The smart fields of the High Archon and the senator darkened. “Do you find this work distressing?” asked the fleet commander.
“Another species gone, like dew in the sun.”
“Think of the Battle of the Second Arm, Your Excellency—more than two thousand supernovas detonated, one hundred and twenty thousand planets with life vaporized. We do not have the luxury to be sentimental.”
The senator ignored the fleet commander. He addressed the High Archon directly. “Random planetary spot checks are unreliable. There may be signs of civilization elsewhere on a planet’s surface. We should implement area scans, as well.”
The High Archon said, “I have discussed that possibility with the Senate. We must destroy hundreds of millions of stars in the isolation belt. We estimate the belt contains ten million planetary systems and fifty million planets. Our time is limited; we will not be able to conduct a full area scan on each planet. All we can feasibly do is widen the detection beam to scan larger random samples… and pray the civilizations that might exist here have spread uniformly across their planets’ surfaces.”
“Next, we’ll learn Newton’s second law.”
He spoke as quickly as he could, to teach the children as much as possible in the short time he had left.
“An object’s acceleration is directly proportional to the force acting on it, and inversely proportional to its mass. To understand that, you need to know what acceleration is. Acceleration is the rate at which an object’s speed changes over time. It’s different from speed—an object that’s moving fast isn’t necessarily accelerating rapidly, and a quickly accelerating object may not be moving fast. For example, say there’s an object moving at 110 meters per second. Two seconds later, it is moving at 120 meters per second. Its acceleration is 120 minus 110, divided by two… that’s five meters per second—no, five meters per second squared. Another object is moving at ten meters per second, but two seconds later, it’s moving at thirty meters per second. Its acceleration is thirty minus ten, divided by two—ten meters per second squared. The second object may not be as fast as the first, but its acceleration is greater! I mentioned squares—a square is just a number multiplied by itself…”
He was surprised that his thinking was suddenly so clear. He knew what this meant: If life is a candle, his had burned to its base, and its wick had fallen and ignited the last bit of wax there, with a flame ten times brighter than before. His pain was gone and his body no longer felt heavy; in fact, he was barely aware of his body at all. The life he had left seemed to be in his brain, which worked furiously to convey all its knowledge to the children gathered around him. Language was a bottleneck—he knew he didn’t have enough time. He fantasized that the knowledge he had spent his life accumulating—not much, but dear to him—was lodged in his brain like small pearls, and that as he spoke, a crystal ax chopped the pearls out of his brain onto the floor, where the children scrambled to gather them like sweets at New Year’s. It was a happy fantasy.
“Do you understand?” he asked restlessly. He could no longer see the children around him, but he could still hear them.
“We understand! Now please rest, teacher!”
He felt his flame begin to sputter. “I know you don’t understand, but memorize it anyway. Someday, it will make sense to you. The acceleration of an object is directly proportional to the force acting on it, and inversely proportional to the object’s mass.”
“We really do understand, teacher! Please, please rest!”
With his last ounce of strength, he gave the children a command. “Recite it!”
Through tears, the children began to chant. “The acceleration of an object is directly proportional to the force acting on it, and inversely proportional to the object’s mass. The acceleration of an object is directly proportional to the force acting on it, and inversely proportional to the object’s mass….”
Hundreds of years ago, one of the world’s great minds emerged in Europe, wrote down these words. Now, in the twentieth century, they filled the air of China’s most remote mountain village, recited by a chorus of children in a thick, rural accent. In the sound of that sweet hymn, his candle burned out.
The children gathered around his body and wept.
Target Number: 500921473
Absolute Magnitude: 4.71
Evolutionary Stage: Middle Main Sequence
Nine planets found
This is Vessel Blue 84210 reporting
“What an exquisite planetary system,” the fleet commander exclaimed.
The High Archon agreed. “Indeed. Its small, rocky planets and gas giants are spaced with wonderful harmony, and its asteroid belt is in a beautiful location, like a necklace. And its farthest planet, a little dwarf covered in methane ice, suggesting the end of one thing and the beginning of another, like the final note of a musical cadence…”
“This is Vessel Blue 84210. We are commencing a life scan on Planet One. This planet has no atmosphere, a slow rotation, and a huge temperature differential. Scan beam is firing. First random site: white. Second random site: white…. Tenth random site: white. Vessel Blue 84210 reports that this planet has no life.”
“You could smelt iron on the surface of that planet. We shouldn’t waste time,” said the fleet commander.
“We are commencing a life scan on Planet Two. This planet has a thick atmosphere; a high, uniform temperature; and substantial acidic cloud cover. Scan beam is firing. First random site: white. Second random site: white…. Tenth random site: white. Vessel Blue 84210 reporting—this planet has no life.”
“I have a strong feeling that Planet Three harbors life. Scan thirty random sites,” said the High Archon, his message traveling instantly over the four-dimensional communicator to the duty officer of Vessel Blue 84210, over one thousand light-years away.
“Excellency, our schedule is very tight,” said the fleet commander.
“You have your orders,” said the High Archon resolutely.
“Yes, Your Excellency.”
“We are commencing a life scan on Planet Three. This planet has a medium-density atmosphere, and most of its surface is covered by ocean…”
The first shot of the life-scan beam struck a circle of land in Asia around three miles across. In the light of day, the effect of the beam would have been visible to the naked eye—it turned every nonliving object in its field transparent. The scan hit the mountains of northwest China; in daylight, an observer would have seen a spectacular sight as sunlight refracted through the mountain range and the ground under her feet seemed to disappear, revealing an abyss into the depths of the planet. Living things—people, trees, grass—remained opaque, and their forms would have stood out clearly against the crystal background. However, this effect only lasted for the half a second it took the beam to initialize, and onlookers would likely assume they had imagined it. Besides, it was nighttime.
In the direct center of the beam’s field was the village school.
“First random site… we’ve got green! Vessel Blue 84210 reporting—we have discovered life on target number 500921473, Planet Three!”
The beam began automatically to sort the many life-forms it had hit, entering them into its database in order of complexity and according to an initial intelligence estimate. At the top of the list was a group of life-forms inside a square shelter. The beam narrowed and focused on the shelter.
The High Archon’s smart field received an image transmission from Vessel Blue 84210. He projected it onto the black background, and in an instant, he was standing within a projection of the village school. The image-processing system had removed the shelter from view, but the life-forms inside were still hard to make out, as their bodies were so similar to the silicon-based planetary surface around them. The computer eliminated all nonliving objects in the image, including the larger, lifeless body the other beings encircled, and the beings now appeared suspended in a void. Even so, they were still dull and colorless, like a bunch of plants. This was clearly not a species with any remarkable phenotypic features.