At least no human could have done it.
“The signals and the gravity waves are artificial, Sondra. Which means Earth didn’t just disappear,” he said. “Somebody took it.”
“We know that it’s still sending pulses of gravity waves, and that radio signal.” Tyrone Vespasian sat in his office, behind his desk, willing himself to calmness. He knew there was something overcontrolled about his movements, as if he were trying to hold too much in. Was he trying too hard to be rational, logical, to be sensible when sense was useless? “The signal proves it. That’s a deliberate message signal, not some natural radio noise. Even if we can’t read it.”
“And where is that signal coming from?” Lucian asked gently.
Vespasian shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “From here. From somewhere on the Moon. It’s almost as if it’s coming from everywhere at once, out of a whole series of dispersed transmitters. We can’t find it.”
“Don’t you think that might give us a few problems?” Lucian asked. “Earth vanished two-point-six seconds after the beam touched it—the exact time for a speed-of-light signal to go back and forth between the Earth and Moon. If they decide to blame us, Mars and the Belt Community might decide to do something drastic.”
Vespasian nodded, leaned in toward Lucian and lowered his voice. “I’ve thought of that, too. Remember the proposal about ten years ago to blow up Mercury to get at its core metals? They wanted to create a second asteroid belt close enough in to the Sun so they could really get some use out of Solar power. Officially, the Community never got around to building the Core Cracker bomb—but suppose they did, unofficially? The Moon’s about the same size as Mercury, with a lower mass. The Belt Community might figure it’s them or us.”
“But we didn’t do it!” Lucian protested.
“I checked, and as of five minutes ago, no less than six groups have claimed credit for the quakes, Earth’s vanishment, or both. Three on the Moon, two on board the surviving habitats, and one on Mars. Rad groups, nut groups, and most of them barely know which end of a screwdriver to hold. None of them could possibly have pulled this off. All they’re doing is blowing off steam, trying to upset the applecart and fit the disaster into their ideology. The Final Clan Habitat survived, and I read some guff from those nuts. Claiming they had swept away Earth, the source of all genetic decadence and lower races. Now they’re free to breed their superhumans without interference. No one has taken any of these groups seriously in decades. They always claim responsibility for disasters. But suppose someone is rattled enough to believe them now— and we get caught in the line of fire?” Vespasian said.
“Thanks to that damn fool McGillicutty sending a public message from Venus, everyone—including the nut groups—knows all about the twenty-one-centimeter radio signal, the speed-of-light delay, and the gravity waves. They can talk those things up, sound impressive, like they really did it. But none of them can know about the black hole yet—unless they did do it.”
“So if we keep our mouths shut about it, that might be a way to spot the real culprits,” Vespasian said.
“Or at least prove none of our local crazies did it,” Lucian said.
“Then who did do it?” Vespasian demanded.
Lucian frowned. “Jesus, Vespy. You’re talking about the most horrible crime in history. I can’t imagine anyone being able to do it. Not emotionally, or mentally. I can’t imagine a reason good enough for doing it.” Lucian paused a moment. “Those scientists on Pluto fired the gravity beam. But if they meant to wreck Earth, then why announce the experiment beforehand? Most of them are from Earth, and Earth funded their work. Besides, the beam touched Venus and those outer planet satellites—and the Moon for that matter—and we’re still here. Which suggests the beam was a coincidence, or set off someone else’s hidden system, or that the real baddies timed the thing to look like Pluto did it. Pluto had no motive.
“If anyone had a good enough motive—and I don’t think anyone does—it could be Mars and the Belt Community. They’ve got a lot of weird hardware floating around out there in deep space. Stuff nobody knows about. With Earth out of the way, Mars and the B.C. are suddenly dominant in the Solar System. And they get to blame the disaster on us—or on a bunch of mad scientists on Pluto.”
“But Earth is their biggest market!” Vespasian protested. “Everyone on Mars and in the Belt has some kind of family Earthside! And dammit, they’re human beings. No human being could commit this crime.”
“Which leaves open one other possibility,” Lucian said.
“Oh no. No you don’t.” Vespasian stood up suddenly and began pacing back and forth behind his desk. “Come on, Lucian. Don’t throw aliens from outer space at me. There’s nothing out there. By now we’d have found something.” There was something in Vespasian’s soul that felt chilled by the very thought.
Lucian ignored his friend’s discomfiture. He rubbed his face with tired hands. He felt drained, all capacity for emotion sucked out of him. “Either humans or aliens, Vespy. Take your choice. Either people who couldn’t possibly do it, or beings from another world who don’t exist. Bug-eyed aliens, insane human terrorists, Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny gone bad. Somebody did it. And we’re not going to find out who’s guilty sitting here. Just don’t send a public message about the Earthpoint black hole,” Lucian said. “It could only make matters worse, scare people more. Send coded messages to the scientific groups. Let them work on it.”
Vespasian grunted. “Okay, I guess.” He shook his head and looked at the wall clock. “Jesus, those poor bastards on Pluto.”
“What do you mean?” Lucian asked.
“I mean the frigging speed of light. Think about it. Earth went poof ten hours ago. They sent the gravity wave five hours before it reached its target, went to bed, got up, and didn’t find out what they had done until then, five and a half hours after we saw it happen. We’re sending the word about the black hole now. They won’t find out about that until late tonight. It’s like it’s all happening to them in a dream on the other side of the Universe.”
Vespasian stared into space. “Terrible things happen, things you cause accidentally. You don’t learn the consequences of what you’ve done for eleven hours after it happens, and you can’t stop the terror once you’ve set it in motion. If you were the poor son of a bitch who had pushed the button in the first place, how many shocks like that could you take?”
The day the Tycho Purple Penal Fire Department burned down her parent’s house Marcia felt the purest joy of her life. The memory popped into her mind unbidden, and at first she wondered why. Then she understood. Her subconscious was reminding her how much she had already survived.
Remember, Marcia told herself. Remember the turmoil, the chaos you have survived to get here. You can survive this, too. Remember the strange and terrible way you escaped, and the joy you felt that day.
The moment came back to her. The black pall of smoke hazing over the dome’s interior, the gray ashes sifting downward, the firemen laughing and chuckling, putting away their blowtorches. And Marcia watching it all, tears of happiness in her eyes.