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  Meek stood up also, a thoughtful expression on his face. “You know, there’s a lifetime of work for me to do. A long, long lifetime of work.”

  Adri nodded and said, “We can help you to live a long and productive life, Dr. Meek.”

  “Harmon. Call me Harmon, please.”

  Jordan said, “Adri, you’re right. I’m rather famished. Let’s get to dinner.”

  But Adri held up a slender-fingered hand. “I’ve taken the liberty of inviting the rest of your team to join us at dinner. Including the three persons from your orbiting spaceship.”

  “You have?” Jordan replied, surprised. “And they all accepted?”

  “Yes, of course.” Adri’s expression became slightly guilty. “I’m afraid I told them that we’re holding this dinner in Dr. Meek … er, in Harmon’s honor.”

  Meek’s shaggy brows shot up. “My honor?”

  “Why, yes,” Adri replied. “Today is your birthday, isn’t it?”

  “No, my birth—” Meek’s face eased into a knowing grin. “Yes, it is my birthday, of a sort. I’ve come to life today, haven’t I?”

  And the three of them headed down to the dining hall.

  * * *

  It was a long, boisterous dinner, with real wine and lots of laughter. Jordan looked over the faces of the team: Brandon, Hazzard, Longyear, and all the others. All the suspicions were gone. All the fears. Adri relaxed enough to dig heartily into a spicy roast. Aditi sat next to Jordan, beaming at him.

  “It’s done,” she said into his ear. “You’re going to help us.”

  “And you’re going to help us,” he said.

  Then he got to his feet and tapped his wineglass with a spoon. All the conversations stopped. Every face along the table turned toward Jordan. Even people at other tables looked toward him, their faces filled with curiosity and hope.

  “It was a countryman of mine,” Jordan began, “who said: I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.”

  “Come on, Jordy,” Brandon groused.

  Yamaguchi said, “We’re not going to war, are we?”

  “In a sense,” Jordan said, “we will be going to war. War against the human race’s ancient enemies: ignorance, fear, and the ultimate enemy—death.”

  The entire dining hall fell absolutely quiet.

  “We’ve got to convince the people of Earth that they’re in mortal danger. And once we’ve done that—”

  “Assuming we can,” Hazzard said.

  “I assume that we can and we will. And once we do, we have to search out other intelligent species and protect them from the gamma burst that’s spreading across the galaxy.”

  “We must help them to survive,” Elyse said.

  “That is our task,” said Jordan. “That is our mission. Are we up to the challenge?”

  “Damned right we are,” Brandon snapped.

  Longyear broke into a crooked grin and said, “We few, we happy few.”

  Adri, seated across the table from Jordan, slowly rose to his feet. “To continue in the vein that Jordan started with, let each of us therefore brace himself—and herself—to our duty.”

  Jordan finished, “And so bear ourselves that if the human race lasts a billion years, our descendents will still say, This was their finest hour.”

  Everyone in the dining hall broke into applause.

  Jordan sat down, and Aditi squeezed his arm. “I’m proud of you, Jordan.”

  “I couldn’t have done it without you,” he said.

  “Of course you could have. And you would have. But I’m happy that I’m here beside you.”

  “It’s a huge task that we have ahead of us,” said Jordan. “It won’t be easy to convince the people of Earth that they’re in danger.”

  “And others are in danger, too,” Aditi said. “The people of Earth can help them to survive.”

  Jordan nodded. “We struggle against the inevitable.”

  “Nothing is inevitable, Jordan.”

  He grasped her hand tightly. “Not as long as you’re with me.”

  “I will be, wherever you go.”

  Adri raised his voice to be heard over the laughter and talk of the others.

  “Long life to you, Jordan Kell. Long life and happiness to you all.”

  Jordan dipped his chin in acknowledgment. “Happiness is working hard at a task worth doing.” Then he turned to Aditi and added, “With the woman you love at your side.”

  EPILOGUE

  Difficulty is the excuse history never accepts.

  EDWARD R. MURROW

  EIGHT YEARS AND EIGHT MONTHS LATER

  If this wasn’t so stupid, Pancho Lane said to herself, it would be funny.

  As a newly elected member of the World Council, Pancho had flown to Earth from the Goddard habitat in orbit around Saturn on a special high-g boost just to attend this session of the Council. And here she was, sitting at the foot of the long conference table, while the leaders of the human race made asses of themselves through this farce of a meeting.

  Chiang Chantao was sitting in his powerchair up at the head of the table, more machinery than human being, wheezing and frowning and trying to make himself heard while the others argued and shouted at one another.

  They have a lot to argue about, Pancho admitted to herself. The meeting had originally been scheduled to discuss who the next chairman of the World Council should be. Chiang Chantao was set to retire at the end of this term and there was still an enormous amount of work to be done to alleviate the effects of the monstrous greenhouse floods.

  Two days before the meeting convened, though, the communications from New Earth started arriving. The first mission had arrived safely. The planet was indeed almost completely Earthlike.

  And then the lightning bolt. New Earth was populated by human beings! They—the entire planet—had been constructed by a machine intelligence that had originated on another world, twelve thousand light-years away.

  The aliens had a message, and a mission. A massive wave of lethal gamma radiation was sweeping outward from the core of the galaxy. It would reach Earth in two thousand years. When it did, it would wipe out all life on Earth.

  They don’t believe it, Pancho realized. They don’t want to believe it. But the human explorers on New Earth believed it. They presented evidence that the best astronomers in the solar system were now poring over.

  “Two thousand years from now!” shouted the councilman from the European Union. “Even if it’s true, we don’t have to lift a finger for a dozen centuries, maybe more. It’s not our problem.”

  “That’s what people said a hundred years ago about the global warming,” said Felicia Ionescu, her face a picture of barely controlled contempt. “And now look where we are.”

  A new round of jabbering erupted: accusations, denials, recriminations.

  Douglas Stavenger, seated on Pancho’s right, glanced at her. The expression on his face was a mixture of exasperation and disgust.

  Stavenger wasn’t actually present in the room, of course. His body teeming with nanomachines, he was not allowed to set foot on Earth. He was attending this fractious meeting through a virtual reality telepresence: his three-dimensional holographic image looked quite solid, almost as if he were actually in the conference room. Pancho had to stare hard to see that his image was slightly transparent, like a ghost.

  Stavenger got to his feet. All heads turned to him, all the yammering stopped. Even Chiang’s rheumy eyes fixed on him. The room fell absolutely silent.

  “Two thousand years is a long time,” he began, “but from what Jordan Kell and the others have told us, there are other intelligent races that need to be saved.”

  “Is that our responsibility?” Chiang croaked, from behind his breathing mask.

  For several heartbeats Stavenger did not reply. He simply stared at the chairman. It took three seconds for the words spoken in this meeting to reach Stavenger, on the Moon, and for his response to get back to Earth. The time seemed to stretch endlessly
.

  At last he said, “I believe we have a moral obligation to do whatever we can to save life, wherever we can reach it.”

  Anita Halleck, seated at the chairman’s left, objected, “But we have so much work to do right here on Earth. How can we afford this new … new … crusade?”

  “How do we know this whole story hasn’t been concocted by the scientists to squeeze more funding out of us?” asked the councilwoman from Pacifica.

  Again the wait. Then Stavenger smiled and replied, “The answers to your questions are relatively simple. We send a new mission to Sirius C, a team of scientists and administrators who will check on the facts and advise the World Council of their validity.”

  Before anyone could respond, he went on, “The people of habitat Goddard have already built the spacecraft for a new mission to Sirius. The people of Selene will fund its staffing.”

  “You mean we won’t have to pay for any of it?”

  Pancho jumped in. “That’s right. You people on Earth can devote your resources to alleviating the floods. The people off-Earth will handle the next mission to Sirius C. And that includes not only Selene and Goddard, but the rock rats out in the Asteroid Belt, as well. We’ve built the ship and we’ll pay for the team to crew it.”

  The other Council members looked at each other in stunned silence. No one seemed to know what to say. Pancho, grinning inwardly, thought, We’ve made them an offer they can’t refuse.

  At last Chairman Chiang wheezed, “A very generous offer. I propose that the Council accept it.”

  Heads nodded up and down the table. Stavenger’s ghostly image sat down again.

  “The only other agenda item is to nominate a new chairman,” said Chiang.

  Immediately, Pancho said, “There’s only one person here who can fill your shoes, Mr. Chairman. And that person is Douglas Stavenger, of Selene.”

  Again bedlam erupted.

  “How can he be chairman when he can’t even visit Earth?”

  Pancho slapped the palm of her right hand on the polished tabletop and their voices stilled.

  “Now look, people,” she said. “Doug’s been a Council member for some years, without setting foot on Earth. Hell, I’m a Council member and George Ambrose, from the Belt, is too.”

  Ambrose nodded his shaggy red-haired head and grinned boyishly.

  Pancho continued, “You’ve made an effort to make this Council include all the people of the solar system. So why won’t you elect the best man for the chairman’s post, even if he lives on the Moon?”

  They argued the issue back and forth, but the objections gradually petered out. When Chiang called for a vote, Stavenger was elected unanimously.

  Pancho was smiling as she left the conference room. She chatted with a few of the Council members for a while, then made a beeline for the hotel where her husband was waiting for her.

  “It’s done?” Jake Wanamaker asked the instant she came through the door of their suite. He really didn’t need to ask; he could tell from the huge grin on Pancho’s face.

  “It’s done,” she said. “We’re goin’ to New Earth.”

  Wanamaker puffed out a breath. “Eighty years, Panch. It takes eighty years to get there.”

  “Yep. Trish’ll be a hundred and fourteen years old by the time we get there.”

  “And how old will we be?”

  “Don’t matter,” said Pancho. “Our lives are just beginning, Jake. Just beginning.”

  TOR BOOKS BY BEN BOVA

  Able One

  The Aftermath

  As on a Darkling Plain

  The Astral Mirror

  Battle Station

  The Best of the Nebulas (editor)

  Challenges

  Colony

  Cyberbooks

  Escape Plus

  The Green Trap

  Gremlins Go Home (with Gordon R. Dickson)

  Jupiter

  The Kinsman Saga

  Leviathans of Jupiter

  Mars Life

  Mercury

  The Multiple Man

  Orion

  Orion Among the Stars

  Orion and King Arthur

  Orion and the Conqueror

  Orion in the Dying Time

  Out of Sun

  Peacekeepers

  Power Play

  Powersat

  The Precipice

  Privateers

  Prometheans

  The Rock Rats

  Saturn

  The Silent War

  Star Peace: Assured Survival

  The Starcrossed

  Tale of the Grand Tour

  Test of Fire

  Titan

  To Fear the Light (with A. J. Austin)

  To Save the Sun (with A. J. Austin)

  The Trikon Deception (with Bill Pogue)

  Triumph

  Vengeance of Orion

  Venus

  Voyagers

  Voyagers II: The Alien Within

  Voyagers III: Star Brothers

  The Return: Book IV of Voyagers

  The Winds of Altair

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Ben Bova is a six-time winner of the Hugo Award, a former editor of Analog, former editorial director of Omni, and a past president of both the National Space Society and the Science Fiction Writers of America. Bova is the author of more than a hundred works of science fact and fiction. He lives in Florida.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  NEW EARTH

  Copyright © 2013 by Ben Bova

  All rights reserved.

  Cover art by John Harris

  A Tor Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor-forge.com

  Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  Bova, Ben, 1932–

  New Earth / Ben Bova. — First edition.

  p. cm.

  “A Tom Doherty Associates book.”

  ISBN 978-0-7653-3018-5 (hardcover)

  ISBN 978-1-4299-4814-2 (e-book)

  1. Life on other planets—Fiction. 2. Interplanetary voyages—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3552.O84N49 2013

  813'.54—dc23

  2013006324

  e-ISBN 9781429948142

  First Edition: July 2013

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Contents

  Epigraph

  EARTH

  Beijing

  ARRIVAL

  Awakening

  Data Bank

  Alone

  The News from Earth

  Outcasts

  Examination

  Brothers

  A Glow of Light

  Analysis

  Preparation

  Excursion

  Frustration

  Decisions

  Departure

  THE MOON

  Anita Halleck

  ENCOUNTER

  Landing

  Into the Forest

  Contact

  Adri

  The City

  The Administrative Center

  Hospitality

  Fears

  Visitors’ Quarters

  Rebellion

  The Farms

  Guilt and Fear

  Camping Out

  Base Camp

  What’s in a Name?

  Examination

  EARTH

  Washington, D.C.

  DISCOVERIES

  Turnabout

  History Lesson

  Motivations

  Reactions

  In the City

  Shielding

  Aurora


  Factions

  Transition

  Racing Toward Extinction

  Questions

  Conundrum

  Confirmation

  MARS

  Tithonium Base

  REVELATIONS

  The Biolab

  Return to Camp

  Unanswered Questions

  A New Regime

  Dinner

  Hollow Progress

  Field Trip

  Sooner or Later

  Surprise

  Confirmation

  Culture Shock

  Security

  Guests … or Prisoners?

  SATURN ORBIT

  Habitat Goddard

  UNDERSTANDING

  Back to the City

  The Gulf

  The Truth

  The Danger

  Reaction

  Suspicion

  Decision

  Conflict

  Trust

  Learning

  Verify

  Factions

  Resolution

  EXOPLANET

  Homeworld

  CRUSADERS

  Base Camp

  One on One

  By Their Fruits

  Aliens

  Reconciliation

  EPILOGUE

  Eight Years and Eight Months Later

  Tor Books by Ben Bova

  About the Author

  Copyright