Space Read Free Page A

little theater, its light glimmering from the folded wooden walls.
    Malenfant stared around at the rows of Japanese faces, like coins shining in this rich brown dark. They seemed remote, unreal. Many of these people were NASDA administrators; as far as he could tell there was nobody from Nishizaki senior management here, nominally his sponsors for the trip.
    The virtual was a simple schematic of stars, randomly scattered. One star blinked, representing the Sun.
    "We will launch unmanned probes," Malenfant said. Ships, little dots of light, spread out from the toy Sun. "We might use ion rockets, solar sails, gravity assists -- whatever. The first wave will be slow, no faster than we can afford. It doesn't matter. Not in the long term.
    "The probes will be self-replicating: von Neumann machines, essentially. Universal constructors. Humans may follow, by such means as generation starships. However it would be cheaper for the probes to manufacture humans in situ, using cell synthesis and artificial-womb technology." He glanced over the audience. "You wish to know if we can build such devices. Not yet. Although your own Kashiwazaki Electric has a partial prototype."
    At that there was a stir of interest, self-satisfied.
    As his virtual light show continued to evolve, telling its own story, he glanced up at the walls around him, at the glimmer of highlights from the wood. This was a remarkable place. It was the largest structure in Edo, serving as community center and town hall and showpiece, the size of a ten-story building.
    But it was actually a tree, a variety of oak. The oaks were capable of growing to two hundred meters under the Moon's gentle gravity, but this one had been bred for width, and was full of intersecting hollowed-out chambers. The walls of this room were of smooth-polished wood, broken only subtly by technology -- lights, air vents, virtual-display gear -- and the canned air here was fresh and moist and alive.
    In contrast to the older parts of Edo -- all those clunky tunnels -- this was the future of the Moon, the Japanese were implicitly saying. The living Moon. What the hell was an American doing here on the Moon, lecturing these patient Japanese about colonizing space? The Japanese were doing it, patiently and incrementally working.
    But yes, incrementally: that was the key word. Even these lunar colonists couldn't see beyond their current projects, the next few years, their own lifetimes. They couldn't see where this could all lead. To Malenfant, that ultimate destination was everything.
    And, perhaps, Nemoto and her strange science would provide the first route map.
    The little probe images had reached their destination stars.
    "Here is the heart of the strategy," he said. "A target system, we assume, is uninhabited. We can therefore program for massive and destructive exploitation of the system's resources, without restraint, by the probe. Such resources are useless for any other purpose, and are therefore economically free to us. And so we colonize, and build."
    More probes erupted from each of the first wave of target stars, at greatly increased speeds. The probes reached new targets; and again, more probes were spawned, and fired onward. The volume covered by the probes grew rapidly; it was like watching the expansion of gas into a vacuum.
    "Once started, the process is self-directing, self-financing," he said. "It would take, we think, ten to a hundred million years for the colonization of the Galaxy to be completed in this manner. But we must invest merely in the cost of the initial generation of probes. Thus, the cost of colonizing the Galaxy will be less, in real terms, than that of our Apollo program of fifty years ago."
    His probes were now spreading out along the Galaxy's spiral arms, along lanes rich with stars. His Japanese audience watched politely.
    But as he delivered his polished words, he thought of Nemoto and her tantalizing hints of otherness -- of a mystery that might render all his