Charles Sheffield - Tomorrow and Tomorrow

The scale that accompanied the display gave the lie to the illusion. The “road” was a kilometer wide. The quilt was monstrous, each of its patches the size of a county of old Earth. Scattered darker dots within the patches were big enough to be towns.

The field of view zoomed in toward a narrower black thread at the center of the broad swath of road. Drake could see that the edges of the patchwork quilt were not regular. They were broken and random, the boundaries intruding on each other. The pink had spread in places onto the darker swath, like crabgrass invading an untended lawn.

The black thread must surely be water. Unlike on Mars, these canals were real. The line of banks ran ruler straight across the surface. Close to the water’s edge, every few kilometers, a five-sided open tower of girders stretched toward the sky. The display closed in on one.

“This is too tall to be built on this planet with natural materials. Carbon composites are essential for its building and continued stability, which implies a reasonably advanced technology. Technology implies intelligence. But where is that intelligence?”

Drake recalled his “firebreak,” the millions of human worlds sacrificed and emptied to escape the Shiva. Had other galaxies been invaded? Were alien species trying the same delaying tactic, abandoning this world to slow an enemy’s advance? Who was the Roman general famous for his scorched-earth policy and refusal to fight the Carthaginians directly?

“One might conclude that the intelligence is here.”

The display homed in on a lighter-colored area by the canal. It was a clearing, a couple of hundred meters across, and it stood in the shadow of one of the great pentagonal structures. Drake was at last able to pick out surface life-forms.

The flat semicircle was bordered on its straight edge by water, and on its curved perimeter by a skimpy fence. A group of thirty or forty objects like oversized pink snails clustered against the boundary. They were creeping steadily along the fence. A dozen others, slightly smaller and faster moving, surrounded them.

A group of twenty other beings crouched close to the water’s edge. They were dark red, with many legs, and they surrounded a dark, shallow pit in the surface. On closer inspection Drake could see that they came in three types. The ones on the very edge of the pit were the biggest, four times the size of the outermost group members.

“This depressed area” — a bright point of green, vivid against the pinks and browns, appeared on the display in the middle of the pit — “ is revealed by infrared imaging to be well above ambient temperature. I assume that it is a breeding pit, kept warm by rotting vegetation. It is not hot enough to be a cooking pit.”

Drake thought that was an odd thing for the ship to say — the presence of the vast pentagonal towers spoke of a mastery of technology far beyond the use of fire. But he could see (or imagine) a consistent picture in what was going on in the clearing: herd animals, grazing, held by the fence and protected and chivied along by the equivalent of sheepdogs. The red creatures might be the breeding phase of either of the other types.

But where was the intelligence that had made the great towers? A primitive breeding/grazing society as he knew it could never produce such a technological tour de force.

“This settlement seems typical.” The display scanned along the canal to show numerous colonies, each one close to a

tower. “ The pattern is repeated in hundreds of places. Each time, the same organisms are seen. But now — observe.”

One of the towers had toppled over. It sprawled the skeleton of its length across the canal and far beyond, into the patchwork of open fields. It seemed intact after its collapse, vouching for the strength of the materials used to make it.

“There is no colony here. Every other tower has one. And see this.”

The scene on the display was moving again, swinging away from the canal to a spider’s web of converging roads. At the web center stood buildings, some low and dark roofed, others reaching for heaven like the pentagonal towers. Plants like long vines grew over the low roofs or wound around the towers’ bottom girders. There was no sign of life anywhere.

“Buildings. Roads. Power stations. Lighted cities. Communications, unless the towers serve some other uses. There is civilization. But where are the beings who did all this ? I would welcome your interpretation, before I offer mine.”

“I can’t even make a guess. Did you see signs of life or artifacts on any other planet of this system?”

“None.”

“So they don’t have spaceflight. Their development must have been enormously different from ours. What do you think is happening?”

“I have one piece of evidence that you have not yet seen. This is an image taken at night.”

The bright cities stood out like clusters of jewels. The roads that joined them were invisible, but as Drake watched, lines of bright blue intermittently flashed along their lengths.

“I have enhanced the pulse in duration and lowered its apparent speed to a level where human eyes can follow. What you are seeing is a burst of information carried by optical laser. Given the absence of intelligent organic life, it suggests a simple explanation: This civilization has passed the industrial phase. It is now wholly concerned with information transfer among its separate elements. Physical transfer of material is no longer necessary.”

“What about the beings who did the original development?”

“I assume that they went to inorganic form and were downloaded into a planetary network.”

“One that takes no notice of us?”

“If they never discovered spaceflight, they may deny even the possibility of off-world existence. The question is, What do we do now? We need a working force to build an S-wave signal detector, but the intelligence of this planet has never worked in space. Also, like my own intelligence, it may be unable to appear in corporeal form. How can we determine if that is so?”

“Since they don’t respond to our signals, I’ll have to go down and take a look. Chances are there’s nothing useful, but if this is the best you’ve seen in a hundred and twenty-four tries, we have to make sure.”

“Not the best one. The only one.”

“How many more hours of daylight?”

“Unless we elect to change longitude, there will be six hours before darkness.”

Drake glanced at the sun, uncannily close in color to Sol. “I might be back by then. If not, I’ll spend the night in the lander. Is it ready for use?”

“It is waiting.”

“How much will you have to change me, before I can survive on the surface?”

“Some slight changes were made during your embodiment. This world is close to being an Earth look-alike. I would recommend, however, that you proceed with caution in ingesting native substances.”

“Don’t eat the food and don’t drink the water. Sure. What else?”

“I believe no other changes are essential. ”

“You knew what I was going to decide, didn’t you?”

“I had suspicions.”

Drake wondered what the ship had been doing during the two million years in which he was dormant. Studying him, more than likely. Was there any way that a ship’s brain could become smarter, or at least more cunning, over time? If experience worked for people, might it work for inorganic brains?

“You know what to do if I don’t return, and the signals from me stop?”

“Regrettably, if you do not return I will be able to do nothing to help you. If you do not send instructions, I will wait for one year in orbit around this planet. Then the ship will go on to the next target star and continue the search. I will seek to recover the lander, if that is in any way possible.”