Time m-1

by Stephen Baxter

  Reid Malenfant:

  Malenfant stood tethered to the surface of Cruithne, waiting.

  He was aware how grimy he had become. After a couple of weeks on the asteroid, everything — his suit, the fireflies and habitats, every piece of equipment — had turned to the dismal gray-black color of Cruithne, coated with coal-dark electrostatically clinging regolith dust.

  A fabric canopy towered over him. Erected by the squid with their waldoes and fireflies, it was rigid, improbably skinny, a tent that could surely never remain upright on Earth; yet here, in Cruithne’s vacuum and miniature gravity, it could last years, unperturbed, until the fabric itself crumbled under the relentless onslaught of solar radiation.

  An automated countdown was proceeding in his headrest. Impatient, he snapped a switch to kill the robot’s soft Midwestern female voice. What difference did it make, to know the precise second? This operation wasn’t under his control anyhow. This was all cephalopod now, and Malenfant was just an observer. And he was dog tired.

  Meanwhile Cruithne turned, as it had for a billion years. Sun and stars wheeled alternately over him. When the raw sunlight hit him he could feel its strength, and the fans and pumps of his backpack whirred, the water in his cooling garment bubbling, as his suit labored under the fierce hail of photons to keep him cool and alive.

  It was, without question, a hell of a place to be.

  This operation was the fulfillment of Malenfant’s bargain with the squid.

  The mining operation here was an order of magnitude more ambitious than the simple regolith scraping Sheena 5 had initiated after she first landed. The tentlike canopy had been set up over a suitable impact crater — which Emma had named, with her gentle humor, Kimberley. The canopy was just a low-tech way to contain ore thrown out by the robot dust kicker now burrowing its way into Cruithne. When the canopy contained enough ore it would be sealed up and moved to the processing site.

  There, mechanical grinders would chew steadily at the ore within a rotating cylinder. The spin would force the grains of crushed ore through a series of sorting screens, and the sorted material dropped onto rotating magnetic drums. The idea was to separate nonmagnetic silicate grains from nickel-iron metal granules; every so often the metallic material would be scraped off the drums and recycled through the sorter, until only highly pure metal was left.

  It was possible to cast raw asteroid metal directly, but the native metals were heavily polluted with carbon and sulfur, and the result would be an inferior product. So the ore would be passed through a solar toaster, as Malenfant thought of it — an inflatable solar collector working at a couple of hundred degrees centigrade. The toaster was the key to a process called gaseous carbonyl extraction, which allowed the extraction of ultra-pure metals — and, as a bonus, the direct fabrication of ultra-pure iron and nickel products in high-precision molds via chemical vapor deposition.

  The objective of these first tentative steps was just to give the squid access to the most easily extracted metals: nickel and iron in the form of metallic alloy. In fact, locked up in Cruithne there were also troilite, olivine, pyroxene, and feldspar — minerals that could also serve as sources of ferrous metals when the nickel-iron was exhausted, even if their extraction was a little more complex. Besides that, the ore also contained other valuable metals like cobalt and the platinum-group metals, as well as nonmetals like sulfur, arsenic, selenium, germanium, phosphorus, carbon…

  Cornelius Taine had been dead set against pointing the squid toward more advanced processing techniques. In fact, Cornelius had been all for reneging on Malenfant’s contract with the squid altogether. Malenfant had insisted on keeping his promise, but had given in to Cornelius on the advanced processing.

  Not that it made much difference, he figured; the squid were smart and would surely not take long to figure out how to extract the full potential of these ancient rocks, whether humans showed them what to do or not.

  Cornelius was right to have reservations, however. The squid, if they did get out of the resource bottleneck of Cruithne, would be formidable rivals. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to start the relationship of the two species with a grudge.

  All three of the adults had spent time out on the surface modifying firefly and miner robots, surveying the asteroid for a suitable crater to serve as a pit head, and operating test and pilot runs of the various processes involved. Cruithne had turned out to be a congenial environment to work in. The gravity here was better than zero G because tools, dust, and people tended to stay where you last put them rather than float away. But on the other hand structures did not have to be as strong as under Earth’s ferocious pull.

  But the work hadn’t been easy. Though the skinsuits were a marvelous piece of lightweight engineering, a couple of hours of even the lightest physical work — shoveling crumbling regolith into the hoppers of the test plants, for example — left Malenfant drenched in sweat and with sores chafing at his elbows, knees, armpits, groin. Cornelius had actually suffered worse; a pressure imbalance caused by a rucking of his suit had given him a severe embolism on one leg, an incident that hadn’t helped improve his mood.

  Anyhow it was over now. Malenfant was proud of what they had achieved here. The technological infrastructure they had built here was neat, elegant, simple, low maintenance.

  Earth came into view, a bright blue disclet shadowed by the pallid Moon.

  It struck him that it had been the dream of his whole life to come to a place like this: to stand here on the surface of another world, to watch heavy machinery tear into its rock and begin the construction of a living space, to watch the beginnings of the expansion of Earth life beyond the planet, fulfilling the dreams of Tsiolkovski and Goddard and Bernal and O’Neill and so many others.

  Well, he’d gotten himself here, and he ought to be grateful for that. Not only that, his basic plan — using asteroid materials to bootstrap extraterrestrial colonization — was obviously working.

  But he hadn’t expected it to be like this — in the hands of another species.

  In a way, a part of him wished it wasn’t so: that this had been a simple story of asteroid mines and O’Neill colonies and homesteads in space, that the extraordinary future hadn’t intruded. Simple dreams, easily fulfilled. But that had never been an option.

  The future, it seemed, was turning out to be one damn thing after another.

  He turned away from the canopy, and began to make his way back to the O’Neill.

  When the squid made their next surprising request Malenfant and the others held a council of war on the O ‘Neill ‘s meatware deck.

  Cornelius Taine, as ever, was hostile to any form of rapprochement with the squid beyond what was absolutely necessary to maintain their base on this asteroid. “So they want to leave. Good riddance. They shouldn’t be here anyhow. They weren’t in the plan.”

  Emma said severely, “You mean they should be dead.”

  “I mean they shouldn’t exist at all. The plan was for one squid to live long enough to bootstrap the operation here, that’s all — not this whole new enhanced species we have to contend with.

  Dan Ystebo should be prosecuted for his irresponsibility—”

  “You aren’t helping, Cornelius,” said Malenfant.

  “Let them split off their chunk of rock and go. We don’t need

  them.”

  “The point is, they are asking us where they should go. Another NEO, the asteroid belt.”

  Cornelius’s face worked. “That ought to remain… secure.”

  Emma laughed. “Secure? Secure against what?”

  Cornelius was growing angry. “We could be remembered as the ultimate suckers. Like the Native Americans who sold Manhattan for a handful of beads.”

  “The asteroid belt is not Manhattan,” Malenfant said.

  “No. It’s much more. Vastly more…” Cornelius started to list the resources of the Solar System: water, metals, phosphates, carbon, nitrogen, sulfur, rattling through the asteroids and the ice
moons of Jupiter and the atmospheres of the giant planets and the Oort Cloud. “Take water. Water is the most fundamental commodity. We think the main-belt asteroids could contribute about half the water available on Earth. And a single ice moon, say Jupiter’s Callisto, has around forty times as much water as Earth’s oceans. Even if you exclude the Oort Cloud the Solar System probably contains something like three hundred times Earth’s water — and almost all of it locked up in small, low-gravity, accessible bodies.

  “The Solar System may be able to sustain — comfortably, conservatively — as many as a million times the population of the Earth.” He watched their faces. “Think about that. A million human beings, for every man, woman, and child alive now.”

  Emma laughed nervously. “That’s… monstrous.”

  “Because you can’t picture it. Imagine how it would be if the human race reached such numbers. How often does an authentic genius come along — an Einstein, a Beethoven, a Jesus? Once a millennium? We could cut that down to one a day”

  “Imagine a million people like me,” Malenfant growled. “We could have one hell of an argument.”

  “Those cephalopods are ferocious predators, and they breed damn fast. If they start propagating through the Solar System they could take it all in a few centuries.”

  “If the cephalopods are better adapted,” Malenfant said easily, “and maybe they are — that’s why we chose the squid solution in the first place — then maybe that’s the way it’s supposed to be.”

  “No,” Cornelius said, muscles in his cheek working. “This isn’t simple Darwinism. We created them.”

  “Maybe that will turn out to be our cosmic role,” Emma said dryly. “Midwives to the master race.”

  Malenfant growled, “Look, let’s keep Darwin and God out of it. Cornelius, face the facts. We don’t have a real good handle on what the squid are going to do here. They seem to be split into a number of factions. But some of them at least seem to be determined on carving off a chunk of this rock and going someplace. Population pressure is ensuring that. If we deceive them — if we try sending them off to freeze in the dark — and they survive, they aren’t going to be too pleased about it. And if we don’t give them any clear guidance…”

  Emma nodded. “Then they’ll seek out the one place they know has the water they need.”

  Cornelius said, “We can’t let them find Earth.”

  “Then,” Malenfant pressed, “where?”

  Cornelius shook his head, pressured, frustrated. “All right, damn it. Send them to the Trojan asteroids.”

  Malenfant looked at him suspiciously. “Why there?”

  “Because the Trojans cluster at Jupiter’s Lagrange points. By comparison, the belt asteroids are spread over an orbit wider than that of Mars. So it’s easy to travel between the Trojans. And we think they sometimes exchange places with the outer moons of Jupiter. You see? That means that access to Jupiter orbit from the Trojans — energetically speaking — is very cheap. While the asteroids themselves are rich.” Cornelius shook his head. “My God, what a Faustian bargain. We think the asteroid mass available in the Trojans is several times greater than that in the main belt itself. Not only that, they seem to be supercarbonaceous.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “They’re made of the same stuff as C-type asteroids and comet nuclei. Like Cruithne. But in different, more volatile-rich proportions. It was cold out there when the planets formed. Cold enough for the lighter stuff to stick.”

  Malenfant frowned. “It sounds like a hell of a piece of real estate to give away.”

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” Cornelius said. “Some of us think the Trojans might prove to be the richest resource site in the system. So surely even a species as fecund as the squid is going to take some time to consume them all. And even when they’re done they may choose to go to Jupiter and its moons rather than come back in toward the sun.”

  Malenfant growled, “I see your logic. We’re giving them a big territory, enough to occupy them for centuries.”

  “Time enough for us to do something about it,” Cornelius said tensely.

  Malenfant looked at Emma. “What do you think?”

  She shrugged. “Geopolitics are beyond me,” she said.

  “This is beyond geopolitics,” Cornelius said. “We’re playing games with an opponent of unknown potential, over the future of the species.”

  “We’ll tell them to aim for the Trojans,” Malenfant said, relieved the decision was made. “Cornelius, start working on trajectory information…”

  It took the emigrant squid only days to build their cephalopod Mayflower.

  They sent their robots to work leveling the floor of a small crater. Over the crater they built a roughly spherical cage of unprocessed asteroid nickel-iron. Then they began to manufacture the skin of the bubble ship that would take them to Jupiter’s orbit. It was simple enough: modified firefly robots crawled over the floor of the crater, spraying charged molecules onto a substrate, like spray painting a car, until a skin of the right thickness and precision of manufacture down to the molecular scale was built up.

  Malenfant observed as much as he could of this. It was a manufacturing process called molecular-beam epitaxy that had been piloted on Earth decades before. But nobody had succeeded in developing it to the pitch of sophistication the squid had reached.

  Malenfant was somewhat awed: it seemed to him the squid had simply identified their manufacturing problem, immediately devised a perfect technology to deal with it, and had built and applied it. It was a technology that would be worth uncounted billions to Bootstrap, in some unlikely future in which he made it back home and stayed out of jail.

  Anyhow, when the fabricators had completed the bubble — a gold-tinted plastic — the squid started to fill it with asteroid water extracted by simple inflatable solar heaters. A cap of Cruithne substrate rock, sheared off the asteroid and anchored to the metal cage, would serve as feedstock for methane rockets and a source of raw materials for the habitat.

  Though the technology was simple, it still seemed something of a miracle to Malenfant to see water bubbling up out of coal-black asteroid rock.

  It would be a long, grim journey, Malenfant knew. Under the low acceleration of the methane drive it would take many years for this bubble ship to reach the cluster of Trojan asteroids, five times Earth’s distance from the sun. The current generation of squid — none of whom would live to see the conclusion of the journey — were surely condemning generations of their offspring to a journey through despair and darkness and squalor.

  And it might not work. If population controls failed, there would be wars, he thought. Savage. Perhaps the fragment of civilization on this ship would fall so far there would be nobody left alive who knew how to fix the methane rockets or breaches in the habitat meniscus.

  Somehow he didn’t think that would come about. Already this miniature colony, here on Cruithne, had survived long enough to show the cephalopods possessed a purpose — a ruthlessness — that far transcended the human.

  And at last, the survivors would reach Jupiter’s leading Trojan point, where the sun would be a point source brighter than any star, and Jupiter itself a gleaming gibbous disc, and a million asteroids would swarm in the sky.

  With the gentlest of nudges from spring-loaded latches the droplet parted from its asteroid parent. The moment had come: no countdown, no fuss.

  The rise was slow; nothing that big was going to make any sudden moves. It sailed upward like a hot-air balloon, huge waves rippling softly over the golden structure, the cap of asteroid rock sullenly massive at the base.

  When it reached the sunlight a glow exploded from the droplet’s interior.

  As their great journey began — away from the complexities and politics of the crowded inner worlds, off to the wide-open emptiness, the calm and cold precision of the outer system — Malenfant thought he glimpsed the squid themselves, rushing this way and that, peering excitedly f
rom their rising bubble ship.

  But perhaps that was just his imagination.

  He watched as the droplet shrank, receding, hoping to see the moment when it was far enough from the asteroid for the methane rockets to be lit in safety. But the flames would be invisible, and he was growing tired.

  Malenfant raised his hand in salute. Good-bye, good-bye, he thought. Perhaps your great-great-grandchildren will remember me. Maybe they will even know I was the being responsible for sending their ancestors out there, for giving you this chance.

  But they will never know how I envied you today.

  It had taken fifteen of their twenty available days, here on Cruithne, to deal with the cephalopods. Now they had five days left — five days to confront the thing that lay on the other side of the asteroid, to confront the alien.

  He turned and started to crawl back across Cruithne, and to home.

  Bill Tybee:

  There was a new assistant at the Nevada center, who started a

  week ago. A big bullnecked Texan called Wayne Dupree.

  Wayne did not look like any kind of teacher to Bill — he had the biggest, thickest arms Bill had ever seen on any human being — nor was he a parent or relative of any of the kids. And he had no noticeable skills in teaching or child care. He just supervised the kids in glowering silence, occasionally administering a shove or a prod, as they went about the routine of their lives.

  Wayne was the first adult Bill saw strike one of the kids here.

  Bill complained about that to Principal Reeve. She made a note in a file and said she’d look into it, but that she was sure Wayne wasn’t overstepping any mark.

  And Bill was sure she didn’t do a damn thing about it, because he saw Wayne do it again, a day later.

  The turnover of staff here had always been high. Bill had noticed that the professional types soon became discouraged by the kids’ baffling opacity and distance. After a few months Bill had become one of the more experienced helpers here; he was even assigned to train new folk.

  But recently a new type of person, it seemed to him, had been appointed to work here.