Earth

“Or maybe it’s not just a lone madman this time. I wonder… Governments and ruling cliques are good at coming up with ways to destroy the world. Maybe one was developing some sort of doomsday device? An ultimate deterrent? Maybe, like you, they released it by mistake.”

“Then why keep it secret?”

“To prevent retribution, of course. Or to gain time while they plot an escape to Mars?”

Alex shook his head. “I can’t speculate about any of that. All I can do is—”

“No.” George stabbed a finger at him. “Let me tell you what you can do. First off, you can get busy confirming this data. And then, after that…”

The fire seemed to drain out of Hutton’s eyes. His shoulders slumped. “After that you can tell me how much time I have left with my children, before that thing down there swallows up the ground beneath our feet.”

The frightened techs shifted nervously. Stan Goldman watched his own hands. Alex, however, felt a different sense of loss. He wished he too could react in such a way — with anger, defiance, despair.

Why do I feel so little? Why am I so numb?

Was it because he’d been living with this possibility so much longer than George?

Or is George right? Am I miffed that someone else obviously did a bigger, better job of monster making than I ever could?

Whoever it had been, they were certainly no more competent at keeping monsters caged. Small satisfaction there.

“Before we do more gravity probes,” Stan Goldman said. “Hadn’t we better find out why that last scan set off seismic tremors? I’ve never heard of anything like it before.”

George laughed. “Tremors? You want quakes? Just wait till Beta’s grown to critical size and starts swallowing up the Earth’s core. Chunks of mantle will collapse inward… then you’ll see earthquakes!”

Swiveling in disgust, Hutton strode off toward the stairs to climb back to Ao-marama — to the world of light. For some time after he departed, nobody did or said much. The staff desultorily cleaned up. Once, Stan Goldman seemed about to speak, then closed his mouth and shook his head.

A nervous engineer approached Alex, holding a message plaque. “Um, speaking of earthquakes, I thought you’d better see this.” He slid the sheet onto the console between Stan and Alex. On its face rippled the bold letters of a standard World Net tech-level press release:

TEMBLORS, LEVEL 3 THROUGH 5.2, HAVE HIT SPAIN, MOROCCO, BALAERICS. CASUALTIES LOW. SWARM FOLLOWED UNUSUAL PATTERN IN SPACE, TIME, AND PHASE DOMAINS. INITIAL ONSET—

“Hm, what does this have to do with…?” Then Alex noticed — the Spanish quakes had struck at exactly the same time as the jolts here in New Zealand! Turning to the whole-Earth cutaway, he made some comparisons, and whistled. As nearly as the eyeball had it, the two swarms had taken place one hundred and eighty degrees apart — on exactly opposite sides of the globe.

In other words, a straight line, co

He watched the new singularity, the one called Beta, follow a low, lazy trajectory, never climbing far from the inmost zone where density and pressure were highest, where its nourishment was richest.

It does more than grow, Alex realized, amazed the universe could awe him yet again. It does one hell of a lot more than grow.

“Stan—” he began.

“You’ve noticed too? Puzzling, isn’t it?”

“Mm. Let’s find out what it means.”

So they were immersed in arcane mathematics, barely even aware of the world outside, when someone turned a dial to amplify the breathless voices of news reporters, describing a disaster in space.

PART II

PLANET

A modest fire burns longer. So it is, also, with stars.

The brightest rush through lives of spendthrift extravagance to finally explode in terminal fits of self-expression, briefly outshining whole galaxies. Meanwhile, humbler, quieter suns patiently tend their business, aging slowly, gracefully.

Ironically, it takes both types to make a proper potion. For without the grand immoderation of supernovas there would be no ingredients — no oxygen, carbon, silicon, or iron. And yet the steady yellow suns are also needed — to bake the concoction slowly, gently, or the recipe will spoil.

Take a solar mix of elements. Condense small lumps and accrete them to a midsized globe. Set it just the right distance from the flame and rotate gently. The crust should bubble and then simmer for the first few million years.

Rinse out excess hydrogen under a wash of sunlight.

Pound with comets for one eon, or until a film of liquid forms.

Keep rotating under an even heat for several billion years.

Then wait…

□ For consideration by the 112 million members of the Worldwide Long Range Solutions Special Interest Discussion Group [ D SIG AeR.WLRS 253787890.546], we the steering committee commend this little gem one of our members [□ Jane P. Gloumer QrT JN 233-54-2203 aa] found in a late TwenCen novel. She calls it the “Offut-Lyon Plan.” Here’s Ms. Gloumer to describe the notion:

“Our problem isn’t too many people, per se. It’s that we have too many right now. We’re using up resources at a furious rate, just when the last of Earth’s surplus might be used to create true, permanent wellsprings of prosperity. Projects such as reforestation, or orbital solar power, or [□ list of other suggestions hyper-appendixed, with appropriate references] aren’t making any progress because our slender margin must be spent just feeding and housing so many people.

“Oh, surely, the rate of population growth has slackened. In a century, total numbers may actually taper off. But too late to save us, I’m afraid.

“Now some insensitive members of this very SIG have suggested this could be solved by letting half the people die. A grim Malthusian solution, and damn stupid in my opinion. Those five billions wouldn’t just go quietly for the common good! They’d go down kicking, taking everybody else with them!

“Anyway, do billions really need to die, in order to save the world? What if those billions could be persuaded to leave temporarily?

“Recent work at the University of Beijing shows we’re only a decade away from perfecting cryosuspension… the safe freezing of human beings, like those with terminal diseases, for reliable resuscitation at a later time. Now at first that sounds like just another techno-calamity — plugging another of the drain holes and letting the tub fill still higher with people. But that’s just small thinking. There’s a way this breakthrough could actually prove to be our salvation.

“Here’s the deal. Let anyone who wants to sign up be suspended until the twenty-fourth century. The U.N. guarantees their savings will accumulate at 1 % above inflation or the best government bond rate, whichever is higher. Volunteers are assured wealth when they come out the other end.

“In return, they agree to get out of the way, giving the rest of us the elbow room we need. With only half the population to feed, we problem solvers could roll up our sleeves and use the remaining surplus to fix things up.

“Of course, there are a few bugs to work out, such as the logistics of safely freezing five billion people, but that’s what SIG discussion groups like this one are for — coming up with ideas and solving problems!”

Indeed. Jane’s provocative suggestion left us breathless. We expect more than a million responses to this one, so please, try to be original, or wait until the second wave to see if your point has already been stated by someone else. For conciseness, the first round will be limited to simple eight-gig voice-text, with just one subreference layer. No animation or holography, please. Now let’s start with our senior members in China…