“I won’t be burying you,” I replied. “I’ll be dead long before you are.”
“It is no matter,” she said. “I do not die here. When ice is gone from your world I shall leave worm and stand upon ground with sky above me and wind in my hair and sun on my face. I shall be content. Then An take me when he wills.”
“You may never die.”
“When Earth is old and sun is great and red and burns it up what shall I do?”
“That,” I said, “is a very long way away.”
She smiled. “Nothing very long.”
We had left the dwelling and were walking under the great arching branches of the forest, along the path that ran from the house and eventually petered out between the trees. How long had Noema been telling me the vast, tragic story of her race? She had begun it two days previously but I had had no sense of time passing. The present had been a small, strange and distant thing, and it was only gradually that my mind returned to it.
After Tubal’s death there was little to relate. Any other world within range of the ageing worm’s antimatter drive had long since been visited and found wanting. She could stay within the worm until the light failed or she could complete the journey and see what contact with humanity would bring. In the end loneliness decided her.
“Years pass. I see none, speak to none. All I know are voices of your world. I listen to them. They are better than silence without end. I must come to you. What else can I do?”
“You weren’t afraid of what we might do to you?”
“I think long of it. I listen to your voices. Some of you good, some evil. I must find those that are good, speak to them. See if I may live in peace with you. Maybe one, two of you come into worm, but never I think to go down to your world. You are a strange people. I wait and see what you become.”
That had been her plan until Ganymed changed everything. She decided to stay near Mars until things had returned to relative stability on Earth. It was not Ganymed that worried her. She knew, as Dieter had eventually worked out, that the moon would have been a safe enough distance from the asteroid’s devastation. It was humans she feared. What would they do as their own demise descended upon them? They might try anything to take control of the worm or even destroy it in irrational fear. Better to keep at a safe distance until humanity no longer posed a threat. And Mars was a world. It would be pleasant to walk on it.
“You have a space suit?” I asked.
“Yes. I have seeds for them. I grow one. Nearly ready. They are like thick skin over body. I feel as they feel. Sun shine I feel warm. Wind blow I feel wind. Easy to walk in them, move arms.”
“How long can you stay on Mars in your suit?”
“A day. Then must go back to pod, let skin become strong again. We do this on many worlds. Cannot stay but still good to go to them. I have seen…such wonders. Clouds like fire, shine like jewels when light of sun in them. I see things you cannot imagine. In all the worlds such beauty, fills the heart, sometimes too much.”
“It was worth it,” I said, “Even if you could never live on them.”
She glanced at me. “Water on Mars make you dance. Yes. It is…worth it.”
It was evening. I lay on my bed, tablet in hand, making the longest report yet since I entered the pod. As I recounted the story of Noema’s people I became aware of an impression, faint and almost subconscious, that there was a detail I had not been told. I dismissed it. There was so much about the vessel and its occupant that did not fit my preconceptions of what an alien civilisation should be like. I was hardly bothered by one more fleeting thought that something was not quite in place.
Cloe was right. I couldn’t see two inches in front of my nose. It was so blindingly obvious.
I finished the report then knelt down to pray. An almost irresistible need continued to draw me to prayer as I had been drawn at the lakeside. To be honest, I found the resurrection of my long dormant faith rather amusing. It had taken a deliberate act of will to open my mind to God’s presence, but once that was done the reality of that presence swept my sceptical outlook into oblivion.
My scepticism had rested on an assumption that material and intellectual progress must leave religion behind as a bird leaves its nest or a snake sheds its skin. It’s a kind of mental conditioning. Experimental science cannot disprove the existence of a God, but it cannot prove it either since it deals only with physical phenomena: measurable causes leading to measurable effects. Anything not physical immediately falls out of its jurisdiction by the fact of its immateriality.
The conditioning lies in thinking that anything not physical doesn’t exist because scientific experimentation cannot evaluate it. You can’t put God in a test tube, ergo there is no God. Well the joke was on me now. I knew well enough that he existed and was busy at work inside me, but I still couldn’t prove or disprove it.
I extinguished the clay oil lamp next to my bed and let myself drift off to sleep. One day at a time. I would see what the morning would bring.
Sleep can have a way of settling one’s thoughts. When I awoke the next day it was with the conviction that I was never going to persuade Noema to let enough people into the worm for humanity’s survival. She might eventually acquiesce after many years had passed when—and if—humans proved trustworthy. But there was not nearly enough time for that. Once order broke down after Ganymed’s impact the survivors would be desperate, and desperation is not a good soil for trust. It was time to pass on what I knew.
“I need to return to Mars,” I said at breakfast.
A variety of fruits, some almost recognisable, filled a wooden bowl on the table. A pitcher of water stood next to them.
Noema paused in the act of taking an orange-coloured plum. “Why?”
“I must tell my people what I know.”
“What you tell?”
“The truth. That you can’t save them.”
She considered this. “Yes, it is good. You tell them. Then you come back?”
“I’ll be staying on Mars for some time, but, yes, I’ll come back.” As I said the words I felt an odd quickening in my chest, as if picking up one of the three cups I found the ball that shouldn’t have been there.
Noema inserted the fruit into her mouth, her gaze on me frank and steady as always. “When you finish all, come.”
The light was just beginning to fade as we stood by the hole from which an age and a half ago the gourd creature had emerged and deposited me on the forest floor. Near the hole the gourd lay open. I climbed up the slope of its unfurled leaves, deposited my suit and bag by the central chair then turned and sat. Noema raised her hand in farewell. As I reciprocated a reluctance arose within me. I was leaving too soon. I had unfinished business here and needed to stay longer. Noema had something to tell me and I needed to know what it was. It was only when the leaves closed up again and the gourd started moving that I realised what had happened. I was in love.
The return to the surface of Mars was uneventful, in the sense that it was a replica in reverse of my original trip to the alien vessel. I had little to do except keep an eye on the time and think. So I thought about Noema.
I was well and truly smitten. Once I became aware of its existence the love flooded up from the depths. I longed for her with a force I could scarcely credit of myself. I was not the romantic type. My marriage had cooled off with a minimum of fuss and I had accepted the status quo, not looking for romantic fulfilment elsewhere. My career had been fulfilment enough and I had almost been able to forget the underlying bedrock of disappointment. Almost.
What exactly is this thing called the human heart? There is so little correspondence between what it longs for and what life has to offer. A man rationalises, come to terms with the limitations of his circumstances, stuffs his heart into a narrow box and tells it not to be so stupid, and then a day comes when it bursts out again, stronger for having been so long confined, and tramples his rationalisations underfoot.
I had to admit though that my situation played a big part. I had built my life around my career in NASA and that was now finished. Any kind of human interaction was also over, or would be before long. Sylvia—I could not even think of her with regret any more—would be dead even sooner, and I bid a brief, unmourned mental farewell to our marriage. The remainder of my life would play itself out between the surface of Mars and the internal cavity of the worm, and I would have but one individual for company.
Oh, but there was so much more to it than that. Noema had given me a part of her mind and I had resonated with it as I had never done with any human. Sure, love can make you blind. You idealise a person you hardly know purely on their physical appearance and the way they tilt their head. But this was different. I knew Noema. The bond created by the dreams had made lying impossible. Withholding all of the truth, perhaps, but not lying, and there was a simplicity in her that made any dark revelations inconceivable. Some people are like that. Their natures are transparent and it is not long from the first meeting that one knows, at least in the broad outlines, what they truly are.
The fact that she was an alien did not bother me in the least, though perhaps on reflection it should have. When you fall in love you don’t plan it out. As far as I could tell Noema was near enough to human as no matter and that sufficed for now. Future complications arising from her alienness could be dealt with when they arose.
Whether Noema loved me in return was something that did bother me. She had not given any of the signals a human woman uses to indicate either thumbs up or thumbs down. I didn’t even know if her race understood ‘love’ as I did. She might just see it as a kind of loyalty, necessitated by the family structure, but without any affection. She wanted me back, that was clear enough, but it might merely be for the company. I didn’t like the thought. I chewed it over for a long time and in the end knew it changed nothing. I didn’t love her any the less. I would return to the vessel and find out if she loved me and if she didn’t I would just have to make the best of it. But it was not an ending I wanted to think about. ‘‘Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.’ Tennyson was a damn fool.
The hours passed. I set my alarm to wake me well ahead of my expected arrival. As my journey neared its end the atmospheric pressure began to decrease. When my ears popped I put on my helmet and turned on the air supply. Twenty minutes later I was on the surface.
The moment I had stepped off the opened leaves they closed up and the pod rose off the ground, rapidly gaining speed as it climbed up into the brown sky above before disappearing from sight in the dim morning light. I leaned back, looked straight upwards and waved. I’ll come back but I must first do whatever I can for my own kind. You understand that.
Not that I could do anything except kill humanity’s last hope. The realisation finally weighed down on my mind. My mission had been a failure. What was I going to say to Cloe? To Trinny? And why had it sunk home only now?
The SEV was a couple of hundred metres away, my return point not being in exactly the same place as my point of departure. After a short walk I slowly mounted it and drove back to the Hab, keeping my speed at 8 kilometres an hour, partly from caution and partly to give myself time to think. Once I learned that the alien vessel could not stop Ganymed my sense of urgency had faded, and Noema and her story had completely absorbed me thereafter. Now, as the SEV bumped slowly along under a pinkish blue sky the feeling crept on me that I had not tried nearly hard enough to persuade Noema to take a human colony on her vessel. Fine, I would have to remedy that. The time had not yet come to bury the corpse of the human race.
III – GANYMED THE GREAT
20. “Cloe, you there?”
“I am so glad to hear your voice.”
“Are you OK? How’s the Terra Nova? Why can’t I see you?”
“A problem with the comm link camera, that’s all. I’m just glad you’re back.”
“Of course I’m back. There’s only so much to see inside three miles of alien rock.”
She laughed, in relief more than from humour. “Very funny.”
“What’s the news?” I asked.
“One message from Trinny. I’m sorry Jason. Sylvia died two days ago.”
There’s nowt so queer as folk, as the Yorkshire proverb goes. I had mentally bid farewell to Sylvia during my return to the Martian surface. Now, inexplicably, I felt a sharp pang of loss well up within me, a sense of two lives wasted, of a union ending in futility that need not have if so much had been different. What should have been was not and would never be and between us the fault lay. We had been warned that it would be for better or for worse. Well, it was over now and there was nothing I could do about it. The pang gradually faded.
“Jason, it’s all right with you?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. We were expecting this but it’s still.…not easy.…when it comes.”
“It was painless. She fell into a coma and passed away two days later.”
“I wrote to her. I said everything I probably should have said years ago. Don’t think I got through to her though.”
“You did your best, Jason. I’ll send you Trinny’s message. You want some time to read it? There are also some AVs for you.”
“Send them. I’ll look at them later. Right now we need to talk before I reply to Trinny.”
“What happened?”
“I’ve got a bunch of reports on my tablet. Everything’s there. I’ll send them to you now.”
“Just tell me.”
I didn’t answer.
“Is it good or bad?”
“Not good,” I replied. “The alien ship can’t deflect Ganymed.”
There was no reaction from Cloe other than silence.
“Listen,” I said, “It doesn’t have any weapons, and it can’t push the asteroid. Its front end is that black crater which is a kind of eye—the whole thing is bioengineered, I’ll tell you about that later. Pushing against the asteroid would blind it and probably rupture it. There’s no time to build a support structure.”
“I understand, Jason.”
“No, listen. I have a plan. I said I would save you and dammit I will. The elevator pod can’t stop in space, only when it reaches the ground. You carry out Dieter’s plan and go to the moon. Stay in lunar orbit as long as necessary then return to Earth when the weather has calmed down after the impact. The pod will come for you. The alien—there’s only one by the way—can bring others to her vessel and she’s already agreed to bring you. I’ll tell Mission and every goddam bigwig that you come up first or nobody comes after.”
“….OK, I’m trying to absorb all this. How many others can come?”
“We only need a few hundred to keep the gene pool sufficiently rich.”
“No, how many will the alien.…she.…take on board?”
This was the point where I was going to lie, but for some reason I could not do it. “She won’t take any except you. Cloe, keep this to yourself.”
“Mon Dieu.”
“She doesn’t trust us, not in a group anyway.”
She made no reply.
“Cloe?”
“Yes, Jason.”
“You’ll keep what I said to yourself?”
“.…yes.”
“I’m going to do a check on the Hab’s systems. We’ll talk later. I’m sorry I couldn’t do better.”
“What will you tell Trinny?”
“That the possibility exists of the alien taking a human colony on board, and that’s not a lie because I sure as hell haven’t given up trying to convince her. But I can’t tell them the truth.”
“Why not?”
“Think about it. There’s a group of you standing round the pod and you’re the only one it’ll take, the only one who will survive. Reckon the others will just let you go without trying to hitch a ride? Cloe, don’t tell them. And the reports—I’ve marked the ones you can pass on to Trinny. Don’t transmit the others.”
“Thanks Jason.”
“For what?”
“For looking after me.” And the background static ceased.
Half an hour later I was satisfied all the life support systems on the Hab were functioning normally but decided to wait for Cloe to contact me again before doing anything further. Let her take her time digesting all the material I had sent her. It would save a lot of questions. In the meantime I was content to just sit by the porthole and gaze out at the Martian landscape. I no longer had any motivation to keep myself busy as I had done when my exile on Mars had seemed permanent. In any case the main objective of the mission—finding water—had already been accomplished, not that it mattered any more.
My mind kept straying back to Noema. I love you, strange, beautiful alien thing. I will be with you before long, but why does it have to be so bittersweet? Love in death. Love has everything to do with life. It is the young, with their lives before them, who claim romance as their own. The old, if they marry, do so with circumspection, not out of a simple, blind irresponsible affection. I was young enough to feel my life was not yet substantially over. My enthusiasm for existence was bound up with Noema and would be for the remainder of my days. And the only reason I would be with her was that the rest of humanity would soon be dead. Without Ganymed I would have been an ambassador and nothing more, introducing Noema to the human race then stepping back. Love in death, the sharpest of poignancies, the love greater because there was no happily ever after save the love itself; no family, no children, no friends, no future life other than walking along a lakeshore talking of the past.
I sighed. So be it. I paused then repeated the words aloud. So be it.
The comm link pinged.
“Yeah, Cloe.”
“I’ve finished going through it all. She’s magnificent, Jason.”
“Think so?”
“Don’t pretend to be stupid. You know she is. It’s the eyes. She has such lovely big eyes.”
“I suppose she has.”
There was a gentleness in Cloe’s voice. “What does she think of you?”
“She trusts me.”
“Mmm….OK.”
I laughed. “She likes my company, and I don’t know anything beyond that.”
“It’s OK. I think men are meant to be dense.”
“Don’t patronise me.”
“No offence meant.”
“I’m not offended. Perhaps a bit touchy though. All right, I admit it, she’s had quite an effect on me. She is so….unlike what I expected an alien to be.”
“Yes, it’s strange. Just a coincidence I suppose.”
“Has to be. Anyhow she’s human enough that it’s easy to forget she’s from a different race. But it shows now and then.”
“How?”
“Well….for example, I can’t be sure how she sees me. Friendly but.…I don’t know.…non-committal. Leaves me wondering.”
Cloe chuckled. “Jason, it’s obvious. She’s fallen in love with you but she waits until you tell her first.”
“How do you know?”
“Those clips you took of her. She hardly glanced at the camera when you moved it. All the time she was looking at you.”
“Now you’re embarrassing me.”
“I thought you should know.”
“Mmh.”
“I have another message from Trinny. He wants to know why the bloody hell you haven’t contacted him since you got back to the Hab. That’s quote unquote. I sent him the reports you told me to pass on, but he wants to hear from you.”
“I’m still figuring out what to tell him. It has to stand up to scrutiny from every angle. They saw through Dieter quickly enough. I’ll tell them the truth, just not all of it.”
“You think this is going to work?”
“No reason why it shouldn’t. ‘Alien might be prepared to take people on ship and is willing to meet another human now. Alien knows my story and wants to meet you first. Better to show ourselves accommodating and do as alien asks.’ End of story. They can try and pick holes in that.”
“I don’t think it’s going to be so simple. I think they’ll doubt the story but go along with it anyway. It’s the only chance they have. Jason, you must talk to her again. After what happened to her own race she won’t want to see the same happen to us, no?”
“Don’t count on it. She’s spent most of her life watching her people die and the survivors kill each other. The thought of humans coming to the worm and doing it all over again is something she can’t bear. If she thought we were a peaceful, friendly lot things might have been different, but that lead balloon went down the moment her ship was within range of Earth’s radio and AV signals.”
“But we must try. Her people were cruel. I don’t care how technologically advanced they were, their society was primitive. We’re not the same, world war or no world war.”
“I haven’t given up yet, but I have to be very careful how I go about it. I’m not compromising your ticket.”
“Jason, push her as hard as you can. Say anything that might work and don’t worry about me. We must try and save others.”
“I know. I’d better get on with sending something to Trinny. I’ll be in touch later.”
“Sure Jason. I’m sorry. I put a lot on your back.”
“No. It was there already.” And I switched off the comm link.
Half an hour later I was ready with my message for Mission. After an apology for my non-communication and an assurance that my health and general physical condition were in a good state, I got down to business.
Following on the reports which give a full picture of the nature and history of the alien vessel I can only repeat my recommendation that we co-operate with the alien’s willingness to see Cloe. At this point I don’t have a definite commitment from the alien on the question of accepting a sizeable human colony into her ship, but if she meets Cloe and is favourably impressed by her—which I think is more than likely—then she will be more ready to meet another human, and another, until sufficient trust is built up for a substantial human population to be transported to the vessel. Please confirm as soon as possible that this course of action is acceptable and I will relay it to the alien.
Let them agree before they had too much time to think about it.
Two hours passed before I received the reply.
Director Eugene Trinny to Commander Jason Montague
We’re discussing your recommendation. Will let you know the decision in due course. Have you seen the earlier messages I sent you?
I had completely forgotten about Trinny’s transmissions. After reading his text message I opened the AVs.
They consisted of a collage of news reports on the worsening situation on Earth as the truth about the impotence of mankind’s nuclear arsenal against Ganymed permeated through the public consciousness. Panic wasn’t the word for it. Stock markets had crashed, Martial law had been declared in several countries, and in some places order had already collapsed under a rising tide of anarchy. Ordinary people were interviewed. Those who hadn’t despaired clung to one hope, me. I cursed Trinny. He was giving me a motivational kick up the backside. If he had been there with me I swear I would have broken his nose with my fist.
Once the last AV was finished I wrote a reply.
Commander Jason Montague to Director Eugene Trinny
Don’t do that again.
Trinny did not mention my last message in his reply but told me to sit tight whilst NASA evaluated my reports, in the hope of finding something that would help me better persuade the alien to save the human race. I doubted it, but was happy to co-operate. If I was to save Cloe I needed NASA’s good will. I would jump through any number of hoops to retain that. The remainder of that day and the next consisted of conversations with Cloe and a more thorough check of the Hab’s life support systems. Because something was wrong.
From the beginning of the Mars project there had been a long debate over the best way to power the Hab. Solar panels are relatively lightweight and can last indefinitely, and if one breaks it can be repaired or just dispensed with. On the minus side they don’t work at night or, more importantly, during Martian dust storms that can cut sunlight by eighty per cent for months at a time.
Nuclear power on the other hand is impervious to Martian weather. It works twenty four hours a day and lasts as long as the mission does, in fact a good deal longer. Its only downside is the potential danger of radiation. The boffins at NASA finally decided that there was nothing on Mars that could crack open the protective shielding around a plutonium suitcase reactor save a direct hit by a large meteorite, and if that happened the crew would have time to evacuate before being fatally affected by the radiation. So in addition to transporting the SEVs the Shirase doubled as a nuclear generator. One kilogramme of plutonium heated helium gas that drove three pairs of stirling engines which in turn drove an alternator. The arrangement produced 50 kilowatts of electric power, more than enough keep the batteries charged that powered the Hab’s life support systems. If one of the stirling engine pairs failed the other two would still be enough to keep things going. A power line, automatically played out by one of the SEVs after landing, connected the Shirase to the Hab. The batteries and the power line could be repaired, but there was little I could do about the Shirase’s nuclear generator if it started playing up.
There wasn’t much that could go wrong with it. Each stirling engine pair consisted of two pistons and displacers—together known as a converter—in which the helium acted as a hydrostatic bearing, preventing the moving parts from touching each other and reducing wear and tear to practically zero. They would be good for eight years of continuous use. The plutonium broke down at a constant rate, producing a steady supply of heat. The alternator was solid, containing only one moving part. It was basically an electric motor that worked in reverse, producing current as it rotated. There was only one real weakness in the setup: the cooling system.
Nuclear reactors generate heat, a lot of it. Most gets converted into the electricity that powers the Hab but there is still a significant fraction left over that must be removed from the nuclear generator if its components were not to overheat and melt. The Shirase’s reactor was cooled by Lithium-6, a metal that remains in a liquid state up to 1342°C, at which point it turns into a gas. It passed through the reactor core, heating up to 1100°C and then flowed along narrow metal pipes through two series of cooling vanes that extended out on either side of the Shirase, rather like a satellite’s solar panels. Heat was transferred to the panels and radiated out into the thin Martian atmosphere, after which the liquid Lithium, now at a temperature of 1030°C, flowed back into the reactor to repeat the process.
The vanes and the pipes that ran through them were inherently fragile. They did not require maintenance and were good for years of use provided they had not suffered damage. It took me a while to work out that something was wrong with them.
A check through the log of the reactor’s operational history from my departure from the Martian surface until my return showed a sudden, sharp temperature spike followed by a gradual cooling off back to normal operational levels. The spike, and return to normal was linked to an increase in the rate of flow of the Lithium passing through the vanes. At first it made no sense. Nothing except my interference could affect the temperature of the reactor. Why had it suddenly gone up then gone down again? I would need go out and have a look at the cooling system.
An hour later I stood in my spacesuit outside the squat tube of the Shirase. The set of vanes on one side seemed fine, but on the other side it was a different story. An irregular metallic gleam, rather like water frozen in the act of flowing, covered a large part of the radiator vanes, themselves twisted and discoloured. The Lithium had leaked out through a crack in the pipes, possibly caused by overstressing during the Shirase’s aerocapture or landing, and extensively damaged the surface of the vanes. The system would have automatically compensated by pumping the Lithium faster. There was one bit of good news. The Lithium had not all flowed out since the Martian atmosphere had frozen it, eventually sealing the hole.
The whole thing was inherently unstable. The aperture through which the Lithium had leaked could become larger, allowing more to leak out and possibly melt the already hardened Lithium. If that happened the whole system would soon lose its coolant, shutting down altogether.
Once I reached that conclusion I relaxed. A question mark now hung over the Hab’s lifespan but I could leave it at any time, and deep down I preferred going sooner rather than later. I prepared a report of the situation and passed it on to Cloe for transmission to Mission. Trinny wasn’t the only one who could give a motivational boot. Once off Mars I would be unable to communicate with anyone. Mission would have to give their go-ahead soon to my plan to save Cloe.
That evening I lay on my bunk and let my mind wander back to that strange alien world seventeen thousand kilometres above my head. There was already an air of unreality about it: the forest, the temple, the lake, even the mud-brick dwelling I had stayed in. Only Noema remained real. Part of her mind was mine, and the familiar hi-tech surroundings of the Hab could not diminish that.
Did she return my love? Cloe thought so and Cloe was canny, but I was not yet entirely convinced. I could only hope it, not yet believe it. I had lived too long for that. Still, the hope was real and that was already a comfort. As I drifted off to sleep I felt a return of that peace that had filled me next to the lakeside. There was a God in heaven and everything would surely work out, even humanity’s survival, somehow. I could hardly be blamed for forgetting that anything worthwhile comes at a price.