Genesis Earth Read online

  In other words, this planet was practically Earth’s twin.

  I sat for hours completely engrossed in the study of this beautiful celestial orb and eagerly pored through the data as fast as it came in. Icaria was a windfall discovery, a planetologist’s Holy Grail. The data I gathered would forever alter entire research paradigms within the field. Knowing this, I handled my data with the utmost reverence, backing it up on multiple drives across the ship.

  For all the signs of abundant life, however, I couldn’t find any sign of civilization. No artificial radio emissions on any frequencies, no massive orbital structures, no lights on the dark side of the planet, no cities of any appreciable size that the powerful telescopes aboard the Icarus could detect. It was as if the planet were still in the early stages of its evolution, too primitive to produce sentient life.

  And yet, from the unexpected appearance of the alien object, it was impossible to doubt that intelligent beings of some sort had had access to this world. Icaria was teeming with natural resources, just as Tom had predicted. It was perfect for human settlement. Why, then, could I find no sign of advanced civilization?

  Something wasn’t adding up. I had to be missing a key element—I refused to believe that Icaria was a virgin planet.

  As I thought on this, another high resolution image of the surface came onto my screen from the telescope. At a quick glance, it looked no different than the hundreds of other images. A closer look, however, revealed something highly unusual.

  A single black line, thin as a hair but straight as laserlight, cut across a portion of the planet near the horizon. At first I thought something was wrong with the lens on the telescope, but upon closer inspection, I noticed that the line ended on the other side with a bulbous, semi-spherical end. Curious, I calibrated the telescope for a closer shot.

  I gasped. It wasn’t a flaw—it was an artificial structure.

  “Oh my God,” I exclaimed, barely aware of my own voice.

  I was looking at some kind of orbital structure, spherical in shape at the end, but with a long thin line that appeared to go straight down to the surface of the planet. The spherical end station possessed nodular structures similar to the orbital docks on Earth. The long, thin line was probably a cable, stretching from orbit down to the surface. With a few simple measurements, I estimated that the structure’s center of mass orbited near or at the altitude for a geostationary orbit.

  I was looking at an alien space elevator, a structure designed to lift material from the surface of the world into orbit. Only an advanced, spacefaring culture could produce such a marvel of engineering. Even Earth didn’t have one yet; there were simply too many technical problems to be solved, though several scientific foundations were working hard to design one. That is, had been working—for all I knew, after forty years, they might have already built it.

  But the existence of the elevator only raised more questions. Why would an alien civilization go through all the trouble of building an elevator, only to leave the surface virtually untouched? I found no evidence of civilization at the base of the elevator—no settlements, no population centers, none of the signs of civilization that a spacefaring culture would reasonably leave. For all intents and purposes, the cable seemed to lead down into a virgin wilderness.

  Why?

  As I stared in fascination at the image of the elevator, I heard the bridge door open behind me, followed by the pitter-patter of feet on the tile floor.

  “What’s going on?” Terra cried out. I felt something wet on my shoulder, and turned to see her bent over me, squinting intently at the monitors. Her hair was dripping wet, and she was naked except for a towel wrapped around her body. A rapidly growing puddle of water had formed in the floor around her small, bare feet.

  I blinked. “Uh, hi.”

  She turned and glanced at me, a worried frown on her face. “Are you all right? What’s going on?”

  “I, uh, think I’ve found something.” I pointed to the image on the screen and traced the space elevator with my pen. “See that? It’s an orbital structure—probably a space elevator.”

  Without taking her eyes from the monitor, she nodded slowly and stood up straight. I absently brushed away a few droplets of water from the keyboard.

  “That’s it?” she asked. “Is there anything else?”

  I turned around in my chair to face her. She really was worried for me.

  “No, that’s all I’ve got—so far, at least.”

  “And you’re alright? You’re doing fine?”

  “Yes, I’m fine.” I glanced down at her towel. “Did you just come out of the shower?”

  “Yeah. I heard a shout and thought something was wrong.”

  I paused for a second, completely confused. But then I remembered how I’d cried out at the discovery of the space elevator. That was probably what had brought her running.

  “It was nothing,” I said. “I was just surprised by this discovery, that’s all.”

  “Oh.” She looked down at herself, as if she’d only just realized what she was—or wasn’t—wearing. “Yeah. Okay, then.”

  “How are you feeling?” I asked.

  “Groggy, but not too bad.”

  “Ready to get to work?”

  “Uh…” She glanced down again and blushed. I stifled a laugh.

  “Were you really all that worried just now?” I found it curious that this girl, who always seemed so aloof and emotionally detached, could be frightened by something as simple as a shout of wonder. Was she as worried about the alien object at the sixth planet as I was? If she was, she had an odd way of showing it.

  “No,” she said, giving me a dirty look. “And why are you smiling?”

  Was I smiling? I guess I was.

  “Perv,” she said. “Don’t scare me like that again.” With that, she turned on her heel and left.

  “No, wait,” I said, but it was too late. The door had already slid shut behind her.

  Honestly, I wasn’t smiling at her expense—it wasn’t like that at all. Maybe I found the situation a bit amusing, but at the same time, I was still ecstatic about the discovery I’d just made. It was hard not to smile, in fact.

  “Terra, I wasn’t laughing at you,” I said, hoping the intercom would carry my voice to her. “Honest.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” came her voice over the speakers. “It’s fine.”

  “No, really, I—”

  “I said it’s fine.”

  Her tone of voice told me to drop the issue. I opened my mouth to say something else, but swallowed my words. As awkward as the situation was, anything I could say would only dig me deeper in the hole. Better to let it go.

  Trust and Deception

  The message we broadcast to the alien ship was extremely simple: a series of pulses representing the first hundred prime numbers starting with two, broadcast across multiple radio bands. Basically, it was a way of saying “we are here—can you see us?” After we sent it out, there was nothing to do but wait, watch, and listen. With the long distances between us, it would take at least six hours to hear back.

  Six hours is a long, long time to wait. I don’t know what kind of a response I expected to receive, but I knew that whatever it was, it would be tremendously significant. We tried to go about our work, but really, we were both just counting down the minutes to contact. At least, I know I was.

  The end of the countdown found us sitting together on the bridge, eyes and ears glued to the monitors. Terra didn’t need to come down—after all, she could have watched just as easily from her work station on the observatory. From the tension in the air, I don’t think either of us wanted to be alone.

  Neither of us spoke as the clock ticked down to zero. I felt my heartbeat surge.

  Plus one, plus two, plus three…

  Nothing.

  Of course the alien beings wouldn’t respond to our message right away. They would have to interpret it, draw out its meaning. At the very least, they needed time to formulate a return message.

  The seconds ticked by. Neither of us moved. Fifty eight, fifty nine, sixty… still nothing.

  We waited in silence for twenty minutes, waiting for a reply. I don’t know what I expected, but I certainly didn’t expect this. After all, this wasn’t a chunk of space rock; it was an alien ship capable of punching a hole in space-time and accelerating to near light speeds within minutes. Was it possible to have any doubt on that point? Of course not!

  But if it wasn’t, why no response?

  Long after Terra left the room and resumed her post in the observatory, I sat staring at the computer screen, monitoring the receiver. I couldn’t believe—or rather, didn’t want to believe—that the beings on that ship would ignore us.

  And yet they did.

  “Michael,” Terra said over the intercom, “I think you ought to get some rest.”

  “No, I’m fine,” I said, my body aching from exhaustion. I felt as if someone had beat me all over with a pipe. My eyes blinked uncontrollably when I tried to keep them open.

  “No, I think you should go. Really.”

  I wanted to argue with her, but I knew she was right. Besides, I didn’t have any strength left to fight it.

  “Alright,” I said, my words slurring together. “I’m going.”

  My body craved sleep, yet even as I lay on my bed, it wouldn’t come. The ghost ship still haunted my mind, and as long as it did, I could have no rest. Why were they ignoring us? Why couldn’t they at least acknowledge that they’d heard our message? It was maddeningly frustrating. I wanted answers, and I wanted them now; the anticipation was killing me.

  At least it’s only a couple more days before the probes arrive, I consoled myself. When our probes arrived at the sixth planet to investigate the alien object up close, we’d start to get some answers.

  * * * * *

  I woke up eight hours later and groggily made my way to the ship’s mess. As I prepared breakfast, Terra slipped in through the door.

  “My dinner’s in that compartment to your right,” she said as took her seat at the small table jutting out from the far wall. “Could you warm it up for me?”

  “Sure,” I said, my back turned to her in the tight space. “What brings you down?”

  “Dinner. Thought I’d wait for you.”

  I nodded. “Any response from the object?”

  “No.”

  She didn’t say anything more. It only took me a couple of minutes to prepare the food—cereal and meal, hydrated from our dry food stores. Not too tasty, but nutritious enough. Terra’s had a slightly different nutritional content from mine.

  The silence felt awkward, so I tried to break it with some small talk.

  “How was your shift?”

  “Very busy,” she said. From the tone of her voice, she wasn’t complaining. “The universe on this side of the wormhole is huge. I’ve already cataloged at least ten thousand stars, and that’s barely scratching the surface. It’s going to take a long time to put together a decent starmap—but it’s so much fun naming all the constellations, and…”

  I laid out her dinner and my breakfast on the table as she continued to talk. The smile on her face was broad and eager, and her eyes lit up with excitement as she told me all about the astronomy of this new universe.

  “Did you know that Icaria’s sun is almost identical to Sol?” she said, still talking as she plunged her spoon into her bowl of meal. “It’s a yellow-white main sequence dwarf. One point one solar mass, one point oh three solar radii, and one and a quarter of Sol’s luminosity. It’s a little bit older, by maybe a billion years or so, but it’s just as stable.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you detect anything unusual near the sixth planet?” I asked, letting her eat a little. “Anything at all connected with the alien object?”

  She chewed and swallowed her food before answering. “No, not really. Nothing’s changed with the… the object.”

  “Have you learned anything about it that might help us figure out what it is?”

  She shrugged. The eagerness evaporated from her face.

  “Not really. There’s not much I can do that the probes can’t do better. Besides, I’ve got more important things to do.”

  I put my spoon down and stared at her. What could possibly be more important than the alien object? It took her a few moments to notice that I was staring, but when she did, she put her fork down and stared right back.

  “What?” she said, a little defensively. “Is something wrong?”

  “Well, it’s just—I mean, don’t you think it’s important to get some answers about that alien object? To make contact with whoever or whatever is piloting it?”

  “Yeah,” she said, frowning, “but Michael, I’ve got other work to do. Those probes will arrive in less than forty hours; we’ll get our answers then.”

  From the tone of her voice, it seemed that she didn’t want to have anything to do with the alien object—that she would be happier if it had never showed up.

  “Are you afraid of it?” I asked.

  “No,” she answered, a bit too quickly. “Are you?”

  I hesitated for a moment. “I don’t know. Maybe. But either way, the most important thing we can do is to make contact with whomever or whatever is piloting that ship. Don’t you think so, too?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  What do you mean, ‘maybe’?

  “Terra, this is quite possibly the most important moment in human history. We—”

  “We’ll get answers, Michael. Don’t worry.”

  From the tone of her voice, though, she didn’t seem to care much one way or the other.

  “I hope we do. The people back home will expect it.”

  “Oh. Yeah. Back home.” She rolled her eyes and went back to eating her dinner.

  I frowned, puzzled at her response, but didn’t press her for an explanation. Not then.

  * * * * *

  The probes reached the world one day later, towards the end of my waking shift and the beginning of Terra’s. Technically, I should have been getting ready to sleep, but I wasn’t about to miss the broadcast from the probes.

  Terra stepped onto the bridge with a bowl of hot cereal and took her seat next to me. “What’s the news?”

  “The transmission shows the probes’ final approach,” I said. “They should be coming up on the alien object any moment.”

  We sat in silence for a while, watching reports from each of the six probes on at least as many holoscreens. Of course, the transmissions were not coming to us in real-time. The sixth planet was on the opposite side of the star from our position, and we had about a three hour time lag.

  Knowing this made me even more jittery. At the critical moment of contact, it was a machine, not a human, that would make all the decisions—that had already made them. We had given the probes a clear and comprehensive set of protocols for making contact with the object, but that gave me little comfort. This was an historic moment—I did not want a machine to screw it up. At this point, though, there was nothing I could do.

  “There,” she said, pointing to one of the middle screens. “On the horizon.”

  I zoomed in on the point she had indicated. Sure enough, the alien ship appeared on the screen, cresting the red-orange arc of the sixth planet’s horizon. It looked almost like an ancient monolith, rising up from the edge of the hellish world below.

  “It definitely appears to be some kind of spaceship,” I said. “See, that’s where the engines would be—at the rear. And see that? Those are traces of an increased temperature and radiation towards the rear of the ship. That must be their energy core.”

  “But if that’s true,” said Terra, “the energy core and engines only take up half of the structure. What’s the rest of it used for?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  That was when we saw it.

  “Wait,” I said. “I’m seeing something on the probe’s scanners.”

  “What is it?”

  I leaned forward and squinted. “A small, spherical object,” I said, “less than a foot in diameter, approaching at—oh my god.”

  “What? What’s going on?”

  My face paled, and my hands started to shake. “It’s going to collide with the probe in four seconds.”

  Her eyes widened. “Collide?”

  “That’s right. Getting a visual… come on—”

  The screen flashed, turned to static, and went dark. Empty blackness—no transmission.

  The probe was gone.

  “What was that?”

  “We lost contact,” I said. “Trying backup frequencies, auxiliary channels…”

  It was no use—all transmissions had died. The probe was dead. I lay my shaking hands in my lap and stared numbly at the blank screen.

  “Oh my god,” said Terra. “They shot it down.”

  “Yeah.”

  I felt as if I were going into shock. Chills ran down the back of my neck, and my heart started pounding in my chest. This couldn’t be happening.

  “What about the other probes?”

  “Hang on,” I answered, turning frantically to the other monitors. “They’re right behind the first one. I’m bringing up the visual feed on them all.”

  The screens flashed to life once again, displaying the video data from all the surviving probes. One of them showed the alien ship just starting to rise over the edge of the horizon, like some tiny, featureless moon. I bit my lip as another blip appeared on the scanners.

  “I’m detecting the same thing,” I said, my legs going numb. “Small object inbound from the ship, high speeds.”

  I felt as if my hands were tied. Mankind’s first contact with advanced alien life, and the machines I’d sent out to do the job were screwing it up. We were screwing it up.

  We lost every probe. The last three got good shots of the others going up in explosions. Like the others, however, they soon met their fate. One by one, every screen went blank.

  I stared in stunned silence. Without a word, Terra glanced over at me. Her eyes were wide.