Covenant (30 page)

“Then how come we don’t all know about it?” Ethan challenged.

“A question that I too would like answered. If all people were educated about the fundamental origin of life, then there would be far more understanding in the world.”

Rachel shook her head.

“How can life be everywhere and be debris? It doesn’t make sense.”

Hassim shrugged.

“When our universe was born in the Big Bang, it consisted of about three-quarters hydrogen, a quarter helium, a smattering of lithium and deuterium, and nothing else.”

“How do you know that?” Rachel asked.

“Because it still does,” Hassim said. “The rest of the universe’s mass is made up of dark matter and dark energy, substances about which we know very little indeed.”

“And we’re the debris?” Mahmoud asked.

“Absolutely,” Hassim said. “Look at yourself. Look at the room you’re in, the earth that we’re standing on, the air that you’re breathing. Think about anything chemical at all in this universe. Then think about what you’ve just learned. A universe filled with swiftly cooling hydrogen and helium gas, unknown dark materials, and
nothing else at all.
”

Ethan thought for a moment.

“We must have been created after the Big Bang.”

“Exactly,” Hassim said. “People think that the universe came into being containing everything within it and that stars, planets, and life evolved thereafter over immense periods of time. This is basically correct but it misses a most important point: that the young universe contained no heavy elements like carbon, oxygen, silicon, iron, and so on—nothing that makes solid matter like planets, trees, oceans, or people.”

“So where did it come from?” Ethan asked.

“Stars,” Hassim replied. “They all form from interstellar clouds of hydrogen gas that collapse under their own gravity, creating pressure and heat within. When the core of the cloud gets hot enough, it shines with nuclear fusion, just as our sun does now. What’s happening inside is that the hydrogen fuel is being converted into heat and light as atoms of hydrogen fuse together under the immense gravitational pressure: fusion. The thing is, when this occurs, only a small percentage of the mass of each atom is released. The rest remains within, and so the two nuclei fuse and create a new element, helium.”

“Which was already present in the universe,” Rachel said.

“Yes,” Hassim agreed. “From this process, a helium core grows inside the star, and when it’s big enough, it too begins burning with nuclear fusion, creating carbon. In stars, the deeper you go, the heavier the elements you find being created, all the way up to iron, if the star is large enough. When these stars exhaust all of their fuel, they blast their material out into space in supernova explosions to become part of the interstellar medium from which new stars are made. As the heavier elements build up in space after each generation, so the next generation of stars have an abundance of heavy elements that form planets and comets and asteroids in orbit around them: the things that we’re made from.”

Rachel blinked in surprise. “That’s where the Earth came from?”

“Yes,” Hassim said. “The process is called nucleosynthesis. This is where you get the sodium in common salt, the neon in fluorescent lights, and the magnesium in fireworks, not to mention the zinc in your hair, the calcium in your bones, and the carbon in your brain. The iron in the hemoglobin in your blood shares the same origin as the iron in the rocks of our planet. In your body there’s enough iron to make a three-inch nail, enough carbon to make nine hundred pencils, enough phosphorous to make two thousand match heads, and enough water to fill a ten-gallon tank. We are all chemical beings.”

“And all of this is ‘old news’?” Ethan asked.

“The physics behind all of this was worked out in the 1950s and early 1960s, using Einstein’s general relativity,” Hassim said. “Scientists like Fred Hoyle, Geoffrey and Margaret Burbidge, and William Fowler did all the calculations long ago, and they’ve all been proven right with further actual observation of the stars using spectroscopy. William Fowler won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1983 for the work done. But it’s generally unknown within the public domain, and powerful faith movements prefer it to remain so. Their beliefs are all based upon a human-centric view of the universe, but nucelosynthesis proves that all life is merely a product of natural processes and not unusual or even unique to our world, their disinformation just a smoke screen to deceive the public.”

“But why does that make Lucy’s discovery so important to you?” Rachel asked.

“For two reasons,” Hassim explained. “Firstly, if genetic material from the remains that Lucy found can be extracted and analyzed, it may show what evolutionary path life has followed through natural selection on other worlds. And secondly, it proves what we already suspect: that life is as common as the stars that fuel its existence.”

“Several hundred billion stars in our galaxy alone,” Rachel murmured, “and hundreds of billions of galaxies in the universe.”

Ethan began to realize the scope of what Hassim was saying, and suddenly the existence of extraterrestrials didn’t seem quite so ridiculous after all.

R
afael slipped through the door of the building and closed it behind him. An archaic iron lock protruded from the door. On an impulse he turned the key, locking the door from the inside, and slipped it into his pocket before taking in his surroundings.

Musty odors of dust and desiccated soil stained the air; chunks of dislodged masonry and shattered bricks littered the floor. Letting his eyes adjust before daring to move, he saw the faint outlines of a crumbling stairwell leading up and away to his left, and a narrow corridor ahead of him that led into the gloomy depths of the building.

He was about to venture forward into the corridor when he noticed a single door to his left, just before the stairwell. It stood ajar, and he crept toward it, reaching for his knife before swinging the door open.

A large gib frame stood in the center of the room. Atop the frame was a barrel-sized coil of thick rope, from the end of which dangled a heavy iron hook. To Rafael’s right, an unused diesel generator crouched above patches of fuel staining the dusty floorboards.

Rafael edged forward, and in the dim light he saw a large rectangular hole hewn from the living earth, an impenetrable blackness that plunged to unknown depths beneath the city. On the far side of the hole, a rope ladder was tied to two stakes driven deep into the earth, the ladder vanishing down into the darkness.

Rafael squatted at the edge of the tunnel entrance and listened intently.

No sound emanated from within, although he could feel the hot air from the underground tunnels wafting toward him as though the ancient soil was breathing. He knew that there would be other entrances and exits from this tunnel, providing some meager ventilation to those hiding or incarcerated within.

He closed his eyes, orienting himself within the building to the street outside, picturing the layout of the nearby streets. He recalled the single glowing streetlight perhaps a hundred yards to his left. Power was intermittent in Gaza and electricity cables were often run directly down the tunnels by insurgents, using either the grid or generators to supply light to the depths. This tunnel would most likely pass close by the streetlight, an easy point at which to tap into the electricity supply. From there, he suspected that a row of buildings on the opposite side of the street provided a likely termination point, an escape route for Hamas fighters fleeing an Israeli assault.

Rafael pocketed his blade and moved around to the ladder, carefully testing its strength before lowering himself into the darkness.

T
he remains Lucy found were similar to humans,” Rachel said. “You think that life on other planets is like life on Earth?”

Hassim Khan shook his head.

“That’s unlikely. Life on other planets will endure differing environments. If a planet orbiting another star was more massive than Earth, then its gravity would be correspondingly higher, resulting in species of a more muscular build to counter their increased weight on such a planet. That could match the physicality of the species Lucy found.”

“But it looked almost human to me,” Ethan said, “just a lot bigger. Surely that can’t be possible on an entirely different planet?”

“Evolution often follows certain paths,” Hassim explained. “There are facets of biological species that often appear as a result of natural selection, especially in predatory species. Limbs, eyes, ears, grasping hands and so on appear frequently in the fossil record. There is no reason to think that this would not occur on other planets too.”

Ethan sat in thought for a moment.

“Do you think that genetic material could be extracted from Lucy’s find?”

“Almost certainly.” Hassim nodded. “Researchers have successfully extracted intact blood cells from a
Tyrannosaurus rex
bone some sixty-five million years old. The remains that Lucy found were only seven thousand years old. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were able to recover organic material from it, maybe even intact DNA.”

“Which would confirm the idea of life forming on a universal theme,” Ethan guessed.

Hassim smiled.

“The origin of life among the stars as a universal and not a local event,” Hassim agreed. “It’s known as
panspermia.
”

“You mean that we didn’t evolve on Earth?” Rachel stammered.

“Oh, we evolved here all right,” Hassim corrected. “But the very things we are made of did not, and that may include life in all of its self-replicating glory. It has been known for some time that when giant stars die in supernova explosions, the material they release in the cooling conditions contain carbon grains, and that particles of other chemical elements attach themselves to the tiny grains and react enthusiastically with each other. These carbon grains were given a name: stardust.”

“Grains?” Ethan asked. “Like sand?”

“Much smaller,” Hassim said. “Spectroscopic studies of these star-remnant molecular clouds have found there the presence of methanimine, formaldehyde, formic acid, amine groups, and long-chain hydrocarbons caught within their veils. These are the building blocks of life: methanimine is an ingredient in amino acids; formic acid is the chemical that insects use as venom and is also the stinging ingredient in nettles. Both are polyatomic organic molecules that combine to form the amino acid glycine, which has since been seen in molecular clouds in deep space and found in comets by NASA in 2009, and amino acids are one step away from life itself.”

“And that’s without planets forming?” Rachel asked.

“Yes,” Hassim said. “Ultraviolet radiation bathes the clouds, heat from other nearby stars warms them, and all manner of chemical reactions occur. Frozen water, methanol, and ammonia rapidly form around the grains as the heat from the supernova fades. Trapped within these tiny cores the elements react and produce various polyatomic molecules. Experiments carried out in 2001 at NASA’s Ames Research Center confirmed these processes, when silicate grains covered in this kind of material were chilled to the temperature of deep space and suspended in ultraviolet light. When the organic compounds produced were immersed in water, membranous cell structures appeared spontaneously, as they may well have done on the young Earth: life, without supernatural intervention. All life on Earth is based on cells such as these, biological material encased in a membrane.”

“It all fits together,” Ethan said, genuinely amazed.

“That’s what science does. In 2002,” Hassim went on without missing a beat, “further experiments conducted with water, methanol, ammonia, and hydrogen cyanide found in molecular clouds discovered that three amino acids called glycine, serine, and alanine arose spontaneously within the containers. In another similar experiment, no less than sixteen amino acids and other organic compounds were produced under the conditions that exist between the stars using nothing more than the ingredients of molecular clouds. The proteins of all living things on Earth are composed of combinations of twenty amino acids.”