Charles Sheffield - Tomorrow and Tomorrow

He would call it anything but natural development.

He changed his mind when the ship flew on to their next port of call. Compared with Uranus, Neptune’s development was natural.

Something monstrous was happening to Uranus.

The major moons, except for little Miranda nearest to the planet, had gone. The ship swung into co-orbit with Miranda and circled Uranus for two full revolutions. The gas-giant world was marked with a pattern of bright spots, ninety-six of them evenly spaced around the flattened sphere of the planet.

“Nothing yet,” Ana said in reply to Drake’s question. “In another two thousand years or so, when the preparation work is all done, those will be the main nodes. The stimulated fusion program will begin. Uranus is too small to maintain its own fusion, so there will have to be continuous priming and pumping. They’ll move Miranda farther out, and do the fusion pumping from there.”

She spoke casually, as though the conversion of a major component of the solar system from planet to miniature star was a routine operation. And perhaps it was.

“What happened to all the other moons?” He could see fifteen listed in the ship’s data set, from tiny Cordelia, barely more than an orbiting mountain that shepherded the Uranus Epsilon ring, out to Titania and Oberon, good-sized worlds half as big as Earth’s Moon. Miranda was now the only survivor.

“Oh, they’re all right. They’ll be moved back eventually.” Again, the astonishing thing about Ana’s reply was her offhand manner. “Miranda couldn’t be moved, because it was needed. But the others must have been in the way for this phase of the work.’’

Drake stared out of the ports and wondered. Uranus had not been a promising candidate for life to begin with. It would become an impossible one when hydrogen fusion turned the whole world to incandescence.

The thought nagged at him: Why do such a thing, within the original home system of mankind? On those rare occasions in the old days when he thought about the far future, he had imagined Earth, together with all the other planets of the solar system, preserved as some kind of grand museum. Humanity might spread out across the Galaxy, but the home worlds would always be there. Preserved in pristine condition, they would remind people of their origins.

But what had made him believe that, when Earth itself had already provided such a different lesson? Humans had been changing Earth in a thousand ways for five thousand years: draining lakes, damming rivers, making deserts bloom, razing mountains, clearing forests. Why would they stop, simply because they had left Earth?

Drake wondered if it was all his own wishful thinking: a human urge to turn back the clock to a happy time of simplicity and certitude. He stole a glance at Ana, who was looking out of the port and humming to herself in that beloved rich contralto. A surge of happiness engulfed him. Humans could change, the solar system could change, the universe itself could change. It did not matter, as long as Ana was with him.

After Uranus, the happenings about Saturn seemed minor. Its biggest moon, Titan, was being developed. It was not, however, being terraformed by machines or downloaded humans. Instead, bioengineered human forms were colonizing the unmodified moon.

“It’s another experiment, of course,” Ana said. “Just to see how far the human biological limits can be pushed. There’s no doubt that we could do here exactly what we’re doing on Neptune, but where’s the fun and challenge in that? As it is, what we have on Titan is quite an undertaking. It’s not the low temperature. That’s a hundred and eighty below water freezing point, but it can be handled easily — just a matter of insulation, when you get right down to it. The hard piece is the chemistry, ours and Titan’s. Nitrogen, methane, ethane, and organic smog: how would you like the problem of adapting a human to breathe and drink those? Do you want to take a closer look?” And, after one look at Drake’s

face, “Right, then, I guess that’s all for Titan and Saturn. Jupiter it is.”

The activities they had seen back on Uranus made more sense to Drake after they had left Saturn and its horde of moons, approached Jupiter, and descended at last for a feathery landing on one of the Jovian satellites.

He remembered Europa from Par Leon’s time as an ice world, the fifty-kilometer deeps of its continuous ocean plated over by a kilometer and more of icy plateaus and thick-ribbed pressure ridges. But it was that way no longer. Their little ship landed on a giant iceberg, floating in random currents along a broad river. With the sunlight striking in at a low angle, the long stretch of open water seemed mottled and tawny like the skin of a great snake. It wound its way to the horizon between palisades and battlements of blue crystal. As the berg carrying the ship moved sluggishly along, Drake saw open water leads running off in all directions. He shivered. He could imagine strange creatures, huge and misshapen, writhing along the icy horizon.

Europa in its tide-locked orbit turned steadily about Jupiter. The Sun slowly vanished from the black sky. The sounds of jostling floes became louder, carried to the ship through the water and ice of the dark surface. To Drake’s musician’s ear the bergs cried out to each other, sharp high-pitched whines and portamento moans in frightening counterpoint, against a background of deeper grumbles.

“This is why we need the Uranus fusion project,” Ana said cheerfully. “Europa is warmed at the moment by individual fusion plants within the deep ocean, and that leads to patchy melting. It will be a lot better here when Jupiter produces a decent amount of heat.”

“You mean you’ll do the same thing for Jupiter as you’re doing for Uranus?”

“Not the same. But similar. Uranus is really more like a test case.”

“But if you’re going to do it eventually, why wait?”

“Oh, the age-old problem. We still have—”

She said a word that Drake had never heard before. A soft voice from the ship’s communications system at once added, in English: “no exact equivalent; conservatives/Luddites is closest match.” It was the first time Drake had realized that the ship’s computer monitored every conversation, and had a program to provide near-equivalents for references it judged unfamiliar to Drake.

Ana didn’t seem to realize how incongruous it was, that a project to transform Uranus beyond recognition could be judged as the “conservative” and old-fashioned approach. She went on, “But the Jupiter transformation will be approved eventually. Give it a few thousand years, and it will all be finished and working. The ice will go. And we’ll have another whole world for development.”

She had been setting out a meal for the two of them, and she obviously did not share Drake’s increasing uneasiness. But she must have sensed it, because suddenly she stopped what she was doing and came across to his side.

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m fine.” It was preposterous to be anything other than fine. He was with Ana again, after an endless separation. But maybe it was because he was with her that he was allowed to admit to fears and doubts. In any case, try as he would he could not stop shivering.

“You don’t look good.” She placed her hand on his forehead. “And you don’t feel good. Damp and clammy. Let’s take a look at you.”

She walked over to the ship’s controls, touched a panel, and studied a display.

“Hmm. It’s nothing physical.”

“How can you tell?”

“I can’t. The ship can. It monitors the health of both of us continuously. It says you’re all right. But it only deals with physical problems. So the rest is up to us.”