David Brin: Earth

Centimeter by centimeter Alex neared the collapsed catwalk. One wall staple remained in place, imbedded in limestone. Barely able to see, Alex had to hunt for it, his foot repeatedly missing the perch.

“Left, Alex!” Stan screamed. “Now up !”

His mouth open wide, exhaling a dragon’s spume of crystallized fog, Alex found the ledge and swung his weight onto it. Without pausing, he used it to hurl himself at the valve.

After all his struggles getting there, turning the handle was anticlimactically easy. At least that part of the cryo system was built well. The wailing shriek tapered off, along with the icy pressure. Stan staggered forward.

Past him sped rescue teams with ladders and stretchers. It took moments to pull down the two injured workers and hustle them away. But Alex would not be carried. He came down on his own, gingerly. Huddled in blankets, arms locked by those guiding him, he looked to Stan like some legendary Yeti, his bloodless face pale and sparkling under a crystal frosting. He made his escorts stop near Stan, and managed a few words through chattering teeth.

“M-my fault. Rushing things-s…” The words drowned in shivering.

Stan took his young friend’s shoulder. “Don’t be an ass ;you were grand. Don’t worry, Alex. George and I will have everything fixed by the time you get back.”

The young physicist gave a jerky nod. Stan watched the medics bear him away.

Well , he thought, wondering at what the span of a few minutes had revealed. Had this side of Alex Lustig been there all along, hidden within? Or would it come to any man called upon by destiny, as that poor boy obviously was, to wrestle demons over the fate of the world?

□ Long ago, even before animals appeared on dry land, plants developed a chemical, lignin, that enabled them to grow long stems, to tower tall above their competitors. It was one of those breakthroughs that changed things forever.

But what happens after a tree dies? Its proteins, cellulose, and carbohydrates can be recycled, but only if the lignin is first dealt with. Only then can the forest reclaim the stuff of life from death.

One answer to this dilemma was discovered and exploited by ants. One hundred trillion ants, secreting formic acid, help prevent a buildup which might otherwise choke the world beneath a layer of impervious, unrotting wood. They do this for their own benefit of course, without thought of what good it does the Whole. And yet, the Whole is groomed, cleaned, renewed.

Was it accidental that ants evolved this way, to find this niche and save the world?

Of course it was. As were the countless other accidental miracles which together make this wonder work. I tell you, some accidents are stronger, wiser than any design. And if saying that makes me a heretic, let it be so.

— Jen Wolling, from The Earth Mother Blues,Globe Books, 2032. [□ hyper access code 7-tEAT-687-56-1237-65p.]

Pleiades dipped its nose, and Teresa Tikhana welcomed back the stars. Hello, Orion. Hello, Seven Sisters , she silently greeted her friends. Did you miss me ? As yet, few constellations graced the shuttle’s for-ward windows, and those glittered wanly next to the dazzling Earth, with its white, pinwheel storms and brilliant vistas of brown and blue. Sinuous rivers and fractal, corrugated mountain ranges — even the smoke-stack trails of freighters crossing sunburned seas — all added up to an ever-changing panorama as Pleiades rotated out of launch orientation.

Of course it was beautiful — only down there could humans live without utter dependence on temperamental machinery. Earth was home, the oasis ;that went without saying.

Still, Teresa found the planet’s nearby glare irksome. Here in low orbit, its dayside brilliance covered half the sky, drowning all but the brightest stars.

Vernier rockets throbbed, adjusting the ship’s rotation. Valves and circuits closed with twitters and low chuckles, a music of smooth operation. Still, she scanned — checking, always checking.

One plasma screen showed their ground track, a few hundred kilometers from Labrador, heading east by southeast. NASA press flacks loved ground path indicators, but the things were next to useless for serious navigation. In-stead, Teresa watched the horizon’s tapered scimitar move aside to show more stars.

And hello, Mama Bear , she thought. Good to see your tail pointing where I expected .

“There’s ol’ Polaris,” Mark Randall drawled to her right. “Calculating P and Q fix now.” Teresa’s copilot compared two sets of figures. “Star tracker fix matches global positioning system to five digits, in all nine degrees of freedom. Satisfied, Terry?”

“Sarcasm suits you, Mark.” She scanned the figures for herself. “Just don’t get into the habit of calling me Terry. Ask Simon Bailie, sometime, why he came home from that peeper-run wearing a sling.”

Mark smiled thoughtfully. “He claims it was ’cause he got fresh with you on the Carter Station elevator.”

“Wishful thinking,” she laughed. “Simon’s got delusions of adequacy.”

For good measure, Teresa compared satellite and star tracker data against the ship’s inertial guidance system. Three independent means of verifying location, momentum, and orientation. Of course they all agreed. Her compulsive checking had become notorious, a sort of trademark among her peers. But even as a little girl she had felt this need — one more reason to become a pilot, then astronaut — to learn more ways to know exactly where she was.

“Boys can tell where north is,” other children used to tell her with the assurance of passed-down wisdom. “What girls understand is people!”

To most sexist traditions, Teresa had been impervious. But that one seemed to promise explanations — for instance, for her persistent creepy feeling that all maps were somehow wrong. Then, in training, they surprised her with the news that her orientation sense was far above average. “Hyperkinesthetic acuity,” the doctors diagnosed, which translated into measurable grace in everything she did.

Only that wasn’t how it felt. If this was superiority, Teresa wondered how other people made it from bedroom to bath without getting lost! In dreams she still sometimes felt as if the world was on the verge of shifting capriciously, without warning. There had been times when those feelings made her wonder about her sanity.

But then everyone has quirks, even — especially — astronauts. Hers must be harmless, or else would the NASA psych people have ever let her fly left seat on an American spacecraft?

Thinking of childhood lessons, Teresa wished at least the other part of the old myth were true. If only being female automatically lent you insight into people. But if it were so, how could things ever have gone so sour in her marriage?

The event sequencer beeped. “Okay,” she sighed. “We’re on schedule, oriented for rendezvous burn. Prime the OMS.”

“Aye aye, Mem Bwana.” Mark Randall flicked switches. “Orbital maneuvering system primed. Pressures nominal. Burn in one hundred ninety seconds. I’ll tell the passengers.”

A year ago the drivers’ union had won a concession. Nonmembers would henceforth ride below, on middeck. Since this trip carried no NASA mission specialists, only military intelligence officers, she and Mark were alone up here on the flight deck, undistracted by nursemaid chores.

Still, there were minimal courtesies. Over the intercom, Mark’s low drawl conveyed the blithe confidence of a stereotypical airline pilot.

“Gentlemen, by the fact that your eyeballs have stopped shiftin’ in their sockets, you’ll realize we’ve finished rotating. Now we’re preparin’ for rendezvous burn, which will occur in just under two and a half minutes…”