Pandora's Star

by Peter F. Hamilton

  Mark crossed the single-lane road at the end of Main Mall, and walked along the waterfront promenade. Randtown was built around a horseshoe-shaped inlet on the northern shore of Lake Trine’ba. At a hundred and eighty kilometres long, it was the biggest stretch of inland freshwater on Elan. Complementing the height of the mountains which corralled it at their centre, it was over a kilometre deep in places. Lurking below the astonishingly blue surface was a unique marine ecology that had evolved in isolation for tens of millions of years. Stunningly beautiful coral reefs dominated the shallows, while conical atolls rose from the central deeps like miniature volcanoes. They were home to thousands of fish species, ranging from the bizarre to the sublime; though, like their saltwater cousins of this planet, they used lethal-looking spines and spindles rather than fins to propel themselves along.

  After the winter skiing and snowboarding, diving was Randtown’s second largest tourist draw. The waterfront provided dozens of jetties, where the commercial diving boats were berthed. Even today, with the Trine’ba only just above freezing, ten of the operators were running trips out over the waters. Mark watched a big Celestial Tours catamaran slide past, its impellers kicking up a thick spume behind each hull. A couple of the crew waved to him from the prow, calling out something that was lost in the noise of the engines.

  He carried on along the side of the stone wall, with its single line of poetry which stretched the entire length. One day he was going to read it from start to finish. The Ables Motors garage, which was his franchise, was situated a couple of streets away from the eastern end of the promenade. He got to it well before quarter to nine. Randtown, for all it was the only real town for eight hundred kilometres, wasn’t particularly large. Without the tourists and youthful transients, the population was only just over five thousand people. You could walk from one end to the other in less than quarter of an hour.

  There were an equal number of people living out in the valleys and lowlands to the north and west where the farms and vineyards were spreading. To travel about on the district’s dirt-track roads they needed decent four-wheel-drive trans-port. That was what Ables Motors specialized in, a division of Farndale that produced vehicles for harsh terrain. It had seemed like the perfect solution to Mark when they were searching for a new home and career. He was good with machines, so he could do most of the light repairs himself; and trading both new and second-hand models would add considerably to that income. Unfortunately, Ables Motors was a relatively new venture for Farndale, an unproven brand, while the old familiar Mercedes, Ford, Range Rover, and Telmar products took the lion’s share of the market. Nor did it help that the Ables garage was only a couple of years old. He perhaps should have realized that when he took it on along with the outstanding mortgage. Sales were slow, and given the tiny number of Ables vehicles in the area, maintenance work was equally sparse.

  It had taken Mark less than a fortnight to realize that the four-wheel-drive business wasn’t going to bring in anything like a decent income for the family. When he started looking around for extra work, he swiftly found that people in town and the farms had a lot of broken-down hardware that could be fixed by anyone with rudimentary mechanical aptitude. Mark had damn good mechanical, and electrical, aptitude; on top of which he had a fully equipped workshop. At the start of the third week he brought a few items back to the work-shop, a couple of janitorbots, an air conditioner, the sonar out of a dive operator’s catamaran, cookers, solar heat exchangers.

  Randtown was a tight-knit community, people got to hear about anyone with that kind of talent. Pretty soon he was deluged with appliances and equipment that needed to be patched up. Most of it was done for cash, too; not that Elan’s taxes were excessive. But they’d been paying off the mortgage on the vineyard faster than they’d originally planned.

  That morning he’d got three autopickers waiting for him in the workshop. Each unit was the size of a car, with enough electromuscle appendages to fit a Raiel with prosthetics. They belonged to Yuri Conant, who owned three vineyards in Ulon valley, and was now a good friend and neighbour. One of Yuri’s kids was the same age as Barry.

  Mark pulled on his overalls, and started running diagnostics on the first machine. Its magnetic drive bearings were shot to hell. He was still underneath examining the superconductor linkages when his garage sales assistant, Olivia, came in.

  ‘Have you heard?’ she asked excitably.

  Mark propelled his flat trolley out from under the mud-caked autopicker and gave her a wounded look. ‘Wolfram finally asked if he could come in for a coffee last night?’ It was a saga of frustrated romance which had been playing out for two weeks now; Mark usually got the latest instalment each morning.

  ‘No! The Second Chance is back. They came out of hyper-space above Anshun about forty minutes ago.’

  ‘Goddamn! Really?’ No way could Mark pretend lack of interest in that. If he hadn’t been married with family responsibilities he would have applied to go on the voyage himself. It was all part of the more interesting universe which existed away from Augusta. As it was he’d hunted down a lot of information on the project until he was able to bore plenty of people with all the statistics and trivial factoids. His e-butler was supposed to alert him on all new developments connected with the flight, but while he was driving into town that morning he’d put a blocker on his e-butler’s access to the cybersphere to avoid any more emergency call-outs like Tea For Two. Family could get through, but no one else. He’d forgotten to take it off when he reached the garage. ‘What did they find?’ he asked as he hurriedly removed the blocker.

  ‘It’s gone, or something.’

  ‘What has?’ The data began to line up inside his virtual vision.

  ‘The barrier. It vanished when they started to examine it.’

  ‘Holy cow.’ His virtual hands started to flash over icons, bringing up information. In the end there was so much coming on line they went into the little office at the back of the salesroom to watch the images on a holographic portal. CST was releasing video segments of the exploration as the starship downloaded its data. The media companies were gleefully swooping on it, putting together their own analysis and commentary teams in the studio.

  Olivia had been right, the barrier was no more. Its disappearance was shocking, affecting him like the news of a sudden death in the family; that was one thing he absolutely hadn’t been expecting. Nor had any of the studio experts, judging by the way they struggled to make sense of it.

  There was little traffic on the road outside the Ables garage. The Russian chocolate house opposite had the same images playing in their portals above the counter. Customers sat at the tables, drinks ignored as they stared at the incomprehensibly massive barrier. He called Liz to see if she was accessing. She said yes, she was sitting with the rest of the staff at the Dunbavand vine nursery where she worked, looking at the scenes on one of the office screens.

  Mark watched, awestruck, as the spheres and rings of the Dark Fortress revolved within the portal on his desk. The scale was so hard to appreciate. Then there was the system-wide Dyson civilization. The safe thrill of watching the nuclear firefight between ships, making him feel like he was doing something illicit. None of the commentators Alessandra Baron brought in to her studio liked the implications of that. She turned to a cultural anthropologist to try and explain why a space-faring species would fight in such a fashion. He clearly didn’t have a clue.

  Hours passed without Mark really being aware of them. It was only when Olivia said, ‘Time for my lunch break,’ that he finally glanced round at her, frowning as he tried to work out what she was saying.

  ‘Right. Sure,’ he replied. ‘I don’t suppose anyone’s going to buy a vehicle off us today.’ He decided he ought to take a break himself, and shut the garage doors behind him. The promenade was unusually quiet for midday. He pulled his jacket hood up against the bitter wind blowing off the lake. Those who did stroll past had the glazed otherwhere expression symptomatic of someone absor
bed by their virtual vision. Everybody was hooked on the starship’s return. It was as momentous as the Cup Final, when all through the first half Brazil had actually looked like they were going to lose. Instinctively he glanced up at the Black House where Simon Rand lived, wondering if he too was having life put into perspective on this day. The building was a huge Georgian mansion perched on the slope above the eastern wing of the lake’s inlet, set in ten acres of its own immaculately maintained grounds. There were dozens of big houses arrayed on the slopes around it, the most expensive and exclusive in the town, though they didn’t match its grandeur. A lot of them belonged to the first arrivals, the men and women who’d joined Simon’s quixotic crusade and helped lay the highway through the mountains.

  It was fifty-five years ago now when Simon Rand arrived at Elan’s planetary station with a whole train loaded with JCB roadbuilders, a fleet of various bots, and trucks jammed full of civil construction systems. He was moderately rich even back then, a first-life son of a minor Earth Grand Family who had cashed in his trust fund to buy a dream. Inspired by legends of the Oregon Trail he was determined to set out for somewhere fresh and new, and protect it from modern desecration. Elan, opened to settlers for only a couple of decades back then, was a good starting point. Developers and investors were cut a lot of slack by the planetary government if they helped establish new neighbourhoods and facilities. The idea was such entrepreneurial folk would import entire factories and build housing around them. But Simon’s very different vision of a clean green community was harmless enough, so the bureaucrats granted him his land licences whilst privately believing the venture was doomed. After all, the Confederation worlds were littered with the follies of eccentric romanticists and their lost fortunes.

  Simon immediately set off for the almost uninhabited southern continent of Ryceel. Once there he began the ultimate foolishness of building his road through the imposing Dau’sing range – as if there wasn’t plenty of open land available north of the mountains. Several news shows ran derisive reports on their bulletins, which attracted other idealists and supporters to his cause, willing to get their hands dirty for the payday of living in a quiet, off-mainstream community when they were finished. And Simon, for all his quirky attitude, had at least prepared for his venture with a pragmatic thoroughness.

  Three years and seven hundred and eighty kilometres later his last surviving JCB monster roadbuilder chewed its way round the base of Blackwater Crag amid the death-screeches of disintegrating rock and churning clouds of filthy steam, like some earthbound dragon. Behind it was a dual carriageway of enzyme-bonded concrete that bridged seventeen rivers and tunnelled through eleven mountains. Walking along the newly laid surface that crackled and gave off urea-like fumes was Simon, leading a shambolic caravan of mobile homes, trucks, and even a few horses and mules pulling carts. The three other roadbuilders that had begun the trip were now abandoned behind them; cannibalized, rusting hulks slumped beside the road as monuments to its conception.

  Like Moses so long before him Simon gazed out across Lake Trine’ba and said, ‘This is where we belong.’ He could see that it was the cool blue water which had parted the continent-spanning mountains, leaving their massed ranks pressed together along its shores. The massif ramparts stretched on and on into the distance, reflected perfectly by the unsullied mirror surface. On both sides, hundreds of waterfalls fed by the meltwater poured out over jagged cliffs, from tiny silver trickles barely wetting the rock to great foaming cascades throwing out spray thicker than rain. Tiny, delicate scarlet and lavender coral cones were poking out from the centre of the lake. And filling the huge gulf of air above the water was a silence so deep it absorbed his very thoughts.

  In fifty-two years, the majestic view hadn’t changed. Simon was very determined about that. Buildings, forests, fields, drainage ditches, and roads now spread out over the virgin land in the valleys behind Randtown, but there was no industry, none of the factories and business units which normally barnacled the outskirts of human settlements. The inhabitants could import what they liked down the long toll highway which was still their only physical link to the rest of the human race – it wasn’t economical to build a railroad beside it, and there was nowhere for an airport. Simon wasn’t out to change the majority Commonwealth culture, he just wanted to keep the worst aspects out of his little part. So the farms were organic, the town’s principal income came from tourism, its energy was geothermal and solar; combustion engines were illegal; recycling was a minor religion, and sewage was treated in secure bioreactors to prevent the slightest chance that any foreign human-derived chemical could ever pollute the precious pure water of Lake Trine’ba.

  As environments went, Mark had gone from one extreme to the other.

  Virtual vision showed him a ghostly image of the Second Chance slowly manoeuvring itself into its assembly platform dock high above Anshun. He was struck by its condition, how unworn it was. After such a voyage there should surely be some signs of stress, a few meteor impacts, scorchmarks – just something to prove how far it had been and what it had seen. But it looked as new and clean as the day it departed.

  He stopped at one of the stalls behind the promenade and bought a tuna, shrimp, talarot, sweetcorn and mayo salad bap for lunch, along with some vegetarian sushi, plus a small something for pudding. It was Sasmi who sold it to him. She’d arrived in town a few months ago for the start of the snowboarding season. With her raven hair and flattish face Mark had thought her heritage was Oriental until she told him her ancestors were actually Finnish. A sweet girl who had dived headfirst into everything Randtown offered: the friends, parties, sports. Who always found the time to talk to Mark – not that he was singled out, she just had an irrepressibly sunny nature.

  Today even she was caught up in the drama of the starship’s return. They swapped: ‘Have you heard?’ and: ‘Did you see the bit where . . .’ as he watched her assembling his bap. He walked away back down the promenade, her parting smile lingering in his mind. There had never been so much temptation in his life before. It was an undisputed quality of Randtown; everybody here was so busy cramming their life full of events which mostly seemed to be parties and meeting other people, yet with all that they were never hurried. He had taken months to learn how to slow down and chill out after Augusta’s lean, focused routine of work and family, where enjoyment was centred solely around entertainment. His only fear about living here now was that he would give in one day – some of the girls were just divine.

  Olivia was still on her break when Mark got back to the garage. He’d only just sat down and started on his triple chip chocolate and quorknut muffin pudding when CST released the real bombshell. Two people had been left behind. The news was only just breaking because the company had been informing and counselling the families. Mark had enough trouble coping with that, never mind that one of them was actually Dudley Bose. For a while he was furious with the rest of Second Chance’s crew for abandoning them out there, such a thing was surely the ultimate betrayal. Just thinking about that much distance made him shiver. Then Captain Wilson Kime made a real-time statement. He was dressed in his full dark uniform, hair clipped neat and short, staring unflinchingly into the camera, knowing how many people would be staring back. All of them with one question on their lips. Why did you do it? Why didn’t you wait for them?

  ‘It is with the most profound regret that I find myself ending our historic voyage with this saddest possible news,’ Wilson said. His deep solemn voice was so sincere Mark immediately switched to feeling sorry for him and the terrible weight of command. ‘I was forced to make the decision which every captain fears the most, to risk the lives of every person on board, or to leave our friends and colleagues behind. This mission was launched with the express commitment of bringing back vital information on Dyson Alpha, and the remark-able barrier surrounding this star. Whilst the safety of my crew is paramount to me personally as well as enshrined in my duty, I cannot overlook our ultimate objective. We found
ourselves in a situation that placed the entire ship in grave danger. Faced with these circumstances, I had no choice other than to leave. It is a choice that I will have to face down every day for the rest of my life, always asking myself if we’d just stayed that fraction longer would they have got back in contact? But those few extra moments could equally have brought us calamity. Then we might never have brought back the information we have. The Commonwealth might not have been warned that the barrier is down, and the aliens it contained do not appear to be friendly. It is that information which I considered more important than the lives of our comrades. I know that if the tragic situation had been reversed, and I was out there lost in the alien station, that I would have wanted my shipmates to carry the essential knowledge home no matter what the personal cost. All of us undertook this voyage knowing there would be danger involved. None of us imagined it would be so profound. Thank you for your time.’

  Mark slumped back in his seat, and pushed out a long breath. Given those circumstances, he supposed he would have done exactly the same thing. It was still a pretty frightening decision, though. And the captain thought the aliens were dangerous. That wasn’t good, not good at all.