Fate of Worlds: Return From the Ringworld

Koala. We’ve been expecting you. Maintain your course and speed while we hand off your approach to Space Traffic Control, who will prepare landing guidance…”

Sigmund’s console squawked twice as things dropped into normal space nearby. Moments later, his passive infrared sensor acquired two faint objects streaking, relative to Elysium and the decoy buoy, at nine-tenths light speed. Defensive drones. Kinetic killers. His console chirped again: at hyperwave pings for terminal guidance.

“Koala, if you carry hyperwave transponders, we request that you…”

There was a blinding flash before the view-port polarizer cut in. His eyes watering, Sigmund squinted at his instruments. “They just killed ‘Koala.’”

37

The deed was done, the risks taken, the dirty truths transmitted to New Terra. There was nothing left to do but wait — trying not to obsess about the many ways everything could still end badly. Neither the government Sigmund strove to overthrow nor the cold, dark vacuum of space was forgiving.

He endlessly paced (if locomotion at his slow shuffle could be called pacing) the short corridors of Elysium. On this slow lap he found Amelia slouched over the small table in the relax room: dark bags under her eyes; picking at a crust of bread; staring, transfixed, at the recorded loop they transmitted — circuitously, through a series of hyperwave relays, lest kinetic killers find them.

The old man in the vid looked twitchier and far wearier than she.

“It’s a recording, you know,” Sigmund teased her. “It’s the same every time.”

“I know.” Amelia frowned at the circle of bread crumbs that surrounded her plate. “Is this going to work?”

He gestured at the vid. It had just cut to a file shot of Donald Norquist-Ng. He told her, “The minister will do his best to blame everything on me. I made illegal recordings. I assaulted people and stole a ship. Having improvised a fake Koala, who’s to say that I didn’t destroy the fake ship, too?”

“You didn’t,” she protested.

“That’s what we’re counting on.” Sigmund gestured at the continuing playback. “Plenty of people were in that room. You can hear them in the background. They weren’t all happy. Some of them will come forward.”

Uh-huh. And pigs will fly, said the forlorn expression on Amelia’s face.

Sigmund found the recording easier to face than Amelia. He listened to his voice-over saying, “… Known to your government for many weeks. Here is Minister Norquist-Ng first hearing the news.”

As Alice’s recorded voice replaced Sigmund’s, loss and anger washed over him. What had she been thinking, to run off like that? To get herself killed like that?

The vid rolled on, indifferent to Sigmund’s pain. “We know the way to Earth,” Alice was saying. “From this location, it’s about two hundred light-years, mostly to galactic south. From New Terra, a bit over two ten. Jeeves? Show them.”

“Graphic off,” Norquist-Ng barked. “Jeeves, you will show that image to no one except by my authorization. I’ll brief the governor. No one is to speak a word about this development outside this room.”

In the looping message, Sigmund explained to — did he have viewers? — that a stellar map had been erased before anyone in the meeting room could study it. “But was suppressing this report the misguided decision of one man? Did the minister tell the governor? Let’s find out.”

For his meeting with the governor, Sigmund had risked wearing spy lenses. His audience — again assuming that he had viewers, that this transmission was not being jammed — would see the executive office and the governor herself.

He heard himself telling the governor, “Koala will arrive in about two weeks. It’s my opinion that we should be preparing the population. First contact with representatives of long-lost Earth … that’s a big deal.”

Rodgers-Bjornstad shook her head. “People would worry and wonder about what will change, what it all means, to the exclusion of everything else. Everyone who needs the information has it. The coming visit remains classified until Koala arrives.”

“The governor was complicit in withholding this news,” recorded-Sigmund summarized. “Because she fretted about lost productivity? Or, as I had feared, because she and the Minister of Defense had an undisclosed motive? I had to know. Here is what happened next.”

Video switched to a star field centered on New Terra. The blue dot was an icon; from this distance, the planet was hard to spot even if you knew where to look. The world and its low-flying suns together shone only one millionth as bright as the dimmest red-dwarf star.

The voice-over announced, “This is the Earth vessel Koala, calling New Terra.”

This segment of the recording ended all too quickly in a blinding flash.

“That was an attack without warning” — Puppeteer-cleansed English lacked the word ambush — “on the embassy ship from Earth. A ship that Minister Norquist-Ng had personally promised safe passage. A ship bringing home one of his own officers.

“Suspecting deceit by our leaders, I arranged what looked to sensors like a ship’s arrival. I am saddened to have been correct in my suspicions, appalled at the actions taken by our government. But here, finally, is good news. Koala has yet to reach us. It has not been destroyed.

“I submit to you, my fellow citizens of New Terra, that those who would suppress the rediscovery of Earth, those who would kill to keep that secret, are unworthy to lead us.”

He concluded the broadcast as he had begun. “This is Sigmund Ausfaller, onetime Earth resident, your former defense minister. I wait in nearby space to warn away the embassy ship from Earth when it arrives. Or we can reconnect with our cousins and our long-lost past. The choice is yours … if you act quickly.”

* * *

ROCKING HERSELF, ARMS CROSSED across her chest to clutch her own upper arms, Amelia sat perched on an armrest of the pilot’s crash couch. The star field had been banished from the main view port, replaced with an old image of Hermes, Amelia, and their three children. Julia, the youngest, was at the missing-tooth, cheesy-grin stage.

Sigmund backed away silently. Whistling loudly, he returned to the bridge. This time Amelia had heard him coming. She sat more normally — looking posed. Stars once again showed in the view port.

He said, “I’m going to make some dinner. What can I get you?”

“Nothing, thanks.”

“You have to eat something,” he said gently.

She shook her head. “Was everything we did for nothing?”

“Don’t think that.” A hand set on her shoulder confirmed that she was trembling.

Why wouldn’t she be terrified? Their buoys had broadcasted for three days, and they had heard back … nothing.

Every second they spent out here terrified Sigmund, too, but he had to be strong. Their ship was intact and no one aboard had died. That was better than usual for him. “Worst case, we’ll warn away Koala. Julia will be safe.”

“With Earth knowing they’re unwelcome here. Hermes and I will never see our daughter again — unless this ARM organization of yours takes offense and returns with a fleet.” Amelia laughed cynically. “Of course I’ll be in prison. Maybe that will take my mind off things.”

How would the ARM take news of a planned ambush? Assuming the organization hadn’t changed since Sigmund’s era, not well.