Stephen Baxter - Moonseed

“We’ve also observed this astronomically, now we’ve started looking,” Alfred said. “In the Earth-Moon system. The same radiation signature as on the ground. There seems to be a concentration of Moonseed at the Lagrange points.” He looked around the table for understanding. “Lagrange points are gravitationally stable collection points in the Earth-Moon system. We always wondered why we couldn’t see anything at the Lagrange points: no minor bodies, asteroids, trapped there. Now we know. The Moonseed is there, destroying whatever drifts in.”

“Just here? Where else?” Bromwich asked.

“Venus,” said Alfred Synge bluntly.

“Maybe space is their natural habitat,” Henry said. “Rather than planets. Our models show that they have difficulty reaching the surface of a planet, from space. They burn up in atmospheres, or are smashed by simple impact, on an airless body like the Moon.”

Alfred said, “But if they do get to a planet—”

“If they do,” Henry said, “then they transform it. Like Venus.”

Petit said drily, “Explain something else to me. You say the planets are shielded from the Moonseed, by atmosphere and gravity. We brought it here, from the Moon. But how did it get to Venus?”

“We’ve developed a theory about that too,” said Henry.

Petit said drily, “I thought you might.”

“We took it there,” Henry said.

“What?”

“You need a soft landing to deliver Moonseed to a planetary surface. The only objects which have soft-landed on the planets are our probes.”

“You’re saying we did this?”

Henry shrugged. “It’s a hypothesis. The probes collected the dust from the Lagrange clouds in near-Earth space. Specks in the paint work. And then delivered them to the planetary surfaces.”

Petit pulled Henry’s laptop towards him. “Give me a minute… Ah. The first probe to soft-land on Venus was Soviet. Venera 7. Landed in 1970.” He looked up.

“So,” Alfred said softly, “it takes a few decades to destroy a world the size of Venus.”

The Admiral snapped, “How big is Venus?”

“Similar to Earth,” Alfred said. “Eighty per cent of the mass.”

“Jesus H — So there’s our timescale.”

“Oh, this is just bull,” Petit protested. “For God’s sake. There are holes in this you can drive a Chevy through. We’ve also been to Mars. Mars is only eleven per cent of Earth’s mass. How come we didn’t destroy Mars too? And we know it’s on the Moon. How come the Moon hasn’t burst like a party balloon?”

“I don’t know,” Henry said, looking determined. “But I think that’s the key, Professor Petit. The Moon. The Moon is the key.”

Monica asked, “The key? To what?”

But Alfred was speculating again. “You know, you’re right, Dr Meacher. The only way the Moonseed can get to a planetary surface is through the action of intelligence.”

“Which means—”

“Maybe that’s the purpose of intelligence. Maybe we were meant…”

There was a moment of silence.

Petit laughed. “Alien nano robots manipulating history, eh? Is that what you’re going to tell the President? Should she go on TV with that? Admiral Bromwich, I intend to disprove this absurd scaremongering hypothesis, point by point.”

Henry nodded. “Do it. I’ll be there to applaud you.”

“But in the meantime,” the Admiral said, “we have to consider how to advise the President. And Dr Meacher, for all he’s a little swivel-eyed for my taste, is the only one coming up with any scenarios here.”

“Thank you,” Henry said drily.

Bromwich said, “I think we have to work on a worst-case assumption.”

Petit laughed. “The worst case being the end of the world. In an election year, too.”

Admiral Bromwich turned to Henry. “You’ve told me how bad this is going to get. Now tell me what we should do about it.”

“Three things,” Henry said. “We know we can slow the Moonseed down, if not stop it altogether, at least before it gets into the mantle.”

“How?”

“The structures it forms are fragile. They can be smashed, to put it bluntly.”

“We’ll bomb the shit out of it,” the Admiral said.

“And,” Petit said, “when you run out of bombs?”

“Then I’ll be on the White House lawn ripping it apart with my teeth and bare hands,” the Admiral said. “Where will you be? What else, Dr Meacher?”

Henry said, “Maybe we can come up with some kind of nano counter-agent.”

“I thought you said there was no hope of that.”

“I might be wrong. We have to try. But, no, I don’t think there is any hope.”

He let that hang in the air, for long seconds, maximizing its impact.

Monica studied Henry anew. He was the first to understand this, she thought. There must have been a time, right at the beginning, when only he knew this. Only he, of all the billions on the planet, could see the future. The unfolding of Moonseed logic: Christ, the end of the world. How must that have felt?

Probably, she thought, much like the moment when the doctor, an absurdly young man, had told her, in cool, compassionate terms, that she had such a short time left to live.

If it had been me, would I have had the strength to act as Henry has done? To communicate, to risk mockery and ridicule?

After all, she wouldn’t live to see the end, whatever happened.

There is no hope. Yet we must act as if there is.

Yet there was still something in Henry’s manner she didn’t understand. Something he didn’t want to tell them.

Or something he wanted to achieve.

She said, “Dr Meacher, give us your third recommendation.”

“We need to go back to the Moon. To Aristarchus, where Jays Malone picked up that rock.”

The Admiral frowned. “Why?”

Because the Moon is the key, thought Monica. That’s the centre of his case.

Henry said, “We have the question Professor Petit raised. We know the Moon is infected with Moonseed — but the Moon hasn’t been destroyed. Why not? We’ve learned all we can here. Something on the Moon must be inhibiting the Moonseed. We have to understand what.”

Monica watched him. This is what he wants, she realized, on some deep intuitive level. The Moon mission. This is what he’s seeking from us, today.

But, she sensed, there’s something he wants to achieve up there beyond what he’s telling us.

But he fears ridicule, obstruction, if he tells us about it…

“I agree,” she said immediately.

Henry looked at her, surprised. He said, “We have to go quickly. While we still can. Before we’re overwhelmed. It may be in a few months we won’t be capable of mounting a Moon mission, whether we want to or not.”

The Admiral nodded. “How the hell? I thought we smashed up all the Moon rockets, or put them in museums.”

“We did,” Henry said. “But NASA has a way.”

Monica said softly, “When can you leave?”

He looked startled. “Me?”

“Who else?”

“Dr Beus, I’m a rock hound, not an astronaut.”

“Difficult times,” the Admiral said. “We all have to think out of the box, Dr Meacher.”

Henry subsided, looking confused, calculating. But he leaned forward again. “There’s something else.”

“What?” the Admiral said.

“Weapons. We need to take weapons.”

Petit gasped. “You can’t be serious.”

The Admiral considered. “I suppose the premium will be on compactness, lightness. A battlefield nuke, maybe. Lasers—”

“My God,” said Petit. “If you were a man, Admiral, I’d say this was turning into a testosterone fest. Nukes to the Moon? We signed the Outer Space Treaty in 1967. If I remember my history, we undertook not to place in orbit, or emplace on the Moon or any other body or station in space, nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction. We pledged to limit the use of the Moon and other celestial bodies exclusively to peaceful purposes. We prohibited their use for establishing military bases or testing weapons—”