N-Space

by Larry Niven

  Here’s another: nuclear war. Aha, you’ve heard of it. Nuclear war could certainly destroy an environment if it’s done right.

  Some nearby star might go supernova. The world need not be wiped clean of life, but a good many species would die or change, including the most complex.

  The aliens’ own sun may have turned unstable.

  There’s evidence for cycles of destruction on Earth, spaced around 26 million years apart. The causes are in doubt. Even the numbers are in doubt. The cause may be flurries of comets passing through the solar system. The nucleus of a comet is nothing you want to stand in front of. Read LUCIFER’S HAMMER, then multiply the numbers by a thousand. The event that killed the dinosaurs also wiped out most of the life on Earth, and half the species.

  What are the odds that a comet or asteroid will intersect some random inhabited world during that brief period after fire and before the ETIs can get off the planet? In the three-million-year period of our existence our own odds are not terrible; but we may be luckier than most worlds.

  So much for natural causes.

  If you like paranoia, you’ll love the Berserkers. Fred Saberhagen and Greg Benford have different versions, but both involve self-replicating artificial intelligences. Saberhagen’s version is space-going forts left over from some old war, and they’re programmed to destroy all life. Benford’s version was built by old artificial intelligences, and they fear or hate organic intelligences. Both seem plausible, and either would explain our lack of visitors. If the Berserkers are out there, we must be just on the verge of attracting their attention.

  These are the pessimistic assumptions. But let me give you the David Brin theory before you have to go looking for aspirin.

  We know of two ways that otherwise Earthlike worlds can go wrong. Venus was too close to the Sun. Too much atmosphere boiled out, and the greenhouse effect kept the surface as hot as a brick kiln. Mars was too small to hold enough atmosphere, and too cold. There’s evidence of liquid water on Mars at some time in the past, but never enough of it for long enough. Earth could have gone in either direction.

  What about a third choice? Let’s look at an Earth that’s just a little larger. There’s just a little more water. Astrophysicists are generally happy if they can get within a factor of ten. How much land area would we have if Earth was covered with ten times as much water?

  Even twice as much would be too much. Life would develop, we’d get our oxygen atmosphere, but nothing would ever crawl out onto the land because it wouldn’t be worth the effort. Not enough land.

  We don’t actually need more water than we have. Let’s give Earth’s core a little less in the way of radioactives. The crust grows thicker, circulation of magma slows down, mountain building becomes much rarer. We get shallow oceans covering a smooth planet.

  Something might still develop lungs. A big-brained whale or air-breathing octopus might well develop an interest in optics. There’s water and air to show him how light behaves. He might even find tools for telescopes—breed jellyfish for the purpose—but what would he do about the stars? He’s got no use for the wheel and no access to fire.

  There are less restrictive assumptions that could still keep visitors at home.

  Our would-be visitor may have evolved for too specific an ecological niche. One lousy lake, or one lousy island, or the growing area for one specific plant, as Koalas depend on eucalyptus. Our ETI may not have the means to conquer large parts of a planet, let alone venture outward. This is certainly true of thousands of Earthly species. Even where some rare species has spread throughout the world, it was usually done by differentiation of species.

  And it was done slowly. Our ETI, when we find him, may be subject to biorhythm upset. Even where a planet has been conquered, there may be no contact between parts of it. No airlines, no ships, nothing that moves faster than the speed of a walking alien, because jet lag kills.

  A population of ETIs who have conquered their planet and are already suffering from population pressure, may not be able to breed with each other, let alone gather for a summit meeting. But they won’t have wars of conquest either. An invading army would be dead on arrival.

  IV

  Where are they? Why haven’t they come? We have answers now, though they may not be right.

  First: Something kills intelligent beings. It may be natural or artificial. It may be some time bomb ticking away in their own genes. These are the pessimistic assumptions, and they imply that we too are doomed.

  Second: The sky may be dense with water worlds, a thousand water worlds for every Earthlike world where land pokes through. But water worlds don’t allow a technology that would lead to spaceflight. They might allow telescopes. Intelligent whales and octopi may be waiting for us all across the sky.

  Third: The ETIs may have no interest in talking to us. Even where the interest can be generated, they don’t have the skill for dealing with other minds. The evolutionary basis for that skill may be unique to humankind.

  Fourth: The aliens may have adapted too specifically to their ecological niches. They may suffer from extreme biorhythm upset.

  If these guesses are right, we have lost something precious. We lose the Draco Tavern and the Mos Eisley spaceport. We lose all of Star Wars. We lose Ensign Flandry and Nicholas Van Rijn and the Kree-Lar Galactic Conference. The only interstellar empires left to us are all human: Dune, and Foundation and Empire, and Jerry Pournelle’s CoDominium and Empire of Man before the Moties were found.

  But we lose all conflict too, until interstellar war can be waged between human and human.

  What’s left? The picture is peculiar precisely because it was so common in science fiction forty years ago. Human explorers cross interstellar space to find and communicate with native wogs. Misunderstandings with the natives may threaten ship and crew, but never Earth.

  Water worlds will not be a problem to us. We could build floating bases. The water-dwellers would not perceive us as competitors. Species restricted to one ecological niche would also pose no threat. On the contrary, they might have things to tell us or show us—art forms or philosophical insights if nothing else—and they would likely be glad of our company.

  There is hope in the fact that dolphins like us.

  As for aliens with no impulse to talk to us—we can give them reasons. We have done very well by talking to aliens. If we manage to settle the worlds of other stars, it will be because we can talk to aliens, and get answers.

  • • •

  • • •

  “…But I carried away some magic. Watch: I put a half-twist in this strip of paper, join the ends, and now it has only one side and one edge…”

  “Talisman” [with Dian Girard], 1981

  SPACE

  Twenty-five years ago, my ambition was to tell stories.

  It wasn’t long before I decided I could save civilization too. I was about to blame that on Jerry Pournelle, until I remembered:

  San Diego, the Starlight Motel, the Bouncing Potatoes Westercon in 1966. They put me on a panel alongside Harlan Ellison and a handful of other contributors to his forthcoming anthology Dangerous Visions. And I was talking about a short story, “The Jigsaw Man.”

  I told fandom assembled that the situation was desperate: that executing criminals by disassembling them for public organ banks would be feasible now. The argument that allows any convicted axe murderer to save a dozen lives in this fashion works just as well on a political dissident or a litterbug. The inertia of politicos would not hold back the organ bank problem forever. We had to be prepared!

  Harlan was not trying to keep a straight face. Well, maybe he was.

  I meant it, of course.

  Barnaard performed his heart transplant a little before Dangerous Visions hit the stores. Next thing I knew, several study groups had sprung up to study the ethics of organ transplants and donor rights.

  I stopped worrying. I kept writing on the subject, but then, it’s a natural basis for stories.

 
I remained ready to save civilization.

  When Apollo 11 left lunar orbit and began its descent, Marilyn and I were on our way to a Watch-the-Landing party. We were at a traffic light with the radio on. For just that moment my whole nervous system surged with fear. I wanted powerfully to shout, “Wait! Let me think this over. This is going to change all of the future, the consequences are beyond our control—”

  It never crossed my mind that we would go to the Moon, and come back, and stop! Or stop the program early, stop building Saturns, and even attempt to burn the plans. Why? They worked!

  For us fanatics there were a couple of wonderful years of lunar exploration, then an endless time spent planetbound, marooned. Then Jerry Pournelle told me that we could save civilization.

  The Citizens Advisory Council for a National Space Policy has met five times over five years, for harrowing three-day weekends. The attendees include spacecraft designers, businessmen, NASA personnel, astronauts, lawyers. Adding science fiction writers turns out to be stunningly effective. We can force these guys to speak English. For those who can’t, we can translate. Jerry does the yelling and gives us our directions. In each case we have spent a weekend designing a proposed space program for the nation, including costs and schedules.

  It’s weird to think that we are [or were] the only ones doing costs and schedules. Didn’t we hire a government to do that? But the Council came about because Jerry realized that nobody else was doing it, in Washington or anywhere else.

  When he talked me into this, and Marilyn into holding local civilization together while it happened, and forty or so pro-space types into attending at their own expense, Jerry could make only one promise. The President would see what we produced.

  The pattern established at the first Council meeting was the one we followed thenceforth. It was absolutely new to me; I have never held a job in my life, except for one summer working in a gas station.

  The science fiction writers [me, Jerry, and Poul Anderson on that first occasion] would take notes and turn them into English later.

  After it wound up, Jerry asked me to write up my impressions, quick, while they were still in my mind. They’re not too coherent, but here they are.

  • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

  NOTES ON THE SPACE POLICY SEMINAR

  FRIDAY AFTERNOON

  Activity started at noon and centered mainly around the doorbell, which never stopped ringing. Dr. Pournelle spent all of that time making introductions. I welcomed people without worrying about their names; I’ve learned there’s no point.

  We tried gathering round the poker table to get started. The poker table got overfilled quick. Marilyn had put the leaves in the breakfast table, making it our largest. We continued trying to organize, and did fairly well at it, though our ranks continued to swell until the crowding became ridiculous.

  Consumption of coffee reached record levels. I reluctantly gave up trying to monitor that myself. Also trying to help Marilyn and contribute to the policy-making. From that moment she was on her own.

  The need for Dr. Pournelle, or any single authority-figure with a loud voice and no neurotic fear of offending people, became obvious Saturday and stayed that way throughout. We thirty-six or so managed to continue in the direction we were pointed, mostly. I don’t think it would have worked on as many science fiction writers; but then, we did convene for one stated purpose.

  When the breakfast room got jammed, we broke up into groups, as directed.

  The group I joined tackled the question: “How do we get free enterprise into space?” Suggestions and pro-huckster arguments came thickly and rapidly. Forty percent tax break on investments in space (that specific figure was never questioned). Ten year tax moratorium on salable products from space (instantly extended to 2000 A.D.). Starbase I, the permanent space station with huckster-room for rent. Incorporation rules. Present restrictions on business, some of which now make any small business almost impossible, let alone a space enterprise, should not apply unless Congress specifically says so.

  I remember participating, but I don’t remember adding anything specific. When the group disbanded I went to write up our decisions in tentative fashion. Art Dula had material to expand it; Bjo Trimble typed it in, after I showed her how. She loves Electric Pencil.

  After dinner Art Dula and I seriously tackled our group’s position paper. I titled it “How to Save Civilization and Make a Little Money,” expecting that that would drop out along the way. We polished the bejesus out of it. Dula does know how to cut and polish, as well as I did ten years ago, and he developed the same hyperenthusiasm I was working under. It helped that there had been no serious disagreement about any major points. But he uses tremendous sentences bristling with clauses. I’d stare at some damned tangled paragraph, often reduced to gibberish by a crucial misspelling via Bjo; then yell “Trrrust me!” and slash it apart into little words and short sentences.

  All the time we were working, raucous laughter rose from below. I was missing all the fun. We got our copies downstairs late in the evening, and I found myself passing them around and demanding that people read them…and thinking that a lot of this must go on during such symposia. Lots of people working through the fun time to produce paper, then watching people fail to read the damn paper.

  SATURDAY

  Marilyn’s new chairs arrived, and were needed.

  Without the volunteer help, nothing would have worked. There were three, and they made a good many trips for supplies. Marilyn was exhausting herself keeping us fed. Coffee vanished as fast as it appeared. I tried to ignore all this, because I was expected to contribute as a participant.

  Some of these memories have gotten blurred…

  Morning: a general session discussing progress. We had produced a fair amount of paper, and that seemed good to Dr. Pournelle. He kept insisting that we stay specific: that we should not restrict ourselves to general statements about how getting into space is a Good Thing. We should build thus-and-so? Fine. If you can’t tell me what it costs, then what does it look like?

  Lunch.

  Dr. Pournelle broke us up into groups. I’d have loved to sit in on the Moon Project group, but thought I was more badly needed in Blue Sky. I took ’em outside—it seemed appropriate.

  Discussion ranged all over the map. At one point Dr. Pournelle came out to be sure we weren’t restricting ourselves too much. He found it wasn’t necessary. We tossed in a few favorite far-out ones, like the orbital tower and esoteric means of propulsion, and the interstellar light-sail…but quickly dropped the subject of interstellar flight. We came up with short-range stuff too, and that was what got used.

  Put seven crew aboard any Shuttle that isn’t mass-restricted or already full. Have a lottery for the extra seats, or reward politicians, news commentators, and aging hard science fiction writers who jog. An astronaut in every village! Build a windowed pressure can with seats for the Shuttle bay. Accept that the Shuttle will be used to make movies.

  SATURDAY EVENING

  The volunteers went out for Chinese food for forty. (We’ve still got far too much of it.) Came back much later, telling tales of the restaurateur’s shock as he realized they were serious. I made a cheese omelet for B.J., a woman on a very restrictive hypoglycemia diet.

  We liked each other, almost universally, all thirty-odd of us. We were all gathered for a larger purpose. I failed to notice that the science fiction writers were being treated as absolute equals, because I expected nothing less; I had to have it pointed out. How times change.

  After dinner Dr. Pournelle split us into groups. I got drafted for the discussion re: “How can the Space Program be made to help underdeveloped peoples?”

  Chuck Gould stated our conclusion at the outset. Every comsat that goes up should be overdesigned and flexible. We should be able to sell, lease, or give away comsat capability to any nation that finds a use for it, and instantly. Fine. We then traded anecdotes and philos
ophic generalities for an hour or two—I had some of my own, but found it difficult to interrupt—after which we repeated the original statement again. I tried to hand in my notes. I was told, diffidently, that I (as wordsmith) was expected to produce the copy.

  I said, “There’s a problem. I’m not inspired.”

  “Why?”

  I explained. I know how to help the underdeveloped people. I produce new wealth via space conquest and new technology, and expect a great deal to spill over. The rich get richer and the poor get rich too; it almost always works, as long as new wealth is being created. [I’m not sure that got into our final missive. Dr. Pournelle, it should.]

  I/we worked on the position paper afterward, starting with my sparse draft and continuing Sunday, photocopying every draft. It was like pulling teeth, but we’ve produced a good, readable paper.

  I got into the drinking and conversation earlier Saturday night. Dave Griswell and I started trading wild ideas. If any serious bureaucrat knew how his mind really works…well. He wants to collect the solar wind and mine it for resources, mainly iron. I offered him half a Dyson shell, saying you’d be able to move the sun too. He worked out the numbers, and it’s just no good. But he likes my flux tube. (That became The Smoke Ring.)

  SUNDAY

  We didn’t convene till eleven. But we convened like a flash flood! Everybody running in all directions. I never stopped except right at the beginning, when Dr. Pournelle convened us. He had a draft of the two papers to be sent to the Administration. It was pretty good. There was some discussion, including both nits (which got sarcasm) and important points (on the level of “Sure this is true, but do we hit ’em with it now?”)