The Dark Spring: Hard Science Fiction

by Brandon Q Morris

  That was indeed alarming. Churyumov-Gerasimenko hadn’t even reached its closest point to Earth yet. And now it was being visited by two spaceships.

  “Not that the comet would pose a danger to the solar system,” Dieter continued. “At least not yet. But its mass seems to be increasing too fast for comfort. Right now I’m imagining it disappearing for another six years into the distant reaches of the solar system, continuing to grow unobserved, only to return as a real monster.”

  Karl got goosebumps. That wasn’t a pretty picture.

  “Unfortunately, I don’t have the computing capacity to calculate the true mass of the comet based on its altered orbit. So I’ll leave that to you. But I’d be grateful if you could keep me up to date with your findings.”

  Good. He had something to do. Karl downloaded the attached data and closed the email. His office smelled strange. It must be him. He stood up and opened the window. The sky was gray. He yawned. The night had been too short and the mattress too hard.

  Change of plan. First he needed a shower, then coffee and breakfast. Back to the hotel, then, where he could take care of those three things, and also change his clothes.

  It was quite the problem. Karl stroked his chin and spotted a crumb stuck to his index finger. He figured it must be the remains of the pain au chocolat he’d bought from the bakery. He ate the sweet morsel, then concentrated on the monitor again. He wouldn’t get anywhere analytically, even though it was a problem involving only two bodies, not three. But calculating the orbit of an object that was increasing in mass, and in an unknown manner, was beyond his capabilities.

  Fortunately he had the simulation. He let the computer run through all possible variations. He’d select the variant that was closest to known reality and take the data from it that was of interest to him. It wasn’t a very satisfying process, because it wouldn’t tell him anything about the underlying cause, which was what interested him most as a scientist.

  But it would provide clues as to how the comet might change in the future. And that was probably what NASA was most interested in right now.

  The program he’d written was describing various shapes on the monitor. Only a fraction of the calculated orbits were displayed. The simulation was set up to give results that slowly approached reality. Reality was a green oval. At this point, the results were still dancing around it at quite a distance.

  The image fascinated him. He’d had a spirograph as a child. He would insert a colored pen into a hole in a plastic circle, which he then ran along the inside of a large ring. The results were beautiful curves that were downright hypnotic. But the spirograph became even more exciting when he began to read into the nature of these curves. Even just the names. He got hypotrochoids when he ran the circle around the inside of the ring, and epitrochoids when he used the outside of the ring. Then he’d cut new base circles out of cardboard to create deltoids, diamond-like asteroids, and heart-shaped cardioids. And while out walking he’d looked for technical models—for example, the paths described by the coupling rods on the wheels of locomotives.

  The rapidly changing paths on the screen weren’t trochoids. They looked similar, but they were, in fact, ellipses that systematically changed shape as they were being drawn, as though the person drawing them was distracted, or a third party was secretly pulling the paper away under the pen.

  Mathematics was a strange subject. Small changes might have no effect for a long time, and then suddenly throw everything off. An ellipse elongated and stretched. For a moment it was a parabola, when its eccentricity reached precisely 1. Suddenly it became a hyperbola.

  A spaceship could be moving along a safe orbit, but all at once, without much warning, and only because a gram of mass had been added somewhere, it could wind up unable to make its way back under its own power. Who made up these rules? They can’t have been meant for humans, because they lulled them into a false sense of security before catastrophe suddenly hit. They’d probably sought out the wrong universe, or the cosmos had given the wrong species the ability to understand it.

  The result of the simulation was so compelling that Karl launched the conferencing software and dialed himself into Mission Control again. Everything seemed peaceful in Houston. He clicked on the hand symbol.

  “We’re listening, Karl,” said a man.

  That must be Charles, whom MOM had entrusted with several tasks yesterday. Karl looked for him in the camera view. There he was, sitting in his desk chair, leaned way back with his arms crossed over his chest, his legs outstretched and his feet in western-style leather boots resting on the desk. It was just what Karl imagined a true Texan to look like. All he was missing was the cowboy hat.

  “Isn’t MOM there?” asked Karl.

  “It’s not her shift,” Charles replied. “She needed to catch up on sleep, the poor thing. I’m concerned about her.”

  “I have some interesting new findings,” Karl said.

  “Uh-oh. That doesn’t sound good.”

  “How did you know?”

  “When scientists report new findings without being asked, it’s never good news. Call it practical experience. You always have to squeeze them to get the good news. Metaphorically speaking.”

  “You’re probably right. I looked at 67P’s orbit, with the latest data. It looks like the dark matter spring is quite powerful.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Approaching the comet is getting more dangerous by the day.”

  “Is this dark matter somehow radioactive or corrosive?”

  “No, it just acts as a gravity well. If we’re unlucky, they won’t be able to get out of it. Although I don’t think we’re at that stage yet.”

  “But?”

  “67P’s orbit could distort into an extreme ellipse, to the point that it becomes a hyperbola.”

  “That sounds familiar.”

  “True, it was already identified as a potential danger. But based on the new data, it’s become much more likely.”

  “How much time do we have?”

  “A few days.”

  “How many days, exactly?”

  “I can’t say, Charles. The more data I get, the more accurate the prediction. But this is about a rescue mission, right? The third crew member from the Gateway is going after the NASA capsule.”

  “Yes. What are you getting at?”

  “You should consider aborting the rescue mission. Otherwise you’ll lose three astronauts instead of two.”

  “Four.”

  “Four?”

  “A civilian is still on board. It was unavoidable.”

  “I see. Another reason to pull the ripcord in good time.”

  “Can you give us a precise time after which there’s no going back?”

  “No, Charles. That’s not how science works.”

  “That’s bullshit. Scientists always say that, after they’ve just warned you about the dire consequences of overstepping the line.”

  “I’m sorry. It’s like a loose wheel nut. You can’t say for sure exactly when it’s going to fall off, just that it’ll happen soon.”

  “That wasn’t a personal criticism, and thanks for the warning. But it doesn’t help us. Because as long as a rescue’s still possible, we won’t abandon anyone.”

  This must be how Cassandra felt. Only she hadn’t been wearing a headset. Karl took his off and laid it on his desk. Now the Mission Control people he saw on his monitor were opening and closing their mouths silently.

  He could sympathize with the Mission Control crew. Who’d abort a rescue mission if there was a chance it might succeed? People systematically overestimated their influence on reality. They didn’t know how slim a 1:10 chance truly was. Add to that the excellent moral reputation that heroism enjoyed. ‘We tried everything and lost four astronauts in the process,’ is worth more to the public than, ‘We gave up in time and only lost two astronauts.’

  But the scientists weren’t innocent, either. These days he could laugh about it, but at the tim
e, it was a harsh defeat. At 13 he’d tried to convince his classmates of the practical value of his hobby, math. It was a snowy winter—the best conditions for proving the tautochrony of a cycloid, that is, the fact that this type of curve was the fastest way to reach the lowest point. His classmates, on the other hand, were convinced that a straight line was the shortest and, therefore, the fastest route.

  They’d built two competing toboggan runs out of the plentiful snow, making use of a natural slope. They both had an eight-meter height difference. One of them ran straight toward the target, while the other had the shape of an upturned cycloid—much steeper at the start and flatter at the end than the straight track.

  He’d lost the race, every time. After the others had grown tired of mocking him, he’d continued alone, ridden both tracks alternately, and timed himself with a stopwatch. One hundred to zero for the straight run. Why? He hadn’t taken friction into account. Although his run had always started faster, friction at the shallow end had cost him his victory.

  It had been a tough lesson. He decided there was no way he was going to study mathematics. And now this discipline seemed to be making him into a Cassandra again.

  Karl wiped the crumbs off his desk with a napkin, scrunched it up, and threw it into the wastebasket. He’d gone to the canteen and grabbed himself a schnitzel roll, which now sat heavily in his stomach.

  The magical shapes were still displayed on the screen.

  He reached for the keyboard and then stopped himself. But he couldn’t resist. What had Dieter said? His former intern had imagined the comet disappearing into the far reaches of the solar system for six years, continuing to grow unobserved, and then returning as a monster. Shouldn’t he be able to prove that with a simulation?

  The error interval would be much bigger, of course, if he simulated six whole years into the future instead of just a few days. But maybe it would give him a rough idea of the order of magnitude. If Dieter was right, then the worst was yet to come.

  Then the failure of this rescue mission would be the least of his worries.

  He launched the program. This time he built in a counter that estimated the run time, which made sense, because he couldn’t expect results for another 52 hours. Should he ask Sylvia for a slot at the supercomputer? But then he’d have to reconfigure his program, which would take time, and the permission wouldn’t come through immediately, either. At best it would save him a day. Given that he was modeling events six years from now, the wait time seemed tolerable.

  August 30, 2026 – Lunar Gateway

  “Man, I don’t know how long I can stand this,” said Vyacheslav.

  “What do you mean?” Yunus asked.

  “Everything. The noise, the stink, the boredom...”

  Yunus sighed. Slava was right. The Lunar Gateway couldn’t pretend to compete with the spaceship in terms of comfort. The life support system hissed, everything smelled of oil and sweat, and there weren’t any personal video screens on which to watch movies. There was a lot of equipment, but they probably shouldn’t touch any of it. A person needed specialized training to use any of it. No wonder astronauts had to prepare for years for a space flight. He’d never have had time for that kind of stress.

  He looked around. There wasn’t even anything telling the time. Yunus turned the computer screen on and saw that the operating system was running. There, at the top right, one-thirty. He should pray again. He’d let it slide in the last few days on the spaceship. It was now afternoon, so he could combine the morning and afternoon prayer into the Salat al Musafir, the traveler’s prayer. Maybe it would help the four people out there on their way to the comet.

  But where was Mecca? It wasn’t easy to find a porthole in this tube. A measuring instrument covered the first one he found. Behind it he discovered the moon. Somewhere down there, KK, Sophie, and Emily were entertaining themselves. But Mecca must be on the other side.

  Yunus couldn’t take his eyes off the moon. One day, when the Earth’s satellite was inhabited, how would the faithful pray there? On the dark side you couldn’t see Mecca, so they’d have to look down. He shoved off and drifted through the conduits. This place needed a good cleaning. And before he could pray, he needed to wash himself, too.

  “Slava? Have you used the bathroom yet?”

  “Yeah. It’s not so easy. You have to aim well.”

  “I’m only interested in washing for now.”

  “Come on. I’ll show you.”

  Yunus looked to the right and prayed for God’s blessing, then looked to the left and repeated the prayer. It was strange, but even up here it had a calming effect on him, and now he knew what was wrong—it had been a mistake to allow himself to be shuffled off into the Gateway. Brandon was the only one who’d realized that.

  But now it was too late. Or was it? He pressed his face up to the porthole and looked to the right, where he could see the gleaming landing module for the Artemis mission. They could get into it and fly after the others, or they could use its propulsion unit to accelerate the entire Gateway toward the comet. He could operate a computer, but he couldn’t calculate a course.

  “Vyacheslav?”

  “Are you done?”

  “Yes, thanks. I have a question.”

  “Then ask. You’re not usually so shy.”

  “Do you think they’ll make it?”

  “Well, I’m a very optimistic person.”

  “So you don’t.”

  “Umm, why?”

  “Instead of answering my question, you tell me about your optimistic attitude.”

  “Okay, Yunus, you got me. I have a bad feeling about it, but I’m trying to be optimistic.”

  “Thanks. I’m regretting not staying on board.”

  “I’m not. We couldn’t have changed the outcome of the expedition in any case.”

  “That’s true. But wouldn’t it have been fairer if we—?”

  “Why fairer? Those three on the moon didn’t have the chance to take part in the rescue mission. Was that fair?”

  “I know, what—”

  “Orion here, please...” The transmission came from a hidden speaker.

  “What was that?” asked Slava.

  “It must’ve been the capsule. We have to reply!”

  “How?”

  “Shit! Why didn’t anyone tell us?” Yunus searched the walls and ceiling. There must be a radio here somewhere.

  “Orion, Dave here... malfunction...”

  Oh, man! No wonder Daniel had been so dismissive of KK’s group—they really had no clue. On the SS1, the automated controls did everything for them. They weren’t astronauts, just luggage that could walk, and they couldn’t even do that very well.

  “Found anything?” asked Slava.

  “We have to think. Remember when we—”

  “...problems... matter... come here please... danger.”

  The capsule must be shielded by something so that its signal was only coming through in fragments.

  “That’s not so easy when two people are biting the dust in the background,” said Vyacheslav.

  “How was it when we got here?” asked Yunus. “There was a radio connection to Earth.”

  “All I remember is that we had contact with Daniel via helmet radio.”

  “I’m pretty sure. It came from up there.” Vyacheslav moved toward the prow.

  “...don’t come here, I repeat...”

  “Shit, there it is again. Did you hear the warning?”

  “Yes, Slava, I’m not deaf. But it didn’t come from up there.”

  “I found it,” said Vyacheslav.

  “What?”

  “The radio. Looks quiet, though. Not receiving. Shall I try activating it?”

  “Leave it. We’ll only end up disrupting the transmission.”

  “But where did it come from?”

  “I know... Wait. It sounded choppy. They must have been searching through frequencies. Of course! They were just hoping to get through on one of them. You can’t do
that with just a radio. You need a computer!”

  Yunus pulled the keyboard toward himself. Then he flicked through the open applications. Sure enough, there was a program transmitting on all possible frequencies. The commands were presumably being routed via the same antenna as the radio module.

  The program was repeatedly sending the same message.

  “Lunar Gateway to Orion. We’re coming to your aid.” Underneath he could see which replies had come through.

  “Orion here. We’ve... thruster malfunction... days. Please...”

  That was yesterday. There were three entries under it.

  “Orion here, please...”

  “Orion, Dave here... malfunction...”

  “...problems... matter... come here please... danger.”

  “...don’t come here, I repeat...”

  Yunus cracked his fingers. Hopefully they’d get through again. But the speaker remained silent. What was it they’d heard?

  “What do you think, Slava. What does it mean?”

  Vyacheslav floated over to him. Their heads were close together as Slava read the text on the screen. His breath smelled of garlic.

  “They’re having problems. I can’t be sure of anything else.”

  “But here,” said Yunus, pointing at the third and fourth lines. “They say ‘come here’ and even ‘please,’ but then they say not to.”

  “Maybe they’re in disagreement?” suggested Slava.

  “We only heard the man.”

  “We need to send this to Mission Control.”

  “Can you do that?”

  “I think I can figure it out. I did my military service with a radio unit.”

  “You’re a radio operator, Slava? Why didn’t you say so?”

  “I was the driver. I only watched others using the equipment. But it looked similar to that device up there.”

  “Hey, if you were a driver, you should be able to maneuver us to 67P. The Gateway pretty much looks like a car.”