When mid morning came, Andrew was finally forced by fatigue to get some sleep. He returned to his bed, which was large, cold and empty without Susan in it, and dropped off almost immediately.
When he awoke as evening was falling, he emerged from his room to find the door to the children's bedroom closed with the sound of heavy snoring coming from within. He crept quietly past, did what he had to do in the bathroom and got dressed. Then he went down to the lower level to see what progress had been made in the chase after Reginald Fox.
Ivan Kartoshka was alone in the cockpit and Andrew sat in the co-pilot's chair beside him. "Where are we?" he asked.
"Europa Terra," the other man replied. "We crossed Sinus Manches, what used to be called the North Sea, while you were asleep. It was uneventful. We've closed to within fifty klicks of Fox but he's now driving forward at full speed, still heading due east, so that we're unable to make any headway on him."
"What's east of here that he could possibly be heading for?" asked Andrew in confusion. He called up a map of what had been Europe to see what lay ahead in that direction. "Denmark. Baltica Planitia. Siberia. Nothing but the same hills and glaciers. Maybe his plan is to just keep driving, stay ahead of us, until we're past the Malina return window. All the dysprosium in the world won't do us any good without a gravity assist from Malina."
"Philip Badger told us that most of their food is missing from the dig site," said Kartoshka. "They were running low, waiting for a resupply, but even so they estimate that he has enough food to last him for three months. Longer if he rations it."
"That's not long enough," said Andrew. "If he holds out as long as he can, drives until he's almost dead from hunger, we'll still catch him in plenty of time to make the Malina gravity assist. And that's without the other rovers that will be setting out from the city. Give it a few weeks and we'll have him cornered no matter where in the world he runs to."
The Constable nodded. "If it were you in that rover, what would you do to keep the dysprosium permanently out of our hands?"
Andrew thought about it. "Maybe there's a crevasse somewhere that he intends to drop it into. He might have spotted something on the new terrain maps."
"If he were heading west, out over Atlantica Planitia, maybe," the Constable replied. "They reckon there's still liquid water deep under the ice. Kept liquid by the Earth's inner warmth. If he found a way to dig through the ice he could drop the dysprosium in and we'd never get it back. The way he's going now, though... Nothing but land for five thousand kilometres."
"Perhaps he intends to turn north after a while," mused Andrew. "To where there's liquid water under Barenta Planitia."
"Then he'd have gone in that direction from the beginning. We were wondering whether he intends to turn south, once he's far enough away from the city."
"Why? What's south?" Andrew looked at the map. "Alpes Montes. Mediterrania Planitia. Africa Terra." He shook his head in confusion. "I got nothing," he admitted.
"Well then, all we can do is keep on his tail and hope to catch up with him. As you said, there are other rover's heading out from New London. Some heading north east, some going south east, to try to cut him off if he turns either north or south. Sooner or later we'll get him."
"You're probably right," Andrew replied.
"That's assuming, of course, that we want to catch him," the Constable replied, watching him carefully.
"Are you having doubts?" asked Andrew, suddenly wary.
"Cheval says that you are. That you're afraid that the second Mars colony might fail."
"I just think that it's a hell of a gamble, that's all. I mean, we're pretty well off right here on Earth, right?"
"Well off?"
"I mean, we're surviving, and not just surviving. We're thriving. We have a massive industrial base that can manufacture anything we want. Rovers, entire new cities when we want them. Even spaceships."
"What good are spaceships if there's nowhere for us to go? If this planet were to be magically transported back to the inner solar system we could send missions of exploration to anywhere inside the orbit of Jupiter. Even further if we didn't mind spending time in hibernation, but out here... Even with a gravity assist from Malina we're a hundred years from anywhere. Once we're past Malina we'll be two hundred years from anywhere. Even with hibernation, no-one would survive a journey that long, unless some breakthrough is made in hibernation technology, which seems unlikely. The eggheads seem to think that there are fundamental limits on how long a human being can be kept asleep. Limits that can never be broken. If that's the case, then what good will spaceships be to us?"
"New propulsion technologies..." Andrew began.
"Pushing a spaceship requires energy. If we stay here, on Earth, the planet's geothermal energy is all the energy we'll ever have."
"We don't know that. They were on the verge of solving fusion when The Freeze happened. If we could finally solve fusion..."
"There were ten million scientists in the world before The Freeze. Now there are less than a hundred, and that's spread across all disciplines. Biology, chemistry, materials science... The people who were trying to solve fusion before The Freeze had been studying the subject all their lives and had been trained by people who had also been studying the subject all their lives. Even with all the records they left behind, essential knowledge has been lost."
"Then we'll start again from scratch," said Andrew. "As our population grows, there will be more scientists."
"There can never be as many as there were before The Freeze," the Constable countered. "They say that there will never be more than about a hundred million humans on this world. There can't be more than that. We just won't have the resources to support them."
"That just means that it'll take longer. Maybe it'll take us a thousand years to solve fusion. So what? When we finally do solve it we'll have all the energy we want. Enough to send spaceships back to the inner solar system in just a few years even though we're five times as far from the sun as we are now."
Kartoshka shook his head. "It doesn't work that way," he said. "The days when a single genius working alone in a lab can change the world are long gone. These days, science and technology grow from a scientific community of millions. There's a kind of, of..." He paused as he searched for the right words. "A critical size that a scientific community has to reach before it can start making real breakthroughs. A smaller community just can't make the same kind of progress no matter how long they try."
"Says who?"
"You've only got to look at the history of science. Throughout the twentieth and twenty first centuries science and technology grew at an exponential rate. That's not just because each generation built on what the previous generation had achieved. That was part of it, but not all. The real reason was the sheer size of the scientific community. All the scientists in the world become a kind of a single brain. The larger it is, the smarter it is. I'm afraid that, if we stay on Earth, the limits there will have to be on our population means that there will never be any more real scientific innovations. No fusion, no anti-gravity, no faster than light space travel."
"Well, do we need any more scientific breakthroughs?" asked Andrew. "We've already got all the science we need to survive. Life for us today is pretty good. Everyone has enough to eat, everyone has somewhere warm and safe to sleep. Compare that to how the world was before The Freeze."
"So why risk a hundred year space voyage back to Mars?" said the Constable, nodding to himself as if beginning to be swayed by the other man's words. "Think of all the things that could go wrong. And if the second Mars colony fails, that's it. Curtains for the whole human race."
Andrew nodded. "The thing is, I can see both sides of the issue. Yes, if we stay here we and our descendants can have a good life for as long as our sources of energy hold out. We have nuclear fission and geothermal energy to last for millions of years. Now that there's no biosphere to protect we don't have to worry about poisoning the environment. We can create all the industry we want, all the pollution we want, with no consequences."
"So what's the other side of the issue?"
Andrew sighed. "Mankind used to dream of colonising other planets. Of spreading across the galaxy. Even if we solve fusion, it would take the power of the sun to cross the gulf of interstellar space. Gigantic lasers, powered by the sun, driving solar sails to a significant fraction of the speed of light. Without the sun, those dreams are purest fantasy." He looked across the cockpit at the other man. "Did you ever stand on the surface and look up at the stars?"
"Many times," Kartoshka replied.
"The Milky Way. Stretching across the sky. Billions of stars, most of them with planets. Imagine humans living on all of them. Spending centuries gradually making them habitable. Those that can't be made habitable being used as raw materials to make space habitats hundreds of miles across. Imagine a vast civilisation of trillions upon trillions of human beings spread across millions of worlds, all evolving separately, all becoming something different, unique. Societies and civilisations that we can't even imagine today."
He took a deep breath. "Now imagine all of humanity trapped on just one planet. Our population limited, our dreams and ambitions stunted, stifled. Imagine looking up at the stars in the sky and knowing that they will always be out of reach. And no matter how many millions of years the geothermal energy lasts, eventually it will run out. No matter what we achieve here on Earth, it will be destined to come to nothing when the Earth's core finally begins to cool."
"Maybe," the Constable replied. "But we would still have those millions of years. If we go back to Mars and the second colony fails we will have thrown those millions of years away. Millions of years trapped on Earth would be preferable to a few short years on Mars as all the closed systems gradually fail one by one. Our children and grandchildren might curse us for throwing away the future they might have had."
Andrew nodded. "I think about it over and over. Sometimes I feel myself on one side of the issue, other times on the other. Maybe it's best that the decision is being made for us, because I'd never be able to make it on my own."
"But what right does the Council have to decide our future for us?" asked the Constable. "We should all have been consulted. There should have been a referendum."
"I'm sure there would have been if there'd been more time," said Andrew. "Malina gave us a tight deadline, though. If we're going back to the inner solar system we have to do it now, before the Earth is too far past Malina. They had no choice but to start building the spaceships right away."
"But now that the construction of the ships is well underway, we could have the referendum now," said Kartoshka. "Let all the people decide. And if they decide that they do want to risk going to Mars then those of us with doubts will accept the fact and go along with it. I would have no problem accepting a democratic decision made jointly by everyone. What I don't like is when a small group of elitist take the decision into their own hands, thinking they know better than anyone else."
"Maybe they do know better than anyone else," said Andrew. "Maybe they have access to information that we don't."
"Then that information should be made accessible to everyone, so we can make an informed decision. What right do they have to keep us in the dark?"
Andrew said nothing, suddenly feeling uncomfortable with the way the conversation was going. Kartoshka had started out defending the decision to go to Mars but suddenly he seemed to be opposed to it. Had he really been convinced by Andrew's arguments?
"Well?" prompted the Constable. "What right do they have?"
"Maybe the important thing is that someone made a decision," said Andrew. "It would have been so easy for them to dither and obfuscate. Delay and delay until the opportunity had been lost forever."
"But what if it's the wrong decision?" said Kartoshka, looking at him carefully.
"It's always impossible to know whether you were right to gamble until you see how the dice land."
"Maybe the only reasonable course of action is not to gamble," said the Constable. "That's what The Return would be, after all. Gambling the entire future of the human race."
Andrew nodded. "If we win, we get the Galaxy one day," he said, "but if we lose we lose everything. The greatest gamble of all time."
"Some people might think that Reginald Fox was right to do what he did," said Kartoshka in a soft voice, one eye looking back at the entrance to the cockpit as if to make sure there was no-one standing there. "If you think the Council is wrong to gamble with the future of humanity, maybe taking action to prevent it is an act of great moral courage."
"Some people might think that, perhaps," Andrew admitted.
"Would you have the courage to take that kind of action if you thought it was necessary?"
"Maybe it's not a question of courage but trust," Andrew replied. "To have faith that the Council known what it's doing. That it's weighed all the pros and cons and has reached what they sincerely believe is the right decision. And if that's the case, then we can maximise our chances of success by giving it our best effort. If everyone gets behind The Return, does their utmost to try to make it succeed, then maybe it will succeed. Maybe the thing that will kill us is if we start fighting among ourselves as everyone tries to impose their will on everyone else."
Kartoshka studied his face carefully. For a moment a look of disappointment seemed to appear on it, but it was gone before Andrew could be sure. Then the Constable nodded. "Maybe you're right," he said. "And it's not as if anything we do will make a difference anyway. If we fail to catch Fox, one of the other rovers will. The Return is going to take place and there's nothing you and I can do to prevent it."
"Even if we wanted to," said Andrew.
"Right."
After that, the two men sat in silence for a while as the rover continued to trundle across the frozen face of the planet. Then they began to talk about football.