Fiasco (34 page)

In the afternoon of the following day, Steergard summoned Nakamura and both pilots. Immediately after the catastrophe, the
Hermes
had lifted above the ecliptic, its maneuvering engine on full power, to remove itself from the countless lunar fragments. It took a parabolic course in the direction of the Sun, but left behind radio probes and transmitters. These sent communiqués which showed that actually Quinta had pulled the debris of the broken moon down upon itself—because its salvo of ballistic rockets had interfered with the cavitation in such a way, that the resulting eccentricity of the process backfired on the planet.

The effects, observed optically though the ship by now had tripled its distance from Quinta, were horrible. From the oceanic epicenter spread tidal waves. Masses of water a hundred times higher than normal inundated the nearby eastern coasts of Heparia and in a thousand-mile front submerged Heparia's great plain. The ocean went deep into the land and did not retreat completely, creating lakes the size of seas, because the lithospheric plate above Quinta's mantle had buckled and water filled the new depressions formed on the surface.

At the same time, billions of tons of water, thrust in steam vapor up above the stratosphere, covered the face of the planet with a solid shroud of clouds. Only the thin ice ring gleamed above it in the sun, like a razor.

Steergard asked Nakamura for a report on the
SG
s taken continually of the selenoclasm. Immediately after the selenoclasm, he had ordered the heaviest magnetron units launched and put into orbit around Quinta, on opposite sides of the planet. These were veritable giants with sidereal feeders; each possessed a mass of seven thousand tons. For protection against possible attack, Steergard had them surrounded with coherent-gravity guns: single-use gracers that, according to the plan established by SETI, were to have served to annihilate any asteroids the
Hermes
encountered on the way to Quinta (the vessel was unable, because of its near-light speed, to maneuver around obstacles that the protective shields would not withstand).

Before Nakamura made his report, Steergard unexpectedly turned to the second pilot and asked him where he had learned the old Latin slogan
Nemo me impune lacessit,
with which he had closed the last council.

Tempe could not remember.

"I can't imagine that you were ever a classics scholar. You probably read Poe's 'Cask of Amontillado.'"

The pilot shook his head ruefully.

"Maybe. Poe? The writer of fantastic tales? I doubt it. But I don't recall what I read … before Titan. Is it important?"

"That, we will see. But not now. Let's hear the results."

Nakamura had hardly opened his mouth when Steergard interrupted:

"Was the equipment attacked?"

"Twice. Gracers destroyed about fifty rockets. The Holenbach curvature halted
SG
reception but without damage to the image."

"Their origin?

"The continent that was hit, but the rockets came from outside the disaster area."

"More specifically?"

"Four places in a mountain system fifteen degrees below the arctic circle. The launchers are subterranean, their sites fortified with imitation rock. There are many there, in the meridional belts, all the way to the equator. The pictures uncovered over a thousand. There are undoubtedly more, but the easiest to observe were those that stood perpendicular to the pulse field. The planet turns but the field does not. With continuous spinoscopy you get a completely worthless image—as if a man, X-rayed, were to turn during the exposure. Therefore, we went over to microsecond-snapshot tomography. So far we've accumulated about fifteen million frames. I wanted to wait until the end—that is, for one full revolution of the planet—and only then hand over the tapes to DEUS…"

"I understand," said Steergard. "DEUS hasn't tallied up the pictures?"

"Not yet. I
was
able to take an overall look at the hourly composites of the tomograms."

"Then you do have something! Go ahead."

"I'd like you to see the sharpest
SG
s for yourself. A verbal description cannot be objective. Almost everything visible on the film gives grounds for a particular interpretation, but not for any definite diagnosis."

"All right."

They rose. Nakamura inserted a disk into the
MV
and its monitor lit up. Across the screen ran trails, blurred and trembling; the physicist fiddled with the tuning for a moment, the picture darkened, and they saw a circular spectrum with a black, round spot in the center and an unevenly bright perimeter. Nakamura shifted the picture until the planet's surface was on the bottom half of the screen. Above the curve of the lithosphere, which was opaque and black, lay—in the same bent band—a whitish mist, thickest along the horizon: the atmosphere, with microscopic floccules that were clouds. The physicist changed the spectrum, going from the lighter to the heavier elements. The gases of the atmosphere vanished as if blown away, and the darkness of the continental plate, impenetrable before, now began to brighten.

Tempe stood between Harrach and the captain, eyes glued to the screen. He had learned about planetary spinoscopy while still on board the
Eurydice
, but had never seen it applied. A nuclear imaging instrument of astronomic range placed the planet within a bowl of magnetic fields of flux density equal, at the peaks of the pulse, to the magnetosphere of a micropulsar. The planet was probed through and through, and the resulting images, created by the spin resonance of the atoms, could be sectioned—tomographed—by concentrating the field on successive layers of the globe, beginning with the surface and working down to the hotter and hotter strata of the mantle and the core.

As a microtome cut frozen tissues so that they could be examined in sequence beneath a microscope, so a nucleoscope made possible the taking of pictures that showed, layer by layer, the internal structure of a celestial body, unobtainable by either radar or neutrino sounding. For radar, a planet was completely opaque; for a stream of neutrinos, too transparent. Therefore nothing but magneto-coherent, multipolar spinoscopy allowed one to look within celestial bodies—granted, only those that had cooled, such as moons and planets.

Tempe had read on the subject. The magnetic potentials, focused by remote control, oriented the spins of the atomic nuclei along the lines of force; when the field was switched off, the nuclei gave back the energy imposed on them. Each element of the periodic table then vibrated according to its own resonance. The picture recorded in the receptor was a nuclear portrait in cross section, where sextillions of atoms performed the role of the dots in an ordinary halftone photoengraving. The advantage of high-powered nuclear imaging was its harmlessness for the material objects examined, which included living beings; the disadvantage was that, applying such power, one could not conceal the source of the transmission.

Following the instructions of the physicists, DEUS filtered the pictures, each layer and section, for
SG
s of elements that were particularly suited for technological use. This choice was based on an assumption that was not entirely certain—but it was the only one available: the analogy, at least partial, between the Quintan and terrestrial technospheres. And, indeed, deep in the crust of the illuminated globe appeared a vague network of vanadiums, chromiums, and platinums, the platinum group including osmium and iridium. The subsurface threads of copper suggested power lines.
SG
s of the region affected by the selenoclasm showed chaotic microfoci of devastation, and the cross section of the starlike construct called Medusa resembled rubble and had traces of the uranides.

Calcium was also found there. For ruins of dwellings there was too little calcium. And the ground showed no sedimentary rock whatever. Hence, the guess that these were the remains of millions of living beings who, before their death, or after it, had been subjected to radioactive contamination, since a high percentage of the calcium was an isotope found only in the skeletons of irradiated vertebrates. For all its cruelty, this discovery (still, of course, not conclusive evidence) offered a glimmer of hope. They had no way of knowing yet whether the population of Quinta was made up of living creatures or, possibly, nonbiological automata: the heirs of an extinct civilization. One could not rule out the grim hypothesis that the arms race, having exterminated life (with perhaps a few remaining souls huddled in shelters or caves), was being carried on by life's mechanical successors.

This was precisely what Steergard had feared most, from the first encounters, though he kept the fear to himself. He considered possible a course of historical events whereby, over centuries of operations, a living force became replaced by military machines—not only in space, which they had already seen, but also on the planet. War automata, possessing no instinct for self-preservation, designed for suicidal combat, would hardly be amenable to entering into any kind of negotiations with a cosmic intruder. Although command centers, even if totally computerized, still should be guided by self-preservation. Yet if their sole directive was to achieve supremacy through strategic operations, they would not allow themselves to be put into the role of negotiators, either.

The chance of living beings communicating with living beings, on the other hand, was greater than zero. The optimism that resulted from examining the
SG
s—through the possible recognition of hecatombs, piles of skeletons, because of the relation of calcium to its isotope—was subdued. It would have been hard to call it a devout wish. While the pilots and the captain were listening to Nakamura, who provided explanations for the critical pictures—with the caution that most of this was just conjecture—the intercom buzzed. The captain lifted the receiver.

"Steergard here."

They heard the voice but could not make out the words. When the speaker finished, Steergard did not respond immediately.

"Very well. Right now? Come on over, then."

He put down the receiver, turned to them, and said:

"Arago."

"Should we leave?" Tempe asked.

"No. Stay." And added, as if unintentionally, "It won't be a confession.

The Dominican entered in white, though not in his monk's habit: he had on a long white sweater. That he wore a cross under it was revealed only by the dark string around his neck. Seeing those present, he halted at the door.

"I didn't realize that the captain was holding council…"

"Have a seat, Reverend Father. This is not a council. The time for parliamentary procedure and voting is past."

And, as if that sounded more brusque than he intended, he added:

"I didn't want this. But the hard facts are not concerned with what I want. Please, everyone, sit."

They sat, because, although he had delivered this last sentence with a smile, it was an order. The monk had expected a private conversation. Or perhaps he was taken aback by the peremptory ring of Steergard's words. Guessing the reasons for Arago's hesitation, the captain said:

"
C'est le ton qui fait la chanson.
But I didn't compose the tune. I tried to play it
pianissimo
."

"It ended up being played on the trumpets of Jericho," replied the monk. "But perhaps we can put aside these musical metaphors?"

"Of course. Let's speak plainly. Rotmont was here an hour ago, and I know the gist of the conversation—the exegesis—no, let's stick with conversation—that DEUS occasioned. It concerned … astrobiology."

"Not only," said the Dominican.

"I know. And therefore I ask in what capacity my visitor presents himself to me: physician or papal nuncio?"

"I am not a nuncio."

"With the will or without the will of the See of Peter—yes.
In partibus infidelium.
Or perhaps
in partibus daemonis.
I say this in reference to the memorable remark, not of the doctor of astrobiology but of Father Arago, on the
Eurydice,
in Ter Horab's cabin. I was there; I heard and remembered. And now—you have my attention."

"I see here the same pictures that Rotmont explained to me. DEUS indeed has occasioned my visit."

"The calcium hypothesis?" asked the captain.

"Yes. Rotmont inquired whether a line in the spectral analysis of certain points was or was not an isotope of calcium. DEUS could not rule out the possibility."

"I know the particulars. If those are bones, they're bones in the millions. A mountain of bodies."

"The critical place is a large complex of buildings, no doubt a Quintan center," said the monk. He seemed paler than usual. "A museum with a radius of fifty miles? Hardly likely. Genocide, then. A cemetery for a murdered nation is not a scene unprecedented in our history. Anyway, the founders of the SETI Project did not have in mind contact with an intelligence upon a battlefield littered with the corpses of the host."

"The situation is a good deal worse than that," answered Steergard. "No, let me speak. I repeat: something worse took place than a catastrophe brought about by a series of coincidences no one wanted. I did say that the planet might respond to our ultimatum before the deadline but not in signals. The other side, suspicious, could have opted for a counter-offensive. But I did not dream that, with full premeditation, they would pull the cavitated moon down upon themselves. We became mass murderers according to the maxim of a certain Italian heretic: 'Because of excess virtue the forces of hell prevail.'"

"How am I to understand this?" said Arago, astounded.

"Using the canons of physics. We announced that we would shatter their Moon as a demonstration of our superiority, and we gave assurances that this sidereal operation would cause them no harm. Having experts in celestial mechanics, they knew that with the smallest investment of energy one could break apart a planet by increasing the gravity at its core. They knew that only an explosion that was focused exactly at the Moon's center of mass would not change the orbit of the resulting fragments. Had they intercepted our sidereals from the solar side of the Moon, or at its front along a tangent to the orbit, the broken pieces would have been driven to a higher orbit. Only the interception of our missiles in the hemisphere facing Quinta could—had to—pull the eccentric product of the cavitation down upon themselves."