The Songs of Distant Earth (12 page)

“So that’s where we use the quantum drive, probably for the last time.
Magellan,
which has spent its entire existence in space, will finally descend to the surface of a planet.

“And then, for about fifteen minutes every day at the appropriate time, the drive will be switched on at the maximum power the structure of the ship – and the bedrock on which it is resting – can withstand. We won’t know how long the operation will take until we have made the first tests; it may be necessary to move the ship again if the initial site is geologically unstable.

“At a first approximation, it appears that we’ll need to operate the drive for thirty years, to slow the planet until it drops sunward far enough to give it a temperate climate. And we’ll have to run the drive for another twenty-five years to circularize the orbit. But for much of that time Sagan 2 will be quite livable – though the winters will be fierce until final orbit is achieved.

“So then we will have a virgin planet, larger than Earth, with about forty percent ocean and a mean temperature of twenty-five degrees. The atmosphere will have an oxygen content seventy percent of Earth’s – but still rising. It will be time to awaken the nine hundred thousand sleepers still in hibernation, and present them with a new world.

“That is the scenario unless unexpected developments – or discoveries – force us to depart from it. And if the worst comes to the worst …”

Dr. Varley hesitated, then smiled grimly.

“No – whatever happens, you won’t be seeing us again! If Sagan 2 is impossible, there is another target, thirty light-years farther on. It may be an even better one.

“Perhaps we will eventually colonize both. But that is for the future to decide.”

The discussion took a little time to get under way; most of the Academicians seemed stunned, though their applause was certainly genuine. The president, who through long experience always had a few questions prepared in advance, started the ball rolling.

“A trivial point, Dr. Varley – but who or what is Sagan 2 named after?”

“A writer of scientific romances, early Third Millennium.”

That broke the ice, just as the president had intended.

“You mentioned, Doctor, that Sagan 2 has at least one satellite. What will happen to it, when you change the planet’s orbit?”

“Nothing, apart from very slight perturbations. It will move along with its primary.”

“If the directive of – what was it, 3500
–
”

“3505.”

“
–
had been ratified earlier, would we be here now? I mean, Thalassa would have been out of bounds!”

“It’s a very good question, and we’ve often debated it. The 2751 seeding mission – your Mother Ship on South Island – would certainly have gone against the directive. Luckily, the problem hasn’t arisen. Since you have no land animals here, the principle of non-interference hasn’t been violated.”

“This is very speculative,” one of the youngest of the Academicians said – to the obvious amusement of many of her elders. “Granted that oxygen means life, how can you be sure that the reverse proposition is true? One can imagine all sorts of creatures – even intelligent ones – on planets with no oxygen, even with no atmosphere. If our evolutionary successors are intelligent
machines,
as many philosophers have suggested, they’d prefer an atmosphere in which they wouldn’t rust. Have you any idea how old Sagan 2 is? It might have passed through the oxygen-biological era; there could be a machine civilization waiting for you there.”

There were a few groans from dissenters in the audience, and someone muttered “science fiction!” in tones of disgust. Dr. Varley waited for the disturbance to die away, then answered briefly, “We’ve not lost much sleep over that. And if we did run into a machine civilization, the principle of non-interference would hardly matter. I’d be much more worried about what it would do to us than the other way round!”

A very old man – the oldest person Dr. Varley had seen in Thalassa – was slowly rising to his feet at the back of the room. The chairman scribbled a quick note and passed it over: “Prof. Derek Winslade – 115 – GOM of T. science – historian.” Dr. Varley puzzled over GOM for a few seconds, before some mysterious flash of insight told her that it stood for “Grand Old Man”.

And it would be typical, she thought, if the dean of Lassan science was a historian. In all their seven hundred years of history, the Three Islands had produced only a handful of original thinkers.

Yet this did not necessarily merit criticism. The Lassans had been forced to build up the infrastructure of civilization from zero; there had been little opportunity, or incentive, for any research that was not of direct practical application. And there was a more serious and subtle problem – that of population. At any one time, in any one scientific discipline, there would never be enough workers on Thalassa to reach “critical mass” – the minimum number of reacting minds needed to ignite fundamental research into some new field of knowledge.

Only in mathematics – as in music – were there rare exceptions to this rule. A solitary genius – a Ramanujan or a Mozart – could arise from nowhere, and sail strange seas of thought alone. The famous example from Lassan science was Francis Zoltan (214-242); his name was still revered five hundred years later, but Dr. Varley had certain reservations even about his undoubted skills. No one, it seemed to her, had really understood his discoveries in the field of hypertransfinite numbers; still less extended them further – the true test of all genuine breakthroughs. Even now, his famous “Last Hypothesis” defied either proof or disproof.

She suspected – though she was far too tactful to mention this to her Lassan friends – that Zoltan’s tragically early death had exaggerated his reputation, investing his memory with wistful hopes of what might have been. The fact that he had disappeared while swimming off North Island had inspired legions of romantic myths and theories – disappointments in love, jealous rivals, inability to discover critical proofs, terror of the hyperinfinite itself – none of which had the slightest factual foundation. But they had all added to the popular image of Thalassa’s greatest genius, cut down in the prime of his achievement.

What was the old professor saying? Oh, dear – there was always someone during the question period who brought up a totally irrelevant subject or seized the opportunity to expound a pet theory. Through long practice, Dr. Varley was quite good at dealing with such interpolators and could usually get a laugh at their expense. But she would have to be polite to a GOM, surrounded by respectful colleagues, on his own territory.

“Professor – ah – Winsdale” “Winslade” the chairman whispered urgently, but she decided that any correction would only make matters worse, “the question you have asked is a very good one but should really be the subject of another lecture. Or series of lectures; even then, it would barely scratch the subject.”

“But to deal with your first point. We have heard that criticism several times – it is simply not true. We have made no attempt to keep the secret, as you call it, of the quantum drive. The complete theory is in the ship’s Archives, and is among the material being transferred to your own.

“Having said that, I don’t want to raise any false hopes. Frankly, there is
no one
in the ship’s active crew who really understands the drive. We know how to use it – that’s all.”

“There are three scientists in hibernation who are supposed to be experts on the drive. If we have to wake them up before we reach Sagan 2, we’ll be in really serious trouble.

“Men went insane trying to visualize the geometrodynamic structure of superspace, and asking why the universe originally had eleven dimensions instead of a nice number like ten or twelve. When I took the Propulsion Basics Course, my instructor said, “If you could understand the quantum drive, you wouldn’t be here
–
you’d be up on Lagrange 1 at the Institute for Advanced Studies.” And he gave me a useful comparison that helped me get to sleep again when I had nightmares trying to imagine what ten to the minus thirty three centimetres really means.

“
Magellan’s
crew only has to know what the drive
does,”
my instructor told me. “They’re like engineers in charge of an electric distribution network. As long as they know how to switch the power around, they don’t have to know how it’s generated. It may come from something simple, like an oil-fuelled dynamo or a solar panel or a water turbine. They would certainly understand the principles behind these – but they wouldn’t need to in order to do their jobs perfectly well.

“Or the electricity might come from something more complex, like a fission reactor or a thermonuclear fusor or a muon catalyzer or a Penrose Node or a Hawking-Schwarzschild kernel – you see what I mean?
Somewhere
along the line they’d have to give up any hope of comprehension; but they’d still be perfectly competent engineers, capable of switching electric power where and when it was needed.

“In the same way, we can switch
Magellan
from Earth to Thalassa – and, I hope, on to Sagan 2 – without really knowing what we’re doing. But one day, perhaps centuries hence, we will again be able to match the genius that produced the quantum drive.

“And – who knows? – you may do it first. Some latter-day Francis Zoltan may be born on Thalassa. And then perhaps
you
will come to visit us.”

She didn’t really believe it. But it was a nice way to end, and it drew a tremendous round of applause.

22. Krakan

“
W
e can do it with no trouble, of course,” said Captain Bey thoughtfully. “Planning’s essentially complete – that vibration problem with the compressors seems to be solved – site preparation is ahead of schedule. There’s no doubt that we can spare the men and equipment – but is it really a good idea?” He looked at his five senior officers gathered around the oval table in the Terra Nova staff conference room; with one accord they all looked at Dr. Kaldor, who sighed and spread his hands in resignation.

“So it’s not a purely technical problem. Tell me all I have to know.”

“This is the situation,” Deputy Captain Malina said. The lights dimmed, and the Three Islands covered the table, floating a fraction of a centimetre above it like some beautifully detailed model. But this was no model, for if the scale was expanded enough, one could watch the Lassans going about their business.

“I think the Lassans are still scared of Mount Krakan, though really it’s a very well behaved volcano – after all, it’s never actually
killed
anyone! And it’s the key to the interisland communications system. The summit is six kilometres above sea level – the highest point on the planet, of course. So it’s the ideal site for an antenna park; all long-distance services are routed through here and beamed back to the two other islands.”

“It’s always seemed a little odd to me,” Kaldor said mildly, “that after two thousand years we’ve not found anything better than radio waves.”

“The Universe came equipped with only one electromagnetic spectrum, Dr. Kaldor – we have to make the best use of it we can. And the Lassans are fortunate; because even the extreme ends of the North and South Islands are only three hundred kilometres apart, Mount Krakan can blanket them both. They can manage very nicely without comsats.

“The only problem is accessibility – and weather. The local joke is that Krakan’s the only place on the planet that has any. Every few years someone has to climb the mountain, repair a few antennas, replace some solar cells and batteries – and shovel away a lot of snow. No real problem but a lot of hard work.”

“Which,” interjected Surgeon-Commander Newton, “Lassans avoid whenever possible. Not that I blame them for saving their energies for more important things – like sports and athletics.”

She could have added “making love”, but that was already a sensitive subject with many of her colleagues, and the remark might not be appreciated.

“Why do they have to
climb
the mountain?” Kaldor asked. “Why don’t they just fly to the top? They’ve got vertical-lift aircraft.”

“Yes, but the air’s thin up there – and what there is tends to be boisterous. After several bad accidents, the Lassans decided to do it the hard way.”

“I see,” Kaldor said thoughtfully. “It’s the old non-interference problem. Will we weaken their self-reliance? Only to a trivial extent, I’d say. And if we
don’t
accede to such a modest request, we’d provoke resentment. Justified, too, considering the help they’re giving us with the ice plant.”

“I feel exactly the same way. Any objections? Very good. Mister Lorenson – please make the arrangements. Use whichever spaceplane you think fit, as long as it’s not needed for Operation Snowflake.”

Moses Kaldor had always loved mountains; they made him feel nearer to the God whose nonexistence he still sometimes resented.

From the rim of the great caldera, he could look down into a sea of lava, long since congealed but still emitting wisps of smoke from a dozen crevasses. Beyond that, far to the west, both the big islands were clearly visible, lying like dark clouds on the horizon.

The stinging cold and the need to make each breath count, added a zest to every moment. Long ago he had come across a phrase in some ancient travel or adventure book: “Air like wine.” At the time he had wished he could ask the author just how much wine he’d breathed lately; but now the expression no longer seemed so ridiculous.

“Everything’s unloaded, Moses. We’re ready to fly back.”

“Thank you, Loren. I felt like waiting here until you collect everyone in the evening, but it might be risky to stay too long at this altitude.”

“The engineers have brought oxygen bottles, of course,”

“I wasn’t thinking only of that. My namesake once got into a lot of trouble on a mountain.”

“Sorry – I don’t understand.”

“Never mind; it was a long, long time ago.”

As the spaceplane lifted off the rim of the crater, the work party waved cheerfully up at them. Now that all the tools and equipment had been unloaded, they were engaged in the essential preliminary to any Lassan project. Someone was making tea.