The Silver Strands of Alpha Crucis-d
Published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, March/April 2016
Every morning and every evening, we stop what we’re doing to watch the silver strands. We try to describe them, to put them into words, but we never come close. They float in the sky, or they dance in a concerted manner, not random, but organized. And they create a sound that resembles wind chimes, if chimes could hum. We feel their undulating resonance in our bones and call it murmuring. The description sounds fitting because when they dance, they behave like a murmuration of starlings. But instead of black–winged creatures, these are silver filaments. Midday when they aren’t dancing, they reach from close to the ground to high into the atmosphere, swaying like a sheer curtain before an open window. Watching them has become our daily ritual.
Every morning, they shimmer a shade of cool pink in the blue dawn. In the evening, they appear golden, reflecting the warmth of the day against a lavender sky. Giving warmth is their service to planet-d. The filaments consist almost entirely of silver metal, an efficient conductor of heat, even the weak radiance from the distant suns of Alpha Crucis. Hanging in the sky at midday, they transmit heat to the planet’s surface, providing it with an atmosphere and liquid water. Watching them, our faces shimmer as though we’re standing near a sunlit lake.
Weeks ago, some of us wondered if they know we observe them and that we enjoy—even envy—their dancing. Our wondering became conviction when they began performing. “Performance” is the word we use to describe the show every morning and every evening. To catch the last of the daylight, they align and fall still until the suns are below the horizon. And then, in the fading light, they perform complex movements and create intricate designs. When we began expressing appreciation and awe, we observed them repeating maneuvers. This surprising and unexplained behavior led us to investigate their formation and composition since some of us still believed them to be simply filaments blown about by wind currents.
We searched and eventually found their source. At low latitudes, near the planet’s equator, lie veins of copper. Where land and ocean meet, beaches sparkle with the rosy color of copper metal and the muted green of verdigris. The rising tides carry silver nitrate, an abundant compound on Alpha Crucis-d. By the time the tides recede, copper metal has done its work, reducing silver ions and growing them into thin filaments of metallic silver and organic polymers. The remaining copper salts turn the tidal pools a deep blue and then flow out to sea with the receding waves. In offshore breezes, the silver filaments dry and take flight over the water like so many shimmering birds, liberated from their nests.
About half of the planet is water, and we wondered when we first arrived why so few storms form in the atmosphere. Then one day we learned the reason. We saw a thunderhead building a few miles out over the water, so we gathered to watch this unusual sight. Lightning illuminated the cloud from within, and bolts streamed from its underside to the water’s surface. And then we witnessed the most remarkable event. Some of the silver strands hanging near the shore in the midday suns moved toward the storm. We know because we could see them reflecting the flashes of lightning until they reached the thunderhead. They entered it, and the lightning stopped. The cloud turned the color of charcoal and dropped rain so heavily that we could no longer see where cloud ended and water began. And then the storm vanished.
Later in the day, we found fine black grains washing up onshore and a black line like seaweed formed along the beach. We took some back to the lab for analysis and found silver oxides and residual copper in a complex like hemocyanins. At this point, some of us insisted that the strands were not simply mineral phenomena in the atmosphere, but were in fact living organisms that acted in community. Not only were they helping to conduct the weak radiance from Alpha Crucis into the lower levels of the atmosphere, but they also conducted and dissipated electrical charges, neutralizing storms. A few of us proposed that the reason might be to prevent atmospheric lightning from generating ozone, which would convert silver metal in the strands to a black silver oxide. Many scoffed at the suggestion since the strands’ behavior would then indicate a deliberate self-sacrifice for the good of the community. They argued that the strands were simply pulled into the atmospheric low of the storm much the same way they danced in the breeze, and the event we witnessed was just a weather phenomenon. We debated the simple chemistry of the strands all afternoon and constructed a clearer picture of the planet’s ecology and the role the strands played in keeping it warm. The majority of us saw the response of the strands as an evolutionary development of a very simple life–form, a hypothesis that lost momentum later in the evening when we witnessed their performance of a eulogy.
As the suns drew low to the horizon, we went out to watch the fading light in the silver strands as we always do. But during this particular evening, the strands went limp and silent for several minutes. The silence resonated stronger than their customary humming. After a few minutes and before the suns dropped below the horizon, we felt a low frequency in our bones, unlike their normal chorus. Some flew out over the water where the thunderhead had been. They appeared to imitate the shape of the cloud and then scattered the way the cloud had dissipated. Others, low near the shore, took flight like they do from their tidal pools. We realized the strands were reenacting the event of the storm and the rising of new strands from birthing pools. Then all of the strands that had gathered rose high into the atmosphere and scattered, leaving nothing but the silent lavender sky of Alpha Crucis-d.
Arguments over what this performance meant began immediately, but we resolved nothing about what we witnessed the day of the storm until a couple of weeks later. We began to notice a fine yellow powder building up on surfaces in the area around our operations. We also saw fewer strands in the sky, but we thought perhaps their presence was somehow seasonal and that they might be back in a few months. Analysis of the powder was simple and convicting: silver carbonate. We were killing the strands.
Our carbon dioxide emissions react with silver to make silver carbonate. Unlike silver nitrate, silver carbonate has low solubility in water and cannot be carried into the tidal pools for participation in the reduction process and the birthing of new strands. Our presence causes a dead–end reaction. We interrupt their life cycle. Silver locked in carbonate is terminal. We realized that either we had to isolate ourselves and prevent all carbon dioxide emissions—which would not be practical long term—or we had to leave.
The meeting to decide our course of action was contentious. Some argued that silver filaments could not possibly be sentient. Others countered that they were alive and so little understood that we should assume intelligence. Alive or not, what became clear during the discussion is that the silver strands are key to the planet’s ecosystem. If they do not perform their service, the planet would soon become a frigid world. We resolved to vote on a course of action in two days’ time, but events sometimes have a way of taking control out of our hands.
On the day before the scheduled vote, two of our lead scientists made an excursion to the low–latitude tidal pools to collect data on the birthing rate. They never returned. We found their bodies and wrecked craft well inland of the coastline. Silver oxides and carbonates clogged the engine intake. On hearing the news, we sat in our conference room in stunned silence. The mechanic maintained that they must have hit a curtain of filaments, for many would be required to cause an engine failure. Some of us wondered if the strands could have deliberately interfered with the engine the way they had deactivated the thunderstorm, sacrificing themselves. Our engineers insisted that the craft’s engine was not a threat, producing only small amounts of carbon dioxide during that one excursion compared with our respiration over the past few weeks. They went on to point out that the amount was even more trivial compared to how much we would emit to leave the planet, at which moment we realized our dilemma.
Our presence is destroying the delicate ecology of the beautiful silver strands, and the damage we would inflict upon leaving will be worse. Beset by impossible questions, we have too little time to find answers. If we stay, how long will the silver strands survive? If we leave, what fraction of the silver will our engines remove from the ecosystem? Will the strands even let us leave? And the final solution was one no one wanted to voice, but it had to be considered: the obvious way to prevent further damage to the strands would be for us to sacrifice ourselves after deactivating every piece of equipment. Most of us consider the suggestion unacceptable since others will eventually come to Alpha Crucis-d and have to go through the same discovery process. So, we reasoned, a ship must return home and declare the planet off–limits.
We took a vote the following day. We decided to leave immediately, using as little burn as possible to propel us through the atmosphere. We lightened our load, but all our plans were rendered useless by the designs of the strands. The engines failed on the runway as silver filaments clogged the ports. No one now doubted their concerted intent. We went nowhere.
To minimize our carbon footprint and not draw attention to ourselves, we began recycling our air and sequestering carbon dioxide. But our air intakes continue to clog with silver. The engineers have designed a hydrogen-powered engine to get us above the strands before the main engines ignite, but it cannot land us safely if the plan does not work. This effort is our only way to leave the planet even though we know that damage will be done in the wake of the main engines. We hope with time that the ecology will return to what it was, as long as we stay away. But we can’t be sure. I leave behind this message, an offering, on the altar of our outpost, which will soon be encased in silver.
Previous Publications
“Meeting Henry,” Still Point Arts Quarterly.
N. J. Schrock 