by Jo Zebedee
Seventeen days later a three kilometre lilypad floated on the ocean: artificial hills covered with solar panels, a thermo-pump descending into the water, five marinas ready for when humans wanted to leave for land. The surface of the lilypad was covered with transparent domes, for Grey was not warm, even here, near the equator, Xie Fei hypothesizing that there was not enough carbon dioxide to create a greenhouse effect strong enough to mimic Earth’s.
“What about the spherics?” Madeleine asked.
“I do not think they are alive, do you?” Xie Fei replied.
Madeleine shook her head, but then hesitated, and shrugged.
*
The second landfall was made by Xie Fei, Madeleine and a scientist pair, the Cambodian medic Hor Namhong and the xenobiologist Hu Min. They stepped onto the beach as James Cook had on Earth in the eighteenth century, knowing nothing of what faced them. The white sandy shore, like the sea, swarmed with microscopic organisms based on Grey’s carbon chemistry – much like the Earth three billion years ago. Multi-cellular life existed, but there was almost nothing large enough in that biosphere to be seen with the naked eye. Neither chlorophyll nor anything like it seemed to have evolved.
Xie Fei hoped the mystery of the monochrome monoculture would soon be exposed. Walking warily, a net on a pole held in both hands, watched by a thousand pairs of eyes and as many computer cameras, she crept forward to the edge of the roiling seashore mass and grabbed a spheric, running back to the waves to drop it into a chem-neutral container.
The computers inside the container began their work. Xie Fei relaxed. She had been afraid of something unexpected, something bizarre, something to match the awesome state of Grey’s land. She could feel the bass vibrations of a billion spherics through her skin; the air a constant thrum. For some, notably Madeleine, this was a pleasant sensation like a jacuzzi of mist, but for Xie Fei it was more of an annoyance.
Later, Hor Namhong gave his initial assessment, standing with his feet in the sea, his trousers rolled up to his knees. Pointing at the container he said, “The spheric is exchanging gases. Carbon dioxide is being taken in and oxygen is being expelled. But the reverse also happens.”
“Like photosynthesis and respiration?” said Xie Fei.
Hor Namhong nodded, pushing his spectacles up to the bridge of his nose. “My guess is that the spherics are a kind of life, using oxygen to respire, presumably to make energy, but also expelling oxygen in a reverse process.” He glanced over his shoulder at the sea. “There may be similar processes going on out there, based in microscopic marine life.”
“What is the percentage of oxygen here?”
“Seventeen. That has to be explained somehow – some process must support the disequilibrium of atmospheric gases.”
Xie Fei nodded, then knelt to peer at the trapped spheric. Already its vital forces were fading, if its lack of energy was anything to go by – it looked like a floppy puffball fungus. “You really think this might be alive?”
“Possibly. I agree with the other scientists though, the lack of variety amongst the spherics is difficult to explain, as is the total absence of other active entities of a similar size.”
Xie Fei turned to face Hu Min. “Over to you,” she said.
Hu Min set up her dissection table, around it a phalanx of computer-cams to observe the operation. The spheric, now motionless, she removed from the container, placing it on the table.
Carefully, with a scalpel, she cut open the spheric, placing an autonomous mini-android inside then linking it to a receiving station. Grey juice seeped from the wound, like so much jelly, then a jet of white water and what looked like a trail of greasy organs. There followed a pause. The mini-android explored the corpus of the spheric. Analyses followed.
Hu Min surveyed the results, then said, “Complex carbon chemistry… multi-cellular… individual cells appear to have control mechanisms… specialised internal structure… an organ centrally placed with a vast number of interconnections… is it alive?”
“Yes, is it?” Xie Fei asked.
Hu Min shrugged. “I suppose it must be.”
“You suppose? The mini-android’s analysis sounds persuasive.”
“Something isn’t making sense here.”
“We want to colonise this planet,” Xie Fei said. “Grey has to make sense.”
“I know.”
“We need to live on land.”
“I know.”
“Are the spherics alive?”
Hu Min ran a hand through her white hair. “We should try to answer that question, certainly.”
*
The CC decided they needed to know more about the deep history of Grey, the geological history, going back millions, billions of years. Simple life had evolved here, as it had on other planets, but had complex life ever appeared? The evidence on the moon suggested so, but it was not proof.
A clutch of lilypads now floated near the shore of Grey’s sole continent, five hundred people living on them, leaving a similar number in orbit. On the largest lilypad, devoted to manufacturing, a group of Von Neumanns constructed a vehicle that could delve beneath the roiling mass of spherics, then in some suitable location drill into the rocks to take samples. Xie Fei would direct the vehicle from its interior cockpit, alongside two geologists.
The danger was obvious to all. Xie Fei was taking a risk. But she argued in favour of it. “We need to locate sedimentary rocks, and the best way of doing that is on land. We do not have the capability yet to perform a planet-wide ocean bed survey. If our vehicle is robust, we will survive.”
The vehicle was robust; and it needed to be. With the trio inside, it moved like wounded mole across the seashore, poking its way gently into the outer edge of the spheric mass, allowing them to swarm over it, then heading beneath the surface, following what seemed to be the course of an ancient river.
The environment beneath the spherics mass was extreme. It did rain on Grey’s land, water sinking through the billions of crevices between spherics, and heat generated by the friction of their movement warmed this water. Soon Xie Fei noticed that these subterranean spherics were subtly different to their airside kin, their outer skins a little slimy, their tendrils a little shorter, their sense organs – if sense organs those bumps were – a little smaller. The product of an evolutionary process? Impossible to tell.
Xie Fei also noticed that the size of the spherics depended on their depth. In the centre of the continent the roiling mass was hundreds of metres deep, that huge mass creating a huge weight, which in turn created high pressure. So here, at the bottom of the pile, there was evidence of friction, fluid and heat, the material they burrowed through like half chewed sandpaper, the temperature fifty celcius, the motion of the small spherics like compressed coelenterates in glue.
“This is a steady-state environment,” she said. “It must therefore be self-regulating. Perhaps Hu Min was too cautious in her assessment.”
Eight kilometres from the shore they halted. Lacking any means of locating sedimentary rocks they relied on guesswork.
The senior geologist, Luo Ping-hai, explained, “We are hunting for sedimentary rocks because we need stratified deposits. In strata we have our template for activity and change on Grey. The thinnest layer will represent ten thousand years – a hundred of them makes a million years, which is almost nothing in the life of this planet. We shall need a good, long cross section.”
Xie Fei asked, “What will you be looking for?” She always got to the point.
“Signs of climate perturbation. Regular cycles, which most likely will be based on the mechanics of Grey’s orbit, and how it spins along that orbit. Iridium spikes suggesting interplanetary visitors. Hints of global glaciation – a snowball perhaps.”
“And fossils, of course.”
“Hopefully.”
For seven days they drilled for samples, moved like a hungry beast beneath the roiling mass, took more samples, but all the rocks w
ere igneous or metamorphic. On the eighth day they chanced upon a curved section of rocks, which clearly existed in layers.
“An ancient ocean bed,” Luo Ping-hai said. “This is exactly what we want. And what I expected – most of Grey’s sedimentary record will be marine.”
They drilled as deep as they could, extracting hundreds of metres of rock – a myriad of layers. This Luo Ping-hai stored in labelled sections.
The nuclear powered vehicle could have lasted months beneath the spheric mass, but Xie Fei, ever cautious, did not want to outstay their welcome. She gave directions for the vehicle to head back to the shore. Not immune to the pleasures of success, she also gave directions for English champagne to be opened.
*
Luo Ping-hai analysed the stratified rock samples, then gave a conference. “There is,” he said, “evidence of complex life on Grey, hundreds of millions of years ago, a time scale approximately matching the radioactive dating of titanium artefacts on the moon. Two kilometres down we came to strata representing shallow water, most likely a river delta. There were fossils of large beings in these strata – limbed beings, like our animals. These creatures lived in a region that was on a descending tectonic escalator, which is why they’ve been preserved.”
“They were preserved uneroded?” asked Xie Fei.
Luo Ping-hai nodded. “Their region sank, quite swiftly in geological terms, into soft, waterlogged material that preserved them, then became compressed, lithified, making fossils in a bed of rock – what I was seeking. But in one particular layer I’ve identified straight-edged stone, suggesting the accidentally preserved foundations of large buildings. I also believe I’ve discovered the remains of artificial glass, a milky white substance present in tiny but regular quantities.”
Luo Ping-hai turned to wave at his computer screen. A pattern appeared.
“What is that?” Xie Fei asked.
“I believe it’s the trace remnant of an artificial plastic. That herringbone pattern is a repeating section of a long-chain carbon molecule. Possibly it’s of organic origin, but I think it’s much more likely to be artificial. Evidence of a briefly flourishing civilisation.”
“The civilisation that reached the moon and mined titanium.”
“Yes.”
“But all this happened millions-“
“Hundreds of millions of years ago. On Earth, dinosaurs hadn’t even appeared.”
“Then what are the spherics?” Xie Fei asked.
“I think the spherics have existed here all that time. I think they represent a fantastically stable system, living, non-living… who knows? There are positive and negative feedback processes that allow them to remain stable as a group, despite their vast numbers, processes that also contribute to the stability of the planetary environment. The atmosphere is in disequilibrium, with the presence of much oxygen, yet it’s stable. My evidence suggests that the temperature of Grey’s surface has hardly varied for hundreds of millions of years, also pointing to the existence of a self-regulating planetary system.”
“Just like Gaia on Earth.”
“Just like Earth.”
Xie Fei shook her head. “What, then, are these spherics?”
Luo Ping-hai nodded. “What indeed are they? I don’t know, but I think they’ve existed here all that time – and now we, outsiders like no others on Grey, have arrived to disturb their stability. How dangerous for them.”
*
A council was inaugurated in the science lilypad to discuss the spherics. Present were Xie Fei, Madeleine Verges, xenobiologist Hu Min and medic Hor Namhong. The rest of the Greyside team, and everybody in the starship, watched through the computer-cam network.
Xie Fei, eschewing formalities, asked the essential question. “Are the spherics alive?”
Hu Min had dissected and analysed a number of spherics now. Running a hand over newly cropped white hair she said, “I believe they are… though still I can’t be certain-“
“What does your team think?” Xie Fei interrupted.
Hu Min shrugged. “Ten think they are alive for every one who doesn’t. The spherics do reproduce, though extremely slowly. They exchange complex carbon molecules in an unvarying format, using the fluids on their body surface as a medium, and my guess is that this is a DNA equivalent. Then they bud, asexually. But phenotype variation is almost nonexistent – effectively little or no Darwinian evolution.”
“No selection pressure?”
“Perhaps.” Hu Min shrugged. “The most interesting physiological aspect is the knot of interconnected tissue in the centre of each spheric, linked to what seem to be sense organs – trillions of connections, like our brain.”
“Then they’re alive, and possibly intelligent,” Madeleine observed.
“I don’t see how they could have survived, unchanged, intelligent, for so long,” Hu Min replied.
Xie Fei said, “The era of bacterial life on Earth lasted billions of years almost unchanged before the Cambrian Explosion. This could be similar.”
Hu Min nodded. “And we must be wary of making direct comparisons. This is an alien world, with an alien creation upon it.”
“Do we know for certain,” Xie Fei asked, “that the spherics in fact have survived for hundreds of millions of years?”
Hu Min nodded. “There are fossils of them in the sedimentary rock record, located and analysed by Luo Ping-hai. They’re not great fossils, but there can be little doubt.”
Silence fell across the quartet, but as Xie Fei took a breath to speak the computer-cam network died. Solar lamps failed, then tripped over into stored power mode. Electric seats sagged, monitors died.
Xie Fei sat up. “Report?”
There was no answer. The lilypad life systems did not reply. They had power, but no communication. Xie Fei snapped open a personal com. Dead.
Hu Min and Hor Namhong stood up, also tapping their coms. “Dead,” Hor Namhong reported.
“Mine too,” said Madeleine.
Xie Fei ran to the nearest window. It was early evening, beta Hydrii setting into scarlet clouds, a thousand lamps twinkling on nearby lilypads; and the glow and sparkle of Von Neumanns lay heavy across the manufacturing lilypad, a kilometre away.
“We seem to have power but no communications,” Hor Namhong reported. He shrugged.
“Taken out,” Xie Fei murmured. “We will have lost our links to the Mei-lu.”
“What could have caused it?” Hor Namhong asked.
In reply Xie Fei walked to a window with a view of land, where she saw a million tumbling spherics – inscrutable, baffling, fading into monochrome distance. “We face great peril,” she said. “Nothing works without electromagnetic communications. We do not work. Madeleine, initiate a full red alert. Swim over to the other lilypads if you have to.”
*
Xie Fei had fifty years experience in her chosen field. With skill, speed and clarity she analysed the com records of two lilypads, discovering that a massive, precise and localised electromagnetic storm had knocked out all computer related linkage. The colony was blind and deaf. Autonomous solar power was unaffected, but everything run by computers was damaged, especially if it was linked by electromagnetic waves to other computers.
“That storm was targeted,” Xie Fei said.
“The spherics?” Madeleine asked.
“What else?”
Xie Fei gave an order for a message to be written in paint on the central dome of the manufacturing lilypad, that would be seen by Qu Lei-lei through the starship opticals.
“Ridiculous!” she said. “Near the end of the twenty second century, painting a message…”
“Is it to be an SOS?” asked Hu Min.
Xie Fei shook her head. “Qu Lei-lei will do nothing until he knows exactly what has happened. Our message will be brief and reassuring.”
“He might send an exploratory team down,” said Madeleine.
“I doubt that. He will see us all mo
ving around the lilypads. Life continues here, though electromagnetic communication does not. But he will worry about our life support systems if this situation is not dealt with soon, for they are all electromagnetically connected. Meat cell stations for instance, and hydroponic fields.”
“What next then?”
In reply, Xie Fei took Madeleine into a private alcove. “What is your instinct?” she asked.
Madeleine leaned back into her chair. “Luo Ping-hai was correct, we’ve disturbed the equilibrium of the spherics. They’ve neutralised us.”
Xie Fei nodded. This was her opinion.
“What are we going to do?” Madeleine said. She looked frightened.
“Think,” Xie Fei replied. “I for one will not give up. Grey’s land surface must be colonised. Our journey was one way.”
*
The second electromagnetic storm was more selective. It targeted the autonomous control systems of the lilypad solar power sources.
Xie Fei, though she had not expected this, had used her foresight and intuition to remodel the power supplies, so that, when they were knocked out, she was able to set them up again as individual, unlinked units, protected by earthed shields.
“We are safe,” she observed, “for a while.”
“Did the storm have a source?” Madeleine asked.
Xie Fei analysed results logged by the network of sensors she had installed atop the higher lilypads. “Land,” she said. “No discrete source.” She pondered this for a moment, then added, “I did wonder if the spherics might be a distributed network of undifferentiated individuals. These results suggest so. They are definitely moving against us. They sense our electromagnetic presence… and perhaps that presence only. They know we have an electromagnetic presence.”
