“Don,” Jack finally said, “scan over a range of channels. See if the probe’s broadcasting in some other frequency we haven’t been monitoring.”
“Monitoring channels...” Don said more to himself than in answer to Jack.
“Palmer, is there any change in trajectory yet?”
“No sir. I’ve been doing radar scans via the comm-relay probes. I can see probe two, but nothing’s changed.”
Jack turned to Don, and asked, “Everything looked fine in the pre-flight, Right?”
“Of course!” Don shot back, not even trying to hide his irritation at being questioned about basic procedure.
Jack then glanced at each of them around the table and asked, “Any suggestions?”
“Just that we follow standard failure recovery procedures,” Palmer said, “and set the computer to try reinitiating a link every twenty minutes.”
The room was quiet again before Don said, “Programming for automatic re-initiation of the comm link is set.”
“OK,” Jack said as he stood up, “we’ve got two active comm-relay probes, two active nav-probes and one good planetary probe. This is why we have redundant systems. We’re still in good shape. But, I want a full failure analysis report on this. We’ll meet back here tomorrow at ten to look at the preliminary data from the nav-probes.”
Kurt stood up, but stayed next to Jack as Palmer walked over. The first officer obviously had a question on his mind, but kept glancing over at Don who remained seated, staring at his terminal. “Do you think we should try building a replacement?” Palmer finally asked.
“How long do you think it’d take?” Jack asked.
“It shouldn’t take more than a week to get a sensor package with appropriate imaging equipment together,” Palmer replied. “Getting a propulsion unit might take longer.”
Kurt answered without waiting for the question to be directed to him, “Definitely more than a week. The problem is we don’t have any additional redundancy in the parts. Probe two was our set of redundant parts. We’ll have to build an entire power unit from scratch. At best, it’d take at least two weeks.”
“That would mean we’d be down to about two or three percent the speed of light before we could launch it,” Jack said softly.
Kurt ran through the numbers and continued the thought, “It’d arrive only a week or so ahead of us. It might not be worth the effort.”
“True,” Palmer replied. “Plus, the comm. relay probes will have exhausted their fuel by then. They’ll be too far out of range to relay any signals.”
“Then we’ve got no real choice,” Jack said. “We’ll stick with one planetary probe.”
“If there’s nothing else, then I’m going to review the logs.” Palmer said. As he turned to leave the room he added, “I’ll check back with you in an hour.”
“Good,” Jack responded reflexively. He took a deep breath and walked to the doorway before turning to Kurt. “Well, at least it wasn’t one of the nav-probes.”
“True. We really won’t lose much data because of this.”
“Now how about that rematch you wanted?”
It took Kurt a full second to realize his friend was referring to the race they had the day before; five kilometers – four full laps around the habitat. Jack seemed to enjoy catching him off balance with the quick change of subject. “Only if you want a serious beating,” he finally answered.
“I don’t know about that.”
Kurt noticed that as the conversation changed from dealing with the probe, Don got up and quietly walked past them. “You know, I did finish in under seventeen minutes a couple of days ago, so I won’t be so easy on you this time,” he said, prodding Jack some more.
“Yeah, but seventeen minutes in the equivalent to Martian gravity isn’t much to brag about,” Jack shot back.
All Kurt could do was shake his head and smile as they left the room. He knew better than to try to win this battle.
Chapter 3 – June 8, 2124
As was his morning routine, Jack sat in his living room sipping orange juice and reading the news from Earth. He skimmed an article detailing the latest economic battle between the European and Asian Unions, and caught himself wondering why he even bothered reading the reports. It wasn’t that politics and economics bored him – quite the opposite. It was the fact that the news was over ten years old; the time it took for the signal, traveling at the speed of light, to reach them. The disagreement between the Europeans and the Asians had long since been resolved and likely relegated to the back pages of history. Administrations and who knows what else had come and gone. The truth was, it was all irrelevant. He knew why he read it. The dry report of activities back on Earth was one of their only connections to a distant home.
Jack paged back to the front of the news summary and stared for a moment at the date: February 20, 2119. It was nearly as irrelevant as the news itself; maybe even more so. All it served to do was represent one of the more unsettling aspects of their trip; an experience the crew coined as “lost time.” Adding the ten-plus year journey for the signal to get to them meant that back on Earth it was sometime in mid-July, 2129. However, the ship’s clocks read June 8, 2124. Just over five years were missing. Standard, text-book special relativity explained it, of course. But, reading about it was one thing; living it was quite another. The only way that Jack could digest the bizarre mix of dates was to fall back on an old, high-school example. Einstein called it the ‘twin paradox.’ Relativity said that since nothing could travel faster than the speed of light, then the passage of time itself was no longer a universal constant. Instead, the closer you came to traveling at the speed of light, the slower time passed for you with respect to the world outside your ship. In fact, according to Einstein’s paradox, if you had a set of twins where one traveled at these relativistic speeds while the other remained on Earth, the twins would no longer be the same age when they reunited after the trip. The traveling twin would be younger. This effect, known as time-dilation, had been known for two centuries, and confirmed countless times in experiments. Though Jack didn’t have a twin back home waiting for him, it didn’t make the effect any less real. The Magellan had accelerated for nearly seven and a half earth-years, reaching a top velocity of just over ninety percent of the speed of light. At that point, time was passing nearly three times more slowly onboard the Magellan than back home on Earth. Though they were now back to slower, sub-relativistic speeds, the cumulative effect of time-dilation had still taken its toll. Just under ten years had passed for the crew of the Magellan since the beginning of their trip, while their Earth-bound counterparts had seen fifteen years go by.
Jack tapped his display’s menu-bar, closing the news report and brought up the day’s agenda. At the top of the list was the morning status meeting. Unlike the typical tedious review of maintenance and prep tasks, this one would be interesting: today they would get their first look at data from the planetary probe.
He quickly brought his breakfast dishes into the efficiency kitchen, and headed back through his living room to the front door. Despite his rank as Captain, he had the same size, one-bedroom apartment as the rest of the crew. The only exception was for married crewmembers, who had an extra room. Space was limited, but the apartments weren’t cramped. The mission planners had worked hard to strike the right balance between providing the amenities necessary to maintain morale, against the extraordinary cost of each kilogram carried on the Magellan. In the end, he had to admit, they did manage to achieve that balance.
Jack strolled out his front door and into the Garden: the largest open livable space in the ship. Set in the midpoint of the globe that made up the habitat, it was four hundred meters across and took up three levels. During the mission planning stages, the psychological team had insisted on merging the fresh-food production and recreation facilities to create an open, Earth-like environment. Enough care had been taken that it truly felt as if he you were walking outside. Their one-story, shingled apartments formed
a ring three-quarters of the way around the Garden, with the remaining quarter taken up by the two-story command building. With space at a premium, even the roofs of the apartments were covered with plants that were part of the food production system. The light blue-gray walls around the perimeter faded to the deep azure one would find on a clear day as they curved upward to the ceiling ten meters above. Diffuse lights ringed the Garden, giving the specter of mid-morning sunlight. With a temperature around twenty degrees Celsius, it was a perpetual spring day. The lights automatically dimmed in the evening providing a ‘night-time’ that lasted a convenient eight hours.
Jack walked the short path across his front lawn to the main road. The yards were maintained by each apartment’s occupant, providing a little bit of individuality. His own, however, was decorated with only a few, short, red-flowered shrubs. Though healthy, their arrangement reflected the fact that they’d been placed purely to break the monotony, and not out of any enjoyment of gardening. It was an almost austere sight when compared with his neighbor, an exobiologist named Alex Gilmartin. His carefully manicured array of flowers, ferns, shrubs and miniature trees gave the small area a lush, near-tropical feeling.
The road in front of him was little more than a one-lane, paved path that ran around the entire Garden. Though capable of handling the traffic of the occasional small, electrically powered maintenance cart, it was nearly always empty. Right now, it was perfectly quiet. Across the street, a small footpath led through the heart of the food production and recreation facilities. On the left was a golden field of hip-high, dwarf-wheat. Beyond it were small fields of rice, corn and other staples. Off to the right was the well-kept lawn of a multi-purpose ball field, followed by a cluster of tennis and handball courts. Beyond them lay a park, replete with small trees, shrubs, simulated stone paths and even a pond that doubled as a swimming pool. The psychological team, over Jack’s objections, insisted on including this area so that the crew could escape the tension and technology that perpetually surrounded them. Though he wouldn’t readily admit it, he was happy he lost that battle.
Continuing at a brisk pace down the center path, he glanced at a pair of robots harvesting the grain. The boxy, golf-cart size, silver-wheeled machines moved slowly though the rows of plants. Their long metal appendages, however, collected the grain too quickly for his eyes to follow. Despite their rapid motion, they made barely any noise – just a soft clicking accompanied by the hiss of grain pouring into holding bins. As he crossed an intersection with a second footpath which ran perpendicular to his, the wheat abruptly shifted to rows of corn. The planting was staggered to ensure a continual supply, resulting in the plants growing taller as he continued down the path. Near the end were stalks with sweet, mature ears, followed by a nearly bare plot peppered with seedlings. The path crossed the main road again, and ended at the glass doors of the brick-faced command building. In reality, the building was nothing more than a facade – just an entrance to the rest of the ship. Its appearance as a separate structure was simply to perpetuate the illusion in the Garden that they still had some semblance of a normal life.
Once inside, he made his way down a plain white corridor, identical to the dozens of others that wound their way through the rest of the habitat. Above the Garden, they led to laboratories, a computer center, as well as repair and other support facilities. Below were the maintenance corridors for the massive arrays of power units, superconducting magnets and other equipment that formed the core of the interstellar drive. Jack took an elevator up one level, and continued a short distance to the main conference room. Palmer, Don and Kurt were already present, prompting Jack to utter a quick, “Good morning,” as he took his seat. “Since we’re all here, why don’t we get started? First, are there any pressing issues?”
Don spoke up immediately, “I’ve taken a look at our first atmospheric spectra from the planetary probe. Even though it’s still two days out, I figured that we might finally get some answers regarding the strange spectral lines we originally spotted back home. The problem is, the spectra aren’t consistent with an active civilization.”
“What do you mean?” Palmer asked quickly, “that’s something you said was beyond any doubt...”
“No...no, I’m not calling what I said into question. It’s just that the details are confusing … that’s what I mean. Back home, at ten light-years away, we could never get a good read on a lot of the trace components. Now that we’re here, we have some good data, but it doesn’t make a lot of sense. Basically, there are almost no short-lived compounds like nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide, compared to the amounts of longer lasting synthetics. Of the synthetics, I’ve identified perfluoromethane and octafluoropropane, and have isolated a couple more that I still can’t identify.”
“Maybe the lack of regular pollutants means they’re more advanced, or at least more sensible than us,” Kurt interrupted, eliciting a chuckle from Jack.
Palmer ignored the comment and added, “Or, for whatever reason, they’re unable to use the technological processes that pollute. This could mean there’s no longer a civilization on Epsilon Eri-D, if there ever was one.”
“That’s not what I said,” Don replied defensively.
“You can’t just choose to ignore a valid possibility because you don’t like it,” Palmer shot back.
“Palmer, these compounds are definitely not natural. If anything, there’s less doubt now about their purpose. Based on their concentrations, they are strong candidates for terraforming. I mean they’ve got a strong green-house potential, making them the ideal gases to warm up a world that might be too cold for liquid water. Maybe we’ve stumbled onto a work in progress here. We could be talking about a race able to engineer an entire planet.”
“Then where’re the energy signatures of technology?” Palmer pressed. “And what about signs of the machines needed to make these compounds?”
Deciding to put a quick stop to the emerging debate, Jack said, “We’ll argue about what this means later. Don, how sure are you of these levels?”
“Very. Basically, from two days out, we can get close to the level of detailed analysis we’d have if we were in orbit.”
“Ok then,” Jack continued, “what about our image resolution? Can we confirm anything visually yet?”
“No not from this distance. The probes are still about 50 million kilometers out.” Don paused as he quickly worked a calculation on his terminal. “We’d only be able to see features about one kilometer or larger.”
“Which doesn’t contradict what I said,” Palmer added.”
“It doesn’t say anything either way.” Jack interjected. “It’s probably not so productive to spend time speculating based on this limited data anyway.”
“Then why bring it up?” Palmer pressed.
Don glared at him as he answered, “I just thought it might be important to mention this. Anyhow, the probe will do a thousand kilometer fly-by in two days. Then, we’ll have some detailed imagery to go with.”
“Thanks Don,” Jack said as he moved quickly to change the subject. “Kurt, how’s our ETA at Epsilon Eri-D looking?”
“We finished the last of our main course corrections, so projections put us there in four weeks, on July sixth – our time.”
They had just completed their passage through the Kuiper Belt, and Kurt proceeded to present their findings. Over ten-thousand bodies had been catalogued; with the largest being a mammoth icy planet five times the size of Pluto. Its unexpectedly large collection of moonlets required a detour that pushed the arrival date out an extra two days. The only truly unexpected find though was that the Kuiper Belt ended some two times further from Epsilon Eri than the belt back home did from the Sun. Jack smiled on hearing this. Though there were still four weeks to go, it meant that they were already in the relatively clear space that was the main part of the star system. The crew would be spared a continuation of the round-the-clock watches and course corrections associated with searching for the hazardous, icy
fragments in the belt. Though separated by centuries, Jack always thought of this duty as something they had in common with the lookouts on the ancient ships that sailed the icy waters of the North Atlantic. Those men had strained their eyes against the pitch black night, looking for icebergs that could wreak havoc on their vessels. Though his crew had telescopes and radar, their job was equally important and no less arduous.
Kurt finished with a status report on the various systems and the room fell quiet again. Jack gave the others a few seconds to pose any questions. When no one spoke up, he asked, “Don, what about our next targets and ETA’s?”
Don stood up and quickly instructed the computer to display the familiar holographic diagram of the Epsilon Eri system. The lights dimmed and a bright, yellow ball representing the central star hovered over the middle of the table. Surrounding it were concentric, red ellipses tracing out the orbits of Epsilon Eri’s twelve planets; the outermost curve swung within centimeters of Jack’s face. There was some similarity to the Earth’s system, in that the outer four planets were gas giants; though it included an unusual binary where a Jupiter-sized planet was orbited by another that rivaled Neptune in size. The hologram showed the massive orange and red striped globe moving along its orbit, with its companion, a muted cream-colored sphere, sweeping out an elongated path around it. The middle region of the system was more chaotic than back home. Two rocky planets, a Jovian, and two asteroid belts cluttered a region from three-hundred-million to three-billion kilometers from the star. The inner belt was undoubtedly the remnants of two terrestrial planets that came too close to one another; the outer belt though may well have been comprised of more pristine debris left over from the formation of the planetary system. The neighboring planets seemed to shepherd the two belts into their distinct regions. Further in toward Epsilon Eri was their target: Epsilon Eri-D. A near carbon-copy of Earth, it was only five percent smaller and sat one-hundred-ten-million kilometers from its sun. Its blue oceans and graceful white clouds called to them. Closer still to Epsilon Eri were the remaining four. Though all were roughly the size of Mars, they varied drastically in their environments. The furthest in was so close that it orbited its sun in only 20 days, leaving it with a molten surface. The next closest was an arid, baked world like Mercury, while the third held a stifling, dense atmosphere that might well be on its way to becoming a Venus.
Prelude to Extinction Page 3