Extinction

“Unknowns can’t be thought through. This is exploration, experimentation.”

“Why do you have to do stuff like this yourself?” she asked, suddenly intense. I could tell from her expression she wanted a real answer, not a quip.

“I think it started with these Nano ships,” I said. “There are secrets locked within these vessels. The Nanos have always driven me mad with their mysteries. I know that our scientists are working hard to analyze them-and I wish them luck. But as far as I can tell, they hadn’t made much progress. They’ve dissected the pieces, of course.”

“They have? What happened?” Sandra asked.

“I heard a team down at Los Alamos Labs in New Mexico took apart one of my fusion backpacks with disastrous results. There are several technical areas that are still uninhabitable.”

“Technical areas?”

“That’s what they call their various labs. The point is that despite the efforts of our best minds, we’ve been unable to do much more than theorize about Nano technology. We are certainly nowhere near reproducing it on our own.”

Venus was bright with reflected sunlight. Due to its orbital position relative to Earth, we were approaching it obliquely. It appeared like a half-moon from our vantage point. The atmosphere was far too thick to see the surface. What we could see was a yellowy-brown-beige swirl. The planet looked like a coffee mocha with way too much cream. Really, we were looking at the top of a mass of roiling clouds. I supposed it was beautiful-in the stark fashion of a scorched desert.

“Why can’t we figure out how these things work?” Sandra asked.

“We lack the fundamentals to analyze alien tech. Imagine this: What if we took a modern computer back in time to the doorstep of Benjamin Franklin, Sir Isaac Newton or Charles Babbage?”

She considered it. “They might trigger a technological revolution in earlier times. We might be centuries ahead of where we are.”

“Maybe,” I said. “But most likely those learned men would have a hard time even comprehending the device. For one thing, it would run out of power within a few hours and turn into a complicated brick of strange materials. Even if we could give them the power and thus the time to really study one of our marvels, there are a thousand details and discoveries they would have to make first in order to build one of their own. At least a century of focused scientific achievement would be required.”

“You sound like a professor now,” she said.

I chuckled. “An occupational hazard. Should I shut up?”

“Nah. I want an ‘A’.”

“You’ve earned your grade in the sack a hundred times over.”

I had to defend myself, bouncing away from the incoming slap. It was a playful attack, however, so I relaxed. I looked down at Venus, which had grown imperceptibly larger beneath our feet. The glass of the observatory was very cold, so cold the molecules in my feet were burning in my shoes. I was glad they had plastic soles, which had no freezing point, or my shoes might have crystallized under my feet. I decided it was best to continue the lecture.

“Think, for example,” I began, “if someone managed to give a Model T Ford to the Romans. They could learn to drive it, but they wouldn’t be able to build one of their own. They could not machine the parts for the engine. The electronics of the ignition system would be incomprehensible. They had no rubber at that time, and no way to find any. They would have the same problem when it came to distilling gasoline to fill the tank. Such a substance was virtually unknown to them. My point is that something as simple as a car requires a dozen scientific and engineering techniques to understand and build. I personally believe that a technological gift to people in the past would be more likely to result in witchcraft trials than any early explosion of technology.”

I looked at the sole member of my audience to see if she was falling asleep yet. As an ex-prof, I’m good at reading listeners. Sandra was distracted by the sight of Venus below us. Her head was tilted downward, and she had her hair in each hand to pull it back as she studied the floor. Her pretty face was lit-up by sunshine reflected from Venus’ dense atmosphere.

“This glass is cold under my feet,” she said.

“Yeah, I didn’t build this chamber perfectly. Hopefully, we’re not getting too much radiation.”

Sandra looked up in alarm. At least I knew she was listening.

“Just kidding! The glass is lead-impregnated and the walls of the Nano ships have always blocked radiation, I’ve checked with Geiger counters.”

She relaxed and looked downward again, studying Venus. “This is pretty amazing. I’m pissed that you didn’t offer to take me along before.”

“I just built the ship!”

“But you planned to leave me home. You planned to look at this beauty alone.”

“Do you want to hear the rest of my speech or not?”

She sighed. “Okay.”

“The Nano ships are a technological gift from the future to us. It’s as if we’d given Benjamin Franklin a pallet of solar calculators-plus a few copy machines and maybe a tractor or two. Like old Franklin, are advanced enough not to believe they are supernatural, but we are not prepared to exploit the gifts fully. Taking a piece of our own current technology back in time just two hundred years would have befuddled our world’s greatest scientific minds at that time. Today we have been presented with the technology of the Blues. We have examples of Nano science in our hands we might not have developed on our own for a thousand years. Worse still, this technology wasn’t designed by human minds for human purposes. This makes the principles behind them doubly hard to fathom.”

“All right fine, professor,” she said. “Tell me why we are risking a war-and our asses, out here.”

“Because I’m hoping we can learn at least how to use the technology that’s out here. I’m hoping we can use it to get out of our star system.”

Her startled eyes met mine. “What for?”

I smiled grimly. “You can’t win a war by staying purely on the defense.”

“I thought we were at peace with the machines.”

“What if we’re not? What if there are more aliens out there, who haven’t yet made an appearance?”

Sandra stopped asking questions. I suspected she hadn’t really liked my answers all that much. We both gazed down at Venus. The planet looked marginally closer now.

The more I thought about it, the more I doubted we would penetrate the secrets of these alien marvels within my lifetime. We simply didn’t have the prerequisite science to do so. But I was determined to learn whatever I could. The American Plains Indians had figured out how to ride horses and shoot rifles, even if they couldn’t build a factory to make their own guns. We would do the same.

I tried not to think about how the story had ended for the Indians.

— 27-

We found something on the far side of Venus. I didn’t see it directly, not at first. But the Socorro knew it was there. A coppery-red contact appeared on the forward wall. I’d instructed the ship to show anything she detected out to maximum range.

“It’s on the planet surface,” said Sandra,

She sat strapped into her jumpseat. I was strapped into my pilot’s chair. I’d decided it was best we were in our seats from here on out. We were only about an hour from reaching Venus. We would go into orbit soon. If we had to make any sudden maneuvers, I didn’t want to be bounced off the walls of the ship.

I eyed the thing on the forward wall. Venus was a gray disk, about the size of a man’s hat now. Superimposed upon it was the coppery-red contact. It hadn’t been there a minute earlier. I couldn’t tell if it was behind Venus, orbiting Venus, or deep inside it. Our metallic-relief observation system was far from perfect. Optically, using the newly installed cameras and my high-def flatscreen, I couldn’t see it at all.