Nemesis

9. Erythro

There were times, once in a while, once in an ever longer while as the years passed (or so it seemed to him), when Janus Pitt found time to sit back in his chair, alone and silent, and just allow his mind to relax. Those were moments when there were no orders to give, no information to absorb, no immediate decisions to make, no farms to visit, no factories to inspect, no regions in space to penetrate, no-one to see, no-one to listen to, no-one to foil, no-one to encourage-

And always when such times came, Pitt allowed himself the final and least exhaustible luxury - that of self-pity.

It was not that he would have anything different than what it was. He had planned for all his adult life to be Commissioner because he thought that no-one could run Rotor as he could; and now that he was Commissioner, he still thought so.

But why, among all the fools of Rotor, could he find no-one who could see long-range as he could? It was fourteen years since the Leaving, and still no-one could really see the inevitable; not even after he had explained it carefully.

Someday, back in the Solar System, sooner rather than later, someone would develop hyper-assistance as the hyperspatialists on Rotor had - perhaps even in a better form. Someday humanity would set out in its hundreds and thousands of Settlements, in its millions and billions of people, to colonize the Galaxy, and that would be a brutal time.

Yes, the Galaxy was enormous. How often had he heard that? And beyond it were other galaxies. But humanity would not spread out evenly. Always, always, there would be some star systems that, for one reason or another, were better than other star systems, and they would be the ones snarled and fought over. If there were ten star systems and ten colonizing groups, all ten would zero in on one of the star systems, and one only.

And sooner or later, they would discover Nemesis and the colonizers would appear. How would Rotor survive then?

Only if Rotor gained as much time as possible, built up a strong civilization, and expanded reasonably. If they had enough time, they might expand their hold over a group of stars. If not, Nemesis alone would be enough - but it must be made impregnable.

Pitt did not dream of universal conquest, of conquest of any kind. What he wanted was an island of tranquillity and security against the days when the Galaxy would be aflame and in chaos as a result of conflicting ambitions.

But he alone could see this. He alone bore the weight of it. He might live another quarter century and might remain in power through all that time, either as actual Commissioner or as an elder statesman whose word would be decisive. Yet, eventually, he would die - and to whom could he then bequeath his far-sightedness?

Then Pitt felt a twinge of self-pity. He had labored for so many years, would labor for so many more, yet was appreciated - truly appreciated - by none. And it would all come to an end anyway, because the Idea would be drowned in the ocean of mediocrity that constantly lapped at the ankles of those few who could see beyond the years.

It was fourteen years since the Leaving and when, at any time, had he been able to be quietly confident? He went to sleep each night with the fear that he would be awakened before morning with the news that another Settlement had arrived - that Nemesis had been found.

He passed through every day with some hidden part of him paying no attention to what was immediately on the agenda, but listening - listening for the fatal words.

Fourteen years and they were still not safe. One additional Settlement had been built - New Rotor. There were people living on it, but it was a new world, of course. It still smelled of paint, as the old saying had it. Three more Settlements were in various stages of construction.

Soon - within the decade, at any rate - the number of Settlements under construction would increase, and they would be given that oldest of all commands: Be fruitful and multiply!

With the example of Earth before them, with the knowledge that each Settlement had a narrow and unexpandable capacity, procreation had always been under strict control in space. There the immovable needs of arithmetic met the possibly irresistible force of instinct and immovability won. But as the number of Settlements grew, there would come a time when more people would be needed - many more - and the urge to produce them could be unleashed.

It would be temporary, of course. No matter how many Settlements there were, they could be filled without effort by any population that could easily double its numbers every thirty-five years, or less. And when the day came when the rate of Settlement formation passed through its inflection point and began to diminish, it might be far harder to stuff the djinn back into its bottle than it had been to release it.

Who would see this well in advance, and prepare for it once Pitt himself was gone?

And there was Erythro, the planet that Rotor orbited in such a way that huge Megas and ruddy Nemesis rose and set in an intricate pattern. Erythro! That had been a question from the beginning.

Pitt remembered well the early days of their entry into the Nemesis System. The limited intricacy of the planetary family of Nemesis had exposed itself little by little, as Rotor raced toward the red dwarf star.

Megas had been discovered at a distance of four million kilometers from Nemesis, only one-fifteenth the distance of Mercury from the Sun of the Solar System. Megas obtained about the same amount of energy as Earth got from its Sun, but with a lesser intensity of visible light and a higher intensity of infrared.

Megas, however, was clearly not habitable, even at first glance. It was a gas giant, with one side always facing Nemesis. Both its rotation and revolution were twenty days long. The perpetual night on half of Megas cooled it only moderately, since its own interior heat rose to the surface. The perpetual day on the other half was unendurably hot. That Megas kept its atmosphere under this heat was entirely because, with its mass higher and its radius smaller than that of Jupiter, its surface gravity was fifteen times that of Jupiter, and forty times that of Earth.

Nor did Nemesis have any other sizable planet.

But then, as Rotor drew closer, and Megas could be seen more clearly, the situation was altered again.

It was Eugenia Insigna who brought Pitt the news. It was not that she had made the discovery herself. It had merely showed up on the computer-enhanced photographs, and had been brought to Insigna's attention since she was Chief Astronomer. With considerable excitement, she had brought it to Pitt in his Commissioner's chambers.

She had begun simply enough, keeping her voice level, though it was shaking with emotion.

‘Megas has a satellite,’ she said.

Pitt had lifted his eyebrows ever so slightly, but then he said, ‘Isn't that to be expected? The gas giants of the Solar System have anywhere up to a score of satellites.’,

‘Of course, Janus, but this is not an ordinary satellite. It's large.’

Pitt kept his cool. ‘Jupiter has four large satellites.’

‘I mean, really large, with almost Earth's size and mass.’

‘I see. Interesting.’

‘More than that. Much more than that, Janus. If this satellite revolved about Nemesis directly, tidal influences would cause only one side to face Nemesis, and it would be uninhabitable. Instead, only one side faces Megas, which is much cooler than Nemesis. Furthermore, the satellite's orbit is tilted substantially to Megas' equator. This means that in the satellite's sky, Megas is seen from only one hemisphere and it moves north and south with a cycle of about one day, while Nemesis moves across the sky, rising and setting, again with a cycle of one day. One hemisphere has twelve hours of darkness and twelve hours of light. The other hemisphere has the same but during its daytime, Nemesis is frequently in eclipse for up to half an hour at a time, with the cooling made up for by Megas' mild warmth. During the dark hours, in that hemisphere, the darkness is ameliorated by Megas' reflected light.’

‘The satellite has an interesting sky, then. How fascinating for astronomers.’

‘It's not just an astronomical lollipop, Janus. It's possible that the satellite has an equable temperature at the right range for human beings. It may be a habitable world.’

Pitt smiled. ‘Even more interesting, but it wouldn't have our kind of light, though, would it?’

Insigna nodded. ‘That's true enough. It would have a ruddy sun and a dark sky because there would be no shortwave light to be scattered. And there would be a reddish landscape, I suppose.’

‘In that case, since you named Nemesis, and one of your people named Megas, I'll take the privilege of naming the satellite. Call it Erythro, which if I recall correctly, is related to the Greek word for “red.” ’

The news remained good for quite some time thereafter. An asteroid belt of respectable size was located beyond the orbit of the Megas-Erythro system, and those asteroids would clearly be an ideal source of material for building more Settlements.

And as they approached Erythro, the nature of its habitability seemed to grow ever more favorable. Erythro was a planet of sea and land, though its seas, from preliminary estimates of its cloud cover as made out in visible light and the infrared, seemed shallower than Earth's oceans, and really impressive mountains on the land were very few. Insigna, on the basis of further calculations, insisted that the climate on the planet as a whole would be entirely suitable for human life.

And then when the inflight had brought them to a distance from which Erythro's atmosphere could be studied spectroscopically with precision, Insigna said to him, ‘Erythro's atmosphere is a little denser than Earth's and it contains free oxygen - 16 per cent of it, plus 5 per cent argon and the rest nitrogen. There must be small quantities of carbon dioxide, but we haven't detected it yet. The point is, it's a breathable atmosphere.’

‘Sounds better and better,’ said Pitt. ‘Who could have imagined this when you first spotted Nemesis?’

‘Better and better for the biologist. Maybe not very good for Rotor on the whole, though. A sizable content of free oxygen in the atmosphere is a sure indication of the presence of life.’

‘Life?’ said Pitt, momentarily stupefied at the thought.

‘Life,’ said Insigna, boring in, taking an apparent perverse pleasure in stressing the possibilities. ‘And if life, then possibly intelligent life, perhaps even a high civilization.’

What followed was a nightmare for Pitt. He had not only to live with the terrible apprehension of his own Earth-people pursuing and overtaking him, superior in number certainly, and in technology possibly - but there was an accompanying fear now that was, if anything, greater. They might be approaching and infringing on an old and advanced civilization capable of eradicating them in a moment of absent-minded annoyance as a human being might, without thinking, crush a mosquito that buzzed too near his ear.

As they continued to approach Nemesis, Pitt said to Insigna with a deeply troubled air, ‘Need oxygen truly imply the existence of life?’

‘It's a thermodynamic inevitability, Janus. In an Earth-like planet - and, as nearly as we can tell, Erythro is Earth-like - free oxygen cannot exist, any more than in any Earth-like gravitational field, a rock can be suspended in open air of its own accord. Oxygen, if present in the atmosphere to begin with, would spontaneously combine with other elements in the soil, giving off energy. It would only continue to exist in the atmosphere if some process were to supply energy and continually regenerate free oxygen.’

‘I understand that, Eugenia, but why need the energy-supply process necessarily involve life?’

‘Because nothing has ever been encountered in nature that would do the job, except the photosynthetic action of green plants that make use of solar energy to release oxygen.’

‘When you say “nothing has ever been encountered in nature,” you mean in the Solar System. This is another system with a different sun and a different planet under different conditions. The laws of thermodynamics may still hold, but what if there is some chemical process that we haven't encountered in the Solar System and that is forming the oxygen here?’

‘If you're a betting man,’ said Insigna, ‘don't bet on it.’

What was needed was evidence, and Pitt had to wait for the evidence to appear.

To begin with, Nemesis and Megas turned out to have extremely weak magnetic fields. This created no particular stir for it had been expected, since both star and planet rotated very slowly. Erythro, with a rotational period of twenty-three hours and sixteen minutes (equal to the period of its revolution about Megas), had a magnetic field that was similar, in intensity, to Earth's.

Insigna expressed her satisfaction. ‘At least we don't have to worry about dangerous radiation effects from intense magnetic fields, especially since Nemesis' stellar wind is bound to be much less intense than that of the Sun. That's good, because it means we might be able to detect the presence or absence of life on Erythro at a distance. Technological life, anyway.’

‘Why's that?’ asked Pitt.

‘It's not at all likely that a high level of technology can be reached without copious use of radio-wave radiation, which would be speeding away from Erythro in all directions. We ought to be able to differentiate between it and any random radio-wave radiation from the planet itself, when such natural radiation is minor, considering that its magnetic field is weak.’

Pitt said, ‘I've been thinking that this may not be necessary; that we can reason out Erythro's lifelessness, even though it does have an oxygen atmosphere.’

‘Oh? I'd like to hear how that might be done.’

‘I've thought this out. Listen! Didn't you say that tidal influences slow the rotations of Nemesis, Megas and Erythro? And didn't you say that, as a result, Megas has moved farther from Nemesis, and Erythro has moved farther from Megas?’

‘Yes.’

‘Therefore, if we look into the past, Megas was once closer to Nemesis and Erythro was closer to Megas and to Nemesis, too. That means that Erythro was far too warm for life to begin with, and may only have become hospitable to life recently. There might not have been enough time for a technological civilization to develop.’

Insigna laughed gently. ‘Good point. I mustn't underestimate your astronomical ingenuity - but not good enough. Red dwarf stars have a long life and Nemesis might easily have been formed in the very youth of the Universe - say, fifteen billion years ago. The tidal influence would have been very strong at first, when the bodies were closer together, and most of the driving apart may have taken place in the first three or four billion years. The tidal influence decreases as the cube of the distance and, in the last ten billion years or so, there would not have been much change and that would be plenty of time for several technological civilizations to be built up, one after the other. No, Janus, let's not speculate. Let's wait and see if we can detect radio-wave radiation, or not.’

—Closer still to Nemesis.

It was a tiny red orb now to the unaided eye, but its dimness could be looked at without trouble. To one side, Megas was visible as a ruddy dot. In the telescope, it showed at something less than half-phase as a result of the angle it made with Rotor and with Nemesis. Erythro could be made out in the telescope, too, as a dimmer crimson dot.

It grew brighter with time, and Insigna said, ‘It's good news for you, Janus. No suspicious radio-wave radiation of possibly technological origin has yet been detected.’

‘Wonderful.’ Pitt felt the wave of relief as though it were a physical warmth washing over him.

‘Don't leap, though,’ said Insigna. ‘They might use less radio-wave radiation that we might expect. They might shield it very well. They might even use something else in place of radio waves.’

Pitt's mouth quirked into a small half-smile. ‘Are you suggesting that seriously?’

Insigna shrugged uncertainly.

Pitt said, ‘Because if you're a betting woman, don't bet on it.’

—Closer still to Nemesis, and Erythro was now a large orb to the unaided eye, with bloated Megas near it, and Nemesis on the other side of the Settlement. Rotor had adjusted its velocity to keep pace with Erythro, which, through the telescope, showed drifting broken clouds in the familiar spiral shapes of a planet of Earth-type temperature and atmosphere, and, therefore, it should be counted on as possessing an at least vaguely Earth-like climate.

Insigna said, ‘There are no signs of light on the night-side of Erythro. That should please you, Janus.’

‘The absence of light is not consistent with a technological civilization, I suppose.’

‘It certainly isn't.’

‘Let me play devil's advocate, then,’ said Pitt. ‘With a red sun and dim light, wouldn't a civilization produce a dim artificial light as well?’

‘It might be dim in the visible region, but Nemesis is rich in the infrared and we would expect artificial light to be similarly rich. What infrared we detect, however, is planetary. It appears, more or less equally, over the entire land surface, whereas artificial light would have patterns, coming off richly in population concentrations, sparsely elsewhere.’

‘Then forget it, Eugenia,’ said Pitt buoyantly. ‘There is no technological civilization. It might make Erythro less interesting in some ways, but you can't want us to face our equals, or, perhaps, our superiors. We would have to leave and go elsewhere, and we have nowhere else to go, and perhaps an insufficient energy supply to get there if we did. As it is, we can stay.’

‘There's still copious oxygen in the atmosphere, so there's still certain to be life on Erythro. It's only a technological civilization that's lacking. It means we'll have to go down and study its life-forms.’

‘Why?’

‘How can you ask, Janus? If we have another sample of life here, one that is altogether independent of the life developed on Earth, what a bonanza it would be for our biologists!’

‘I see. You're talking about scientific curiosity. Well, the life-forms won't go away, I suppose. There will be time enough for that later. First things first.’

‘What can come ahead of a study of a totally new form of life?’

‘Eugenia, be reasonable. We must establish ourselves here. We must build other Settlements. We must create a large and well-ordered society, one far more homogeneous, self-understanding and peaceful than ever existed in the Solar System.’

‘For that we'll need material supplies, which takes us down to Erythro again, where we'll have to study the life-forms-’

‘No, Eugenia. To land on Erythro and to take off again in the face of its gravitational field would be too costly at the present moment. The intensity of the gravitational fields of Erythro and of Megas - don't forget Megas - is great enough, even out here in space. One of our people calculated it for me. We'll have a problem getting our supplies even from the asteroid belt, but it will be less of a problem than getting them from Erythro. In fact, if we station ourselves in the asteroid belt, matters would be even more price-effective. The asteroid belt will be where we build our Settlements.’

‘Are you proposing to ignore Erythro?’

‘For a while, Eugenia. When we are strong, when our energy supply is much greater, when our society is stable and growing, time enough then to investigate Erythro's life-forms or, perhaps, its unusual chemistry.’

Pitt smiled soothingly, understandably, at Insigna. The side issue of Erythro, he knew, had to be delayed as long as possible. If it bore no technological society, then whatever other life-forms and resources it had could wait. The pursuing hordes from the Solar System were the true enemy.

Why couldn't others see what had to be done? Why were others so easily diverted into useless side paths?

How would he ever dare to die and leave the fools unprotected?