Shapers of Worlds Volume II, page 17
Her smile widened as she reminded herself again that it was she who was beholding this view with her own eyes, not Lanfen—the elder, the taller, the smarter, the prettier sister. This time, for once, Meifen had won out. And she would win out again, definitively, when she found proof of extraterrestrial life.
She shook her head, tried to put old rivalries and anger aside, and set off toward Silverstein Ridge. The bright white ice was not slick beneath her feet; at these temperatures, water ice behaved more like rock. It vibrated faintly with the constant distant thunder of Enceladus’s cryovolcanoes, like an engine running somewhere far below.
Walking on Enceladus was more like skipping underwater and remarkably difficult. The tiny moon’s gravity was only a hundredth of Earth’s, barely more than a downward drift; too forceful a step could easily send you tumbling helplessly until you impacted some icy scarp. For this reason, their suits were the toughest ever built, layered polycarbon fibre with synthetic diamond faceplates, and sported gyroscopes and attitude jets. Nonetheless, despite all her training, Meifen had been a mass of bruises until she’d learned the knack.
Meifen’s destination for this EVA was a new feature that had just appeared on the far side of Silverstein Ridge in the latest imagery from the orbiter. As seen from above, it looked like a river—a snaking curve, brighter than the surrounding terrain, flowing down a valley from the cryovolcano called Kowal Peak. But it couldn’t be a river of water, not at a hundred below zero Celsius.
Not liquid water, anyway.
As she loped across the landscape, Meifen’s thoughts returned to her sister. She could not deny that Lanfen was more than qualified to head up an exobiology team; in fact, Lanfen would certainly have risen even higher in the bureaucracy by now if she hadn’t been so focused on her deep-ocean extremophile research project. She had been certain it would give her the edge in selection for the Enceladus mission—and she had nearly been right.
It was probably inevitable that the twins had both become exobiologists, with their astrophysicist mother and biochemist father both so enthusiastic about their fields. It was equally inevitable that they had turned out so competitive—Mother always said that she had felt the two of them jockeying to be born first. Lanfen had won that race, but Meifen had beaten her to Enceladus; perhaps that would finally even the score.
And perhaps Meifen’s victory had even done Lanfen a favour. After her project collapsed and she lost the competition for Enceladus, Lanfen had thrown herself into more collaborative projects; that surely must have helped in gaining this new position.
Meifen paused to sip some water—cold though it was outside her suit, bounding across Enceladus’s surface was hot and sweaty work—and mark a new vent on her map. Dr. Lufkin, the stolid, babushka-like Russian geologist, was insistent that any significant changes in the terrain be properly recorded, and this vent was certainly significant: a jet of steam several metres wide, bursting from a crack in the ice and hurtling skyward at hundreds of metres per second, freezing to snow as it rose. Even from a hundred metres away, she could feel the thunder through her boots. Perhaps someday, it would grow into an enormous cryovolcano like Mount Hurst, whose geyser-topped peak was the second-largest feature on the horizon after Saturn itself.
Much of the water in this jet would escape Enceladus’s gravity to add to Saturn’s E ring, while the heaviest, saltiest particles would fall back to the surface. Those particles—frozen drops of water from the salty ocean forty kilometres beneath her feet—were the thing she, the mission’s exobiologist, had come to Enceladus to study. But though she’d collected and inspected snow of every type, age, and temperature, she had failed to find incontrovertible evidence of life. Organic molecules, yes; dissolved minerals that might be life precursors, yes; but nothing with any structure. If any life swam in Enceladus’s subsurface ocean, the violence of the geysers destroyed all evidence of it.
But the river of ice on Kowal Peak, she hoped, might be different. Meifen checked her map, took a breath, and loped off toward it.
The craggy terrain as she approached the peak reminded Meifen of the last vacation she and Lanfen had taken together, on Kaua’i, together with Lanfen’s husband, Zhou Sheng. The tension between the sisters had been fierce then—both had made it to the finals for astronaut selection—and Sheng, along with the sisters’ parents, had insisted that they take a break to do something together.
And, indeed, there had been a certain amount of togetherness . . .
The ground rose swiftly, becoming twisted and jumbled, covered with a loose scree of ice crystals. She deployed the climbing claws on her boots, but even with their help, she often slipped and stumbled, only the sudden hissing shove of the attitude jets at her shoulders keeping her upright. Sometimes, she had to jump across chasms tens of metres wide, but after months of EVAs, she was confident in her abilities and her suit. She continued to climb, drawing closer and closer to the shimmering geyser that rose like a gigantic white tree from the cryovolcano’s summit. The ice rumbled beneath her boots and gloves.
Soon, she found herself on Silverstein Ridge, comparing the view with her map. And there it was, flowing down Yule Valley toward Cooper Crater: the river of ice she’d spotted on the satellite view, gleaming smooth and white against the jagged terrain around it. She bounded off toward it.
It was the pressure that was her greatest enemy, she thought. The pressure of forty kilometres of ice on the ocean below forced liquid water up through cracks to the surface, where it met near-vacuum and flashed to steam, destroying any evidence of life.
The same sort of pressure—from her sister, her parents, from society at large—had forced her, too, into space. And had destroyed so much.
With a skipping, bobbling step, she brought herself to a halt on the surface of the ice river. She was no geologist—that was Dr. Lufkin’s job—but the instruments in her suit and her cross-training let her identify at a general level what she was seeing. The river was, as she had suspected from the satellite imagery, much warmer and hence softer than the rocky stuff around it; it was behaving like lava, flowing downhill at a comparatively rapid pace. But the gravity here was so low that it piled up on itself as it flowed, forming heaps and ridges like frozen waves. Even Meifen, who knew she had no aesthetic sense whatsoever, had to admit that it was beautiful.
She took several photographs, then set off uphill. What she was seeking was most likely to be found at the river’s source—the newest, warmest part of the flow.
It had been while climbing Mount Wai’ale’ale on Kaua’i that she and Sheng had begun flirting. She hadn’t even meant it at first; she felt nothing for the man. But when he had appeared to respond, that response had triggered an impulse in her. A greedy, nasty, competitive impulse.
She should probably not have followed through.
The source of the ice river came suddenly: an enormous crested dome of smooth, gleaming ice, and beyond it, nothing but stony grey. In places, the dome was completely transparent; in others, a froth of glittering, crystalline white; it had the appearance of a breaking wave. Through her boots, she could feel a low, intermittent creak as the mass of water slowly pressed its way to the surface, freezing as it came.
This was exactly what she had been searching and hoping for: a slow seep, ice from the ocean below that had not been vaporized and catapulted into space. From her toolkit, she brought out drills and scrapers and sample containers.
The work was difficult, the positions into which she was forced to contort herself uncomfortable. But she persevered, gathering samples from high and low and deep and shallow until the beep of her air supply’s monitor forced her to gather her equipment and head back to the lander.
She was happy but exhausted and stumbled frequently. At one point, she misjudged a leap over a gap she had cleared with no difficulty on the outward journey and wound up scrabbling on the chasm’s edge for interminable seconds before clawing her way to safety. She lay on her stomach, gasping, for some minutes, until she was calm enough to continue.
She would have to be more careful. It would be horrible to die now when she was so close to victory. She had worked too hard, sacrificed too much, made too many difficult choices, to fail now.
Although she had to admit that the choices that had secured her position on the Enceladus mission had barely been hers at all. It had been Sheng who had responded to her subtle overtures, Sheng who had come to her tent in the middle of the night.
And it had been Lanfen’s choice to smash her own equipment in a jealous rage when she’d found out, destroying years of her own work.
Lanfen had told the ISA that the data had been lost due to a lab accident. Bad enough that her project had collapsed; even worse if the agency had reason to doubt her emotional stability. For obvious reasons, neither Sheng nor Meifen had been inclined to reveal the truth. But, in the end, the deception had done Lanfen no good; Meifen had been selected instead.
The sisters had barely spoken since. Lanfen had not even come to the launch, to their parents’ puzzled disappointment.
Back at the lander, Meifen fidgeted impatiently as the airlock cycled, listening to her suit creak as air pressure returned. She began doffing the suit as soon as she possibly could, her breath fogging the air and the cold metal of her neck ring burning her fingers, and left the helmet bouncing lazily on the EVA prep room floor.
Dr. O’Neill, the disgustingly perky Irish engineer, tried to interrupt Meifen as she rushed to the science bay. “There’s a priority transmission coming in from Earth,” she said as Meifen rushed past.
“I’ll be there in a minute,” Meifen replied, not slowing. She took the ladder in one jump, the precious sample container clutched to her chest.
Her fingers trembled, and not just from the cold, as she thawed and prepared the first sample and slipped it into the microscope. She held her breath as the image came up on the screen.
And took in more air in an excited gasp as the view swam into focus.
Curved, transparent forms drifted in the water, the salty Enceladan water from forty kilometres below the surface. One resembled an amoeba with a tail. Another looked more like a paramecium, only arrowhead-shaped. Structures were visible within, resembling vacuoles and organelles.
They were unmoving, clearly quite dead. They were in bad shape—exploded by decompression, torn by ice crystals that had frozen and thawed. But there was no question that they were life forms, possibly even multicellular. And they were definitely no Earth species.
Extraterrestrial life! She was the first human being to ever behold extraterrestrial life! Her place in history was assured!
A sudden happy shriek from the wardroom two levels above was the only thing that could have broken her spell of exhilarated wonder. “Dr. Lai!” called the commander, his voice full of surprise and delight. “Get up here right now! You don’t want to miss this!”
“Coming!” she called, barely able to contain her own excitement. She couldn’t wait to share her news with the rest of the crew . . . and the anticipation of her sister’s reaction was even more delicious.
She leaped up from the science bay to the engineering deck in one jump. A second jump took her to the wardroom, where her three crewmates were gathered around the big wall display.
And on that display . . .
Fabulous creatures.
Golden-skinned they were, and large-eyed . . . nocturnal, perhaps, or evolved for a lower level of sunlight than Earth’s. Tall and slim, with gill-like structures pulsing on the sides of their heads. Tool-using hands. The rest was obscured by clothing, colourful and diaphanous.
The camera pulled back, revealing the big press room at ISA headquarters in Mumbai. The head of the ISA was there on the stage with the aliens, and the president of the Asian Union, and . . .
. . . and her sister.
LAI LANFEN, read the text beneath her grinning face. XENOBIOLOGY LEAD, FIRST CONTACT TEAM.
Meifen’s knees buckled, but it was three long seconds before her body hit the deck.
I Hid in the Bathroom When the Aliens Arrived
By Lisa Foiles
Time: Present Day
Universe: Three to the Left and Two Straight Down
Planet: Tycho, Galaxy K4-Q88P
Weather: Balmy
We had one alien encounter. It was embarrassing how much this dude looked like the stereotypical movie alien. Tall, slender, leathery skin. Deep green. A space suit filled out by arms and legs. And holy cow, a HUGE noggin. Big ol’ head. He looked like a cake pop. A babysitter once traumatized me with Mars Attacks! when I was a kid, so not gonna lie, I was pretty apprehensive about this guy. The only unexpected feature was his lack of eyes. He didn’t “see” in the way we do . . . he sensed things . . . ? I’m still not sure.
My apprehensions subsided because . . . he was kind. The linguists attempted to communicate, but it wasn’t happening. Yet, the alien continued to visit. His ship would arrive on our planet, he’d step out, look back and forth as if to scan the area, and then just sort of . . . co-exist with us. We would—I say we, but I mean they, as in all the smart people on Tycho, who don’t include me—attempt to offer him all sorts of things, including food, and he would reject them all. I remember they played Beethoven for him at one point. (I would’ve chosen Beyoncé, but it’s all good.) I stayed far away from the alien and just kept baking.
Oh. Yeah. I’m a baker. I’ll get to that.
The final visit from the alien was last year. He looked . . . ill. I don’t even know how to explain it because frankly, he looked pretty ill to begin with (in my opinion). His green faded to grey. He seemed weak. He stayed with us for two days before he died. His body was on the ground, motionless. I guess our doctors were able to confirm his expiration. I mean, did he even have a heart to stop beating? These are the types of questions I would think, but never say, because I’d end up sounding like a toddler who wandered into a UN meeting. “Georgia is also a country?” is something I would probably ask in that scenario.
Anyway.
The scientists dissected our alien friend because they’re scientists, and that’s kinda their thing. After months of experimentation, they discovered something incredible: we could access the brain’s information. Just a little at a time. I was never allowed inside the building, so I don’t know how they did this, but it’s how we learned about the Sludge. The Sludge is a green mucus-like substance extracted from Tycho’s core, which can be used as both a clean, viable energy source and as artificial intelligence. It consists of . . . nucleus-like . . . micro-organisms . . .
Okay, stop. This is where we’re going to have problems.
I don’t know. I don’t know how or why it works. I don’t know any of this science-y stuff. Whenever this crap is talked about in my presence—which is ALL THE TIME—my brain rejects the information and curls up into a ball to protect itself. My brain is a possum. In fact, I’m the only person from Tycho who doesn’t have the slightest grasp of anything we’re actually doing.
Or, I guess, I was the only person.
And nobody on Tycho is doing anything now.
All I know is that it became clear that this alien brain could teach us a lot. If this one tiny peek led us to the Sludge, think of the infinite secrets that could be unlocked.
All right. Time to make like cloud storage and back up.
I’ve been living on the planet Tycho in Galaxy K4-Q88P, and I shouldn’t have.
With the invention of a new fast travel system, Earthlings have explored space like a kid armpit-deep in a cereal box in search of a decoder ring. We’re hittin’ every nook and cranny. Several planets have been recognized as Earth-like, so colonization has begun, with the most successful so far being Tycho. Obviously, you need really effing smart and cool and good-looking people to be part of these ventures. Not morons. I cannot stress this enough. You do not want morons in charge of interplanetary travel and space colonization.
My older siblings were both selected for the Tycho expedition. Cole is . . . dammit, I have to use past tense now.
Cole was a Sergeant Major in the US Marine Corps and Amelia was a space-systems mechanical engineer. (No clue what those job titles meant.) They both spoke twelve languages or some absurd number like that, which is helpful when you’re stationed in a remote corner of space with the most diverse group of intellectuals imaginable.
As you could guess, I was not the most impressive of my parents’ three kids.
But I had a plan.
After five years, Tycho became. . . almost normal. Like, a normal place to live. Like Denver or some shit. Houses. Buildings. Farms. Indoor plumbing. Wi-Fi. They were starting to expand from their utopian “everybody share!” way of living and considering adopting the idea of currency exchanged for goods and services.
That’s where I came in. I could never match the IQ scores or physical skills of my brother and sister, but dammit, I could bake. After begging, pleading, and just the right amount of strategic blackmailing that only a little sister is capable of, I convinced my siblings to get me to the planet. They put their careers at stake and fudged my documents to make me appear . . . smart. On paper. Instead of a 25-year-old basic Hallmark Channel-loving, Taylor Swift-listening, frappuccino-drinking white chick who flunked out of culinary school and ran her bakery into the ground after six months.
But that’s neither here nor there.
I was accepted as a crew member on the next trip to Tycho to introduce outer space to sugar, fat, and a hell of a lot of sprinkles. This was a new start for me. No one knew me. As long as I held my idiot cards close to my chest and kept people in frosting, no one would suspect that I wasn’t qualified to be there. Hey, Mom and Dad! Try telling your neighbours your youngest is the “odd” kid who “struggles” when she runs a SPACE BAKERY.
