Harvest Read online

  “We might have looked to developing space stations,” Vars said. She sat on the floor on a big square pillow that Ben had managed to scrounge from somewhere. “We started with space stations before building permanent Elfies on the moon.”

  “Yes,” Ben said, but with impatience in his voice. Vars had learned by now that when he got like this, it meant he had a brainstorm and wanted to share something with her. But Ben never just came out and said anything outright. He preferred the Socratic method of interaction, where he asked Vars pointed questions until she reached the same conclusion as him. It was maddening sometimes, especially because Vars had a similar style of discussion and they were only days from reaching Saturn. The ship was about to reassume its more maneuverable configuration, folding back into one rigid mass propelled by multiple engines. That meant the loss of what little pseudo gravity they maintained via rotation. It was all necessary for slowing down and landing on Mimas; and Ian was riding Vars and the rest of his group hard to present their ideas before that happened.

  “So are you talking mineral wealth?” Vars asked. Without access to asteroids for metals and comets for water, it would have been difficult to colonize the solar system as much as humans had done in the last hundred years.

  “Not only,” Ben said. “I’m also talking about real estate. To expand into the stars, a civilization would presumably need to begin within its own star system. So systems with just one planet would be at a disadvantage right from the start. Sort of like what you were discussing in your book about domestication of animals and plants: people who lived in areas with a variety of good options for domestication—the wild ancestors of goats, cows, horses, rice—got ahead a lot faster than people in poor resource areas. So luck is critical to developing a star-faring civilization.”

  “I see your point,” Vars said. “Our system is rich in planets and resources.” Not to mention, human science exploration would have suffered from lack of examples of other planetary bodies to study. Variety was important for spurring invention, Vars knew.

  Ben pushed on. “Alice was talking the other day about the wealth of our DNA heritage. The sheer diversity of life on Earth, and to a lesser degree on Mars, on Jupiter’s moons, and even on Titan, is extraordinary, don’t you think?”

  “Alice is a Seed. She grew up thinking about DNA diversity in this way,” Vars said. “But yes, we do have an abundance of evolutionary solutions to living in extreme environments and to generating energy—”

  “Yes! And motion. We use biomimetics all the time. It’s the go-to solution on my team.” Ben’s eyes twinkled with excitement. He’d once told Vars that his expertise in solving robotic motion problems by studying animals’ movements was what had gotten him a role on Ian’s team in the first place. With Mims, his job was to extrapolate backwards, to reverse-engineer from the movements of artificial specimens to the possible biology of their makers. “We had an army of different AI-controlled miniature robots to build our colonies on Mars and on the moon. They were all designed based on our observations of nature. Our machines slither like snakes into the crevices of asteroids, swim like jellyfish in the oceans of Europa, crawl like crabs on the surface of Mars. And it’s not just the engineering solutions. Alice talked about splicing DNA to create life that would someday make Mars more like Earth. We have an abundance of riches here.”

  “It’s always easier to steal than to start from scratch,” Vars agreed. “Are you saying that alien civilizations would covet our star system for its biodiversity and lucky configuration of planets?”

  “I’m just extrapolating from what you wrote in your book about civilizations on Earth. We had winners and losers. And it had nothing to do with native intelligence or ability. Unlike the other great apes, humans have very limited genetic diversity. The winners and losers were predominantly determined by their initial geographic location. So wouldn’t the same be true on a galactic scale? Too close to the center of the galaxy, and the chance of being exterminated by some violent gamma ray event in a neighboring star system or some stray orphan planet becomes too high. Too far out on the edges of the spiral arms or galactic halo, and the distance between neighboring stars is just too great for colonization efforts. Distances, energies, and densities are all parts of the fates of interstellar life.”

  “So not only is Earth in the Goldilocks Zone of our own planetary system,” Vars said, “but our sun is well placed in relation to the galactic neighborhood. Am I getting it? In which case, I’m guessing you and your team have created a list of other star systems that are advantageously positioned?”

  “Wait on that, Vars. I want to get back to that why question. Why would someone send a probe to our star system, wait a few millennia, and then attack us?”

  “If you’re saying that our solar system has intrinsic value, then you’ve answered your own question,” said Vars. “Mind you, I’m not agreeing, not yet.” She liked Ben when he got this super enthusiastic, but it was hard to argue with him at these times. She’d learned just to nod, give gentle encouragements, and wait for Ben to share his ideas in a systematic way.

  “I know, I know.” Ben was up and circling the cramped space of his room. Vars had to duck under his windmilling arms now and then. “But resources are everything. It’s really your idea, Vars. I’m just repeating it. We barely survived the human-ending event of 2057. And we refocused our energies on spreading human seeds—sorry for the reference—as wide as we can. But if we only had the one planet, our options would have been much more limited.”

  “If the ‘human-ending event’ was one of the things you mentioned before—a stray orphan planet disrupting our system, a supernova event too close, or a million of other cosmically horrible events—then having a well-stocked star system wouldn’t be enough,” Vars said.

  “Yes. And that’s why humans’ long-term plan has to be to go to the stars. To ensure survival, we need to spread far and wide.”

  “That’s a distant future.”

  “Yes. For now. But we’re talking about a two-billion-year range, right? Mims might have had time to plan that far.”

  “So your theory is that Mims are here to take over our solar system for their colonies?”

  “If humans think this way, wouldn’t other intelligences? And it never worked out well for the indigenous populations of Earth when technologically-advanced and resource-rich colonists arrived and took their lands.”

  “It’s a leap, Ben. Remember when we talked about human nature? It was your point. Humans bear their evolutionary baggage of millions of years. But other civilizations will have their own natures, their own evolutionary paths. Comparing the base motivations of humans to aliens doesn’t make sense.”

  “It’s not about their nature, Vars. No one wants to go extinct because the universe BURPS.”

  “Burps?”

  “BURPS—it’s an acronym. B is for Burned by stellar evolution. The sun will turn into a red giant and swallow up Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Luna. This is just a matter of time; we have this on our schedule.

  “U is for Undone by a cosmic cataclysm. A supernova, a gamma ray burst, or some galactic center event that burns away our atmosphere and singes all life across Earth and its solar system colonies. Again, it’s just matter of statistics: sooner or later something will blow up too near to us.

  “R is for Ripped by a stray stellar bullet. The solar system rips apart by coming too close to some other galactic inhabitants. We set up the Asteroid Hunter Program after the Keres Triplets event, but if a whole planet, or a star, or a black hole were to swing our way, we’d be helpless to stop it. The only way for humans to survive such an event would be to have a colony in another star system. Hopefully far enough away to remain unaffected by the loss of our home world.

  “P is for Poisoned by our own hubris. Plagues, wars, evil AI, ecological disasters. We were almost there once. In fact, the Triplets might have saved us from this partic
ular destiny. But in a few centuries, we’re bound to forget and start tinkering all over again. It might be part of our human nature.

  “And finally, S is for Stagnate through lack of advancement. Humans get bored and die out.” Ben sat back down. “That’s BURPS.”

  “I see you’ve given this a lot of thought,” Vars said. “But dying of boredom, Ben, really?”

  “I would,” Ben said with a smile. “Wouldn’t you?”

  Vars allowed herself a chuckle. “So allow me to summarize your ideas.”

  “Not just mine.”

  “Fine. Any civilization that survives to acquire space flight would need to plan on expanding and exporting its people to the stars to ensure its own survival.”

  “It’s how it has to be,” Ben said. “The one thing we’ve learned about life—granted, only in our own solar system—is that it strives to survive. It mutates and pushes the boundaries and takes over ecosystems, but it refuses to die.”

  “And once that life acquires intelligence—”

  “It puts its mind into survival.”

  “And you believe Mims want what we have.”

  “That would be one interpretation, but not the only one,” Ben said.

  “What are some others?”

  “That’s where you come in, Vars. You’re the expert.” He leaned back and smiled smugly at her. Sometimes, Vars got a sense that this was all unreal to Ben—fun and games, all an intellectual challenge. It’s like he was able to forget that the world was hanging on the balance. And when Vars was with him, he made it easy for her to forget too, to get carried away in these conversations. It some ways, Ben made it easier for Vars to think beyond the horror of the moment. Sometimes, when she considered what was really happening, she just wanted to curl up and give up.

  “Are you sure Ian didn’t assign you to me?” Vars asked. She could see Ian doing just that.

  “Nah, it was my idea. And really, I’m just spurring you on and giving you another perspective on your own work. Didn’t you say that if not for a cosmic accident, it would be dinosaurs and not us?”

  “So basically you’re saying that in just a few years, we might be the ones sending probes full of little robots to explore other worlds?”

  “It’s in the works already.”

  “Where? Where would you send the first probe?” Vars asked, getting pulled back into the what if game.

  “Well, it’s still up for debate. But it’s just a question of time and resources. In 2017, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration—”

  “I know of NASA.”

  “NASA announced the discovery of Ross 128. It’s a single-planet star system with a well-behaved star—”

  “Well-behaved?”

  “Quiet, not a lot of eruptions of radiation, small flares, basically a nice and steady source of light, heat, and energy. Perfect for our type of life. The planet, Ross 128, is a just a twinge larger than Earth and lies right inside the habitable zone. Perfect.”

  “But only one planet,” Vars said.

  “Yes, that’s a big downside. Before I met you, I would have voted for that world. But now? Now, ideally, we want a rich star system, full of planets. Something like Trappist-1. The name came from the telescope that discovered the system: Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope. Anyway, it’s an ultracool dwarf star with seven Earth-sized planets orbiting at good distances for life. The fourth, fifth, and sixth planets in that system lie completely within the habitable zone.”

  “That’s perfect!” Vars ignored the importance that Ben had placed on her thoughts. She didn’t feel that influential. She was barely keeping up...

  “Yes. Based on some preliminary observations of seasonal variations of atmospheric methane on the sixth planet, we’re pretty sure there’s at least primitive life there. Of course, after 2057, all of the Earth’s resources were focused on our immediate survival. It’s only in the last decade or so that we’ve returned to searching for potential exoplanets to colonize.”

  “So is Trappist-1 on the list for human colonization?”

  “Well, no. Unfortunately, this system is forty light years away.”

  “So it’s interesting long-term perhaps, but not for an initial colony,” Vars said.

  “Precisely.”

  “And Mims, presumably, would think along the same lines.”

  “Presumably. Alas, the speed of light is still the law of our universe.”

  “It’s not like Star Trek,” Vars said with a smile. “So Mims sent out a bunch of probes into their immediate stellar neighborhood to look for potentially good locations for their colonies.”

  “The smaller the probe, the less flexible the technology within, the cheaper the investment per probe…which means the more systems Mims can afford to visit.”

  “Right. So let’s say they find a couple of good locations. Then what?”

  “It’s very costly to send a real colony ship. As you’ve said, it’s not like Star Trek. The real colony ship would be a one-way trip for its passengers.”

  “So you have to prep the place,” Vars said.

  She thought about Spain and Portugal sending ships across the globe in the fifteen and sixteen hundreds. At the time, it was a total leap of faith, a jump into the unknown, into the blank places on the maps where dragons lived. Mims would have had it a bit easier—they’d have the technology to identify which star systems were promising and presumably even discover something about the exoplanets as well: atmospheric composition, existence of organic compounds, possible oceans of liquid water. Still, that wouldn’t be enough. Not to colonize.

  “They would send probes to terraform the potential planets to meet Mims’ needs,” Vars said after a few moments of consideration.

  “Like the nanobots,” Ben agreed.

  “But is that what those things are doing? Terraforming Earth for Mims’ needs?”

  “You tell me. Wouldn’t the meaning of ‘terraform’ be different for every civilization?”

  “When the Europeans came to America, they brought seeds to plant the food they liked. They brought horses and cows and pigs. They brought their technology and tools.”

  “They brought all they needed to survive,” Ben agreed. “I assume Mims would too.”

  “Across interstellar space? How long would it take us to send a ship to our nearest star neighbor?”

  “Alpha Centauri A is about 4.3 light-years away. If the ship travels at half the speed of light, then it would take a little more than eight years to get there. That’s of course from the ship’s reference frame; we’re talking relativistic velocities, so there’ll be Lorentz contraction, shortening the distance the ship would need to traverse. But from Earth’s point of view, it would take closer to ten years. But then there’s acceleration and deceleration times—”

  “Relax, Ben. I’m just looking for an approximation. So if we wanted to send a probe to Alpha Centauri, we could get it there in a decade or two?”

  “Probably longer, but not much longer. Of course, a colony ship would require a lot more energy to accelerate to those speeds, so it would take significantly longer.”

  “Still within one generation.”

  “Yes. But it would be a one-way trip. And no help once the colonists got there; just whatever we could do to prepare the place for colonization in advance. Just like with the Luna colony and Mars, we sent advanced probes ahead of time, full of things we needed to survive.”

  “Food, water, air, shelter, energy,” Vars said.

  “Yes. The basics.” There was a lot to think about.

  Saturn took up most of the view from the bridge of the ship. And it was breathtaking. The gas giant’s cloud tops churned with top-level atmospheric storms, and occasionally a vortex created a window into a layer below through the eye of the storm. Like a kaleidoscope, Saturn was continuously evol
ving and yet unchanging. Slowly the view shifted, and Vars found herself looking down on the surface of Mimas. The pilot fired the engines and moved their spaceship into the little moon’s orbit.

  “Welcome to Mimas, ladies and gentlemen,” said Major Liut.

  Everyone, military crew and scientists, had squeezed in to watch the approach. This was the first time anyone would see the Mims’s artifact with their own eyes, out the window, as opposed to through instrument-collected imagery. No one wanted to miss this.

  The bridge had four crew stations and a captain’s chair. Major Liut took the command position, and his people staffed the navigation, flight control, and engineering posts. Ian sat in the other crew chair, though not to operate any controls; he just needed a place to sit. After the surgery, he had lost a lot of stamina, not to mention the use of one of his hands. Getting around the ship during the few days of weightlessness with just one arm put additional strain on the man. Vars would bet Ian was covered in bruises...she was.

  Vars positioned herself right behind Ian’s chair, with a full view of the window. Ben was beside her. Alice, due to her short stature, was pushed to the front and now floated right in front of Liut, bracing herself against the foot and handholds of the bridge. Even sitting down, the major towered over the diminutive scientist.

  Mimas floated below them. It was the first Saturn moon large enough to assume a spherical shape. The other mini-moons, closer to the mother planet, were really just big rocks, shepherding Saturn’s rings. And while Mimas was way beyond the F ring—the last well-defined ring of Saturn—it was still within the haze of the E ring, a diffuse collection of dust and ice that titrated as far out as the orbit of the next significant moon, Enceladus.