The Dark Spring: Hard Science Fiction

by Brandon Q Morris

  Vyacheslav called from the WHC. “What did he say?”

  “Sophie, Emily, and I,” repeated their host, “will fly to the moon with the Blue Destination lander.”

  “Oh, that’s a shame,” said Yunus.

  “Before any rumors start circulating, I didn’t draw straws. It was a conscious decision. The moon is feminine in so many languages, but so far only one woman has visited it. I’d like to rectify that. We’ll triple the ratio.”

  “That’s... noble,” said Yunus.

  Brandon could see how hard it was for him not to show his disappointment. They heard nothing else from Vyacheslav. He probably wouldn’t come out of the bathroom until he’d calmed down. They all knew that KK was the boss. Don’t spoil the mood.

  “Thank you, KK,” said Emily. She held onto the backrest of her seat and elegantly somersaulted, something which didn’t require much strength in zero gravity, but it required a whole lot of body control.

  “I feel honored,” said Sophie. “You have no idea, Kenichi, what this means for my work.”

  “And when do you go?” asked Brandon.

  Three fewer people in the cabin—that would make for a comfortable few days.

  “In two hours,” replied KK. “Before that I’d like to allow Sophie and Emily to say goodbye to their loved ones.”

  “Tommy still doesn’t want to talk to me?” asked Sophie.

  He couldn’t help listening in. Sophie was talking so loudly to her family that Brandon could hear every word she spoke.

  “...”

  She was wearing a headset, so he couldn’t hear the reply.

  “Pity. Please tell him I love him and that I’ll never miss his birthday again.”

  “...”

  “What did he say to the teacher?”

  “...”

  “She’s an old bag. She’s had it in for Tommy since last year.”

  “...”

  “I’m concerned, too, obviously. But KK isn’t suicidal. If he’s going, that means it’s totally safe.”

  “...”

  “Yes, I will.”

  “...”

  Sophie laughed.

  “...”

  “Oh, Nicole, I really miss you, too. We should go to Leonardo’s when I get back.”

  Was she in a relationship with a woman? Or was Nicole Sophie’s sister, who was now looking after her son? Sophie was the only one here with whom he’d had hours-long conversations, but he knew nothing about her private life, just like she presumably knew nothing about his.

  “...”

  “I think so, too.”

  “...”

  “Don’t be upset with me, love, but I still have to call Mom.”

  “...”

  “Love you, too.”

  They looked stylish in their new spacesuits. Behind the reflective visors you couldn’t see their faces, which were red from five hours of pre-breathing exercises. It reminded him of the soldiers in Star Wars. They looked chic but were somewhat impractical, because you couldn’t read the other persons’ faces.

  It wasn’t only the moon-landing trio who were wearing crew suits—he and Yunus were, too. The spaceship wasn’t designed to launch a moon lander. But its cargo bay was very spacious and had a large hatch, so they only needed one or two helpers to dispatch the lander into space. All they had to do was leave the cabin and go outside to enter the cargo bay.

  “We’ll go out one at a time,” Kenichi instructed.

  Yes, teacher. Their host often spoke to them like they were small children, but he was responsible for them. After all, he was the one who’d brought them here.

  KK climbed into the airlock first. Two people could fit into it, but Kenichi didn’t want to take any risks.

  “Next,” he said from outside.

  It was Brandon’s turn. He opened the airlock door, put his head in, and climbed into the small, dark chamber. Someone closed the hatch. A red light illuminated, then went out, and a green one lit up on the outer hatch. KK extended his hand and helped him climb out.

  The spaceship was huge. Brandon felt like an ant balancing on its back legs. He’d rather be down on all fours—that felt apt. He forced himself to breathe deeply. Then Yunus climbed out of the hatch. They coupled themselves to the same line, the end of which they attached to the hatch. Yunus held the pulley.

  “It’s quite a ways down,” Brandon observed.

  Yunus weighed the line in his hand. “Twenty meters should do it,” he said.

  “It’s only twelve meters to the cargo bay,” said KK.

  “Then let’s go,” said Yunus.

  This was easier said than done. Brandon’s feet didn’t want to move. If he took a single step, he’d plummet into the depths. Just don’t let it show. They’d practiced this on one of their few training days. Topic: Leaving the spaceship in an emergency. They’d rappelled down a wall. He’d stood just as he was now.

  “You okay?” asked Yunus.

  “Sure.”

  Brandon pushed a foot forward. He didn’t fall, but his body wouldn’t move. First he needed to scoot his back foot forward and then wedge the front one under the next bracket. It must look funny the way he was creeping down this tower of a spaceship, trying to maintain constant contact with the bare metal. Just don’t lift off.

  It happened anyway, just before the cargo hatch. His left foot lifted off before he could put his right down. Brandon was adrift. He rotated his arms like a helicopter, but of course that didn’t help. It was a strange feeling. Shouldn’t he be terrified? At least panicked?

  Brandon’s head was clear. The safety line attached to his back went taught. He turned around and saw Yunus waving to him. He’d managed to shove a foot under one of the metal brackets just in time. Even if he hadn’t and they both floated up, the line would have saved them.

  The hatch opened, a black, oval mouth with silver teeth, the mechanisms that unlocked and sealed the heavy hatch at the top and bottom. Just three more steps and he was there.

  The cargo bay’s cylindrical form revealed the surprisingly simple structure of the ship, essentially a thick metal pipe, narrowing to a point at the front. This shape didn’t require any struts as the walls were strong and solid. And they were made of an element that humans had known for a long, long time: iron. Alpha Omega hadn’t chosen carbon fiber composite or expensive titanium alloy, but steel, a material that could handle all conditions, from the coldness of space to the heat of landing in a dense atmosphere. It meant SpaceShip SS1 could brake and land in Earth’s atmospheres as well as Mars’.

  “Not bad,” said Yunus. “We’re traveling in a giant metal bottle.”

  “Good metaphor.”

  “KK and his friends should have given us a tour before the launch. It would’ve given us more appreciation for the ship.”

  “But then we’d have seen the lander too soon.”

  “That’s true,” said Yunus. “So why aren’t we just landing with the whole ship?”

  “It would use too much fuel. I had to calculate that for one of my books. Bringing the entire mass of the ship to a standstill would have—”

  “Brandon, Yunus, are you coming?”

  Three people in spacesuits had appeared in the hatch. The two smaller ones must be Emily and Sophie. The taller one was KK. He pointed at the lander, on which the Blue Destination insignia stood out in gold.

  “Pretty small,” said Yunus.

  “At least it’ll fit through the hatch,” said KK. “I suggest we don’t waste any more time. We’ll get in, and then you can maneuver us outside.”

  “Do we have to pay attention to anything in particular?” asked Brandon.

  “The main thing is throwing us out. The lander will then orient itself. The whole flight proceeds automatically.”

  “Okay.”

  “Does anyone want to say anything?” KK asked.

  “I hate goodbyes,” said Sophie.

  “See you soon,” Emily said.

  The three of them disappeared
into the lander five minutes later.

  “Shall we close anything from outside?”

  “No, silly, please don’t, or we won’t be able to get out,” Kenichi replied.

  “It would be an interesting experience, though,” said Sophie. “First the long journey, then sitting around contemplatively without being able to set foot on the surface—”

  “Don’t listen to Sophie. She’s obviously just had too much oxygen,” said Emily.

  The passengers seemed to be fine. Brandon reached for one of the three legs and nodded to Yunus. “Shall we?”

  “Let’s do it,” said Yunus.

  Yunus grabbed hold and grunted, but nothing happened.

  “You can’t lift your foot,” said Brandon. “The lander has too much mass. We can’t do it.”

  “But what about zero gravity?”

  “Microgravitation. But that only applies to the gravitational mass, not the inert mass.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We’re altering the lander’s state of motion, and its inertia’s working against it. That’s the same as on Earth.”

  “But that means we’ll never be able to do it.”

  “Come over here. We have to wedge ourselves between the lander and the wall. Luckily it’s close enough. And the friction is minimal. Once we set it in motion, its inertia will carry it.”

  “But the hatch isn’t at the same level as the floor.”

  Yunus was right, but that wasn’t necessarily a disadvantage. Brandon looked at the lander. It had a landing base. On top of that was the thruster sitting in a metal frame, crowned by the round capsule.

  “Look. Its center of gravity is above the middle,” Brandon observed.

  “Good for it,” said Yunus.

  “What happens if the lander sails toward the hatch, and then they decelerate the landing base?”

  “It’ll tip.”

  “Exactly, and it’ll tip forward, out of the hatch.”

  “Ah, that’s logical. Then our work is done.”

  “Can you hear us in there?” asked Brandon.

  “Every word. Your work is done,” said KK.

  “Not quite. We’ll move you toward the hatch, and then you’ll tip out into space. Just so you don’t wonder and get a fright. That won’t affect the controls, will it?”

  “No. They can handle anything.”

  “Good. We’ll start.”

  They lay on the floor, braced their legs against the wall, and each of them grabbed one of the lander’s legs.

  “And—go!” cried Brandon.

  It was strange. Yunus was much bigger and stronger than him, but he still listened to him. Brandon exerted himself. His arm muscles had never been very well developed, but he gave it everything he had. All at once the lander was set in motion. It didn’t leave his hands, but he only noticed because he was now drifting past Yunus.

  “You have to let go,” Yunus told him.

  Brandon let go, but his inertia was still moving him just as fast as the lander. He should have thought of that. How annoying!

  Yunus laughed.

  “I have a slight problem,” said Brandon. He flailed his arms, but the floor was just out of reach. How was he supposed to brake? If he continued flying straight ahead, he’d sail directly toward the hungry mouth of the cargo hatch. It wasn’t the mouth of the ship, but the cosmos, that wanted to devour him. Shit. He shouldn’t be giving instructions to others. He couldn’t even take care of himself.

  Something pulled at his back, and he hung motionless in the air. The safety line.

  “Thanks, Yunus.”

  The lander tipped before his eyes, as planned. Everything proceeded in total silence.

  “Ouch,” cried one of the women over the helmet radio.

  “We’re fine,” KK said immediately.

  The lander somersaulted. The spinning momentum it had received from the barrier in front of the hatch was causing it to rotate slowly. The crew capsule was now below and the thruster above.

  “Ouch! Shit!” he heard Sophie exclaim.

  “I told you to buckle yourselves in,” Kenichi scolded.

  Now he was the fussy teacher again. White vapor shot out of a jet on the side of the lander, a corrective jet working against the spin. The lander was already rotating more slowly.

  “All right, we’re nearly there,” said KK.

  The lander was now steady. From their perspective, it was hanging diagonally in space, but there was no preferential direction out there.

  “Activating landing sequence,” said their host.

  “Do you still need us?” asked Brandon.

  “No. The computer will do the rest. Be careful climbing up.”

  August 25, 2026 – TU Darmstadt

  The small point raced toward the larger one, accelerated, impacted it, and evaporated into a cloud of pixels. Karl played the simulation again and again. He was sure he’d overlooked something. What was the focus of the simulation? The comet’s gravity. They assumed it had caused the speed of Alpha Omega’s probe to increase. That meant 67P must have become significantly heavier, apparently due to the dark matter spilling out of it.

  Exactly what they should make of this was something the theorists would probably argue about for a long time. Were they seeing something that had always been there but was previously invisible for some reason? Or was this mass—which they believed they’d identified as dark matter—utterly new on the scene? It had to be. Gravity couldn’t be hidden—the mass couldn’t have been there before. Somewhere he’d read a speculative theory that it was flowing through 67P from another universe into theirs.

  That was nonsense. It was more likely they were dealing with a white hole—the end of a wormhole—which matter could only exit. Maybe the wormhole had always been there, and until now, the other end where the matter was being sucked up had been moving through something close to a vacuum, since the amount of matter that had previously made it through had been too small to measure. And now the dark matter was being sucked up from some kind of conglomeration. The most unlikely objects were possible. Scientists suspected that star-sized objects made of dark matter might exist.

  But that was pure fantasy. He had to stick to the facts. What had Philae revealed about the unknown mass? It was cold. Very cold. Very, very cold. But there was a problem—the cosmic background microwave radiation, which filled the entire universe almost uniformly at a temperature of 2.75 Kelvin. The dark matter could not possibly be colder than that.

  Karl called up Philae’s data. MUPUS and CIVA had taken temperature measurements. What did the system documentation say? He remembered how he and Sylvia had worked through the night to hammer out the specifications, and how annoyed they’d been when a contractor hadn’t adhered to them and had pushed through what they thought was right. In any event, the temperature values hadn’t been their top priority. The error interval was around 3 to 4.5 Kelvin. That was too much, at least compared to the microwave background.

  He picked up the phone. “Sylvia? Do you have a moment?”

  “For you, always.”

  He knew that was a lie, but he wasn’t about to argue. “I’m looking at some of Philae’s new data. Do you remember the temperatures?”

  “Ice cold. That’s what made us think it could be dark matter, bosonic multi-quarks forming a BEC—”

  “Yes, exactly. But temperature measurement isn’t exactly one of Philae’s strong points.”

  “Too imprecise?”

  “To check a couple of ideas I have, anyway.”

  “Then we should take more accurate measurements.”

  “That’s what I was hoping to hear. Any ideas?”

  “Infrared? My first thought would be the JWST, but we won’t be able to get our hands on that.” The James Webb Space Telescope was NASA’s newest baby. Sylvia was right—the JWST was booked out for years due to the many delays in launching it.

  “Doesn’t have to be infrared. Something in the millimeter range?”

  �
�Do you think it has something to do with the cosmic microwave background?”

  “I... Maybe, yeah.”

  “But that’s an entirely different phenomenon,” she said.

  “It’s just an idea.”

  “A daft idea. Typical Karl.”

  He considered hanging up.

  “But wait, quite a few of your daft ideas have had a kernel of truth lately. You’ve got a track record. Maybe you should follow your instincts.”

  “Okay, but how?”

  “I know someone who knows someone who owes him a favor. At ALMA.” The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array was a radio telescope that surveyed the sky in the millimeter wave range. That was precisely what he needed. Sylvia was the best.

  “Can you give me his contact details?”

  “Hmm. Leave it to me. I’ll write to Roberto myself.”

  Her eyes lit up when she said the name. Didn’t something happen during one of her internships, before they met on the Rosetta mission? She’d told him in bed, in an almost yearning tone. He felt a brief rush of jealousy. But he had no reason to feel jealous. She was welcome to contact this Roberto. That was Johannes’ problem. Karl had never realized until now just how satisfying schadenfreude could be.

  “But please don’t forget, will you? I know you’ve got a lot to do, but now there’s a human-crewed mission depending on our knowledge of 67P.”

  And if that means you have to fly to Roberto in Chile, I’ll be especially pleased.

  August 25, 2026 – Lunar Gateway

  “Hatch closed,” said Daniel.

  “Confirmed,” Dave replied.

  “Deactivating coupling mechanism,” said Daniel. “One moment. The system needs the commander’s authorization.”

  “Commander’s authorization granted,” Dave confirmed.

  “Coupling disengaging. Mission Control, this isn’t going to work when the commander’s no longer on board. I’ll need increased permissions.”

  “We hear you,” Luna said.

  “Hearing isn’t enough.”

  “Sure. But you know it has to go through the command level.”