Stephen Baxter - Moonseed

Monica said bluntly, “We signed that treaty primarily with the Soviet Union. A country which doesn’t exist any more. We shouldn’t let that stand in our way.”

“I’ll dissent from the recommendation,” Petit said.

“That’s your privilege, sir.”

“You space buffs make me sick. History can be torn up, just so you have your Buck Rogers dreams back again. The Russians—”

Bromwich smiled comfortably. “Who cares about the Russians? What can they do? Think about it. We’re now the only superpower on the planet. The Russians can’t stop us. So fuck them.”

Monica noticed that, as Henry let this dispute run on, he wasn’t volunteering what he wanted his weapons for.

Alfred Synge was smiling at Henry. “To return to the Moon. You know, I envy you…”

The Admiral looked around the table. “Dissenting voices or not, I think we have our recommendation for the President. We back Dr Meacher’s proposal for a Moon mission, if it can be mounted. But in parallel we set up programs to mitigate the effects of the Moonseed, here on Earth.”

Henry was nodding.

“And,” said the Admiral, “we should continue to study the basic science of the thing, see if we can come up with an antidote. Whatever.”

Nods around the table.

Monica was content to let the Admiral take over. She’d expected it anyhow, and she didn’t disagree with any of her conclusions.

The Moon mission, though, was going to be the key, she sensed. That was what Henry Meacher had wanted when he walked in here, and it was what he was walking out with: a manned lunar flight, with a weapon.

Maybe he is smarter than he looks.

As the meeting relaxed into break-up informality, the Admiral drummed her fingers on the table. “Tell me this, gentlemen. Just what in hell are we dealing with here? Underneath all the science. Is the Moonseed here to destroy the world? Like some kind of Berserker?”

“I have a theory,” Henry said quietly. “Off the record.”

“Off the record,” said Bromwich.

“Think about a starship,” Henry said.

Petit laughed, sat back in his chair, and folded his arms.

Henry went on doggedly. “It’s a slow affair. Restricted to low velocities by relativity, by lightspeed and energy requirements. Maybe it’s driven by some kind of low-tech thing, like a solar sail. Whatever. It reaches a star system. Like the Solar System.” He closed his eyes. “It’s surrounded by a cloud, of something like the assemblers the nanotechnologists talk about.”

“The Moonseed,” said Bromwich.

“Yes. As it passes through the System, the assemblers hit on local resources. Principally small rocks, floating in space, asteroids and comets. There’s an awful lot of that stuff floating around out there; no need to go all the way down into a planet’s gravity well to retrieve it. It takes the rocks apart, and makes—”

“What?” Petit demanded.

“I don’t know.” Henry spread his hands. “Starship parts. I think, if we go back into the Moonseed pools, that’s what we’ll find.”

Petit just laughed.

“But if it does reach a planet,” Henry said, “the Moonseed goes further.”

Alfred spread his hands. “That’s true. Venus now seems to be some kind of black hole factory. Extremal black holes, which flee at the speed of light. I know it sounds implausible, but—”

“Good God,” Bromwich said. “I hate this sci-fi stuff. Why the hell?”

Alfred said, “Maybe it’s a starship drive. How about that?”

Henry smiled. “Even I never thought of that. A black hole rocket. Well, why not? The exhaust velocity would be lightspeed. The specific impulse—”

Admiral Bromwich was shaking her head. “So where is this fucking starship?”

Henry shrugged. “I don’t have all the answers. Maybe the starship has gone. Maybe it was destroyed. Perhaps the Moonseed have been here a long time. It could be the starship got here when the Solar System was forming — lots of debris just floating around, the planets not yet stabilized. The System would be a dangerous place back then — but better adapted for the Moonseed, no planets yet, just a thin cloud of rock flour. The kind of system such a ship would aim for. But dangerous. Maybe it suffered some kind of catastrophic accident.”

“And,” said Synge, “if the Moonseed has been around that long—”

“Maybe it has evolved, somehow. Or devolved. Maybe it forgot how to make anything except itself. Maybe it forgot how to make a starship drive properly.”

“So Venus is a screw-up,” said Alfred.

“If there was a ship,” Bromwich said doggedly, “where did it come from? Where was it going?”

“…Maybe there was no ship,” Monica Beus said. “Maybe the ‘ship’ was a hive. Then you don’t need to speculate about motive, or destination: nothing above survival, reproduction, propagation.”

And as she framed the thought, she shuddered. On some deep level, she felt she had stumbled on a truth, in this insight. My God. A hive. What are we dealing with here?

Or maybe her own morbidity was polluting her thinking. Projecting the cancer that was eating her up onto the whole damn universe.

They talked further, and the speculation, mostly led by Alfred, got wilder.

Perhaps, it was posited, in all this evolution, the imperatives of the Moonseed had got lost, or warped beyond recognition.

Perhaps the Moonseed was actually a message, of some kind. Perhaps it would rebuild the Solar System, if it was allowed, into some new information-bearing form. Perhaps the Moonseed was trying to reconstruct the world it came from, or the people who lived there. “Like a transporter beam,” said Alfred. A distorted beam, with the information it contained lost or transmuted, into which Earth had strayed. “I think this is just an accident,” Alfred said. “We are lucky—”

That was too much for Bromwich; she snorted. “ Lucky? You scientists really are fuckers.” She picked up her papers. “I’ll tell you this, though. If this is what we meet the first time we put our foot out the farmhouse door, we’re going to find it a tough old universe out there.”

David Petit shook his head, disgusted.

The meeting broke up.

The day began badly, and got worse.

Ted even had trouble putting on the thick heat-resistant suit Blue Ishiguro lent him. When he bent to haul on the tight trousers and boots, and wriggled into the one-piece tunic, the stitched-up hole in his chest seemed to gape wide open. And when he pulled on his gloves and the hood with its big glass faceplate, the heat immediately began to gather.

Blue — already suited up, a heavy pack of equipment strapped to his back, cameras fixed to his hood and chest — was watching him sceptically.

“Kind of hot,” Ted said.

“Yeah. Here.” Blue handed him a heavy box, the size and shape of a cat box.

Ted tested the weight. “What’s this?”

“For samples. This is science, remember. How many can you carry?”

Soon Ted was laden with four of the boxes, suspended over his shoulder on leather straps; where the straps dug into him he could feel the heat build up further.

Blue was still watching him doubtfully. Questioning his strength, or commitment.

Ted glanced up at the sun, which was climbing the sky. “Are we going, or what?”

Blue hoisted his pack, picked up tools and sample boxes of his own, and set his face to the north, towards the centre of Edinburgh, the city of ash.

As he toiled over the rubble-strewn ground, Ted kept re-running his last encounter with his daughter. Their last argument.

“…What are you talking about, Dad?”

“They say there are still a few hundred people alive in there. Maybe more.”