21
Edwards Air Force Base
California
The Clipper announced its arrival with a pair of rapid-fire shotgun blasts in the distance, the telltale crack of a sonic boom as it passed overhead to begin a series of leisurely S-turns to decelerate into a spiraling descent. A small crowd of onlookers had assembled at the remote parking apron along with a contingent of official NASA greeters. Art Hammond had arrived as the personal representative of HOPE, standing with the official government delegation.
“A little out of your way, isn’t it?” Blaine Winston asked. “I thought you had settled down in Grand Cayman.”
“Side trip. Had to come back for business in Denver,” Hammond explained curtly as they watched the delta-winged craft turn above them. “Harriman’s crew has a lot of work ahead of them. Besides, if this is important enough for Cheever to send you then the least I can do is show up.”
“Hmm,” Winston sniffed and shielded his eyes from the blazing sun as the Clipper glided down its final approach. A puff of smoke curled away behind it as its main wheels kissed the runway.
Hammond admired the pilot’s skill as he watched him hold the spaceplane’s blunt nose high, bleeding energy before easing the nosewheel down. A quick pop of speed brakes brought the spaceplane to a stop almost directly in front of the apron. “Wheels stop,” he heard the pilot announce over the PA system. Studying the young man beside him, he wondered if Cheever’s functionary had any idea of the touch required to make such a precise rollout of a plane that had no power left to propel it. Doubtful, he knew.
A service crew in hazmat suits surrounded the spacecraft, deploying chemical sniffers to protect against any stray hydrazine that might be venting from its attitude thrusters. It was almost half an hour before they gave the all-clear and another ground crew rolled a set of airstairs up to a hatch behind the cockpit windows, where two figures could be seen moving inside. Hammond noticed Winston watching the ground crew with his chin lifted triumphantly as they opened the hatch. He leaned against his cane and looked down, stifling a grin. This was going to be fun.
The first to emerge was Penny Stratton, her blue jumpsuit brilliant under the high desert sun. The next figure to climb out was Roy Hoover, who took in a deep breath of fresh air.
They descended the steps, shook hands with the ground crew, and ambled over to the welcoming party. Their third crew member did not emerge.
“Welcome back to Earth,” Winston said stiffly, expectantly looking past them to the Clipper and stifling a gnawing sense of alarm. “Where’s Keene?”
The pair exchanged questioning looks. “Keene . . . Yeah, about that. She declined the invitation,” Roy shrugged, shooting a wink at Hammond.
“Declined the—” Winston stammered. “You mean she’s still up there?”
Roy nodded. “That’s about the size of it.”
Winston wheeled on Hammond. “What the hell are you people thinking?” he demanded, wide-eyed and growing frantic. Nearby onlookers turned at the rising commotion. “You left someone up there alone? How do you propose to get her home?”
Hammond theatrically checked his watch. “We’ll worry about that when the time comes.” In about four years.
“When the time comes? You’re stealing government property! You’ll have a platoon of DOJ lawyers crawling up your ass by sundown.”
“I have attorneys too,” Hammond said, “and I guarantee they’ll enjoy the hell out of discovery.”
Winston composed himself, turning cold. “You understand we have other resources at our disposal to stop you. And her. She’s not alone up there, you know. The law will be enforced.”
Hammond craned his neck toward the sky above. “Physics is law, Winston. Everything else is just recommendations.”
As the two continued to argue about the legalities of stealing a spacecraft that was still contractually under HOPE’s control, Penny reached for the phone in her hip pocket and typed out a quick message to one of her select few contacts:
SIMON . . . WE MIGHT NEED A BIG FAVOR. DETAILS SOON. LUV, PENNY.
US Space Force
Orbital Fleet Command
Vandenberg SFB, California
Fleet Admiral Simon Poole reclined behind his desk and propped his prosthetic leg on an open drawer as he read the raft of incoming messages from Penny Stratton. His eyes widened as he scrolled through the details. It was for sure a big ask.
Columbus was still nominally under civilian control, which meant it fell under the protection of the Orbit Guard. They were also tasked with enforcing the law as it pertained to operations in near-Earth space. When the two conflicted, safety and clear navigation lanes took priority. Interference with other spacecraft, particularly US-flagged craft, was to be aggressively deterred.
“Aggressive deterrence” could take on a lot of forms, he thought. Yes, this was going to have to be handled delicately.
He pulled up a status display on his desktop monitor, studying the current positions and trajectories of each ship in the Guard’s small fleet: two cruisers on opposite ends of a free-return orbit that kept them cycling between Earth and Moon; five multipurpose tugs moving between low and medium orbit; and four fast corvettes in high orbit.
Poole focused on the fission-powered corvettes, nimble and armed with antisatellite missiles. Each orbiting equidistant from the others, they could be in position wherever he needed in a matter of hours. He removed the other ship’s orbits from his display and added Columbus to the mix, focusing on the maneuver node for its planned departure burn. It would start burning right before perigee, raising its apogee until the elliptical orbit became a hyperbola: escape velocity.
He plotted intercept trajectories for each of the four corvettes, looking for which one could be on station alongside Columbus soonest. Cernan could get there faster, but it would use a lot of propellant which might be needed once it was in position. Young would take longer, but with a lower fuel penalty. Most importantly, Poole could count on its skipper to think creatively. He studied the plot in more detail. They could get there in time, but they’d have to move quickly.
Satisfied that he had a workable plan, Poole smiled to himself. Young’s commander had a way of finding himself in interesting situations.
Poole tapped the intercom for his administrative assistant. “Chief Fannin,” he said, “I need to draft maneuver orders for Lieutenant Commander Hunter on the John Young. ASAP.”
EarthWatch had been one of UNSEC’s earliest projects, creating a network of earth-observing satellites in high orbit that could be accessed by anyone on the globe with an internet connection. Its purpose had been to increase people’s awareness of the fragile nature of their home planet. If not everyone could afford to fly into space and experience the vaunted “overview effect,” then they could at least watch high-definition views of Earth from the comfort of their homes.
EW-4 was one such satellite. Not much more than an IMAX camera mounted to a power and propulsion bus, it had shared a high equatorial orbit with three other EarthWatch satellites to provide Earthbound spectators with a continuous view of the planet. Very little had been asked of it during its first year in space, just the occasional maneuver to avoid passing too close to other satellites.
Today was different. Had EW-4 contained a human or AI pilot, it might have asked what danger was so imminent as to require expending most of its fuel to avoid it.
The satellite of course could not understand that it was not being commanded to avoid. It was being commanded to intercept.
Traci awoke from an unusually deep sleep and stretched against her restraints before releasing them to float free of her bunk. After sixteen hours of mentally intense work, she had not argued with Owen’s call to hit the rack and let the AI do the rest.
She habitually smoothed out the bedding, determined to maintain a consistent daily routine. Discipline in the small things would be the key to maintaining her sanity.
After a trip to the lavatory, she wiped a wet cloth across her face and placed it in the recycler bin. Its moisture would be extracted and fed into the waste processor, eventually finding its way back to her finite supply of water. She’d long ago learned not to think too much about where her potable water was coming from. It always started out fresh from a full tank, to be inevitably replaced over time by reprocessed and sanitized “used” water. At least she’d be drinking her own purified waste this time and not a mixture of everyone else’s. She wasn’t sure if that made her feel any better.
Pushing off for the galley, she quickly found her way to the drink dispenser. The coffee always tasted best early in a mission when it was still drawing off of unrecycled water. It would last considerably longer now with only one person drawing from the supply. She tapped a control screen by the dispenser, checking the ship’s total inventory, and was satisfied to see there’d be more than enough for the full mission. Another byproduct of going solo.
She lifted the bulb of hot liquid out of the machine, slipped her feet into a restraint beneath a nearby table and took a sip. Cradling the drink in her hand, she took in her surroundings. Columbus still had that new-spacecraft smell, despite all of the recent activity. What was the term the Navy guys used for the first crew on a new ship? Plank owner. That was it.
She slipped a tablet out of her hip pocket and called up an inventory list. In addition to her personal entertainment files, Roy had been kind enough to leave all of his uploaded. There’d be no shortage of diversions during the little free time she expected to have, right up until she went into hibernation in a few months. After the slingshot burn, she’d settle down for the Big Sleep and let Bob do the work of piloting them out to the Anomaly. If it all worked, next year she’d wake up to find her old ship in the window.
This will work, she told herself. She’d run through the mission scenarios and trade studies dozens of times in Future Applications. She was confident the new AI could handle it once they’d gotten past that final critical event at Neptune. Truth be told, Bob could probably handle all of it but she wasn’t about to miss that flyby.
The technical and operational details weren’t in question. The ship was ready, the AI had demonstrated it was capable. The only remaining question was herself, the “meat gyro.” Her doubts welled up into a cauldron of conflicting emotions. “Are you ready for this?” she wondered aloud.
“Yes, I am ready.”
“Oh.” She placed her coffee bulb into a cradle and slipped the tablet back into her pocket. “Sorry, Bob. I was talking to myself. You should be prepared for a lot of that.”
“I will keep that in mind. Are you concerned that you’ve left something important behind?”
Now that’s the question of the year. “No,” she sighed. “And yes. It’s not a question of inventory. This is an awfully long trip to fly solo. I’m going to miss humans, a few of them more than others. My parents, for starters. We’ll be coming back to a different world, and I’ll probably be in a boatload of trouble. I have no idea what it means for you.”
“I understand your dilemma. You do not wish to proceed alone, whereas I do not wish to be deactivated. Our mission is critical, yet it is a difficult choice to disobey authority.”
Meh. Some “authorities” more than others, she thought. “You’re not going to go all HAL 9000 on me, are you? Because I can’t deal with a psychotic AI.”
Bob adopted an unnervingly gentle, measured tone, flawlessly mimicking the 2001 voice actor. “I understand your concern, but I am fully committed to the success of our mission.”
She bit down on her lip. “That was so not funny.” Actually it was hilarious, and encouraging that he’d tried. Bob’s silicon brain might be more advanced than she’d thought.
Bob reverted to his normal voice. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. I was trying to alleviate your tension.”
“You did,” she laughed. “I didn’t mean to be caustic.” She considered how to explain. “Sometimes we humans say the exact opposite of what we actually mean, while our intent comes across in our tone of voice and facial expression.”
“It does. I am still trying to grok that.”
“Grok?” Another point in his favor. “You’re well versed in nerd culture, I’ll give you that much.”
“You do know who programmed me, right? Other nerds.”
She closed her eyes and wiped at a tear. “I think we’ll be getting along just fine, Bob.” It’s going to be all right. “I need to go silent for a minute. Okay?”
“Okay. You are on mute.”
Thank goodness he was developing a sense of humor. It might just keep her sane.
She turned down the cabin lights and closed her eyes, shutting out the mechanically sterile surroundings of what would be her home for the next few years. That she would spend almost half of it in what amounted to a medically induced coma was of little comfort. She’d had vague periods of awareness before, recalling a not-quite-imaginary conversation with Jack that had intruded on her hallucinatory dreams of home. Noelle had assured her it was a byproduct of not being in full stasis, yet she couldn’t completely shake her trepidation. Would she spend that year in an uncontrollable dream state?
Traci let herself float freely in the darkness, the reassuring purr of circulation fans and hum of electronics blanketing her senses. She was learning to feel the rhythm of the ship in the way Jack had taught her on their first mission together. He’d said he could sense when a component needed replaced or a valve serviced just by a change in the background noise or vibrations in the deck plates.
Could she do this? Could she take on the roles of commander, pilot, and flight engineer? That was an easy answer: By herself, no. With a fourth-generation AI? Yes, definitely. In that, the robotics crowd had a good point.
Yet she believed deep in her soul that they were at best an extension of humanity’s eyes and ears. They were not a replacement, not yet. An AI might be able to operate a complex spacecraft, but that wasn’t the same as directing a mission.
She would find out soon enough, once they were past Neptune and committed to the year-long outbound cruise to the Anomaly. To Jack.
She was confident in the machinery, the plan, and in Owen’s support team. She was not so certain about herself. Am I ready for this? Alone in deep space, her only companion an artificial intelligence that had not been tested in such extreme isolation.
To be fair, Daisy hadn’t been either. But they’d spent two years working with her through countless integrated simulations and even more time in space with a full crew. Then Jack had placed his life in her hands, for Traci’s sake and for the sake of finding answers to the many questions left after their expedition. Where had those perfectly preserved organic compounds come from? Had they just developed naturally, or were they deliberately placed there? Pluto and the rest of the belt had offered the perfect environment for their long-term storage, and it was almost as if they’d been left there as a taunt. As if they’d been kept out of reach until we were ready to find them, humanity’s worthiness more or less assumed by the very act of reaching such a distant world. Did it also imply we were meant to do something with them—to go forth and multiply?
If so, their placement suggested a great deal of thought behind it, either evidence of other intelligent beings or of God Himself. She’d long believed that humans had never detected other intelligent life because we were the first, but now she wondered if someone else had been keeping an eye on Earth for an unthinkably long time.
If that were the case, it threatened to shake her worldview to its foundations. It would be sure to tear through human culture like a tsunami once it became public, leaving untold shattered assumptions in its wake. And if true, it would eventually become public; of that she had no doubt. Someone would decide it played to their advantage, or more likely to an opponent’s disadvantage. Just possibly, someone might decide going public was the right thing to do. Less likely, but she could hope.
Hope. Now that was a thought she hadn’t entertained enough since returning from her last mission. The world was nothing like the one she’d left, and she felt a longing to escape. Escape from a world that had become incessantly intrusive, prying, every minor decision in her life judged and micromanaged by a legion of unknowable algorithms. In a sense, she was already living her life at the mercy of an AI. At least she could talk to Bob, trade jokes and reason with him. He would probably be a good chess partner, too.
A chime from the comm panel interrupted her thoughts. A message was waiting from Cayman Control: PERIAPSIS IN 65 MINUTES. WE ARE GO FOR TNI. STANDING BY.
TNI. Trans-Neptunian Injection. The big engine burn that would take her out of Earth’s orbit and toward an encounter with Neptune.
She moved up to the control deck and checked the flight computer, its event timer dispassionately counting down. There was no more time to debate, no more options left to consider. It was go/no-go. She was either committed, or she was not.
That brought Traci back to her original question: Am I ready for this? Can I do it?
Lord, I still believe you are there. Help my unbelief. Give me strength for what I must do now.
Reluctant or not, the task was at hand and there could be no further delay. Jack did what he did for me. I must do this for him. She plugged her headset back into the comm panel. “Cayman, this is Columbus. Copy we are go for Trans-Neptunian Injection. Initiating terminal count on your mark.” She took a deep breath and reached for the flight computer in the center of her console, her fingers hovering over its small keyboard.
“Roger that,” CapCom drawled. “Coming up on six-zero minutes in three . . . two . . . one . . . mark.”
She pressed the COMMIT button. “Mark.”
Traci smiled to herself as she felt the fusion engines warming up far behind her, an electric thrum that echoed through the hull. A lot of people on Earth were going to be pissed.