Larry Niven - The Barsoom Project

Eviane smiled uneasily. “Seems to be the end of the world.”

Charlene gripped her seat, silent, lips pressed thin.

Max admired the way Eviane helped her friend. In the midst of a whirlwind of panic and murder, she seemed to be maintaining control. Something had changed in the silent, withdrawn Eviane of the Time Travel Game.

There was a rumbling purr as the plane backed away from what Max could now see was a ruined airline terminal. The roof buckled under a crushing mantle of snow.

“We’re very fortunate that the storm is dying,” the stewardess said. She looked exhausted. “We’re the last plane out of San Francisco Airport. I don’t know what happened to the rest of them. I can only hope… ”

Her voice trailed off, and she rubbed her eyes. They were red-rimmed and dark-circled, as if she hadn’t slept in days.

As she buckled herself against the wall the plane lurched, bounded across the icy ground. The windows smeared with snow flumes. The plane tilted and went up at a steep angle. Snow-locked buildings and cars swiftly became toylike.

Max craned over Frankish Oliver to peer out of the window at the city below.

The plane rose, turning right. The long overhead wing swung back. Max saw the ruin that had once been the showpiece of the west coast. The rebuilt Bay Bridge lay broken and buckled, and snow partially covered a string of cars that stretched from Mann to Oakland. Ships were frozen in the bay, and the entire city lay under a blue-white mantle of ice. The light was dim; the sky beyond the folded-back wing was slate-gray.

Study Eskimos, Dream Park’s instruction packet had read. He was beginning to understand why.

The passengers had grown quiet. A hush followed the wump as they eased through the sound bather.

The stewardess switched her throat mike on. Her voice was a near parody of the countless airplane safety recitations Max had heard over the years. “The weather has continued to worsen,” she said. “We can’t go south. The airports in Los Angeles and San Diego are swamped. Texas and New Mexico are sealed; they’re shooting unauthorized planes out of the sky. The Southwest just isn’t prepared for this kind of weather. New York has done better. Its people and social structures have survived, while California is disintegrating. Since Canada commandeered the oil pipeline, that’s no place for Americans. Alaska is our best bet.”

The plane slid through gray clouds, and out.

Eviane hissed. Charlene frowned. “What’s wrong?”

“The sun!”

Only fools look straight at the sun. Charlene caught it in her peripheral vision, glaring above an unbroken white cloud deck. “It looks fine.”

Eviane stared at her, then looked out the window. “It looks that way from Ceres?”

“I… Oh! If it’s right for Ceres, then… too small for Earth. Not enough light. What could cause that?”

Max cursed under his breath. Moon Maid was dead-on. Why hadn’t he seen it? He tried to shake the cobwebs away. For the first time since the jumbled introductions at the Tower of Night, he had a chance to really look at the people around him.

One man stood and introduced himself, “My name is Robin Bowles. I owe you all, and I guess you don’t know why.”

The group went silent. Eviane canted forward. She whispered fiercely, “Robin Bowles, the actor? He’s our guide?”

Max only vaguely recognized the name, but he knew the face from late-night movies, vidcassettes, talk shows, and tabloids. None of that mattered now. One of the first things that Gamers learned was that somebody along on the trip would have been briefed on the Game, the rules, the situation, the mission. When the “guide” spoke, you listened.

“It’s been almost two years since the series of operations that saved my life.” Bowles was a hair over six feet tall, and stout where many of the Gamers were merely chunky. His hair and beard were long and bushy, brown going gray. “The Red Cross had a severe blood shortage due to the blood bank terrorism of ‘ 54. Everyone was afraid. Infected needles, infected plasma-the entire system was beginning to fail. And the ten of you donated blood that saved me.” He sighed. “It was a miracle, and there was no way I could thank you. I’d lost a fortune speculating on adverse-environment gear. I was betting on another oil strike in Alaska.”

His face darkened, grim as a man staring into the depths of hell. “Then the sun began to die.”

Six words, said without drama, without a roll of drums or a dimming of lights, yet Max felt the chill right down to the marrow.

Bowles paused to let the implications sink in. “It wasn’t just that the sun wasn’t burning. No fusion, no neutrinos, hell, that’s news from the last century. But now the interior heat is going somewhere, somehow. Interior heat inflates a star, keeps it from collapsing. The sun is shrinking. The surface isn’t any dimmer, but it’s a smaller radiating surface. The Earth’s insulation is down to half and falling.

“The weather changed, and suddenly the gear that had been a drug on the market became gold. The film industry in Utah and Illinois died overnight, but I was making more money on the gear than I’d ever made in holos. So I stayed in San Francisco, selling and manipulating sales, until it became obvious that the city was falling. It was time to move on. And I remembered you, all of you. I’d kept track of you. I found you, and offered you this escape. Thank you for accepting my offer.” The sincerity in his thanks came through clearly. This was a man who was delighted for the chance to repay a fraction of what he owed.

“The plane is completely stocked. I own a wildlife research station in the north country. There will be heat, and food-enough to last a lifetime for us, and any children we may have. Beyond that.. ” The optimism slipped like a loose mask. “We all know what awaits us. Awaits mankind eventually. We can only hope that someone will find an answer. Some of you have technical skills.”

He took a handful of manila file folders and moved down the aisle, passing them out. “These are personalized dossiers. Please correct any faulty information. We will have to depend on each other completely. We are a totally closed society.”

He passed Max, and handed down a folder. Max broke the seal with his thumbnail.

Max Sands. 6’4”. 295 lbs. Recreational therapist-whatever the heck that meant. Sounded sexier than what he really did. He’d never met the guy in the folder, but already liked him better than the one in the mirror. This Max Sands had stayed behind when the city began to empty. He cared for the sick who couldn’t be moved. When the blizzard hit San Francisco…

He snuck a peek over at Charlene, wondering if she had taken a fantasy identity. She would have made a perfect Tolkien elf, but there were no elves in this Game.

Frankish Oliver’s biography described an SFPD sergeant. A vital job, someone who had stayed behind during what must have been a long and painful exodus from the northern climes. Max closed his eyes… it was easy to imagine. The sun shrinking, the weather cooling. Panic. The beginning of the end for Man on Earth. And what was happening to Man in space, with their dependence on solar power?

He examined the men and women around him. These were the people he would have to depend upon for his survival. He envisioned himself learning to use snow tractors, working in hothouses, tending the reactor…

Max shook himself out of the reverie. Stop being so clever. Don’t even try to guess.

Frankish Oliver was chuckling under his beard. “Isn’t he good? Robin Bowles, under all that hair!”

“Last time I saw him, he was balding.”

“Actor’s ego. He’s on camera now. He was Nero Wolfe in Fer-de-Lance and The Mother Hunt. They couldn’t be paying him enough for this.”