Earth as an Example

Chapter 3

Jesse Allen

Copyright (c) 1991

Maxel space station was one of the products of the war. Though small by Federal standards, the city in the sky regularly housed ten thousand. Unlike its cousins orbiting inhabited planets, Maxel circled no primary. It merely hung in space, the nearest star over three parsecs away. With no populous planets nearby, it was not a commercial stopover. No profit-minded interest had ever been shown in the station. But the war had demanded that there be piers where ships could rest without the normal long haul on ion drive necessary near stars. Once a short distance away, ships departing Maxel simply kicked straight into hyperdrive. A day out of port, they could be a full parsec away, fully ten thousand times the distance covered in the same time on ion drive. Without the lengthy climb out of a stellar gravitational well, and clear of the denser interplanetary medium, ships trimmed days, even weeks, off their voyage time.

The Nikaljuk was docked at one of the outermost service corridors, a long flexible tube extending out to the one exit hatch in use. The freighter looked out of place among the sleek war ships of the Federal Navy, their shining steel hulls bristling with the weapons of their trade. Dr. Drucker and Captain Huston looked out on the scene from a large window overlooking the quay. Behind them, a number of officers milled about, two concentrating on a game board projected on the table in front of them.

Suddenly, the stars dimmed as the window darkened. A few kilometres out from the station, a ship cut in its hyperdrive, the bright light of its engine thrust drowning out everything in its dazzling brilliance. But the window had adjusted its filtering appropriately: The bright exhaust tubes could be watched without blinking. The ship pulled away, rapidly picking up speed as it dwindled away into the distance. As it streaked off into the night sky, the stars gradually reappeared as the window returned to its usual transparency.

"John Huston!" called out one of the game players, suddenly looking up from the holographic playing cube in front of him. "What an unexpected pleasure! What brings you to this corner of the Union?"

Captain Huston and Dr. Drucker turned from the window to face the speaker. He was a tall, thin man in his middle thirties with short blonde hair, dressed in the dark, close fitting uniform of a navy officer.

"Byron Parry!" exclaimed Captain Huston, moving over to shake hands with the player. "Good to see you again. Dr. Drucker, this is Byron Parry from the Brach Y Pwull, a friend of mine from academy days. Byron, Dr. Drucker, chief archaeologist of Museum."

Captain Huston looked at Byron's neckline for a moment, noting the four silver clusters on the neckline.

"Not a Captain any more? Congratulations!" he remarked.

"Thanks," replied Byron. "I got the promotion to Commander three months ago. And these days, I'm on the Rodina. Dr. Drucker, glad to meet you. I recall your name from the ruckus back when the historians were stirring up Parliament to fund Museum."

"My involvement with those affairs was slight," replied Dr. Drucker modestly. "Politics is not my field, though I do think Parliament did make the right decision in the end."

"Indeed," said Byron. "I've been meaning to visit the place for some time. My kids have been twice already with school and have come home screaming with pleasure and running circles around me in History both times. How about you, John? What have you been up to?"

"I'm still a mere captain," replied John, "but I have managed to get off the escort roster. I'm working on the Nikaljuk, a light freighter, assisting Dr. Drucker and his team on a research project. A strange occupation for a Navy captain in the middle of a war, but orders are orders."

"Since you're not going to introduce me," said the player across the board, "it IS your turn." She spoke with a thick accent that Captain Huston did not recognize, swallowing all her vowels.

"John, Dr. Drucker, this is Siabohn O`Neil," Byron said, "Captain of the Brach Y Pwull. She was my second."

"Five years on the Brach Y Pwull," said Siabohn, "and he STILL can't pronounce it properly. At least with me in command, the crew has a captain who can talk properly."

"Perhaps if you Orionians spoke using the same vowels as the rest of the galaxy," retorted Byron merrily, "you wouldn't have such troubles." Then he waved his hand at the game board. "What do you think of this, John?"

Captain Huston knelt down to look at the board carefully, examining the formation of red and black pieces strewn throughout the cube's volume.

"It looks like you've been out matched, but there are some possibilities here," said John after a few moments.

"You're in trouble," Dr. Drucker warned Captain O`Neil, "if you let John join the fray. They used to call him `the Dark Master' for the way he plays this game."

At that, Huston suddenly looked up at Dr. Drucker who was now examining the playing board from O`Neil's side of the cube.

"Who told you that?" he asked.

"Admiral Perry," replied Dr. Drucker nonchalantly. "Did you honestly think I challenged you blindly?"

"After those first two games," replied Captain Huston, "yes. You knew the whole time? Did you just let me win those two?"

"I wish I could say yes," replied Dr. Drucker sheepishly, "but I'm afraid that, even forewarned, your style managed to take me by surprise. But you've lost that edge now."

`Indeed I have,' thought Huston. `This last game has been dragging on for a week now. He just started massacring my pieces all of a sudden. I've struck back and devastated him too, but neither of us is winning, more than a hundred moves since the last capture.'

"By the way," started Huston, "what's all the excitement about? We've seen four ships kick off in the last hour." Right on cue, the window darkened again as another ship cut its hyperdrive in.

"How long have you been here?" asked Parry.

"Just a couple of hours," answered Huston. "What have I been missing?"

"You missed it, all right," said O`Neil.

"The Haiphong, mate," added Parry. "Admiral Nguyen himself was here not a week ago, then suddenly scrambled out of here yesterday afternoon. Apparently the Kalganians have started a new offensive. They razed a few planets only a dozen parsecs from here. Clobbered the orbital stations, bombarded the ground-space facilities, then left a few snipers to harass anyone who came to aid the locals too soon."

"And they sent the Haiphong? Kind of overkill, isn't it?"

"It seems there was some high level concern. A bunch of civilians were headed for one of the nearby systems that lost contact a few days ago. The Secretary-General had some personal interest in the passengers and wanted the Navy to intercept them before they tried to make planet fall. But that was only the first stop: Haiphong is heading for Sagittarius to handle the new troubles there."

Captain Huston and Dr. Drucker exchanged a shocked look.

"This ship..." asked Dr. Drucker. "It wouldn't happen to have been headed for Janella, by chance?"

Commander Parry's head snapped up from the game cube.

"That's classified information!" he said sternly. "How did you get a hold of it?"

"Good grief!" exclaimed Captain Huston. "That was us! We got jumped by a raider at Janella three days ago and barely got out alive. We were about to survey the area and see what was going on when we got ordered to get here full blast. But the Secretary-General? All I'm doing is shuttling around some prehistory specialists!"

"It seem you've become a VIP," said Commander Parry with respect.

"You said Nguyen was taking the Haiphong to Sagittarius," said Dr. Drucker. "What's happening?"

"Hmm," rumbled Commander Parry hesitating. "Well, I doubt the censors will quash this. The razing rampage has only been a small part of a general renewed offensive by the Empire. Sagittarius has born the brunt of it. They've been dropping nova bombs into every star with a ship yard nearby without much regard to inhabited planets."

"Nova bomb?" asked Dr. Drucker, his face turning white. "What's that?"

"It's a device dropped into a star. It penetrates deep into the stellar core, then explodes. The detonation, when placed correctly, disrupts the balance of the fusion reactions that power the star.

"Of course, stirring up something which has a mass of 10$^{30}$ kilograms is quite a task, so the change is quite short lived and doesn't disrupt the entire star. But it's enough --- for at least a few hours, the bomb wreaks total chaos. The high energy particle flux from the star jumps by several orders of magnitude, well beyond the maximum tolerance of even the best shipboard shielding. Anything caught in space within a milliparsec is cooked through and through. Space stations too: Even they can't withstand that kind of blast. If they're on the far side of a planet when it starts, the planet will shield them... until their orbit takes them over to dayside. And most stations are in low orbits with periods around a hundred minutes, far too short to save them."

"And the planet?" asked Dr. Drucker with concern.

"Dayside, they'll all get baked... and they're the lucky ones. The particles turn the atmosphere into a hodgepodge of radioactive isotopes. A lot of air is simply ionized and then neutralizes itself violently. But the altered isotopes... Anyone who survives the initial blast will die from radiation sickness. Nightsiders can be evacuated, but their ships have to remain in the planet's shadow until the particle storm is over, which involves defying about a half dozen laws of orbital mechanics. Not that it can't be done, but that can save only a few thousand at best. For everyone else, there's simply nothing that can be done. They'll die. All of them."

"But rescue missions? Surely they can treat the sick?" said Dr. Drucker pathetically.

"This is radiation sickness, not a fever," replied Byron. "Once you get it, the best anyone can do is make you comfortable. And how do you rescue a hundred million people? Half of them won't live long enough for a rescue mission to even make it there. For very mild cases, the tissue damage can be undone or removed, but past that exposure level, there's nothing that can be done. A few very lucky people who hid in shelters might escape enough of the radiation and altered atmosphere to have treatable exposure levels. But again, that's going to be thousands at the most."

"So no one can live through a nova bomb?" said Dr. Drucker quietly.

"That's about the size of it," replied Byron.

Dr. Drucker turned to Captain Huston.

"My family...they're on Hardin, near the center of the Sagittarius sector. And there's three ship construction yards there, two of them working for the Navy."

"Hardin?" said Siabohn comfortingly. "I've not heard of any action reaching that deep into the sector yet. You can check with the base commander: He can get you in touch with your family if it's possible and he'll know if the action is close. The Haiphong and its escort fleet is setting up blockades around inhabited planets. If Hardin hasn't been attacked yet, the fleet will be protecting it. And the Kalganians will find it hard to run through the Haiphong's screens. Nguyen's the sort you hate to have as an enemy."

But Dr. Drucker missed the last of her words. He was already out the door headed for the base commander's office.

Lieutenant Judith Swerth noticed she was chewing her nails and forced her hand out of her mouth. It was the fifth time she had caught herself gnawing at her fingers in the last ten minutes and the condition of her nails suggested she had done it many more times than that. It was a nervous habit of teenage years that returned under stress.

She had been in the command chair of the Wangratta for the past five hours and was due to change watch in another three. She was one of eight officers from the Chepachet, a federal cruiser assigned to monitor the Hardin star system. Although the entire sector was theoretically protected by blockade ships, the Navy was taking no risks and had assigned additional ships to protect individual star systems within the blockade volume. The Wangratta was a small scout ship specifically designed to monitor shipping traffic while remaining undetected herself. Her crew were all junior officers training for command positions --- they rotated turns at each of the pilot, monitor, engineer and command positions.

When the unexplained signal came in from the neutrino strips lining the Wangratta's hull, Swerth had been excited and pleased she had the command. It was the third such contact and thus was dubbed Gondor 3, the Navy parlance for a suspected, but unidentified enemy ship. The other two had occurred while she was off duty or at the navigator's console. While she was certainly involved, there had not been a chance to prove herself from the command chair. But now her enthusiasm had given way to worry and tension. Gondor 3 had initially appeared as a middle weight Kalganian raider nearby, approaching at a speed that would bring it close to the Wangratta in a matter of hours. The Wangratta would grapple with the raider, locking on tractor beams to anchor it in space. Her powerful engine plant could generate power enough to maintain her protective shields against the very worst barrage the raider could bring to bear. Meanwhile, the Chepachet would come into position and destroy the enemy ship.

But the encounter had not happened. Despite Gondor 3's velocity, clearly discernible from the Doppler shift in its energy pattern, it had not yet arrived. That implied it was at a greater distance and its neutrino signal came from a larger power plant than she had assumed. Each passing moment made the smallest size ship still explainable by the signal larger and larger. In another ten minutes, she would be sure beyond all doubt that the inbound ship was beyond the Wangratta's defensive shield capacity...and perhaps would even out gun the Chepachet. Yet how could something that large have escaped the outer guards?

There was a possible answer. The neutrino strips were very new and few ships were equipped with them. Neutrinos are highly penetrating particles generated in a host of nuclear reactions. The collapse of a supernova, the deep cauldron of a stellar core, and the power plants of starships all produced the tiny, massless particles in profusion. They were so penetrating that they could escape from the depths of a star and it was hopeless to even attempt to contain them in a fusion vessel. But just as they could pass through a reactor wall, they also passed through detectors without appreciable effect. Neutrino detectors were normally giant devices where a single detection implied the presence of trillions of non-detections.

The Wangratta's detectors, however, were subtly different. A modification of the detector material during its forging yielded a material which, when an appropriate energy field was applied, had a billion-fold greater cross-section to passing neutrinos. Detections remained marginal and little information could be eeked from what signal there were. But it made for a passive tracking system. A ship which shut down its own power plant could lie undetected and yet monitor all traffic within a considerable volume of space around it. And until a way was found to contain neutrinos, there was no countermeasure to thwart it.

What Lieutenant Swerth feared, however, was the countermeasures for the usual scanners which were quite feasible, such as might have been used to slip past the blockade. A ship with a large enough power plant could hold up just such a device, fooling a searching ship into seeing nothing. Those countermeasures, in turn, could be scrambled, but again, power limitations made it possible for only the largest starships to carry the scramblers. Could it be that a large Kalganian ship could have evaded the scrambling fields and with its stealth system, passed unnoticed by the outer guard ships?

But that was impossible! Almost all of the Sagittarius sector was surrounded by heavy ships set in positions such that their scrambling fields would have a 25% overlap. There would be no way to penetrate that shield undetected.

Yet there was definitely something approaching which should not have been and it must have escaped the attention of the outer guards.

"I have signal resolution," announced Lieutenant Helgth. "Gondor 3 is no longer a single point source."

`Good,' thought Swerth. `That mean's it's close enough for secondary power sources to be detected, making it quite close. Probably a heavier rated raider instead of the middle weight I had assumed. The Wangratta can still handle that.' Swerth's assumptions rested on knowing the volume of space the neutrino strips could comb, the flux and velocity of the approaching vessel, and its probable distance at the time of first contact. There was also the matter of the spectral signatures --- different class vessels gave off subtly different energy patterns and Gondor 3 had many of the spectral signatures of medium displacement raider. But recognizing neutrino signatures was a new and uncertain business and it was quite feasible for the raider to have been somewhat larger than the energy spread of its power plant initially appeared.

"Gondor 3 now appears as three contacts," continued Helgth. "Assessment shows central contact is a Kalganian cruiser with two accompanying heavy raiders. From an extreme distance, their combined signature appears like that of a medium raider."

`Bad,' thought Swerth, her sudden hopes dashed. `Very, very bad.'

"Notify the Chepachet," she commanded.

"There is some ambiguity in the identification of Gondor 3," explained Helgth from the signal processor. Then he swiveled in his chair.

"There could be even more ships," he said in a dead pan voice.

Siabohn and Byron sat across the table from each other starting down each other's pieces. John Huston sat beside Byron looking at the board, but with an unattentive eye. Occasionally, he would glance at the empty seats next to himself or at the chess pieces arrayed across the table just as they had been put there by himself and David Drucker a week ago. They had been halfway through setting up the board when the Navy reported the vapourization of the Chepachet and the subsequent bombardment of Hardin's primary. Dr. Drucker had left then and not returned. No one had seen him since, though everyone knew where he was.

John looked at the chess board one more time and had to fight back the instinct to rise and go to the archaeologist's quarters. But John had sat in the command chair long enough to know some griefs were meant to be private. When Dr. Drucker truly wanted to talk, he would come of his own accord.

"Long range scanners confirm the planet is inhabitable, Captain," announced Georgia. "It has a nearly circular orbit almost exactly in the middle of the life compatible range. Atmosphere analysis shows that the air is predominantly nitrogen with an approximate 20% oxygen content. Carbon dioxide levels are low and within biocompatible limits. This could be it, sir." She couldn't keep a hint of excitement out of her voice.

"It does sound good," replied Captain Huston, "and we can tell more from here than early settlers. Now we have to hope for something a little bad --- we're looking for an abandoned planet, so there has to be something to have driven the settlers away after they got here. Something subtle enough to have been missed in a preliminary analysis, but annoying enough to have convinced them to leave later."

"I'll keep looking," said Georgia, obviously pleased.

The Nikaljuk was slowly spirally in toward the second of the water/oxygen worlds circling G-type stars within the region the probe was supposed to have come from. The archaeologists that had been bound for Janella and Srosa had left them at Maxel. Instead of being flown to those destinations by the Nikaljuk as had been originally planned, they were going with the second wave of military convoys, the first having re-established order. Those who remained with the Nikaljuk began the search for the abandoned planets which might, in the ancient settler's ruins, give Dr. Drucker's team another of the missing clues to the elusive First World.

So far, the search has not gone well. The stellography mission to this part of the sector was ancient and outdated. The information was skimpier than it had seemed at first glance. Just a simple note of star mass, luminosity, and stellar class, plus the presence of planets and their orbital parameters. Few of the planets had been accurately classified, let alone examined in detail. The Nikaljuk's first stop at one of the F type stars had been typical: The planet reported in an acceptable orbit for life tolerable conditions had proven to be an airless ball with a distinctly elliptical orbit. At periastron, the planet was too close to its primary for livable temperatures while apastron grazed the outer limit. But it had been a long shot to start with since G, not F, type stars were the norm for habitable planets.

They were still optimistic when they arrived at their next stop, one of the two G type stars in the region which was known to have a planet in the right range of orbits. But that too had proven a disappointment. The stellographers classification of water/oxygen world had not been mistaken, but they had missed one vital detail. There was carbon dioxide in the atmosphere along with the normal gases, and it was present in poisonously high levels. The heavy concentration of the gas trapped infrared emission from the surface, bringing the planet's surface temperature up to hundreds of degrees. Colonists would have been desperate to try living in such a place, though with air conditioned homes and refrigerated greenhouses, they could have survived. But that chance seemed remote enough that Dr. Drucker had not hesitated to move on.

Their third destination, orbiting a F type star, was again a long shot. But they did not waste any time getting close to eliminate it as a possibility. Even as they entered the edges of the planetary system, scanners revealed the candidate planet's atmosphere was transparent to ultraviolet light. Even around a G type star, such a planet would be uninhabitable.

Enthusiasm was growing again as they approached their fourth destination. This, too, orbited a G type star and was known to have a planet within the tolerable orbital limits and classified water/oxygen by the surveyors. Long range scanners confirmed the presence of the usual radiation trapping zones from a magnetic field, the atmosphere was distinctly opaque to all but the longest ultraviolet wavelengths, and the traces of carbon dioxide were normal. Temperatures plummeted near the planet's poles, but were downright balmy across the equator. All in all, everything looked like an ideal planet for settlers to try their hand at. Certainly they must have at least approached this planet.

Soon, the Nikaljuk would go into a low polar orbit and make a detailed map of the planet's surface, assisted by a pair of automated probes that had been outfitted on the ship's hull at Museum. If they found anything that looked like it might have been an ancient landing site or settlement, the drones could make low flying passes for closer investigation. If it seemed warranted, the Nikaljuk could attempt to find a landing site and set down, though the energy involved in climbing back out of the planet's atmosphere and gravitation well was considerable.

`This is the most interesting project I've done since joining the Navy,' thought Captain Huston. `Even better than coming to grips with those Kalganian monsters...' and as he thought that, he gripped his command chair harder. `Monsters, all right. I will make them pay someday.' The enthusiasm that everyone else had shown for the exploration and particularly the prospect of this approaching planet had not been shared by Dr. Drucker. He had been very subdued since they left Maxel.

John thought about Hardin's destruction. That the Kalganian cruiser's crew were killed by the same blast that claimed Dr. Drucker's family and over five hundred million other lives seemed poor compensation. `We ought to drop a nova bomb into Kalgania's sun and see what they think of it then!}' But beneath his anger, Captain Huston realized that it had been tried and failed several times, and even that would not prove anything even if it did succeed. Destroying the imperial capital would no more halt the Kalganian Empire than if the Union lost Throne. Between the Kalgan sector and all its allies, the Imperium commanded thousands of worlds and destroying every inhabited planet in their power would take more nova bombs than there were in the Union's arsenal.

"I've completed the detailed spectral analysis, sir," announced Georgia. "The planet's primary is G2 with the normal metallic content and a mass of three times ten to the thirtieth kilograms. It is presently in an active period, with a number of flares and prominences, but nothing unusual for its class. Barring some unusual activity cycle that my instruments couldn't predict from these readings, this is a completely normal star for a habitable planet's primary."

"Can you assess the probability of unusual solar activity sufficient to make the planet unpleasant?" inquired Captain Huston.

"I can assess it," answer Georgia, "and it is bloody unlikely! This class is the best studied of all stars; after all, 95% of the galactic population lives within a stone's throw of G type stars. Chances are less than one in a million that solar activity from this star could make things more than mildly uncomfortable on the planet. I don't think we'll find anything to drive away colonists from the star. Whatever it was must have been from the planet itself."

"We'd better find something wrong with this place soon," said Captain Huston. "It would be quite a shock to find that no one in the last ten thousand years has bothered to notice a perfectly inhabitable planet in the middle of the oldest sector. How long `til we establish orbit?"

"Three hours, sir," answered Norman from the pilot's console. "It will take another half hour of maneuvering to get into the polar mapping orbit from our initial approach orbit."

"Release the drones as soon as we establish polar orbit," ordered Captain Huston.

"You BEAUTY!" exclaimed Georgia.

"Lieutenant, you are on the bridge," reprimanded Captain Huston.

"Sorry, Captain," apologized Georgia. "I think I've found what we're looking for."

"We've established a stable polar orbit," announced Norman. There was a twin pair of gentle thuds from the ship's rear. "Both drones released. They should drop to their cruising altitude in half an hour."

"Dr. Drucker to the bridge, please," said Captain Huston to the computer grill. "Lieutenant Smythe?"

"Radioactivity," she said proudly. "There's slight traces of radioactive isotopes spread over the planet. Nothing serious --- you'd get only a little less exposure on the surface from the planet's primary. It's unusual, though."

"Native radioactivity?" said Captain Huston. "I've never heard of it being significant enough to be mentioned in a general planetary assessment."

"As I said," replied Georgia, "it's unusual. Radioactivity comes from the heavier elements which normally would not be found on the surface of a planet. During formation, they tend to gravitate towards the inner core of the planet and deposits are very sparse nearer the surface.

"But that's not all that's unusual about this planet. There's that satellite we noted on the way in. It's four hundred thousand kilometres out, but it's almost a full percent of the planet's mass, much more than is common for terrestrial planets. Even from its distant orbit, the satellite exerts sufficient gravitation to alter the surface. We've observed tidal changes in the level of the oceans on the order of metres in places."

"And that would have been sufficient to disturb the differentiation of the planet during its formation and bring heavier elements to the surface?"

"It's just a piece of dead reckoning so far," confessed Georgia. "I got the readings and tried to come up with a hypothesis for it. The computer is running a simulation right now to see if my explanation holds water. But wherever those heavier elements came from, extrapolating the current levels backwards nine thousand years and this starts to become a decidedly uncomfortable place to make home. Not unmanageable, but enough to cause somewhat higher rates of degenerative diseases, birth defects, and a few other nasty side effects. Perhaps tolerable when the pickings were slim, but as soon as colonists found better places, they would have moved on."

"You called for me?" asked Dr. Drucker as he walked onto the bridge.

"Yes," said Captain Huston. "We've just released the surveying drones and established our mapping orbit."

"So this is definitely an inhabitable planet? I've been a little tired lately and have been snoozing instead of following the reports as they come in."

"Indeed it is, barring one detail. The crust is mildly radioactive. It's marginal now, but Lieutenant Smythe claims it would have been at irritating levels nine thousand years ago. The place is good enough to have attracted early colonists, but still unpleasant enough to send them on their way as soon as better prospects offered themselves."

"Radioactivity, you say," said Dr. Drucker.

"It is a little unusual," said Georgia. "I guessed it could have come from an enhanced quantity of heavy elements in the planetary crust."

"Unusual?" said Dr. Drucker, quickly becoming excited. "It's more than unusual! I've never heard of anything like it before! How did you arrive at your figures for the radioactivity levels? Do you have a detailed analysis of the elementary composition?"

"No," answered Georgia. "I couldn't identify the elements from our orbit. The atmosphere blurs the energy of the decay photons. So I made a surmise and threw it back through each of the four standard decay chains."

"Mind if I look at your calculations?" asked Dr. Drucker. "I work with radioactive dating techniques regularly and know a little bit about the subject. What are the end products of each of your extrapolated chains..." and the conversation continued, delving into technical language which Captain Huston could not fathom. But it was obvious that Dr. Drucker and Lieutenant Smythe would be untangling the question of the planet's geological history for some time.

`There's really nothing I can do with this,' thought Captain Huston looking at the chess board on the table in the middle of his room. `Neither of us, barring a mistake by the other, can win.' It had been thirty moves now since Dr. Drucker had tried to draw Captain Huston's rook and knight into an attack on the archaeologist's bishop which was closing in to hound the black king. But Captain Huston had seen through the subterfuge soon enough, noticing that Dr. Drucker's true aim was not the king, but to sneak his one remaining pawn through to be queened. `And if I had not seen that soon enough, the game would have been over in a matter of moves. I can hold his bishop and knight, but never quite threaten his king, just as he can threaten my pieces, but not take them without disastrous loss himself. What was the special name for this stage of the game? Stalemate? But I am not prepared to give up quite yet. Just one little slip...'

"Captain Huston, please report to the bridge," said Captain Suliman's voice from the comlink grill next to the door.

Captain Huston looked at the chess board one more time before striding out to the bridge. `Oh, dear,' he though as he saluted Captain Suliman. `Everyone is looking rather glum.'

"You got here promptly," said Captain Suliman. "I thought you would be sleeping. Otherwise I would have called you earlier."

"I was trying to thwart Dr. Drucker's chess strategies," replied Captain Huston. "Is there a problem?"

"I think Lieutenant Smythe and Dr. Drucker can explain better than I," said Captain Suliman.

Captain Huston turned to face the two. The rest of Captain Huston's bridge crew had left when relieved by Captain Suliman and his officers, but Georgia apparently had remained with the archaeologist, arguing over her calculations. Obviously, that had continued for several more hours.

"Captain," began Georgia, "this is not the abandoned planet we were hoping to find."

"So we head for the remaining F star? You realize we'll be flat out of luck if that planet wasn't settled. We don't have any clues where that probe came from if we can't find an abandoned settlement."

"There's no need to move on," she said. "This is First World."

`This is it?' thought Captain Huston with a sudden surge of excitement, one that died when we saw her expression. `There's nobody down there...and why is everyone looking so down? Something is missing here...'

"The drones found clusters of mineral deposits that were definitely not accidental," continued Georgia. "What their purpose might have been, we can only guess. Probably surface habitation. Ten thousand years of weathering would have destroyed their original form. But the chemical collections are definitely artificial. No natural force could have gathered materials together in that fashion. And there are thousands of these clusters, some of them hundreds of square kilometres in size. It would take millions of people hundreds of years to construct whatever those heaps once were.

"That's how we eliminated the possibility of this being an abandoned planet. If it was good enough to support a few hundred million, or even a few billion, why abandon it? And how could they evacuate that many? Even now, with the resources of the entire Federation, that would be quite a feat."

"So there were once a few million people living here...and they weren't evacuated and they aren't here now. So where are they?"

"If you extrapolate the current radiation levels," said Dr. Drucker, "back to the time of the probe's launch instead of just nine thousand years, the radiation is not only irritating, but lethal. Anyone caught on the surface at that time would die."

"I don't understand," said the thoroughly confused Captain Huston. "First, you say this is First World, then that the planet had a lethal crust. If you extrapolate the radioactivity back a few thousand years more, you'd have enough heat to melt the crust and that is patent nonsense! What gives?"

"The extrapolation combined with information from the drone probes shows that the radioactivity comes from a number of different elements. Principally barium and thorium, but there's quite a mishmash."

"Barium?" said Captain Huston. "The gravitational differentiation model predicted this?"

"No, Captain," said Lieutenant Smythe. "My suggestion proved to be just a shot in the dark. The simulation did not predict particularly unusual radioactivity levels. However, it did suggest the planet would have higher concentrations of heavy metals in the crust, including uranium in mineable deposits."

"And the balance of radioactive elements matches the end products of a widespread fissioning of uranium 238 near the time of the probe's launch," said Dr. Drucker quietly. "Perhaps thirty years later, though the date are somewhat imprecise."

"But U$^{238}$ is stable!" exclaimed Captain Huston. "I'm not a radio chemist, but even I know that!"

"Indeed it is," said Dr. Drucker, "and that's the most alarming part of all. For U$^{238}$ to fission, it must be exposed to an intense flux of fast neutrons. Judging from the evidence of glassified rock at a number of spots where concentrations of the elements are higher, I'd suggest a hydrogen fusion device was used to produce the neutrons in sufficient number to spark the chain reaction."

"But why?" said Captain Huston. "It doesn't make any sense. Why go around shattering perfectly stable uranium nuclei when all the end products are deadly?"

"Exactly," said Dr. Drucker. "They are deadly...and that is the point. Do you have any idea how much energy a few kilograms of U$^{238}$ gives off when it fissions?"

"A lot, but..."

"A lot?" snapped Dr. Drucker. "The ignition system alone could flatten a spaceport! The fission would double or even quadruple the power of such a device. Entire cities could be laid waste by one of those! A few hundred of them and an entire planet would die...and that's just what happened!"

"Oh, come off it," said Captain Huston light heartedly, trying to disarm the archaeologist's seriousness. "You can't build something like that without understanding what it would do if it was used like you just suggested. Sheer common sense would prevent them from using it...and therefore from even building it in the first place. You can't really believe that!"

"Really!" exploded Dr. Drucker. "A race committed genocide here, Captain! But those weapons are puny compared to those in deployment now. They used hundreds of them and it still would have taken years to kill their planet. Hardin was devastated in minutes from a single bomb! Where's the `sheer common sense' in that?" and with that, the chief archaeologist stomped off the bridge, leaving the entire crew thunderstruck.

Outside, the ruddy ball of Museum's sun was starting to peek over the horizon. The room was silent. Neither the Secretary-General nor Admiral Perry made a move to switch off the trimensional recorder.

"Do you understand now why I have called you here for this report?" asked the Procurator softly after the silence had lasted for several minutes.

"No, sir," replied John.

"It has been twenty years now since the border skirmish that started this war," began the Secretary-General, rising from her seat to stand at the window and watch the dawn. "Since my father sent the fleets to Kalgan all those years ago, over a hundred billion lives have been lost. Many of them soldiers, but mostly civilians. Their crime was merely to have lived on planets with orbiting ship yards of the wrong colour.

"And there's no sign of the carnage stopping. Oh, the Federal Union will win eventually. Of that, there can be no doubt. We have almost twice their resources. But at what cost? It could be twenty years before it ends, or even more. It has cost too much already.

"My father never could have envisaged what he started. Now he'll go down in history as the tyrant who started it all. I have no desire to follow in his footsteps.

"The military are understandably reluctant to back off...on both sides. But if the public knew all that was really happening, all popular support for this war would come to an end and the military would have no choice but to negotiate for peace.

"Censorship has, of course, pre-empted that. The armed services have kept a tight rein on the news for years now. Even the best informed people only have an inkling of what is actually happening...and they are all in positions where it benefits them to keep silent. Including myself --- without the web of people suppressing news of me, my whereabouts would be public and hence enemy knowledge. Considering the number of assassination attempts on the mock government at Throne, there is no doubt that it has been censorship that has kept me alive for so long.

"But the war has exceeded my limits. I will not stay silent any more. This carnage must stop now. And you have provided me with the means to convince the citizenry of the Union.

"Imagine what it would be like if your story was aired. Not just the results of some ten year old archaeological search for...what did you call that planet? Earth?"

"Yes, sir," replied Dr. Drucker. "The vernacular name for First World is `Earth'."

"Yes," continued the Secretary-General, "not just a report on the finding of Earth, but the whole lot. The incident with the Maelstrom, the attack of the Nikaljuk at Janella, the razing of space stations at Turnay and Janella, the destruction of Hardin and Earth..." Her voice trailed off into a whisper.

"There are a number of people in the military," said Admiral Perry picking up where the Procurator had left off, "who don't like this war much either. Enough to force the censors to pause before trying to edit your accounts. The seal of the Secretary-General will weigh heavily in favour of it all being broadcast. We almost got the censors to back down once before. We won't fail this time."

"But do you really think this will change anyone's opinion?" asked Dr. Drucker, his voice betraying his tiredness. "It means a lot to me, but it's my family that's died."

"Yours," said the Secretary-General, "and the families of billions of others too. And it convinced one of the most militant graduates of the Herculean Naval Academy already, hasn't it, MR. Huston?"

John made no response.

"When I first saw your initial reports," continued the Secretary-General after a short pause, "I saw my chance. If Earth can be an example to us all, we can save the lives of more people than those who perished in our ancient ancestor's forgotten war. It is certainly worth trying."

Deep below the surface of Museum, a trio of technicians lowered the ancient probe into a display case in the newest section added to the archives of the planet. Elsewhere in the room, there were trimenographs taken from the surface of Earth, the whole room dedicated to records from that one planet. Only five years after its dramatic rediscovery, the planet had become the most famous in all the galaxy.

Across from the probe's display case which dominated the room, there was a small trimensional plate that showed the Beetle Juice nebula in all its glory. Behind the facade that the plate was mounted on was the story known galaxy-wide of the discovery of Earth.

"All set!" called one technician. Together, they stepped out of the case and signaled to the door keeper that they were finished. The keeper looked at the shining metal package in the display case for a moment, wondering what stroke of luck had brought it to the attention of its finders all those years ago. `How different history would have been,' he thought, `if this tiny machine had not been found when it was.' Then he turned to the door switch and for the first time, the doors to the new Peace Hall were open.

Shining in the bright floodlights that lit it, Pioneer 11 looked down on the flood of school children that scrambled into the room, just arrived on an excursion from their home town on distant Kalgan.

Jesse Allen is a graduate student in Astronomy at the University of Iowa. After failing to get a ticket to Australia, he has become disenchanted with Astronomy and he will become a science education student within the next year: yet another reason to avoid the American public high school system. `Earth as an Example' is his only published story so far, but his latest science fiction work `Radio Emission from X-ray binary systems: Mapping Cygnus X-1' will be submitted soon. In more serious science writing, he is working on a Star Trek: The Next Generation novel `Salvage Operation' with co-author Debra Johnston.

jsa@lamsun.physics.uiowa.edu.