CHAPTER 5
Chris remembered the first time he saw Saturn through the lens of a telescope. Like most kids, he had seen pictures of the ringed planet on screen, but seeing it through the eyepiece of the small refractor his parents bought him was a life-changing event. It was a warm and humid summer night in the suburbs of Richmond, Virginia, so the viewing was not terribly good. There were only a few stars visible overhead and even those might have been obscured had the Moon been visible. Fortunately, the Moon hadn’t yet risen when young Chris Holt dragged the white cylindrical telescope out of his room and into the driveway. None of his friends were even remotely interested in looking at the stars and planets, so Chris found himself alone again. But he didn’t mind. This was fun.
He was given the telescope for his birthday two weeks previously and had used it to look at the Moon a few days ago. In between nighttime viewings, he practiced setting it up by pointing it toward the homes up the street during the lazy days of his summer break from school. Chris had checked the astronomy information sites and learned that Saturn would be visible early that evening so he planned his day around catching his first glimpse of the famous ringed planet. That night he meticulously set up the telescope and engaged its automatic “go-to” feature that allowed him to quickly and perfectly align it with the bright but tiny point in the sky that was supposed to be Saturn.
He looked into the eyepiece; what he saw rocked his world and changed his life. The tiny point of light resolved into a small disk surrounded by brilliant and huge rings. Chris was so excited that he literally jumped and shouted with joy—nearly toppling his new telescope in the process. He ran quickly into his house to fetch his sister and mother so they, too, could see the most awesome sight in the universe. He recalled their excitement, but with time he realized their exuberance was most likely in support of his interest rather than Saturn. But, that didn’t matter, he was hooked. From that point forward, he knew he wanted to be a space scientist.
The American-European-Japanese ship left Earth orbit at 6:43 Greenwich Mean Time when its nuclear thermal engines sent superheated hydrogen around the onboard uranium fission reactor and generated over one hundred thousand pounds of thrust. To the engineers watching the telemetry stream back on Earth, the engine startup was routine and blissfully uneventful. The same engines had been used to send five separate human crews to and from Mars and each time they had performed flawlessly. To the astronauts onboard the Resolution, named after one of Captain Cook’s ships of eighteenth century exploration, it was anything but routine.
Chris had only stopped throwing up from his first exposure to near-weightlessness about six hours before Earth departure and now the shake, rattle (despite a merciful non-roll) of the engines starting as the ship moved out of orbit was making him wonder if he would lose his lunch. Like about half of the people to go to space, Chris experienced “space sickness” and was nearly debilitated for most of the two days they spent in orbit preparing the Resolution for its mission. He had thought he could control his body and not be among those who became ill in space, but he learned just after launch that his mental prowess just wasn’t good enough to control everything.
Even though the doctors had assured him that it wouldn’t be a problem, Chris had worried about flying into space so soon after having the latest generation corneal implants surgically placed in his eyes. He had resisted them for years, but the powers that be at NASA and the DoD insisted that he have them for the trip. Something about being able to more quickly access the ship’s data systems and they being generally more reliable than ’net goggles. Chris knew they were probably correct, but he didn’t like it. Fortunately, at least so far, the doctors had been correct. He hadn’t had any vision related problems since coming aboard the ship. He even found that he liked the way the corneal implants linked to the standard audio implants he had been using for years. But he was glad he had the ability to turn them off when he started to feel overloaded.
And then there was the sudden acceleration. 0.2 g wasn’t quite like the ten times higher acceleration that made his 3.9-second zero-to-sixty miles per hour antique Tesla roadster so much fun to drive, but it was impressive—especially after being two days in weightless hell. His colleagues, all veteran astronauts, took both weightlessness and the sudden acceleration in stride, as well as traveling through vacuum at about 17,500 miles per hour. Old hat. Yeah, right, Chris thought. This is one of those moments of extreme excitement that I tell everyone about in my lectures. Right now I can’t wait for the boredom of the next six weeks . . .
In the crew cabin with him were his companions for the next several weeks and for whatever awaited them at the asteroid. First and foremost, there was Colonel Robyn Rogers-White, the mission commander. Chris, like probably every other man who’d ever met her, thought she was drop-dead gorgeous. So much so, that even Chris, who usually only stumbled and fumbled when in the presence of Nobel Laureates, had to control himself. And he hated it; he wasn’t used to being intimidated by mere looks. She had that and she was smart. Chris considered her to be almost too perfect; perhaps that’s why he felt so intimidated? They really hadn’t had much time to get to know each other and if he kept freezing up every time she looked at him, then he would lose her respect and that bothered him. He often told himself that he didn’t care what other people thought about him, but that was a lie. He did care; he was just so used to screwing up and offending people that he told himself that lie to make himself feel better during the lonely times.
Also in the cabin was the truly annoying Dr. Juhani Janhunen. Janhunen was the European Union’s personnel contribution to the mission and, at age forty-five, his space-related resume was impressive: three months on Moonbase and principal investigator on two deep space robotic missions. Chris might have liked him if it weren’t for his arrogant, Euro-superiority bullshit. Chris could put up with Janhunen because he was competent and hadn’t yet made any stupid mistakes. But Chris figured they would happen.
Then there was Yuichi Fuji, Japan’s crew member. Holt didn’t know much about Fuji, other than his resume, and Fuji seemed just fine with that. He didn’t say much, which to Chris was more than okay, except for the fact that it made the man seem aloof. People who were aloof often thought of themselves as superior, and Fuji was definitely not superior. His bumbling answers to some of the most rudimentary astrodynamics questions made Chris wonder if his resume had been doctored to make him appear qualified for the mission. He had a nagging suspicion that Fuji might be more of a spy or bureaucratic place-filler than a top-in-his-field scientist on his way to make contact with aliens. Like himself, Fuji was also space sick.
“You okay back there Holt?” asked Robyn, her head turning to the side to visually check on her crewmates.
“Good enough, you just worry about flying this thing. I’ll be fine.”
“If you say so,” she replied, sounding unconvinced.
Chris didn’t blame her. He’d been mostly useless since arriving at the Resolution and he was sure she was concerned about how he’d perform once they reached the Artifact. He wasn’t concerned; he knew he was coming out of the space sickness and could rise to any challenge. Plus, he didn’t want to show any weakness in front of Colonel Rogers-White lest he appear . . . weak.
From Chris’s perspective, there really wasn’t much to see except the blue marble that was Earth receding into the distance, ever so slowly, as the ship accelerated. The burn would last about an hour, providing comforting partial gravity and disquieting rattles for the duration. He could have tuned his ’net implants to see the instrument displays that he knew Robyn was watching as she shepherded them away from Earth’s gravity and toward, well, whatever awaited them. But he didn’t. It wasn’t every day that an otherwise earthbound scientist like him, who studied space and dreamed of going there since he was a boy, had an honest-to-God chance to fly there himself. Going to visit an alien Artifact was icing on the cake.
“Juhani, what is the news about the Chinese and Indian ships? Have you heard anything more about when they will be launching?” asked Yuichi.
Sounds like what an intelligence officer would ask, thought Chris.
“Nothing new. The latest intel says that the Chinese will depart Earth orbit tomorrow at the earliest, and on Saturday at the latest. That gives us anywhere from a one- to three-day head start, assuming that they don’t have a higher-performing engine than what our intelligence agencies tell us.”
“What about the Indians?”
“That’s a tougher one to answer. You know how the Indians have been since their Phobos mission failed last year. Just like they were before. Secretive. We didn’t even know they were going to Phobos until they launched, and even then we didn’t know if their destination was a Mars moon or Mars orbit until three months into the flight. We’ll know they’ve launched when they launch, I guess.”
“Any news on the Caliphate?” asked Chris. He’d grown concerned about what the rogue Middle Eastern state might do when its religious leaders learned that humans weren’t alone in the universe and their distorted view of Allah might have to allow not only for other religions but other sentient beings who might not even share humanity’s concept of a God. The concept of God bothered Chris. It was another of those common abstractions that he just didn’t really grasp. God wasn’t there making His existence known. Yet there were people who would kill you if you didn’t believe in what they said you were supposed to believe in—something you could not see. How could a rational person do such a thing? Yet billions of people did just that. It was all so confusing.
“I can brief you on that,” said Robyn, “but not until we’re finished with this burn and on our way. I was told to share the latest intel with you regarding the Caliphate once we were on escape. It’s not good.”
“The Americans are on their way.” Rui Zhong’s comment came almost as an aside as they were going through their pre-boarding checklist. She and her fellow taikonaut, Yuan Xiaoming, were near the end of more than two hours of systems checks that had to be completed before they would give their concurrence to boarding the rocket that would take them to the Zheng He, their own version of the American’s Resolution. The ship was named after the famous Chinese mariner who sailed throughout Asia and even to Africa in the early Ming Dynasty. It was an appropriate name for the ship that would take them to the alien Artifact. If all went well, then they would launch a mere thirty-six hours after the Americans. The ship was designed to carry a crew of ten. With this smaller crew and fewer supplies, which meant less mass to be accelerated by their ship’s nuclear propulsion system, they should easily make up the lost time and arrive at the target within hours of each other, perhaps even before the Americans.
“Better to arrive with the Americans than the Indians,” replied Yuan. He admired the Americans and their continued ingenuity, despite their being displaced as the preeminent economic power in the world. Since the war, their two countries had worked together, instead of against each other, and both were the better for it. Both great nations were prospering. On the other hand, he despised the Indians. In his view, they seemed to relish the role of international troublemaker and behind-the-scenes destabilizers. Such actions were not only disharmonious, they were dangerous. They and the Caliphate were blights upon an otherwise increasingly interdependent and collaborative world.
“The Indians will also be at the party, though there is no way they will arrive within a week of us or the Americans. I was told by the commissioner that they won’t be able to launch for at least another week.”
“That, Rui Zhong, is the best news I’ve heard today,” Xiaoming said as he stopped viewing the virtual checklist and instead switched to message mode. Like most Chinese, Yuan had the latest American corneal implant, allowing data from the central computer to be projected directly into his eye, at his discretion. In this case, he turned off the checklist after finishing the next-to-last section in order to read the most recent message from his sister. Her message icon was so typical of her: a Citron. The symbol of luck and happiness.
Brother, good news. I’m pregnant! The doctor says it will be a girl, just like we selected, and all of the modifications appear to have taken nicely. She will be taller than me, you know how I dislike being so short, and I’ve selected Mother’s eyes for her. You know how jealous I’ve been over your eyelashes? And the fact that you have them? Well, she’ll have your eyelashes. Her IQ will be like yours also. It looks like the gene splicing for intelligence went perfectly.
We’re all excited about your trip. Be safe and bring home an alien for us to meet. SMILE. We love you.
Xiaoming couldn’t be more pleased. This was good news to hear before departure and a sign of good luck. He might need it.