The Long Mars

35

On May 24, 2045, four months after leaving the Low Earths, the US Navy airships Armstrong and Cernan reached their nominal target of Earth West 250,000,000.

The world itself turned out to be unprepossessing, barren, ordinary, but at least you could land on it with a facemask, walk around a little. The crew built a stone cairn, affixed a bronze plaque, set up a Stars and Stripes, took a few photographs. When Wu Yue-Sai showed images of a similar ceremony performed by the crews of the Zheng He and Liu Yang, who had reached Earth East Twenty Million, they built the cairn up a bit to make sure it was bigger than the Chinese one. The trolls looked out from the observation galleries—they weren’t about to wear facemasks to go outside—and sang a sweet barbershop-quartet kind of song, over and over as a round, that sounded as if it had been selected to celebrate the journey, about how it was mighty nice, a trip to paradise, with my baby on board…

Even Douglas Black came down to the surface, with his aide Philip at his side. At Maggie’s quiet order, while he was off the ship Mac was never more than a few yards from Black, with full medical kit to hand. Black looked around, smiled, chatted, and allowed himself to be photographed alongside the crew, but refused to do any more than that. This achievement was the crew’s, he said; he was only a passenger, cargo. He did collect a handful of the local dirt, and slipped it into a plastic bag: a mundane souvenir of an unprecedented journey. Maggie rather liked his lack of ostentation.

There wasn’t much else to do here. Some of the crew played an improvised game of golf as a tribute to Alan Shepherd, an American hero who was one of their own, a Navy man who had once played a golf shot on the moon.

Then they turned the ships around, metaphorically speaking, to head Eastwards, and home.

At this point Douglas Black made another rare emergence from his suite, and asked a special request of Maggie.

They had logged Earth West 239,741,211 on the way through, but had not lingered long. Now they returned, for a longer stay.

This was one of the smaller worlds, with a mere eighty per cent of Datum Earth’s gravity. On the local version of the North American craton, tremendous glacier-striped mountains strained for a sky laden with fluffy water-vapour clouds, and in the valleys impossibly spindly trees clustered. The animals too were tall, slender, graceful, even though a peculiar six-legged body plan had prevailed. This world was, according to Douglas Black, just like a Chesley Bonestell painting, and all of them save Mac had to look up that reference to see what he meant.

When Maggie authorized shore leave, the crew loved it. Delightfully, thanks to an atmosphere that happened to be especially rich in oxygen, you could walk around with no special protection whatsoever. Harry Ryan and his engineers wandered around planning how they would span mighty gorges with graceful viaducts. Snowy was at last able to indulge his appetite for the hunt, and went bounding away. Even the trolls seemed happy here, despite the low gravity, and they sang a new song, playfully taught them by Jason Santorini: “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds’.

When the moon came up, Maggie could see the grey and the white, the lunar seas and the highlands, were all wrong. Proof, if she needed it, that this was far from home.

But—as Douglas Black announced to Maggie as they walked in convincing-looking grass, with Philip shadowing them, and Mac silently looking on—Black intended to stay here. “I found my real estate, at last,” he said.

“Hmm. On this world of all the worlds, of all the possibilities for life on Earth that we saw?”

“I always knew what I was looking for, Captain. I had a quite detailed specification, and my staff have scrutinized the records of every single world we stepped through. And this place fits the bill, most nearly, of all those we have witnessed. Now, I have prepared for this possibility. In my sealed cargo I have everything required to establish a home here, safe, secure, provisioned. For now I need only Philip at my side, my staff, my equipment. I would ask only of you, Captain, that you take the news of this place back to the Low Earths, announce this location, stepwise in the Long Earth and geographically—I will give you the name of an appropriate agent to handle this, although of course the regular news channels will disseminate it—and in due course others will follow me here.”

Maggie was puzzled. But when she asked Mac’s advice, the doctor shrugged, evidently having no particular objection.

Maggie said, “I’ll tell you the truth, Mr Black. You might not be alone. Some of my younger crew are thinking of jumping ship and staying here. It’s an open secret. Thanks to my XO I can tap into the scuttlebutt.”

Black seemed delighted. “I would be glad of the company of young people. Of course we could assist each other… And are you thinking of permitting this?”

“Why not? I can’t let the manning numbers run down so far that the ships themselves are compromised, of course. But we have some slack. My mission is more about planting flags than planting colonies, but my orders don’t expressly forbid it. It would extend the US Aegis in a concrete form, a pretty long way out. And it will be an international colony, if Lieutenant Wu is serious about staying.”

“Ah! That delightful young officer. She would be very welcome. Her children will be tall and slender and have big chests for the thin air. Just like the Martians of Ray Bradbury! What do you think, Captain? How about yourself? You are healthy, still young. You too could stay, build bridges, raise babies.”

“Oh, I think my own duty is clear, Mr Black. It’s home for me, with my ship.”

“Of course, Captain. But will you allow me one privilege? Earth West 239,741,211: an efficient but cold label. Let me name this world, as if I were its discoverer. I will name it Karakal. Please record it in your log.”

That baffled Maggie, who had been expecting some name like Blackville.

But Mac recognized the reference. “Lost Horizon. The Tibetan mountain where they found Shangri-La, in Hilton’s novel.” He looked around. “Ah, I see now. That’s the clue. You picked a world of gravity so low that even a lard-bucket like me can leap like a basketball star, and oxygen levels so high the air is like wine. Of course, I should have guessed. This Earth, you hope, is going to turn out to be a machine to keep you alive. Even reverse your ageing. Like this whole world is an extension of that oxygen tent you have in your cabin! Your very own Shangri-La.”

“That indeed is the idea, Doctor.”

Maggie asked, “Can partial gravity really reverse ageing?”

Mac grinned. “It’s one of the oldest space-buff dreams, Captain.”

“Yeah, but I thought low gravity was bad for you—leaching away the calcium from your bones, wasting your muscles, messing with your body’s fluid balance…”

Black said, “That’s true for zero gravity, Captain. Partial gravity is different. Surely this world’s pull will be sufficient to keep the muscles strong, the juices flowing as they should, with appropriate diets, exercise regimes and so forth. But by allowing the body to spend less energy just fighting gravity—the cells will oxidize more slowly, the joints, the ligaments, the dubious architecture of the spine will all be stressed significantly less—there is a strong argument that life spans could be significantly extended.”

Maggie turned to her chief surgeon. “Mac?”

He spread his hands. “There’s an argument, maybe. But not a shred of hard evidence. Very little research has been done on the effects of partial gravity, and won’t be until the day we have data from long-duration stays on Mars or the moon. However, it’s Mr Black’s choice, his money.”

“Oh, come, Doctor; at my age, my position in my life, don’t you think it’s a gamble worth taking? And it’s not just my money by the way. I’m representing a consortium of backers—none of them adventurous enough to take this trip with me, but all willing to follow, in the next year or two. They will come with their staff, their own doctors…” He smiled. “Now do you see the vision, Captain? Among my backers are Americans, Europeans, Chinese, politicians and industrialists and investors, some, frankly, closer to the dark edge of the law than others. Old money and new—some indeed who made a fortune out of the Yellowstone aftermath, for every disaster is an opportunity for somebody. Some people, you know, got rich even out of the fall of the Roman Empire. The Long Earth is still young, and we are very wealthy indeed; with time we’ll find ways to wield our influence even from this remote world. Now if you’ll excuse me—come, Philip, we need to find a location for our first settlement and get established before the airships leave. . .”

Maggie stared after him. “A community of the fabulously rich, Mac. Rich and ageless, if this all works out as he dreams.”

“Well, it might. Oxygen and low gravity—that’s quackery, probably. But they’ll be bringing in teams of researchers who’ll have nothing else to do but find something that does work.”

“And if so it really will be a Shangri-La. Without the monks.”

Mac grunted sceptically. “Or a community of struldbrugs, like Gulliver’s Travels—undying but ageing, and growing more and more bitter. A gang for whom even death will no longer bring an end to their clinging to wealth and power. Think of all the monsters of history who you wouldn’t want to see still around today, from Alexander through Genghis Khan to Napoleon…”

“It might not be like that. Maybe they will give us a longer perspective.”

“Hell of a gamble if you ask me. So are you going to allow this, Captain?”

“I don’t see I’m in a position to stop him. He’s not crew, Mac.”

“I guess. Well, I’m glad I won’t live long enough to see what grows from the seed you planted today.”

“You old cynic. Come on, let’s get back to the ship and go home.”