Lightspeed: Year One

true spider silk, it’s not impossible.” She read from her desk. “Spider silk has a breaking strain twice that of steel, but thirty times the elasticity. It’s a type of liquid crystal. It’s used commercially—did you know that?” She fingered the fabric of her suit. “We could be wearing spider silk right now.”

“What about the hole with the lid?”

“There are trapdoor spiders in America. On Earth. I remember, when I was a kid . . . The spiders make burrows, lined with silk, with hinged lids.”

“Why make burrows on Pluto?”

“I don’t know. Maybe the eggs can last out the winter that way. Maybe the creatures, the flakes, only have active life during the perihelion period, when the atmosphere expands and enriches.” She thought that through. “That fits. That’s why the Poole people didn’t spot anything. The construction team was here close to the last aphelion. Pluto’s year is so long that we’re still only half-way to the next perihelion—”

“So how do they live?” Cobh snapped. “What do they eat?”

“There must be more to the ecosystem than one species,” Lvov conceded. “The flakes—the spiders—need water glass. But there’s little of that on the surface. Maybe there is some biocycle—plants or burrowing animals— which brings ice and glass to the surface, from the interior.”

“That doesn’t make sense. The layer of nitrogen over water ice is too deep.”

“Then where do the flakes get their glass?”

“Don’t ask me,” Cobh said. “It’s your dumb hypothesis. And what about the web? What’s the point of that—if it’s real?”

Lvov ground to a halt. “I don’t know,” she said lamely. Although Pluto/Charon is the only place in the System where you could build a spider-web between worlds.

Cobh toyed with a fitting from the drive. “Have you told anyone about this yet? In the inner System, I mean.”

“No. You said you wanted to talk about that.”

“Right.” Lvov saw Cobh close her eyes; her face was masked by the glimmer of her faceplate. “Listen. Here’s what we say. We’ve seen nothing here. Nothing that couldn’t be explained by crystallisation effects.”

Lvov was baffled. “What are you talking about? What about the eggs? Why would we lie about this? Besides, we have the desks—records.”

“Data desks can be lost, or wiped, or their contents amended.”

Lvov wished she could see Cobh’s face. “Why would we do such a thing?”

“Think it through. Once Earth hears about this, these flake-spiders of yours will be protected. Won’t they?”

“Of course. What’s bad about that?”

“It’s bad for us, Lvov. You’ve seen what a mess the Poole people made of Charon. If this system is inhabited, a fast GUTship won’t be allowed to come for us. It wouldn’t be allowed to refuel here. Not if it meant further damage to the native life forms.”

Lvov shrugged. “So we’d have to wait for a slower ship. A liner; one that won’t need to take on more reaction mass here.”

Cobh laughed at her. “You don’t know much about the economics of GUTship transport, do you? Now that the System is criss-crossed by Poole wormholes, how many liners like that do you think are still running? I’ve already checked the manifests. There are two liners capable of a round trip to Pluto still in service. One is in dry dock; the other is heading for Saturn—”

“On the other side of the System.”

“Right. There’s no way either of those ships could reach us for, I’d say, a year.”

We only have a month’s supplies. A bubble of panic gathered in Lvov’s stomach.

“Do you get it yet?” Cobh said heavily. “We’ll be sacrificed, if there’s a chance that our rescue would damage the new ecology, here.”

“No. It wouldn’t happen like that.”

Cobh shrugged. “There are precedents.”

She was right, Lvov knew. There were precedents, of new forms of life discovered in corners of the system: From Mercury to the remote Kuiper objects. In every case the territory had been ring-fenced, the local conditions preserved, once life—or even a plausible candidate for life—was recognised.

Cobh said, “Pan-genetic diversity. Pan-environmental management. That’s the key to it; the public policy of preserving all the species and habitats of Sol, into the indefinite future. The lives of two humans won’t matter a damn against that.”

“What are you suggesting?”

“That we don’t tell the inner System about the flakes.”

Lvov tried to recapture her mood of a few days before: When Pluto hadn’t mattered to her, when the crash had been just an inconvenience. Now, suddenly, we’re talking about threats to our lives, the destruction of an ecology.

What a dilemma. If I don’t tell of the flakes, their ecology may be destroyed during our rescue. But if I do tell, the GUTship won’t come for me, and I’ll lose my life.

Cobh seemed to be waiting for an answer.

Lvov thought of how Sol light looked over Pluto’s ice fields, at dawn.

She decided to stall. “We’ll say nothing. For now. But I don’t accept either of your options.”

Cobh laughed. “What else is there? The wormhole is destroyed; even this flitter is disabled.”

“We have time. Days, before the GUTship is due to be launched. Let’s search for another solution. A win- win.”

Cobh shrugged. She looked suspicious.

She’s right to be, Lvov thought, exploring her own decision with surprise. I’ve every intention of telling the truth later, of diverting the GUTship, if I have to.

I may give up my life, for this world.

I think.

In the days that followed, Cobh tinkered with the GUTdrive, and flew up to the Interface to gather more data on the Alcubierre phenomenon.

Lvov roamed the surface of Pluto, with her desk set to full record. She came to love the wreaths of cirrus clouds, the huge, misty moon, the slow, oceanic pulse of the centuries-long year.

Everywhere she found the inert bodies of snowflakes, or evidence of their presence: eggs, lidded burrows. She found no other life forms—or, more likely, she told herself, she wasn’t equipped to recognise any others.

She was drawn back to Christy, the sub-Charon point, where the topography was at its most complex and interesting, and where the greatest density of flakes was to be found. It was as if, she thought, the flakes had gathered here, yearning for the huge, inaccessible moon above them. But what could the flakes possibly want of Charon? What did it mean for them?

Lvov encountered Cobh at the crash scar, recharging her suit’s systems from the life support packs. Cobh seemed quiet. She kept her face, hooded by her faceplate, turned from Lvov.

Lvov watched her for a while. “You’re being evasive,” she said eventually. “Something’s changed—something you’re not telling me about.”

Cobh made to turn away, but Lvov grabbed her arm. “I think you’ve found a third option. Haven’t you? You’ve found some other way to resolve this situation, without destroying either us or the flakes.”

Cobh shook off her hand. “Yes. Yes, I think I know a way. But—”

“But what?”

“It’s dangerous, damn it. Maybe unworkable. Lethal.” Cobh’s hands pulled at each other.

She’s scared, Lvov saw. She stepped back from Cobh. Without giving herself time to think about it, she said, “Our deal’s off. I’m going to tell the inner System about the flakes. Right now. So we’re going to have to go with your new idea, dangerous or not.”

Cobh studied her face; Cobh seemed to be weighing up Lvov’s determination, perhaps even her physical strength. Lvov felt as if she were a data desk being downloaded. The moment stretched, and Lvov felt her breath