Hunted Earth - The Ring Of Charon Part 7

Astrophysics Foundation would be impressed. And if the UNAF was impressed, there was no way they could shut down the Gravities Research Station. At least that was what Larry hoped.

The announcer looked away from the camera toward a timer display on his desk. "Twenty seconds now," he said, obviously relis.h.i.+ng the moment.

Larry swallowed hard and leaned forward in his seat. Silly to be nervous, silly to be excited. He knew it had worked. But the seconds were sliding away.

"T minus five, four, three, two, one, zero. We are getting the first-"

The commlink from JPL went dead.

In the middle of view screen three, Earth flashed out of existence.

The Moon hung in the telescope view.

Alone.

Larry sat there, watching the monitor screen in frozen horror. The comm people were already jumping up, checking their gear. "It's everything,"

one of them said. "All commlinks with Earth just went dead."

"That's crazy. Check back at central."Everything. Larry sat, motionless, his heart pounding. They would search for an answer, a malfunction in their gear.

But Larry knew. No evidence, no explanation, but he knew. Somehow, impossibly, the beam, the harmless gravity-wave beam, so weakened at that range it could not have squashed a fly or mussed a child's hair- Somehow it had vaporized the Earth.

Eyes began to turn toward Larry. Eyes that were no longer friendly, or excited. Yes, he thought, they 'll all be willing to admit it was my experiment now.

Eyes bored into his head. One pair of eyes in particular. Raphael, behind him, seething with terror and rage. Larry could feel the director's malevolent stare drilling into the back of his skull.

Two thoughts echoed in his head, one incredible, the other simply insane.

Larry Chao had destroyed the Earth.

And somehow, Simon Raphael was going to see to it that it came out of Larry's pay.

Part Two

CHAPTER SIX.

The Amber of Time

Gerald MacDougal reached out and slapped the alarm buzzer. Two in the morning. Vancouver, British Columbia, was a lovely city, but it had a major flaw: it was in the wrong time zone. Like the Moon and the domed Settlements and virtually allthe other s.p.a.ce installations, VISOR worked on Universal Time. Greenwich Mean Time as they insisted on calling it here.

Two a.m. here. That was ten in the morning on VISOR, ignoring the speed-of-light delays. Ten a.m., Tuesdays and Sat.u.r.days, were Marcia's a.s.signed slots for sending view messages home. If she even got that much chance. She had sent a twenty-word-text message the night before warning about watching some gravity experiment from Pluto, just after 1000 UT. Right on top of her sending time slot.

Gerald stretched and yawned. Venus was about ninety degrees from conjunction at the moment, which worked out to a ten-minute speed-of-light delay, plus a split second or two while the Earth-orbiting comsat picked it up and relayed it around to his receiver. He had time to wake up a bit before Marcia's weekly message came in. He could have let his comm system pick it up and could have played it back later, of course, but he preferred to see the view message immediately, the moment it came down. That way he would know what Marcia had been doing and saying ten short minutes before. It was the one time when that was possible.

G.o.d, he missed her.

He stood up, walked to the window, and looked down at the splendid city laid out before him. His hometown. Aside from the time zone, there was no place on Earth he'd rather be. And, as far as his work was concerned, no place on Earth was where he ought to be. Gerald was a big man, tall, muscular and tough, with curly brown hair and a solid jaw.

He got restless waiting, and was too often forced to convince himself that patience was a virtue.

Back to s.p.a.ce soon, he promised himself, not quite believing it. There was still hope. To Venus, and VISOR, and his wife and his work.

Strictly speaking, the primary subject of Gerald MacDougal's work did not exist. One of his careergoals was to wipe out anything that resembled it.

Gerald was an exobiologist, a student of life off the planet Earth. The flaw, of course, was that there wasn't any life beyond Earth. Except, of course, such Earth-evolved life that continued to evolve even off planet. Every human being, every plant, every animal brought along to the Settlements carried microscopic life-forms by the billions.

Anywhere humans went, viruses, bacteria, and other microbes, disease-causing and benign, traveled as well. Normal medical practice was enough to keep most of the nasties at bay inside the sealed colonies-but some microbes escaped the domes, tunnels, s.h.i.+ps and habitats to the outside environments. Virtually all of them died the moment they left the controlled environment. But a few survived. And of those survivors, a very few managed to reproduce, and evolve, often at a ferocious rate.

Earth-derived microbes lurked in the soil around Martian cities, living off dome leakages of air, moisture and organics; lived inside the rock of mining asteroids, dining on a witches' brew diet of complex hydrocarbons; lived as mildew-like patches in airlocks all over the Solar System, absorbing air, moisture and bits of organic matter whenever the locks were pressurized, encysting when they went into vacuum.

Even to Gerald, who should have been used to such things by now, the tenacity of life in such circ.u.mstances was incredible. It was proof to Gerald that there was a G.o.d. No random sequence of events could have produced living things capable of such feats. Evolution existed, yes; Gerald was no creationist. But there was a divine hand guiding evolution.

A divine hand that worked in mysterious and sometimes horrifying ways. For a few, a terrifying few, of the outsider organisms came back inside thedomes and the s.p.a.cecraft. Most such Returnees were wiped out by the drastically different environment, but some readapted to life back inside. That was when terror struck. Hardened by their generations outside air, light and pressure, some Returnee organisms bred h.e.l.laciously back inside, carrying in their genes the ability to digest unlikely things. Plastics, metal, resin compounds, semiorganic superconductors. And some of them, ancestors of disease organisms, retained the ability to infect the human body.

There were microorganisms that could cause disease in humans and also eat through pressure suits and air domes from the inside. Or dissolve the superconducting wires of power grids. Or jam valves in fusion systems.

From a human perspective, the Returnees were a nightmare. But G.o.d, Gerald had long since decided, did not have a human perspective. The Good Lord wanted all life, everywhere, to have a chance.

Humans and microbes were equally His children, equally miraculous. He wanted all His children to have a chance at life, from the most high unto the least. If some individuals of one species had to die so another species might survive, was that not the way of all Nature? Why should humanity be exempt?

He did not see any contradiction between admiring the dogged survival skills of the Returnees and coldbloodedly seeking to destroy them. The wolf lives at the expense of the deer, and the buck may kill the wolf to defend his herd. Neither is right or wrong. Even the lamb lives at the expense of the foliage it crops-and many a thorn will stab at a lamb unwary enough to dine on the wrong plant. All that lives must draw life from others, and must defend itself against the a.s.sault of other species. So too with humanity.

Gerald's goal was to wipe out all off-planet microscopic life outside the human-madeenvironments. He knew he could never achieve his goal, and this knowledge gave him a certain strange comfort. But it was not enough. The destruction of life, however needful, did not fulfill Gerald.

He wanted to create life, be G.o.d's tool in the work of making a whole new world full of life-but now that dream was fading. The circ.u.mstances were so frustrating.

The terraforming of Venus was technically possible. No one questioned that any longer.

Gerald's work would have played a part in it, too.

The Isolated Exobiology Facility would have been an ideal source of terraforming microbes. The simplest of gene engineering would have produced microbes to break down the noxious atmosphere, to fix nitrogen to soil, to remove carbon dioxide and produce water, to convert the acid-leached rocks to soil.

But the era of grand projects, of great visions, was fading before it had gotten properly under way.

The Terra Nova stars.h.i.+p project had been canceled, and now the word was that the Ring of Charon was being shut down. What hope could there be for a plan to rebuild a world? More than likely, the microbes stored at Gerald's Isolated Exobiology Facility would never get their chance to seed Venus.

He looked up from the valley, into the late-night sky. Venus would not rise for hours yet, but he knew it was there. And Marcia was there, aboard VISOR as it circled that h.e.l.l-hot world. He had spent much of the last year preparing to join her there-but now the two of them were forced to face the likelihood that it would be Marcia returning here, as humanity retreated from the challenge of Venus.

The comm center bleeped, and Gerald rushed over to it, sat down and powered up the screen. The countdown clock appeared, ticked down to zero, and then was replaced by Marcia's dark exquisiteface.

"h.e.l.lo, Gerald," she said, her voice warm and loving. "Thank heavens I got through-we just got word of a big experiment that we'll need all our transmission bandwidth for. There was supposed to be a ten o'clock cutoff on personal messages, but Lonny knew I was scheduled and stretched the rules for me. He'll keep me on as long as he can, but I might get cut off abruptly. Nothing to worry about-they just need this vision channel. Lonny's sending a text message from me on a sideband right now. It tells what the experiment is so I don't waste view time talking about it. Sorry, but the text message isn't much-just a data dump on what we've been told about the experiment. I haven't had time to write a real letter. I'm working on one. I should be able to send it tonight."

The printer bin buzzed and a thin sheaf of papers dropped into it. Gerald ignored the doc.u.ment, reached out a hand and touched the screen. These few moments with her image were all he had, and now even this contact was being rationed. Never again, he decided. Once he got there, or she came here, never again would they be separated.

"There isn't much excitement beyond this experiment run," Marcia's image said.

"McGillicutty's driving us all even madder than usual, but I suppose I should be used to that by now. The work is going well-though we're all watching the news and hoping we're not in it."

There was a m.u.f.fled voice from off camera, and Marcia glanced away. "Oh d.a.m.n!" she said, cursing with the sincerity of someone who didn't do it often.

"Lonny says I've got ten seconds. I love you, Gerald.

I can't wait for your next message to me. Finish up all your business and get here. I love you.

Good-bye-"

The screen cut off, and Gerald felt a lump in his throat. There was only so much of this separation that he could take. Thank G.o.d it would be oversoon, one way or the other.

Aboard VISOR, Marcia MacDougal forced a smile, thanked Lonny, and hurried out into the corridor. But where to go? she wondered. She felt lost, empty. Gerald gone, the project dying. What did it matter? To the wardroom, she decided, almost at random. Maybe there would be people there, someone to talk to, someone to take her mind away from loneliness.

She went into the corridor and walked the short distance. But the wardroom was empty.

McGillicutty must have pulled everyone in to help observe the gravity experiment. No doubt she'd get drafted herself, sooner or later.

Finding herself alone, Marcia MacDougal made the best of it. She stepped over to the wardroom's big observation port, and looked down at the planet's glaring cloud tops.

She was a striking woman, seeming taller than she really was by virtue of her determined character. She had clear, flawless skin the color of dark mahogany, and her face was round and expressive. Her eyes were dark brown, bright and clear; eyes that seemed to see everything. But there was nothing at all to see out the observation window.

To the naked eye, dayside Venus was blindingly bright, a featureless wall of cloud. She could have fixed that: the observation windows could be controlled, the contrast, brightness, and spectrum manipulated. With the right settings, pattern and order appeared in the cloud tops.

But right now, to Marcia, a blank, staring,featureless globe seemed most appropriate. The light was so bright that nothing could be seen. So much information was coming in that nothing could be understood. The metaphors seemed apt to the era of the Knowledge Crash. And VISOR seemed likely to be the next Crash victim.

Venus Initial Station for Operational Research- VISOR-had been meant to be the stuff that dreams were made of. The headquarters for the creation of a brave new world-a new Venus, cooled, watered, made new with life.

No one knew exactly how it was to be done, how a world would be brought to life. That was what VISOR was for-to find the answers. There had been some wild ideas: VISOR dropping huge probes and seeder s.h.i.+ps onto the planet, manhandling ice-bearing asteroids and monstrous atmosphere skimmers into place. Huge sunshades...o...b..ting the planet, floating chemical factories built under enormous dirigibles and set loose in the upper atmosphere.

Some of the more wild-eyed miners in the Asteroid Belt had their own ideas. They had quite seriously offered to blow up the planet Mercury with a fearsome device named the Core Cracker.

With a second asteroid belt close to Sun, they would really get some use out of solar power. Venus didn't really have much to do with the idea, but the Belt Community crowd had tried to sell its plans to VISOR, pointing out the Mercury Belt would be an ideal place to build those ma.s.sive sunshades or rotation-enhancement impact bodies.

There were other schemes, not quite so mad, and VISOR would have tried some or all of them. At the present time, of course, no one had the faintest idea how to do any of those things. And that was the whole point. VISOR was built to last for centuries, built to grow, change, evolve. The station designers expected that it would have to handle technologies whose inventors were not yet born.VISOR. The last two words in the acronym were the key. Operational Research. Before Venus could be remade, the scientists and engineers had to learn how the task could be done. A lot could be resolved with computer models and small-scale simulations, but when dealing with a ma.s.sive planetary environment, those techniques simply weren't enough. The engineers and scientists needed a whole planet to play with, a whole planet to make mistakes on. Terraforming required on-the-job training.

Couldn't the United Nations see that? Couldn't they see how vital the station was? How disastrous a shutdown, or even a temporary mothballing, would be? Venus was a task for decades, generations. It could not be done in fits and starts.

Suddenly the intercom hooted at her. A high-pitched slightly peevish voice that Marcia had learned to dread spoke. "MacDougal! Get on up to Main Control!" McGillicutty's voice said. "I need you to monitor some low-end radio for me."

Marcia shut her eyes and counted to ten before turning away from the window and heading up to the lab. She was willing to bet that even her husband's patience would be worn thin by Hiram McGillicutty. She'd have to try the experiment, once Gerald got here.

Hiram McGillicutty was the staff physicist of the Venus Initial Station for Operational Research.

Most days, that job made Mcgillicutty as useful as a parachute on a fish.

No one disputed that VISOR needed a physicist, but only in the sense that a small town needed a fire department. You had to have one around, just incase something unexpected happened.

McGillicutty did not think much of his colleagues on the station. Mere engineers. Give them the numbers to plug into the equations, and they were perfectly happy. Never mind what the numbers meant, or how they were derived. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, they not only would not need to know how the numbers came to be there, they would positively resent your wasting their time with such petty details.

Hiram McGillicutty imagined himself as accepting his lot philosophically-though no one else on the station would ever describe his att.i.tude in such terms. Most of them would come up with arrogant, or self-absorbed.

But today was different. Today this was his station, thanks to those bad boys on Pluto.

McGillicutty chuckled under his breath, shook his s.h.a.ggy head, and bared his snaggled teeth in a rueful grin. He had seen the prelim data from Ganymede and t.i.tan. What a stunt the gravity boys were pulling!

He checked the sequencer clock and worked out the speed-of-light delay. According to the experiment plan Pluto had transmitted, the gravity beam should have started targeting Venus just over five and a half hours ago. So if the experiment was indeed running on schedule, the gravity beam should be arriving any- "Jesus jumping Christ w.i.l.l.ya lookit that!" he cried. Hiram McGillicutty was of an excitable sort, but for once he would seem to be ent.i.tled. The gravity-wave meter, a piece of incredibly delicate hardware that had rarely given off so much as a quiver, was now spiking high, slamming into the high end of the scale. McGillicutty adjusted the graphic display scale by a factor of a hundred.

Marcia MacDougal shook her head in wonderment. It was real. After hundreds of years asa minor curiosity- a sideshow in the world of high-energy physics-gravitic research was suddenly coming alive, right before her very eyes.

"It's a gravity beam," someone said. "Shouldn't we feel heavier, or lighter, or something? I don't feel a thing."

"How powerful is that beam?" one of the biologists asked, a bit nervously. "It's not going to start pulling us toward Pluto, is it?"

"It doesn't work that way," McGillicutty explained testily. "What they've managed to do-somehow, G.o.d only knows how-is use a phase relation to make half the wave repulse instead of attract. The effect cancels itself out overall. And the beam is d.a.m.n weak before it gets here."

McGillicutty licked his lips greedily. "G.o.d I'd love to know how they do it. But if they've figured out how to manipulate gravity fields that well, they can't be more than a few steps from true gravity control-if they could fiddle the harmonics somehow and establish a standing wave front-they could create whatever gravity field they wanted."

"That's the sort of little 'if' that takes another hundred years to crack," Marcia said. "I'd bet gravity waves are just a parlor trick for a long, long time."

"Maybe," McGillicutty said. "But as parlor tricks go, this is a pretty major one. Gravity waves ought to provide a whole new way of looking at the Universe. Matter should be practically transparent to gee waves! Tune the waves right, and we ought to be able to use them to see right through the Sun and the planets, look down into them as deep as we want. Put a gee-wave sender on one side of Venus, and a detector on the other, and we'd be able to examine its internal structure in real time. Like radar. There are big times ahead. Big times."

"For the gravity crowd," Chenlaw said mournfully. "The research pie is getting mightysmall. So what do you think will happen to our funding if this Ring gets s.e.xy and starts gobbling up all the money? What we have to do is come up with a way to get involved in gravity if we want to see a dime."

Marcia glanced up at the sequence clock. "Eight more minutes here. Then they switch the beam to Earth." She watched her displays, and wondered what the new world would be like.

McGillicutty was also glad when the beam s.h.i.+fted off Venus.

Oh, those ten minutes when the beam had been directed at them, at VISOR, those were blissful, fantastic. But they were almost too much. The signal was so powerful it threatened to overwhelm his instruments. But now he could direct his gear at a remote target, at Earth. No one had ever done this sort of sensing before. It was an entirely different challenge, an entirely different opportunity.

You needed some range before you gained any perspective. Besides, there were all the secondary effects you could only observe at range. How did the gee waves warp radio? Lightwaves? In theory, modulated gravity waves should alternately blues.h.i.+ft and reds.h.i.+ft electromagnetic radiation.

Would that really happen? And what effect would the beam have on existing and interacting gravity sources? Would there be induced resonance waves in the Earth-Moon system's gravity patterns?

McGillicutty wanted to know it all. That in itself was nothing new-he spent his entire life, every waking minute, wanting to know all the answers.

What was different about today was that he was getting the chance to find out.Still, he would have to move fast to get it. The gravity-wave beam had s.h.i.+fted off Venus only a few minutes ago. He had only about five minutes to reorient the station's sensors toward Earth and reconfigure them for distant sensing. Fortunately, the rest of the staff was there to a.s.sist him on the job.