Origin. Stephen Baxter

you try again.’

      ‘But even if you make it to the Moon, what will you find? You should know I’ve had several briefings in preparation for this meeting. One of them was with Dr Julia Corneille, from the Department of Anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History. An old college friend, as it happens.’

      ‘Anthropology?’

      ‘Actually Julia’s specialty is palaeoanthropology. Extinct homs, the lineage of human descent. You see the relevance.’

      ‘Homs?’

      ‘Hominids.’ Della smiled. ‘Sorry. Field slang. You can tell I spent some time with Julia … She told me something of her life, her work in the field. Mostly out in the desert heartlands of Kenya.’

      ‘Looking for fossils,’ Malenfant said.

      ‘Looking for fossils. People don’t leave many fossils, Malenfant. And they don’t just lie around. It took Julia years before she learned to pick them out, tiny specks against the soil. It’s a tough place to work, harsh, terribly dry, a place where all the bushes have thorns on them … Fascinating story.’ She picked up the scrap of bone from her desk. ‘This was the first significant find Julia made. She told me she was engaged on another dig. She was walking one day along the bed of a dried-out river, when she happened to glance down … Well. It is a fragment of skull. A trace of a woman, of a species called Homo erectus. The Erectus were an intermediate form of human. They arose perhaps two million years ago, and became extinct a quarter-million years ago. They had bodies close to modern humans, but smaller brains – perhaps twice the size of chimps’. But they were phenomenally successful. They migrated out of Africa and covered the Old World, reaching as far as Java.’

      Malenfant said dryly, ‘Fascinating, ma’am. And the significance –’

      ‘The significance is that the homs who rained out of the sky, on the day you lost your wife, Malenfant, appear to have been Homo erectus. Or a very similar type.’

      There was a brief silence.

      ‘But if Erectus died out two hundred and fifty thousand years ago, what is he doing falling out of the sky?’

      ‘That is what you must find out, Malenfant, if your mission is approved. Think of it. What if there is a link between the homs of the Wheel and ancestral Erectus? Well, how can that be? What does it tell us of human evolution?’ Della fingered her skull fragment longingly. ‘You know, we have spent billions seeking the aliens in the sky. But we were looking in the wrong place. The aliens aren’t separated from us by distance, but by time. Here –’ she said, holding out the bit of bone ‘– here is the alien, right here, calling to us from the past. But we have to infer everything about our ancestors from isolated bits of bone – the ancient homs’ appearance, gait, behaviour, social structure, language, culture, tool-making ability – everything we know, or we think we know about them. We can’t even tell how many species there were, let alone how they lived, how they felt. You, on the other hand, might be able to view them directly.’ She smiled. ‘Even ask them. Think what it would mean.’

      Malenfant began to see the pattern of the meeting. In her odd mix of hard-nosed scepticism at his mission plans, and wide-eyed wonder at what he might find up there, Della was groping her way towards a decision. His best tactic was surely to play straight.

      Nemoto had been listening coldly. She leaned forward. ‘Madam Vice-President. You want this Dr Corneille to have a seat on the mission.’

      Ah, Malenfant thought. Now we cut to the horse-trading.

      Della sat back in her rocker, hands settling over her belly. ‘Well, they sent geologists to the Moon on Apollo.’

      ‘One geologist,’ said Malenfant. ‘Only after years of infighting. And Jack Schmitt was trained up for the job; he made sure he was, in fact. As far as I know there are no palaeoanthropologists in the Astronaut Office.’

      ‘Would there be room for a passenger?’

      Malenfant shook his head. ‘You’ve seen our schematics.’

      Della tapped her desk, and brought up computer-graphic images of booster rockets and spaceplanes. ‘You are proposing to build a booster from Space Shuttle components.’

      ‘Our Saturn V replacement, yes.’

      ‘And you will glide down into the Red Moon’s atmosphere in a – what is it?’

      ‘An X-38. It is a lifting body, the crew evacuation vehicle used on the Space Station. We will fit it out to keep us alive for the three-day trip. On the surface we will rendezvous with a package of small jets and boosters for the return journey, sent up separately. The whole mission design is based around a two-person crew. Madam Vice-President, we just couldn’t cram in anybody else.’

      ‘Not on the way out,’ Della said evenly. ‘Two out, three back. Isn’t that your slogan, Malenfant?’

      ‘That’s the whole idea, ma’am. And those outbound two have to be astronauts. The best scientist in the world will be no use on the Red Moon dead.’

      ‘The same argument was used to keep scientists off Apollo,’ Della said.

      ‘But it is still valid.’

      Nemoto said coldly, ‘The reality is that I must fly this mission because the Japanese funding depends on it. And Malenfant must fly the mission –’

      ‘Because the American public longs for him to go,’ Della sighed. ‘You’re right, of course. If this mission is approved, then it will be you two sorry jerks who fly it.’

      If. Malenfant allowed himself a flicker of hope.

      Nemoto seemed to be growing agitated. ‘Madam Vice-President, we must do this. If I may –’ She leaned forward and unrolled her softscreen on Della’s desktop.

      Della watched her blankly. Malenfant had no idea where this was leading.

      ‘There is evidence that similar events have touched human history before, evidence buried deep in our history and myths. Consider the story of Ezekiel, from the Old Testament: And when the living creatures went, the wheels went by them: and when the living creatures were lifted up from the Earth, the wheels were lifted up. Or consider a tale from the ancient Persian Gulf, about an animal endowed with reason called Oannes, who used to converse with men but took no food … and he gave them an insight into letters and sciences and every kind of art –’

      Shit, Malenfant thought.

      Della was keeping her face straight. ‘So is this your justification for a billion-dollar space mission? UFOs from the Bible?’

      Nemoto said, ‘My point is that the irruption of the Red Moon is the greatest event in modern human history. It will surely shape our future – as it has our past. The emergence of the primitive hominids from Malenfant’s portal tells us that. This one event is the pivot on which history turns.’

      ‘I feel I have enough on my plate without assuming responsibility for all human history.’

      Nemoto subsided, angry, baffled.

      Della said bluntly, ‘However I do need to know why you are trying to kill yourselves.’

      Malenfant bridled. ‘The mission profile –’

      ‘– is a death-trap. Come on, Malenfant; I’ve studied space missions before.’

      Malenfant sat up straight, Navy style. ‘We don’t have time not to buy the risks on this one, ma’am.’

      ‘You’re both obsessed enough to take those risks. That’s clear enough. Nemoto I think I understand.’

      ‘You do?’

      Della smiled at Nemoto. ‘Forgive me, dear. Malenfant, she may be an enigma to you, but