CHAPTER 10 – POLITICAL REACTIONS
09:08 (Universal Time)
Monday, December 24, 2317
Ceres Consortium head offices
Demeter, dwarf planet Ceres
Main Asteroid Belt
Toru Tomonaga shook hands with Juan Perez, who had just arrived from his distant Titan, in the Saturn System, and showed him to his seat around the big conference table before going to his own seat. While his consortium was hosting this emergency meeting of the Spacers League Council due to Ceres being the nearest common destination for their group, Janet Robeson was chairing the meeting as the current head of the League. Also present due to the nature of the meeting’s main subject was Claudia d’Arcy, the President of the Earth’s Northern Alliance, a strong ally of the Spacers League. Janet Robeson then opened the meeting with a smile and a nod from the head.
‘’Thank you all for coming on such short notice, ladies and gentlemen. A special thanks to you for coming, President d’Arcy. I realize how busy you are due to the continuing hostilities between your Northern Alliance and the Southern Federation. I also want to present my excuses to you all for providing you with only the most minimal information about that alien ship found on Eris. However, that information was at first very scanty and had the potential to start public disturbances and possibly panic if leaked in the open. Now that we are here together to discuss this in private, I can inform you that the KOSTROMA was able to obtain more information about that alien ship. In fact, it received a video message from the alien ship two days ago that explained a lot of things, then started an ongoing exchange of information and data with that ship. I will first show you that initial alien video message, then will brief you on what happened during the last two days.’’
The showing of the initial alien video took about nine minutes and left the participants to the meeting, save Janet Robeson, seriously shaken. Charles Watts, the governor of Mars, spoke somberly at the end, looking around the table.
‘’After seeing this, I believe that those Koorivars deserve our help and that we should do our utmost to assist them in finding a new home. Our main topic of discussion should thus not be about whether to help them, but rather how to help them.’’
‘’I fully agree with you, Charles,’’ replied Janet Robeson, ‘’but you should listen to a few new information before we start discussing this seriously. That data exchange between the VEON SHOURIA and the KOSTROMA, apart from helping to build a translation software, has also revealed some very relevant information. First, that alien ship left Shouria with a total of 22,134 Koorivars in cryogenic sleep, with a computer in charge of the ship. Second, it left Shouria in the year 1959 of our calendar and traveled for 301 years before arriving in our Solar System. It thus traveled at an average speed of 7.3 percent of the speed of light, or close to 22,000 kilometers per second, a rather impressive performance for a rocket ship. The VEON SHOURIA was by then under the control of a secondary, low performance computer that had been built for maximum long term reliability while the main computer was in sleep mode inside a heavily protected anti-radiation vault. That secondary computer however still failed partly and, unable to fulfill the last part of its program, effected an emergency landing on the first celestial body it encountered, in this case Eris. Its rocket exhaust melted the surface ice of Eris on landing and it buried itself deep in the ice. That secondary computer then compounded its final failure by not awakening its designated first contact crew, contrary to its initial directives. Only the visit of the KOSTROMA’s exploration team, by triggering an alarm, initiated the awakening of that first contact team. Since then, and after receiving the first video message from the VEON SHOURIA, the construction crew embarked on the KOSTROMA has been busy melting and pumping away the methane ice covering the alien ship, at the request of the Koorivars.’’
Jacobus Stein, a metallurgist engineer and the CEO of the Pallas Mining Industries, a major industrial player in the Spacers League, was the first to ask a question.
‘’Has the crew of the KOSTROMA have yet a face to face meeting with one or more of those aliens, Janet?’’
‘’No, not yet! Captain Forster wants to wait to be invited in before returning to the Koorivar ship. She is also waiting for a translation software to be ready, to facilitate any future exchange.’’
‘’And what do we know exactly of the biology of those Koorivars?’’ Asked Nadia Suslov, the CEO of the Sverdlovsk Group, based on Hygiea. ‘’Is there any possibility of mutual contamination or transmission of diseases? The spreading of an alien virus or microbe in our space habitats could be catastrophic to all of us. In fact, has Captain Forster followed biological hazard protocols when visiting that ship?’’
‘’She did!’’ Answered at once Janet Robeson. She could not blame the fiery blonde for asking that, as it was a legitimate question about a very possible threat. ‘’All those that entered the Koorivar ship kept their spacesuits sealed and went through decontamination on returning to the KOSTROMA. As for the possibility of biological contamination, the main computers of the VEON SHOURIA and of the KOSTROMA have exchanged a mass of biomedical data, including cell structures, tissue and blood composition, body micro-organisms and even food compatibility. While the Koorivars turned out to be purely vegetarians and herbivores and don’t eat meat, their biological differences with us have been assessed to render mutual contamination unlikely. We will however have to wait for actual testing of tissue and organism samples before we could give a more definitive verdict on that.’’
‘’What about the food the Koorivars eat normally?’’ Asked Claudia d’Arcy. ‘’Could they assimilate our own vegetarian products and grains without danger of poisoning?’’
‘’Again, we will have to wait for actual sample testing before we have a definite answer on that. However, preliminary data about the chemical structure and composition of the main staples of the Koorivar show them to be fairly close to a number of our grains, fruits and vegetables. If we ever give assistance and shelter to all these Koorivars, I then believe that the best way to take care of that problem will be to build for them special hydroponic gardens, planting in them seeds they brought with them.’’
‘’Hum, that would imply that we would give them some land space or space habitat volume, so that they could live decently. Twenty-two thousand Koorivars is still a manageable number, but selecting a location for them could be contentious, especially if they intend to reproduce quickly and expand their population.’’
‘’Well, I believe that this last point is precisely the one on which we will have to work the hardest to arrive at a consensus.’’ Said soberly Janet Robeson. ‘’Is any of you ready to receive, house and support those alien refugees, as well as giving them adequate living and development space?’’
Janet was not surprised to see the men and women around the table look at each other with indecision, clearly reluctant to volunteer their own resources. She however understood too well their hesitations: Humanity had just come out of a costly war two years ago that had left deep scars in the psyche of their populations. Also, the Earth was still as overpopulated as before and the various Spacer worlds were still scrambling to build more space habitats, mostly under the ice surfaces of various moons and giant asteroids, for their growing populations and for the flow of prospective immigrants wanting to escape the pollution and overpopulation of Earth. Claudia d’Arcy finally asked a question to Janet.
‘’What kind of environmental conditions did the Koorivars live under on their planet Shouria? Was it a cold, hot or temperate world? Did it have oceans?’’
‘’We are lucky in that the KOSTROMA got that information during its data exchange with the VEON SHOURIA, President d’Arcy. To sum it up, the gravity on Shouria was 1.3 gravities, the atmospheric pressure at sea level was 1,156 millibars, the average annual temperature at the terminator turned around 21 degrees Celsius, falling to sixteen degrees Celsius on the dark side and rising to maximums around 29 degrees Celsius at the equator, facing its sun. It had both salt water oceans and dry continents covered with vegetation. While the atmosphere was thicker and heavier than that of Earth, it also had a higher oxygen content, on top of containing quite a lot of helium, radon and other rare gases.’’
‘’So,’’ said pensively d’Arcy, ‘’high altitude locations on Earth would definitely harm those Koorivars, while tropical and desertic climates would be quite uncomfortable for them.’’
‘’Correct! The scientists on the KOSTROMA deemed that a temperate continental climate, allied to a low-lying, forested land, would be the most appropriate type of home for them. That or a specially adapted space habitat.’’
That attracted a frown on the face of Karl Langemann, CEO of the Vesta Consortium, one of the biggest builder of space habitat components.
‘’To produce enough prefabricated space habitats to house over 22,000 persons would take months, if not close to a year. That does not count the time needed to transport them and bury them in selected locations on an ice moon, nor the time to produce all the industrial and hydroponic equipment that would go into them.’’
As the group pondered the last arguments, Claudia d’Arcy seemed to take a decision and spoke up.
‘’Let me time to study this problem. I can’t promise anything right now, but I may have a possibility in mind. In the meantime, I believe that we should worry about something else: the possible reactions of Earth citizens to alien neighbors. You all know as well as me how easily some demagogue preachers and hatemongers can manipulate crowds if they raise the specter of some kind of alien threat.’’
‘’You are unfortunately too right about that, President d’Arcy.’’ Replied Janet Robeson on a disillusioned tone. ‘’I remember what happened a century ago, when local micro-organisms and primitive aquatic creatures were found to populate the underground oceans of Europa, Callisto and Enceladus. Many tried then to have the Jupiter and Saturn systems quarantined indefinitely, to supposedly protect Earth from ‘space contamination’. It took some endless argumentation and months to calm the public fears raised by a few doomsayers.’’
‘’Yes, I also remember that.’’ Said the governor of the Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto systems, Juan Perez. ‘’It will be even worse if we settle these Koorivars on Earth. However, I strongly believe that they need to be settled on Earth, for psychological reasons.’’
‘’I think so as well.’’ Said Claudia d’Arcy. ‘’Besides, it will be much easier to find space for them somewhere on Earth than to build new space habitats. Switching to another problem concerning the Koorivars: even if we settle them somewhere, how do we make them productive, inclusive citizens of our society?’’
‘’I’m afraid that this problem will be better studied by an army of economists and sociologists.’’ Replied Janet Robeson. ‘’The KOSTROMA will not come back from its expedition for at least another six months, so we will have ample time to discuss those various problems and find solutions. For the moment, I suggest that we let Captain Forster and her team of scientists free to study the Koorivars and give us more information on them.’’