The Songs of Distant Earth (3 page)

Councillor Simmons, leaning across from the back seat, was talking quietly to the mayor.

“Helga,” he said – and it was the first time Brant had ever heard him use the mayor’s first name – “do you think we’ll still be able to communicate? Robot languages evolve very rapidly, you know.”

Mayor Waldron didn’t know, but she was very good at concealing ignorance.

“That’s the least of our problems; let’s wait until it arises. Brant – could you drive a little more slowly? I’d like to get there alive.”

Their present speed was perfectly safe on this familiar road, but Brant dutifully slowed to forty klicks. He wondered if the mayor was trying to postpone the confrontation; it was an awesome responsibility, facing only the second outworld spacecraft in the history of the planet. The whole of Thalassa would be watching.

“Krakan!” swore one of the passengers in the back seat. “Did anybody bring a camera?”

“Too late to go back,” Councillor Simmons answered. “Anyway, there will be plenty of time for photographs. I don’t suppose they’ll take off again right after saying “hello!””

There was a certain mild hysteria in his voice, and Brant could hardly blame him. Who could tell
what
was waiting for them just over the brow of the next hill?

“I’ll report just as soon as there’s anything to tell you, Mr. President,” said Mayor Waldron to the car radio. Brant had never even noticed the call; he had been too lost in a reverie of his own. For the first time in his life, he wished he had learned a little more history.

Of course, he was familiar enough with the basic facts; every child on Thalassa grew up with them. He knew how, as the centuries ticked remorselessly by, the astronomers’ diagnosis became ever more confident, the date of their prediction steadily more precise. In the year 3600, plus or minus 75, the Sun would become a nova. Not a very spectacular one – but big enough…

An old philosopher had once remarked that it settles a man’s mind wonderfully to know that he will be hanged in the morning. Something of the same kind occurred with the entire human race, during the closing years of the Fourth Millennium. If there was a single moment when humanity at last faced the truth with both resignation and determination, it was at the December midnight when the year 2999 changed to 3000. No one who saw that first 3 appear could forget that there would never be a 4.

Yet more than half a millennium remained; much could be done by the thirty generations that would still live and die on Earth as had their ancestors before them. At the very least, they could preserve the knowledge of the race, and the greatest creations of human art.

Even at the dawn of the space age, the first robot probes to leave the solar system had carried recordings of music, messages, and pictures in case they were ever encountered by other explorers of the cosmos. And though no sign of alien civilizations had ever been detected in the home galaxy, even the most pessimistic believed that intelligence must occur
somewhere
in the billions of other island universes that stretched as far as the most powerful telescope could see.

For centuries, terabyte upon terabyte of human knowledge and culture were beamed towards the Andromeda Nebula and its more distant neighbours. No one, of course, would ever know if the signals were received – or, if received, could be interpreted. But the motivation was one that most men could share; it was the impulse to leave some last message – some signal saying, “Look
–
I, too, was once alive!”

By the year 3000, astronomers believed that their giant orbiting telescopes had detected all planetary systems within five hundred light-years of the Sun. Dozens of approximately Earth-size worlds had been discovered, and some of the closer ones had been crudely mapped. Several had atmospheres bearing that unmistakable signature of life, an abnormally high percentage of oxygen. There was a reasonable chance that men could survive there – if they could reach them.

Men could not, but Man could.

The first seedships were primitive, yet even so they stretched technology to the limit. With the propulsion systems available by 2500, they could reach the nearest planetary system in two hundred years, carrying their precious burden of frozen embryos.

But that was the least of their tasks. They also had to carry the automatic equipment that would revive and rear these potential humans, and teach them how to survive in an unknown but probably hostile environment. It would be useless – indeed, cruel – to decant naked, ignorant children on to worlds as unfriendly as the Sahara or the Antarctic. They had to be educated, given tools, shown how to locate and use local resources. After it had landed and the seedship became a Mother Ship, it might have to cherish its brood for generations.

Not only humans had to be carried, but a complete
biota.
Plants (even though no one knew if there would be soil for them), farm animals, and a surprising variety of essential insects and microorganisms also had to be included in case normal food-production systems broke down and it was necessary to revert to basic agricultural techniques.

There was one advantage in such a new beginning. All the diseases and parasites that had plagued humanity since the beginning of time would be left behind, to perish in the sterilizing fire of Nova Solis.

Data banks, “expert systems” able to handle any conceivable situation, robots, repair and backup mechanisms – all these had to be designed and built. And they had to function over a timespan at least as long as that between the Declaration of Independence and the first landing on the Moon.

Though the task seemed barely possible, it was so inspiring that almost the whole of mankind united to achieve it. Here was a long-term goal – the
last
long-term goal – that could now give some meaning to life, even after Earth had been destroyed.

The first seedship left the solar system in 2553, heading towards the Sun’s near twin, Alpha Centauri A. Although the climate of the Earth-sized planet Pasadena was subject to violent extremes, owing to nearby Centauri B, the next likely target was more than twice as far away. The voyage time to Sirius X would be over four hundred years; when the seeder arrived, Earth might no longer exist.

But if Pasadena could be successfully colonized, there would be ample time to send back the good news. Two hundred years for the voyage, fifty years to secure a foothold and build a small transmitter, and a mere four years for the signal to get back to Earth – why, with luck, there would be shouting in the streets, around the year 2800.

In fact, it was 2786; Pasadena had done better than predicted. The news was electrifying, and gave renewed encouragement to the seeding programme. By this time, a score of ships had been launched, each with more advanced technology than its precursor. The latest models could reach a twentieth of the velocity of light, and more than fifty targets lay within their range.

Even when the Pasadena beacon became silent after beaming no more than the news of the initial landing, discouragement was only momentary. What had been done once could be done again – and yet again – with greater certainty of success.

By 2700 the crude technique of frozen embryos was abandoned. The genetic message that Nature encoded in the spiral structure of the DNA molecule could now be stored more easily, more safely, and even more compactly, in the memories of the ultimate computers, so that a million genotypes could be carried in a seedship no larger than an ordinary thousand-passenger aircraft. An entire unborn nation, with all the replicating equipment needed to set up a new civilization, could be contained in a few hundred cubic metres, and carried to the stars.

This, Brant knew, was what had happened on Thalassa seven hundred years ago. Already, as the road climbed up into the hills, they had passed some of the scars left by the first robot excavators as they sought the raw materials from which his own ancestors had been created. In a moment, they would see the long-abandoned processing plants and
–

“What’s
that?”
Councillor Simmons whispered urgently.

“Stop!” the mayor ordered. “Cut the engine, Brant.” She reached for the car microphone.

“Mayor Waldron. We’re at the seven-kilometre mark. There’s a light ahead of us – we can see it through the trees – as far as I can tell it’s exactly at First Landing. We can’t hear anything. Now we’re starting up again.”

Brant did not wait for the order, but eased the speed control gently forward. This was the second most exciting thing that had happened to him in his entire life, next to being caught in the hurricane of ‘09.

That
had been more than exciting; he had been lucky to escape alive. Perhaps there was also danger here, but he did not really believe so. Could robots be hostile? Surely there was nothing that any outworlders could possibly want from Thalassa, except knowledge and friendship …

“You know,” Councillor Simmons said, “I had a good view of the thing before it went over the trees, and I’m certain it was some kind of aircraft. Seedships never had wings and streamlining, of course. And it was very small.”

“Whatever it is,” Brant said, “we’ll know in five minutes. Look at that light – it’s come down in Earth Park – the obvious place. Should we stop the car and walk the rest of the way?”

Earth Park was the carefully tended oval of grass on the eastern side of First Landing, and it was now hidden from their direct view by the black, looming column of the Mother Ship, the oldest and most revered monument on the planet. Spilling round the edges of the still-untarnished cylinder was a flood of light, apparently from a single brilliant source.

“Stop the car just before we reach the ship,” the mayor ordered. “Then we’ll get out and peek around it. Switch off your lights so they won’t see us until we want them to.”

“Them – or It?” asked one of the passengers, just a little hysterically. Everyone ignored him.

The car came to a halt in the ship’s immense shadow, and Brant swung it round through a hundred and eighty degrees.

“Just so we can make a quick getaway,” he explained, half seriously, half out of mischief; he still could not believe that they were in any real danger. Indeed, there were moments when he wondered if this was really happening. Perhaps he was still asleep, and this was merely a vivid dream.

They got quietly out of the car and walked up to the ship, then circled it until they came to the sharply defined wall of light. Brant shielded his eyes and peered around the edge, squinting against the glare.

Councillor Simmons had been perfectly correct. It
was
some kind of aircraft – or aerospacecraft – and a very small one at that. Could the Northers? – No, that was absurd. There was no conceivable use for such a vehicle in the limited area of the Three Islands, and its development could not possibly have been concealed.

It was shaped like a blunt arrowhead and must have landed vertically, for there were no marks on the surrounding grass. The light came from a single source in a streamlined dorsal housing, and a small red beacon was flashing on and off just above that. Altogether, it was a reassuringly – indeed, disappointingly – ordinary machine. One that could not conceivably have travelled the dozen light-years to the nearest known colony.

Suddenly, the main light went out, leaving the little group of observers momentarily blind. When he recovered his night vision, Brant could see that there were windows in the forepart of the machine, glowing faintly with internal illumination. Why – it looked almost like a
manned
vehicle, not the robot craft they had taken for granted!

Mayor Waldron had come to exactly the same astonishing conclusion.

“It’s not a robot – there are people in it! Let’s not waste any more time. Shine your flashlight on me, Brant, so they can see us.”

“Helga!” Councillor Simmons protested.

“Don’t be an ass, Charlie. Let’s go, Brant.”

What was it that the first man on the Moon had said, almost two millennia ago? “One small step …” They had taken about twenty when a door opened in the side of the vehicle, a double-jointed ramp flipped rapidly downward, and two humanoids walked out to meet them.

That was Brant’s first reaction. Then he realized that he had been misled by the colour of their skin – or what he could see of it, through the flexible, transparent film that covered them from head to foot.

They were not humanoids – they were
human.
If he never went out into the sun again, he might become almost as bleached as they were.

The Mayor was holding out her hands in the traditional “See – no weapons!” gesture as old as history.

“I don’t suppose you’ll understand me,” she said, “but welcome to Thalassa.”

The visitors smiled, and the older of the two – a handsome, grey-haired man in his late sixties – held up his hands in response.

“On the contrary,” he answered, in one of the deepest and most beautifully modulated voices that Brant had ever heard, “we understand you perfectly. We’re delighted to meet you.”

For a moment, the welcoming party stood in stunned silence. But it was silly, thought Brant, to have been surprised. After all, they did not have the slightest difficulty understanding the speech of men who had lived two thousand years ago. When sound recording was invented, it froze the basic phoneme patterns of all languages. Vocabularies would expand, syntax and grammar might be modified – but pronunciation would remain stable for millennia.

Mayor Waldron was the first to recover.

“Well, that certainly saves a lot of trouble,” she said rather lamely. “But where have you come from? I’m afraid we’ve lost touch with – our neighbours – since our deep-space antenna was destroyed.”

The older man glanced at his much taller companion, and some silent message flashed between them. Then he again turned towards the waiting mayor. There was no mistaking the sadness in that beautiful voice, as he made his preposterous claim.

“It may be difficult for you to believe this,” he said. “But we’re not from any of the colonies. We’ve come straight from Earth.”