New Earth

Eight Years and Eight Months Later

If this wasn’t so stupid, Pancho Lane said to herself, it would be funny.

As a newly elected member of the World Council, Pancho had flown to Earth from the Goddard habitat in orbit around Saturn on a special high-g boost just to attend this session of the Council. And here she was, sitting at the foot of the long conference table, while the leaders of the human race made asses of themselves through this farce of a meeting.

Chiang Chantao was sitting in his powerchair up at the head of the table, more machinery than human being, wheezing and frowning and trying to make himself heard while the others argued and shouted at one another.

They have a lot to argue about, Pancho admitted to herself. The meeting had originally been scheduled to discuss who the next chairman of the World Council should be. Chiang Chantao was set to retire at the end of this term and there was still an enormous amount of work to be done to alleviate the effects of the monstrous greenhouse floods.

Two days before the meeting convened, though, the communications from New Earth started arriving. The first mission had arrived safely. The planet was indeed almost completely Earthlike.

And then the lightning bolt. New Earth was populated by human beings! They—the entire planet—had been constructed by a machine intelligence that had originated on another world, twelve thousand light-years away.

The aliens had a message, and a mission. A massive wave of lethal gamma radiation was sweeping outward from the core of the galaxy. It would reach Earth in two thousand years. When it did, it would wipe out all life on Earth.

They don’t believe it, Pancho realized. They don’t want to believe it. But the human explorers on New Earth believed it. They presented evidence that the best astronomers in the solar system were now poring over.

“Two thousand years from now!” shouted the councilman from the European Union. “Even if it’s true, we don’t have to lift a finger for a dozen centuries, maybe more. It’s not our problem.”

“That’s what people said a hundred years ago about the global warming,” said Felicia Ionescu, her face a picture of barely controlled contempt. “And now look where we are.”

A new round of jabbering erupted: accusations, denials, recriminations.

Douglas Stavenger, seated on Pancho’s right, glanced at her. The expression on his face was a mixture of exasperation and disgust.

Stavenger wasn’t actually present in the room, of course. His body teeming with nanomachines, he was not allowed to set foot on Earth. He was attending this fractious meeting through a virtual reality telepresence: his three-dimensional holographic image looked quite solid, almost as if he were actually in the conference room. Pancho had to stare hard to see that his image was slightly transparent, like a ghost.

Stavenger got to his feet. All heads turned to him, all the yammering stopped. Even Chiang’s rheumy eyes fixed on him. The room fell absolutely silent.

“Two thousand years is a long time,” he began, “but from what Jordan Kell and the others have told us, there are other intelligent races that need to be saved.”

“Is that our responsibility?” Chiang croaked, from behind his breathing mask.

For several heartbeats Stavenger did not reply. He simply stared at the chairman. It took three seconds for the words spoken in this meeting to reach Stavenger, on the Moon, and for his response to get back to Earth. The time seemed to stretch endlessly.

At last he said, “I believe we have a moral obligation to do whatever we can to save life, wherever we can reach it.”

Anita Halleck, seated at the chairman’s left, objected, “But we have so much work to do right here on Earth. How can we afford this new … new … crusade?”

“How do we know this whole story hasn’t been concocted by the scientists to squeeze more funding out of us?” asked the councilwoman from Pacifica.

Again the wait. Then Stavenger smiled and replied, “The answers to your questions are relatively simple. We send a new mission to Sirius C, a team of scientists and administrators who will check on the facts and advise the World Council of their validity.”

Before anyone could respond, he went on, “The people of habitat Goddard have already built the spacecraft for a new mission to Sirius. The people of Selene will fund its staffing.”

“You mean we won’t have to pay for any of it?”

Pancho jumped in. “That’s right. You people on Earth can devote your resources to alleviating the floods. The people off-Earth will handle the next mission to Sirius C. And that includes not only Selene and Goddard, but the rock rats out in the Asteroid Belt, as well. We’ve built the ship and we’ll pay for the team to crew it.”

The other Council members looked at each other in stunned silence. No one seemed to know what to say. Pancho, grinning inwardly, thought, We’ve made them an offer they can’t refuse.

At last Chairman Chiang wheezed, “A very generous offer. I propose that the Council accept it.”

Heads nodded up and down the table. Stavenger’s ghostly image sat down again.

“The only other agenda item is to nominate a new chairman,” said Chiang.

Immediately, Pancho said, “There’s only one person here who can fill your shoes, Mr. Chairman. And that person is Douglas Stavenger, of Selene.”

Again bedlam erupted.

“How can he be chairman when he can’t even visit Earth?”

Pancho slapped the palm of her right hand on the polished tabletop and their voices stilled.

“Now look, people,” she said. “Doug’s been a Council member for some years, without setting foot on Earth. Hell, I’m a Council member and George Ambrose, from the Belt, is too.”

Ambrose nodded his shaggy red-haired head and grinned boyishly.

Pancho continued, “You’ve made an effort to make this Council include all the people of the solar system. So why won’t you elect the best man for the chairman’s post, even if he lives on the Moon?”

They argued the issue back and forth, but the objections gradually petered out. When Chiang called for a vote, Stavenger was elected unanimously.

Pancho was smiling as she left the conference room. She chatted with a few of the Council members for a while, then made a beeline for the hotel where her husband was waiting for her.

“It’s done?” Jake Wanamaker asked the instant she came through the door of their suite. He really didn’t need to ask; he could tell from the huge grin on Pancho’s face.

“It’s done,” she said. “We’re goin’ to New Earth.”

Wanamaker puffed out a breath. “Eighty years, Panch. It takes eighty years to get there.”

“Yep. Trish’ll be a hundred and fourteen years old by the time we get there.”

“And how old will we be?”

“Don’t matter,” said Pancho. “Our lives are just beginning, Jake. Just beginning.”