34
He was close, within a hundred thousand kilometers; they had measured the time lag between radio signals to be less than a quarter of a second and getting shorter as Columbus slowed to meet them.
Desperate to see a familiar face, Traci was disappointed that Jack was still limiting himself to voice comm. Magellan’s condition hadn’t deteriorated so much that he’d been left with low-gain radio. She knew it had to be personal—while the ship’s condition may not have been so bad, perhaps his physical condition was. He’d made it this far on a combination of hibernation and minimum calories; he must be a shell of his former self.
She knew better than to try and talk him into anything different. While not a vain man, he could be especially hardheaded after reaching a decision—which was the whole reason he’d ended up out here, she reminded herself. His years in isolation no doubt had hardened that trait like concrete. After all he’d endured, perhaps he’d earned it.
In the end it was of no matter. They were here now, and would soon be reunited. After he’d sent them Magellan’s orbit parameters, she had left the straightforward maneuvers up to Bob. It was a good exercise for him, and it left her space to clear her mind and leave the past events behind. The time had finally come to forget about the mad scramble, the political machinations and roadblocks. She could at last feel like a human being again, about to greet a long-lost friend—and maybe more.
Was there going to be more? She hoped, but couldn’t know. They had left so much unresolved, which she knew was largely on her. Traci had repressed so many of her natural urges for the sake of her personal moral code that at times it felt like she barely knew herself. The deadly serious and ruthlessly demanding world of military aviation and astronaut training had made it easy to suppress. Workaholics had no time for personal lives, a condition she’d embraced for too long. She suspected that was at the core of the wrenching conflict she’d felt about her inclinations.
That was behind her as well. She’d had to remove herself entirely from earthly society, literally taking herself light-years away, to have the emotional freedom she needed to balance the unsolved equation of her life. To do that she needed the remaining variable, her friend. With no idea where it might lead, Traci’s first step was to find the one person in the universe whom she knew would take her as she was.
Behind a dense ring of dust five billion miles distant, Tau Ceti’s light was weaker than their Sun’s had been in their home system. Here it was a faint glimmer, distinct from the surrounding stars but barely bringing as much light to bear. Much of what was visible came from the misty glow of the wormhole’s shimmering boundary.
Traci gingerly pulsed their reaction jets as the full length of Magellan slid into view for the first time. The months preparing for this moment could not undo the years of wear and tear on the old girl, leaving her all the more astonished that Jack had been able to survive on it all this time.
The ship lay before them as a dull gray hulk in the dim starlight, isolated sections gleaming silver and white beneath Columbus’s rendezvous lights as they passed over it like an underwater shipwreck. It reminded her of their long-ago encounter with Arkangel, though the spooky character of the secretive Russian vessel had felt much more ominous than reuniting with a spacecraft on which she had so much history.
It hurt to think of their old home in those terms, but she couldn’t shake the sensation that this was what it must have felt like approaching the wreck of the Titanic.
She focused on the task at hand—she had to judge the ship’s integrity and survey the docking node for any damage or loose equipment that might foul their connections. Stick to procedure, she reminded herself. Very well then—start at the beginning.
They had approached nose-to-nose, gliding alongside at a safe distance to examine the battered vessel before closing with it. If it didn’t appear safe, she would have Bob keep them alongside while she crossed the remaining distance encased in a spacesuit.
The micrometeor shield, while not exactly in tatters, was near the end of its useful life. The dome’s outer layer was peppered with holes, as if it had absorbed multiple blasts of birdshot. A few larger impacts had left tears in the ballistic fabric with smaller, secondary holes in trail along the inner layers of shielding. Strips of shredded fabric drifted loosely beneath the dome like the tentacles of a jellyfish. Behind it sat the remaining crew hab: a single, silver cylinder on one side of the big octagonal control module. She could see right away that the forward docking node was a no-go, it being too close to some of that trailing material from the inner shield.
Interior lighting was visible through the flight module’s portholes, and she was surprised to see the observation cupola’s protective shutters in place. The windows must have been damaged as well, otherwise why wouldn’t he want to have them open for rendezvous?
“I’m maneuvering clear,” she called over the radio, as much to check that he was paying attention as anything else. “Holding at two hundred meters.”
“I see you on the rendezvous cameras,” Jack replied, his voice still oddly attenuated despite being so close. Maybe his UHF antennas had sustained some damage as well? “We’ve got you on lidar. How do we look from out there?”
“She’s seen better days,” Traci said. “I’m abeam the hab section, heading back toward the secondary node. There’s some trailing damage to the inner meteor shield that’s a little close for comfort.”
“Not surprising. We covered a lot of distance. And I . . . well, I haven’t had the opportunity to get outside and look.”
“Understood,” she said. Even Jack would’ve been reluctant to do any solo EVA’s after this much time, another reminder of his weakened condition.
Moving farther aft, she could see the secondary node was free and clear, protected from any impacts by the cluster of modules ahead of it. The ship’s main truss extended behind that, holding Magellan’s antenna array and its remaining propellant tanks. Astern she could see the reactor plant and its trio of engine bells, which appeared to have held together well. That made sense, as their internal magnetic fields had absorbed the stress of channeling the plasma exhaust. “Forward section’s showing the most wear and tear,” she reported. “Midsection and aft looks almost as good as new.” Other than the brittle, sun-bleached appearance of the outer skin left from its years in space, the business end of the ship had held up well. “I think I’m safe to approach.”
“You’re clear of traffic,” he said, deadpan as always. “Think you can remember the rest?”
“Like riding a bike. Think you can stop being a smartass for five minutes?”
“Sure. But why would I want to?”
“So I don’t strangle you, for starters.” She pivoted Columbus perpendicular abeam the aft docking node and gave the thrusters a quick sideways pulse, placing the ship directly in front of them. Laser rangefinders bounced off Magellan’s docking target, and its waiting portal sat behind crosshairs on the screen before her.
She unbuckled from the pilot seat and moved up to the dome where she’d have an unobstructed view. Bringing two ships together, each longer than a football field and massing well over a hundred metric tons, was not something she was inclined to leave entirely dependent on a video feed. “Bob, I’m transferring terminal phase control to the cupola.” He answered her with a single electronic chirp. She turned a selector switch and unfolded a small control pedestal from beneath the dome’s rim. The image of Magellan’s docking port appeared on screen between a pair of hand controllers. She gave each a quick pulse to ensure they were working. “Positive control confirmed, RCS checks good. I’m ready for final approach to node B2.”
“Copy. B2 lidar’s locked on. Should be pinging you now.”
A green light illuminated on her panel, accompanied by a welcoming chime. “Good lock. Starting final approach.” With another gentle pulse of thrusters, Magellan began drawing closer.
“I show you at a hundred fifty meters, closing at one half.”
“Copy one fifty at a half,” she said. “I show same.” At a leisurely half meter per second, she’d drift into the docking ring in five minutes. She let the two ships do the rest, her flight computer “talking” to Magellan’s rangefinder as it followed the invisible beam of laser light to its target. Minutes later, there was a gentle bump as the two ships connected. Outside, she could see Magellan react with a shudder. “Contact.” She activated spring-loaded docking clamps which locked them together with a rippling clatter. “And that’s hard dock.”
“Welcome back.”
Mating two spacecraft was never a straightforward matter of locking them in place and throwing the doors open. Even the simplest craft was designed with multiple redundancies and painstaking operating procedures that had to account for every possible failure mode and multiple variables, as everything about the space environment was waiting just outside to kill you: extreme temperatures, cosmic radiation, vacuum. That’s why there were checklists for everything, right down to using the zero-g lavatories.
Traci hurriedly unsnapped her four-point harness to push out of her seat and fly down to the connecting tunnel to wait beside the hatch. She’d been through this particular process so many times she’d lost count. Now, she found herself becoming impatient with the checklist. She felt her heart pounding with each step in the procedure, eager to get through them.
“Get on with it,” she muttered impatiently, waiting through the computer-directed flow. Temperature differential in range? Check. Pressure differential? Check. External seals all indicated green, internal seals were green . . . that did it for her side of the tunnel.
She eagerly pulled out the locking lever and gave it a hard twist to unseat the hatch. It moved aside easily and she floated into Magellan’s empty airlock. It felt as if she’d never left. She recognized telltale scuffs on the sidewalls, saw handwritten reminders she’d left long ago still posted by one of the equipment lockers. The sense of familiarity, of returning to a place she’d called home for two years, only heightened her anticipation. Her heart raced as she waited for the “go” from the other side.
Calm down, she told herself. Quit acting like you’re waiting for a prom date. There was so much to say, yet all the words she’d rehearsed in her mind for this long-awaited reunion had escaped her, overtaken by the cold necessities of behaving like a professional and not wrecking their spacecraft.
“Hello, Traci. How are you?”
She was surprised to hear Daisy’s soothing mezzo-soprano voice. Why wasn’t Jack on the other side of the tunnel? Maybe he was tied up with minding the ship and left the grunt work to the AI. That must be it. “I’m good, thank you. Nice to hear you again, Daisy.”
“It is good have you back. I look forward to working with you again.”
“As do I,” she said, forcing the words out against her mounting impatience. She glanced at a status display beside the locking lever. “Looks good from in here. I’m ready when you are.”
“Pressure is equalized. You are clear to open. Welcome aboard.”
Finally. Her hand trembled as she reached for the lock. She pushed the hatch aside and flew into Magellan’s open bay.
The compartment was as familiar as the entryway to her family farm, and felt nearly as well worn. It was still decorated with the personal effects they’d brought aboard years earlier: flags, mission patches, comical bumper stickers, handwritten instructions on the sidewall padding: “do not open even in emergency.” It still held the same smell after all this time—not unpleasant, just a reminder of the people she’d shared this craft with for so long. Nothing had changed.
But there was no one to be found.
She moved out into the open corridor and grabbed for a nearby handhold. Not only had nothing changed, the ship felt empty, like she’d broken into an abandoned house. As she floated up into the galley deck, it looked like it hadn’t been used for years. Nothing out of place, none of the scuffs and stains that the most well-kept spacecraft still couldn’t avoid. With so much time to himself, she’d expected the hab to feel as lived in as Jack’s condo in Houston. Even the record turntable he’d modded to work in microgravity appeared untouched. Every corridor she passed through, every compartment she looked into, felt as sterile as if they’d been tidied up before a trip and waiting for their occupant’s return.
“Where’s Jack?” she asked warily.
“I’m afraid that’s complicated.”
“Complicated how? I was just talking to him ten minutes ago.”
There was a familiar voice over the intercom. It was still a bit off, just as it had been over the radio, but it was unmistakably his. “I’m back here, in the med bay.”
Of course, she thought, angry with herself at her lack of empathy. Proximity ops is mentally demanding and he can’t be in good health after so much time out here. The poor guy had to be malnourished. “On my way.” She giddily pushed off for the connecting corridor while fishing in her waist pocket for the package of salami bites she knew he’d have been craving. “Hope you’re ready for—”
Traci would have stopped cold had she been on her feet. As it was, she fumbled and missed the handhold, tumbling across the med bay and coming to a stop on the other side. “Jack?”
He was there, but not in any condition she’d been prepared for. His body lay inside the medical pod, still connected to IV lines and wrapped in a thicket of ECG leads and muscle-stimulating electrodes. It looked like he’d easily shed fifty pounds, although his skin had maintained its color through routine baths of UV light from the solar system’s most expensive tanning bed.
“Jack?”
“I’m here,” a disembodied voice said. “Sort of.” There was no movement from his body, but that was his voice coming from the overhead speakers . . . just like Daisy’s.
She scrabbled for a handhold and pulled herself upright, her free hand shooting up to cover her mouth in shock. Wide-eyed, she realized the artificial timbre in his voice hadn’t just been from attenuated signals across vast distances. That was his voice for certain—how was he speaking?
“Sorry,” he said. “I know this isn’t what you expected.”
“How—” she stammered, “how are you—”
“Talking?” he asked. “The same voice synthesizer that Daisy uses. She had a couple years’ worth of my vocal patterns stored in the cabin voice recorder. For her it was a simple matter of sampling it from the storage media.”
“Sure. Simple,” Traci said in quiet disbelief as she tried to absorb the scene around her. Sampling explained the subtle synthetic tone of his voice, an uncanny processed timbre reminiscent of the auto-tuned music that had been so popular during her childhood. “No. It’s not ‘simple.’ This is . . . amazing. Frightening. Confusing,” she said, tears beginning to well in her eyes, now for different reasons. “How are you doing this?”
“Daisy can explain it better than I can. It was her idea,” he said, “but all of this is coming from inside my brain. The interface uses the nanofilaments I had to inject for her to monitor me in hibernation.”
“So this is actually you I’m talking to, right? Not some clever chatbot synthesizing your voice?”
“It’s me,” he assured her. “My brain, directly interfaced with Daisy’s neural network.”
“How?” she asked again, staring at his motionless body cocooned in the medical pod. “How can you be talking to me if you’re unconscious?”
“My body’s in torpor. My mind isn’t. It’s hard to explain—let’s just say I’ve learned that ‘conscious’ is a complicated word.”