In absence of solid information, a myriad of rumors flew.
… It’s the melting of the ice caps that’s making the Earth shake…
… It’s secret weapon testing. Treaty violations. We’ve got to call in the tribunals before it’s too late…
… These aren’t earthly phenomena at all. We’re being softened up by UFOs…
… It’s an alignment of the planets. The Babylonians were right predicting…
… Overpopulation — ten billion souls can’t stand the pressure. The psychic strain alone…
… Could we have awakened something ancient? Something terrible? I caught sight of a dragon, snooping a public memory file. Have others out there seen it too?…
… Gaia, it is our Mother, shivering in her sleep, at the pain we’ve caused her…
… I don’t have any idea what it is! But I’ll bet there are people in high places who do. They have a duty to tell us what’s going on!
More headlines on ABC, TASS, Associated Press—
Holos of departing diplomats are analyzed by professionals and amateur hackers, who enhance every face, every pore, and publish speculative analyses of flesh tones, blink rates, nervous ticks—
… the Russ ambassador was scared…
… the EUROP team knew more than they were telling…
… clearly there’s collusion between NATO and ASEAN…
Stan was impressed with the creative energy out there. Data traffic soared, straining even the capacious fiber cable channels. Reserve capacity was brought on-line to cope.
A holopop group, Space Colander, produced a new number called “Straining Reality” — an instant hit. Underground poets sent paeans to strangeness migrating from computer node to computer node, circuiting the globe faster than the sun.
Stan did not participate, of course. Except for his rare walks, he spent most of his time conversing over military lines with Alex and with Glenn Spivey’s physicists, piecing together the secrets of the gazer. Some were starting to fall into place, such as how the beams coupled with surface matter. It seemed they had discovered a whole new spectrum, completely at right angles to the colors of light. With these discoveries, science would never be the same.
His darkest premonitions were like the ones those physicists in New Mexico must have felt, nearly a century ago. But those men had been wrong in their worst fears, hadn’t they? Their bomb, which might have wrought searing Armageddon, instead proved to be a blessing. After scaring everyone away from major war for three generations, it finally convinced the nations to sign covenants of peace. Perhaps the same sort of result would come of this. Humanity didn’t always have to be foolish and destructive.
Perhaps we’ll show wisdom this time, as well. There’s always a chance.
Hours later Stan was still hard at work, predicting beam-exit points so that Spivey’s teams could get there in advance to study the effects, when he found himself blinking at his work screen with a weird picture still planted in his brain. It came and went before he could focus clearly, and now the display showed nothing abnormal. Perhaps it was just a figment of fatigue. Nevertheless, he retained a distinct afterimage… of a glittering smile set in a lizard’s face, and behind that a whipping, barbed and jeweled tail.
In 1828 Benjamin Morrell discovered, off Namibia, a treasure island covered with guano. A layer more than twenty-five-feet thick had been deposited by generations of cormorants, cape gannets, and penguins. Morrell called it “the richest manure pile in the world.” By 1844 up to five hundred ships at a time crowded round Ichaboe Isle. Eight thousand men carted off tons of “white gold” to make the gardens of England grow. A lucrative if messy business.
Then the guano was gone. The ships departed Ichaboe for Chile, the Falklands, anywhere birds nested near rich fishing grounds. Like Nauru, whose king sold half his tiny nation’s surface area to fund his people’s buying spree, each newfound deposit lasted a little while, made a few men rich, then vanished as if it had never been.
Many other ecological crises came and went. Shoals of fishes vanished. Vast swarms of birds died. Later, some fisheries recovered. And protected nesting grounds pulled some cormorants and gannets back from the verge of extinction.
Then, one day, someone noticed the birds were again doing what birds do… right out there on the rocks. Nor did they seem to mind much when men with shovels came — carefully this time, not to disturb the nestlings — and carried off in bags what the birds no longer had any use for.
It was a renewable resource after all. Or it could be, if managed properly.
Let the fish swarm and the currents flow and the sun shine upon the stony coasts. The birds rewarded those with patience.
• IONOSPHERE
Mark Randall could almost feel all the telescopes aimed at him. The sense of being watched caused a prickle on his neck as he maneuvered Intrepid, toward the strobing flash of the instrument package. Naturally, the great powers were observing his ship.
And the ninety-two news agencies and the Big 900 corporations and probably thousands of amateur astronomers whose instruments were within line of sight.
Some probably have a better idea what I’m chasing than I do, he contemplated.
“That thing wasn’t put there by any rocket,” Elaine Castro told him as she peered over his shoulder at the spinning cylinder caught in the shuttle’s spotlight. “This orbit is too weird, And look. The thing doesn’t even have standard attachment points!”
“I don’t think it was launched… normally,” Mark answered. Neither of them was saying anything new. “Need any help prepping for EVA?” he asked his new partner. “You’ve updated your inertial units?”
The stately black woman laid a space-gloved hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “Yes, Mommy. And I promise, I’ll call if I need anything.”
Mark blinked with a sudden wave of deja vu, as if someone else were reading his lines in a play. Since when was he the worrywart, the double-checker, the fanatic for detail?
Since his last partner had been taken from him by something unfathomable, of course. “Well, give me a suit integrity readout from the airlock anyway, before pumping down.”
“Aye, aye, Cap’n.” She saluted, primly and sarcastically. Elaine fastened her helmet and left to fetch the beeping mystery they’d been sent chasing round the world to claim.
How did you get there? he silently asked the spinning object. There were laws of dynamics that had to be bent just to reach this bizarre trajectory. No record showed any rocket launch during the last month that might have sent that thing on such a path.
But there are other records than those released by NORAD and SERA… records of inverted tornadoes and columns of vacuum at sea level… of vanishing aircraft and rainbows tied in half hitches.
His panels shone green. Happy green also lit where Elaine’s suit proclaimed itself in working order. Still, his eyes roved, scanning telemetry, attitude, life support, and especially navigation. Mark whistled softly between his teeth. He sang, half consciously, in a toneless whisper.
“I yam where I yam, and that’s all where I yam…”
His crewmate emerged into sight, waving cheerfully as she jetted toward the shining cylinder. Mark watched like a mother bear as she lassoed the spinning object and reeled it behind her to Intrepid’s stowage bay. Even as Elaine cycled back inside, Mark kept alert, watching not only his instruments, but also the Earth… which had once seemed such a reliable place, but of late had seemed much more twitchy, and prone even to sudden fits of wrath.