Phytosphere

  Phytosphere

  Scott Mackay

  When the alien Tarsalans mount a light-blocking sphere around Earth to further their aims of conquest, two scientists race against time to destroy it, even as crops die in the endless night of the phytosphere, and famine and anarchy tighten their hold on civilization. Matters go from bad to worse when Earth’s over-zealous military, seeking to defeat the Tarsalans, inadvertently destroy the phytosphere’s control mechanism, turning it into a train without brakes. One of the scientists fails to destroy the light-blocking sphere. This leaves it up to the remaining scientist. But he is on an isolated moon community without resources or weapons, and must use only his wits and cunning to defeat the twin-brained super-intelligent Tarsalans. Alien-based post-apocalyptic fiction at its best!

  Scott Mackay

  PHYTOSPHERE

  To Katie

  PART ONE

  1

  From his eighth-floor room in the Nectaris Buena Vista Hotel and Gambling Casino, Gerry Thorndike watched the shroud form over Earth. It moved with the slowness of a minute hand sweeping around a clock. He tried to view it as a scientist might, struggled to bring to bear his scientific education, training, and experience, but was hard-pressed to make any substantive observations about the Tarsalan-created phenomenon, knowing he was up here on the Moon, and his wife and children were still down there, on Earth.

  He turned from the unsightly thing, angry that the aliens should resort to such an insidious measure, wondering why after nine years in orbit they should now suddenly decide to change their political approach to the immigration question. He checked his waferscreen notes. If the shroud’s current growth rate remained the same, it would reach North Carolina in less than a day. He thought of Glenda in their house on the outskirts of Raleigh; of his two children, Jake and Hanna; and of how he had been a fool to jeopardize everything he had ever valued with this questionable trip to Nectaris.

  He walked to the pressurized observation deck and looked at the wasteland of gray regolith below, much of it churned with rover tracks and footprints, looking like a beach after a busy Saturday afternoon.

  He pulled out his fone and tried once more—as if coming out onto the observation deck might make a difference—but the computerized voice from AT&T Interlunar told him for the seventh time that service between Earth and the Moon was currently unavailable, that they had technicians working on the problem, and that they hoped to have service restored shortly. Yet how could AT&T Interlunar work on the problem when the communications disruption was yet another pressure tactic on the part of the Tarsalans? In a fit of frustration, he threw his fone against the polycarbonate pressure glass. But fones were hard to break, and after a defeated sigh he picked it up, inspected it, and put it back in his pocket.

  He glanced once more at Earth—and at the green thing that grew over it like a fungus. The unnerving scene came to him slightly warped, the result of the man-made magnetic field around Nectaris that protected its citizens from solar wind and electron-stripped galactic radiation. What could he do? The shroud slithered across the western hemisphere like a garden slug, rippling at the edges, pitted with brown specks, mottled with even darker spots that looked like mildew. He glanced at North Carolina and saw clouds—a June storm whirling up from the Gulf. Was Glenda being smart about it? Was she driving to Raleigh and stocking up on canned goods? Was she purchasing candles, matches, and batteries? Was she maxing out their credit cards, buying time, hunkering down, preparing for the worst?

  Or was she talking over the back fence with Leigh Phelps? He cringed as he thought of Leigh, wondering how his suspicions could have blunted his judgment so badly. Just because the rest of his life was falling apart didn’t necessarily mean his wife was sleeping with the neighbor.

  He placed his hand against the pressure glass, sadly realizing that his blowup about Leigh was just a symptom of a larger problem, a growing malaise in their marriage that seemed to be creeping into his and Glenda’s life the way the Tarsalans were making this bizarre shroud creep around the Earth. He flexed his fingers against the polycarbonate. He wanted to touch Earth, embrace it, save it, stop this sickening green pall from enveloping it. But the shroud persisted, and as he glanced toward the East Coast he saw, for the first time, an opposite edge, and understood that east would meet west, south would meet north; all the various blooms would join up, and darkness would entomb the Earth.

  For several seconds he fought to control his panic. He had failed his family so often in the past, and he didn’t want to fail them now. But no flights in and no flights out—not with this Tarsalan shroud.

  His panic ebbed and he went back to his room. He switched on the TV and watched the news, the Nectaris local broadcast. The news team had some breaking information. Three fresh blooms had formed: one over the Indian Ocean, another over South Africa, and a third above Bermuda.

  Before he could get the details, someone knocked on his door. He walked over and answered, knowing who it was, full of mixed emotions, and not sure how he would react.

  Ian Hamilton stood there. “I don’t know about you, but I’m bar-bound. I’ve been watching the news all morning. It’s depressing the hell out of me.”

  “You know I don’t drink anymore, Ian.”

  “Gerry, drinking is the chief reason people come to the Moon.”

  “I’ll have a cranberry juice.”

  “With vodka.”

  “With ice.”

  Ian shook his head. “You sure have changed.”

  “I can’t go carousing like I used to.”

  “So you’re going to pull a Neil on me?”

  “Actually, I’m going to pull a Gerry.”

  The hotel lounge, Tranquility Base, served drinks to a large, mixed crowd. Gerry and Ian found stools at the bar with a good view of the TV. People negotiated the weak Moon gravity with varying degrees of success, the native Moon workers managing with ease, but the visitors from Earth overstepping themselves, crashing into tables and chairs. Most of the furniture was padded and bolted to the floor.

  Many Earthlings restricted themselves to Velcro paths.

  On TV, the Lunar Broadcasting Corporation played live pictures of Earth taken from the Lunette Surveyor Satellite. The image of the shroud, like a diseased piece of flesh, reminded Gerry of the rot he sometimes found in the deepest corners of his refrigerator. What in God’s name was he going to do? It was real. It was happening. And he was stuck on the Moon, as powerless as could be.

  It left him in a piss-poor mood, and questioning the motive behind Ian’s knock and subsequent invitation to Tranquility Base. Ian ordered drinks, a Jack for himself and a cranberry juice for Gerry. To make matters worse, his old friend ordered a shot of Smirnoff on the side for Gerry, as if he wanted to tempt Gerry any way he could. Conversation between them froze. After a minute Gerry did the repetition-gets-the-message-across thing one more time.

  “I’m not drinking, Ian. These aren’t the good old days anymore.”

  “Is it going to kill you?”

  “It just might.”

  “I know you’re worried, but maybe if you had a drink—”

  “Ian, no. I’ve been sober for two years. I’m not going to blow it now. Especially not with that thing around the Earth.”

  “Then why the hell did you come to the Moon in the first place? Without your wife.” He laughed in the old boisterous way. “Come on. Let’s party.”

  “I don’t need alcohol to party.”

  “Yes, but this is the first time we’ve seen each other in seven years.”

  “I had no idea you were here.”

  “But surely to God it calls for a drink. After all the great drinking times we had?”

  “Ian, as I much as I like you, I regret all those times we
got drunk together. Thanks for the vodka, but I don’t think so.”

  Ian shook his head in a hard-done-by way. “I wish I was rich enough to say no to free booze. I may have to take her off your hands, if you really don’t want her.”

  “Be my guest.”

  Ian considered. “We’ll leave it by your glass for the time being. You might change your mind. If you’re not going to drink…if you want to celebrate our reunion with just a crummy old cranberry juice, and not remember all those good times…”

  “Ian, I want to remember all those good times. But there were some bad times too. Times that hurt Glenda. Times that hurt my kids. It’s going to take me a long time to face up to that, but it starts without drinking an ounce.”

  Ian looked away and sighed, gripping his Jack Daniel’s as if it were the last one he would ever have.

  “The truth is, Gerry… I don’t care if you drink or not. I just want to talk to you. I’ve got something on my mind, and I thought if you had a drink… you’d be a little more receptive. What I’ve been meaning to tell you… ever since you got here, but didn’t have the guts… God, it was crazy seeing you in the civic pool the other night. After seven years! And up here on the Moon. That was really something. And I didn’t want to put a damper on things at that particular moment, so I thought I would wait a couple of days… but I was meaning to ask you… even despite the recent circumstances you told me about… I mean… how good, really, is your financial situation? The reason I ask is that AviOrbit’s reducing my retainer. They do that to pilots who turn fifty in the calendar year… it’s just their policy, and there’s nothing I can do about it, but it still caught me by surprise, even though I knew it was coming, and now… now my own personal budget… I find I’m running a bit short, so I was just wondering… If you can afford a trip to the Moon, you must be doing something right. Especially if you’re staying at the Buena Vista.”

  “Ian, it’s really nice meeting you here, and it was a big surprise… but the only reason I came to the Moon, and didn’t go somewhere else, was because my parents bought the trip for me years ago, when the Buena Vista was having a big promotion. Package-deal vouchers with no time limit. My parents gave me the voucher when I graduated. Neil got one too. Without the voucher, I wouldn’t be here. As for my money… I already told you, North Carolina State let me go six months ago. Glenda and I are hardly making our mortgage payments, Hanna’s asthma medication is killing us, and my severance pay is running out.”

  Ian now looked hangdog. “I just thought if you could afford a trip to the Moon… I didn’t realize you had the voucher.”

  Gerry had a closer look at Ian and could hardly believe his old friend was here. He wore a rawhide jacket with huge shoulder pads and silver-flake detailing. Old Ian Hamilton, the god of good times, the prophet of empty pockets, with his seat-of-his-pants religion. And was he truly surprised that money had finally found its way into the conversation? It was always money with Ian. And with him as well, come to think of it. And now this ridiculous trip to the Moon. He regretted the old package-deal voucher. He wanted to be with his family.

  His anxiety came back. He couldn’t stop thinking of Glenda. He looked at his watch. It was ten-thirty in

  North Carolina. What was she doing? She would be getting ready for bed. Was she thinking about him?

  Or, after his most recent performance, did she even care about him anymore?

  “You’re worried about her, aren’t you?” asked Ian.

  For someone so insensitive, Ian sure could be sensitive at times.

  “All the things we fought about, Ian…. Do you know I actually had the gall to accuse her of fooling around with the neighbor? You see what a ridiculous man I am? And it wasn’t only about the neighbor.

  The finances… the move to Old Hill… never having enough time for each other. And the drinking… it’s still like a nightmare to both of us, even after two years.” Gerry shook his head. “She really took it badly when I blew up about the neighbor. God, I regret it. Now I’m up here, and she’s down there, and I have no way of getting in touch with her. Did you hear anything on TV about AT&T Interlunar getting things up and running again? I don’t understand how they can get things going if the Tarsalans are causing the problem.”

  Ian raised his eyebrows. “I understand Mayor Hulke’s office is getting official communications. Us plebs, though… forget it.”

  “I sure would like to talk to Glenda and get it straightened out. We walked right to the brink, Ian. I told her I was sorry before I came up, and we both thought it was a good idea I use the old voucher so we could have some time apart, but… she had this look in her eyes, like she was making plans—like she just wanted out—and it’s scaring the hell out of me. You don’t know what you have until you’re in danger of losing it.”

  A special report came on the TV. Both men looked up.

  Mayor Malcolm Hulke was making an announcement. The anchorman disappeared, and a shot of the Nectaris Civic Center’s Council Hall came onto the screen. It was a round chamber three times the size of the Buena Vista’s largest meeting room, blasted right into the gray rock of the Moon, the surface laminated with polycarbonate, the space lit by a galaxy of halogen lights. Various council and media members sat in the chamber. Locals and visitors filled half the public gallery.

  Hulke emerged from a doorway to the left. He wore shorts and a T-shirt emblazoned with the latest tourism logo for Nectaris: a crescent moon drinking a piña colada with a big smile on its face, and some dice in the foreground with the dots made to look like craters. Hulke was a slightly overweight young man with a patch of tawny hair combed over his narrow pate, close-set eyes that reminded Gerry of mole eyes, and the oddly smooth complexion of a man who had spent his entire life in the Moon’s weak gravity. He climbed the steps with an ease of motion an Earthman simply wouldn’t have on the Moon, his slender bones the product of Ossimax—the low-grav anti-bone-leaching compound they put in the water here. He stopped at the podium, took a waferscreen from his pocket, unfolded it, then tapped his temple three times to activate his automatic contact lenses.

  The mayor looked at those in the public gallery, then turned to the cameras, to his waferscreen, and at last to the members of the media. “Just before we get started, I want to say I won’t be answering any questions about the alleged Oxygen Production Unit kickbacks, so if you’ve come to dog me with that old horse you might as well go home. I’ve surrendered all appropriate documents to the special investigator’s office, and until he makes an evaluation, I’d appreciate it if you’d just drop it for a while.

  We’ve got real news to talk about tonight, this whole shroud thing around the Earth.”

  The noise in Tranquility Base subsided as people turned to the TV.

  “The Tarsalans unilaterally suspended immigration negotiations a couple weeks ago, and now they’ve gone and put this shroud around the Earth, and who knows when they’re going to take it down?

  Generally, communications are intermittent. We’re getting a few special drops from the United States, messages-in-a-bottle-type things, and we’re doing our best to reply…so it’s not like we can’t talk to them, and find out what’s really going on… because we can, at least on a limited basis. And I see Richard Glamna already has his hand up, but I’m going to ignore you, Richard, because I can tell you’ve been saving up another OPU zinger, and if you go ahead, you’ll just embarrass yourself. So put your hand down, and let’s concentrate on what’s important. Like I say, some of these drops are making it through, so we’re getting the… the gist of things. And I guess the gist of things… how can I put the gist of things?”

  Hulke paused, and his face settled into a slightly comical, questioning, but ultimately benign expression of disbelief, as if he were surprised and even mildly amused by the gist of things.

  “The Tarsalans are telling us…or at least the U.N. is telling us… that our good buddies in the Tarsalan mothership won’t come back to the table until they get th
eir way.” Hulke had to pause again, his shoulders rising, his brow pinching with incredulity, as if he found this notion ridiculous. “The G-15”—and he said this with a kind of ass-kissing reverence—“along with the other developed nations of Earth, have made a final offer: the Kanem Region of Chad, the Arnhem Land Reserve in the Northern Territory of Australia, and the Chattahoochee National Forest in the state of Georgia.” He looked around, his face frozen in a mask of beneficence, as if the offer of these small land packages to the aliens was the best deal anybody could ever hope for, like getting a complimentary night in the presidential suite at the Buena Vista. “Unfortunately, the Tarsalans aren’t playing ball. It really makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”

  Lisa Rand, of the Lunar Broadcasting Corporation, stood up. Why the mayor let her get away with it, and not Richard Glamna, Gerry couldn’t guess. Maybe because she was a lot prettier than Glamna.

  “Mayor, have the Tarsalans made any moves against the Commonwealth of Lunar Colonies, and can we expect a similar shroud to develop around us?”

  The mayor nodded, as if he had been anticipating this question right from the start. “I don’t have any concrete information on that right now, Lisa. But according to our customs records, all Tarsalan visitors to the CLC returned to their mothership three weeks ago, well before their negotiation team said sayonara to Earth. So does this mean they’re planning something for us? I don’t know. At this point I think we should be prepared for anything.”

  The young LBC reporter persisted. “But as far as you know, we’re not looking at a shroud.”

  “The real problem for us right now, Lisa, is this blockade of weaponized satellites the Tarsalans have deployed around the Earth. Earth can’t send us any supplies. So there’s nothing in the way of food coming in. Which means we do have a situation, but a situation revolving mainly around food. We could start to feel the pinch in as little as a few weeks. Bear in mind that the summer is our busiest season.