The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fifteenth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  Somehow, she knew intuitively, the anaerobes had done it. They had evolved an intricate network. Peroxide eaters somehow traded with the harvesters of vapor. And they communicated-surely, for why else would they evolve light signaling?

  The pearly lance, jutting up: A signal? A celebration? A mating dance? With so much energy expended, there must be some purpose.

  It was natural to see it as a pointed message, but there are many behaviors in biology that defy easy logic. She knew what she would like to believe, but ... Science is a systematic way to avoid fooling yourself, after all.

  So much to guess ... They were three weeks out before Ground Control sent the liftoff pictures from the microcams she had positioned. One had pointed nearly north, along their trajectory. The rocket plume had blazed across the hard blackness and then vanished from the cams fixed view. But the cam kept on recording because there was still something to see.

  They had caught it. The ivory plume, towering kilometers into the sky, mingling with the gleaming stars. What's this?-Earth wanted to know.

  She smiled. Memory was always tricky, unreliable. That was why they trained you to observe and sample.

  From the spectrum Earthside could tell that the gas was methane and hydrogen, with some sulfur. Useful stuff. But-what's this?

  She knew then that she would return. Let Piotr sit in his estates, but she was a scientist. There was a whole vast world back there to fathom.

  Not the scarred surface, but the kilometers-deep labyrinth of ancient refuge. In that last moment, she sensed, Mars had flashed au revoir, not adieu.

  Table of Contents

  THE YEAR'S BEST SCIENCE FICTION: FIFTEENTH ANNUAL COLLECTION

  Contents

  Acknowledgements

  Summation: 1997

  Beauty in the Night

  ONE: NINE YEARS FROM NOW

  TWO: SIXTEEN YEARS FROM NOW

  THREE: NINETEEN YEARS FROM NOW

  FOUR: TWENTY YEARS FROM NOW

  FIVE: TWENTY-TWO YEARS FROM NOW

  Second Skin

  Steamship Soldier on the Information Front

  Reasons to be Cheerful

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  Moon Six

  We Will Drink a Fish Together. . .

  Escape Route

  Itsy Bitsy Spider

  A Spy in Europa

  The Undiscovered

  Echoes

  Getting To Know You

  SUMMER 2062

  Balinese Dancer

  Marrow

  MISSION YEAR 0.00:

  MISSION YEAR I.03:

  MISSION YEAR I.22:

  MISSION YEAR 4.43:

  MISSION YEAR 6.55:

  MISSION YEAR 88.55:

  MISSION YEAR 88.90:

  MISSION YEAR 89.09:

  MISSION YEAR 114.41:

  MISSION YEARS 511.01-1603.73:

  MISSION YEAR 4895.33:

  MISSION DATE-INCONSEQUENTIAL

  Heart of Whitenesse

  The Wisdom of Old Earth

  The Pipes of Pan

  Crossing Chao Meng Fu

  Yeyuka

  Frost Painting

  Lethe

  Winter Fire

  Nevermore

  Open Veins

  After Kerry

  The Masque of Agamemnon

  Gulliver at Home

  A Cold, Dry Cradle

  PART I

  PART 2

  PART 3