Starborne (12 page)

Sieglinde contin
ues to mutter, but Hesper will not be turned from his path. Relentlessly he reminds everyone once again that the sort of world they need to find is the sort of world that they would be capable of li
v
ing on. Hesper spells this tautological platitude out in
terms of temper
a
ture, gravitational pull, atmospheric composition, solar luminosity, and all the obvious rest, and then he asks if there are any questions. Sie
g
linde says something uncomplimentary-sounding in German; Zena nudges her and tells her to hush;
the others remain silent.

“
Very well,”
Hesper says. “
Let me show you now what I have found.”

He touches switches and conjures up virtual images at the far end of the corridor, where the beams of a communicator node intersect.

Hesper tells them that what th
ey see is a star and a solar system. Hesper
’
s star seems not to have a name, only an eight-digit catalog number. So evidently it hadn
’
t ever registered on the consciousnesses of those old Arab astronomers who had given Rigel and Mizar and Alde
b
aran and all
those other stars such lovely poetic designations, som
e
where back a thousand or two years ago. All it has is a number. But it has planets. Six of them.

“
This is Planet A,”
he announces. The assembled voyagers behold a small bright dot of light with six le
sser dots arrayed in orbits around it. He explains that this is merely the decoding of a reality-analog, not in any way an actual telescopic image. But it is a reliable decoding, he a
s
sures everyone. The instruments with which he pierces the veil of the no
space tube are as accurate as any telescope. “
Main sequence sun, type G2. Type G and perhaps Type K are the only acceptable stars for us, of course. This is a yellow-orange sun, G2, not uncomfortably different in luminosity from our own. I call your atten
t
ion to the fourth planet.”
A small gesture of a finger: one of the six small dots expands until it fills the visual field. Now it is a globe, green faintly banded with blue and red and brown, dabs of white above and below. It has a cheerily familiar look.
“
Here we see it, not a direct image, of course, but an enhanced transformation of the data. Its diameter, by all indications, is Earthlike. Its distance from its primary is such that small ice-caps are present at the poles. The spectral reading indicates
a
strong dip in brightness at 0.76 micron, which is a wavelength at which molecular oxygen absorbs rad
i
ation. Nitrogen is also present
—
somewhat overabundantly, in truth, but not seriously so. The temperature range seems to be within human to
l
erability. Also
we have indications of the presence of water, and the distance of this world from its primary is such that water would be c
a
pable of existing on its surface. Now, notice also the sharp absorption band at the far red end of the visible spectrum
—
0.7 micron,
approx
i
mately. Green light is reflected, red and blue are absorbed. This is a characteristic of chlorophyll.”

“
So what time do we land?”
Paco calls out.

Unperturbed, Hesper continues blandly: “
We note also the minute presence of methane, one part in l.5 m
illion. That is not much methane, but why is there any? Methane rapidly oxidizes into water and carbon dioxide. If this atmosphere were in equilibrium, all the methane would have been gone long ago. Therefore we must not have an equilibrium here, do you s
e
e? Something is generating new methane to replace that which is oxidized. Ongoing metabolic processes, perhaps? The presence of bacteria, or larger organisms? Life, anyway, of one sort or another. Every indication thus far points toward viability.”

“
And if
the place is already inhabited?”
asks Heinz. “
What if they don
’
t want to sell us any real estate?”

“
We would not, of course, intrude on a planet that has intelligent life of its own. But that can readily be determined while we are still at a di
s
tance. The
emission of modulated radio waves, or even the visual signs of occupation
—”

“
How far is this place from our present location?”
Sylvia wants to know.

Hesper looks puzzled. He spreads the fingers of his precise little hands and glances uncomfortably toward
the year-captain.

The year-captain says, “
There
’
s no easy way of answering that. While we
’
re in nospace we don
’
t have spatial coordinates relating to anything but Earth.”

“
In relation to Earth, then,”
Sylvia says.

“
About ninety-five light-years,”
Hesper te
lls her.

There is murmuring in the corridor. “
Ninety-five light-years”
is a phrase that carries the weight of serious distance.

“
We should be able to reach it,”
says the year-captain, making a quick and probably slightly hazy estimate, “
in about seven mont
hs.”

Hesper says, “
The other prime prospect, Planet B, which is eighty-six light-years from Earth, has similar characteristics, although with perhaps keener indications of the presence of organic molecules.”
A new virtual pattern springs into the air in th
e hallways, eleven pips of light clustered about their bright little star. He begins to speak once more of spectral lines, insolation levels, temperature gradients, probable size and gravit
a
tional pull, electromagnetic emissions, and all the other criteria
they must consider.

Somebody cautiously asks if they have enough information to make a decision about a landing.

The year-captain says they do. Enough to allow him to recommend a reconnaissance mission, at any rate. And what they don
’
t know now, they will
be able to learn by sending down drone surveillance vehicles before deciding whether to undertake an actual manned exploration. But first they must agree to take the steps that will bring them out of nospace and carry them to the vicinity of the designat
e
d world. There are certain risks in that; there will be risks every time they move from nospace to normal space or back again. But those are risks that must be taken.

He calls for the motion. He proposes a survey of Hesper
’
s Planet A; and if A proves unsui
table, a look at Planet B.

No one is opposed. They have come out here, after all, to find a place to live.

***

Playing
Go
seems to ease the tensions of Noelle
’
s situation. She has been playing daily for weeks, now, as addicted to the game as any of them, a
nd by now she has become astonishingly expert at it.

The year-captain was her first opponent. Because he had not played in years he was rusty at first, but within minutes the old associations r
e
turned and he found himself setting up chains of stones with s
kill. Al
t
hough he had expected her to play poorly, unable to remember the pa
t
terns on the board after the first few moves, she proved to have no di
f
ficulty keeping the entire array on her mind. Only in one respect had she overestimated herself: for all her
precision of coordination, she was u
n
able to place the stones exactly, tending rather to disturb the stones a
l
ready on the board as she made her moves. After a while she admitted failure and henceforth she would call out the plays she desired
—
M17, Q6, P6,
R4, C11
—
and he would place the stones for her. In the begi
n
ning he played unaggressively, assuming that as a novice she would be haphazard and weak, but soon he discovered that she was adroitly e
x
panding and protecting her territory while pressing a sharp
attack against his, and he began to devise more cunning strategies. They played for two hours and he won by sixteen points, a comfortable margin but not
h
ing to boast about, considering that the year-captain was an experienced and adept player and that thi
s was her first game.

The others were skeptical of her instant ability. “
Sure she plays well,”
Paco muttered. “
She
’
s reading your mind, isn
’
t she? She can see the board through your eyes and she knows what you
’
re planning.”

“
The only mind open to her is her sister
’
s,”
the year-captain said v
e
hemently.

“
How can you be sure she
’
s telling the truth about that?”

The year-captain scowled. “
Play a game with her yourself. That ought to tell you whether it
’
s skill or mind-reading that
’
s at work.”

Paco, looking sullen, agreed. That evening he challenged Noelle to a game; and later he came to the year-captain looking abashed. “
She plays very well. She almost beat me, and she did it fairly.”

The year-captain played a second game with her.
She sat almost m
o
tionless, eyes closed, lips compressed, calling out the coordinates of her moves in a quiet steady monotone, like some sort of clever automaton, a mechanical game-playing device. She rarely needed much time to d
e
cide on her moves and she
made no blunders that had to be retracted. Her capacity to devise game patterns had grown with incredible swif
t
ness, just in those first few days: no more than thirty minutes into the game he found that she had him nearly shut off from the center, but he r
ecovered the initiative and managed a narrow victory. Afterward she lost once more to Paco and then to Heinz, but again she displayed an increase of ability, and in the evening she defeated Chang, a respected player. Now she became invincible. Undertaking
two or three matches every day, she triumphed over Leon, Elliot, the year-captain, and Sylvia.
Go
had become something immense to her, something more than a mere game or a simple test of mental agility. She focused her energy on the board so intensely that
her playing approached the level of a religious discipline, a kind of meditation. On her fourth day of play she defeated Roy, the ship
’
s reigning champion, with such economy that everyone was dazzled. Roy could speak of nothing else that evening. He d
e
man
ded a rematch and was defeated again.

And now she plays almost all the time. She sits within a luminous sphere of Noelleness, a strange otherworldly creature lit by that eerie inner glow of hers, and finds some kind of deep and abiding peace in a universe
of black and white stones.

***

So it is decided. We are to make our first planetary visit.

The first of how many, I wonder, before we discover our new home? Will we find a world on this first attempt that
’
s almost good enough but perhaps has one or two mor
e or less serious drawbacks, and will that cause us to get embroiled in a long dreary battle over whether to stay or leave? We don
’
t want to pick a place that doesn
’
t really work, of course. But what
’
s our definition of a place that works? A planet that
’
s
99.77% identical to Earth? Blue skies, fleecy clouds, green forests, easy gravit
a
tion, a pleasant climate, ripe and nicely edible fruit on every vine, lots of easily domesticated useful animals close at hand? We aren
’
t going to find a place like that. If w
e hold out for a perfect simulacrum of Earth, we
’
re going to be roaming the galaxy for the next fifty thousand years.

What we
’
re going to have to settle for is some place that
’
s 93% Earthlike, or 87%, or maybe only 74%. Obviously we need an ox
y
gen-based at
mosphere and plenty of available water, and we aren
’
t g
o
ing to be able to manage if the biochemistry of the place is pure poison to our systems, or if the gravitation is so strong that we can
’
t take a step without falling on our noses. But we will need to
understand that whe
r
ever we settle, we
’
re going to have to make changes in the environme
n
tal conditions to the limit of our ability to effect them, and probably we
’
re also going to have to make significant genetic changes in ou
r
selves to
the point where there
’
s likely to be some serious debate over whether our children can really be considered human.