Space

by Stephen Baxter

  Virtual Paulis had issues of his own. ‘Remarkable,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  Paulis sounded wistful. ‘Meacher, we didn’t want to emphasize the point overmuch before you left, but you’re the first human to have passed through a Saddle Point teleport – except for Malenfant, and he never reported back. We didn’t know what would happen.’

  ‘Maybe I would have arrived here as warm meat. All the lights on but nobody at home. Is that what you expected?’

  ‘It was a possibility. Philosophically.’

  ‘The Gaijin pass back and forth all the time.’

  ‘Ah, but perhaps they don’t have souls, as we do.’

  ‘Souls, Frank?’ She was growing suspicious. ‘It isn’t just you in there, is it? I can’t imagine Frank Paulis discussing theology.’

  ‘I’m a composite.’ He grinned. ‘But I – that is, Paulis – won the fight to be front man.’

  ‘Now that sounds like Frank.’

  ‘For thousands of years we’ve wondered about the existence of a soul. Does the mind emerge from the body, or does the soul have some separate existence, somehow coupled to the physical body? Consider a thought experiment. If I made an exact duplicate of you, down to the last proton and electron and quantum state, but a couple of metres to the left – would that copy be you? Would it have a mind? Would it be conscious?’

  ‘But that’s pretty much what we’ve done. Isn’t it? But rather than a couple of metres …’

  ‘Eighteen light years. Yes. But still, as far as I can tell you – I mean the inner you – have emerged unscathed. The teleport mechanism is a purely physical device. It has transported the machinery of your body – and yet your soul appears to have arrived intact as well. All this seems to prove that we are after all no more than machines – no more than the sum of our parts. A whole slew of religious beliefs are going to be challenged by this one simple fact.’

  She looked inward. ‘I’m still Madeleine. I’m still conscious.’ But then, she reflected, I would think so, wouldn’t I? Maybe I’m not truly conscious. Maybe I just think I am.

  The ship surged as the flower scoop thumped into pockets of richly ionized gas; the universe was, rudely, intruding into philosophy.

  ‘I don’t understand how come the Saddle Point wasn’t out on some remote rim, like in the solar system.’

  ‘Meacher, the gravitational map of this binary system is complex, a lot more than Sol’s. There is a solar focus point close to each of the system’s points of gravitational equilibrium. We emerged from L4, the stable Lagrange point which precedes the neutron star in its orbit, and that’s where we’ll return.’

  ‘There must be other foci, on the rim of the system. Other Saddle Points which would be a lot safer to use.’

  ‘Sure.’ Virtual Frank grinned. ‘But the Gaijin aren’t human, remember. They seem to have utter confidence in their technology, their shielding, the reliability and control of their ramjets. We have to assume that the Gaijin know what they’re doing …’

  Madeleine turned to the consoles. Soon her monitors showed that data was starting to come in on hydrogen alpha emission, ultraviolet line spectra, ultraviolet and X-ray imaging, spectrography of the active regions, zodiacal light, spectroheliographs. Training and practice took over as she went into the routine tasks, and as she worked, some of her awe went away.

  ‘Meacher. Look ahead.’

  She reached for the periscope again. She looked at the approaching horizon – over which dawn was breaking. Dawn, on a star?

  A great pulse of torn gas fled towards her over the horizon. It subsided in great arcs to the star’s surface, the battered atoms flailing in the star’s magnetic field – and again, a few seconds later – and once again, at deadly regular intervals. And the breaths of plasma grew more violent.

  ‘My God, Frank.’

  ‘Neutron star rise,’ Paulis said gently. ‘Just watch. Watch and learn. And remember, for all of us.’

  The neutron star came over the horizon now, stalking disdainfully over its companion’s surface, their separation only a third that between the Earth and its Moon. The primary rose in a yearning tide as the neutron star passed, glowing gas forming a column that snaked up, no more than a few hundred metres across at its neck. Great lumps of glowing material tore free and swirled inwards to a central point, a tiny object of such unbearable brightness that the periscope covered it with a patch of protective darkness.

  And then the explosion came.

  Blackness.

  Madeleine flinched. ‘What the hell –’

  The smart periscope had blanked over. The darkness cleared slowly, revealing a cloud of scattered debris through which the neutron star sailed serenely.

  ‘That’s a burster,’ said Paulis dryly.

  The cloak of matter around the neutron star was building up again.

  Flash.

  The periscope blacked out once more.

  ‘You’ll get used to it,’ Paulis said. ‘It comes every fourteen seconds, regular as your heartbeat. An X-ray flash bright enough to be seen from Earth.’

  She studied her instruments. The data was flowing in, raw, uninterpreted. ‘Paulis, I’m no double-dome. Tell me what’s happening. The primary’s star-stuff –’

  Flash.

  ‘– fuses when it hits the neutron star, right?’

  ‘Yes. Hydrogen from the primary fuses to helium as it trickles to the neutron star’s surface. In seconds, the helium collects over the crust into a kind of atmosphere, metres thick. But it is a transient atmosphere which abruptly fuses further, into carbon and oxygen and other complex molecules –’

  Flash.

  ‘– blasting away residual hydrogen as it does so.’

  The neutron star roared towards the flower-ship, dragging its great hump of star-stuff beneath it, and –

  Flash.

  – bellowing out its fusion yells. The Gaijin pulled the flower-ship’s petals in further; the mouth of the ram closed to a tight circle.

  A circle which dipped towards the neutron star.

  ‘What are they doing?’

  ‘Try not to be afraid, Meacher.’

  The flower-ship swooped closer to the primary; red vacuoles fled beneath Madeleine like crowding fish. She sailed beneath the neutron star, skirting the mouth of fire it tore open in the flesh of the primary.

  Her body decided it was time for a fresh bout of space adaptation syndrome.

  The Waste Management Station was another Shuttle-era veteran, and it took some operating. When she came out, she opened her medical kit and took a scopalomine/Dexidrene.

  ‘Meacher, you’re entitled to a little nausea. You’re earning us a first-hand view of a neutron star. I’m proud of you.’

  ‘Frank, I’ve been flying for twenty years, fifteen professionally. I’ve flown to the edge of space. I have never had a ride like this.’

  ‘Of course not. No human has, in all of history.’

  ‘No human except Reid Malenfant.’

  ‘Yes. Except him.’

  She looked inside herself, and found, despite the queasiness, she was hooked.

  Maybe it didn’t matter what she would find, back home. Maybe she would choose to go on, like Reid Malenfant. Submit herself to the beautiful blue pain, over and over. And travel on to places like this …

  ‘Listen, Meacher. You’ll have to prepare yourself for the next encounter with the burster. The neutron star’s orbit around its parent is only eleven minutes.’ His image seemed to be breaking up.

  ‘Frank, I think I’m losing you.’

  ‘No. I’m just diverting a lot of processing resources right now … I have something odd, from that neutron star flyby. I need some input from you.’

  ‘What kind of input?’

  ‘Interpretation. Look at this.’

  He brought up an image of the neutron star, at X-ray wavelengths. He picked out a section of the surface, and expanded it. Bands of pixels swept over the image, enhancing and augmenting.r />
  ‘Do you know anything about neutron stars, Meacher? A neutron star is the by-product of a supernova, the violent, final collapse of a massive star at the end of its life. This specimen is as heavy as the sun, but only around twenty kilometres wide. The matter in the interior is degenerate, the electron shells of its atoms collapsed by the pressure. The surface gravity is billions of G, although normal matter – bound by atomic bonds – can exist there. The surface is actually rigid, a metallic crust.’

  She looked more closely at the image. ‘Looks like there are patterns on the surface of the neutron star.’ There were hexagons, faintly visible.

  ‘Yeah,’ Paulis said. ‘Now look at this.’

  He flicked to other wavelengths. The things showed up at optical frequencies, even: patterns of tidy hexagons each a metre or so across. In a series of shots shown in chronological order, she could see how the patterns were actually spreading, their six-fold symmetry growing over the crystalline surface of the neutron star.

  Growing, to her unscientific mind, like a virus. Or a bacterial colony.

  Life, she thought, and she dissolved into wonder.

  ‘The Gaijin don’t seem surprised,’ virtual Frank said.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Life emerges everywhere it can. So they say … The star creatures’ metabolism is based on atomic bonds. Just as is ours – yours. Their growth paths follow the flux lines of the neutron star’s magnetic field, which is enormously powerful. Evidently the complex heavy atoms deposited by the fusion processes assist and stimulate their development. But eventually –’

  ‘I think I can guess.’

  On multiple softscreens, hexagons split and multiplied into patterns of bewildering complexity, ever-changing. The images grew more blurred as the star’s rudimentary, and transient, atmosphere built up.

  ‘Think of it, Meacher,’ Paulis said. His image was grainy, swarms of blocky pixels crossing his face like insects; nearly all the biopro’s immense processing power was devoted to interpreting the neutron star data. ‘The very air they move through betrays them; it grows too thick and explodes – wiping the creatures clean from the surface of their world.’

  ‘Well, not quite,’ Madeleine said. ‘They survive somehow, for the next cycle.’

  ‘Yes. I guess the equivalent of spores must be deposited on or below the surface of the star. To survive these global conflagrations, every fourteen seconds, they must be pretty rudimentary, however – probably no more advanced than lichen. I wonder how much these frenetic little creatures might achieve if the fusion cycle was removed from their world …’

  She watched the surges of the doomed neutron star lichen, the hypnotic rhythm of disaster on a world like a trap.

  She stirred. Did it have to be this way?

  Paulis said, ‘Meacher –’

  ‘Shut up, Frank.’

  Maybe she wasn’t going to turn out to be just a passive observer on this mission after all. But she doubted if John Glenn would have approved of the scheme she was planning.

  The Gaijin told Paulis, by whatever indirect channels they were operating, that they planned two more days in orbit.

  Madeleine called up Paulis. ‘We have a decision to make,’ she said.

  ‘A decision?’

  ‘On the siting of our UN-controlled teleport gateway.’

  ‘Yes. Obviously the recommendation is to place the gateway at L5, the trailing Lagrange stable point –’

  ‘No. Listen, Frank. This system must have a Saddle Point on the line between the neutron star and its parent – somewhere in the middle of that column of hydrogen attracted from the primary.’

  ‘Of course.’ He looked at her suspiciously. ‘There’s a gravitational equilibrium there, the L1 Lagrange point.’

  ‘That’s where I want the gateway.’

  He looked thoughtful – or rather his face emptied of expression, and she imagined mips being diverted to the data channel connecting him to the Gaijin. ‘But L1 is unstable. It would be difficult to maintain the gateway’s position. Anyway, there would be a net flow of hot hydrogen through the gateway, into the transmitter at the solar system end. We won’t be able to use the gateway for two-way travel.’

  ‘Frank, for Christ’s sake, that’s hardly important. We can’t get out to the solar system Saddle Points anyhow without the Gaijin hauling us there. Listen – you sent me on this mission to seek advantage. I think I found a way to do that. Trust me.’

  He studied her. ‘Okay.’ He went blank again. ‘The Gaijin want more justification.’

  ‘All right. We’ll be disrupting the flow of hydrogen from the primary to its neutron-star companion. What will be the effect on the neutron star?’

  Paulis said slowly, ‘Without the steady drizzle of fusing hydrogen onto the surface, the helium layer will cease its cycle of growth and explosion. The burster will die.’

  ‘But the lichen life forms will live. Won’t they? No more fusion blow-outs every fourteen seconds.’

  He thought it over. ‘You may be right, Meacher. And, free of the periodic extinction pulse, they may advance. My God. What an achievement. It will be as if we’ll have fathered a whole new race … But what’s the benefit to the Gaijin?’

  She said briskly, ‘They say they’ve come to us seeking answers. Maybe this is a place they will find some. A new race, new minds.’

  There was motion beyond her windows. She looked out, pressing her nose to the cool glass. The Gaijin were swarming over the hull of their flower-ship like metallic beetles, limbs flailing angularly. They were merging, she saw, becoming a gruesome metallic sea that writhed and rippled.

  ‘The Gaijin seem … intrigued,’ Paulis said carefully.

  She waited while he worked his data stream to the Gaijin.

  ‘They agree, Meacher. I hope you know what you’re doing,’ he said.

  ‘Me too, Frank. Me too.’

  The Gaijin opened up the flower-ship’s petals, and once more Madeleine swooped around the thin column of star-stuff.

  As soon as the UN Saddle Point gateway was established and operational, the result was extraordinary.

  The gateway was set at the thinnest point of the column of hot hydrogen torn from the primary. The gateway flared lurid blue, continually teleporting. At least fifty per cent of the primary’s hydrogen – according to Paulis – was disappearing into the maw of the teleport gate. It looked as if the column of material had been neatly pruned by some cosmic gardener, capped with an almost flat surface.

  ‘Good,’ Madeleine said. ‘It’s worked … We’re moving again.’ She returned to her periscopes.

  The ship approached the neutron star. The star’s ruddy surface sparkled softly as residual material fell into its gravity well. Once more the elaborate hexagonal patterns flowed vigorously across the surface of the star – but the lichen seemed, oddly, to pause after a dozen seconds or so, as if expectant of the destruction to come.

  But the fusion fire did not erupt, and the creatures surged, as if with relief, to new parts of their world.

  A fourteen-second cycle to their growth remained, but that was soon submerged in the exuberant complexity of their existence. Flowing along magnetic flux lines, the lichen quickly transformed their star-world; major sections of its surface changed colour and texture.

  It was stunning to watch.

  She felt a surge of excitement. The data she would take back on this would keep the scientists busy for decades. Maybe, she thought, this is how the double-domes feel, at some moment of discovery.

  Or an intervening god.

  … Then, suddenly, the growth failed.

  It started first at the extremes; the lichen colonies began shrivelling back to their heart lands. And then the colour of the patterns, in a variety of wavelengths, began to fade, and the neat hexagonal structure became chaotic.

  The meaning was obvious. Death was spreading over the star.

  ‘Frank. What’s happening?’

  ‘I expected this,’ the inter
face metaphor said.

  ‘You did?’

  ‘Some of my projections predicted it, with varying probability. Meacher, the lichen can’t survive without their fusion cycle. Our intervention from orbit was somewhat crude. Kind of anthropocentric. Maybe the needs of the little creatures down there are not as simple as we imagined. What if the fusion cycle is necessary to their growth and existence, in some way we don’t understand?’

  The fusion cycle had delivered layers of complex molecules to the surface. Maybe the crystalline soil down there needed its fusion summer, to wipe it clean and invigorate it, regularly. After all, extinction events on Earth led to increased biodiversity in the communities that derived from their survivors.

  And Madeleine had destroyed all that. Guilt stabbed at her stomach.

  ‘Don’t take it hard, Madeleine,’ Paulis said.

  ‘Bullshit,’ she said. ‘I’m a meddler.’

  ‘Your impulse was honourable. It was worth a try.’ He gave her a virtual smile. ‘I understand why you did it. Even if the real Frank won’t … I think we’re heading for home, Meacher. We’ll be at the Lagrange point gateway in a couple of minutes. Prepare yourself.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Thank God. Get me out of here.

  A couple of minutes, and eighteen years into the future …

  ‘And, you know,’ Paulis said, ‘maybe there are deeper questions we haven’t asked here.’ That didn’t sound like Frank Paulis, but one of his more reflective companions. A little touch of Dorothy Chaum, perhaps. ‘The Gaijin could have brought you – the first human passenger, after Malenfant – anywhere. Why here? Why did they choose to show you this? Nothing the Gaijin do is without meaning. They have layers of purpose.’

  She thought of that grisly, slow dismantling in Kefallinia, and shuddered.

  The Paulis composite said, ‘Perhaps we are here because this is the truth. The truth about the universe.’

  ‘This? This dismal cycle of disaster, helpless life forms crushed back into the slime, over and over?’

  ‘On some symbolic level, perhaps, this is the truth for us all.’