Frozen Orbit

by Patrick Chiles

  “Because it’d rank right up there with Galileo dethroning Tycho. Humanity would no longer be the center of our universe.”

  “We find new species in the Arctic Ocean all the time. Discovering some unknown life-form on Europa would be no different. I fully expect it to happen out here.”

  Jack pointed at the widescreen TV on the opposite wall. “Lots of chatter in the media that it would emasculate entire religious systems.”

  “Emasculate?” she said. “Strong choice of words. Why don’t you just go for it and use ‘castrate’ or ‘neuter’? You’re implying they’re nothing but control systems.”

  “I’m not implying anything,” he said. “I’m stating it as fact. Just because you grew up Southern Baptist—”

  “Presbyterian,” she corrected. “Big difference. It means we’ll actually speak to you when we bump into each other at the liquor store.”

  “Are the drinks for before or after the snake handling?” he teased. “Because I think I’d want it beforehand.”

  “Funny how the people who know the least about our beliefs just assume it’s a system for controlling stupid people.”

  “It’s not?”

  She chewed the inside of her cheek. Why hadn’t they covered this ground during all those months of isolation training back home? “I wish you’d just be the least bit open to accepting that most people’s faith is honest.”

  “It’s the ‘honest’ part I have trouble with. There’s just too many greedy TV preachers and violent fanatics out there for my taste.”

  She crossed her arms, a common gesture in microgravity for comfort’s sake now returned to its traditional connotation. “I probably find them more offensive than you do, so don’t give me that ‘opiate of the masses’ crap. Would you like me to go on about secular fanatics who try to shut down entire cities whenever they feel slighted by the system?” she asked, returning fire at Jack’s own family’s peculiar brand of zealotry.

  “Wouldn’t matter a hoot to them if we found life out here. Entirely different motivations.” He wasn’t going to get under her skin that easily. “So let me put it this way: What if we found intelligent life?”

  Traci displayed nothing but for the slight purse of her lips. She took one last sip and set her spill-proof mug down on a magnetic strip. “That would be different.”

  “So you have thought about it?”

  “We’re in the space business. Of course I have. We’re eventually going to find actual living organisms out here. I don’t know how I’d react if they were intelligent.” She tapped her fingers on the small table, staring him down. “Now let me ask you something: Why haven’t we found any yet?”

  “Fermi’s paradox,” he said. “Where is everybody? The intelligence might be so advanced that we wouldn’t recognize signals from them if they were thrown right in our faces.”

  “Here’s my problem with that: Everybody starts from the assumption that any alien intelligence would be generations ahead of us. That outlook isn’t based on science, it’s science fiction.”

  “There’s also a hypothesis that perhaps we’re the noisy kids next door who still haven’t learned to keep our heads down and our mouths shut.”

  “You mean we’re the hillbilly neighbors who the uppity rich folk won’t speak to?” she asked wryly. “Because I kind of grew up with that.”

  “I mean if there are older civilizations out there, maybe they learned the hard way that there’s a good reason to be quiet: It’s a rough neighborhood, so shut up and quit attracting attention to yourselves.”

  “That’s . . . ” She faltered, between incredulity and horror. “That’s ridiculous. There are educated people who seriously think we’re in danger from marauding space barbarians? Sounds like the plot to a thousand bad movies.”

  “As long as we’re challenging assumptions, why not? We’ve conditioned ourselves to believe that any sufficiently advanced civilization would be de facto peaceful, otherwise they’d have long ago destroyed themselves with all their magical technology.” Jack leaned in. “What is that based on besides wishful thinking?”

  Traci drew her legs up underneath her, staring over her mug as she floated in a dorm bull-session pose. “I see your point. It does show our own naive arrogance, doesn’t it? That’s a pretty good argument against a handful of egghead scientists claiming to speak for the rest of us while they’re blasting welcome signals out into the galaxy.”

  Jack grinned. “Like parking a loaded Benz in the worst slum in Detroit and hollering, ‘Yo! Check out all this money and crack I got right here!’ If I’m in the back seat, I’d like the chance to say no to that.”

  “It’s funny. Only not really,” she said. “We just assume anyone else out here would be Vulcans and ignore the possibility that some of them might be Klingons.”

  Maybe it was the fatigue or the thrill from a stimulating argument, but Jack couldn’t resist the urge to steer them back to his original point despite his common sense screaming leave it alone. “You seem awfully comfortable with the idea, considering either scenario still wrecks your entire religious tradition.”

  Another annoyed eye roll. “I still don’t see how that’s relevant.”

  “Your Bible doesn’t mention any other intelligent creatures?”

  “It’s not like angels and demons are zipping around in starships,” she said warily. “There’s a couple of references to ‘celestial beings’ I never could figure out, and nobody ever explained it to my satisfaction. Doesn’t mean there isn’t an answer. There’s no mention of polar bears or silverback gorillas either. What’s your point?”

  “Dinosaurs?”

  Her face turned stone cold. She knew where this was going. “You know me better than to try and put me into the same box as the young-earthers. If you’re going to go around trying to poke holes in someone else’s beliefs, you ought to try to understand them first.”

  “I’d say the same thing about creationists or anti-vaxxers. They refuse to learn the basics of a scientific theory because it might undermine their belief systems.”

  “And that’s their problem,” Traci shot back. “Do you know how many arguments I’ve been in with people who’ve told me I can’t count myself as a Christian simply for accepting current scientific theory? You have no idea, Jack. None. And what really makes me mad is we did it to ourselves. We got so distracted by lowbrow TV and gossip rags that there aren’t enough of us left who still know how to think critically. Who are capable of understanding that a three-thousand-year-old book translated from languages that don’t even exist anymore doesn’t have to be taken literally down to the last syllable.”

  “So you don’t even believe all of it yourself?” He was genuinely curious now, though he realized too late that it hadn’t come out that way.

  “Don’t put words in my mouth,” she snapped. “That’s not what I meant.”

  Yep, that’s how it came out.

  “What I meant was that there are words from ancient Hebrew and Aramaic for expressing entire ideas that have no direct translation. Adam and Eve translate into Man and Woman, in the big picture sense. ‘Day’ could be used to convey entire ages, like ‘day of the dinosaurs.’ To understand that would mean you’d have to be willing to actually read. You’re a linguist, you’re supposed to be good at that.”

  Jack felt himself flush. She’d nailed him good. “Sorry, I didn’t—” he began, but Traci had heard enough. As she stalked off toward her room, a quick glimpse of garish colors behind her door reminded him that he’d never seen the inside of her compartment.

  Were those Christmas lights and pink flamingos? At this rate, he could forget about being invited in to find out. Ever.

  “Here’s a big idea for you,” she spat. “What if it’s as simple as this: What if we’re the only ones looking? What if we haven’t found anyone else yet because we’re the first?”

  Jack hadn’t known it was possible for those flimsy plastic doors to slam so loudly.

  19


  Mission Day 66

  Velocity 747,444 m/s (1,671,985 mph)

  Acceleration 0.0 m/s2 (0 g)

  Arkangel Commander’s Log

  27 Apr 1991

  Gravity again. Acceleration or deceleration, we feel no difference. It only matters whether it is pointed with or against our direction of travel. The forces remain the same. Our trajectory will soon intersect Pluto’s orbit as we spend the next six weeks expelling approximately 7600 km/s delta-v just to slow our spacecraft into the planet’s feeble sphere of influence. This constitutes fully one quarter of our nuclear propellant. It would almost be simpler to decelerate into a lower energy sun-centered path and fly in formation with the planet instead of orbiting it.

  As before, 0.7g appears to be the most we can manage without triggering a potentially dangerous resonance. Given what we’ve learned, it may be necessary to further limit acceleration factors over time as we shed mass.

  After some recent struggles with the air circulation systems, I am reminded of the irony of our situation. We command the most advanced spacecraft ever assembled, having taken us deeper into the solar system than anyone ever conceived, and our daily existence depends on how well the plumbing functions. Let the Americans keep pretending to explore Low Earth Orbit with their precious shuttles!

  For plumbing, in essence, is all a spacecraft is. Devilishly clever plumbing, but still it is all based on delivering just the right ratios of propellant and oxidizer to the engines. If humans are involved, there is even more plumbing to ensure they have sufficient amounts of air and water. The water sustains our bodies and cools our spacecraft, but circulating fresh air barely subdues the stale scent that is beginning to permeate every pore.

  All of the exotic structural materials surrounding us are simply to keep us whole with as little mass as possible, otherwise I have no doubt we would build these vessels from pot metal if we could get away with it. The real magic comes in building engines just energetic enough to not explode beneath us and in electronics that are not baked by the extreme radiation environment.

  We ride inside of a giant locker room atop a plume of nuclear fire.

  Now that was some peculiar imagery. At least it was all men. Made things simpler.

  It had been two full days and his falling out with Traci still stung. She’d taken to immersing herself in her work, keeping on-duty conversations clipped and businesslike. Off-duty interactions were avoided altogether. Roy must have noticed but had yet to say anything. It was his nature to let them work it out on their own unless it presented an immediate threat to the mission. Either way, their self-imposed segregation couldn’t last much longer.

  Paging back through the logs, he searched for signs of relationships breaking down from the isolation and stress: pointless arguments, long periods of silence, not exactly the sorts of things that might be in an official journal unless they were especially concerning. Was the lack of it a tell in itself? It was always dangerous to read too much into these things.

  Their “proving run” mission had been planned for six months, nothing unusual for a cosmonaut used to long stints on Mir, whereas Arkangel had been loaded out for a full year. After Pluto, they’d planned to spend the return leg roaming the outer planets and trumpeting the triumphs of the Soviet Union. But as Roy liked to say, it wasn’t bragging if you could pull it off, was it?

  Crude as the technology was, a pulse drive could have taken them anywhere they wanted to go. Its only limits were the number of bombs that could be stored in the magazine and how long the ship would hold up. Life support would’ve been the most limiting factor: Magellan’s own recyclers worked at about ninety-five percent efficiency and required regular attention. Arkangel’s forty-year-old systems might have yielded half that and with twice the work put into it. Judging by the vehicle specs, they hadn’t counted on it working all that well. They’d loaded enough hydrogen and oxygen to feed the fuel cells for twice the mission duration, just in case.

  Their tension hadn’t been a function of time, he knew. It was a function of distance. Each had spent months aboard Mir orbiting Mother Earth, where either home or spare parts were just a day trip away in a Soyuz if things got bad. Out here, not so much.

  The official explanation from Moscow was that the crew had clearly been affected by the extreme isolation and overwhelmed by whatever they’d found out here. Jack was inherently skeptical of any explanations from the Kremlin. All of this happening near the end of the Bad Old Days only made their decades-old “official” explanations all the more suspect. Vaschenko was becoming more contemplative as the mission wore on and flirting with—heaven forbid—independent thought.

  Some have postulated that life on Earth was given the time it needed to evolve because of our giant outer planets: They constitute a sort of picket line, a castle moat of deep gravity wells that attract debris from the edges of the solar system. Planet-killing mountains and icebergs which might otherwise bombard Earth as meteors and comets during their fall sunward are instead deflected into less threatening orbits. So was our asteroid belt formed by a protoplanet torn apart by competing tidal forces between the Sun and Jupiter, or is it a collection of wandering rocks herded over the ages by the gas giant? Perhaps the ancients were not wrong to worship it as a god.

  I cannot help but wonder how this all came to be. So much variety in nature, and so much of it with a purpose we can barely understand—could it all be random chance? It is becoming difficult for me to think so.

  This was in Vaschenko’s official log? His private one had to be a real barn burner. Such meanderings would’ve given the Kremlin fits, and Vlad had to know there’d been a political officer in the TsUP just to make sure the proles stayed on script. Had he been trying to poke the old Soviet Bear in the eye, or was he just losing his grip?

  Everyone thought they’d lost it at Pluto, for reasons still unknown. Was it simply isolation? Had they gone stir-crazy out here in the Big Empty?

  He doubted it. These guys were pros. They’d spent more time in that creaky old Mir than anybody since.

  Rhyzov had said they’d “found” something, and Jack had yet to see what that might have been. The sanitized transcripts sure hadn’t given up any secrets; perhaps Owen’s bootleg originals would.

  Rhyzov had also said they’d become erratic later in the mission; maybe it was time to follow them to Pluto. Against his better judgment, Jack began skipping ahead.

  4 Jun 1991

  Gregoriy’s devoted attention to the Kvant module’s survey instruments has delivered incredible news. If he is correct, the Party may even see fit to name a University after him. Or a new species, perhaps.

  He has been reluctant to commit to these discoveries, yet he has put many hours into analyzing the spectrographic observations we took before starting our deceleration burn. His observations, even from this distance, have been tantalizing. The planet appears to be covered in nitrogen snow with traces of methane and carbon monoxide. It even has traces of an atmosphere with the same gases roughly in equilibrium with the surface.

  Most surprisingly are hints of the type of complex organic molecules the American astronomer Sagan called “tholins.” In a place that promises to make Siberia look like a Black Sea resort, might we find life?

  That seemed like kind of a stretch, at least from the benefit of hindsight after New Horizons’ flyby. As far as Vaschenko would’ve known, those types of complex hydrocarbons had never been observed this far out in the solar system. Jack couldn’t even remember if they’d been detected on Titan by that point, and that particular moon of Saturn was covered in them.

  Yet it had clearly affected the cosmonauts. Whatever they’d expected to find, it sure wasn’t organics. He flipped farther ahead to a page that looked particularly worn.

  18 Aug 1991

  It is good to be back aboard our mothership with my comrades after being in such a desperately cold, forbidding place. It now feels warm and inviting here in a way that a spacecraft never has. If it had a firepl
ace, the setting would be complete!

  In a solar system filled with unlikely worlds, Pluto was utterly unlike anything I expected. I call it “forbidding” deliberately, for “frightening” would be too harsh a term though others certainly might react in such a way. It was disquieting, as though I had stepped into a realm not meant for mortal men. It felt as if I had disturbed something precious and absconded with oivtczqoy [garbled] treasures qvfpbird [garbled] comprehension.

  Gregoriy has certainly treated them that way. He has taken great care to keep my plundered snowballs zbyrphyrf [garbled] isolated while he sacrifices ovbybtvpny [garbled] to his science instruments.

  This world has challenged my assumptions about a great many things.

  Looked like they started having comm problems all of a sudden, random garbled syllables appearing all through the text after Vlad returned from Pluto. That was going to be annoying. There could have been something important in there; he’d just have to deduce it from the context of the sentence. Odd how they’d omitted the garbled text from the “official” transcripts given to NASA; it only showed up in the originals Owen had smuggled to him aboard Cygnus. Probably nothing.

  Probably. That’s what I get for skipping ahead.

  Frustrated, Jack stuffed the yellowed papers back into their folder. These guys thought they’d found biological precursors on the icebox of the solar system? Now his watch partner and a dead Russian were poking at his worldview.

  Maybe that was it. He thought he’d just been needling Traci out of fun, but was he in truth just lashing out at her confidence? She hadn’t done anything except defend a belief which he didn’t take seriously. How could he? If humans were creating actual thinking machines out of silicon chips, what did that say about the nature of intelligence?