The Songs of Distant Earth Read online

  There were a few nervous little laughs; then Councillor Simmons remarked thoughtfully, “I’m sure we could handle a seedship if we had to. And wouldn’t its robots be intelligent enough to cancel their program when they saw that the job had already been done?”

  “Perhaps. But they might think they could do a better one. Anyway, whether it’s a relic from Earth or a later model from one of the colonies, it’s bound to be a robot of some kind.”

  There was no need to elaborate; everyone knew the fantastic difficulty and expense of manned interstellar flight. Even though technically possible, it was completely pointless. Robots could do the job a thousand times more cheaply.

  “Robot or relic – what are we going to do about it?” one of the villagers demanded.

  “It may not be our problem,” the mayor said. “Everyone seems to have assumed that it will head for First Landing, but why should it? After all, North Island is much more likely –”

  The mayor had often been proved wrong, but never so swiftly. This time the sound that grew in the sky above Tarna was no distant thunder from the ionosphere but the piercing whistle of a low, fast-flying jet. Everyone rushed out of the council chamber in unseemly haste; only the first few were in time to see the blunt-nosed delta-wing eclipsing the stars as it headed purposefully towards the spot still sacred as the last link with Earth.

  Mayor Waldron paused briefly to report to central, then joined the others milling around outside.

  “Brant – you can get there first. Take the kite.”

  Tarna’s chief mechanical engineer blinked; it was the first time he had ever received so direct an order from the mayor. Then he looked a little abashed.

  “A coconut went through the wing a couple of days ago. I’ve not had time to repair it because of that problem with the fishtraps. Anyway, it’s not equipped for night flying.”

  The mayor gave him a long, hard look.

  “I hope my car’s working,” she said sarcastically.

  “Of course,” Brant answered, in a hurt voice. “All fuelled up, and ready to go.”

  It was quite unusual for the mayor’s car to go anywhere; one could walk the length of Tarna in twenty minutes, and all local transport of food and equipment was handled by small sandrollers. In seventy years of official service the car had clocked up less than a hundred thousand kilometres, and, barring accidents, should still be going strong for at least a century to come.

  The Lassans had experimented cheerfully with most vices; but planned obsolescence and conspicuous consumption were not among them. No one could have guessed that the vehicle was older than any of its passengers as it started on the most historic journey it would ever make.

  4. Tocsin

  No one heard the first tolling of Earth’s funeral bell – not even the scientists who made the fatal discovery, far underground, in an abandoned Colorado gold mine.

  It was a daring experiment, quite inconceivable before the mid-twentieth century. Once the neutrino had been detected, it was quickly realized that mankind had a new window on the universe. Something so penetrating that it passed through a planet as easily as light through a sheet of glass could be used to look into the hearts of suns.

  Especially the Sun. Astronomers were confident that they understood the reactions powering the solar furnace, upon which all life on Earth ultimately depended. At the enormous pressures and temperatures at the Sun’s core, hydrogen was fused to helium, in a series of reactions that liberated vast amounts of energy. And, as an incidental by-product, neutrinos.

  Finding the trillions of tons of matter in their way no more obstacle than a wisp of smoke, those solar neutrinos raced up from their birthplace at the velocity of light. Just two seconds later they emerged into space, and spread outward across the universe. However many stars and planets they encountered, most of them would still have evaded capture by the insubstantial ghost of “solid” matter when Time itself came to an end.

  Eight minutes after they had left the Sun, a tiny fraction of the solar torrent swept through the Earth – and an even smaller fraction was intercepted by the scientists in Colorado. They had buried their equipment more than a kilometre underground so that all the less penetrating radiations would be filtered out and they could trap the rare, genuine messengers from the heart of the Sun. By counting the captured neutrinos, they hoped to study in detail conditions at a spot that, as any philosopher could easily prove, was forever barred from human knowledge or observation.

  The experiment worked; solar neutrinos were detected. But – there were far too few of them. There should have been three or four times as many as the massive instrumentation had succeeded in capturing.

  Clearly, something was wrong, and during the 1970s the Case of the Missing Neutrinos escalated to a major scientific scandal. Equipment was checked and rechecked, theories were overhauled, and the experiment rerun scores of times – always with the same baffling result.

  By the end of the twentieth century, the astrophysicists had been forced to accept a disturbing conclusion – though as yet, no one realized its full implications.

  There was nothing wrong with the theory, or with the equipment. The trouble lay inside the Sun.

  The first secret meeting in the history of the International Astronomical Union took place in 2008 at Aspen, Colorado – not far from the scene of the original experiment, which had now been repeated in a dozen countries. A week later IAU Special Bulletin No. 55/08, bearing the deliberately low-key title “Some Notes on Solar Reactions”, was in the hands of every government on Earth.

  One might have thought that as the news slowly leaked out, the announcement of the End of the World would have produced a certain amount of panic. In fact, the general reaction was a stunned silence – then a shrug of the shoulders and the resumption of normal, everyday business.

  Few governments had ever looked more than an election ahead, few individuals beyond the lifetimes of their grandchildren. And anyway, the astronomers might be wrong. Even if humanity was under sentence of death, the date of execution was still indefinite. The Sun would not blow up for at least a thousand years, and who could weep for the fortieth generation?

  5. Night Ride

  Neither of the two moons had risen when the car set off along Tarna’s most famous road, carrying Brant, Mayor Waldron, Councillor Simmons, and two senior villagers. Though he was driving with his usual effortless skill, Brant was still smouldering slightly from the mayor’s reprimand. The fact that her plump arm was accidentally draped over his bare shoulders did little to improve matters.

  But the peaceful beauty of the night and the hypnotic rhythm of the palm trees as they swept steadily through the car’s moving fan of light quickly restored his normal good humour. And how could such petty personal feelings be allowed to intrude, at such an historic moment as this?

  In ten minutes, they would be at First Landing and the beginning of their history. What was waiting for them there? Only one thing was certain; the visitor had homed on the still-operating beacon of the ancient seedship. It knew where to look, so it must be from some other human colony in this sector of space.

  On the other hand – Brant was suddenly struck by a disturbing thought. Anyone – anything – could have detected that beacon, signalling to all the universe that Intelligence had once passed this way. He recalled that, a few years ago, there had been a move to switch off the transmission on the grounds that it served no useful purpose and might conceivably do harm. The motion had been rejected by a narrow margin, for reasons that were sentimental and emotional rather than logical. Thalassa might soon regret that decision, but it was certainly much too late to do anything about it.

  Councillor Simmons, leaning across from the back seat, was talking quietly to the mayor.

  “Helga,” he said – and it was the first time Brant had ever heard him use the mayor’s first name – “do you think we’ll still be able to communicate? Robot languages evolve very rapidly, you know.”

  Mayor Wa
ldron didn’t know, but she was very good at concealing ignorance.

  “That’s the least of our problems; let’s wait until it arises. Brant – could you drive a little more slowly? I’d like to get there alive.”

  Their present speed was perfectly safe on this familiar road, but Brant dutifully slowed to forty klicks. He wondered if the mayor was trying to postpone the confrontation; it was an awesome responsibility, facing only the second outworld spacecraft in the history of the planet. The whole of Thalassa would be watching.

  “Krakan!” swore one of the passengers in the back seat. “Did anybody bring a camera?”

  “Too late to go back,” Councillor Simmons answered. “Anyway, there will be plenty of time for photographs. I don’t suppose they’ll take off again right after saying “hello!””

  There was a certain mild hysteria in his voice, and Brant could hardly blame him. Who could tell what was waiting for them just over the brow of the next hill?

  “I’ll report just as soon as there’s anything to tell you, Mr. President,” said Mayor Waldron to the car radio. Brant had never even noticed the call; he had been too lost in a reverie of his own. For the first time in his life, he wished he had learned a little more history.

  Of course, he was familiar enough with the basic facts; every child on Thalassa grew up with them. He knew how, as the centuries ticked remorselessly by, the astronomers’ diagnosis became ever more confident, the date of their prediction steadily more precise. In the year 3600, plus or minus 75, the Sun would become a nova. Not a very spectacular one – but big enough…

  An old philosopher had once remarked that it settles a man’s mind wonderfully to know that he will be hanged in the morning. Something of the same kind occurred with the entire human race, during the closing years of the Fourth Millennium. If there was a single moment when humanity at last faced the truth with both resignation and determination, it was at the December midnight when the year 2999 changed to 3000. No one who saw that first 3 appear could forget that there would never be a 4.

  Yet more than half a millennium remained; much could be done by the thirty generations that would still live and die on Earth as had their ancestors before them. At the very least, they could preserve the knowledge of the race, and the greatest creations of human art.

  Even at the dawn of the space age, the first robot probes to leave the solar system had carried recordings of music, messages, and pictures in case they were ever encountered by other explorers of the cosmos. And though no sign of alien civilizations had ever been detected in the home galaxy, even the most pessimistic believed that intelligence must occur somewhere in the billions of other island universes that stretched as far as the most powerful telescope could see.

  For centuries, terabyte upon terabyte of human knowledge and culture were beamed towards the Andromeda Nebula and its more distant neighbours. No one, of course, would ever know if the signals were received – or, if received, could be interpreted. But the motivation was one that most men could share; it was the impulse to leave some last message – some signal saying, “Look – I, too, was once alive!”

  By the year 3000, astronomers believed that their giant orbiting telescopes had detected all planetary systems within five hundred light-years of the Sun. Dozens of approximately Earth-size worlds had been discovered, and some of the closer ones had been crudely mapped. Several had atmospheres bearing that unmistakable signature of life, an abnormally high percentage of oxygen. There was a reasonable chance that men could survive there – if they could reach them.

  Men could not, but Man could.

  The first seedships were primitive, yet even so they stretched technology to the limit. With the propulsion systems available by 2500, they could reach the nearest planetary system in two hundred years, carrying their precious burden of frozen embryos.

  But that was the least of their tasks. They also had to carry the automatic equipment that would revive and rear these potential humans, and teach them how to survive in an unknown but probably hostile environment. It would be useless – indeed, cruel – to decant naked, ignorant children on to worlds as unfriendly as the Sahara or the Antarctic. They had to be educated, given tools, shown how to locate and use local resources. After it had landed and the seedship became a Mother Ship, it might have to cherish its brood for generations.

  Not only humans had to be carried, but a complete biota. Plants (even though no one knew if there would be soil for them), farm animals, and a surprising variety of essential insects and microorganisms also had to be included in case normal food-production systems broke down and it was necessary to revert to basic agricultural techniques.

  There was one advantage in such a new beginning. All the diseases and parasites that had plagued humanity since the beginning of time would be left behind, to perish in the sterilizing fire of Nova Solis.

  Data banks, “expert systems” able to handle any conceivable situation, robots, repair and backup mechanisms – all these had to be designed and built. And they had to function over a timespan at least as long as that between the Declaration of Independence and the first landing on the Moon.

  Though the task seemed barely possible, it was so inspiring that almost the whole of mankind united to achieve it. Here was a long-term goal – the last long-term goal – that could now give some meaning to life, even after Earth had been destroyed.

  The first seedship left the solar system in 2553, heading towards the Sun’s near twin, Alpha Centauri A. Although the climate of the Earth-sized planet Pasadena was subject to violent extremes, owing to nearby Centauri B, the next likely target was more than twice as far away. The voyage time to Sirius X would be over four hundred years; when the seeder arrived, Earth might no longer exist.

  But if Pasadena could be successfully colonized, there would be ample time to send back the good news. Two hundred years for the voyage, fifty years to secure a foothold and build a small transmitter, and a mere four years for the signal to get back to Earth – why, with luck, there would be shouting in the streets, around the year 2800.

  In fact, it was 2786; Pasadena had done better than predicted. The news was electrifying, and gave renewed encouragement to the seeding programme. By this time, a score of ships had been launched, each with more advanced technology than its precursor. The latest models could reach a twentieth of the velocity of light, and more than fifty targets lay within their range.

  Even when the Pasadena beacon became silent after beaming no more than the news of the initial landing, discouragement was only momentary. What had been done once could be done again – and yet again – with greater certainty of success.

  By 2700 the crude technique of frozen embryos was abandoned. The genetic message that Nature encoded in the spiral structure of the DNA molecule could now be stored more easily, more safely, and even more compactly, in the memories of the ultimate computers, so that a million genotypes could be carried in a seedship no larger than an ordinary thousand-passenger aircraft. An entire unborn nation, with all the replicating equipment needed to set up a new civilization, could be contained in a few hundred cubic metres, and carried to the stars.

  This, Brant knew, was what had happened on Thalassa seven hundred years ago. Already, as the road climbed up into the hills, they had passed some of the scars left by the first robot excavators as they sought the raw materials from which his own ancestors had been created. In a moment, they would see the long-abandoned processing plants and –

  “What’s that?” Councillor Simmons whispered urgently.

  “Stop!” the mayor ordered. “Cut the engine, Brant.” She reached for the car microphone.

  “Mayor Waldron. We’re at the seven-kilometre mark. There’s a light ahead of us – we can see it through the trees – as far as I can tell it’s exactly at First Landing. We can’t hear anything. Now we’re starting up again.”

  Brant did not wait for the order, but eased the speed control gently forward. This was the second most exciting thing
that had happened to him in his entire life, next to being caught in the hurricane of ‘09.

  That had been more than exciting; he had been lucky to escape alive. Perhaps there was also danger here, but he did not really believe so. Could robots be hostile? Surely there was nothing that any outworlders could possibly want from Thalassa, except knowledge and friendship …

  “You know,” Councillor Simmons said, “I had a good view of the thing before it went over the trees, and I’m certain it was some kind of aircraft. Seedships never had wings and streamlining, of course. And it was very small.”

  “Whatever it is,” Brant said, “we’ll know in five minutes. Look at that light – it’s come down in Earth Park – the obvious place. Should we stop the car and walk the rest of the way?”

  Earth Park was the carefully tended oval of grass on the eastern side of First Landing, and it was now hidden from their direct view by the black, looming column of the Mother Ship, the oldest and most revered monument on the planet. Spilling round the edges of the still-untarnished cylinder was a flood of light, apparently from a single brilliant source.

  “Stop the car just before we reach the ship,” the mayor ordered. “Then we’ll get out and peek around it. Switch off your lights so they won’t see us until we want them to.”

  “Them – or It?” asked one of the passengers, just a little hysterically. Everyone ignored him.

  The car came to a halt in the ship’s immense shadow, and Brant swung it round through a hundred and eighty degrees.

  “Just so we can make a quick getaway,” he explained, half seriously, half out of mischief; he still could not believe that they were in any real danger. Indeed, there were moments when he wondered if this was really happening. Perhaps he was still asleep, and this was merely a vivid dream.