Orson Card - Earth unavare

The nine Italian survivors who had been trapped in the wreckage were in attendance. They stood huddled together off to one side, the horror of their ordeal still evident on their faces. None of them had been terribly injured in the pod attack, but they looked like broken people nonetheless. Weeks ago, when the Italians had docked with El Cavador, the Italians had been full of song and laughter and life. Now they were like ghosts of the people they had been, silent and solemn and heavy of heart. For the past two days they had patiently awaited the return of the search party, desperate for news of lost loved ones. But both days had ended in disappointment, and now whatever hope they clung to had to be paper thin.

“I’m ending the search for survivors,” said Concepcion.

Jeppe, an elderly Italian who had become a spokesman for the survivors, objected. “There have to be places we haven’t searched,” he said.

“There aren’t,” said Concepcion. “As painful as I know this must be, we all must accept facts and move forward.”

“What about the bodies?” asked Jeppe. “We can’t leave them out there.”

“We can and we will,” said Concepcion. “The recovery effort could take weeks to conduct safely, and we’ve stayed here too long already. Under other circumstances I would agree, but these are not normal circumstances. We need to move now. I remind you that there are three members of my own family among the dead who have not been recovered. All of us are making sacrifices.”

She meant Toron, Faron, and Janda. The miners never found Janda’s body in their searches, and now that the search was over, no one ever would. Victor felt a pang of guilt as he pictured Toron in his mind, dying there on the pod, pleading for Victor to find his daughter.

Concepcion continued. “Our primary mission now is to warn Earth and Luna and everyone in the Belts that this near-lightspeed ship is coming. The pod is incontrovertible evidence that the ship is alien and that the species flying it has malicious intent. If we had a laserline transmitter, we could send a warning immediately, but at the moment, we have no reliable long-range communication. The radio is working, but without a laserline, I doubt we’ll send a message at this distance with any accuracy. I suggest we set a course for Weigh Station Four and try to hail them as we approach. We can then use their laserline transmitter to send a warning from there.”

“Agreed,” said Dreo. “But sending the warning via laserline isn’t a sure thing. We can’t count on our message getting through. We’re still a long way from Earth. Any message we send in that direction will have to pass through several hands and relay stations along the way before it reaches Earth. If the message isn’t passed on, if it stops somewhere along the chain, it dies there. It happens all the time. You know how these relay stations work. Corporates and paying accounts get top priority. Those are relayed first. The computers do that automatically. We’re free miners, the dregs of space, ignorant roughnecks. The station attendants would push our messages aside only to be sent out when the server space becomes available.”

“We’ll mark the message as an emergency,” said Concepcion. “We’ll tag it as high priority.”

“Of course,” said Dreo. “But that’s overused. Some clans mark all of their messages as emergencies in hopes of getting top placement and being quickly sent through. Believe me, when I worked for corporates, I had to deal with these relay stations all the time. Seventy to eighty percent of the laserlines they get every day are marked as emergencies even though most of them aren’t. ‘Emergency’ means nothing.”

“But we have an overwhelming amount of evidence,” said Father. “The helmet-cam footage shows that the pod had images of Earth. The Eye has given us mountains of data to suggest the ship is moving in that direction. We have eyewitness accounts of the pod attacking without provocation. We even have footage of the hormigas themselves. No one can refute this.”

“Yes,” said Dreo, “but no one will know any of that until they open the message. Which these relay stations won’t do. And even in the remote chance that someone does open the message, they might dismiss what little evidence they look at as either a hoax or simply a mistake of our equipment. And if they think that, they’ll do more than not pass it on, they’ll delete it.”

“You make it sound hopeless,” said Mother.

“I’m being realistic,” said Dreo. “I’m telling you how the system works.”

“We’ll get other clans and families involved,” said Father. “We’ll tell them where to look in deep space, something we should have done a long time ago. We’ll turn everyone’s attention out here to the alien ship. Whoever has a sky scanner as good as our Eye would detect the ship and send a warning message to Earth. Maybe if we build a swell of warnings, if we make enough noise, something will get through.”

“Maybe,” said Dreo. “Probably. But how much time do we have here before it reaches the Kuiper Belt? Six months? A year?”

“I’ve asked Edimar to give us a status,” said Concepcion. “She’ll update us on the ship’s trajectory and position. Edimar?”

The crowd parted, and Edimar stepped forward. It was the first time Victor had seen her since Toron’s death. She looked exhausted and small. Victor’s heart went out to her. She had lost her father and sister in a few short weeks. And now, with Toron gone, she had the overwhelming responsibility of being the family’s only sky scanner. Her face was expressionless, and Victor knew that Edimar was doing what she always did: burying her pain, holding everything in, closing everyone else out.

“As has been mentioned,” she said, “we now know with some degree of certainty that the ship is on a trajectory with Earth. It could change its speed at any moment, but based on its current rate of deceleration, it will arrive at Earth in little over a year.”

There was a murmur of concern among the Council.

“As for when it will reach the Kuiper Belt,” said Edimar, “we obviously have much less time. I’ve run through the data over and over again now and it looks as if the ship will be relatively close to us in less than four months.”

Everyone started talking at once, alarmed. It was loud and chaotic and Concepcion called for order. “Please. Quiet. Let Edimar finish.”

The talking subsided.

“We can’t even reach Weigh Station Four in that time,” said someone in the back.

“You’re probably right,” said Edimar. “I’ve done the math. The starship will likely pass by Weigh Station Four before we get there.”

“Pass by?” said Dreo. “You mean the two will be close?”

“They won’t collide,” said Edimar. “There’s little chance of that. Weigh Station Four will be a hundred thousand kilometers away from the ship’s trajectory. That should be a safe distance.”

“In relative space terms, that’s not all that far,” said Mother. “That’s only a quarter of the distance from the Earth to the Moon. That’s too close for comfort. We have to move now. Immediately. We need to warn the weigh station as soon as possible.”

“We need to be clear about our warning, though,” said Dreo. “We know plenty about the pod, but less about the ship. Such as its size. Do we even know how big it is?”

“Not precisely,” said Edimar. “It’s heading toward us, so we don’t know its length. We can only detect the front of it. But even that is big. At least a kilometer across.”

This time the reaction in the room was a stunned silence.

Victor thought Edimar had misspoken. A kilometer? And that was the ship’s width, not its length. That couldn’t be right. What could possibly be that big?