Arthur Clarke - Firstborn

It would have been ironic, after having blazed across the solar system, to have the ship disabled by a virus uploaded in a greeting message. Edna said cautiously, “Let them in.”

A holographic head popped into existence before Edna: a young woman, smiling, personable, a little blank-eyed. She looked faintly familiar. “ Liberator, Lowell. Good morning.”

“Lowell, Liberator, ” Edna said. “Yes, good morning, we can see your dawn. A pretty sight. This is navy cruiser Liberator, registration SS-1-147—”

“We know who you are. We saw you coming, after all.”

“I know your face,” John Metternes said now. “Umfraville.

Paula, that’s it. A hero’s daughter.”

“I live quietly,” the girl said, unfazed.

Edna nodded. “I think we all hope that today will be a quiet day, Paula.”

“We hope so too. But that’s rather up to you, isn’t it?”

“Is it?” Edna leaned forward, trying to look more commanding than she felt. “Paula, you, and those you speak for, know why we’re here.”

“Bisesa Dutt is not at Port Lowell.”

“She won’t be harmed. We simply intend to take her back to Earth where she can be debriefed. It is best if we work together.

Best for Bisesa too.”

“Bisesa Dutt is not at Port Lowell.”

Reluctantly, Edna said, “I’m authorized to use force. In fact I’m instructed to use it, to resolve this issue. Think what that means, Paula. It will be the first act of war between the legal authorities on Earth and a Spacer community. It’s not a good precedent to set, is it?”

John added, “And, Ms. Umfraville. Be aware that Port Lowell is not a fortress.”

“You must follow your conscience. Lowell out.”

Metternes dragged a hand through his greasy hair. “We could wait for confirmation from Earth.”

Edna shook her head. “Our orders are clear. You’re procrasti-nating, John.”

“Do you blame me? Lowell’s a sitting duck down there. I feel we’ve become the bad guys, somehow—”

An alarm sounded, and panels turned red throughout the bridge. There was a faint swimming sensation; the ship was moving.

“Shit,” Edna said. “What was that ?”

They both swung into diagnostic routines.

It was Libby who spoke first. “We have gone to stealth. We are evading further fire.”

Edna snapped, “What happened?”

“We just lost an antenna complex and part of a solar cell array.

However all ships’ systems have triple level redundancy; contact with Earth has not been lost—”

“A laser beam,” John said, checking his data, wondering.

“Good God almighty. We got zapped by a laser beam.”

“What source? Are we under attack?”

“It came from the planet,” John said. “Not from another ship.”

He grinned at Edna. “It was a space elevator laser.”

“Mars doesn’t have any space elevators.”

“Not yet, but they put the lasers in already. Cheeky bastards.”

Libby said, “That was surely a warning shot. They could have disabled us. As I said we are now in shroud, and I am maintaining evasive maneuvers.”

“All right, Libby, thank you.” Edna glanced at John. “Situation clear? You agree how we should respond?” She didn’t need his approval. She was the military officer in command. But she felt she couldn’t proceed without his acceptance.

At last he nodded.

“Prepare a torpedo. Low-yield fission strike.” She pulled up a graphic of Port Lowell. She tapped a green dome. “Let’s take out the farm. We’ll do the least damage that way.”

“You mean, we’ll kill the least people?” John laughed hollowly.

“Look, Edna, it’s not just a farm dome. They’re running experimental programs in there. Hybrids of Martian and terrestrial life. If you blow it up—”

“Lock and load, John,” she said firmly, pushing down her own doubts.

The launch of the torpedo was a violent, physical event. The ship rang like a bell.

In Mount Weather the images of the Liberator ’s attack were shocking, a holographic globe of Mars with a gunshot wound.

“I can’t believe this has happened on my watch,” Bella said.

Bob Paxton grunted. “Welcome to my world, Madam Chair.”

Cassie Duflot sat beside Bella. “This is why my husband died.

So we have the capability to do this, if need be.”

“But I hoped the need would never arise.” Bella suppressed a shudder. “I’m here because people thought I was a hero from the sunstorm days. Now I’m nuking my fellow human beings.”

Paxton was studying a montage of images on a softwall. “It’s all over the media. Well, you got to expect that. If you nuke Mars even the couch potatoes and thumbheads are gonna take notice. No casualty reports so far. And anyhow they shot first.”

“I can’t believe you’re taking it as coldly as this, Bob,” Bella said with a trace of anger. “You were the first human to walk on Mars.

And now, in a generation, it’s come to war, at the very site of your landing. It’s as if Neil Armstrong was asked to command the invasion of the Sea of Tranquillity. How does that make you feel ?”

He shrugged. He wore his military jacket unbuttoned, his tie loosened, and he held a plastic soda can in his bearlike fist. “I feel we didn’t start this. I feel those saps on Mars should have done what their legally authorized governmental representatives ordered them to do, and hand over this screwball Dutt. And I feel that, like the lady says, there’s no point spending terabucks and a dozen lives developing a facility like the Liberator if you ain’t gonna use it.

Anyhow it’s your daughter who dropped the nuke.”

But it had to be Edna. Bella probably could have found some way to spare her daughter this duty; there were relief crews for Liberator. But she needed somebody she could trust — somebody she could rely on not to drop the bomb if Bella ordered her to withdraw.

“So what’s the reaction?”

Paxton tapped a screen at his elbow, and images flickered across the wall, of emptied-out food stores, deserted roads, towns as still as cemeteries. “Nothing’s changed. The alarm has been building up for weeks, ever since the cannonball failed. Everybody’s hunkered down, waiting. So far the numbers after that nuke on Mars are holding up.”

Cassie asked, “What numbers?”

Bella said, “He means the snap polls.”

Paxton said, “The negatives counter the positives, the war lobby versus the peaceniks, the usual knee-jerk stuff. And there’s a big fat don’t-know lobby in the middle.” He turned. “People are waiting to see what happens next, Bella.”

A backlash might yet come, Bella thought. If this dreadful gamble didn’t work her authority would be smashed, and somebody else would have to shepherd Earth through the final days as the Q-bomb sailed home. And that, she helplessly thought, would be a tremendous relief. But she could not put down her burden yet, not yet.

Bob Paxton said, “Message coming in from Mars. Not that Umfraville kid who’s been the spokesman. Somebody else talking to Liberator. Unauthorized probably.” He grinned. “Somebody cracked.”

“So where is Dutt?”

“North pole of Mars.”

“Tell Liberator to move.”

“And — oh, shit.” His softscreen filled with scrolling images, this time scenes of Earth. “They’re hitting back. Spacer bastards.

They’re attacking our space elevators!” Paxton looked at her. “So it’s war, Madam Chair. Does that ease your conscience?”

A live image of Mars hovered over the Wells crew table. The atomic wound inflicted by the Liberator burned intensely at the equator, and now a miniature mushroom cloud rose high into the thin Martian air. A lot of dreams had already died today, Myra thought fan-cifully.