“Thus the linear arrangement,” Jack said. “Everything’s stacked along the axis of thrust to handle all that power. Same way we had to build Magellan.”
“Correct,” Rhyzov said. “But mass tradeoffs were still difficult. There was no point in building Arkangel if we could not also carry a lander and laboratory module.”
Jack continued studying the layout. There was the lander, on the opposite end of the forward node: an old LK of the type first built for their defunct Moon program. So not all of them had ended up as museum items. He pointed at a squat cylinder covered with antennas. “And this lab module, on the opposite side of the docking node. Is that what I think it is?”
“Was Kremlin’s idea.” There was sorrow in Rhyzov’s eyes.
Roy leaned over for a better look. “You guys couldn’t build so much as a fishing boat without turning it into an intel trawler, huh?”
“Not in those days,” Rhyzov agreed. “Is much the same now. Too much same.”
“Got that right,” Roy muttered. He turned to Owen. “How’d you get him here to begin with?”
“It wasn’t easy,” Owen said with a glance at Rhyzov, “especially given their Middle East mischief. In the end, it all comes down to the fact that they need our help. Mother Russia wants her sons back, plus whatever stuff they found out there.”
“How far out is ‘out there’?” Noelle asked, thinking she already knew the answer. If that thing was still parked at Jupiter, could their second-phase mission out to the Kuiper Belt have all been an elaborate ruse?
Owen coughed. “Pluto.”
It was a testament to the crew’s discipline that they didn’t explode with disbelief. Instead, they each leaned back against their chairs and looked to Roy in a show of unity that carried more weight than words.
Roy drummed his fingers against the table. He took a sip of coffee, glaring at Owen over the rim. “Interesting how that’s our final destination,” he finally said. “I always wondered why that ‘Phase Two’ option was added, considering the risks and departure window constraints. What I’d like to know is why the hell are we finding this out right before launch?”
“It was a condition of funding the mission,” Grady Morrell said. The chief astronaut had been silent through this whole exchange. “A big chunk of it came out of the Pentagon’s little black book. I owe the Air Force the next two dozen seats.” At the glacially slow rate NASA was adding to the astronaut corps, that would leave them on the hook for a very long time.
Owen pushed another envelope across the table. “These were taken by the New Horizons probe during its Pluto flyby in 2015. The operators trained its cameras on this region because of some unexpected radiation signatures they picked up during approach phase three. I’m not sure what anyone expected to find, but it wasn’t this.”
They each took a photo of the metallic green dragonfly orbiting Pluto.
“So it was still generating heat?” Noelle asked. “After how much time?”
“At that point? About twenty-five years.”
Jack almost choked on his coffee. “This thing’s been out there since, what . . . the eighties?”
“Almost,” Owen said. “Since most of us were kids. The age of big hair and parachute pants.”
Jack turned to Rhyzov. “So, when you talked about doing this back in the old days . . . ”
“Was not joking,” Rhyzov said. “Arkangel was first proposed to Brezhnev in seventies after they learned of your Air Force’s research. Was finally approved by Andropov. Gorbachev didn’t even know about it until the radioactive propellant was ready to launch.”
“Let me guess,” Jack said. “Launching a few thousand warheads at once needed the chairman’s personal approval.”
“Sending a payload of nuclear weapons into orbit was major treaty violation,” Rhyzov explained. “To his credit, Gorbachev was more reluctant than his predecessors about it.”
“A bomb is a bomb, even if they were built to propel a spacecraft,” Owen said. “It took multiple launches; one Energia booster for each propellant magazine. If there’d been a failure, all those warheads would’ve come crashing down along a straight line from China to Oregon. Gorbachev put all his trust in Dr. Rhyzov’s team to not accidentally start World War Three.”
“It figures the USSR would be the only ones crazy enough to build one of these things,” Jack said. “So what was the mission? What did they want with a pulse drive, besides a nifty way to disguise a weapons platform?”
“Final mission was grand tour of outer solar system and demonstration of maximum sustained acceleration. Original mission was less scientific,” Rhyzov chuckled. “Kremlin would spend anything on intelligence gathering, especially under Andropov. Remember he was KGB.”
Jack scratched his head. “What intel value does this have? It doesn’t do anything that a good recon bird couldn’t.”
The old Russian gave them an impish smile. “Unless your leaders think it can intercept signals from the future. Alters calculation considerably.”
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever . . . ” Jack began. His mouth hung open for a beat until he began laughing. “Oh man. They couldn’t be—have been—that ignorant.”
It was ludicrous enough to get a rise out of Roy. “That’s not just stupid,” he said, “that’s weapons-grade stupid.”
“Never underestimate nomenklatura’s ability to overestimate themselves. Politburo was convinced Arkangel could accelerate to a high fraction of light speed out of the solar system, collect radio and television signals from future Earth, then bring them back to use that information for unimaginable advantage.”
“Unimaginable is right,” Jack said. “Nobody explained that relativity doesn’t work like that? Someone must have pointed out that time dilation only goes in one direction.”
Rhyzov’s features seemed to darken. “Of course someone did. My predecessor in the advanced propulsion directorate. After they took him to Lubyanka, I never saw him again. That is how I became project leader.”
Just as the Nazis had refused to accept general relativity because it wasn’t “German” science, the Soviets had also twisted science to serve their own political ends: Lysenkoism had led to the starvation of millions since everything ultimately ran headlong into the ineluctable laws of nature. It was a matter of time, which would have offered scant consolation to a man rotting away in the notorious KGB dungeon.
Rhyzov continued. “We kept building. Constructing ship wasn’t problem. Let cosmonaut crew or bureau director explain failures to party chairman afterward.” He then stabbed at the air for emphasis. “It wasn’t going to fail because our ship didn’t work.”
“All those resources,” Traci wondered. “Everyone thought it was our military buildup that ground the Soviet Union into the dirt. There was more to the story.”
“Ah,” he said with a dismissive wave, “there is always more, but you could also say this was part of our reaction. KGB and GRU elements were in charge by then. They were desperate for any advantage.”
“But that’s laughable,” Traci said. “To think no one was able to talk sense to Andropov . . . ”
“You did not know Andropov. Whole world thought Saddam had biological weapons, too.”
“Good point.”
“Exactly!” Rhyzov wagged a bony finger at them. “You thought he did because he thought he did. And Saddam believed he did because anyone who could tell him truth was afraid to.” He drew the same finger across his neck to finish his point.
“Feet first into an industrial shredder,” Jack said. “They had a nasty way of dealing with naysayers.”
“As you Americans say, ‘military intelligence’ is an oxymoron. Fortunately for us, we still had a ship which was only limited by the mass we could launch to it. Once it was fully equipped, we could send it anywhere. Gorbachev approved final mission because he was desperate for his own standing.”
“At least you no longer had to be so afraid of failure,” Traci said, ever th
e optimist.
The old man’s countenance darkened. “One is never too far removed from fear in such a system. Differences are in severity of consequences,” he explained. “In this case, consequences fell upon crew.”
“They’re still out there. What happened?”
“We do not know,” he sighed. “Though some suspect it is because of what they found.”
That’s not creepy at all, Jack thought. He shrugged off the chill working its way up his back. “What did they find?”
“Once again, unknown. Spacecraft ‘went dark,’ as you say, in 1991. For such an ambitious project, there was much we could not learn. In the end, we know the mission commander survived an apparent crew mutiny.” Rhyzov took a long pull from a cup of tea as he studied Jack. “They tell me you are fluent. Viy izuchayu Roosski yiziyk?”
Jack shot a glance at Owen and Grady. “Two years of total immersion at the defense language institute.” It had been followed by six more years of sitting in an Air Force van listening to intercepted signals along the Russian frontier. “Long before all this astronaut stuff.”
Rhyzov considered him for a moment. “Your man will do fine,” he finally said to Grady, who even at this late hour still needed convincing. “The commander, Colonel Vaschenko, was diligent about sending his personal observations with encrypted mission updates. Over time his transmissions became erratic. Eventually they stopped. Those who knew him best believed he kept private journal aboard spacecraft. He almost dared us to come find them.”
“Which brings us back to the original question,” Jack said. “Why didn’t they come back?”
The old man became lost in his thoughts. “We do not know,” he said after a time. “Isolation can do frightening things to the mind. Whatever it was, it drove our most trusted cosmonauts completely mad.”
The normally convivial prelaunch breakfast became subdued. The crew ate in silence, each savoring their last fresh-cooked meal for the next two years while contemplating what they’d just learned, and what lay ahead. The excitement they’d begun the day with was now tempered by the harsh reality of the knowledge that they would no longer be, and in truth never had been, first.
Even more galling was that they would have to maintain the public facade until whenever Public Affairs might decide to let the secret out. For at the farthest reaches of the solar system, they were going to encounter the last thing they could have imagined: another crew of explorers over forty years dead.
Roy’s frustration, while not quite boiling over, bubbled out from under the tight lid of his cool temper during the van ride out to 39A. As they trudged down the walkway, sealed up in their spacesuits and waving to the crowd with beaming faces that might as well have been prosthetic makeup, it had been impossible to ignore the throng of protestors lining the sidewalks.
“‘No Nukes in Space’?” Roy groused. “Don’t they know space is full of even worse stuff all by itself?”
“I seriously doubt anything those goobers think they know,” Traci said. “The stuff they’re screeching about is already in orbit. It’s not coming back here.”
“If they had even half a clue about what we were going out there to find,” Roy chuckled. “A spacecraft powered by nuclear bombs. I swear, don’t any of these people have jobs?”
“Read the news lately? Not enough of them,” Jack said, not ready to join in the hippie-bashing just yet. His mother and sister might have been out there among them if he wasn’t riding out to the launchpad.
“You’re such a buzzkill,” Traci said with a shot from her elbow. “Still can’t get your head out of the real world, can you?”
“Just enough to make me glad we’re leaving it for a while.”
4
Mission Day 1
The Deep Space Vehicle Magellan awaited their arrival at three hundred kilometers’ altitude, covering thirty thousand kilometers each hour in its fall around Earth. They’d been chasing it for most of the day in their Dragon III capsule; a tighter window could have put the two ships in close proximity sooner, but the mission planners had other ideas. They wouldn’t be leaving Earth orbit any earlier and there was still a great deal of work ahead to check out their spacecraft in orbit before taking it along on their journey.
Sunlight poured into Dragon’s cabin through big oval windows that could have been lifted from a Gulfstream jet, almost obviating the need for its warm indirect lighting. It had taken many sim sessions for them to get comfortable with the little spacecraft’s minimalist touchscreen controls; the single design concession for NASA was a good old-fashioned control panel mounted along the bottom with backup gauges, an eight-ball attitude indicator, and hardwired switches.
The sunlight spun across the cabin from an unplanned roll as Traci stifled a curse. “It’s not a video game,” Roy reminded her. “You can’t always fly it with the keyboard.” She nodded her understanding and reached for one of the joysticks that had been mounted on each of their seat arms at Roy’s insistence.
Jack pushed away from the window by his seat to float up between the pilots. “I still think we should name her,” he said. “This is a spacecraft all its own, after all.” Word was the NASA administrator had been irritated to no end by the agency naming every single module of the ISS and decided that christening their first deep-space vessel the Magellan was good enough. “It’s bad luck to take out a ship with no name.”
“Superstitious Navy crap,” Roy said as he followed their target through a long-focus telescope mounted behind the flight station. “But feel free to entertain the idea,” he added, signaling that he was in fact open to it despite HQ’s official discouragement.
Jack had been thinking on it a while but had more fun casting about for suggestions. “Anybody have a favorite cartoon character?”
“Going lowbrow right out of the gate?” Traci said. “You can’t come up with anything inspirational?”
“My two favorites were taken before I was even born,” Roy said. “If I can’t use Charlie Brown or Snoopy, count me out.”
“Who else traveled with Ferdinand Magellan?” Noelle asked. “Did he have any shipboard pets?”
Traci snorted. “You’re asking the funny pages guy for historical trivia?”
“I’m just playing to my audience,” Jack said. “Looks like I underestimated you guys.”
“You’re the first Lit major astronaut. I’m sure you have some ideas.”
“It was a minor,” he protested. “How come everyone conveniently forgets the ‘applied math’ part? But yeah, I had a couple ideas. My first thought was Smaug.”
“Not Puff the Magic Dragon?” Roy said.
Jack continued. “Then I realized that was too obvious. Too pedestrian. So, I went deep,” he said, and paused for dramatic effect. “Fafner.”
The other three traded confused looks.
“It’s from Wagner,” he began to explain.
“The composer?” Traci wondered. “He wrote about a dragon?”
“Sort of. It was from one of his operas, but that’s digging too deep. Then I thought of Grendel.”
Traci frowned, trying to place it. “Hansel and . . . ? No, that’s not it.”
“Beowulf,” Jack explained. “Grendel was something like a dragon.”
“It also sounds like something I’d blow out of my nose,” Roy said while Noelle stifled a giggle. He remained still at his station as a thin smile creased his face. “Let’s table this discussion for later. I’ve got our new home in sight.”
They continued falling around Earth, steadily closing until Magellan lay less than a kilometer ahead. Even a few meters’ difference meant they orbited at different speeds, and therefore one would have to overtake the other. The trick was to get ahead of it and raise their altitude until it matched their target’s enough for it to gently drift into them.
It required a bit of backward thinking: In order to speed up, one first had to slow down. Braking for just a few seconds in the direction of flight lowered their altitude and shorte
ned the distance of their orbit, which increased their speed as they drew closer to Earth. Once they’d pulled ahead, they could accelerate to regain altitude and increase their orbital period which slowed them back down to meet Magellan.
Decades’ worth of video from space had a deceptive tendency to make vehicles jetting about in orbit appear as benign as toys floating in a bathtub, when in truth spacecraft massing several hundred metric tons between them were whipping along at a good four or five miles per second within arm’s reach of each other. Go that fast in the atmosphere and they’d be on fire.
The low relative motion often made it just as deceptive for the people inside the spacecraft. As Traci flew them along Magellan’s length, Jack was struck by the contrast: Dragon might have been roomy for a space capsule but it was nothing compared to the ship they were about to mate with. Over twice as long as the old Space Station but with half the livable space, most of its bulk consisted of cryogenic propellant tanks and utility modules. There was no mistaking that it was meant to go somewhere. Had gone somewhere, in fact: Mars, with a flyby of Venus on the return leg. While many had laid claim to the term before, Magellan was NASA’s first honest-to-goodness spaceship: built to be reused and reoutfitted as new technologies put new destinations within reach.
Not as graceful as the massive vehicles SpaceX was building for their own Martian expeditions, it hadn’t been designed with wealthy adventure tourists in mind either. Magellan resembled nothing so much as a flying umbrella stand built from an elaborate Erector Set. Forward, it was protected by a domed canopy of ballistic fibers that shielded them from micrometeor strikes which would become more hazardous as they gained speed. At their final velocity of over a million kilometers per hour, a pebble could hole the ship and leave a trail of ionizing radiation in its wake.
Behind the dome were the crew’s living areas, a cluster of aluminum cylinders stacked side by side around a central hub. This hub held the command section, where the daily work of piloting Magellan would happen.
Frozen Orbit Page 4