Isaac leans in and squints, tapping a location on the image. He tags it tholin basin. He taps another area. Complex crater.
Beckman is off to his left, sitting with a cup of tea watching a six-way camera view from the surface drones, Bernard’s interior cameras, and Goose’s exterior cameras. He takes a sip and says, “Find anything interesting?”
Isaac looks up. “Oh yes, it’s all interesting.” He points at a line of mountains. “Minor equatorial ridge. Only other body besides Iapetus to have one. Radar indicates high probability of sub-surface liquid water. Dr. Kelly will be excited.” He raises his eyebrows. “How ‘bout you? Any aliens yet?”
Beckman pauses, takes another sip of his tea. When he sets his cup back down, he says, “Not yet.”
“I hope they come back.”
“Really? Not me.”
Isaac seems genuinely perplexed. “Why not? Imagine everything we could learn from them. I have so many questions.”
“Well, maybe we could learn that they wouldn’t have any more concern for stepping on us than we’d have for ants in the grass.”
Isaac frowns. “You seem to be a glass-half-empty type of person.”
“Better question is if the glass is the size it needs to me,” Beckman says.
James lies on his back beneath a low sea of fiber optics. He’s shed his EV suit — he couldn’t fit under here wearing it — and instead is wearing a black tee shirt tucked into cargo pants. Although it’s dim under here, enough light leaks out of the fiber optic bends to bathe the area in a soft glow. A blue radiance pulses from Ananke’s screen to his left. On his right is a box of new fiber optic cables.
“T34,” Ananke says.
James holds a small silver flashlight, panning the beam over the junction labels. “R34…S34…gotcha.” He unscrews the cable from its mount and examines the clear tube. A hairline fracture passes in a straight line, slightly burnt.
“Pion shower damage,” Ananke says. “From the strangelet event.”
“That little particle has been a real pain in the ass. Guess we wouldn’t be here, though, without it.” He snaps in a replacement cable.
“We’re giving Bernard’s the same upgrades Goose has, once it’s in the ring,” Ananke says. “At least there will be no more strangelet events. You know, Bernard’s will reach ninety-nine-point-one cee after the upgrades.”
James grins and tilts his head. “Never thought the old girl would break ninety-eight.”
“Slow by Goose’s standard, but still.”
“I’ll take it.”
Ananke’s screen ripples purple. “Next up is Q48.”
James shimmies right and slides down, shining the flashlight. “Got it.”
“That’s the last of them in the central bus.”
James tilts his watch. “Hitoshi?”
When the video pops on, Hitoshi lies at an angle in a slanted tube with an access plate exposing circuitry. In his right hand, he grips a logic probe. “Yesh?”
“We’re about wrapped up in the main bus. How’s it going?”
Hitoshi glances to the side and back. “Well, I’m hanging out in this Jeffries tube and I’m just about to reverse the polarity, then we’ll be good.”
“I’m guessing that’s an old sci-fi reference.”
“Okay, boss, seriously, your office wall is a shrine to the nineteen-fifties and sixties. You’ve got, like, every astronaut and pilot from the era. You gotta watch some of the shows from that time period.”
“You keep telling me that.”
“Sooner or later you’ll see the light.” He motions towards the panel. “So, almost done with the tokamak field controller. Once I wedge myself out of here, I’ll meet you at the bridge and we can knock off the psi. If it looks good, we’ll warm up the reactor and see if we explode.”
James raises an eyebrow.
Hitoshi pinches his fingers together. “It’s a really small chance. I wouldn’t worry about it.”
James shrugs. “Meet you on the bridge.”
8
Divergence
It’s June, 2060, in the Whitsunday Islands. Kate wears a tank top and shorts, the wind rustling her long, blonde hair as she trims the mainsail. Behind her, a lush green panorama swirls with ivory sand and aquamarine water.
James lounges on deck, his feet up and crossed. He’s tan with dress shorts and a white, cuffed, short-sleeve button down shirt. With his aviator sunglasses, he looks like he’s stepped out of time.
Kate’s working on the mainsheet when she pauses, breathing hard.
“You okay?” James asks, standing. “Let me get it.”
“Yeah,” she says. “Just a little light-headed.”
He fetches an iced water from the cooler and sets his hand on her back. “Here, drink something. Grab a seat.”
“Thanks,” she says, cracking open the cap.
He motions over his shoulder. “Let’s get below deck, crank up the environmentals. Get you out of the sun.” He pauses. “Sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah, yeah. Too much fun, not enough aqua.”
A few months later, James lies on Kate’s dorm bed, tracing a line on the back of her arm with his finger. She giggles and pulls her arm away. Beside her bed, her desk is littered with books and papers. The two bottom books read Architectural Design I and Contemporary Design and Planning Theories. James admires her focus. She’s always known exactly what she wanted to be. Not so much for him. He’s a year into an aeronautical engineering degree at Stanford, which he’s chosen because of its proximity to her at Berkley, and he’s commuting to San Jose for Air Force ROTC classes.
Kate follows his eyes to the bookshelf. “You’re thinking about it again, aren’t you?”
“What’s that?”
“The big decision. Will James Hayden commit?”
“I’ve got a year to figure it out.”
She pinches him. “Air Force officer is kind of sexy. Silver pilot’s wings on your dress blues.”
He musters his best grin. “You’re kind of sexy.”
“Think you’re going to go for it?”
“Ten year contract as a pilot,” James says. “That’d make me thirty-two when I’m out.”
“Oh, you should totally do it,” she says.
He eyes her, curiously.
“Okay, here’s a question for you,” Kate says.
He rolls to face her. “Shoot.”
“Name an awesome test pilot.”
James doesn’t hesitate. “Yeager.”
“Name another.”
“Lovell.”
She rests the side of her head on a bent arm. “Now, name your favorite aeronautical engineer.”
“Alright, half my favorite test pilots have aeronautical engineering degrees.”
“Yeah,” she says, “but they’re your favorite test pilots.”
He mirrors her body language, leaning on his elbow. “That doesn’t prove anything. Name your favorite architects.”
“Yeah, okay, like, Wright, Gehry, Michelson, Sjoberg, Jin…”
“Point taken.”
“So, that’s the thing. You’ve practically got ‘test pilot’ tattooed on your forehead.” She hesitates, looking down, then back to him. “You want more than being the next Hayden in Hayden Aeronautics.”
He looks at her and he can see it. The divergence. A fork in the road awaiting a choice. One life of certainty, the other of risk. One life where he marries Kate and gives her all of the security they need to grow a family and her career, where he takes the can’t-lose path of his father’s business. The other where they press the pause button on that future, getting back to it after they pursue their own dreams.
At nineteen he’s still a teenager. Life was supposed to wait longer for decisions like this.
Two months later, Kate’s lightheadedness returns, this time accompanied by breathlessness and fatigue. Her diagnosis of ATP synthase deficiency due to ATPAF2 gene mutation is a serious problem requiring both genetic and nanotech treatm
ent, but it’s curable. She spends a week in the hospital. As they leave, James is quiet.
“Hey, don’t worry. It’s the sixties. There’s nothing modern meds can’t fix,” Kate says.
James looks over at her. “Back in the islands, I brushed it off. Didn’t think anything of it. I should’ve pushed, got you help sooner.”
She pushes him playfully. “C’mon, I’m fine. Knock it off.”
By Christmas, she’s back in the hospital. This time the deficiency is similar, but different, caused by a mutation in the ATP5E gene. She improves only slightly. By now the doctors have noticed the common thread and suspect underlying genetic damage from a nanotech intervention to correct cystic fibrosis when she was an embryo. They are unclear what the latent trigger was, or even the full scope of genetic damage.
James’s father, Christopher, stands outside the hospital room with him. He’s tall with sandy blonde hair and has James’s charisma. He says, “I talked with Kate’s father. George Washington has the best treatment. I’m going to take care of it. She’ll have the best.”
It’s early January when they move her. George Washington University’s room is pristine white except for a wall parallel to Kate’s bed swirling with azure water lapping against the white sands of the Whitsunday Islands. A vase holds a splash of leafy greens and bright gold flowers. “That’s my favorite memory,” Kate says, motioning towards the wall. She’s pale with brown circles under her eyes.
James squeezes her hand. “Mine too.” He rubs his thumb along her palm. “There’s some promising low-earth-orbit microgravity treatment options. Experimental stuff, but, we should try it.”
She smiles. “Trying to get me on that rocket ship after all?”
He returns her smile.
Kate squeezes his hand back. “You’re a fixer, James Hayden, but you can’t fix everything.”
“I don’t accept that,” James says.
Everyone is back aboard Goose, gathered around the habdeck media screen. Ava and Isaac flank opposite sides of the display.
“Do you want to go first?” Ava says.
Isaac waves a hand. “No way. Yours is cooler.”
Ava grins and squeezes her fists. She takes a deep breath and exhales. “Okay. Here we go. So, we sent three drones to analyze the cryovolcano slurry. The samples on the outside were promising, showing some organics similar to what we found on Titan and Enceladus. What was more interesting is that there were potential byproducts of life processes. So we sent the third drone into the volcano’s dome itself.”
She taps the screen and it displays the drone’s recording. At first, it’s as if it’s peering into a deep, black hole framed by congealed white ice. When the drone flicks on its flashlight, the hole resolves itself into irregular streaks, like candle wax has bubbled up and dropped back down the dome’s interior. Glossy ice reflects the quadcopter’s light. The copter descends. Fifty meters. One hundred. Five hundred. Finally it reaches the bottom. Solid ice greets it.
“Not surprising,” Isaac says. “Frozen over between eruptions. If this were an Earth volcano, this would be the magma chamber.”
The drone’s spotlight refracts ghostly eddies as it examines the ice floor. When it swings its beam into the wall’s ice, it becomes intensely interested in a patch. Chemical compounds scroll down the screen.
Everyone leans in a bit.
Ava smiles and taps the screen. The image changes to a crystalline wonderland visible in the microscopic analysis When it fills the screen, it’s a three-dimensional metallic shape resembling a spiky buckyball surrounded by what appears to be a burst cellular membrane. The entire image is distorted, the object encapsulated in ice crystals. The drone tags the different components with identifiers.
“Polyoxometalate contained within a lipid and protein membrane,” Ava says. “It’s a hybrid organic-inorganic compound. There are thousands of them per cubic meter beneath the ice floor.”
“Are they alive?” Ananke asks.
Ava’s talking faster, the pitch of her voice rising. “The cellular structure is similar to an excavate protist. Most cells in the sample area are solitary, but some are clumped in agglomerates. They almost certainly were alive.”
James eyes the screen. “All of them are dead?”
“Yes. Cellular membranes are burst.”
“From freezing?” Hitoshi says.
Ava shakes her head. “From the polyoxometalate.”
Julian adds, “Polyoxometalate has been used in medicine for treatment of tumors, and also as an anti-bacterial and viral.”
“Can it occur naturally?” Hitoshi says.
“Yes,” Julian says. “But usually it’s synthesized. It's a metal anion and an oxide.”
Everyone thinks on that a moment. Beckman rubs his chin with his knuckle.
Ava says, “It’s entirely possible the polyoxometalate is being formed and released through some natural process, proving toxic to some of the life, or that there’s some ecosystem benefit that we don’t understand.” She pauses. “But the cellular life chemistry appears similar to terrestrial life. If that’s true, it will be the second time we’ve found life which follows the same rules as Earth’s.”
As James processes her message, the grin builds on his face. “That’s awesome! This is what the dream’s all about, what Riggs was built for. Why we’re all here. This is a huge discovery. We came here to fix Bernard’s, and instead, we found life outside the solar system.”
James claps, and everyone follows.
Ava smiles, bouncing slightly. “Oh, I’m so excited.”
Julian looks over, and gives a congratulatory clasp on her shoulder.
“What happens next?” James says.
“First rule of exobiology is to leave life untouched. When we’re back home, I’ll confer with my colleagues and we’ll announce. After that, we’ll need to design a mission to look in the subsurface seas.”
“When it’s time to come back, you can count on Goose,” James says.
“Thanks. Well, I’ve hogged the stage long enough. Isaac’s turn.”
Isaac stirs. “Found extra-solar life. Tough act to follow.”
Everyone chuckles.
Isaac taps something on his slate and the media screen fades to a Janus graphic. The moon spins slowly as a three-dimensional blank sphere covered in a paper-mache of photographic strips. “Janus model, from orbitals. As Dr. Kelly suspects, we found evidence of a sub-surface ocean covering most of the eastern hemisphere. Heating is mostly from Erebus tidal forces with some core heat. Also found heavy cratering, which is inconsistent with Janus’s location. Janus must have been somewhere, such as the inner solar system, where much debris remained after planetary formation. Some craters have a muddy, red snow — tholins — from sunlight on methane. Not enough sunlight here for that.”
Ananke’s screen pulses orange. “You believe this is evidence of capture?”
Isaac nods. “Erebus orbit is eccentric. Seems more likely it was a capture. Impossible to know which star.” He points at the lower left portion of the moon. “This is the most interesting, however. Large impact struck the southern hemisphere. Created weird terrain at its center. Fields of ice spikes hundreds of meters tall, similar to what we see on Pluto. Multiple concentric rings. Inner rings have ice spikes. That’s not the unusual part, though.” He toggles the display through different wavelengths. A dim glow emanates from the crater’s center. “Ultraviolet radiation from the field of spiky crystals.”
James squints. “What can create UV?”
“The Sun,” Isaac says.
“Weld arcs,” Hitoshi adds. “Alien death rays.”
Isaac shrugs. “Like I said, weird. Kind of want to check it out, though.”
9
Threading the Needle
Betty finishes the last of Bernard’s repairs, and, like a surgeon completing an operation, collects and accounts for all of her tools. Repair of the Riggs drive and radiation shielding is now the ring’s job. She packs everything
and has herself and all the parts back in Goose’s cargo bay by nineteen-hundred. It’s dark now that the balloon lights have been retracted and packed away. Only the oasis of Goose’s floods illuminate the landscape.
James leans against the galley wall with his arms crossed. The crew cleans up the last of their dinner. “Well,” he says, “we have a decision to make.”
“I vote for the cobbler,” Hitoshi says.
“More of an after-dessert decision,” James says. “Bernard’s is good to go. Get her back in the ring, ten hours of repairs, head home tomorrow morning.”
Hitoshi crosses his arms. “Sounds awesome.”
“Question is how we spend those hours. Gotta get some sleep in there, and it’s either going to be here or in orbit. Comes down to what we want to do with Isaac’s finding.”
Isaac rests his hands on the table. “If we go to orbit, we can take images, but Goose’s cameras aren’t any better than what we already have.”
“What do you want to do?” James says.
Isaac weighs the question. “Fly Goose to the site, send out Ava’s quadcopters, find the light source.”
James glances at the Janus illustration on the media screen. “A thousand clicks. Take Goose supersonic. About thirty minutes to get there.”
Beckman squints. “You’re thinking of sleeping overnight next to the mystery lights?”
James shakes his head. “Figure we arrive by twenty-one hundred. Send in the drones. Break for orbit by midnight. Sleep in space.”
Beckman nods, “Alright.”
“So that’s the vote,” James says. “Direct to orbit, or road trip. Unless there’s an option I’m missing.”
Everyone’s silent, waiting.
“Show of hands,” James says. “Road trip?”
Isaac, Ava, and Julian raise their hands.
Ananke says, “I don’t have hands, but I vote road.”
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