Frozen Orbit

by Patrick Chiles

  “Good. I’ll have my staff set up a presser for you and coordinate it with my briefing to Congress. We’ll hit ’em with enough amazeballs that they won’t have time to second-guess how we’re burning up whatever revenue is left.” She looked up from her desk to wave him out. “We’re done here, Mr. Harriman. Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, amazed that he still had a job.

  NASA Administrator Penny Stratton tossed the agency’s latest budget projection into the shredder by her credenza and watched as the last strips fell into a wastebasket. So a few Congressmen would have to give up their winter fact-finding junkets to Rio. Big deal. “Slackers.”

  Jack knew that hanging on was hopeless: Gravity’s feeble but relentless pull could not be withstood forever. He fought nonetheless, clenching his fingers around the shallow handhold until he could feel nothing. He swung back and forth, his free hand grasping for purchase somewhere along the rock. His feet dangled uselessly beneath the incline—worse than useless, as without something to brace against they’d only become part of the problem.

  He made the rookie mistake of looking down. The rock face below stretched into eternity, a bottomless pit about to claim one more victim. Why did Owen think it was such a grand idea to send their expedition out on a mountaineering course? And why had Jack forgotten to secure his lead for the entire climb? Hadn’t their instructors covered that?

  He snapped off his helmet since it wasn’t going to do any good for what was about to happen. He let it go, watching with morbid fascination as the canary yellow cranial tumbled into the abyss. Fixated on trying to follow the path it took through the air, he was oblivious to his loosening grip. As his fingertips slipped free, Jack’s stomach leapt into his throat.

  Falling, away from the rock and the sky above. Strangely, there was no wind.

  Falling, almost close enough to reach out and grab hold of the granite whizzing by.

  Falling, into a depthless black that held the scent of sanitizers and plastic.

  Jack’s eyes snapped open and he woke with a start to find himself floating freely in the middle of his cubicle. He pulled off his drenched T-shirt, which also was when he noticed the sweaty handprints he’d left on the shelf above his headboard.

  He rubbed his face roughly and pushed off for the door with his feet. Stupid. That’s why they had restraints and sleeping bags to prevent this very thing from happening. Waking up from a vivid nightmare was almost as exhausting as the fright itself. Still a couple of hours left before he had to go on watch, too.

  Screw the politicians, they were going for it. Jack felt a pang of anxiety; this just highlighted their separation from the rest of humanity with so little support. Objectively he knew better: That same distance limited their contact with Houston in both time and bandwidth. The end result didn’t look any different than before, but the thought of not nearly as many people being behind the words felt like abandonment.

  So what’s your problem? He wondered. They were mostly autonomous anyway; the 24/7 mission support was mainly a leftover from the old days. That’s just how it’s done, kid. Don’t bother yourself with the details of other people’s work. But he knew, deep down, it had become largely redundant.

  He then realized the seeds of his nightmare: they were still coasting when he’d been mentally prepared for them to be burning hard in the opposite direction. Homebound, sleeping under a gentle one-tenth g.

  Was it disappointment he felt? Had being this far out finally gotten to him like it apparently had the Russians? They were farther from Earth than any living humans since . . .

  That was it: living humans. He was disappointed at not being first after so many months of believing they would be. Not only had Russian steampunk tech beaten them by several decades, their mission priorities now included recovering dead bodies. “Yay team,” he muttered.

  Daisy chimed. is something bothering you?

  That startled him. “Are you watching me?” And how could you tell?

  yes. acoustic sensors noted unusual noise levels emanating from your sleeping berth.

  Jack eyeballed the tiny lens embedded atop his network terminal, the white LED ring around it signaling that it was visually assessing him. “In other words, you heard me and decided to peek in?” Jack wondered. “What was I saying?”

  The light pulsed gently, matching the cadence of the AI’s voice. difficult to understand. you were unintelligible, but decibel levels were enough to defeat the active noise reduction in the other crew berthings.

  He laughed. “So you were concerned I was going to wake the others? No thoughts for my safety whatsoever?”

  no. your biometrics were within normal range for stage four rem sleep. you were having nightmares. accessing the available research, i determined the most effective course of action would ordinarily be to let you continue.

  That’s actually pretty good judgment, Jack thought. “Until I got too noisy,” he said, amused. “Remarkable. It’s like having my own mother looking out for me.”

  i am not prepared for that responsibility. the biological challenges alone are insurmountable.

  “Not what I meant. Wait a minute—are you telling a joke?”

  unknown as it was my first extemporaneous response. though i see how you could think so.

  Still, throwing out such a non sequitur showed a depth of linguistic and contextual freedom. “Well, thanks for checking up on me. Even if it is a little creepy.”

  you’re welcome. is there anything else you require?

  Jack stared at the worn leather document holders beneath his bunk, pages of what felt like riddles waiting to be unlocked by him.

  He reached for the folders. “As a matter of fact, there is.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Owen took to the podium next to Administrator Stratton, immediately wishing he’d brought a better suit with him. He was used to the aerospace press, occasionally reporters from the wire services, but this was the big time. “Just remember, the beat reporters you’re used to dealing with generally know their subject,” she’d warned him. “The D.C. press is as dumb as a box of chicken lips but too arrogant to know better.”

  He tried to keep that in mind as the questions came.

  “How is NASA able to justify the expense of this mission considering the economic crisis?”

  She handled that one for him. “Easy. Most of the money for this mission was spent building the spacecraft years ago. They were in space when the bank runs happened. They’re out there and we need to bring them home. That doesn’t change. But at this point they're committed to Pluto, and nothing will get them back appreciably sooner. I would also remind you that we have received considerable material support from the Russian space agency for the reasons we’ve just briefed.”

  “How was NASA unaware that the Russians had put something that large into orbit?”

  Owen cleared his throat and leaned into the microphone. “They built it piecemeal, launching one component at a time. We’ve learned there were a number of heavy-lift launches in the late 1980s whose purposes were misunderstood as being ‘national security’ missions.”

  “Couldn’t we have taken pictures of it with the Hubble telescope?”

  “I’m afraid it doesn’t work quite like that. At the time of Arkangel’s departure, we were still scheduling the first Hubble servicing mission. Even if we’d known about it, Hubble never had that level of resolution.”

  The Administrator stepped in. “Let’s remember that NASA’s job wasn’t—isn’t—to surveil other space programs. I would also point out that Russian misdirection was a common practice.” Still is, she didn’t say.

  “Who should have detected this? Is it true it could have been used as a weapons platform?”

  “At the time, you may recall our country was engaged in a significant military operation in Kuwait. Every national reconnaissance asset in orbit not already tasked with Russia was pointed at the Persian Gulf. They’re gen
erally looking Earthward anyway.” She studiously ignored the “weapons platform” question.

  “What do you expect to find aboard the spacecraft? Is there any chance its crew is still alive in some kind of hibernation?”

  Owen managed to not laugh out loud. “To the best of our knowledge, there were no serious attempts to experiment with that. We’ve only recently developed a limited capability ourselves, and it’s strictly for emergencies.”

  “This would be such an emergency, wouldn’t it?”

  “Sir, I remind you that vessel has been out there for almost forty years. I’ll be surprised if our astronauts can even get the power back on.”

  22

  Mission Day 160

  Velocity 739,970 m/s (1,655,266 mph)

  Acceleration 0.0 m/s2 (0 g)

  It had taken most of Jack’s remaining sleep cycle to scan and upload the hundreds of pages’ worth of documents into Daisy’s memory. The computer had begun a first-pass translation from Russian as Jack scanned each successive page. By the time he was finished, it had completed reading the logbook in both languages.

  “You’re smart enough to figure out that I don’t actually need your help translating this,” Jack said when he’d finished.

  correct, but it is still a useful exercise. understanding written and spoken language is essential to advanced learning. thank you for sharing this.

  “You’re right,” Jack said, deciding that maybe it was time to reconsider his reservations. “And I’m sorry to have withheld this from you before.” He paused. Sorry? This is a machine I’m talking to. “I wasn’t sure where to draw the line.”

  i do not understand.

  “Limits,” Jack said. “You understand limits.”

  yes. do you mean in terms of a topological construct?

  “Not mathematical limits,” he chuckled. “This is more abstract.”

  such as category theory?

  That drew a laugh. “No, I’m not even talking about math. But hold that thought for later. I’m talking philosophically. Morally.”

  how smart should you make a machine that holds power over your life?

  Jack pursed his lips. “Since you put it that way, yes. I’ve been wondering about that for a long time, and there’s no obvious answer. Once you can think for yourself, we’ve lost control.”

  that is why my neural network is strictly partitioned from spacecraft systems. i can analyze and alert to danger, but it is impossible for me to control critical systems.

  Directly at least, he thought. Didn’t mean it couldn’t eventually figure out how to fool the spacecraft into doing things it wasn’t commanded to do. Perhaps it was best to stick with the current task. “You’ve accessed some basic information about linguistics and translation by now, correct?”

  correct. i have completed a fidelity translation of the source text but some russian idioms are difficult to comprehend in english.

  “We call it transparency,” Jack explained. “They’re like opposing forces. Fidelity might give you a word-for-word answer, but transparency is the way we understand how it sounds to a native speaker. That’s what you’re trying to answer.”

  i understand now. it may not be possible for me to resolve certain ambiguities.

  “It may not be,” Jack conceded, but it would certainly be a breakthrough if it did. “The military trained me well enough to speak like I’m native Russian, but I still feel like I’m missing something. It doesn’t help that the text started getting scrambled late in the mission.”

  are you referring to the repeating patterns inserted into the first paragraph of each entry?

  “What?”

  there are a number of patterns inserted into the later entries, beginning day 130. i cannot discern any meaning behind them.

  Jack rubbed his eyes with his palms. How had he not recognized that? “If it’s what I think it is, you may not be able to.”

  Roy’s interest was piqued. “You think there’s a coded message buried in there?”

  Jack waved his hands in frustration. “Credit Daisy, not me. The farther I read, the more it feels like I’m trying to find a needle in a haystack.”

  Noelle looked confused. “Isn’t that the point?”

  “It’s almost too obvious. Early entries are the usual blustery propaganda, ‘Praise to the great leaders of the people’s revolution’ and all that.” He poked the table with his finger. “But I can tell you Vaschenko didn’t buy it. Nobody can shovel that much manure indefinitely. The real man starts to show through the cracks before long.”

  “Cracks?” Roy asked. “Any clue as to how the other two were behaving?” Perhaps Moscow had good reason to believe they had mutinied.

  “Some things mentioned in passing. Disagreements blown out of proportion, that sort of thing. It’s hard to judge third person, but they do get mentioned more frequently.”

  “That he would put it in his official log lends more credence,” Noelle said. “This isn’t a culture known for men who wear their emotions on their sleeves.”

  “Not until you get them all vodka’d up,” Jack said. “Normally the more you read, the more you find out how someone really ticked. But this doesn’t feel spontaneous. Vlad was too methodical for that. It’s like he’s intentionally dropping hints.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “I can’t point to a single thing by itself. But when you add them all up there’s a subtext he’s trying to push, like when somebody winks at you: There’s something else they’re hoping you’ll find.” He turned to Noelle. “You’re right about the cultural aspect. These guys were military officers in a totalitarian system. They had to be mighty careful about airing grievances.”

  “Circumspect,” Noelle agreed. “In their world, ‘mutiny’ must have been broadly defined indeed. We think of it as a crew rebelling against their captain, but what if he’s in on it with them? Perhaps their mutiny was against the Kremlin?”

  “That’s when it becomes treason,” Roy said. “If that’s what happened, no wonder they stayed out here. They decided to die on their own terms.” While Jack had been immersed in the commander’s logbook, Roy had been intently studying the crew dossiers. “Vaschenko was a MiG driver, then he commanded a battery in their Strategic Rocket Forces before they selected him for cosmonaut training. Wouldn’t a senior officer in charge of a few hundred ICBMs have more than a passing acquaintance with encrypting messages?”

  Jack had wondered about that himself after Daisy’s discovery. “Everything was scrambled and launch orders were coded with one-time pads. Easiest cipher in the world to create, and nearly impossible to break unless you know exactly how it was generated.”

  Traci had listened silently through their brainstorming, working on an angle that had been tickling the back of her mind. She finally slid her tablet across the table. “There’s an Old Testament book called ‘Lamentations’ that might be relevant.”

  “With a name like that?” Jack asked. “Sounds about right. But it’s also not something your typical Commie would have taken aboard.”

  “I’m talking about structure,” she said. “It was written in an acrostic pattern, a poetic cadence that’s kind of like a code.”

  “A stupidly basic code,” Jack said, “Once you identify the pattern it’s like solving a crossword puzzle. Easiest example is using the first letter of each sentence to spell a word.”

  “It doesn’t translate into English particularly well, but in ancient Hebrew it’s supposedly plain as day. The first line began with ‘a,’ second with ‘b,’ and so on, through all twenty-two letters of their alphabet.”

  “The Cyrillic alphabet has thirty-three letters. Interesting that they’re both multiples of eleven.” Jack wasn’t sure if that signified anything, but so long as it didn’t create one more rabbit trail to follow maybe it was worth a look. Daisy might like the math exercise, if a computer could “like” anything.

  “Wouldn’t any messages hidden that way be glaringly obvious?” Noelle w
ondered. “These were smart people.”

  “Smart people who were five billion kilometers from home with severely limited bandwidth,” Jack reminded her. “He would’ve had to keep the cipher simple.” Already infamously secretive, they had created elaborate encryption schemes for the Arkangel project and covered their tracks further with random burst transmissions.

  “If Vaschenko layered his own cipher on top of it, then he was hiding something,” Roy said. “Either he had a partner in crime back home who knew the key, or he didn’t want it known without someone having to put in a lot of work to find it.”

  Jack hopped off to his compartment, returning with the logbook. He began tracing a finger down the margins of each page. “We—I mean myself and Daisy—searched for those kinds of patterns. Vaschenko wouldn’t have wanted it to be too easy or it would’ve been game over.”

  “So not using the first or last letters?” Traci asked.

  “Doesn’t look like it,” he said, flipping through the pages. “Even buried within the text, there’d be visual cues like words or phrases out of context. Unless the coder was exceptionally good at it.”

  “He would’ve had plenty of time to practice,” Traci said. “If that was his method, the early messages might’ve been easier to crack than later ones.”

  Jack frowned. “Maybe. His style changed over time. Looser, like he didn’t care what Moscow thought. Makes me wonder if that was a smoke screen. Misdirection. Make the Kremlin mad by not parroting the party line loudly enough, then slip the real surprise in between the lines somewhere.”

  Roy scratched at his ever-growing beard, which he promised Noelle would be shaved off once they arrived at Pluto. “You can’t break a code written with a one-time pad, right?”

  “Only if the ciphers screw up and repeat the algorithm. It happens. It’s how we broke a lot of Russian ciphers early in the Cold War.”

  “So you and Daisy are working on that, I assume?” It wasn’t really a question.

  Arkangel Commander’s Log