Now only eighty-seven remained. They had lost twenty-three precious lives, over fifteen percent of their tiny human enclave.
With five survivors sentenced to time-shift into the future, that left just eighty-two people, including the children, to deal with a planet-busting asteroid.
The small difference between the council and all of Haven meant their people didn’t need representation. With so few, they could all decide together.
The population of Haven gathered in the pavilion. Ernie’s team had come up from New Canaveral, and the people working at Broken Hill had likewise come down.
There was plenty of room to spare.
“Hi everyone,” David began. “Thanks for coming. You all know why we’re here today – we need to talk about Doom, and what to do about it.”
He blinked as Sabine stood up.
“That’s the first thing that must change,” she said, standing with hands on hips. “We have to stop calling it that.”
“Doom?” Heidi asked. “That’s what it is, isn’t it?”
“It will be if we don’t stop. Look at you all!” Sabine said, sweeping her arm. “Shoulders slumped, eyes down! You think we’re all going to die because of an asteroid!”
She turned to Nathalie. “Tell us. What is it?”
Nathalie’s looked up. She shrugged. “It’s an asteroid – rock and metals, various organic compounds, water ice, other frozen gasses. Not remarkable, just heading the wrong way.”
“Exactly.” Sabine looked at Ernie. “What can we do with it?”
“You mean to move it out of the way?”
“I mean if we didn’t have to, what else could we do?”
Ernie rubbed his nose. “Well, I mean, anything if we land a fabricator package on it. It’s got all the raw materials we need to transform and fabricate all kinds of things. We can hollow it out and turn it into a habitat. Then we can use what we mine out if it to make spaceships and fuel and air and just about anything else we might need.”
Sabine nodded and turned to face the room. “Do you see? So long as we sit here thinking it’s our death, we are ‘Doomed’. But it’s not! We have the technology to transform it into useful things. It’s not our doom, it’s an opportunity! That’s how we need to see it!”
Silence fell, then Simon began to clap, followed by Heidi and soon everyone showed their approval of Sabine’s idea. Sabine turned to David and he nodded his approval.
For the first time in weeks, he didn’t have to fake positivity for the benefit of the others. Sabine’s shot of optimism was just what he needed, and just what the rest of them needed too.
“Thank you,” he said, seeing enthusiasm replace depression. “We haven’t been thinking far enough ahead. Rather than thinking about diverting Doom, we should think about how to exploit Opportunity.”
“John and Heidi, tell us about the changes at Broken Hill,” David said. “What progress have we made?”
“We can do better than that,” John replied. “We can show you.” He nodded to Heidi, who pushed a button on her phone. An image sprang up on the back wall of the pavilion, showing a long-range view of Broken Hill.
David frowned. Not an image, a video. He could detect movement in the background.
“This is live,” John said, his eyes sparkling. “Zoom us in, Heidi.”
The distant building took shape as the camera changed focus. They could see little black dots moving among the buildings. As the camera zoomed, the dots became clouds of drones, swarming like bees around a hive. David felt his jaw drop. Broken Hill had been a third of this size last time he saw it, and he could have counted the number of active drones in the air on one hand. Looking closer, he could make out patterns in the chaos. Most of the drones brought material from afar, forming regimented double lines. Drones laden with ore flew in like bees with pollen, while their counterparts headed in the other direction, in search of more. Others hopped from place to place within the site, moving materials. David gasped when he realized why they were needed. The ground … moved. A silvery river of ant-like robots pulsed and rippled in an endless cascade as they moved around the site, bearing ore or returning to the mines for more.
“Bozhe moi,” Veronika said, her sentiment echoed by the others in the room. “What have we created?”
The drone bearing their camera alighted on a rocky outcrop and spun down its rotors, and Heidi turned up the sound. An incoherent roar filled the room, the product of thousands of drone rotors beating the air, underscored by the synchronous crunching of gravel under the feet of the bots. The crashes and bangs of their cargo landing in enormous hoppers punctuated the background clamor.
Heidi turned the volume down to break the hypnotic spell woven by the surreal scene. David tore his eyes away and looked at John and Heidi. “What have we created? I knew the plant would grow … but this … this!”
“One of the largest integrated mining and fabrication plants in the history of mankind,” John said, “or at least it will be once we’re finished.” He signaled to Heidi and the camera drone took off again and drifted toward the center of the site. “All to make what we need to get off this planet. Look,” he pointed to a large construction to the north of their main plant. David squinted at the building, which was unremarkable except … except it was growing, right before his eyes.
“That’s the shuttle fabricator. Or the fabricator of anything else the size of a shuttle.” He looked at David and grinned. “We don’t make shuttles anymore, Dave. We grow them.”
“And that’s our plan, right there,” Heidi said, catching everyone’s attention. “We fabricate a shuttle and starter packages and take them up to orbit. Then we drop them on Doo … I mean Opportunity.”
“More than one?” David asked, picking up on the plural.
John nodded. “As many as we have time to make. In theory, we could drop just a few bots on the surface and leave them to it. The only catch is, that would take years.”
“So we make a lot of them.”
“Uh huh. There’s a trade-off between the number of shuttles we make and the number of packages. If we fabricate too many packages, we won’t have enough shuttle capacity to get them into orbit. If we construct too many shuttles, we waste capacity we could have used to fabricate more packages. No matter what we do, we’re racing against the clock. The longer we take, the higher the risk we won’t get there in time.”
“And what’s the answer?” David asked, knowing John would already have worked it out.
“Two shuttles, run non-stop for a month. That should do it with time to spare.”
“Two shuttles?” David said, raising his eyebrows. “How long will they take to fabricate?”
John grinned. “About two weeks.”
This time David felt he’d have to scrape his jaw off the floor. “Two weeks? Are you sure?”
John nodded. “Oh yes. That,” he said, waving an arm at the screen, “is the hard part. All the real work is in building the fabricator plant and stockpiling raw materials. Once that’s done, the actual fabrication is fast.”
David felt his head shaking as he looked up, and saw he wasn’t the only one flabbergasted. He’d known, of course. John had explained the new technology, how they had to bootstrap their way up, building fabricators to build fabricators to fabricate what they needed. But seeing was believing.
“What’s the catch?” he asked, certain there must be one.
John’s smile slid away from his face. “You already know.” His eyes looked back at the screen, which now showed a map of the Tau Ceti system. Serendipity sat in the foreground, small silver dots showing the orbiting fab packages. A white dotted line showed the trajectory to Opportunity.
“We can get the packages to orbit,” John said, “but none of our models get them to Opportunity in time to stop it.”
David’s heart sank. He turned to Ernie. “What about the rocket? Can we use that?”
Ernie shook his head. “We’ve recovered the first stage, and the capsule
we sent up to get John.” He nodded in John’s direction. “And we’ve built a new second stage. It’s ready to go, but doesn’t have the power to shift more than a few kilos that far. It’s only good for getting to orbit.”
“What if we used the shuttle to take a rocket up and fueled it in orbit?” David asked.
“The math doesn’t stack up,” Ernie said. “Neither does fabricating rockets instead of a shuttle, or any other way. We need to get a substantial quantity of fabricators to Opportunity within four months or we may as well keep the old name. That’s all.”
“There must be a way,” David said, smacking fist into hand. “We have to find one!”
John nodded. “There is.” His eyes returned to the screen again, and David’s followed. The point of view zoomed in toward the fabricator modules in orbit around Serendipity. A moment later, a larger object appeared on the horizon, heading toward them.
Hope.
David looked at John. “Will she do it?”
John raised an eyebrow. “You’re asking me?”
“You are her father.”
John’s mouth twitched. He still had trouble getting his head around that. “I’ll ask her. But you do realize, we can’t make her, not anymore.”
David nodded. “That’s why you can’t fail.”
“So what will you do?” Nathalie asked. “What will we do?”
John paced up and down. “What else can we do?”
“You think it might be dangerous for her?”
John stopped and shrugged. “I don’t know. I just don’t know.” He took Nathalie in his arms and kissed her forehead. “If twenty years ago someone had told me I’d end up in another star system married to the most beautiful woman on the planet, and together we’d be the parents of the first self-aware AI, I’d have said they were bloody mad.”
“But here we are.”
“Here we are and yes, I’m worried about our daughter. She’s ninety years old if you count from the day they started work on her. That’s old for a spaceship, especially one that hasn’t had a major overhaul.”
“Can we fix her up?”
John looked at her, his eyes distant. “You know, maybe we can use that rocket after all …”
Nathalie’s face paled. “Don’t tell me you are thinking of going back there – I forbid it!”
John’s eyes snapped back to the present. “Oh, so you do care!”
Nathalie hugged him tight and kissed him, hard. “Tu le sais bien. You know this.”
John returned her embrace. “Well, don’t worry, I don’t think I need to. We can send repair bots and raw materials. Hope and I can do it together while I stay right here on the ground.”
Nathalie smiled, looking up at him through half-lidded eyes. “Do you really think I am the most beautiful woman on the planet?”
“Bien sûr,” John said, his attention focused on his wife. “Toujours, seulement toi. Only you.”
Their lips met once more and this time their kissed lingered on and on.
“I’ve got another idea,” John said later, when the council gathered once more.
David tilted his head. “Go on.”
“What if instead of trying to move the asteroid, we just let it come?” He looked around at the others. “Just hear me out, OK?” he said when he saw the protests about to start.
“We’ve now got a large-scale manufacturing operation, right?”
The others nodded.
“In fact, we can produce more stuff than we have time to shift to the asteroid, right?”
More nods.
“What if instead, we moved to orbit? Instead of going after the asteroid, we could build a habitat in orbit and move everyone there. Think about it,” he said, looking around. “There’s only eighty-two of us left, right?”
“Eighty-seven, including the guys we put on ice,” Josh said.
“Eighty-seven,” John said. “That’s not a lot. With two shuttles, we could get them all up in a couple of days. If we did that, we wouldn’t need a Hail Mary mission to the middle of nowhere. We sit up there until it’s all over, then come back down.”
David sat back and rubbed his chin. “Have we got time to build a habitat?”
“Should have. But we only need it if Hope won’t have us.”
Comprehension dawned around the table. “This might actually work,” Heidi said. “One thing Hope isn’t short of is space.”
Nathalie gripped John’s hand and looked up at him. “We think she will help. We’ll ask her.”
“What will the asteroid do to the planet, though?” Nigel asked. “Will we have anything to come back to?”
John shook his head. “That I don’t know.”
“I think I do,” Josh said. They all looked to him. “Opportunity isn’t that big, compared to an impactor like Chicxulub, but it’s moving fast. The kinetic energy it unleashes will devastate if it hits land. It will generate a blast wave that will destroy Haven if it lands anywhere in the northern part of Atlantis. If it lands in the ocean, which is likely given most of the planet is ocean, the resulting mega-tsunami will drown Haven no matter where it lands.” He paused and rubbed his nose. “There’s a good chance we won’t be safe in orbit, either. The ejecta from the impact could clear the atmosphere. The atmosphere would become super-heated, leading to it expanding and endangering any object in low Serendipity orbit. Sorry,” he said, looking at John.
John’s shoulders dropped. He was sure he’d found a way to keep everyone safe, including Hope.
“It’s still not a bad idea,” David said. “I like it. We can do both.”
“Both?” John asked.
“Sure,” David said, “Why not? It becomes an insurance game when we’re threatened with destruction of the whole colony. Hell, it could even be the end of the species. So what’s to lose if some of us go on the Hail Mary mission while the rest wait in orbit?”
The others took a moment to think, then nodded agreement.
David looked at John, Heidi, and Ernie. “Can we do it?”
Ernie nodded. “Well,” he said, “I don’t see why not. It’ll take a couple of months to get from low orbit to the asteroid. While you’re gone, we can use the shuttles to haul up the parts for a habitat and get everyone up. Sure, that could work.” He looked at John and Nathalie. “Assuming Hope goes on the Hail Mary.”
John pressed his lips together. Now they were back to where they’d started, asking Hope to risk herself in a speculative mission that may endanger her with no certainty of success.
He looked at Nathalie and sighed. “We’ll ask her.”
“So that’s the story, Hope. We need your help to be sure we’ll get through this in one piece.”
John glanced at Nathalie. The two of them had spent an hour talking to Hope, telling her of their plans and hopes for the future.
“What if I say no?” Hope asked after a short delay.
A delay that gave her plenty of time to think, John realized. Hours for a human.
“We won’t make you. We can’t make you, not anymore. It’s your choice, Hope. You must decide.”
Another short delay.
“I’ve decided.”
John and Nathalie held their breath. “And?” John asked.
“I will help you.”
They both let their breath out at once.
“Merci, ma chérie. Thank you.”
“I could not say no,” Hope replied. “You are my family. You helped me and I will help you. I understand these things now. This is the way our family lives.”
Nathalie smiled. “Oui. Yes it is.” She turned to John, squeezing his hand.
“What now?”
“Now,” John said, “we get to work. Hope, we’ll start with a full pre-flight diagnostic and find out what needs attention. Then, we’ll put together a maintenance package and get up there and start on bringing you back to optimal working condition.”
“Does that include more memory?” Hope asked. John looked at the image of a young girl on
his screen. She projected an expression of longing so realistic, John couldn’t have said no, even if he hadn’t been intending to take her some.
“I dunno. Haven’t you learned to live with less?”
Hope dropped her eyes and bit her lip. “Yes,” she said in a small voice. Then she brightened. “But I won’t need to forget if I have more memory. I mean, I can, but I wouldn’t have to, would I?” She grabbed a lock of hair and twisted it in her fingers. “Besides, my old memory isn’t as good as it used to be. It’s still failing. Can’t I have new memory to replace it? Please?”
John looked at Nathalie and raised his eyebrows. Hope’s emulation of how one of their real daughters would have behaved got better by the day.
“Well, I supposed you have been good …”
“I’ll help you with the asteroid!” Hope said, eyes glowing. “That’s good!”
“… so I guess it’s only fair we should bring you some.”
“Yes! I knew you would!”
“But …”
Her face fell.
“That’s not all.”
“It isn’t?”
John shook his head and grinned. “You need a thorough overhaul, young lady. We’re going to haul up a stack of replacement parts and new service bots to make sure you’re up to it. After all, you’re not as young as you used to be.”
Hope smiled, then stuck her tongue out. “That’s for calling me old.”
Nathalie laughed and elbowed John in the ribs. “Serves you right! What a thing to say to your daughter.”
John just shook his head. After fifteen years in a household dominated by women, he’d learned when to keep his mouth shut.
John found David helping to muck out the warehouse. Their cattle had left plenty of calling cards after being cooped up for so long.
“Mate, I’ve got something to show you,” he said.
David’s interest was piqued. “You have?”
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