– Pandora’s Cornucopia
37.
Peng Xiang Bin really wanted to follow up on one comment that had been made by the alien entity within the worldstone. When shown images of the other interstellar messenger egg-the Havana Artifact being studied in America-Courier of Caution had made clear its disdain and hatred, calling the beings who dwelled inside that vessel liars.
Despite all the remaining translation problems, that word came through vividly and clear. It was intriguing and more than a bit chilling. Clearly Paul and Anna and the professor wanted to learn more about that, as well. But Dr. Nguyen insisted on sticking to their list of scheduled questions.
So, Bin concentrated on drawing another set of ancient characters. When a completed line of figures floated across the surface of the egg-shaped thing, he also spoke the question aloud.
“How did you arrive on Earth?”
The reply came in two parts. While Courier of Caution painted ideograms and uttered antiquated words, an image took shape nearby, starting as night’s own darkness. Anna Arroyo quickly arranged for an expanded version of the picture to billow outward from their biggest 3-D display, revealing a black space vista, dusted with stars.
In arch tones that seemed beautifully and appropriately old-fashioned, Professor Yang Shenxiu translated the ancient ideograms, aloud.
“Pellets, hurled from the homefire,
Thrown by godlike arms of light,
Cast to drift for time immeasurable,
Through emptiness unimaginable…”
One star, amid a powdery myriad, seemed to pulsate, aiming narrow, sharp twinkles outward…
“Capture those constellation images!” Dr. Nguyen commanded, with no time for courtesy.
“I’m on it!” Menelaua snapped. His fingers left the animatronic crucifix hanging from his neck and waggled in the air with desperate speed, while the islander grunted and hopped in his seat.
Bin stared as several of the winking rays seemed to propel tiny dots in front of them. One of these zoomed straight toward his point of view, growing into a wide, reflective surface that loomed at those watching.
“Photon sail!” Anna diagnosed. “A variant on the Nakamura design. Driven onward by a laser, at point of origin.”
Bin grunted, amazed by her quickness-and that he actually grasped some of her meaning! The space windjammer hurtled past his viewpoint, which swiveled around to give chase-and he briefly glimpsed a tiny, smooth shape dragged behind the giant sail, brilliantly radiant in the home star’s propelling beam…
… which finally shut down, perhaps after many years, leaving just a natural glow from the original sun, a glitter that diminished as separation increased and decades passed in seconds. With no laser light to catch anymore, the diaphanous sail contracted, folding and collapsing into a small container at one end of a little egg, whose former brightness now faded, till it could only be made out as a seed-shaped ripple, starlit, hurtling at speeds Bin couldn’t begin to contemplate.
“Neat trick with the sail,” Paul commented. “Tuck it away, when it’s not needed for propulsion or energy collection, so it won’t snag interstellar particles. With bi-memory materials, it could expand or contract with very little effort. I bet they use it later to slow down.”
Bin now grasped how the worldstone must have come across the incredible gulf between stars-a method sure to provoke feelings of kinship from this colony of wealthy yachting enthusiasts. At the same time, he wondered, What would ancient peoples, in China or India, have made of these images?
They would have thought in terms of gods and monsters.
How easy it would be, to chuckle over such naïveté. But, in fact, could anyone guarantee that modern humanity was advanced enough to understand, even now? In ways that mattered most?
Meanwhile, Scholar Yang’s narration continued.
“Slow time passed while the galaxy turned,
A new star loomed-its light, a cushion.”
The pellet turned around and redeployed its sail, which now took a gentler, braking push from a brightening light source ahead. Our sun, Bin realized. It had to be.
“Knew it!” the islander exulted. “Of course there’s no laser at this end. So sunshine alone won’t be enough.”
As the star ahead grew from a pinpoint into a tiny, visible disc, a new object abruptly loomed in front of the worldstone-a great, banded sphere, replete with tier after tier of whirling, multicolored storms.
“Chosen beforehand-a giant ball waited,
Ready to catch… pull… assist…”
Yang Shenxiu’s translation stumbled as, even with computer aissistance, he could only offer guesses. Well, after all, Courier had a limited useful human vocabulary. Ancient Indus and Chinese people knew very little about astronomy, planetary navigation and all that.
Just like me, Bin thought as the striped, cloudy ball approached rapidly.
“A gravity swing past Jupiter,” Anna murmured in apparent admiration. “Like threading a microscopic needle across centuries and light-years. They had to time it perfectly.”
The mighty gas planet swerved by, unnervingly fast, and the pellet, its sail billowed open, then plunged past the sun in a hairpin swerve before veering into black space. Far… far… until it paused at the end of a towering arc… then plummeted inward again, approaching the star from a different angle, filling the sail once more with torrents of light.
Paul interjected. “But it would still have loads of excess velocity. This needle must have been threaded many times, offering multiple swings past other planets, as well as Jupiter and the sun, again and again.”
His appraisal was borne out, as the broiling solar sphere darted by, making Bin’s eyes water. Just after nearest passage, the sail furled back into its container… and soon a smaller ball swung past, so close that Bin felt as if he were passing through the topmost of its churning, yellow clouds, while a brief, glowing aura surrounded the image.
“Atmospheric braking through the atmosphere of Venus. Dang! They’d need orbital figures down to ten decimals, in order to plan this from so far away, so long in advance.”
Then, another sudden veer and gyre past Jupiter…
“Yes, though it could make small, real-time adjustments, between encounters, by tacking with the sail,” Anna replied. “Still they wouldn’t arrange it in such detail without a destination in mind.” She made her own rapid finger movements. “They had to know about Earth already. From instruments, like our LifeSeeker Telescope… only far more advanced. They’d know it had an oxygen atmosphere, life, nonequilibrium methane, possibly chlorophyll. Even so-”
Without shifting his transfixed gaze, Bin had to shake his head. There was no way that ancient peoples could have made anything of this, even if Courier showed them all the same images and told them about these worlds, named after their gods-or the other way around. Bin’s head seemed to spin, nauseated, as the whirling, planetary dance went through several further encounters-more dizzying, gut-wrenching pirouettes-until the sense of pell-mell speed finally diminished. The pace grew sedate-if no less urgent. Then another dot approached, slowly, gracefully. Bin guessed which planet from its greenish-blue glitter.
“It must have intended to fine-tune its approach to Earth,” Paul commented, “by gradually tacking on sunlight till entering a high, safe orbit, perhaps at a Lagrange point. Then it would spend some time-centuries-evaluating the situation. Maybe use the sail as a telescope mirror, to gather light and make detailed observations from a secure distance. Then wait.”