Galaxias, page 13
As her father bumbled out to the kitchen, she tried to hide her own anxiety.
‘Look, we aren’t completely in the dark,’ the Astronomer Royal said. ‘There has been some speculation before – not about this event particularly – but about events of this kind. Agents of this kind. Of this scale. Theoretically, I mean. And, if they exist, how intelligences might reshape the universe on huge scales.’
Tash frowned. ‘You’re talking about the – what was it – the Kardashev types? You brought that up on Blink Day. I had to check the stenographers’ spelling . . .’
Marlowe nodded. ‘In part, yes. That’s a starting point at least.
‘Kardashev. Soviet Union, scientist in the last century. A Kardashev Type I culture masters energy on a planetary scale – meaning, all the sunlight that falls on it. So we aren’t there, even, not yet. A K-II masters energy on a stellar scale. All of a star’s output. Dyson spheres, if you know what they are. And a K-III masters the energy output on the scale of all the stars in the Galaxy. Hundreds of billions of them.’
Kay-Three.
‘Now, to move the Sun, in an instant – let me remind myself of the numbers—’ Marlowe tapped at her phone on the table top before her, squinted a little at the screen. ‘OK. To move the Sun, to teleport it, you would surely need to master energies equivalent to the mass-energy of the Sun. E equals m cee squared, remember. Ten times the energy of the largest supernova explosions.’
‘So,’ Tash said cautiously, ‘too big even for your—’
‘K-III culture? Well, I figure it would take a century or so of its energy budget, but it could be done.’
Noel came bustling back with the tea, and a heap of biscuits, Tash saw, warm from the printer. ‘Kay-Three, huh. Sounds like another Korean pop star. Sorry. I’ll pour the tea.’
‘So,’ Tash said carefully, ‘the entity we are dealing with—’
‘People are calling it Galaxias,’ Zhi said. ‘Here in Houston anyhow. A name is a name. Nobody seems to know who coined it. Galaxias. We have named it. Even if all we know about it is that it can move the Sun.’
‘Galaxias,’ said Marlowe softly. She swiped her phone. ‘I ought to know about this. Here we are: Galaxias, Greek or Roman name for the Milky Way, as visible in the sky. Named for the spilled milk of a goddess. Root of our word “galaxy” of course. Also the name of a type of fish,’ she said dryly. ‘Fine. Call it Galaxias; it needs a name, as long as we understand there’s no implication of gender or motherhood. The label doesn’t matter.
‘But I do think we are dealing with a single entity here, effectively. So, a singular name – yes. It. Not they. Monstrously powerful, but one entity.
‘And yet it hides, even though it doesn’t need to hide from us, surely.
‘How do I know it hides? Because the Galaxy looks unmodified. It is a Galaxy-scale entity, it must be to master such energies as we have witnessed, yet none of its works are visible. And it must have been able to stop anybody else building anything significant too – upstarts like humanity, perhaps. No Dyson spheres, anywhere. If such traces existed we would have found them by now. This is why I believe it is a single entity, though I know some disagree. Because we see not a trace of it, or any vanquished rivals. We know it exists. It hides as a unity. It must be a unity.’
Mel pursed her lips. ‘I should say this is pretty controversial. I suspect if you polled most scholars, even if they accepted the hypothesis of intelligence, they would argue for a strongly unified culture rather than a single entity—’
Marlowe shook her head. ‘No. The control is too precise, too universal for that.’
‘Good grief,’ Noel said. ‘A single beast that moves suns. Maybe we should just build a whacking great temple and bow down and worship—’
‘No,’ Marlowe said sharply. ‘I won’t have language like that . . . Sorry, Noel.’
Tash smiled ruefully. ‘So you should be. I think you sometimes lack perspective, you scientists, you and Mel . . . You should see the polling that crosses Fred Bowles’s desk. Right now fifty per cent of people seem to think this is an act of God – and I can testify to that, every time I pop into the local church it’s packed out. Another forty per cent think it’s all the fault of the governments, or some secret cabal of scientists and oligarchs. Or the Blink was something to do with a big Chinese spaceborne weather control project, which has been a popular meme for years. Only the final ten per cent think it’s all – scientific, astronomical. And even to them, a debate as to whether this Galaxias is a single entity or some kind of alien federation would be pretty abstruse.’
Mel said reluctantly, ‘My own brother has been putting out posts about religious interpretations. Paul, the radical theologian. And he has been saying it’s all an act of God, and we should be respectful.’
Marlowe looked aghast. ‘Really? Your own brother? Did I ever meet him?’
Mel smiled thinly. ‘No. You’d remember. He’s a very clever radical theologian, and can argue well.’
Marlowe snorted. ‘Makes you wonder if humanity is worth saving at all.’ Then some of the energy ran out of her. ‘I don’t mean that, of course. It’s just that sometimes one despairs . . . But anyhow this is no god, Noel, yours, or brother Paul’s, or otherwise. We know it’s limited to lightspeed. Remember that. It has some proven limitations, at least.
‘And as a material entity it must need – engines – of some kind to have achieved this. Moving the Sun. Not miracles. We are looking for such engines, or their traces. In the vicinity of the Sun – around the orbit of Mercury, for instance. And out in the direction of Centaurus, about where it put the Sun, there is some flaky evidence – various TNOs being deflected.’ She glanced at Noel, seeking understanding. ‘Trans-Neptunian objects, comets and moonlets and dwarf planets. It’s as if big – masses – have been assembled out there. Huge unseen engines. We think. The data is patchy. Things orbit slowly out there, and they are sparse, but the results we have so far are – puzzling.
‘But it’s all technology. Big, but not miraculous. Since when did God need scaffolding? And anyhow the biblical miracles were small fry in comparison to this. Even Joshua’s miracle day, when the Earth’s rotation was stopped. A K-II, a star-scale culture, could have pulled that one off. A god? Puny Yahweh! Any tea left, Noel?’
But even as Noel went out to refresh the pot, Tash saw that Zhi was distracted. Looking away, to something off screen.
‘Zhi? You OK?’
‘Fine, fine. Just – bending a few rules. Charlie, Mel, I hadn’t realised how far you’d got in your thinking. But there’s something else I have here. I wasn’t sure it even existed . . . Now I am. I just got confirmation of access. Look – when you meet your ministers. There’s something else you need to know about – if the Americans haven’t done the decent thing and fessed up already, and they probably won’t have.’
Mel shrugged. ‘Nothing I’ve heard.’
‘Nor me,’ said Tash.
Charlie glared. ‘Get to the point.’
Zhi said, ‘I got a tip from some friends back home. China.’
Tash tried to puzzle that out. ‘Your mother?’ Who, Tash knew, was a senior space scientist in her own right, who, it had always seemed, had never had much contact with the son who had gone to the West to build his own career.
He didn’t reply.
Mel said, ‘Never mind the provenance. Something else, Zhi? What?’
‘Something else that might be connected to Galaxias. On the Moon.’
There was a startled silence.
Tash said, ‘Look, Zhi, don’t get yourself into any kind of trouble. I know about government security. I spend my life inside it. You’re a hero astronaut, but that won’t save you if—’
‘I know, I know. And I’m sorry. I know I’m dragging you all into . . . indiscretion. But I saw a chance to get this stuff to you. I thought it was important. We should be sharing. Besides, there’s no point being a tragic hero without leveraging it every now and again.’
A half-smile.
Tash and Mel shared a glance. That was a flash of the old Zhi.
‘Tash, set up your smart wall . . .’
Tash rebooted the wall with a soft command. The Moon image, approaching fullness, was replaced by a shadowed hemisphere, its features only dimly visible.
Zhi said, ‘The new Moon around the moment of eclipse. Lit by Earthshine . . .’
But now, Tash saw, a spot near its centre was flashing, on, off.
‘So,’ Mel said. ‘I take it we’re back to Blink Day, right?’ Frowning, she stood and walked over to the wall. ‘You’re highlighting this feature?’
Tash asked, ‘Do you know what it is?’
‘Sure. Every amateur astronomer does. Its location is the most significant thing about it. Or was – now, with the whole lunar hemisphere out of whack, it’s lost its title.’
‘What title?’ Tash asked.
‘This is the Sinus Medii.’
‘Correct,’ Zhi said. ‘The Central Bay – right at the centre of the Moon’s Earthside face, as was. Jules Verne’s lunar travellers saw it . . . Never mind. And it has some history. So I’ve been finding out – yes, all right, thanks to leaks from my mother, who has her own agenda, needless to say . . .’
Tash and Mel exchanged glances. Charlie Marlowe leaned forward to see better.
‘The Americans landed a pre-Apollo spacecraft there, in the Sinus Medii. Surveyor 6. No crew, of course. This was back in the 1960s. They sent it there just by chance, they could have sent the probe anywhere on the surface – it was really just a technology test bed. NASA didn’t report anything unusual about the mission.
‘But it turns out that they, and successor agencies, have been quietly watching the site ever since, from lunar orbit, from telescopes on Earth and in space. And, I learned since I got here, NASA even dropped a second probe there, a few years later, under cover of an Apollo mission. Entirely covert.’
Tash glanced at Mel, wondering where the hell this was going.
Zhi went on, ‘Well, the Moon got more attention than usual even as Blink Day wore on, as it became obvious it was turning on its axis, relatively. Obvious to the astronomers. And one American instrument, a lunar low orbiter, right at the end of the twenty-four hours, saw this.’
He tapped at, presumably, an out-of-shot phone. New images splashed on the smart wall.
Evidently the Moon again. But a landscape, now.
‘This was the scene just before the Sun returned. Low-light imagery; basically you are seeing by Earthshine . . .’
Tash saw what looked like an ordinary lunar scene – if you could ever call pictures beamed back from the Moon ordinary. A rubble-strewn ground, ellipses that must be foreshortened craters. The colours were odd, the ground greyish – the sky littered with stars, all of which would normally be drowned by sunlight, in a lunar day, leaving only the Earth to be seen.
But this wasn’t like the usual human-touched lunar landscapes Tash was used to seeing. No Neil Armstrong footprints here, no habitats covered in radiation-shield dust. Just a low mound in the foreground. A heap of dirt.
Zhi said, ‘A deep lunar midnight, at the Sinus Medii. But the visibility was good enough to pick up – three, two, one – this.’
In that static scene, the sudden movement startled Tash.
A projectile. A glittering pellet that was fired out of that innocent-looking mound of lunar dirt, and went sailing into the sky. As if a small cannon had been fired, right from the heart of the face of the Moon.
None of them spoke. Mel and Tash just stared, as the sequence was repeated, twice, three times.
A montage of images with explanatory overlays followed. There were multiple views, measurements made with multiple instruments – and multiple types of instruments, Tash saw, including a spectrometer, which gave clues as to the composition of the projectile.
Which had just streaked away, a blur receding from sight.
‘Wow,’ Tash said.
Zhi watched their faces. ‘I’m not going to say a word. Not yet. Let’s pool our thinking.’
Marlowe asked quietly, ‘How big? That – projectile.’
‘About half a metre across,’ Zhi said. ‘Roughly spherical.’
Tash asked, ‘How long has that been up there? The mound, the – the artefact, whatever, that fired that shot.’
‘Well, we can’t know that—’
Mel said, ‘OK. So we saw it by accident, in 1967, through that Surveyor.’
‘Correct. The Surveyor photos had shown some kind of structure, visibly poking out of the dirt, a cylindrical hole cut in the top. Even the dust pile looked too symmetrical to be natural. Also the Americans thought they saw evidence of ice inside that hole in the crest, maybe shadowed. Just a reflection; the Surveyor had no sampling gear.
‘That’s about all. Don’t ask me more; all of this is classified, and I’ve seen little of it. As I said, the Americans sent up just one more lander, kept it quiet. Just watched, for decades. Not an unwise policy. But the structure, whatever, can’t have been doing anything but watch, in return.’
‘Watch what? Who?’
‘Given the location,’ Marlowe said dryly, ‘right at the centre of the Earth-facing hemisphere, I’d guess it’s been watching Earth. Us.’
Zhi nodded. ‘I think that’s the best theory they have. They being the American intelligence community, coordinating with some covert bits of the old NASA and its successor agencies. The probe runners. The old SETI theorists had a name for a probe like this. A lurker. It just sits and watches you, without revealing its existence. Anyhow I only have partial information on this thing, all acquired since the Blink. So I do know the US agencies have monitored this mound, this artefact, for decades. But now it’s all hotting up.’
Tash frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
‘There’s a Chinese team up there now. A human team.
‘They were sent down from the Lunar Gateway after Blink Day – after, presumably, the American imagery of this – firing event – was hacked. The Chinese are running a lot of industrial projects on the Moon, so they have plenty of infrastructure up there, a lot of cover. And much of it in Copernicus. A big, bright nearside crater. Now a lot of them have moved into Medii. The Chinese are being very cautious, as you can imagine. And secretive. They have left the US probes alone – I mean the Surveyor and the spy probe. They keep just out of its field of view – but they have also masked off the mound from the US probe’s view.’
‘What was it made of?’ Tash asked. ‘The . . . cannonball.’
‘Good question. As far as the Americans can tell from the spectrometry – ice. Just water ice. About a kilogram by mass, we think. A fat snowball. But it may have some kind of protective covering we can’t see, to protect it at the speeds it seems to be going. There is a lot of dust in the plane of the Solar System, although it’s heading out of that plane . . .’
Marlowe was intensely interested in that. ‘What kind of speeds?’
‘As far as we could track it, it was still accelerating, hard. Multiples of G. We don’t know how it’s propelled, by the way. No sign of fuel usage – no infra-red signature – nothing like a rocket exhaust, or a sail . . . We don’t know. We don’t see any reason for it to slow anywhere short of lightspeed itself. By we I mean the American analysts who are studying this thing.’
Tash shook her head. ‘A bucket-load of water ice? What’s the point of that? I thought we were talking about a galactic intelligence!’
Marlowe said cautiously, ‘We can only speculate. But, Tash, you could store a lot of information in water, if you chose. You yourself are pretty much a bag of water containing information coded into complex biomolecules. I’m not suggesting this – system – is using DNA itself, but the principle stands.’
‘OK,’ said Tash, trying to think this through. ‘But even if you could, theoretically, who would choose to send a message in water ice?’
Mel said, ‘That’s a better question. Maybe somebody to whom water is . . . everything. We know that there are water worlds out there. I mean, exoplanets with nothing but deep ocean, no land breaking the surface . . . So maybe this is a clue as to the origin of Galaxias. If so – how exciting!’
Noel said evenly, ‘But aren’t you missing the point? Where was this sent to? Do we know?
Zhi smiled. ‘Another good question. Well, we don’t know where it will end up. But we do know where it is heading, right now: for the constellation of Ophiuchus. North of Sagittarius, the zodiac constellation. If you go that way long enough you would finish up above the centre of the Galaxy.’
Mel said, ‘But it’s not even travelling at lightspeed, yet. Correct? It would take millennia to get that far—’
Marlowe shook her head. ‘Ophiuchus: I think I have an inkling . . .’ She dug out her phone. ‘Catalogue. Ophiuchus. Barnard’s Star . . . Zhi, can you download some better data on that missile’s trajectory? . . .’
With that projection, it took Marlowe only minutes to get the answer she apparently sought.
‘Barnard’s Star. I knew it. The next system out beyond Alpha Centauri, nearly six light years away.’
Tash asked, ‘You’re saying that’s where the pellet is heading?’
‘Well, possibly,’ Marlowe said. ‘When you factor in the relative motions of Sun and star over the next few years. And a logical destination. But what’s there waiting for it? Barnard’s is a red dwarf with just one planet, as I recall.’
Zhi frowned. ‘Take a look.’
Mel said, ‘But the system’s very well studied—’
‘We shouldn’t rely on anything we thought we knew before. Take a look. Find a recent observation.’
Marlowe nodded to Mel.
Mel paged through data coming into her phone.
‘. . . OK. Not sure I see the point of this. There are frequent all-sky surveys that check out nearby star systems, known exoplanets, regularly. Let’s see. Particularly, find out if there’s anything new since Blink Day.’ She murmured into her phone again.
When the results evidently came in, seconds later, Mel looked puzzled, Tash saw. She tapped her phone, waved it at the wall, as if seeking a better signal.
