Starbound (15 page)

Namir:
My proposal was that we record a kind of “baseline” report on what we expect to happen when we arrive at Wolf 25. Our ideas will change over the next six years, naturally.

Paul:
One possibility is that there will be nothing there. The one on Triton said that’s where they live, and took off in that direction. But we lost track of him after a few minutes. He could have gone anywhere.

Snowbird:
Why would they do that?

Paul:
They may have misrepresented their strength, or rather their vulnerability. If we were to attack swiftly, they might not be able to react in time.

Namir:
Possibly. Doesn’t seem likely. We have ample evidence of their strength.

Me:
They had hundreds of centuries to plan ahead.

Paul:
That’s what I mean. They don’t want to confront us in real time.

Fly-in-Amber:
They have planned ahead for this. We will not surprise them.

Elza:
We have to try.

Dustin:
I’m not convinced that that is true. As you know, Elza.

Elza:
Pacifist swine. (Note: said smiling.) Explain, for the record.

Dustin:
This mission is predicated on two things: one, that they know they did not destroy us; and two, that they care. But we know almost nothing about their psychology. Maybe they are so confident they won’t bother to check, in which case, showing up on their doorstep may be a disaster. Or they might know they didn’t destroy us but feel the spectacular demonstration was enough to keep us out of their hair. So again, don’t go bother them.

Namir:
Dustin, even if the mission
is
a mistake, we can’t turn around and go home. The die is cast.

Me:
It’s still a good viewpoint to put in the mix, trying to predict what they’re going to do.

Paul:
Let’s get a sense of the timing. From the Earth’s point of view, the Other left Triton in July of 2079. At its rate of acceleration, it will take only about twenty- four and a half years to get there, assuming it decelerates at the same rate. Say it gets there in January 2104.

In the worst-case scenario, they find out the Earth hasn’t been destroyed and turn around to finish the job. Which they do in the middle of 2128.

Namir:
That’s not the worst case.

Paul:
What is?

Namir:
You assume that the Others have to obey the same speed limit as we do. Suppose they can go a lot faster than the speed of light and are due here tomorrow?

Paul:
Relativity won’t let them. They’d be traveling into the past.

Namir:
(Laughs.) And show up tomorrow. They’ve done other impossible things.

Meryl:
Let’s assume there’s no magic superscience involved, all right? (She looks at her notebook.) If they go straight to Wolf 25, they’ll get there around 2104, by the Earth calendar. We won’t be there until eight years later. And they’ll have our “ready or not, here we come” message months before that. Which I was so enthusiastic about.

Can we agree that the probability they won’t be ready for us is almost exactly zero? (General agreement.) And at any rate, if we did surprise them, there’s not much we can do about it. Short of using the
ad Astra
as a huge kamikaze bomb?

Snowbird:
What is that?

Fly-in-Amber:
It’s a Japanese word meaning a suicide airplane.

Snowbird:
Oh. Well, that would make sense, wouldn’t it? We’re expecting to die anyhow.

Fly-in-Amber:
Most humans won’t do that. Not if they have a chance of living.

Snowbird:
But they don’t live that long anyhow.

Namir:
I’m glad you brought that up, Snowbird. We ought to consider it.

Elza:
I’m not sure I can. We would be murdering a whole planet, besides ourselves.

Meryl:
That’s right.

Namir:
Which is what they tried to do to us.

Dustin:
He wants you to think like a soldier, love, not a doctor.

Moonboy:
What if we had to do it to save the human race? What if we got a message like “Fuck you and the planet you came from”?

Paul:
We never could save the human race, if they decided to destroy it. We could never catch them. We could only take revenge, after the fact.

Namir:
I could do that.

Dustin:
You would. Definitely.

Moonboy:
I would, too. It’s not as if they were human.

Me:
Namir, it would be like Gehenna. There could be innocent races on that planet. For all we know, the one who attacked us was a lone lunatic, who claimed to represent the Others but actually did not.

Namir:
With due respect, Carmen, I have been there, and you have not. Genocide is not murder. You can forgive a murder and go on with life. But if we had found a country responsible for Gehenna, we would have had no mercy. We would have leveled it, in retribution. Which is not the same thing as revenge.

Paul:
The kamikaze thing is not going to happen. I’m the only one who could do that, and I won’t. Besides, if our intent had been to launch a huge relativistic bomb, there would be no need for a crew. One kamikaze pilot, perhaps.

Dustin:
(Laughs.) Now that does make me nervous. You
would
need a crew, if only to keep that pilot from going mad during six years of isolation. But of course the crew wouldn’t know they were all going to die.

Paul:
Are you a philosopher or a story writer?

Dustin:
Sometimes the difference is moot. Are you lying? Don’t answer; we covered that one in freshman logic.

Fly-in-Amber:
Are you two joking? Sometimes it’s hard to tell when humans are serious.

Dustin:
Sometimes jokes are serious, Fly in-Amber.

Paul:
Not this time. He’s just playing games.

Dustin:
One of us is.

Snowbird:
This is making my brain hurt. I have to leave.