The Abyss of Time

Chapter Sixteen

     "Well, I think it might be a good thing," said Jack later that day.

     Miller had gone to visit his son in his own apartment, to see how his family was coping with events. Tensy, Jack's wife, was pouring him a cup of tea while their children, six year old Maddie and four year old Philip, were playing a computer game on the other side of the room.

     "A good thing?" he said as he accepted the steaming cup. "A planet where literally everything will be trying to kill us?"

     "Yes," said Jack, "because that's where the cyborgs have gone. With any luck they've been eaten already."

     "They'd spit them out after one bite," said Tensy with feeling as she poured herself a cup.

     "Besides, things may not be that bad," Jack continued. "That's a dying world, right?"

     "That's what Felgin says," Miller replied. "Getting hotter and slowly losing its water. It's probably still got millions of years yet, though."

     "That's not what I meant," said Jack. "Life can only exist within what used to be the Arctic circle. Right? That's only, what? About four percent of the Earth's surface? Something like that anyway."

     "There may be life within the Antarctic circle too," Miller pointed out.

     "Maybe, but if so it's isolated from the Arctic circle by twenty thousand kilometres of lifeless, burning rock. We can ignore it for all practical purposes. It seems to be a universal rule that living organisms are limited in size by the size of the territory they inhabit. Large continents are inhabited by large animals. Small islands are inhabited by small animals. I'd be willing to bet there'll be nothing bigger than a mouse down there."

     "It's the microbes that Felgin's scared of," said Miller. "He says we'd be nothing but agar dishes to the germs on that planet. Just food served up in a bowl."

     "Maybe," said Jack, "but if that was an airless world we'd have to wear spacesuits to go outside anyway. You said the air was unbreathable. No oxygen."

     "How can there be animals if there's no oxygen?" asked Tensy.

     "If plants can grow without carbon dioxide, maybe animals can breathe without oxygen," said Miller. "And a hostile biosphere is way worse than vacuum. Vacuum isn't hungry. Isn't constantly trying to find a way to burrow its way in."

     Jack nodded. "Which means the cyborgs are very likely dead, right? We know what to expect. They didn't. They just went cruising down there thinking it was an alien world whose life couldn't harm them. They're soldiers, not scientists."

     "We assume they're alive and out to get us until we know for certain they're not," said Miller. He took a sip of his drink.

     "Of course, of course," his son replied, nodding vigorously. "I'm just saying. The news that that's Earth down there is the best news I've had since we left the moon." He looked around at his two children, shouting loudly as two sports cars raced each other on the computer screen. "Play quietly back there, children." They ignored him.

     "We have to protect them," he said to his father seriously. "Ever since I found out about the cyborgs I've been terrified out of my mind. Terrified of what they'd do to my kids if they got their hands on them. Turned into half machines. Their thoughts, values and beliefs warped into something inhuman. And what they'd do to Tensy..." He reached out and took his wife's hand, who squeezed back while staring solemnly at him.

     "We'll assume the cyborgs are alive ahd waiting for us," Miller assured him. "We'll assume the planet is full of cthulhu terrors and that the slightest contact with the biosphere will kill us. We'll take every precaution we can think of. We'll probably build our city underground, cut off all contact with the surface. We'll survive. More than that, we'll thrive down there. We'll make sure of it." He looked over at the children, who'd abandoned the computer game and were now looking through picture books. "For them."