muttered to himself, “Oh my, yes.” Vintner nodded and, surprisingly, so did Crow.
Santeros glanced around the room, settled her gaze on her science adviser, and asked, “Jacob, what’s making all of you twitch?”
“Ma’am, what I said earlier about how big this thing was and how fast it could go . . . If it ran into something, it would pack a monstrous wallop. You remember about that asteroid that hit the earth sixty-five million years ago, down by the Yucatàn, and wiped out all the dinosaurs? If that starship were to hit us at the speed we know it’s capable of, intentionally or accidentally, it would be like that. Worse than that.”
Santeros’s eyebrows went up: “You’re serious. That thing could wipe out all life on Earth? Just by running into us?”
“Well, no, it probably wouldn’t wipe out all life on Earth. Just the majority of all living organisms, and about 99.9 percent of all individual land animals. Most land species would go entirely extinct. We might be one of them. The best we could hope for is that we’d only be bombed back into the Bronze Age. That’s all assuming that the mass is what we think it is. If the mass is radically different—if it turns out to be a big hollow shell—then the impact would be much different. But we don’t think it’s a big hollow shell.”
“We couldn’t deflect it or blow it up?”
“We might be able to figure something out if we had a lot of time . . . but we probably wouldn’t have a lot of time, if it was aimed at us deliberately. We can barely see this thing at Saturn. If we got lucky enough to detect it right at that range . . . and that would be saying something . . . we’d have a little less than four days to figure out what it was doing, and to get ready for it. That’s if it never went faster than what we’ve seen. Butwe don’t really know how fast it can go—we’ve only seen it decelerating. So, if it could go, say, four percent of c, we’d only have a day to get ready. If it can reach twenty percent of c, we’d only have a few hours.”
They all thought about that for a moment, then Santeros said, “So, to sum up, the simple existence of a starship constitutes an essentially unstoppable threat to human survival. We don’t know how real or how likely that threat is. Is that correct?”
Everybody nodded.
“We need to find out,” she said.
White, the chairwoman, interjected, “Let’s not forget for a moment that whoever these aliens are, they’ve got some tech that we don’t.”
Lossness, the head of DARPA, said, “We don’t have it, but we can see it from here. A hundred years out, we could build that ship if we had the funding.”
Emery said, “That’s fine, Gene, but we don’t have it now, and that’s the trouble.” He turned to the President. “The problem isn’t with the aliens. The big problem is, if the Chinese get there first, they may wind up in possession of hard technology that’s a hundred years ahead of ours. In terms of soft tech, biology, chemistry, who knows? They could be a thousand years ahead or ten thousand years. That would not be good. You get advanced-enough technology, and there’s always a way to turn that to a strategic advantage. Always. Imagine the situation if the Chinese had our current computers, and we were stuck with a bunch of old Microsoft Inquirers.”
Santeros: “So now we’ve got two reasons to get out there. To get our hands on next century’s technology before the Chinese do, and to find out if the aliens plan to ram us.” She turned to Vintner, her science adviser: “Is that even possible, Jacob? For us to get out there?”
“I’ve been talking to Janetta Jojohowitz, and Gene’s been talking to his people. They’ve pulled in their smartest guys, made it entirely clear this is at the absolute highest level of classification, fed them a cock-and-bull story about wanting to one-up China’s Mars mission, and then asked them if they had any ideas for
Santeros glanced around the room, settled her gaze on her science adviser, and asked, “Jacob, what’s making all of you twitch?”
“Ma’am, what I said earlier about how big this thing was and how fast it could go . . . If it ran into something, it would pack a monstrous wallop. You remember about that asteroid that hit the earth sixty-five million years ago, down by the Yucatàn, and wiped out all the dinosaurs? If that starship were to hit us at the speed we know it’s capable of, intentionally or accidentally, it would be like that. Worse than that.”
Santeros’s eyebrows went up: “You’re serious. That thing could wipe out all life on Earth? Just by running into us?”
“Well, no, it probably wouldn’t wipe out all life on Earth. Just the majority of all living organisms, and about 99.9 percent of all individual land animals. Most land species would go entirely extinct. We might be one of them. The best we could hope for is that we’d only be bombed back into the Bronze Age. That’s all assuming that the mass is what we think it is. If the mass is radically different—if it turns out to be a big hollow shell—then the impact would be much different. But we don’t think it’s a big hollow shell.”
“We couldn’t deflect it or blow it up?”
“We might be able to figure something out if we had a lot of time . . . but we probably wouldn’t have a lot of time, if it was aimed at us deliberately. We can barely see this thing at Saturn. If we got lucky enough to detect it right at that range . . . and that would be saying something . . . we’d have a little less than four days to figure out what it was doing, and to get ready for it. That’s if it never went faster than what we’ve seen. Butwe don’t really know how fast it can go—we’ve only seen it decelerating. So, if it could go, say, four percent of c, we’d only have a day to get ready. If it can reach twenty percent of c, we’d only have a few hours.”
They all thought about that for a moment, then Santeros said, “So, to sum up, the simple existence of a starship constitutes an essentially unstoppable threat to human survival. We don’t know how real or how likely that threat is. Is that correct?”
Everybody nodded.
“We need to find out,” she said.
White, the chairwoman, interjected, “Let’s not forget for a moment that whoever these aliens are, they’ve got some tech that we don’t.”
Lossness, the head of DARPA, said, “We don’t have it, but we can see it from here. A hundred years out, we could build that ship if we had the funding.”
Emery said, “That’s fine, Gene, but we don’t have it now, and that’s the trouble.” He turned to the President. “The problem isn’t with the aliens. The big problem is, if the Chinese get there first, they may wind up in possession of hard technology that’s a hundred years ahead of ours. In terms of soft tech, biology, chemistry, who knows? They could be a thousand years ahead or ten thousand years. That would not be good. You get advanced-enough technology, and there’s always a way to turn that to a strategic advantage. Always. Imagine the situation if the Chinese had our current computers, and we were stuck with a bunch of old Microsoft Inquirers.”
Santeros: “So now we’ve got two reasons to get out there. To get our hands on next century’s technology before the Chinese do, and to find out if the aliens plan to ram us.” She turned to Vintner, her science adviser: “Is that even possible, Jacob? For us to get out there?”
“I’ve been talking to Janetta Jojohowitz, and Gene’s been talking to his people. They’ve pulled in their smartest guys, made it entirely clear this is at the absolute highest level of classification, fed them a cock-and-bull story about wanting to one-up China’s Mars mission, and then asked them if they had any ideas for
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