Orson Card: Earth unavare

His handheld began flashing.

Victor stopped the treadmill. The message was from Edimar, Janda’s fourteen-year-old sister. She was an apprentice spotter and watched for movement in space: comets, asteroids, anything

that might pose a collision threat to the ship. The message read: COME TO THE CROW’S NEST. URGENT!!

Victor didn’t hesitate. He left the fuge as soon as it stopped spinning, then moved through the ship quickly, his legs still burning, his shirt damp with sweat.

The crow’s nest was a glass dome atop the upper deck, well above the main body of the ship. Victor flew up the long, narrow tube that led to the room and then pulled himself up through the hole in the floor. The room was dark, and the billions of stars beyond the glass dome shined so clearly and distinctly that Victor felt as if he were outside the ship.

Edimar was floating weightless across the room, wearing her data goggles. The computers were extremely sensitive to light, so spotters wore skintight goggles with interior displays instead of using bright computer monitors.

“Epa, Mar. What’s the emergency?” asked Victor.

Edimar removed her goggles. “You’ve always taken me seriously, Vico. Even when nobody else did. You’ve always treated me like I’m smart.”

“You are smart, Edimar. What’s this about?”

“And Jandita said that if I ever needed help with something I could come to you. She said you’d treat me fair, help me out.”

“Of course, Mar. What is it?”

“I want to show you something. And I want you to be honest with me and tell me what you think it is.”

“Okay.”

She found another pair of goggles and handed them to him. “The Eye saw something that doesn’t make any sense. And I don’t want a bunch of people laughing at me if it’s nothing.”

The Eye was the computer system that kept up a constant scan of the sky in every direction, watching for any incoming objects that might collide with the ship. In terms of safety, it was one of the most important pieces of equipment on board. Even small rocks, if they were moving fast enough, could cripple the ship and prove fatal.

“Have you shown your father?” asked Victor

She looked aghast. “Of course not.”

“Why not? He’s the spotter. He’ll be more of a help interpreting what the Eye sees than I would.”

“My father doesn’t think I can do this job, Vico. He has zero confidence in me. He wanted sons, and he got three girls. The only reason I’m his apprentice and not some boy is because Concepcion made him take me on. I can’t go to him with something that’s a mistake. I’d never hear the end of it. He might go to Concepcion with it as proof that I’m not fit for this job.”

Victor knew Janda’s and Edimar’s father well, and it sounded like a pretty accurate description. Victor knew he shouldn’t ask, but he did anyway. “Why work with your father then, Mar? If it’s so difficult, maybe you’d like doing something else, being around other people.”

She looked angry. “Because I like what I do, Vico. I like working the Eye. And because he’s my father. Why don’t you go work in the laundry or the kitchen, if it’s so easy to switch?”

He held up his hands in a show of surrender. “Sorry. Forget I asked. What did the Eye see?”

She looked irritated and said nothing for a moment, as if considering whether she wanted to involve him after all. Then her face softened, and she relaxed. “Goggles,” she said, sliding on her own.

Victor put on the goggles and stared at the blank screen. “Am I supposed to see something?”

“Not yet. First let me explain. I’ve set the Eye to notify me of any motion outside the ecliptic, even if it doesn’t yet look like a collision. Motion there is more rare, but I’ve got a thing for cold comets. Before the sun heats them up and gives them a tail, I think they’re pretty cool. I figure if I’m the first one to spot a new one, I can get it named after me. It’s silly, I know.”

“Not at all,” said Victor. “Getting a comet named after you sounds pretty chevere.”

He could hear the smile in her voice. “I think so, too.” Then she was back to business. “So the Eye was looking outside the ecliptic, taking in some really clean data.”

Clean data meant there had been relatively little space dust or other particles floating in the Eye’s field of view. It meant the Eye could see way far out.

“Then the Eye detected motion and alerted me,” said Edimar. “I called up a visual and got this.”

An image of space appeared in Victor’s goggles. It looked no different from any other view of space. “Am I supposed to see anything unusual?” he asked.

“The motion was here.” Edimar drew on her tablet with her stylus, and a tiny circle appeared on the image of space. Then Edimar zoomed in until the tiny circle filled the display. Victor strained his eyes. “I still don’t see anything.”

“Neither did I. Which means whatever the Eye saw is in deep space. If it were close, we would be getting better visual resolution. And if it’s way out there and the Eye detected its motion, then it must be moving insanely fast. The problem is, the Eye doesn’t give me enough data to determine the object’s trajectory. All I know is that there’s fast motion. But the velocity decreases over time. It means the object is either changing velocity or direction, one or the other. Either it’s slowing, or it’s turning toward or away from us, making it appear to be slowing relative to us. Only neither one is very likely. I’ve run analyses based on a dozen different distances and possible directions of movement and the only thing that explains the data the Eye is giving me is deceleration.”

“It’s slowing down?” said Victor. “Natural objects in space don’t slow down on their own, Mar.”

“No, they don’t. And when I say it’s moving fast, Vico, I mean fast. Fifty percent of lightspeed fast. And that’s its speed now, after continuing to decelerate. Interstellar objects don’t go that fast, they don’t bend without a gravity well, and they don’t decelerate. So tell me, am I going to get teased for this?”

“I don’t think so,” said Victor.

“I should forget about it?”

“Edimar, I think we’re looking at a spacecraft.”

“Nothing goes that fast.”

“Nothing made by humans.”

At his words, Edimar visibly relaxed and a silly grin came to her face. “So I’m not crazy to think we’ve got us an alien starship? A near-lightspeed ship coming into our system and slowing down?”

“Either it’s a lightspeed ship or somebody repealed a whole bunch of laws of physics. And either it’s alien or some corporation or government is experimenting with a technology so advanced it will make them masters of the universe.”

“So I should call a grown-up.”

“You should call the Council. Or I will. This isn’t just important, it’s so important that they’ve got to make decisions about it right away.”

“What’s the hurry?”

“Because it might very well be headed for Earth.”

Lem

The Makarhu wasn’t built to be a science vessel, and it certainly wasn’t built for war. It was a mining ship, property of Juke Limited, the largest space-mining corporation in the solar system. But Lem Jukes-mercifully short for Lemminkainen Joukahainen, heir to the Juke Limited fortune and captain of the ship-was prepared to use the Makarhu for any purpose if it meant turning a failing mission into what the Board of Directors would consider a success.

It was an hour after sleep-shift had ended, and Lem was floating weightless in the observation room, waiting for an asteroid to explode. The asteroid was a small thing, a “pebble” no bigger than Lem himself, lazily moving through space half a kilometer from the ship. If not for the ship’s laser lights dotting the asteroid’s surface and illuminating it, it would have been completely invisible against the backdrop of space, even with the help of the special scope glasses Lem was wearing.