All life. Wiped out. Four billion years ago.
But why does the evidence we’ve pulled up from that destroyed city date it at only a couple of million years old? Two million years ago. That’s about when the last ice age began on Earth. It’s practically yesterday afternoon, in the history of the solar system.
Zworkyn closed his eyes and tried to let go of the puzzlement that bedeviled him. But instead of drifting to sleep he kept thinking about Uranus, lifeless, scoured clean of every living organism that once inhabited it. From the creatures who built that city down to the molecules that formed the basis of life. All gone. Destroyed. Wiped out.
His eyes flashed open. What if the cataclysm that knocked over Uranus’s spin didn’t happen during the Late Bombardment? What if it happened only two million years ago?
Then it would all fit! The planet was knocked over sideways. The city down there was flattened. All life on Uranus—all life, down to the molecular level—was eradicated.
What could have caused that? he asked himself. Then he shivered as a wave of cold swept over his healing body.
Not what could cause that, Zworkyn realized. Who could cause that? Who destroyed all life on Uranus?
Gordon Abbott frowned down at Zworkyn’s body on his hospital bed as the two doctors finished their examination of the patient.
The male doctor straightened up and smiled at Zworkyn. “You’re fine. Kneecap and fibula are both completely repaired. You’re free to go.”
The woman doctor nodded. “All indices in positive territory. You can get up and leave whenever you’re ready.”
Abbott thought, Physically, Vincente is healed. But mentally…? I wonder.
As the two medics left his narrow stall, Zworkyn sat up on his bed. “Gordon, that’s got to be the answer. Uranus was battered over sideways a scant two million years ago, not during the Late Bombardment!”
Abbott shook his head. Softly, almost pityingly, he said, “That’s absurd, Vince. You can’t believe—”
“Where’s the evidence that Uranus was knocked sideways during the Late Bombardment? It’s all conjecture! Why couldn’t it have happened two million years ago instead of four billion?”
“Where’s the evidence for that?” Abbott snapped.
“Down at the bottom of the ocean! That smashed city. The radioactive dating tells us it was smashed two million years ago. That’s real, hard evidence, not conjecture.”
“The Late Bombardment isn’t conjecture.”
“Yes, I know. But there is no actual evidence that Uranus was whacked sideways at that time. That idea is conjecture! Truly!”
Abbott was frowning. “Two million years ago there weren’t big protoplanets whizzing through the solar system. How do you explain Uranus being smacked sideways? What caused that?”
“Not what,” Zworkyn replied. “Who.”
“Who?”
“What happened on Uranus wasn’t natural, Gordon. Not a cataclysm that erases all life on an entire planet, down to the molecular level. It was a deliberate act of destruction.”
“That’s crazy.”
“So was Wegener’s idea of continental drift,” Zworkyn countered. “But it turned out he was right.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“I am. Damned serious.”
Abbott’s face was turning red. “You can’t seriously believe that some interstellar invader wiped Uranus clean of life. That’s the stuff of fantasy!”
“So were airplanes and rockets and colonies on Mars, not so long ago.”
The look on Abbott’s face was more of sorrow than anger. He shook his head slowly. “Vincente, my friend, you’re going off the deep end. Maybe you need a bit more rest here in the hospital.”
“No,” Zworkyn barked. “We need to excavate the ruins down there at the bottom of the sea and find out what they have to tell us.”
Abbott started to reply, caught himself, then began over. “Well, that’s something I can agree with. When in doubt, study the evidence.”
“Right,” said Zworkyn.
“But if I were you, Vincente old friend, I wouldn’t spout your E.T. invasion idea to anybody. Not until you have some real evidence to back it up.”
Zworkyn nodded. “I suppose that’s right.”
“You bet it is.”
SEARCHING
“Can you keep a secret?” Tómas asked.
He was sitting beside Raven on the sofa in her living room, watching the Zworkyn team’s report on the latest samples they had dredged up from the ruined city at the bottom of the sea.
Raven nodded easily. “Keep a secret? Sure.”
“No,” Tómas said, turning to face her. “I mean really keep a secret. Not tell anybody else. Deep and dark.”
She saw that he was totally serious. “If you want me to.”
“It’s something Zworkyn told me. In total confidence. But it’s so crazy, I’ve got to tell somebody about it or burst.”
“I’ll keep your secret, Tómas. I promise.”
“Well…” He hesitated, then plunged ahead. “Zworkyn thinks that the city they’ve found was wiped out by aliens.”
Her eyes widening, Raven asked, “Aliens? Like extraterrestrials?”
Tómas nodded solemnly.
“Wow!”
“I don’t know if he’s gone off the deep end,” Tómas said, almost wistfully. “Maybe that jetbike accident has rattled his brain.”
“Does he seem okay? I mean, has he done anything weird?”
“No, but this afternoon he told me what he thinks about the city down on the seabed. It sounds crazy to me.”
“Did he give you any reason for what he believes?”
Tómas quickly ran through Zworkyn’s reasoning. Raven followed it, just barely.
Touching Tómas’s arm, she asked, “Does any of it make sense to you?”
“I learned about the Late Bombardment in undergraduate school. Everybody thinks that’s when Uranus got knocked over sidewise.”
“Do you think so, too?”
He nodded, but said, “Zworkyn pointed out that there’s no real evidence that Uranus got knocked sidewise at that time. It’s mostly conjecture. But it does add up, really. I mean that’s when the Late Bombardment took place.”
Raven murmured, “If everybody else thinks that’s when it happened…”
“Everybody but Zworkyn.”
“And he’s not really a scientist, is he? He’s just an engineer.”
Tómas almost frowned. “Engineers have brains, you know.”
Raven smiled at him. “Not like yours, Tómas.”
Noel Dacco smiled handsomely at Evan Waxman. “As far as I can see, Evan, you’re running a smooth operation.”
Dacco was sitting in one of the guest chairs in front of Waxman’s desk. Waxman smiled back at him, but he was thinking, This man is making a nuisance of himself. He’s obviously been sent here to check on my operation. Maybe the distributors back on Earth want to ease me out of the Rust production operation, put their own person in to replace me. Maybe I should send this black blowhard back to them in a fancy coffin.
“I’m glad you approve of the way I’m running things,” Waxman said, keeping his smile in place.
“One thing, though,” said Dacco, his face growing serious.
“Oh?”
“Raven.”
“Raven?” Waxman repeated.
“She’s being coy with me. Is there anything you can do to… uh, loosen her up?”
“She’s no longer in my employ. She’s attached herself to that young astronomer from Chile.”
“Gomez.”
“Yes. The one who’s stirred up this hullabaloo about the destroyed city down at the bottom of the sea.”