CHAPTER 9
Only Robyn can look that good after only two months of only spit baths and no makeup, thought Chris as he once again tried not to ogle the mission’s commander. She was the only woman on the flight and all of her male colleagues were painfully aware of that fact. Chris was quite sure that each of the other two men on the flight were just as eager to see as much of Colonel Rogers-White as possible, even if they couldn’t cross the line and do anything about it. Such was the life of a professional male on a two-and-half-month journey into deep space with the hottest woman in the inner solar system.
Yes, I’m a chauvinist, he thought, but only because I wouldn’t have a chance with her. It was easier for him to play the part of the chauvinist than be himself and have to deal with the rejection.
Thinking of Robyn, chance or not, brought a smile to Chris’s face before he went back to the task at hand—prepping the ship’s LIDAR system to begin long-distance mapping of the Artifact. They were only about two hundred thousand kilometers away and braking. They would be alongside the Artifact in just three days. He had the maps from his robotic prospector’s slow flyby; now it was time to begin mapping its surface in earnest, using the best laser system available in the world.
“Chris, are you ready? The people back home are eager for data. I think they’ve been bored,” said Robyn as she seemed to look away from what she was reviewing via her corneal implant and toward Chris.
“Boring is right,” Chris replied, thinking of all the free time he had these last few months to simply look out the window at the blackness of space or the dazzle of the sun, through a filter, of course. He’d read the latest technical journals until he couldn’t stand to read any more and steadfastly refused to join in any moronic games with the rest of the crew. Games were something else he didn’t understand. Why did people engage in meaningless competition using arbitrary rules like that? They seemed to like it, but when Chris played, he got so caught up in understanding and playing by the rules, that he often forgot about the other people at the table and missed out on whatever else was going on that they all seemed to enjoy. He could not play a game and interact with people at the same time. How could anyone? Playing games was just too difficult.
Being bored, he frequently reminded himself, is better than engaging in stupid, complicated activities you don’t understand and embarrassing yourself.
“Don’t knock boring flights. I’ve been on sorties that were anything but boring and I will take boring any day of the week,” she said.
“Having been in research my entire career, I cannot even imagine what that must be like. You’ll have to tell me about them sometime,” said Chris, returning to the task at hand.
“I’ll do that. But right now, I need data,” she replied.
No one spoke as Chris continued to make adjustments to the LIDAR system using the virtual control panel that only he could see, thanks to his corneal implant. To anyone watching, Chris would almost look like a conductor, waving his hands in the air and occasionally pushing virtual buttons.
“Ready!” he said, looking away from the virtual control panel and back toward Robyn.
She smiled and said, “Okay then. Let’s do some mapping and see if the LIDAR can spot anything that your camera missed.”
Five seconds later, a small box located under the crew cabin on the front of the ship rotated and pointed to where the Artifact was positioned, still far out of visual range. Motors activated and slid the cover from in front of the laser aperture and another from the receiving telescope. The laser then kicked in, shooting ten thousand pulses of light into deep space toward the alien ship.
For remote sensing of distant objects, LIDAR works like radar, only better—and that is why Chris liked using it whenever he could. Unfortunately, for his small robotic asteroid survey ships, power was at a premium and he was mostly constrained to use passive, low-power systems like good old-fashioned cameras. The shorter wavelengths of light emitted by the LIDAR’s laser system allow much higher resolution mapping of surfaces than is possible with the much longer wavelength electromagnetic radiation emitted in radar.
“Shit! The receiver went into safe mode,” said Chris, just moments after the laser system became active.
“Perhaps you should check the other channels?” suggested Janhunen, who had moved closer to both Chris and Robyn as they began the mapping. The Resolution didn’t have a rotating section to simulate gravity, so the crew had to adapt to life in space without the comfort and convenience that accompanies living in an environment with an obvious up or down, and, in this case, without the ability to hear people flying up behind you as they pushed off from one section of the ship and coasted to another. Chris didn’t hear Janhunen’s approach until he spoke.
“Perhaps you can be quiet while I figure out what happened?” retorted Chris, keenly aware that Robyn was watching them intently as he tried to recover from being startled by Janhunen’s abrupt appearance. He couldn’t maintain his train of thought with interruptions, didn’t they understand?
“Harrumph,” was Janhunen’s only reply as he moved away and toward Robyn.
Chris, annoyed at the interruption, waited until the European scientist had his back turned before he went about checking the status of the LIDAR’s other receiving channels.
“The backscatter signal completely overloaded the sensors, on all channels. The return signal appears to have come back significantly amplified,” said Chris.
“Chris, if the signal was amplified, that implies that something onboard the Artifact detected our laser signal, reflected it and boosted its strength. Shouldn’t the signal getting back to us have been significantly weaker than what we emitted?” asked Robyn.
Beauty and brains, thought Chris, before he spoke. “Absolutely. Nothing appears to have been damaged, but I’m turning down the gain on the receivers to about ten percent of the previous setting before we try again.”
“Let me know when you’re ready,” said Robyn.
“Here we go again,” said Chris, as he started the ship’s LIDAR system once more.
Chris concentrated on the various data screens projected onto his cornea. He frowned and then suddenly recoiled as if he were ducking a punch to his face.
“Shit. Shit. Shit. The receivers are fried. Whatever that thing did to the first laser pulse, it did in spades to the second. The system completely overloaded. And it looks like the damage might be permanent, or at least until I can install some replacement parts.”
“Apparently, this thing doesn’t want to be mapped,” said Janhunen.
“At least not actively. Were there any problems with the cameras used on your flyby?” asked Robyn.
“None. Everything on that mission worked flawlessly. But all our systems were strictly passive.”
“Well, then, we just learned something new. This thing doesn’t like concentrated energy hitting it. I wonder what it would do if we had one of the new gigawatt pulse ABM lasers?” asked Robyn.
“I can guess,” said Chris.
“Right. Enough of that. What else can we do to get a better look at this thing before we rendezvous?”
“We still have radar. It didn’t seem to mind having gigahertz frequency radio waves reflected from it.”
“Let’s do the best we can with what we have. I don’t want to get near this thing blind.”
“I’m on it,” replied Chris.
“Colonel, please pardon the interruption, but we’re getting a transmission from the Chinese ship. They want to talk,” said Fuji, with his customary politeness. For most of the journey, Fuji had kept mostly to himself, usually joining the crew for meals, but almost none of the various social activities.
“I was wondering when we would hear from them. Given that they’ve almost caught up with us after launching three days later, they are probably feeling a little cocky. Let’s hear what they have to say. Please put them on the speaker and mute all of our microphones except mine,” said Robyn.
In zero gravity, astronauts tend to assume what is known as “neutral posture,” which is prompted by the body’s response to the lack of gravity stressing their musculature. Chris noticed that as Robyn prepared to speak with the Chinese, she straightened her posture and assumed what he’d come to consider to be her “military posture.”
“Done. You’re on,” said Fuji.
“This is Colonel Robyn Rogers-White, commanding the Resolution. How may we help you?”
“Colonel Rogers-White, this is Captain Rui Zhong of the Zheng He. Since we are both going to arrive at the Artifact within only a few hours of each other, my co-pilot and I thought it would be a good idea to contact you to discuss possible collaboration in our forthcoming explorations. For us to arrive at a potentially-active alien ship and be perceived as competing against each other would be, perhaps, not healthy for us or our respective countries.”
Robyn turned off her microphone as she looked toward Fuji and said, “Put the visible and IR telescope on the Zheng He. I’d like to know if they’re making this overture because of some problem with their ship or if they’re being genuinely open.”
Turning her microphone back on, she said, “Captain Zhong. Your idea has merit but I am sure you are aware that our respective countries already ruled out a joint mission. I would be hard pressed, short of an emergency, to defy the spirit, if not the letter, of that decision.”
“I fully understand, Colonel. This is merely an overture, not any sort of attempt to get you to disobey your orders. As you are surely aware, there is a nuclear missile coming behind us. That doesn’t give us much time, especially if we are at odds with each other.”
“I am very aware of the Caliphate’s missile and we appreciate your invitation, but I must follow my orders unless and until I have a compelling reason not to do so. I will have to decline.”
“I am saddened by your decision, Colonel, but I understand and respect it. We must all follow orders. Good luck.”
“Good luck to you also,” she said as she cut off the communications, rose from the seat into which she’d buckled herself, and floated over to where Yuichi Fuji was busily reviewing data streams on one of the console monitors.
“Well?” she said.
“Their ship appears to be functional. There is no visible damage and, if the trajectories I ran are accurate, they will arrive at the Artifact about three hours after us,” Fuji said as he made a show of turning off the monitor and looking at Robyn directly. He paused.
“Is there something else?” she asked.
Now it was Fuji’s turn to straighten his body posture, which he did, just before he replied, “Yes, there is. My government will not abide any sort of collaboration with the Chinese on this venture. Our participation in the mission was only possible after your president assured our leaders that no such collaboration would take place. Thank you for honoring that agreement. I could tell it was not an easy decision for you.”
“Like I told Captain Zhong, I will follow my orders unless I have a compelling reason not to do so.”