New Earth Read Free

overtime concocting theories to support the hope that the Earth-sized planet might indeed host an Earth-type biosphere.The popular media had no such problem. They quickly dubbed Sirius C “New Earth.”
    For nearly a full century, while governments and corporations all over the world toiled to alleviate the catastrophic results of the climate change, Earth’s eagerly inquisitive scientists hurled robotic space probes toward Sirius C. Even at the highest thrust that fusion rockets could produce, the probes took decadesto reach their objective, more than eight light-years from Earth. Yet once they arrived at the planet, what they saw confirmed the most cherished hopes of both the scientists and the general public.
    Sirius C was indeed a New Earth. The planet bore broad blue seas of water, its continents were richly green with vegetation. There was no sign of intelligent life, no cities or farmlands or roads,no lights or radio communications, but the planet truly was a New Earth, unpopulated, virginal, beckoning.
    Impatient to explore this new world in greater detail, the International Astronautical Authority asked the World Council to fund the human exploration of Sirius C. The Council procrastinated, citing the enormous costs of mitigating the disasters caused by the global climate shift. Then thelunar nation of Selene stepped forward and offered to build a starship. Shamed into grudging cooperation, the Council reluctantly joined the effort—meagerly.
    They named the starship Gaia, after the Earth deity who represented the web of life. Gaia would travel to Sirius more slowly than the robotic probes, to protect its fragile human cargo. It would take some eighty years for the ship to reachSirius C.
    Men and women from all around the world volunteered for the mission. They were carefully screened for physical health and mental stability. As one of the examining psychotechnicians put it, “You’d have to be at least a little crazy to throw away eighty years just to get there.”
    But the crew of Gaia would not age eighty years. They would sleep away the decades of their journey in cryonicsuspension, frozen in liquid nitrogen, as close to death as human bodies can get and still survive.
    Gaia was launched with great fanfare: humankind’s first mission to the stars. The explorers would spend five years mapping the planet in detail, studying its biosphere, and building a base for the backup missions to work from.
    By the time the ship arrived in orbit around Sirius C, eighty yearslater, only a handful of dedicated scientists back on Earth were still interested in the mission. Most of the human race was struggling to survive the catastrophic second wave of greenhouse flooding, as the ice caps of Greenland and Antarctica melted down. The backup missions had been postponed, again and again, and finally shelved indefinitely by the World Council.
    Even the eagerly waiting scientistssaw nothing, heard nothing from the explorers, for it would take more than eight years for messages to travel from Sirius back to Earth.

 
    ALONE
    Alone in the wardroom, Jordan poured himself another cup of tea, then sat at one of the tables and stared in fascination at the planet sliding by in the wall screen’s display.
    It certainly looks like Earth, he thought. The data bar running along the base of the screen showed that the planet’s atmosphere was astonishingly close to Earth’s: 22 percent oxygen, 76 percent nitrogen, theremaining 2 percent a smattering of carbon dioxide, water vapor, and inert gases. The biggest difference from Earth was that Sirius C had a much thicker ozone layer high in its atmosphere: not unexpected, since the star Sirius emitted much more ultraviolet light than the Sun.
    Jordan shook his head in wonder. It’s like a miracle, he said to himself. Too good to be true. But then he realized thatthis was the first planet orbiting another star that human eyes had seen close up. What do we know about exoplanets? Perhaps