The Next Continent (56 page)

Tae input the numbers Sohya gave her. “The answer is 11,560 kilometers. Then I divide that by the orbital velocity?”

“Right.”

“That's 6,881 seconds. Half of that is 3,440 seconds. That's when totality will be reached. Add that to 0531…it's 0627.”

They looked at the display on her comm pad as if it were some exotic animal. “We did it,” said Sohya.

“Are you sure this is right?”

“The procedure was right. But if we overlooked some parameter, it's going to be wrong. We better go through everything once more independently.” For the next few minutes, they worked the figures repeatedly.

“Same answer,” said Tae finally. They exchanged worried looks. They were amateurs at this kind of calculation. If they'd made a mistake, it would cost them their lives.

Sohya looked at his comm pad again. His expression hardened. If they were right, they were almost out of time.

“Tae…I trust you.”

“I trust you too, Sohya.”

“Then let's get out of here.” They walked up the tunnel to the entrance. Tae watched her time readout intently. The seconds dragged by.

“Now.”

Sohya kicked the door. It swung upward easily. He grabbed her hand and ran out onto the surface. The pit was thick with mist, suffused with faint orange light from the heliostats. Ice particles—diamond dust—sparkled in the dimness and drifted slowly downward. A reddish orange glow was visible above the rim in the direction of the base. Earth's atmosphere was bending the sun's long red wavelengths and sending them into the umbra.

“We were right!” Sohya shouted with joy. Tae lifted her arms and spun around happily. The wall of permafrost over the door began to sag. They saw the outline of an object half-submerged in the permafrost. It was the rover.

“We have to get away from here! Run!”

They kicked off in a kind of skip that should have carried them several meters, but they couldn't seem to make much headway. The surface of the pit was soft and spongy. It was like a bad dream—they could run hardly faster than on Earth, and their Manna suits were not made for sprinting. Tae stumbled and fell to her hands and knees. In an instant Sohya was at her side, pulling her up again. They felt the ground heaving, as if an enormous serpent were uncoiling beneath their feet. A few moments later they reached the rim of the pit and left the zone of reflection from the now-dimmed heliostats. What they saw in the darkness beyond, faintly visible, caused them to halt in astonishment.

Under the glittering stars, thousands of golden points of light were pulsating all over the ice in a regular rhythm. At the same time, the moon began to emerge from Earth's umbra. Unfiltered sunlight bounced off the heliostats and into the pit, cutting through the mist. The heat sent the drifting ice crystals spinning upward again. Seconds later, the vapor flowed over the edge of the pit and rushed outward in all directions at terrific speed.

Sohya took one look over his shoulder, grabbed Tae, and moved to shield her with his body. But before they could drop to the ground, the hurtling cloud threw them violently into the air.

For an agonized instant, Sohya felt as if his internal organs were tearing loose. Then the pain was replaced by a delicious sensation of floating. He heard Tae's stifled scream. They could both see the lunar surface racing beneath them from what looked like fifty or sixty meters up. Even in one-sixth gravity—even with the hard carapace of their Manna suits—falling from this height at this speed would pulp their bodies like the contents of a can of food dropped off a cliff. As they described a perfect parabola through space, Tae and Sohya embraced.

Something lifted them from both sides. Their direction of flight changed and began rising steeply, like a bird taking flight. There were no birds on the moon…Even before the reality of what was happening penetrated Sohya's brain, he was already shouting.

“Henderson!”

“And Hardin. Say, I don't think I know this one,” said Henderson casually.

The two NASA astronauts were straddling Rocket Comet mobility units like outsize witch's brooms, gripping Sohya and Tae from either side. The shoulders of their white hard-shell suits bore an insignia of a crimson arrow against a dark blue field of stars.

“Hurricane Cadbury sent us to find you.”

Sohya helped Tae clamber up behind Hardin. He got behind Henderson and held on to his backpack. The American mobility units seemed completely unaffected by the additional mass, the change in center of gravity, and the force of the vapor cloud pushing up from below. They set off in perfect formation, curving higher over the crater. Sohya could only look down with wonder and relief.

“One of your multidozers stopped outside our flare shelter half an hour ago, so we went outside to investigate. It told us there were people in the crater. We had no idea anyone would be out after that warning was issued. We had to wait for totality though.”

Sohya slumped with fatigue. “We barely figured out when to make a run for it. We almost ended up roasting inside our suits. What was the point of sending sunlight into the crater?”

“There's something very interesting about ENG. It uses elements in the regolith to grow, and to do that it needs energy. But there's almost no energy in the shadow zone—no heat, no electromagnetic gradient, no sunlight. If it can grow in the shadow zone, we thought giving it more energy would result in some interesting changes.”

“But they tried that already with samples on Earth.”

“Yes, in Earth's gravity. What about the moon's gravity? The one time ENG grew on Earth was after an earthquake, when the local gravitational field changed. But we couldn't get the samples we had at Liberty Island to grow either. There's only one difference between our sample and ENG in the crater: the mass.”

“So you gave the mother colony a big shot of energy just to see what would happen? What is it with you Americans and brute force anyway?”

“It's worked for 250 years.” Henderson laughed. “Still, we're glad you're safe. Now we need to see the effect—”

Tae shouted, “What's that?” They looked down where the fuel vault had been. What was taking place before their eyes could only be called construction. Hundreds of golden pillars thrust upward from the surface. Golden beams extended to link them. Walls formed between pillars and beams. Like time-lapse photography, terraces, roofs, and towers formed with dizzying speed, radiating out from a central spire thirty meters in diameter, like the roots of a huge tree.

Suddenly the growth stopped. The light from the heliostats lost focus, divided into forty squares of light, and raced away across the ice. The experiment had been terminated. Eden's brief noon was over. In its wake was a majestic work in progress rising fifteen meters above the ice, stretching for five hundred meters on its long axis, gleaming weakly in the darkness: a Sagrada Família created by some nonhuman intelligence. They floated over it in silence.

“Is that a cathedral?”

Tae's astonished question were the only words spoken for some time.

CHAPTER 9

PERMANENT SETTLEMENT—AND BEYOND

 

THE MAJESTIC TONES
of the synthesized pipe organ filled the cathedral. The bride and groom entered. People in the pews turned to watch. There was a wave of applause. The bride wore a princess-style dress and walked slowly up the scarlet carpet on the arm of her tuxedoed groom.

The couple stopped before the altar where the priest was waiting. The applause subsided, and for a moment the only sound was the whisper of the ventilation. Then the organist launched into a spirited hymn. The guests looked at their leaflets and joined in, calling for God's blessing. Some sang haltingly; others seemed to know the words from memory.

The priest called the assembly to prayer. Then he spoke to the bride and groom, who stood before him with their heads bowed.

“In Genesis, the Lord says: ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it.' Humanity did, and all of Earth is under our dominion. Now we have reached out and taken the moon unto ourselves. Surely this is pleasing in the sight of the Lord, because He created us in His image. But with dominion comes responsibility. Where humanity would rule over God's earth, so too must we submit to His law. And where we would unify His heavens, so too must we submit to Him here also. As you would extend your love to the earth, so shall you extend your compassion to the stars. Only then can you be fruitful and multiply, and fill the moon, and subdue it. Surely the Lord will look upon your efforts and smile. It may be a somewhat ironic smile though.”

There was muffled laughter. Aaron ended his sermon with a solemn prayer and began the exchange of vows.

“Ryuichi Yaenami, do you take Reika Hozumi for your lawful wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do you part?”

“I do.” The groom's confident answer boomed through the cathedral.

“Reika Hozumi, do you take Ryuichi Yaenami for your lawful husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do you part?”

“I…do…” Her voice was faint. A few of the guests were crying.

“You will now exchange rings as a symbol of your vows.”

The organist gave each a silver ring. They took one another by the hand, slipped on the rings, and kissed. Ryuichi embraced his diffident bride passionately. Some of the guests reddened and looked away.

STAR ROAD
.

That was the name they gave to the titanic ramp that sloped toward the stars out of Eden Crater. Thanks to ENG, the cost of escaping lunar gravity had fallen to nearly zero. Miraculous as it was, the ramp was also a windfall for Sixth Continent. Takumichi Gotoba contributed his unexpected profits to fund a series of weddings for employees from ELE, TGT, and Gotoba Engineering.

Invited to Ryuichi and Reika's wedding were not only friends and family, but neighbors: crew members from Liberty Island and astronauts from Kunlun Base. China had announced that the base would soon be fully operational again.

The stand-up reception was held in the banquet hall. Under the soft light of paper lanterns, the room echoed with conversations in a dozen languages.

“There you are, Aomine!”

Sohya and Tae were standing together—Sohya in a spotless white crew jumpsuit, Tae in a dark blue silk dress. Jinqing Jiang pushed his way through the crowd, raised his glass, and greeted Tae in Japanese.

“Jiang! It's good to see you.” Sohya toasted him in return. Jiang had made the journey from Kunlun Base in a modified resupply vehicle.

“This whole place is quite an accomplishment. I envy you guys.”

“I hear Xiwangmu 7 will be coming to Kunlun soon. I plan to drop by when I get the chance.”

“Be my guest, but we'll put you to work.” Jiang slapped a puzzled Sohya on the back. “Helium-3 mining will be a huge effort. We're starting next year. The State Council just announced it. Kunlun's the only base in the northern hemisphere. We're going to be doing a lot of digging, my friend.”

“Maybe China will be the world's biggest energy producer in ten years.”

“More like twenty. But we'll get there.” Jiang seemed very confident. Then Sohya's smile froze; he saw another Chinese astronaut approaching.

“Hello, Cui.”

Penghui Cui towered impassively over him for a moment before smiling and extending his hand. “We heard about your quick thinking in the crater. Even professional astronauts might not have made it out of that one. But you didn't give up.”

Sohya shook his hand. “Thanks. I wish you guys luck. Let us know if there's any way we can help.”

Cui's grip was firm. He beamed. “Well, we'd better see what's for dinner. The buffet looks impressive.” The two astronauts started making their way toward the food.

“I'm not surprised. All they get at Kunlun is Chinese,” said Tae. Sohya burst out laughing.

Someone tapped him on the shoulder. He turned to see a woman in a gold dress flashy enough to show up even the bride. With her was a heavyset, bearded man in jeans and a print T-shirt.

“That's an amazing dress,” said Tae. “The design is wonderful.”

“Made it myself.” Caroline Cadbury plucked a glass of champagne from a tray skillfully maneuvered around the room by Mikimoto. She took a sip. “I didn't have a thing to wear at Liberty Island. I made this out of micrometeoroid film. I feel a little like Sputnik.”

“I didn't know you were a seamstress.”

“I'd be glad to make one for you. What're your measurements?” Caroline started eyeing her.

“Oh, um, I'm fine with this dress…”

“Relax and enjoy yourselves,” said Sohya. “There's plenty of food.” As if on cue, Kashiwabara emerged from the kitchen, followed close behind by Kiwa, who was carrying a tureen.