Storms of My Grandchildren (40 page)

Life on Claron works pretty much the same as on Earth. Claronians and animals inhale oxygen, which is used in cellular respiration, and exhale carbon dioxide. Plants use the carbon dioxide in photosynthesis and produce oxygen as a waste product.

The claronians are peaceful and cerebral creatures. Their life span is about 150 years. So their concern was not about their individual lives but rather the fate of their civilization. Perhaps this was because they had so much time on their hands to think. Life had become easy after their technology had reached a point that their droids could do all the work—planting and harvesting the crops, construction, cleaning.

For more than 100 million years the claronians had kept their climate stable by steadily increasing the shielding of their planet from the light of their slowly brightening sun. They had long realized the need to keep both the amount of sunlight and the atmospheric composition in the proper ranges for their life processes—they could not reduce the carbon dioxide to make up for a brightening sun. But with their space technology, shielding the sunlight was not difficult. They put reflecting pellets in orbit about their planet and added more pellets as needed to keep the amount of sunlight within the range that they were adapted to.

The problem was that, as their sun expanded into the Red Giant phase, it would swallow Claron. For their civilization to survive, at least one breeding pair would need to escape to another habitable planet. But there was no other habitable planet in their solar system, only two Jupiter-like giant gas-ball planets. Their hope was to find another solar system with a climate more like that of Claron.

They had studied many planets around other stars. Two planets, less than a light-year away, had spectra suggesting plant life. Claronians worked for millions of years to develop their space-faring capabilities. Eventually they were able to send missions to the two green planets and also to several lifeless planets. The first missions were carried out with droids, which could survive accelerations to hyperspeed and long journeys without life-support systems. The droids found that life on the two green planets had not advanced beyond algaelike slime, perhaps similar to life on Earth a billion years ago.

Many attempts were made to transplant claronian life to both of the green planets and to the lifeless planets. All missions failed. The closest they had come to success was establishing colonies of claronians on these planets, within space capsules on the surface. The spacecraft had carried claronian eggs and sperm, as well as seeds for plant life. And while the droids had been able to raise and educate several claronians, they could not get other species to thrive, and the colonies soon died out. They were not able to manufacture a livable environment on another planet.

Their failures were no wonder. How could they mimic a life-support system that had taken billions of years to develop on their planet? Life on Claron was as complex as on Earth, with millions of interdependent species.

Then, near the end of the twentieth century, Earth time, claronian society exploded with the news that radio signals had been detected from a distant source. It was not noise. The signals must have emanated from intelligent life at a great distance.

The signals were mid-twentieth-century radio signals from Earth, located about forty light-years from Claron. Overnight, the study of Earth became the principal activity on Claron. Before long, there were more university students in Earth studies than any other subject. Claronian scientists realized, from technical and educational television programs beamed from Earth, that life there worked in basically the same way that it did on Claron.

English began to be taught as a second language on Claron, with studies beginning in middle school. Television shows broadcast from Earth became popular entertainment. Earth news was reported daily, in English, forty years after the events had occurred on Earth. In 2003, claronians were dismayed to learn of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. While the claronian public was becoming as acquainted with Earth goings-on as many earthlings had ever been, their government began devoting enormous resources to planning and developing the Mission to Planet Earth.

The distance to Earth was much greater than that of their prior missions. It would be an exceedingly difficult trip, despite their advanced technologies. Forty light-years would take several centuries, even using powerful acceleration to hyperspeed, which claronians could not withstand. Though they had learned to recycle wastes during space travel, it was implausible to carry claronians on a trip of several centuries that would require multiple generations.

Instead, they would use the technology developed for their failed attempts to transplant life to the green planets and the dead planets. The spacecraft would carry droids and frozen claronian eggs and sperm. The droids would be programmed to carry out the fertilization and serve as surrogate parents to the claronian babies, as they had successfully done on prior missions. But this time, it seemed, there would be no need to transplant or create entire life systems, other species and their ecologies, and create a livable environment—which is why Earth was so attractive.

Earth had an enormous number and variety of species, just like Claron—animals, fish, birds, even bees that pollinated plants, and butterflies. But Earth’s animals looked quite different and seemed spectacular to the claronians. Finding such a planet was a dream they had had for millions of years. If only they could succeed in getting their civilization to Earth.

The government presented its plan to the public. The spacecraft, dubbed
Mayflower II
, would carry two droids plus claronian eggs and sperm. When they were within twenty-five years of Earth arrival, the droids would fertilize the eggs in an attempt to produce five claronians: two male-female couples and one pilot for the spacecraft. The launch and cruise would be on autopilot, but the pilot would be needed for landing on Earth. There would be a male-female pair from each of the two continents on Claron, East Claron and West Claron.

The claronians would be raised and educated, in English, during the final quarter century of the flight from canned programs that would teach them about Claron and Earth. When they arrived at Earth, the claronians would be early in their childbearing years, with the aim of saving their civilization. They knew that Earth’s sun still had about five billion years before reaching its Red Giant phase, so their civilization would be safe for a time that, even to claronians, seemed to be eternity. The spacefarers would not be able to communicate with Claron during the flight. Once they arrived they would set up a transceiver allowing them to send detectable signals—but even then the great distance meant that eighty years would be required for round-trip exchange of information.

Mission preparation took several decades. On the day of the launch, in the 2030s Earth time, they were receiving Earth news from the 1990s. They learned that earthlings were beginning to change their planet’s atmosphere and realized that could spell trouble for life on the planet. But it seemed that earthlings understood what was happening, so surely they would take the steps needed to stabilize their climate.

The
Mayflower II
launch went off without a hitch, as did the first few centuries of its journey. As planned, the two droids, named Ma and Pa and programmed with claronian parental qualities, became surrogate parents, raising the claronians to young adulthood. Claronians had individual temperaments—and lots of time for interaction during their twenty-five-year upbringings together.

The pilot, an offspring of top claronian navigators, was high-strung and individualistic. He was physically strong and had been given a specialized technical education. They called him Spud, because of his preference for a potato-like vegetable. The other four claronians had nicknames too, but their official identities were Female-East, Male-East, Female-West, and Male-West.

As
Mayflower II
approached Earth, the claronians were confounded by what they saw. They turned to their surrogate parents for advice. “Pa, we are in the last programmed maneuver. We are going into orbit about Earth, but it doesn’t look like what we expected.
Mayflower II
is off autopilot, it’s now in Spud’s hands. What should we do?”

“What do the measurements show?”

“The temperature seems to be one hundred degrees Celsius!”

“Where are you looking?”

“That should be the Pacific Ocean, near the equator. But I can’t see the surface. It is all cloudy and steamy.”

“One hundred degrees—that’s the boiling point of water on Earth’s surface.”

“It can’t be cloudy everywhere.”

Indeed, they found areas where they could see to the ground, mostly in middle latitudes, including North America, Europe, and Asia. All of these areas were dry deserts with blowing sand. The yellow haze above the clouds, all around the planet, they soon learned, was composed of desert dust.

They had enough fuel to maneuver in the solar system, but there was no possibility of returning to Claron. Nor any reason to try.

“Ma, what should we do?”

“We must go to Mars. Venus is even hotter than Earth.”

“But Mars is a dead planet. Like the other dead planets. Claronians cannot survive on lifeless planets.”

“Perhaps Mars is different now. Our last information, when we left Claron, is a few centuries old. Maybe things have changed. Maybe humans moved all of their life-forms to Mars.”

“How could they do that? Humans are primitive. We see how they work. The irrationality in their politics, the dividing lines they draw on maps, the fighting, the starving people, the abuse of animals—they are still barbaric heathens!”

“It is our only chance.”

After further discussion, they decided that Ma was right. Spud put
Mayflower II
on course to Mars. They went into orbit about Mars and circled many times, making measurements. Mars still seemed to have all the properties that it did before their spacecraft left Claron.

Mars remained cold and lifeless. But they observed five constructions that must have been human-made. Flags identified the constructions as Chinese, American, European, Japanese, and Indian. The Chinese camp was the largest. The droids were programmed to communicate in Chinese. But the claronians spoke only English, because that was the language they were taught and used on
Mayflower II
. So they decided to land at the American base.

The American installation was a good choice. It was uninhabited, like the others, but, very considerately, the Americans had left detailed documentation of the twenty-first century. The documentation provided a full history, the complete story of how everything had gone so wrong on the perfect planet, the planet of ten million species.

It was to be the only “entertainment” for the claronians for as long as they would live. They knew there was no point in trying to squeeze atmospheric gases out of the stones, to try to create an environment for life. It was hopeless. Life is too complex. They had brought with them eggs of some of their favorite animals, and fish, and birds, and even butterflies—but there would be no point in unfreezing them.

“Pa, Ma, what will you do? You do not need an atmosphere to breathe. You can go on when we are dead.”

“We will do what we are programmed to do. We will shut down. Then, in the future, if another claronian expedition arrives, they can turn us on.”

“Why would another expedition come to this godforsaken dead planet? It’s no better than any other dead planet. There is no life here. They can find a dead planet closer to home. We will send a message as soon as Spud has finished setting up the transceiver. They will get the message in forty years. They will know what a dead planet this is, what a dead solar system it is.”

Just then they heard a tremendous rumbling—the
Mayflower II
was taking off. Spud had gone back to the spaceship alone.

“Spud, what the hell are you doing? Where are you going?”

“I finished my job—the transceiver is working—you can send whatever message you like. What’s left for me to do—twiddle my thumbs for a hundred years? I’m going to give those bastards a smack!” he cried over the telecom. “There’s plenty of fuel to get to Earth and make a real big pop.”

“Spud, they are all dead. There can’t be anybody left alive on a planet with boiling oceans and scorched deserts.”

“It doesn’t matter. What else am I going to do? The damned fools. They had the perfect planet, and they blew it.”