Pluto's Ghost- Encounter Edition
Page 1
B.C.CHASE
Pluto’s Ghost: Encounter Edition
B.C.CHASE is the internationally bestselling author of the Paradeisia Trilogy, which critics have hailed as one of the greatest franchises of our time.* His electrifying talent for combining the latest in scientific breakthroughs with edge-of-your-seat thrills has earned him a reputation as a master of suspense. Amazon has ranked him among its top ten science fiction authors.
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Also by B.C.CHASE:
Leviathan
Glass
Paradeisia: Origin of Paradise
Paradeisia: Violation of Paradise
Paradeisia: Fall of Paradise
Cataton
Santa Claus: The King of the Elves
Copyright © 2018 B.C.CHASE
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Preseption Press
ISBN: 978-1977718365
This is a work of fiction. Corporations, characters, organizations, or other entities in this novel are the product of the author's imagination, or, if real, are used fictitiously without any intent to describe their actual conduct.
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Table of Contents
Introduction
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-one
Twenty-two
Twenty-three
Twenty-four
Twenty-five
Twenty-six
Twenty-seven
Twenty-eight
Twenty-nine
Thirty
Thirty-one
Thirty-two
Thirty-three
Thirty-four
Thirty-five
Thirty-six
Thirty-seven
Thirty-eight
Thirty-nine
Forty
Forty-one
Forty-two
Forty-three
Forty-four
Forty-five
Forty-six
Forty-seven
Forty-eight
Forty-nine
Fifty
Fifty-one
Fifty-two
Fifty-three
Fifty-four
Fifty-five
Fifty-six
Fifty-seven
Fifty-eight
Fifty-nine
Sixty
Paradeisia: Origin of Paradise Preview
On the Science
Glossary of Abbreviations and Technical Terms
Further Reading
Epilogue
This volume contains a bonus preview of Paradeisia: Origin of Paradise.
Introduction
Everything you are about to read concerning the operating procedures and details of the extant International Space Station modules and the shuttle Atlantis is accurate. (When I write that there are thirty-six laptops on the International Space Station, that’s because there are thirty-six laptops on the International Space Station.) This is not to say this text is error-free. Please note that any errors are my fault and have nothing to do with the sources that I cite. For additional information on the science, see the Note on the Science and the Further Reading at the end of this novel.
Editor: Gayle W. Herde, Ph.D.
SATURN AND ENCELADUS (NASA)
JUPITER (NASA)
PLUTO (NASA)
One
I’m unemployed. I’m seventy-five years old. I hate flying. But I’m sitting on 90,000 gallons of kerosene about to be blasted into space on a mission that cost four hundred billion bucks.
Go figure.
NASA told me that I should wear my helmet on the way up. I said, “No, thanks.” I know that helmet or no helmet, if we’re dumped on the ocean, it will be as fine ash. If they don’t like it, they can kiss my saggy, old butt.
The date is May 18th, 2020. The time is 4:27 a.m. The windows rim the top of the cockpit like holes at the top of an egg. The seats are in two rows: three closest to the nose and three behind. I’m positioned in the right rear (or, in spaceship speak, starboard aft). My back is to the ground in a seat that was clearly not designed by La-Z-Boy. Aside from three screens and a number of buttons and joysticks situated in the nose, the cabin is bare. The walls are dark gray and look like they are made of carbon fiber.
The suit I’m wearing doesn’t look like much. It’s puffy, wrinkled, and fluorescent orange like a highway cone. Underneath it and my shirt I’m wearing a little something NASA doesn’t know about. Folded up and stuffed down the front of my jeans is the cheapest Chinese-manufactured copy of Old Glory money can buy. Why do I have to smuggle my nation’s flag in my pants? I’ll talk about that later, but for now back to my suit. Why is my suit orange? So that if something goes wrong and we get dumped on the Atlantic, we can be spotted more easily. This tells me that the only thing you have to do to be hired by NASA for spacesuit design is display euphoric optimism during your interview. “Mr. Perkins, what do you think your chances are of winning the lottery, this year?”
“About a hundred percent.”
“Perfect. You’re just the kind of person we’re looking for. You’ll be making this year’s space suits.”
The screens show buttons, numbers, graphs, and geometric shapes. I don’t have a clue what any of the buttons are for or what any of the shapes mean. They tried to teach me in case of an emergency, but I told ‘em if I was going to die in space, I wanted to die sitting peacefully, twiddling my thumbs. Anyway, it’s not as if I would be the one to save us should something go wrong. That would be up to one of the other members of the crew: highly esteemed and capable astronauts who spent much of their lives preparing for this. Now they are busy jabbering with Houston—all the preflight mumbo-jumbo, but during flight prep, when we were being suited up and doing the pressure tests and all that, I was surprised to see they looked like they were anxious. They were wringing their hands and their eyes were open wide like cattle. I guess in the end we’re all just human beings and, training or not, knowing that the chances of death within the next thirty minutes are about one in nine[1] is enough to make anybody a little nerv
ous.
On the list of top candidates, I would probably fit somewhere between six and seven billion. As I said, I don’t have any qualifications to be here. I used to listen to science audiobooks in my rig, but that’s as far as my interest in science goes. (You have to listen to something when you’re on the road for five hundred miles a day.) In fact, about the only things that qualify me to go to space at all is that I have traveled more miles than anyone here except for our commander and I am the only one to live in something with an APU. Through my years as a trucker, I logged over five million miles. That’s a far cry from the five billion or so miles it will take us to reach Pluto (that’s not as the crow flies), but if I had driven my trucks to the moon instead of all over America, I could have made about ten round trips. So take that, Commander Tomlinson.
Commander Joshua Tomlinson is thirty years old and sitting in the middle up front. To me, his face has a child-like quality, but since he is less than half my age, I suppose that shouldn’t be surprising. His eyes are large and brown, his cheeks full, and his hair curly. You might think that, being so young, he would lack self-confidence and assurance, but nothing could be further from the truth. It is obvious that he doesn’t have the slightest doubt that he is right all the time about everything. That clearly cannot come from experience, given his age, so I assume it comes from his natural intelligence. As far as raw smarts and quick wits go, I suspect few could match him. His technical knowledge—in fact his knowledge in general—is way over my head. He doesn’t seem to care if any of us like him, and he is obsessed with his business. I like that because his business is getting us to Pluto safely. Not sure how much I want to go to Pluto, but since that’s where we’re going, I want it to be a safe trip.
A safe trip. From everything I’ve heard, that’s an oxymoron in this case. There’s nothing about this trip that is safe. And, to make things worse, if we do meet our doom, in all likelihood it won’t be a quick and easy passing. What I said earlier about being dumped on the Atlantic as a fine ash was hyperbole. All the bodies from the Challenger disaster were recovered (from their seats in the crew cabin) and plenty of the remains from Columbia were found. NASA made me watch the video of Columbia’s last moments before it ripped up, and they showed me pictures of the body parts. They said they wanted me to be fully aware of the risks. In the video, the crew are is joking and having a good time, passing around the camera, and admiring the view of the billowing plasma outside the windows. Then the video goes dead, and what you don’t see is the cockpit spiraling out of control, the pilot desperately flipping switches, astronauts frantically putting on their helmets and gloves, the cabin depressurizing, and their bodies breaking free from their upper seat restraints as the crew compartment spins faster than a blender. I’m trying not to think about that. But as you can see, I’m having a tough time keeping it out of my mind.
Out of the prelaunch blabber, something over the radio from Houston catches my ear: “—and tell Jim he still needs to put his helmet on.”
Commander Tomlinson turns his head and says, “Jim, you need to put your helmet on.”
“Copy that,” I say, “I don’t know where it is.” I’m holding it in my lap.
Commander Tomlinson says, “He doesn’t know where his helmet is.”
Houston replies, “We found it. He left it down here with his brain.”
I hear chuckles all over the radio.
Commander Tomlinson says, “They chose six of the most intelligent people on all the Earth. Then they chose Jim to find out what can go wrong.”
I say, “You’re about to find out what it’s like to launch into orbit and get your butt kicked at the same time.”
By the time we reach Pluto, the communications delay will be nine hours roundtrip. If we were to have a serious medical emergency, whoever needed help would probably be dead by the time we heard back from the flight surgeon in Houston. For this reason, and the fact that it just makes us all feel better, we have our own personal doctor: Shelby Montana, thirty-one, from Louisiana. I think it’s safe to say she’s the favorite member of the crew. She spent most of her medical career as an emergency room doctor. Does that mean NASA is expecting us to have a lot of emergencies? I don’t know, but I do know she has also been practicing common surgeries a lot over the past couple years. She has poufy hair (which I assume will get poufier once we reach outer space), bright, bunny-like eyes, and a small mouth with two big front teeth that she happily exposes when she smiles and laughs—and she smiles and laughs a lot. She’s kind of like our mother hen—clucking at us and pestering us with admonitions about our health and diet all the time. Like a caring mother, we wouldn’t want to do without her even if she can be a little irritating. She does it because she cares. She’s also the one who pulls you aside for a heart-to-heart if she senses you aren’t perfectly happy, and her senses are as sharp as a hound’s.
The psychologist on this mission is Shiro Nakamura, forty-two, from Japan. He is on the left seat with Shelby to his right. He will keep an eye on our mental wellbeing, but I think his presence here has more to do with the purpose of our mission. He’s also a linguist. He has brown eyes and a generally severe expression. He’s very open-minded, but once he has formed his opinion, you could move a mountain more easily than you could persuade him that he’s wrong.
Also aboard are the lovebirds of the mission sitting on either side of Commander Tomlinson: Timothy Manning, thirty-four, from England and Doctor Nari Park, twenty-seven, from South Korea. They’re married, though at times it’s hard to tell if they love space more or each other. Tim is our pilot. The computer will be doing most of the flying, so he will also be responsible for fixing stuff. He’s a stellar programmer, from what I’m told. Get it? Stellar programmer. Nari is one of our “mission specialists” (also what they’re calling me, though I don’t specialize in anything except trying to get out of my easy chair and taking pills). She is a biologist. He’s an optimistic, easy-going character. She’s serious and a little hard to get to know. Tim is blonde and has an unimpeachable smile, big dimples, and ears that flash red when he’s embarrassed or laughing. Nari has long, jet-black hair that she keeps in a ponytail, a narrow chin, and big, round eyes.
The cabin is starting to vibrate and I hear a rushing sound like a giant toilet flushing. That’s the fuel. Now the cabin shakes, and a deep roar reverberates from under us. The engines have fired. This is it. I can’t turn back now. Despite this, I raise my hand and say, “I have a question!”
“What is it, Jim?” Commander Tomlinson says, sounding irritated.
“Are we there, yet?”
“Oh, you idiot!” Shelby exclaims, laughing.
Perhaps my humor is helping me deal the with stark fact that we cannot stop now, even if we wanted to. I cannot get off. I’m going to space. Pluto, here I come.
Two
I look over at the kids sitting next to me: Shelby and Shiro. Shelby is staring straight up with a pleasant grin. Reflected in the monitor up front, I can see that Tim, to Commander Tomlinson’s left, has the broadest smile you’ve ever seen. Tim sees me looking at him and gives me the thumbs up. Nari, on Commander Tomlinson’s right, appears more subdued, but I see her exchange a friendly smile with Commander Tomlinson.
I can feel all the blood drain from my head. My mind is a whirlwind of profound thoughts:
Jim, you idiot.
Jim, you idiot.
Jim, you idiot.
Yes, that’s my name. Jim. Jim Perkins, the truck driver who is going to Pluto.
Well, I suppose they had a reason for choosing me. Out of all the billions of people on this smallish blue ball, Jim Perkins’ name showed up. NASA has puzzled over it ever since the list came through. But nothing stood out to recommend me. Not my biology. Certainly not my brains: the most education I have is a high school diploma. I’m just your average, ordinary, run-of-the-mill person with nothing to recommend me.
Maybe that’s why I accepted the invite: because I was chosen. See, I used
to be the one who makes all the choices. I chose all my dates for high school proms. I chose to be team captain in football. I chose to be student body president. I chose to marry the girl of my dreams. I chose to make love to my new bride (and about a year later my daughter was born). I chose to go on the fast track to success by skipping college. I chose to file for divorce after my wife left my daughter and me and shacked up with a new rich guy. I chose to start trucking. I chose to buy a house out in the country with acreage and a pond. I chose to retire from trucking after a truck crushed my daughter’s car between it and another semi, rolling the roof off like a can of sardines.
So it’s nice to have somebody else do the choosing for once. They chose me for this mission and, to be frank, I guess I’m flattered, so I’m going.
Who is they? They’re not UFO’s, mind you. People in the press have been calling them UFOs a lot, but that’s a misnomer. We have never seen them, we don’t know if they fly, and they’re awfully smart for being mere objects. NASA has instructed us to call them “Extant Communicating Intelligences.” ECIs for short. That’s because NASA thinks the terms alien and extraterrestrial are associated with too many cartoonish depictions in Earth’s media. Offending the aliens right off the bat isn’t high on NASA’s list of priorities. Well, we don’t know how cartoonish they might actually be, but one thing we do know about them is that they were at least 140 astronomical units away. That’s about thirteen billion miles. We know that because that’s how far Voyager 1 was when it … well, wait, I’m getting ahead of myself.
I’ll never forget that phone call (never being a rather insignificant period because it’s likely I’ll die in the next few minutes on my way through the stratosphere). I was laying on the bed of my rig, getting some shuteye, when my cell phone rang. The cab of my semi-truck is actually pretty spacious, with a twin-sized bed, a refrigerator, a microwave, and lots of storage space. For some people, the noise of the APU (that’s the auxiliary power unit that provides a/c) could be a bit much, but I always found it to be sleep-inducing. (Or maybe that was the fourteen hours I had spent on the road.)