The Fifth Civilization: A Novel

by Peter Bingham-Pankratz

  “Why do you believe that?”

  “Observer, why do you think we build such fearsome ships? Why do you think we are so skilled at combat? Because aggression is part of the Kotaran DNA. Forget about the territory we hold, or the fleet we’ve constructed. Our genetic structure gives us the will to fight. Makes us superior to all of the other species we’ve yet encountered.”

  Vorjos flared his nostrils and took a drawn-out sniff. “I don’t necessarily disagree. But still, you have to admit that your belief requires a bit of faith.”

  “What I say is true, Observer. In nature, the weak die. They whittle away to nothing. What are the Nydens, the Bauxens, the humans doing this very second? Dying slowly. It takes a strong race to survive in the wild. Isn’t it obvious? We are the only race to truly evolve as was intended.”

  “Who intended that? The Gods?”

  “No. Nature. We are perfection. When we come across the lost civilization, our living ancestors, I believe they will recognize our superiority. I foresee them celebrating our arrival, perhaps even coming to revere us. They’ll have advanced beyond religion, I assure you. In time, perhaps in a generation, the Kotarans and this civilization will have formed such a bond that we can go about conquering the three lesser races.”

  Grinek grew tired of kneeling and stretched his legs. He was headed for the door when Vorjos shifted in his sling and spoke again. “What you would love more than anything is to attain glory from this trip. Isn’t that right, Grinek? You’ll want us to name a mountain after you, or something like that?”

  Grinek’s ears wiggled in thought. “I’d expect them to rename a continent for me, at least. You see, the real afterlife is in glory, not in a world beyond this one.”

  “So you say,” Vorjos said, closing his eyes. “Answer me this, Grinek, because I’ve been wondering it for a while. If this fifth civilization is so advanced, why have they never contacted anyone else? Why hasn’t so much as a radio wave ever come from this star system?”

  Grinek curled his mouth into a wide grin, the fangy smile offending Vorjos go greatly that he looked away. Grinek froze his mouth there, above the political officer. “I can’t presume to know. I only want to find out. I could ask why this doesn’t intrigue you, Observer, but I know it is because you have replaced the tangibility of your own body with pathetic concepts like politics and the divine.”

  Vorjos peeked back at Grinek, who feinted a lunge forward, startling the drunk officer enough that he flailed in his swing. Grinek snarled and turned to the door. Work had to be done, and this discussion of philosophy had grown tiresome. He opened the door and bolted past Misjrem, heading straight to the lift.

  Chapter 13

  In addition to Kel, Masao, David, and Roan, nine crewmen survived the assault. In fact, a few managed to corner and kill one of the Kotarans, who was about to detonate a grenade. But it was pretty clear that the Colobus was in terrible shape—with more than half the crew dead and only a handful of competent people to run the vessel, there was little hope of making it very far. Communication to the outside had been mostly cut off by whatever was behind them—almost certainly a Kotaran vessel.

  The faster-than-light Alcubierre Drive had been switched onto its maximum setting. Everyone prayed it wouldn’t falter.

  With extreme caution, Kel and Roan managed to sedate the unconscious Kotaran from the engine room and pile him onto a hovercart. He was transported to the medical bay where the doctor, Moira Kazen (who’d survived by hiding in her x-ray machine), restrained him and put him under more sedation. The groggy alien had squirmed and growled along the way, but Roan was confident they had him doped up enough to keep him calm while they decided his fate. The mechanic Jasper (who’d survived by acting dead) was assigned to guard the prisoner. A pistol was offered to the wily man, who said he could do just fine with his wrench.

  As evening approached, and thorough checks of the Colobus revealed absolutely no more Kotarans, all crew except for Jasper met in the dining area. It had been cleaned up from earlier in the day, where a crewman and a cook had been butchered while going about their daily tasks. As each crewman assembled, they made sure to step over a faint red streak of blood still staining the tiled floor.

  There were ten people gathered before Roan. With their haggard faces and tattered clothes, they all resembled refugees more than professional crew on an intersystem freighter. As with most of the other Type-B crews, this lot consisted of people from the poorer regions of Earth: there were two turbaned crewmen, possibly Muslims or Sikhs; two were from the Slavic States and talking in Balkan English; the rest were from various other devastated continents, with an American consoling an African friend over a bowl of cold soup. Trauma hung over the tables.

  Kel cleared her throat. “Listen up, everyone. Up here, please.” The disparate crewmen stopped their conversations and directed their attention to the captain, sitting on a stool at the head of the tables. The new captain.

  “Captain Silverman is dead, as you probably know. So is most of the crew—fourteen others in all. The Kotarans committed a massacre here.” Sniffles and nervous shifting could be heard as the crew took in what Kel was saying—though the mayhem was well known, the bare statistics were still shocking. “We’re in a pretty bad situation, but we’re safe for now. To address one of the rumors I heard earlier, yes, there is still a Kotaran alive on board. He’s going to be locked in the medical suite until further notice.”

  There were shouts of disapproval from the crew.

  “Kill him!” someone said.

  “Dump him out the airlock!” said another.

  All these ideas sounded perfectly reasonable to Roan. But the doctor, Moira, put up her hands to dismiss them and calm down the rabble. Her older Levantine features radiated a stern, motherly aura. “We’re doing nothing of the sort. We’re going to keep him alive and sedated on orders of the captain.” Moira shot Kel a somewhat disparaging look, suggesting she wasn’t all the way on board with this idea.

  “That’s right,” Kel said. “We want to know who he’s working for. What the Kotaran plan is here.”

  More jeers. “Bullshit, he’ll never talk.”

  “He’ll probably kill himself before he squeals.”

  “Good.” Laughter.

  One of the turbaned crewmen stood up. He reminded Roan vaguely of the old holofilms of his ancestors in America—not in his garb, but the way he acted, like a man who attended town hall meetings and stood up to get his voice heard.

  “Why did they attack us?” the crewman asked. “What possible valuables could we have on board? The Colobus is just on a routine trip to Orion…or was on, I should say. We only have industrial cargo on board. Right?”

  Kel looked contemplative, with eyes down at the floor. Her silence was suspicious, as Kel’s almost always was. Masao coughed, but to Roan’s surprise didn’t interject anything.

  “The Kotarans were after something on board,” Kel finally said, eyeing Roan. Here we go. Roan shook his head and unfolded his arms. He knew this was his cue.

  “It’s me,” Roan admitted. “My name is Nick Roan, for those who don’t know. I’m captain of the Dunnock, or at least I used to be. Here’s the situation: I’ve got some valuable scientific information on me right now. It’s important enough to the Kotarans that they’re willing to kill over it.”

  “And what is it?” the turbaned guy said. “What do the Kotarans want so badly?”

  Roan was quiet. “I’m not entirely sure. I only know the basics,” he said.

  “Why the hell are you letting other people get slaughtered for something you aren’t sure about?” the crewman raged, the veins in his forehead throbbing. “I know a way to solve it. Let’s all take a look at the information in question.”

  “No.”

  They didn’t like that. Now much of the crew hopped to their feet. Curses and threats flew in several languages. Roan realized that behind the kitchen counters a few feet away were several drawers of cutlery that could come in r
eal handy if the crew decided to turn the senior officers into salami. This was not the kind of fuss they needed right now.

  “We need to get off this ship!” one of the Slavs said. “Take us to Mars!”

  “Not going to happen,” Kel said.

  “Why the hell not?”

  “There’s a Kotaran ship trailing us,” Masao put in. “A military ship, from the readings it’s giving off. Not something we can go head-to-head with. It’s matched our speed and for now we can stay just ahead of it—we had a head start, after all. But we go to Mars, we’re going to have to change course and pull back on the Alcubierre drive. Then they’ll catch us. Board us again. Have their fun again.” That settled the crew down somewhat.

  Another voice: “The Martian forces will protect us.”

  Roan laughed. “You’d give those Reds a fighting chance over the Kotarans?”

  “Then what should we do?”

  “Obviously,” came a voice, “We have to assess the scientific information.”

  Heads turned as David walked in the room, an alien in a sea of humans. The chatter evaporated. David marched over to the front of the hall and stood beside Kel, who again moved her eyes to the floor, as if ashamed to share space with someone so different. David eyed the crew and his feathers tousled before he spoke again.

  “It is clear that many of us want to leave the Colobus because of the massacre. Unfortunately, that doesn’t appear to be an option in the near future. But there is good news in all of this. If what my friend Aaron Vertulfo suggested to me is true, then we are headed somewhere with unparalleled wonder.”

  Some of the crew seemed to listen raptly. A few shook their heads in disbelief. Roan sympathized with those nonbelievers, but now he was curious as to what was on Aaron’s datapad.

  David continued: “If we continue on our present course, with a slight deviation, we may come across a safe point soon. I have checked the charts. Bauxa is about one month away—and that’s the only world with enough traffic, and friends, to keep us safe. You all expected a two-month voyage, anyway, so this should not be a problem. I pray the information you will soon hear about sways you into helping us on that voyage, because we will need as much help as possible. Mr. Roan, will you please share this information with us?”

  For what seemed like the hundredth time, Roan remembered the pad in his jacket pocket. He reached in and pulled it out. All eyes were on him. Roan waved the hexagon around, the crew responding with silence. Either they were skeptical or filled with suspense. Roan walked it over to David, who snatched the pad with his talon. Roan looked around for something to play the datapad, such a computer or projector, but saw nothing. He wondered if the pad wasn’t going to be sliding down David’s gullet and then projected through that domed head of his. Now that would be something.

  Instead, David merely set the pad down on the mess table in front of him. “This was intended to be presented to the Science Committee of the Planetary Assembly in a few weeks. Please forgive its rudimentary nature.”

  David pressed two buttons on the side. There was a click.

  “Presentation T-I70,” came Aaron’s voice, a jarring sound from beyond the grave. It was as dispassionate as if he was delivering one of his scientific lectures. After the command, a holographic portrait of Earth shimmered above the device, humming and spinning. Aaron’s voice became much more animated:

  “The origin of life is a millennia-old question. Popular opinion once held that a deity or deities created it, and all of the Four Civilizations have similar views in each of their myriad religions. Christianity, Islam, and Judaism on Earth speak of Adam and Eve as the beginning of all life. The Trench Spirits on Bauxa claim that life was ejected from an undersea volcano. And the Diviners of Kotara believe that life came from sunlight millions of years ago, from the rays of Bar’Hail.

  “Scientific evidence, however, points to life originating in primordial pools billions of years ago. The right combination of chemistry and physics stewed organic matter into something much more complex. Over the millennia, this life evolved into the bipedal creatures that today define all the Four Civilizations. More or less, we have four limbs, two eyes, and brains of relatively the same size.” Earth shimmered away on the hologram, replaced by anatomy drawings of all the four known species: the human, the bird-like Nyden, the corpulent green-skinned Bauxen, the dangerous kangaroo-like Kotaran.

  “But where did this organic matter come from? It could have come from materials already present on the cooling Earth. Or it could have been deposited here by an extraterrestrial body. But if life is extraterrestrial in origin, where did it originate? To me, this question brings to mind the age-old dilemma of what came first, the chicken or the egg? Well, I’ve done the research. And I believe I can finally answer that question.”

  Only coughs and shifting could be heard from the assembled crew. Everyone now paid attention, perhaps not convinced but definitely curious.

  “There is a theory called panspermia. It postulates that life originated outside our solar system and that we, humans—and Nydens and Kotarans and Bauxens—are not, in our earliest forms, native to our home planets. Panspermia theorizes that a comet seeded Earth and all other planets with life when they were nothing but molten balls of rock. Perhaps pieces of the comet, embedded with key amino acids, collided with our infant world. We know from experiments in Antarctica that bacteria encased in a big-enough ball of ice can survive in hibernation for millions of years. Tests have also shown that bacteria can survive tremendous impacts, such as a collision with a celestial body.”

  The hologram showed clips of inert bacteria writhing into life.

  “I’ve always been intrigued by panspermia, but had no evidence for it. Such an event would’ve happened billions of years ago and no trace of it would still exist, at least not physically. I have found no comet fragments on Earth and no impact crater old enough to predate life. For example, the Greenland crater, the oldest known on Earth, was formed about three billion years ago. Life, however, originated on Earth as long ago as four billion years ago.

  “So, lacking hard, tangible traces, I’ve instead searched for indirect evidence of this seeding.” The hologram image turned into the familiar, slowly rotating shape of a DNA double helix.

  “The first clue was in genetic material. I’ve analyzed the DNA from members of all four galactic species. Until very recently, the genome of the Kotarans was unknown to outside science. After traveling to Kotara, I was able to obtain DNA that a Nyden colleague helped me decipher. This finally allowed us to map the genetic code of each of the four species, and from those, I have been able to find incontrovertible links.” The swirling double helix lit up as Aaron explained key details. “First, DNA base pairs, which code all information for life forms, are identical across all species. This has been hinted at in research before, but my experiments have finally proven the fact. Second, of the twenty standard amino acids that make up proteins—amino acids being integral parts of DNA—ten of them are identical. Lastly, we all share a key element in our bodies. Though our chemical makeups are all different, owing to the environments of our planets, all four species contain atoms composed of point fourteen percent phosphorous. Phosphorous, you may know, twins with sugar to make up the structural backbone of DNA. There are more detailed files in this device.

  “The second clue was in geography.” The hologram shimmered to show a line of planets. “Our four solar systems are more or less in a direct linear alignment, or at least the first three are. Going from ‘West’ to ‘East’ we have Nydaya, Bauxa, Kotara, and Earth. Panspermia has been dismissed before, however, because Earth is just off this line. If a drifting comet seeded the planets, the naysayers asked, how did far-away Earth get seeded? My research has shown the Beehive Cluster between Earth and Kotara was home to several white dwarf stars that went nova about four billion years ago. It is conceivable that such a change in gravity in any solar system could have altered a comet’s trajectory so that it veered near our
own solar system. A fortunate detour, for us.”

  Roan heard a few murmurs amid the crowd. Nothing too big—everyone was still processing.

  “Even with all this information, we are left with speculation. Where could such a comet have originated? We can assume it was in the so-called West, because the further you get beyond Earth, the older life becomes: that is, Earth has the youngest life of any planet, and the furthest known planet, Nydaya, has the oldest, life there coming into existence about 5.1 billion years ago. But why was the comet sent on its path across the solar system? I have another theory.” A stock animation of a comet appeared on the hologram.

  “If a world existed with life millions or billions of years ago, and suffered some calamity—a supernova, say, or an even bigger catastrophe—bacteria could have embedded in a comet and traveled through space. My best guess is there was such a world, a place where life evolved much earlier than anything previously known, an Atlantis no longer in existence. And assuming the comet moved in a mostly linear trajectory, taking into account gravitic changes we can speculate that the world would be right beyond Nydaya.”

  An animated line skewered each planet on the hologram.

  “You might ask if telescopes or sensors would have been able to pick up stellar remnants in that area. They might, if anyone was interested in looking out that way. The region where I believe the comet originated has been of little interest to human travelers because, quite simply, there is no economic incentive to travel out that way. Though it would only take two to three months to reach the area of interest, neither the Company nor the Scientific Fleet has ever sponsored a trip out that way. The Nydens, meanwhile, have very few exploratory ships of their own, and have never recorded a voyage out that far.

  “Furthermore, the area of space is noticeably devoid of many stars, and the few that have been catalogued have been deemed unremarkable and probably unsuitable for life. Most of this evidence used outdated calculations, however. I have been to Nydaya, I have used their most advanced telescopes, and I have found new planets. One in particular has stood out. In a stellar cluster just beyond Nydaya is a world I call Planet X.” A fuzzy but distinct blue planet appeared on the hologram. “Using direct imaging, I was able not only to get its coordinates, but to determine that Planet X has constant temperatures and orbits in a perfect circle around its sun—it’s in the Goldilocks Zone, just right for the conditions of life. The exact data can be downloaded from this pad. I don’t know if Planet X is where life sprang from, but it is the best candidate for new life out there. Planet X could hold the fifth, and oldest, civilization.