard,” I said, trying to keep the pleading out of my voice. “You can pilot by VR."

  “Afraid not. No repeater satellites. Once I'm on the other side of the Moon, I'm out of contact with here. It's seat of the pants, just look and do. I'm confident I can land it."

  “And if you're wrong,” Red said, “we'll just crash. That might set off the explosion, or it might prevent it."

  “You're so cheerful,” I snapped.

  “We don't agree about death,” he said. We had argued about that, on Mars and here. He invoked the human philosopher Seneca, saying that he had not existed for 13.7 billion years and apparently enjoyed that state. One spark of a couple of centuries’ life, and he'd be back to not existing for some trillions of years and would enjoy it as much as the previous billions.

  “Which leads to a solution,” he said. “Paul, if we just set up the thing to crash on the other side of the Moon, we won't need a pilot. I'll just be the cargo. Dying is not so important to me."

  “Red, that's great! You don't have to be a fucking hero, Paul!"

  Paul didn't look at me, but he wasn't looking at anybody. When he spoke, it was like a class recitation: “Red, I appreciate it, but it's not a simple computation. The Mars lander was not built for this, and it will be out of touch for the most crucial phases."

  “So he crashes!" I said. “He just said—"

  “No. With one kind of mistake he crashes, but with most others he stays in orbit. It's not like dropping a ball. Things in orbit tend to stay in orbit, at least in the short term. And whenever he was not directly behind the Moon, he'd be the doomsday machine for Earth."

  “How long would the flight take?” Oz asked.

  “I could get it down to a day and still have plenty of fuel for the landing maneuver."

  “We'd better get busy."

  “Can I ... could I come?"

  His face was completely still. “No. Darling. Minimum life support, maximum maneuverability.” He stepped toward me and took me in his arms.

  He whispered, speaking slowly and carefully. Only I could hear: “You know I am not so far away from Red with the death thing. I love you and will regret the years we would have had together—do miss them already—but at worst, in one instant I'll only be back to where I spent most of forever.

  “And we had a wonderful time while we had it. Better than most people get."

  I was crying and didn't try to say anything other than the obvious.

  * * * *

  11. Endings, beginnings

  In the last few hours neither Paul nor I brought up the possibility that nothing would happen and he would be back in a couple of weeks. As if talking about it might have jinxed us.

  Red did drop a hint, though, obliquely. I was waiting by the airlock that led to the shuttle, and he came walking up with a bundle tucked under a large and small arm. It was the gauzy tent he wore when he ventured out onto the surface of Mars.

  “Just for safety's sake,” he said. “You never know.” It would protect him for a couple of hours’ EVA or moonwalk, or keep him alive for a while if the shuttle's life support shut down.

  Paul came out of the airlock looking like a Space Force recruiting cubeshot, gleaming white spacesuit. He had shaved his head and had feelie contacts pasted on his skull.

  I was composed. Oz had given me a couple of slap-on tranquilizers, but I wanted to hold off on them until after the launch.

  Paul put his helmet down and swept me up in an armored hug. That was not exactly the way I wanted to remember his body, hidden behind bulletproof plastic. But I could imagine what was underneath.

  “You remember the day we met,” I said, “throwing a pebble at the iguana?"

  He smiled. “Yeah."

  “Think you can manage to hit the Moon?"

  “It's a lot bigger.” He gave me a last hard kiss and stepped back. No good-bye or see you. Just a long intent look and then he picked up his helmet and went through the airlock.

  When it closed, I put one of the patches on my wrist. When the reverberating bang meant they had launched, I slapped on the second.

  We had saved one bottle of the imported Bordeaux for some future celebration. I held it for a long time, remembering. But then I put it back and went down to the mess and made a glass of grape juice laced with ethanol.

  I carried the drink up to Earth A, where almost everyone else was gathered. I almost wished they had let Dargo out to watch the consequences of her judgment. But I would probably have said something or done something I'd later regret. If there was a later.

  The Hubble showed the little ship drifting along in the bright sunlight, occasional background stars going by unhurriedly. Paul talked with technical people here and on Earth, and Red kept up a constant monologue. Fly-in-Amber said it was all apparently in Red's own language, a message for his successor. Or perhaps for the Others, eventually.

  The alcohol and drugs made me very sleepy. I ate a hamburger because I knew I had to have something and then went up to my quarters and slept dreamlessly for twenty hours.

  I awoke to my own timer, the pho
ne, and the computer screen all buzzing and pinging. I turned them all off, knowing what they meant, and went to the head. Splashed water on my face and jerked a comb through my hair and went up to Earth A.

  They weren't using the Hubble, because the Moon is too bright for it to focus on. Oz said it was a telescope in Hawaii. It showed the Mars lander as a small cylindrical shape, moving toward the limb of the Moon. I knew it would be decelerating, but you couldn't tell by looking.

  Paul's voice was suddenly loud. “We'll be making planetfall, moonfall I guess, in about twenty-two minutes. Twenty-one. Lose radio contact in less than a minute."

  The image of the ship and the Moon's limb were almost touching. “Hmm ... I don't have any last words. ‘Crash’ Collins signing off. Hope this works. Dargo, I'll see you in Hell. Darling ... darling ... good..."

  Well, at least Dargo would get all of her message, even if mine required a little imagination. Josie came up and held me from one side, and Meryl from the other.

  Meryl sobbed. “People won't know he already had the nickname."

  The view shifted to earthside, the nearly full moon high over a placid ocean. Maybe it was from the Hawaiian mountaintop where the observatory was.

  After what seemed a lot longer than twenty minutes, a voice from the cube said, “One minute to touchdown."

  We held our breath for a minute. Then another minute. We didn't know what to expect.

  After twenty minutes or so, people started drifting away, back to their quarters or down to the mess, or just to wander.

  For some reason I kept staring at the moon, maybe wishing I was there in Hawaii, maybe not thinking anything much—whatever, I was one of the few people actually watching when it happened.

  At first there was just a faint glow surrounding the moon, as if a wispy cloud had moved in front of it. Then it was suddenly dramatic.

  People who have seen total solar eclipses say it was like that, but more so. A brilliant nimbus of pearly light spread across half the sky, the full moon suddenly a black circle in the middle, dark by contrast.

  A crackle of static and a human voice. “Holy shit. That was close.” Paul!

  * * * *

  It was Red who had suggested the plan, which was probably not something a sane space pilot would have come up with.