“Hmm,” Lars commented. “Too bad for Mars. But if G stars have broad life zones, there ought to be many other worlds out there where conditions were right… with oceans where lightning could begin the first steps. Evolution would have worked in those places, too. So where — ?”

“So where the dickens is everybody!” Wyn Nielsen interjected, slapping the table.

So we return to the age-old question, Stan thought. Enrico Fermi had also asked it a hundred years ago. Where is everybody, indeed?

In a galaxy of half a trillion stars, there ought to be many, many worlds like Earth. Surely some must have developed life, even civilization, long ago.

On paper at least, star travel seems possible. So why, during all the time Earth was “prime real estate,” with no indigenous owners higher than bacteria or fish, was it never colonized by some earlier spacefaring race?

The amount of verbiage that had been spent on the subject — even excluding flying-saucer drivel — only expanded after the establishment of the World Data Net. And still there was no satisfactory answer.

“There are lots of theories why Earth was never settled by outsiders,” he replied. “Some have to do with natural calamities, like you lot are investigating here. After all, if giant meteorites wiped out the dinosaurs, similar catastrophes may have trounced other would-be space travelers. We ourselves may be wrecked by some stray encounter before we reach a level sufficient to—”

Stan’s voice caught suddenly. It was as if he’d been struck between the eyes, twice.

For a blessed time he had managed to banish all thought of the taniwha. So the sudden contextual reminder came like a blow. But the thing that really had him stopped in his tracks was a new thought, one that had swarmed into consciousness following the words — We ourselves may be wrecked by some encounter…

He coughed to cover his discomfiture, and someone slapped him on the back. While he took a drink of warm beer, waving concerned helpers away, he thought, Could our monster have come from outside? Could it not be man-made?

He didn’t need to make a mental note to look into the idea later. This was one that would stick with him. If only I’d been able to break free and go to the meeting in Waitomo! Somehow, he must find a way to transmit this thought to Alex!

But now was not the time to lose his train of thought. There were appearances to maintain. Where was I… ? Oh yes.

Clearing his throat, he resumed.

“My… own favorite explanation for the absence of extraterrestrials — or their apparent absence anyway — has to do with the very thing we were talking about before, the life zones around G stars like our sun. Astronomers now envision a very broad zone outward from our position, where a Gaia-type homeostasis could be set up by life. The farther ^out you go the less sunlight you have, of course. But then, according to the Wolling model, more carbon would remain in the atmosphere to keep a heat balance. Voila.

“But note, there’s very little habitable zone left inward from our orbit. Earth revolves very close to the sun for a water planet. In our case, life had to purge nearly every bit of carbon from the atmosphere to let enough heat escape as the sun’s temperature rose. And in a couple of hundred million years even that won’t suffice. As old Sol gets hotter, the inner boundary will cross our orbit and we’ll be cooked, slowly, but quite literally.

“In other words, we only have a hundred million years or so to come up with a plan.”

They laughed, a little nervously.

“So what’s your theory?” Nielsen asked.

Stan was wondering how to get the center of attention away from himself, so he could find an excuse to sneak away. But he’d have to do it smoothly, naturally. He spread his hands. “It’s really simple. You see, I think Earth must be relatively hot and dry, as water worlds go. Oh, it may not seem that way, with seventy percent of the surface covered by ocean. But that just means that normal life-zone planets must be even wetter!

“One consequence would be less continental land area to weather under rain.”

“Ah, I see,” a Turkish geochemist said. “Less weathering means less fertilizer to feed life in those seas. Which in turn means slower evolution?”

One of the paleontologists spoke from the fringes of the group. “And the life-forms would have less oxygen to drive fast metabolisms like ours.”

Stan nodded. “And of course, with less land area, there’d be less chance of evolving these.” He held up ten wriggling fingers.

“Huh!” Elena Gorshkov commented, shaking her head. Several arguments erupted at the periphery as the scientists disputed amiably. Nielsen was tapping away at the miniplaque on his lap, probably looking for refutations.

Good, Stan thought. These were bright people, and he liked watching them toss ideas about like volleyballs. Too bad he had to keep his most pressing scientific quandaries secret from them. To know such things as he did, and withhold them from his peers… it felt shameful to Stan. ›,

“Aha,” Nielsen said. “I just found an interesting paper on continental weathering that supports what Stan says. Here. I’ll pipe it to the rest of you.”

People drew plaques and readers from their pockets and unfolded them to receive the document, drawn from some corner of the net by Nielsen’s quick-and-dirty ferret program. Distracted from his recent desire to leave, Stan too began reaching for his wallet display.

At that moment, though, his watch gave a tiny, throbbing jolt to his left wrist, just sharp enough to get his attention — the rhythm urgent.

While the chatter of excited discussion swelled again, Stan excused himself as if heading for the men’s room. Along the way he popped a micro-pickup from the watch and put it in his ear.

“Speak,” he said to the luminous dial.

“Stan.” It was the tinny voice of Mohotunga Bailie, his assistant, and it carried overtones of fear. “Get back. Right quick.” That was all. The carrier tone cut off abruptly.

Stan felt a chill, mixed thoroughly with sudden pangs of guilt. The taniwha — has it gone out of control? Oh Lord, I shouldn’t have left them alone!

But even as he thought it, he knew in his heart that Beta couldn’t have gotten away so suddenly. The physics just weren’t there for such a happenstance… not from the stable configurations of just an hour ago!

Then it must be one of the beams. This time we must have hit a city. How many died? Oh God, can you forgive us? Can anyone?

With pale, shaking hands he plunged outside where the pearly arctic twilight stretched around two thirds of the horizon. The aurora borealis made flickering, ionized curtains above the Greenland ice sheet. Stan half stumbled, half ran to his little four-wheeled scooter and kicked the starter, sending its balloon tires whining across the glittering moraine, spewing gravel behind it.

All the way back to the Tangoparu shelter, his mind was filled with dire imaginings of what could have put those dread tones in his stolid assistant’s voice. Then he crossed a hillock and the dome itself came into view, along with the big, olive-drab helicopter, parked just beyond. Stan’s heart did another flip-flop.

It wasn’t a problem with Beta after all, he realized suddenly. At least not directly. This was quite another type of calamity.

NATO, he realized, recognizing the uniforms of the armed men patrolling the shelter’s perimeter. Lord love a duck… I never thought I’d see those colors again. I’d forgotten they were still in business.

He knew only one reason the big armed aircraft would have come all this way at such a time of night, bringing soldiers to the door of his laboratory. And it surely wasn’t a social call.