Roger Allen - The Ring of Charon

“Some man McGillicutty, down there at VISOR, has come up with some figures on… on Earth. Do you know him? Is he reliable?” Raphael asked, in a tone that suggested he wanted to be told no .

“I know him by reputation,” Webling replied carefully. “One of the sort that hasn’t been out of the lab in years. No understanding of people, and a tendency to get lost in the details. He often misses the point of what he finds—but his observations and measurements are always first-rate.”

“Well, he seems to have missed the point here all right,” Raphael said grimly. All the anger seemed to have drained out of the man, as if fear and distraction had left no room for anything else. Raphael dropped the papers on the visitor’s side of his desk. “Have a look at these while I call up the computer file. Can’t think as well looking at paper,” he said under his breath, muttering to himself. Sondra looked at Larry, and Larry looked at her. Muttering? For Raphael, this was utter loss of control. The man was frightened .

“I want to see what this report tells you,” Raphael went on. “I don’t want it to be what it told me.”

Larry and Sondra put their heads together over the hard copy of McGillicutty’s report, while Webling read the computer screen over Raphael’s shoulder.

Larry got it first. “The gravity waves are continuing, but with Earth gone there’s nothing there to produce them. And that twenty-one-centimeter radio source is radiating in a complex, regular and repeating pattern. McGillicutty doesn’t say anything about the pattern. He just talks about the signal strength and the distortions caused by the gravity waves. He missed the fact that the signal is complex and repetitive. But that can’t be. Natural signals can’t—”

He stared into space for a moment, until the truth dawned. “But that means these signals aren’t natural,” Larry said in a whisper. “That’s what the data say to me.”

Raphael nodded woodenly. “That was the conclusion I reached,” he said. “The one I hoped was wrong. The signals are not natural in origin. Could one of the radical groups on the Moon have—”

Sondra felt her skin go cold. “Not natural. Now wait a second here—”

But Larry wasn’t listening. He knew the technology required to generate gravity waves. The Ring of Charon was, if anything, a minimal hookup for gravity generation. It was inconceivable that any other group could have built anything remotely capable of such a job and kept it hidden.

At least no human could have done it.

“The signals and the gravity waves are artificial, Sondra. Which means Earth didn’t just disappear,” he said. “Somebody took it.”

“We know that it’s still sending pulses of gravity waves, and that radio signal.” Tyrone Vespasian sat in his office, behind his desk, willing himself to calmness. He knew there was something overcontrolled about his movements, as if he were trying to hold too much in. Was he trying too hard to be rational, logical, to be sensible when sense was useless? “The signal proves it. That’s a deliberate message signal, not some natural radio noise. Even if we can’t read it.”

“And where is that signal coming from?” Lucian asked gently.

Vespasian shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “From here. From somewhere on the Moon. It’s almost as if it’s coming from everywhere at once, out of a whole series of dispersed transmitters. We can’t find it.”

“Don’t you think that might give us a few problems?” Lucian asked. “Earth vanished two-point-six seconds after the beam touched it—the exact time for a speed-of-light signal to go back and forth between the Earth and Moon. If they decide to blame us, Mars and the Belt Community might decide to do something drastic.”

Vespasian nodded, leaned in toward Lucian and lowered his voice. “I’ve thought of that, too. Remember the proposal about ten years ago to blow up Mercury to get at its core metals? They wanted to create a second asteroid belt close enough in to the Sun so they could really get some use out of Solar power. Officially, the Community never got around to building the Core Cracker bomb—but suppose they did, unofficially? The Moon’s about the same size as Mercury, with a lower mass. The Belt Community might figure it’s them or us.”

“But we didn’t do it!” Lucian protested.

“I checked, and as of five minutes ago, no less than six groups have claimed credit for the quakes, Earth’s vanishment, or both. Three on the Moon, two on board the surviving habitats, and one on Mars. Rad groups, nut groups, and most of them barely know which end of a screwdriver to hold. None of them could possibly have pulled this off. All they’re doing is blowing off steam, trying to upset the applecart and fit the disaster into their ideology. The Final Clan Habitat survived, and I read some guff from those nuts. Claiming they had swept away Earth, the source of all genetic decadence and lower races. Now they’re free to breed their superhumans without interference. No one has taken any of these groups seriously in decades. They always claim responsibility for disasters. But suppose someone is rattled enough to believe them now— and we get caught in the line of fire?” Vespasian said.

“Thanks to that damn fool McGillicutty sending a public message from Venus, everyone—including the nut groups—knows all about the twenty-one-centimeter radio signal, the speed-of-light delay, and the gravity waves. They can talk those things up, sound impressive, like they really did it. But none of them can know about the black hole yet —unless they did do it.”

“So if we keep our mouths shut about it, that might be a way to spot the real culprits,” Vespasian said.

“Or at least prove none of our local crazies did it,” Lucian said.

“Then who did do it?” Vespasian demanded.

Lucian frowned. “Jesus, Vespy. You’re talking about the most horrible crime in history. I can’t imagine anyone being able to do it. Not emotionally, or mentally. I can’t imagine a reason good enough for doing it.” Lucian paused a moment. “Those scientists on Pluto fired the gravity beam. But if they meant to wreck Earth, then why announce the experiment beforehand? Most of them are from Earth, and Earth funded their work. Besides, the beam touched Venus and those outer planet satellites—and the Moon for that matter—and we’re still here. Which suggests the beam was a coincidence, or set off someone else’s hidden system, or that the real baddies timed the thing to look like Pluto did it. Pluto had no motive.

“If anyone had a good enough motive—and I don’t think anyone does—it could be Mars and the Belt Community. They’ve got a lot of weird hardware floating around out there in deep space. Stuff nobody knows about. With Earth out of the way, Mars and the B.C. are suddenly dominant in the Solar System. And they get to blame the disaster on us—or on a bunch of mad scientists on Pluto.”

“But Earth is their biggest market!” Vespasian protested. “Everyone on Mars and in the Belt has some kind of family Earthside! And dammit, they’re human beings . No human being could commit this crime.”

“Which leaves open one other possibility,” Lucian said.

“Oh no. No you don’t.” Vespasian stood up suddenly and began pacing back and forth behind his desk. “Come on, Lucian. Don’t throw aliens from outer space at me. There’s nothing out there . By now we’d have found something.” There was something in Vespasian’s soul that felt chilled by the very thought.

Lucian ignored his friend’s discomfiture. He rubbed his face with tired hands. He felt drained, all capacity for emotion sucked out of him. “Either humans or aliens, Vespy. Take your choice. Either people who couldn’t possibly do it, or beings from another world who don’t exist. Bug-eyed aliens, insane human terrorists, Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny gone bad. Somebody did it. And we’re not going to find out who’s guilty sitting here. Just don’t send a public message about the Earthpoint black hole,” Lucian said. “It could only make matters worse, scare people more. Send coded messages to the scientific groups. Let them work on it.”