Pluto's Ghost- Encounter Edition

by B. C. CHASE

  “No siree!” I say, “I’m ready.” But as I say this it hits me that if we really are heading down to Pluto’s surface, I’m overlooking something very important. “Oh, shoot. I’m not ready. I forgot something. Don’t leave without me.”

  I start to move away, but Commander Tomlinson stops me and whines, “The press will love it when we tell them we were late because our seventy-five-year-old crewman forgot something.”

  “You can tell them I had a senior moment,” I say, patting his cheek. “And, for the record, I’m now seventy-six.” With that, I head off for my CQ.

  I have that disconcerting sensation I felt when one day I was in the waiting room at the dentist and they called me back sooner than they promised they would. I’ve never had a more excruciating root canal that that one before or since. In this case, having five months of anticipation-time stolen from me is giving me a horrible case of the heebie-jeebies.

  For the first time since the mission began, we open the zenith hatch in Node 1. Releasing the hatch isn’t difficult. All Commander Sykes must do is crack the pressure equalizer and rotate a handle until it stops. The hatch slides along grooves and tucks up out of the way. Inside is a small circular room shaped like a flying saucer with seven seats lining the circumference and facing inward. There is one door on the side and a screen on the other side.

  “Where’s the steering wheel?” I ask.

  “It’s entirely automated,” says Tim. “No need for one.”

  Nari, holding the baby, hugs each of us. She will stay on the station while we land. Several SPHERES line up on either side and watch us leave the station as we enter the lander. It is odd, as if they are performing a little going away ceremony for us. For my part, I’m not flattered.

  The lander, called New Shepard 11, has five generously-sized windows. The light of our star streams in from the windows as it rises over Pluto.

  Nari wishes us one last goodbye and, to all of our surprise, a SPHERES sails past her directly into the capsule. It floats down to the floor and uses an arm to grasp the bottom of my seat.

  “What should I do?” I ask Commander Sykes.

  He shrugs, “I guess we have a stowaway.”

  Nari starts to shut the station’s hatch. Commander Sykes and Tim work to close the lander’s hatch. This takes a minute or two, but soon they are seated.

  Where I’m sitting, Katia is to my right and Tim is to her right. Across from me is Commander Tomlinson and to his left is Commander Sykes and to his right is Shiro. Shelby is between Shiro and Tim. The door is between Commander Sykes and me.

  “And away we go,” says Commander Sykes. “Remember, whatever happens, we’re doing this for all the folks back home. Let’s make ‘em proud.” He lifts his hand to a camera mounted on the side of his helmet, “Don’t forget to switch on your cameras.” Then he folds his hands over his chest.

  “Pluto,” says Shiro, “the god of hades.”

  “We’ve certainly been through hades to get here,” says Tim. He isn’t laughing.

  “Let’s hope,” says Shiro, “that the planet doesn’t live up to its name.”

  “Dwarf planet,” corrects Commander Tomlinson.

  The lander rumbles as jets fire to separate it from the station. As we rise, the light streaming in from the sun shifts. Out the window opposite the sun, I see a round, gray object that looks like another planet.

  “Charon,” says Shelby, pointing to it. And, I suspect for my benefit, she adds, “Pluto’s biggest moon.”

  Charon has a giant ridge running across its middle that makes it look like the moon was being torn in half sometime in the distant past.

  The lander is lowering towards Pluto’s surface, and as it adjusts its angle, the landscape comes into view.

  “My God,” says Commander Sykes. “Look at that.”

  We are passing over rows of sharp, blade-shaped ridges and spires. Their shadows stretch out long and straight in a gentle fog that rests between them. “It’s the penitentes,” says Shelby, clearly in awe. “I believe it when they say they’re 1,600 feet tall.” Beyond the penitentes is a massive plain of sparkling, snowy ice and, lining it on the opposite side are ruddy mountains that jut straight up out of the plain at dramatic angles and breathtaking heights. They are so distant that the haze of the atmosphere slightly obscures them.

  “Sputnik Planitia,” observes Commander Sykes. “In the heart of Pluto.”[9]

  As we traverse the plain, I notice small pockets and holes dotting its surface. They are thick and small in some areas (as small as a city block from what I can tell) but in most areas larger and more spread apart. They are strangely unnatural in their regularity and the perfection of their round shapes.

  I can tell that my crewmates are deeply anxious. Heck, I can’t deny that I’m just about scared senseless. The fact that we are about to meet a race of alien beings who are clearly in possession of superior intelligence and resources is heavily weighing on our minds. We don’t know how far they’ve traveled to be here. We don’t know what they value. We don’t know much of anything about them, honestly, except that they are smarter than we.

  Oh, and one more thing we know about them is that they kill indiscriminately in order to manipulate or to suit their objectives.

  We are crossing the plain with tremendous speed. I notice that the mountains to our left are capped with white snow. Snow-capped mountains, I think. On Pluto. Who would have guessed? Farther to the left of the mountains are undulating, almost puffy-looking hills and slopes that could be mistaken for cotton if not for their ruddy hue.

  “The Tenzing Mountains,” says Commander Sykes. “And those,” he points to the horizon, “are the Hillary Mountains.” He shakes his head, “They look a whole lot taller than 11,000 feet to me.”

  “Probably because they stick straight up out of the ground,” says Shelby. “There aren’t any foothills.”

  Commander Tomlinson’s legs are starting to clap together. As high an opinion as he apparently has of the ECIs, he must be feeling a little inadequate to the task of presenting himself to them. He’s like a little child who’s meeting Santa for the first time. Except this Santa doesn’t give presents and doesn’t go “ho, ho, ho.” I can’t help but pity the poor guy. How desperate must you be to choose scary aliens as your heroes? I guess the human psyche longs for a hero. Ideally, we want a hero who is both good and capable of doing anything. When we can’t find one with both those qualities, we usually settle for a hero who can do anything.

  “Didn’t realize how beautiful it would be, did you?” Commander Sykes says to Katia, who is staring, spellbound, with tears in her eyes.

  “No,” she shakes her head, “I didn’t.”

  “None of us did,” Commander Sykes says in a breath.

  As we travel towards the cluster of Hillary mountains that tower in the haze on the edge of the far horizon, I notice that the plain is segmented into round shapes by distinct, dark lines. It looks to me kind of like what you see when you boil a pot of thick oatmeal. As our lander follows the curvature of Pluto’s landscape, chasing the sun to where it hangs over the distant skyline, the lander gradually lowers. My heart begins to thump in my chest with anticipation. I scan the surface for any sign of the ECIs, but nothing catches my eye. The jets fire and the lander slows while our rate of descent increases. We are heading for a spot near the tallest of the mountains where the gentle rises and falls of dunes caress the surface of the plain.

  From a pocket in my pants, I extract the item I had almost forgotten in my crew quarters: the American flag I smuggled in my pants way back on launch day. As I hold the flag up, Commander Sykes smiles, “How did you get that all the way here?”

  “Arrived from Amazon.com this morning. Free one-day shipping.”

  Indicating to the Stars and Stripes, Shelby says, “The ECIs will have no doubt about which country you came from.”

  “I haven’t seen any sign of them,” I say, peering out the window. “They’d better be here to greet me
or I’ll be one unhappy tourist.”

  “What did you expect to see,” says Shiro, “fireworks and a marching band? Make no mistake. They are here.”

  “I’ll believe it when I see a little green guy holding a sign that says, ‘Jim Perkins.’”

  I am suddenly reminded of the video of the Columbia crew before they perished. They were laughing and joking, making light of the inherent danger of a shuttle landing. I think I must be doing the same thing now. Humor is the best tonic for frayed nerves.

  The lander begins a direct descent. Engines fire loudly beneath us, and I clutch the sides of my seat. The downward pressure and shaking are tremendous. Outside the windows on the opposite side of the cabin, the now nearby Hillary mountains rise up to loom impressively high but are soon obscured by a flurry of cloudy fog that shoots up from the ground and swirls around the capsule. There is a light bounce as the lander touches down. I feel the force of gravity pulling me down into my seat, but it is only a fraction of what I remember from Earth. A voice comes over speakers that are recessed in the wall, “Warning: cabin depressurizing in one minute.”

  “Where are they?” asks Katia, craning her neck to peer out the windows.

  “I don’t see anything,” says Shelby.

  We are all frantically looking in all directions.

  “Depressurization imminent. Thirty seconds.”

  There is an uneasy silence.

  “Depressurization in T-minus 10, 9, 8…”

  When the countdown reaches zero, I lift my flag up between my hands. A loud hiss sounds and the flag goes a little stiff with frost. Our vizors all fog up, but the fog quickly dissipates.

  “Cabin depressurized. Open hatch.”

  Commander Sykes unbuckles his seatbelt and moves across the capsule to the door. He extends the crank handle and begins to turn.

  Forty-nine

  The door slides up and exposes a view of breathtaking beauty. The cloudy fog is settling to the ground around the lander like a billowing white sheet coming to rest in a breeze. The SPHERES unclamps itself from my seat bracket and floats straight for the exit, quickly disappearing out of sight.

  “I wonder where it’s going,” Commander Sykes says.

  “To collect the bounty from its masters,” says Shiro.

  Commander Sykes takes his time climbing out of the capsule as he adjusts to the gravity. Once he is outside, he says nothing, and Commander Tomlinson follows. Then Shiro, Shelby, Tim, and Katia each disembark. Before I know it, it is my turn.

  All I can hear is my own breathing inside my helmet. I loosen my seat restraints and stand up. Apparently, I stand up too fast because I bounce up and hit my head on the ceiling. After taking a little time to gain my Pluto-legs, I step for the door. As I pull myself out, I swing my feet up and over the rim and land with a couple of slow hops. The ground is firm, but powdery on top. Once I am stable, I stand erect and raise my eyes to take in the scene. Despite the lack of gravity compared to Earth, it feels really good to plant my feet on the ground for once. I draw in a deep breath as if I am on Earth, but of course my body doesn’t realize that I’m in a space suit and the only air I’ll get is the same packaged, sterile stuff I’ve been breathing for well over a year.

  Our star, the sun, shines from above the snowcapped peak of a massive mountain that surges up from the ground at a sharp angle, shouldered by smaller mountains. Like a crystal ocean, the comparatively tiny ice dunes rise and fall at their bases. The sky is dark and blue like the ocean, stars twinkling out through the atmosphere. In all my days on the road, I’ve seen some of the best that Earth has to offer in terms of scenic vistas. But this is a prospect of such peaceful and lonely grandeur that it outshines them all. I can’t help but drop to my knees and stare in awe, my mouth gaping open like a largemouth bass.

  Now that I am perched on the crest of one, I am astounded by the impressive height of the dunes. They must be a hundred feet tall, at least. The troughs are like valleys. A very faint and leisurely breeze carries nearly invisible flakes of snow that glisten like tiny diamonds as they catch the sun’s white light.

  “What a sight,” utters Commander Sykes. “This view alone is worth the trip.”

  “I cannot believe it,” breathes Shelby. “Who would guess Pluto is the solar system’s most beautiful planet.”

  “Pluto is not a planet,” says Commander Tomlinson.

  Katia says, “You do realize how dumb you sound standing here saying that, don’t you?”

  We stand in pregnant silence for a few moments before Commander Sykes says, “Well, I guess it’s time to plant the flag.”

  “I’ve got it right here,” I volunteer, waving Old Glory. It sways back and forth, tugged by Pluto’s gravity almost as if it’s in a breeze.

  “Sorry, Jim. It will have to be the flag NASA sent.”

  “Where the hell are they?” Commander Tomlinson says, scanning the horizon.

  While Tim seals the lander’s hatch, Commander Tomlinson hops over and retrieves a tube about two feet long from a compartment on the side. He opens a cap and swings the tube around, sending a bundle of several aluminum pole segments wrapped by a white piece of fabric flying out. “Oh crap!” he exclaims as the poles fly out and stake into the ground. The flag wafts through the air, drifting down the dune to settle at the bottom of the trough.

  “Don’t sweat it,” says Commander Sykes. “When Apollo 12 erected their flag, it drooped because the hinge on the pole wasn’t working.”

  “This isn’t freaking Apollo 12,” says Commander Tomlinson. “You don’t get it at all, do you? Nothing in history compares to this.”

  “Okay,” says Commander Sykes, “better go get your flag, then.”

  Commander Tomlinson takes arching strides down the hill until he trips and starts to tumble and bounce. His grunts and groans sound over the radio as he goes. It’s a long way but he finally reaches the bottom and stands up apparently no worse for the wear. He prances over to the flag and lifts it in the air. “I had some words planned,” he says. “Bring the pole down here.”

  “Josh,” says Commander Sykes. “We need the flag here.”

  “It will be too close to the lander up there. The lander will blow it away when you leave. Don’t you remember Apollo 11?”

  “We won’t put it near the lander.”

  “Just everybody come down here. You don’t need to be difficult about this.”

  “Fine,” says Commander Sykes. He takes a few wide steps to the flagpole’s pieces and says, “Tim, get the hammer out of the lander, if you don’t mind.”

  “Certainly, sir,” says Tim, and starts to climb into the lander. Once he returns armed with a mallet, Commander Sykes says, “Jim, Tim, come with me, please.”

  We follow him as he walks about fifty feet away from the lander. He grips one of the poles and slams it down on the ground, saying, “Tim, hammer it in, will you?”

  Tim complies until it’s a good foot into the ground. Commander Sykes assembles the other pieces. “Jim,” he says. “Give me your flag.” He starts clambering back up the dune.

  I happily hand Commander Sykes my flag while Commander Tomlinson shouts, “No! You can’t do that!”

  “Like hell I can’t,” says Commander Sykes. He threads the pole through the grommets and stands back. Old Glory is drooping, but it’s in place. I’m gratified to see it there. But I’m also growing increasingly anxious. The more time we spend with what seems like trivialities in light of our true purpose, the more I’m starting to wonder where the ECIs really are. Why haven’t they made an appearance?

  “What do you think, Tim?” asks Commander Sykes, motioning to the flag.

  “The colors suit me just fine, sir,” Tim replies.

  “Me too,” says Katia.

  “Shiro?” says Commander Sykes.

  “Meh,” says Shiro, “whatever. The dumb voyager pulsar map was erroneous, anyway.”

  Commander Tomlinson is breathing hard as he struggles up the slope.

  Su
ddenly, Shelby says, “Look!” and points towards the next dune.

  A SPHERES has appeared over the crest and follows the curve of the ground into the trough. It reaches Commander Tomlinson and stops. The cellphone screen flashes in colors: black, yellow, red, green, black, yellow, red, green. Then it starts moving right and left and back and forth. It pauses, returns to its original position and, directly before Commander Tomlinson’s face, flashes the colors again but in a different order this time: green, black, yellow, red, green, black, yellow, red, green. It performs the dancelike movements once more before repeating the flashing spectacle once more.

  “Guys, any ideas on what’s going on, here?” says Commander Tomlinson.

  There is silence.

  “Shiro,” says Commander Sykes, “you’re our linguistics expert. What do you think?”

  “Birds can use flashing colors like that in mating rituals. It could be a mating ritual.”

  “A mating ritual?” says Shelby. “Shiro, really?”

  Shiro says, “But most likely it is using our traffic signal patterns. It is trying to tell us to go. It wants us to follow it.”

  “You mean the ECIs are telling us,” says Commander Tomlinson as he stands. Immediately the SPHERES spins around and travels three yards away from him in the direction of the next dune. It stops. Commander Tomlinson takes a step towards it and it moves three yards again. “Yes, he says. It wants us to follow. Let’s go.”

  “Josh,” says Commander Sykes, “wait.”

  “Why?”

  “We have seven hours of oxygen. We don’t want to venture too far from New Shepard.”

  “Did you come to meet the ECIs or didn’t you?” says Commander Tomlinson, huffing as he strides after the SPHERES. “This is the only clue we’ve got.”

  Commander Sykes pauses in thought.

  “Commander?” says Tim.

  “Okay. Let’s follow it. But not too far.”

  Fifty

  The rest of us have better luck than Commander Tomlinson did in getting down to the trough of the dune, but climbing up the crest of the next one proves a little more difficult, with Shiro slipping and rolling back down. Getting around on this low-gravity environment will take some getting used to. The SPHERES travels ahead of us, keeping almost exactly three yards between itself and Commander Tomlinson. As we begin to descend into the second dune’s trough, the SPHERES increases its speed and pulls another ten or so yards ahead of Commander Tomlinson. He hurries to catch up, hopping along and looking a little silly. We reach the top of the third dune and see that this slopes down to the edge of a sheer white cliff that borders a canyon. On the other side of the gorge is the giant mountain, its icy face rising straight up. The chasm is at least five hundred feet deep.