Time m-1

by Stephen Baxter

  › Naturally the usual naysayers are hovering, moaning that Colonel Malenfant is acting outside the lawn or is screwing up the environment! or is in some other way irresponsible.

  › And there is the usual stench of hypocrisy and decay from the bloated corpse that is NASA, our space agency, the agency that should have done all this for us decades ago anyhow.

  › Here’s the pitch.

  › Following a hastily convened gathering in Hollywood, CA, a new society tentatively called the Flying Mountain Society has been formed. If you want to join it will cost 500 dollars U.S. or equivalent.

  › For that investment you won’t get any information or brochures or member services. We will not print glossy magazines or feed a giant staff. In fact we will have no full-time employees. As we are not another NASA booster club you won’t get glossy pictures of spacecraft that will never be built. All you will get is a guarantee that we won’t waste your money.

  › FMS isn’t the only space organization! but it does exist solely to get us into space.

  › Here’s the catch. Don’t join unless you are a hardworking person. Don’t join unless you support Colonel Malenfant’s goal of developing a space industry in our lifetimes! and are prepared to work for it.

  › In fact we’d prefer you didn’t join at all. We’d prefer you started up your own local chapter, affiliated to the Society! which we hope will evolve into a global umbrella organization of pressure groups and activists.

  › You can start with a bake sale. You can start by bombarding the schools with images of asteroids. You can start by hiking out to the Mojave, rolling up your sleeves, and helping Colonel Malenfant any way he can use you.

  › There is incidentally no truth in the rumors propagated in some sections of the press that the Flying Mountain Society is in any way affiliated with or funded by Bootstrap Inc. or any of its subsidiaries or affiliates asn quoten “a propaganda exercise-” This is in fact counterf actual malice spread by Colonel Malenfant’s turf-warrior enemies.

  › If you want to get involved-i reply to this mail. Better yet just get to work.

  Maura Della:

  Open journal. September 3, 2010.

  It was soon after my visit to Malenfant’s experimental site in the Mojave that the news broke about Bootstrap’s true purpose — that is, to assemble a private heavy-lift vehicle with space shuttle technology, to send some kind of mining mission to an asteroid.

  I don’t know if Cornelius Taine had anything to do with that. Presumably yes, if it served his shadowy organization’s purposes. But it wasn’t impossible the leak came from elsewhere; Bootstrap is surely as porous as any large organization.

  Anyhow, I find myself being sucked into the project. Somehow, through the leak and my covert involvement — the fact that I didn’t blow the whistle immediately when I got back from the Mojave — I’m becoming seduced into considering not just rocket engine firings, not just a private launch system, but the NEO mission itself.

  This seems to be Malenfant’s modus operandi: to build up an unstoppable momentum, to launch first and answer questions later.

  The usual forces of darkness are already gathering in Congress to oppose this. It’s going to be a struggle.

  But I already know I’m not going to walk away from Malenfant, despite his outlandish, covert scheming.

  You see, I happen to think Reid Malenfant is right. For the cost of one more space launch — which is undisputed, financially and environmentally — it might be possible to reach a near-Earth object, actually to start exploiting one of those sun-orbiting gold mines, and so, just as Malenfant’s corporate title suggests, to bootstrap a new human expansion into space.

  I think we’ve all become desensitized to the state of our world.

  We live in a closed economy, an economy of limits. Grain yields globally have been falling since 1984, fishing yields since 1990. And yet the human population continues to grow. This is the stark reality of the years to come.

  It seems to me our best hope for getting through the next century or so is to reach some kind of steady state: Recycle as much as possible; try to minimize the impact of industry on the planet; try to stabilize the population numbers. For the last five to ten years I have, in my small way, been working toward exactly that goal, that new order. I don’t see that any responsible politician has a choice.

  I must say I entered politics with rather higher hopes of the future than I enjoy now.

  But even the steady state, our best-hope future, may not be achievable without space.

  Without power and materials from space we are doomed to shuffle a known — in fact diminishing — stockpile of resources around the planet. Some players get rich; others get poor. But it’s not even a zero-sum game; in the long term we’re all losers.

  It isn’t just a question of economics. It’s what this does to our spirit.

  We are frightened of the future. We exclude strangers, try to hold on to what we have, rather than risk the search for something better. We spend more energy on seeking someone to blame for our present woes than on building for a better future. We’ve become a planet full of old people — old in spirit, anyhow. Speaking as a sexagenarian I know what I’m talking about.

  The point is that if we can open up the limits to growth, then we can all be winners. It’s as simple as that.

  That is why I’m prepared to back Malenfant. Not, you’ll note, because I like his methods. But the ends, I suspect, in this case

  justify the means.

  However, all this is going to take some extremely delicate opinion management. Especially over what Malenfant is doing at Key Largo…

  Sheena 5:

  And in the warm, shallow waters of the continental shelf off

  Key Largo:

  The night was over. The sun, a fat ball of light, was already glimmering above the water’s surface, which rippled with flat-light. Sheena 5 had spent the night alone, foraging for food among the seabed grasses. She had eaten well, of small fish, prawns, larvae; she had been particularly successful using her arms to flush out hiding shrimp from the sand.

  But now, in the brightness of day, the squid emerged from the grasses and corals, and rose in the water. The shoals formed in small groups and clusters, eventually combining into a community a hundred strong that soared in arcs and rows through the water. Their jets made the rich water sing as they chattered to each other, simple sentences picked out by complex skin patterns, body posture, texture:

  Court me. Court me.

  See my weapons!

  I am strong and fierce.

  Stay away! Stay away! She is mine!

  It was the ancient cephalopod language, Sheena knew, a language of light and shadow and posture, the “words” shivering one into the other, words of sex and danger and food. It was a language as old as the squid — millions of years old, much older than humans — and it was rich and beautiful, and she shoaled and chattered with joy.

  But there was a shadow on the water. And Sheena’s deep gravity sense told her of an approaching infrasonic rumble, quite characteristic: it was a barracuda, a vicious predator of the squid. This one was young and small, but no less dangerous for that.

  The sentinels, scattered around the fringes of the shoal, immediately adopted concealment or bluff postures. Their simple words blared lies at the approaching predator, and warned the rest of the shoal.

  Black bands on the mantle, arms limp, swimming rapidly backward: Look at me. I am a parrotftsh. I am no squid.

  Clear body, dark arms in a downward V: Look at us. We are sea grass, sargassum, drifting in the current. We are no squid.

  A pseudomorph, a squid-shaped blob of ink, hastily emitted and bound together by mucus: Look at us. We are squid. We are all squid.

  Turn to predator, spread arms, white spots and false eyes to increase apparent size: Look at me. I am strong and fierce. Flee!

  The dark shape lingered close, just as a true barracuda would, before diving into the shoal, seeking
to break it up.

  Sheena knew that there would be no true predators here, in this gardenlike reserve. Sheena recognized the glimmer of steel, the camera lenses pockmarking the too-smooth hide of the beast, the regular churn of the propellers in back. She understood that the shadow could only be a watching Bootstrap machine.

  But she sensed a dull recognition of this fact in the glittering animal minds of her cousins, all around her; they were smart, too — smart enough to know they were safe here. Besides, so sophisticated were their defenses that the squid were rarely troubled by predators. So there was an element of play in the darting concealment and watchfulness of the shoal.

  And then came the hunt.

  The slim cylinder cruised through the posturing, half-concealed squid. Recognition pulsed through the shoal. Some of them spread their arms, covered their mantles with patterns of bars and streaks. Look at me. I have seen you. I will flee. It is futile to chase me.

  Now one of the squid shoal, a strong male, broke free and jetted in front of the barracuda. A pattern began to move over his skin in steady waves, a patchwork of light and dark brown that radiated from his streamlined body to the tips of his tentacles. It was the pattern Dan called “the passing cloud.” Stop and watch me.

  The barracuda cruised to a stop.

  The male spread his eight arms, raised his two long tentacles, and his green binocular eyes fixed on the barracuda. Confusing patterns of light and shade pulsed across his hide. Look at me. I am large and fierce, lean kill you.

  The metal barracuda hung in the water, apparently mesmerized by the pattern, just as a predator should have been if it had been real.

  Slowly, cautiously, the male drifted toward the barracuda, coming to within a mantle length, gaze fixed on the fish.

  At the last moment the barracuda turned, sluggishly, and started to slide away through the water.

  But it was too late for that.

  The male lunged. His two long tentacles whipped out — too fast even for Sheena to see — and their clublike pads of suckers pounded against the barracuda hide, sticking there.

  The barracuda surged forward. It was unable to escape. The male pulled himself toward the barracuda and wrapped his eight strong arms around its body, his body pattern changing to an exultant uniform darkening, careless now of detection.

  But when the male tried to jet backward, hauling at the prey, the barracuda was too massive and strong.

  The male broke the standoff by rocketing forward until his body slammed into the barracuda’s metal hide — he seemed shocked by the hardness of the “flesh” — and he wrapped his two long, powerful tentacles around the slim gray body.

  Then he opened his mouth and stabbed at the hull with his beak. The hull broke through easily, Sheena saw; evidently it was designed for this. The male injected poison to stun his victim, and then dug deeper into the hide to extract the warm meat beneath. And meat there was, what looked like fish fragments to Sheena, booty planted there by Dan.

  The squid descended, chattering their ancient songs, diving through the cloud of rich, cold meat, lashing their tentacles around the stricken prey. Sheena joined in, her hide flashing in triumph, cool water surging through her mantle, relishing the primordial power of this kill despite its artifice.

  That was when it happened.

  Maura Della:

  “Ms. Della, welcome to Oceanlab,” Dan Ystebo said.

  As she clambered stiffly down through the airlock into the habitat, the smell of air freshener overwhelmed Maura. The two men here, biologist Dan Ystebo and a professional diver, watched

  her sheepishly.

  She sniffed. “Woodland fragrance. Correct?”

  The diver laughed. He was a burly fifty-year-old, but the dense air mixture here, hydreliox, turned his voice into a Donald Duck squeak. “Better than the alternative, Ms. Della.”

  Maura found a seat between the two men before a bank of controls. The seat was just a canvas frame, much repaired with duct tape. The working area of this hab was a small, cramped sphere, its walls encrusted with equipment. It featured two small, tough-looking windows, and its switches and dials were shiny and worn with use. The lights were dim, the instruments and screens glowing. A sonar beacon pinged softly, like a pulse.

  The sense of confinement, the feel of the weight of water above her head, was overwhelming.

  Dan Ystebo was fat, breathy, intense, thirtyish, with Coke-bottle glasses and a mop of unlikely red hair, a typical geek scientist type. Igor to Malenfant’s Doctor Frankenstein, she thought. His face was underlit by the orange glow of his instrument panel. “So,” he said awkwardly. “What do you think?”

  “I think it feels like one of those old Soviet-era space stations. The Mir, maybe.”

  “That’s not so far off,” Dan said, evidently nervous, talking too fast. “This is an old navy installation. Built in the 1960s, nearly fifty years ago. It used to be in deep water out by Puerto Rico, but when a hab diver got himself killed the navy abandoned it and towed it here, to Key Largo.”

  “Another Cold War relic,” she said. “Just like NASA.”

  Dan smiled. “Swords into ploughshares, ma’am.”

  She leaned forward, peering into the windows. Sunlight shafted through dusty gray water, but she saw no signs of life, not a fish or frond of seaweed. “So where is she?”

  Dan pointed to a monitor, a modern softscreen pasted over a scuffed hull section. It showed a school of squid jetting through the water in complex patterns. The image was evidently enhanced; the water had been turned sky blue. “We don’t rely on naked eye so much,” Dan said.

  “Which one is Sheena Five?”

  Dan touched the softscreen image, picking out one of the squid, and the virtual camera zoomed in.

  The streamlined, torpedo-shaped body was a rich burnt orange, mottled black. Winglike fins rippled elegantly alongside

  the body.

  “Sepioteuthissepioidea” Dan said. “The Caribbean reef squid. About as long as your arm. See her countershading? The light is downwelling, corning from above; she has shaded her mantle — brighter below — to eliminate the effect of shadow, making herself disappear. Squid, all cephalopods in fact, belong to the phylum Mollusca.”

  “Molluscs? I thought molluscs had feet.”

  “They do.” Dan pointed. “But in the squid the foot has evolved into the funnel, here, leading into the mantle, and the arms and tentacles here. The mantle cavity contains the viscera — the circulatory, excretory, digestive, reproductive systems. But the gills also lie in there; the squid ‘breathes’ by extracting oxygen from the air that passes over the gills. And Sheena can use the water passing through the mantle cavity for jet propulsion; she has big ring muscles that—”

  “How do you know that’s her?”

  Dan pointed again. “See the swelling between the eyes, around the esophagus?”

  “That’s her enhanced brain?”

  “A squid’s neural layout isn’t like ours. Sheena has two nerve cords running like rail tracks the length of her body, studded with pairs of ganglia. The forward ganglia pair is expanded into a mass of lobes. We gen-enged Sheena and her grandmothers to—”

  “To make a smart squid.”

  “Ms. Della, squid are smart anyway. They are molluscs, invertebrates, but they are functionally equivalent to fish. In fact they seem to have evolved — a long time ago, during the Jurassic — in competition with the fish. They have senses based on light, scent, taste, touch, sound — including infrasound — gravity, acceleration, perhaps even an electric sense. See the patterns on Sheena’s hide?”

  “Yes.”

  “They’re made by chromatophores, sacs of pigment granules surrounded by muscles. The chromatophores are under conscious control; Sheena can open or close them as she chooses. The pigments are black, orange, and yellow. The underlying colors, blues and violets, are created by passive cells we call reflecting… Ms. Della, Sheena can control her skin patterns consciously. She can make bands, bars
, circles, annuli, dots. She can even animate the display. The mantle skin is like a reverse retina, where neural signals are converted to patches of shade, rather than the other way around.”

  “And these patterns are signals?”

  “Not just the skin patterns. A given signal seems to be made up of a number of components: the patterns; skin texture — rough or smooth; posture — the attitude of the limbs, head, body, fins; and locomotor components — whether Sheena is resting, jetting, hovering, grabbing, ink jetting. There may be electric or sonic components too; we can’t be sure.”

  The diver growled, “Ms. Della, we’ve barely scratched the surface with these animals. Not to mention their deep-water cousins. Until the last few decades all we did was lower nets and see what we could catch. We used to say it was like trying to understand the animals of the land by working with a butterfly net from a balloon in the clouds.”

  “And what do they use this marvelous signaling for?” Maura asked.

  Dan sighed. “Again we aren’t sure. They don’t hunt cooperatively. They forage alone by night, and shoal by day. The shoaling seems to be to provide protection while they rest. The squid don’t hide on the bottom like octopuses; they shoal over sea grass beds where there are few predators. They have elaborate courtship rituals. And the young seem to learn from the old. They post sentinels. Very effectively, too; though they may have six or seven predator encounters per hour — with yellow jacks and mutton snappers, barracuda and houndfish, coming at them from anywhere — the squid kill rate is very low.

  “But a squid shoal is not a community like ours. They don’t play or groom. There are no leaders among them. The squid don’t show much loyalty to each other; they don’t care for their young, and individuals move between shoals every few days.

  “And they live only a couple of years, mating only once or twice. The squid live fast and die young; it’s not clear to us why such short-lived animals need such complex behavior, communication systems, and breeding rituals. Yet they have them. Ms. Della, these are not like the animals you may be familiar with. Perhaps they are more like birds.”