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Stephen Baxter: Xeelee: Endurance

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Stephen Baxter Xeelee: Endurance

Xeelee: Endurance: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

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Return to the eon-spanning and universe-crossing conflict between humanity and the unknowable alien Xeelee in this selection of uncollected and unpublished stories, newly edited and placed in chronological reading order. From tales charting the earliest days of man's adventure to the stars to stories of Old Earth, four billion years in the future, the range and startling imagination of Baxter is always on display. As humanity rises and falls, ebbs and flows, one thing is always needed – the ability to endure. Contains eleven short stories and novellas.

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The passage was at least mercifully short. Amid a shower of exotic particles we ascended out of another electric-blue Interface – and I found myself back in the Saturn system, for the first time in years.

I could see immediately that we were close to the orbit of Titan about its primary, for the planet itself, suspended in the scuffed sky of the lifedome, was about the size I remembered it: a flattened globe a good bit larger than the Moon seen from Earth. Other moons hung around the sky, points of light. The sun was off to the right, with its close cluster of inner planets, so Saturn was half-full. Saturn’s only attractive feature, the rings, were invisible, for Titan’s orbit is in the same equatorial plane as the ring system and the rings are edge-on. But the shadow of the rings cast by the sun lay across the planet’s face, sharp and unexpected.

There was nothing romantic in the view, nothing beautiful about it, not to me. The light was flat and pale. Saturn is about ten times as far from the sun as Earth is, and the sun is reduced to an eerie pinpoint, its radiance only a hundredth that at Earth: Saturn is misty and murky, an autumnal place. And you never forgot you were far from home when a human hand, held out at arm’s length towards the sun, could have covered all of the orbit of Earth.

The Crab swung about and Titan itself was revealed, a globe choked by murky brown cloud from pole to pole, even more dismal and uninviting than its primary. Evidently Michael Poole had placed his wormhole Interface close to the moon in anticipation that Titan would someday serve his purposes.

Titan was looming larger, swelling visibly. Our destination was obvious.

Harry Poole took charge. He had us put on heavy, thick-layered exosuits of a kind I’d never seen before. We sat on our couches like fat pupae; my suit was so thick my legs wouldn’t bend properly.

‘Here’s the deal,’ Harry said, evidently for my benefit. ‘The Crab came out of the wormhole barrelling straight for Titan. That way we hope to get you down there before any of the automated surveillance systems up here can spot us, or do anything about it. In a while the Crab will brake into orbit around Titan. But before then you four in the gondola will be thrown straight into an atmospheric entry.’ He snapped his fingers, and a hatch opened up in the floor beneath us to reveal the interior of another craft, mated to the base of the lifedome. This was evidently the ‘gondola’, some kind of landing shuttle. It was like a cave, brightly lit and with its walls crusted with data displays.

I said, ‘“Thrown straight in,” Harry? And what about you?’

He smiled with that young-old face. ‘I will be waiting for you in orbit. Somebody has to stay behind to bail you out, in case.’

‘This “gondola” looks small for the four of us.’

Harry said, ‘Well, weight has been a consideration. You’ll mass no more than a tonne, all up.’ He handed me a data slate. ‘Now this is where you come in, Jovik. I want you to send a covering message to the sentience-law compliance control base on Enceladus.’

I stared at the slate. ‘Saying what, exactly?’

Harry said, ‘The entry profile is designed to mimic an unmanned mission. You’re going in hard, high deceleration. I want you to make yourselves look that way in the telemetry – as if this is just another unmanned probe going in for a bit of science, or a curacy inspection, or whatever it is you bureaucrat types do. Attach the appropriate permissions. I’m quite sure you’re capable of that.’

I was sure of it too. I opened the slate with a wave of my hand, quickly mocked up a suitable profile, let Harry’s systems check I hadn’t smuggled in any cries for help, and squirted it over to Enceladus. Then I handed the slate back. ‘There. Done. You’re masked from the curacy. I’ve done what you want.’ I waved at the looming face of Titan. ‘So you can spare me from that, can’t you?’

‘We discussed that,’ said Michael Poole, with just a hint of regret in his voice. ‘We decided to take you along as a fall-back, Jovik, in case of problems, any kind of challenge from Enceladus. Even if they’ve discovered the craft is manned, having you aboard will give us some cover.’

I snorted. ‘They’ll see through that.’

Miriam shrugged. ‘It’s worth it if it buys us a bit more time.’

Bill Dzik stared at me, hard. ‘Just don’t get any ideas, desk jockey. I’ll have my eye on you all the way down and all the way back.’

‘And listen,’ Harry said, leaning forward. ‘If this works out, Jovik, you’ll be rewarded. We’ll see to that. We’ll be able to afford it, after all.’ He grinned that youthful grin. ‘And just think. You will be one of the first humans to walk on Titan! So you see, you’ve every incentive to cooperate, haven’t you?’ He checked a clock on his data slate. ‘We’re close to the release checkpoint. Down you go, team.’

They all sneered at that word, ‘team’, and at the cheerful tone of the man who was staying behind. But we filed dutifully enough through the hatch and down into that cave of instrumentation, Miriam first, then me, and Bill Dzik at my back. Michael Poole was last in; I saw him embrace his father, stiffly, evidently not a gesture they were used to.

In the gondola, our four couches sat in a row, so close that my knees touched Miriam’s and Dzik’s when we were all crammed in there in our suits. The hull was all around us, close enough for me to have reached out and touched it in every direction, a tight-fitting shell. Poole pulled the hatch closed, and I heard a hum and whir as the independent systems of this craft came online. There was a rattle of latches, and then a kind of sideways shove that made my stomach churn. We were already cut loose from the Crab, and were falling free, and rotating.

Poole touched a panel above his head, and the hull turned transparent. Now it was as if we four in our couches were suspended in space, surrounded by glowing instrument panels, and blocky masses that must be the power supply, life support, supplies. Above me the Crab slid across the face of Saturn, GUTdrive flaring, and below me the orange face of Titan loomed large.

I whimpered. I have never pretended to be brave.

Miriam Berg handed me a transparent bubble-helmet. ‘Lethe, put this on before you puke.’

I pulled the helmet over my head; it snuggled into the suit neck and made its own lock.

Bill Dzik was evidently enjoying my discomfort. ‘You feel safer in the suit, right? Well, the entry is the most dangerous time. But you’d better hope we get through the atmosphere’s outer layers before the hull breaches, Emry. These outfits aren’t designed to work as pressure suits.’

‘Then what use are they?’

‘Heat control,’ Michael Poole said, a bit more sympathetic. ‘Titan’s air pressure is fifty per cent higher than Earth’s, at the surface. But that thick cold air just sucks away your heat. Listen up, Emry. The gondola’s small, but it has a pretty robust power supply – a GUTengine, in fact. You’re going to need that power to keep warm. For short periods your suit will protect you; there are power cells built into the fabric. But you won’t last more than a few hours away from the gondola. Got that?’

I was hardly reassured. ‘What about the entry itself? Your father said we’ll follow an unmanned profile. That sounds . . . vigorous.’

Bill Dzik barked a laugh. Nobody else replied.

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