We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

I see life falling into certain broad kingdoms. I believe life on Earth-like planets will all be similar. I believe if life can develop on Jovian planets, it will all be of a type; life on Titan-like planets, where methane exists in liquid form, will all be similar; and so on.

As to metabolic compatibility, we can’t even eat everything on Earth. And vice-versa, thank goodness. There are so many types of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. Some are essential, many are digestible, some are not digestible, and some are toxic. I don’t see it being different on any planet where the life started from the same building blocks we started from. We just have to be able to tell the beefalo from the puffer fish.

… Dr. Steven Carlisle, from the Convention panel Exploring the Galaxy

I decelerated smoothly into the Omicron2 Eridani A system. I was unreasonably excited, knew it, and didn’t care. I had arrived at the semi-official home system of Star Trek’s Vulcan race. Since we were an avid Star Trek fan, it had tickled my fancy to make it an early target. Truthfully, if it hadn’t been for that, I might have skipped the system entirely since it was not a prime candidate for livable planets.

I still felt bad about the way things had been left back in Epsilon Eridani. Riker had barely spoken to me after that last meeting, and I’d gotten myself out-system as soon as possible. Even Bob had looked at me strangely, although he’d continued to be civil. I promised Bill that I would send reports his way when I got here. Whether or not humanity survived technologically, it wouldn’t hurt to have a survey of near-space.

I leaned on the balcony rail of my gondola and gazed at the landscape spread out below. My VR airship was currently drifting over the south of France. I had reconstructed the view from library references, and I was confident of the accuracy. The scene consisted of mostly orchards and farms with the occasional rustic village standing alone. I could hear cattle lowing in the fields, and dogs barking. Blue sky, warm air, and a slight breeze calmed the inner animal and brought a smile to my face. I hope I never get tired of this.

Lucy came over, wagging her tail, and I patted her absentmindedly. I made a gesture and a biscuit appeared in my hand. The dog immediately sat, and I handed her the treat with an admonishment, “Gently…” The biscuit disappeared with a crunching sound.

Mentally shaking myself, I turned back to the desk. A hologram of the system floated over it with my trajectory shown as a yellow line. Omicron Eridani was actually a triple-star system. B and C orbited each other, and the pair orbited A at about 470 AU. Omicron Eridani A was somewhat smaller than Sol, but still a possible if not ideal candidate for habitable planets.

“How’s the survey coming, Guppy?”

“How long until we have a complete survey?”

[Approximately 40 hours]

I nodded and sat back to enjoy the view while I waited. I adjusted my frame rate way down…

***

[Incoming message]

“What? From Bill?”

[Yes. Header information indicates it is technical specifications for a planetary exploration drone]

“Cool. Load it onto the desktop display as soon as it’s all received.”

[There is also a text message]

“Let’s see it.”

A sheet of paper appeared on the desktop. I reached over and picked it up.

Hey Milo;

In case you find Vulcan, or a reasonable facsimile, I’ve sent you plans for a practical exploration drone. I’ve used it on Ragnarök, and I think I’ve worked out all the bugs. There are several variations of the basic design for surveillance, biological analysis, and so on. 𝘳𝘼Νö฿ĘS̩

Riker has taken your advice and made a copy of himself to accompany him back to Sol. Although results aren’t quite as expected, so far.

On another subject, subspace theory is turning out to be very, very interesting. I want to ask you, if you find the material to build a space station, to staff it with a high-level AMI with manufaturing capability. There may be some really interesting blueprints coming your way sometime in the next couple of years.

Bill

My eyebrows went up. Bill was trying to be mysterious, but that didn’t work well when communicating with another you. I could think of a half-dozen things, offhand, that would be really cool to come out of this, technologically. The Riker comment was weird, though.

Based on the header information, Bill would have sent this transmission less than a year after I left, and it had just now caught up with me. That was fast work with the drone designs.

***

“Report?”

[Probable asteroid belt found, just inside the first Jovian. Probable double planet found, at .81 AU]

Double planet? “Put it up on the desk.”

[Image is partly extrapolated]

An image built up in the air above the desk. Although there was no detail, the planets appeared to be very close in size. I found myself bouncing impatiently on my seat, waiting for real data to fill in the blanks.

After several hours, enough information had been collected to define the size and orbital period of the planets. They were 0.9 and 0.7 Earth masses, and orbited each other with a period of 20 days, at a distance of about 364,000 km. Neither planet was tidally locked, although exact diurnal periods would have to wait until I was closer.

“Guppy, this is freakin’ incredible. These planets are in the habitable zone, right?”

[Affirmative, although slightly to the cool side of the band. Climate will be mainly determined by presence of greenhouse gasses]

“Assuming there’s an atmosphere.”

[Atmospheres have been confirmed for both bodies. Composition still pending]

I let out a whoop.

“Guppy, poke me when we get full images, okay?”

***

A day later, I was in orbit around OE-1A, the larger of the two planets.

I stared at the images on the hologram for what felt like hours, totally entranced. The planets were imaged side-by-side, clearly showing the size difference between the two. Both planets had atmospheres, clouds, and extensive oceans. Most importantly, both planets had oxygen in their atmospheres. Large swathes of land showed a definite green color.

“Oh. My. God. I’ve hit the jackpot.”

I turned to Guppy. “Format a message to Bill. Include all telemetry that we’ve collected so far. Also, add names: Vulcan and Romulus.”

[Mission parameters do not permit naming planets]

“Mission parameters can go jump. I found them, so I’m damned well naming them. If any future colonists want to change it, they can make that decision.”

[Aye, sir]

I gazed at the image, grinning, then frowned. Exploration drones. Craaaaaaaap!

“Guppy, have we got anything on useful resources in the asteroid belt?”

[Negative. Detailed survey required]

“Jeez, it’s always something.” I sighed. “Okay, plot a course that will allow us to overfly the entire asteroid belt in a powered orbit. Then we’ll decide where to set up.”

***

The survey took several weeks to complete. The asteroid belt was surprisingly diffuse, and it took two complete revolutions around the parent star to map everything using SUDDAR. The results were disappointing, and I decided I’d have to examine the two Jovian systems for other sources of heavier elements. The inner Jovian was, in fact, quite large, so there was a good possibility that it had captured a large number of satellites.

I unshipped one of the autofactories and half of my scavenging units. I got them started on initial gathering and refining, then headed off to the inner Jovian.

OE-2 was certainly an impressive specimen of the Jovian class of planet. At almost three times the mass of Jupiter, it almost qualified as a brown dwarf. The twenty-hour rotation period created huge horizontal bands of weather, with perhaps a dozen cells that would have put the giant red spot to shame.

The planet also boasted several hundred satellites. At least 60 were large enough to be spherical, and half of those had significant atmospheres. I did a detailed scan of the smaller satellites and discovered a couple of dozen that had sufficient metallic and heavy element deposits to catch my interest. I unshipped a second autofactory and set it to work on a few of the better candidates.

Refining in two different locations created a logistics issue. Since the inner system location had enough material for initial needs, I set a couple of scavenger units the task of flying batches of refined material in-system on a regular schedule.

I arrived back at the in-system yard to find the first batches of exploration drones were almost ready. Satisfied that things were going well and that the AMIs could handle everything, I headed back to Vulcan and Romulus.

I spent the time building up detailed maps of the two planets. The larger, Vulcan, had significantly more CO2 and a thicker atmosphere, therefore a higher mean surface temperature. The smaller planet, Romulus, had actual ice caps, although judging from the change in size just since I’d been here, they might be seasonal. It was currently mid-spring in the northern hemisphere, and with a year only 285 Earth-days long, the seasons moved quickly.

***

Finally, the day arrived when I had my first batch of exploration drones. I had opted to load this batch with biological analysis systems. With a feeling of joy and anticipation, I sent them down, four to each planet.

I elected to start at the equators, where there would be the most diversity of life, and move slowly in pairs toward the poles. One unit of each pair would concentrate on aquatic life, and the other on terrestroid life. I knew I had no chance of covering even a fraction of a full biosphere, but there was one overriding question that needed to be answered: biocompatibility.

It took half a day for the first visual surveys to start coming in. The local life on Vulcan was diverse and included animals almost as big as dinosaurs. Romulus, on the other hand, had no animal life larger than a wolf, and the ecosystems seemed quite sparse. The difference between the two planets wasn’t explainable by just the difference in climate. I suspected that Romulus might have recently suffered an extinction-level event.

The real surprise came from cellular analysis. The results showed a very high probability that life on the two planets was related. Structurally, cells were too similar to be coincidence. I remembered the theories back on Earth that life might have travelled between Earth and Mars on meteoric fragments. Here, the two planets orbited each other, making the possibility even more plausible.

The one remaining question was biocompatibility—would Earth life be able to survive here? I thought back to the Star Trek episode, The Way to Eden, where the entire planet had turned out to be poisonous. It’d be a helluva thing to come sixteen light-years only to be unable to live here.

The space station was still a couple of months from completion, but I uploaded a preliminary report into storage. I tagged it to be sent to Sol, as well as to Bill. While it was unlikely that FAITH was still in operation almost twenty years after the war, it wasn’t impossible. And this was prime territory for spreading the human species off the one planet. I was a little surprised to discover that I cared enough to do that, but it wasn’t like it was costing me extra for the call. I guess I was coming to realize that exploration for its own sake was kind of pointless.

I didn’t have enough biological data to do a protein-by-protein analysis, but I could certainly categorize the carbs and fats and look for obvious issues like high levels of heavy metals or arsenic or such. The biological survey drones had a mechanical stomach that processed organics the same way a human stomach would. Analysis of the output would take about a day per sample, but I had all the time in the world.