Read Online Interstellar: The Official Movie Novelization by Greg Keyes - Free Book Online
Authors: Greg Keyes
Ads: Link
imagine what they were, though, or what their uses might be. Some almost looked like buildings, but jutting out at weird angles that would make them unusable.
Suddenly his perspective shifted, and dizzyingly. What if the structures actually were buildings? Houses, schools, other facilities. At the very thought, their purposes became clear. And yet, they were built along the curve, horizontal to the ground, useless…
On Earth , he thought. They’d be useless here on Earth. With a planetary gravity. But in space, with the vast cylinder spinning along its axis, “down” would be relative. The entire inner surface of the cylinder would become the ground on which folks would walk.
“This whole facility,” he began, still not quite believing what he was saying, “it’s a vehicle? A space station?”
“Both,” Professor Brand said. “We’ve been working on it—and others like it—for twenty-five years. Plan A.”
Cooper ran his gaze around the inside-out world that was still a work in progress. He’d seen designs for things like this, but they were meant to be built in space, not beneath the surface of a planet.
“How does it get off the Earth?” he asked. It seemed undoable. Even if there were thrusters powerful enough to push it into orbit, the entire structure would break up under the acceleration. No object so large could handle the force necessary to escape Earth’s pull.
“Those first gravitational anomalies changed everything,” Professor Brand explained. “Suddenly we knew that harnessing gravity was real. So I started working on the theory—and we started building this station.”
Cooper heard something in the professor’s tone.
“But you haven’t solved it yet,” he guessed, and the older man nodded grimly.
“That’s why there’s a plan B,” Dr. Brand said, her dark eyes studying him. Weighing him up, maybe? Trying to decide if he was worthy?
She motioned, and led Cooper to a nearby lab full of devices built for purposes he couldn’t even guess. They came to a stop in front of a vault made of glass and steel. It housed a series of movable shelves fronted by circular white seals. Dr. Brand grasped a handle on one and turned. The seal opened and she pulled out a cylindrical steel unit housing a multitude of glass vials.
Condensation sighed out from the now empty cavity, like a breath on a cold day.
“The problem is gravity,” she said. “How to get a viable amount of human life off this planet. This is one way. Plan B—a population bomb. Almost five thousand fertilized eggs, preserved in containers weighing in at under nine hundred kilos.”
Five thousand children , he thought. Five thousand, in this little vault, waiting to be brought into the world.
“How could you raise them?” Cooper asked.
“With equipment on board, we incubate the first ten,” Brand replied, as if she was talking about planting corn. “After that, with surrogacy, the growth becomes exponential. Within thirty years, we might have a colony of hundreds. The real difficulty of colonization is genetic diversity.” She pointed to the glass vials enclosed by the device. “This takes care of that.”
Cooper looked at the thing, an uncomfortable feeling growing in the back of his mind. Genetic diversity, sure—five thousand fertilized eggs could be selected to represent the entire range of human variation. Efficient, maybe, but it was clinical, cold. And it presented one huge problem.
“So we just give up on people here?” he asked.
“That’s why plan A’s a lot more fun,” Dr. Brand said.
Cooper thought about the huge Earthbound station. How much had it cost? What a massive gamble—every dime spent here was a dime not being spent trying to beat the blight, to feed the people of the planet. Was the professor really that sure he could pull this out of his hat? He seemed to have convinced all of the right people that he could.
Maybe the professor is right , he mused. He knows a helluva lot more
Suddenly his perspective shifted, and dizzyingly. What if the structures actually were buildings? Houses, schools, other facilities. At the very thought, their purposes became clear. And yet, they were built along the curve, horizontal to the ground, useless…
On Earth , he thought. They’d be useless here on Earth. With a planetary gravity. But in space, with the vast cylinder spinning along its axis, “down” would be relative. The entire inner surface of the cylinder would become the ground on which folks would walk.
“This whole facility,” he began, still not quite believing what he was saying, “it’s a vehicle? A space station?”
“Both,” Professor Brand said. “We’ve been working on it—and others like it—for twenty-five years. Plan A.”
Cooper ran his gaze around the inside-out world that was still a work in progress. He’d seen designs for things like this, but they were meant to be built in space, not beneath the surface of a planet.
“How does it get off the Earth?” he asked. It seemed undoable. Even if there were thrusters powerful enough to push it into orbit, the entire structure would break up under the acceleration. No object so large could handle the force necessary to escape Earth’s pull.
“Those first gravitational anomalies changed everything,” Professor Brand explained. “Suddenly we knew that harnessing gravity was real. So I started working on the theory—and we started building this station.”
Cooper heard something in the professor’s tone.
“But you haven’t solved it yet,” he guessed, and the older man nodded grimly.
“That’s why there’s a plan B,” Dr. Brand said, her dark eyes studying him. Weighing him up, maybe? Trying to decide if he was worthy?
She motioned, and led Cooper to a nearby lab full of devices built for purposes he couldn’t even guess. They came to a stop in front of a vault made of glass and steel. It housed a series of movable shelves fronted by circular white seals. Dr. Brand grasped a handle on one and turned. The seal opened and she pulled out a cylindrical steel unit housing a multitude of glass vials.
Condensation sighed out from the now empty cavity, like a breath on a cold day.
“The problem is gravity,” she said. “How to get a viable amount of human life off this planet. This is one way. Plan B—a population bomb. Almost five thousand fertilized eggs, preserved in containers weighing in at under nine hundred kilos.”
Five thousand children , he thought. Five thousand, in this little vault, waiting to be brought into the world.
“How could you raise them?” Cooper asked.
“With equipment on board, we incubate the first ten,” Brand replied, as if she was talking about planting corn. “After that, with surrogacy, the growth becomes exponential. Within thirty years, we might have a colony of hundreds. The real difficulty of colonization is genetic diversity.” She pointed to the glass vials enclosed by the device. “This takes care of that.”
Cooper looked at the thing, an uncomfortable feeling growing in the back of his mind. Genetic diversity, sure—five thousand fertilized eggs could be selected to represent the entire range of human variation. Efficient, maybe, but it was clinical, cold. And it presented one huge problem.
“So we just give up on people here?” he asked.
“That’s why plan A’s a lot more fun,” Dr. Brand said.
Cooper thought about the huge Earthbound station. How much had it cost? What a massive gamble—every dime spent here was a dime not being spent trying to beat the blight, to feed the people of the planet. Was the professor really that sure he could pull this out of his hat? He seemed to have convinced all of the right people that he could.
Maybe the professor is right , he mused. He knows a helluva lot more
Similar Books
