“Morning,” I said, trying to sound blase.
Ling, wearing a blue and gray jumpsuit, smiled broadly. “Good morning.”
We moved into the center of the room, and hugged, friends delighted to have shared an adventure together. Then we immediately headed out toward the bridge, half-walking, half-floating, in the reduced gravity.
“Howd you sleep?” asked Ling.
It wasnt a frivolous question. Prior to our mission, the longest anyone had spent in cryofreeze was five years, on a voyage to Saturn; the Pioneer Spirit was Earths first starship.
“Fine,” I said. “You?”
“Okay,” replied Ling. But then she stopped moving, and briefly touched my forearm. “Did you — did you dream?”
Brain activity slowed to a virtual halt in cryofreeze, but several members of the crew of Cronus — the Saturn mission — had claimed to have had brief dreams, lasting perhaps two or three subjective minutes, spread over five years. Over the span that the Pioneer Spirit had been traveling, there would have been time for many hours of dreaming.
I shook my head. “No. What about you?”
Ling nodded. “Yes. I dreamt about the strait of Gibraltar. Ever been there?”
“No.”
“Its Spains southernmost boundary, of course. You can see across the strait from Europe to northern Africa, and there were Neandertal settlements on the Spanish side.” Lings Ph.D. was in anthropology.
“But they never made it across the strait. They could clearly see that there was more land — another continent! — only thirteen kilometers away. A strong swimmer can make it, and with any sort of raft or boat, it was eminently doable. But Neandertals never journeyed to the other side; as far as we can tell, they never even tried.”
“And you dreamt—?”
“I dreamt I was part of a Neandertal community there, a teenage girl, I guess. And I was trying to convince the others that we should go across the strait, go see the new land. But I couldnt; they werent interested. There was plenty of food and shelter where we were. Finally, I headed out on my own, trying to swim it. The water was cold and the waves were high, and half the time I couldnt get any air to breathe, but I swam and I swam, and then…”
“Yes?”
She shrugged a little. “And then I woke up.”
I smiled at her. “Well, this time were going to make it. Were going to make it for sure.”
We came to the bridge door, which opened automatically to admit us, although it squeaked something fierce while doing so; its lubricants must have dried up over the last twelve centuries. The room was rectangular with a double row of angled consoles facing a large screen, which currently was off.
“Distance to Soror?” I asked into the air.
The computers voice replied. “1.2 million kilometers.”
I nodded. About three times the distance between Earth and its moon. “Screen on, view ahead.”
“Overrides are in place,” said the computer.
Ling smiled at me. “Youre jumping the gun, partner.”
I was embarrassed. The Pioneer Spirit was decelerating toward Soror; the ships fusion exhaust was facing in the direction of travel. The optical scanners would be burned out by the glare if their shutters were opened. “Computer, turn off the fusion motors.”
“Powering down,” said the artificial voice.
“Visual as soon as youre able,” I said.
The gravity bled away as the ships engines stopped firing. Ling held on to one of the handles attached to the top of the console nearest her; I was still a little groggy from the suspended animation, and just floated freely in the room. After about two minutes, the screen came on. Tau Ceti was in the exact center, a baseball-sized yellow disk. And the four planets were clearly visible, ranging from pea-sized to as big as grape.
“Magnify on Soror,” I said.
One of the peas became a billiard ball, although Tau Ceti grew hardly at all.
“More,” said Ling.
The planet grew to softball size. It was showing as a wide crescent, perhaps a third of the disk illuminated from this angle. And — thankfully, fantastically — Soror was everything wed dreamed it would be: a giant polished marble, with swirls of white cloud, and a vast, blue ocean, and—
Part of a continent was visible, emerging out of the darkness. And it was green, apparently covered with vegetation.
We hugged again, squeezing each other tightly. No one had been sure when wed left Earth; Soror could have been barren. The Pioneer Spirit was ready regardless: in its cargo holds was everything we needed to survive even on an airless world. But wed hoped and prayed that Soror would be, well — just like this: a true sister, another Earth, another home.
“Its beautiful, isnt it?” said Ling.
I felt my eyes tearing. It was beautiful, breathtaking, stunning. The vast ocean, the cottony clouds, the verdant land, and—
“Oh, my God,” I said, softly. “Oh, my God.”
“What?” said Ling.
“Dont you see?” I asked. “Look!”
Ling narrowed her eyes and moved closer to the screen. “What?”
“On the dark side,” I said.
She looked again. “Oh…” she said. There were faint lights sprinkled across the darkness; hard to see, but definitely there. “Could it be volcanism?” asked Ling. Maybe Soror wasnt so perfect after all.
“Computer,” I said, “spectral analysis of the light sources on the planets dark side.”
“Predominantly incandescent lighting, color temperature 5600 kelvin.”
I exhaled and looked at Ling. They werent volcanoes. They were cities.
Soror, the world wed spent twelve centuries traveling to, the world wed intended to colonize, the world that had been dead silent when examined by radio telescopes, was already inhabited.
The Pioneer Spirit was a colonization ship; it wasnt intended as a diplomatic vessel. When it had left Earth, it had seemed important to get at least some humans off the mother world. Two small-scale nuclear wars — Nuke I and Nuke II, as the media had dubbed them — had already been fought, one in southern Asia, the other in South America. It appeared to be only a matter of time before Nuke III, and that one might be the big one.
SETI had detected nothing from Tau Ceti, at least not by 2051. But Earth itself had only been broadcasting for a century and a half at that point; Tau Ceti might have had a thriving civilization then that hadnt yet started using radio. But now it was twelve hundred years later. Who knew how advanced the Tau Cetians might be?