When Sebastian returned to coloring, Jane pulled out her tablet and began reviewing progress on the day's tasks. She contemplated the information distantly.
Images from a few years before flashed through her mind: her reflection in the mirror after taking the pregnancy test, the expressions of the passengers on the subway with her when she began experiencing her first contractions, peaceful newborn Sebbie asleep on her chest at New York-Presbyterian.
“Jane?” Ana said.
Jane snapped her neck forward. “Yes?”
“You dozed off.”
“Sorry... I've been so tired since we arrived.” Jane felt herself nervous just saying those words out loud. Will Ana guess what I'm thinking? she worried.
“No need to apologize! I'm pooped, too,” Ana said. “And drier than anything. I'm like half-way through the huge bottle of lotion I brought. They aren't kidding about it being a desert here. Did you bring enough Chapstick?”
Jane shook her head as she inspected her hands, which were already starting to crack. Ana continued, “Candace is done with me, so she's ready to take the kiddos and start school. Want to head to the lab?”
“I think I'm gonna work with Lucas until lunch, actually,” Jane said.
“Ok,” Ana said. “Well, I'll take the kids to the school room on my way.”
“Thanks. See you later, munchkin,” Jane said, kissing Sebastian who happily took Ana's hand.
Jane sat on the couch for a moment longer, staring intently at Sebastian's drawing. Jesus, how has my baby grown so fast? she prayed.
Without warning, she was weeping. She enjoyed the moment of emotional release and took her time recovering in the solitude. She spread her hands over her stomach and whispered, “Hi in there.”
Having introduced herself to this unexpected stranger, Jane burst into a fit of giggles. She flopped to her side on the couch, rolling her knees up to her chest, vividly aware that she was cuddling her child for the first time. She felt warm inside and imagined it was the wee life greeting her in return.
After a quick stop at the kitchen for coffees (where she opted for decaf), Jane took a deep breath and walked into Lucas's lab.
Her husband was hard at work, fumbling around with a spreadsheet on his tablet. At 36 years old, he looked like a stereotypical scientist more and more lately, as grey hairs started to appear at his temples.
“Hey, baby, what are you up to?” he said when he saw her in the doorway.
“Just saying 'hey,'“ she smiled, handing him a mug. “How much more do you have to do today?”
“Today?” he replied. “What? I'm barely started, hon. Do you need help with something?”
“No, I just thought... well, Lucas... listen. I just had my physical.” She closed the door.
“Right,” he said, putting his work aside and reaching for the mug. “Everything ok?”
“Nothing's wrong, but Sebastian's—”
“She did a physical on Seb?”
“No, not on him. On me. Sebastian's gonna be a big brother.”
Lucas blinked and stared at her.
“Seriously?” he said.
“Yes.”
“Whoa.”
There was a moment of silence before Lucas put the mug down on the work table and wrapped his arms around her.
“What do you think?” Jane asked.
“I'm surprised.”
“But happy?”
“Of course! I just wasn't expecting this now. But it's great. I love you. I love Sebastian. Now I can love this new baby, too.”
Lucas held her tightly for several minutes, whispering words of gratitude and amazement to God. “What an honor. What a blessing. Thank you, Father,” he said at the end, kissing Jane's cheek.
She held her face against his shoulder until she was ready to speak again.
“So what did Candace say?” Lucas asked.
“She doesn't know yet,” Jane said. “Honestly, I don't want to tell the team. We're only here four months, and I'm in winter clothes. I'd rather not have everyone acting weird and chalking all my leadership decisions up to preggie hormones.”
“Sounds like a plan.” He spun her around so her back was to him and spread his hands across her belly. “We're going to need tiny shoes again,” he said, kissing her hair.
“Pink shoes. I hope it's a girl.”
“That sounds good. I would like a little you.”
“We already have a little one that’s just like me, Lu. Haven’t you met Sebastian? Stubborn, ornery, passionate about weird stuff?”
Lucas laughed. “Well, maybe we can have a little one with my personality but with pigtails.”
“I'd like that.”
Chapter 4
MILO Personal Dictation: Lucas Whyse
Happy new year, MILO. January summer but a cold spell. Negative 18 currently. This continent is messed up. Midnight, and the sun’s still shining away.
Can’t believe we’re five weeks into our season. Nothing says ‘Christmas’ like defrosted ham steaks! On the bright side, man, if you’ve been dreaming of it, it sure is ‘white’ down here.
My discs are growing well. The first batch of quartz is about ready, so today I unpacked the assembly robot. (MILO, can I get an update on the diagnostics? Thanks.) If all goes well, the capsule should be loaded with all the gems in time. Good thing I don’t have to do that by hand. I don’t think I could slide in 2 million discs in perfect sequence before I died of boredom or old age.
MILO, please attach the current specs and blueprints for the FAD454 capsule to this mission log entry. Engineering is continuing to manipulate these plans, but here’s where we are for now. Man, Riddhi might be the biggest genius on the team, but she’s the type who calls herself an artist instead of a scientist.
Let’s see, what other personal nuggets can I say to fill this space... Oh, Jane’s team says they've selected the arc they want to use for the first full test, about a half-mile high at its apex. We're going to try a few test runs at a couple thousand Mach in a positive weather window they're expecting soon, assuming the engineering guys get their jobs done. You know, slow, like 2 million miles per hour. Haha.
Hal says he’s hoping we accidentally hit some local wildlife. Yesterday, he said that he once saw a wild turkey get hit by a logging truck, so he could imagine what it would look like to see our capsule tear through a penguin at near light speed. Jane literally turned green.
I don't remember her being this sick last time, or this irritable.
Chapter 5
The next morning, Cheyenne sipped her coffee and tucked her hair behind her ears. Her reflection appeared in the glass front of the electronic tablet as it powered up, the same face she'd seen during her other ten Antarctic summers. The red hair wasn't quite as bright as before; a few strands of white were sneaking in.
Jane swept in to the cafeteria with Sebastian close behind her.
“Morning, Cheyenne,” Jane said.
“Hiya, Missy Mark,” added Sebastian.
“Sorry we're late,” Jane said. “We like to start our day with a Bible story and songs, and I just couldn't seem to get my head off the pillow this morning.”
“No worries. I made you cocoa, little man,” Cheyenne said. Jane smiled, and Seb reached out eagerly. “And coffee for momma.”
“Lucas already ate, I guess,” Jane said, noticing all the other platters were already gone. She weighed the doctor's warnings about caffeine intake and took just one sip. Bonnie, the team’s other physicist, could be overheard in the kitchen cleaning the plates.
She always makes sure everyone knows when it’s her turn to do clean-up, Jane thought with a roll of her eyes.
Bonnie was Jane’s sometimes-begrudging research partner for the last half-dozen years. She was in her late fifties, but hardly the grandmotherly type. She had simply styled grey-brown hair and wore jeans with Crocs when she was working, which meant she wore them all the time.
Her husband Richard was an engineer, leading Split H
orizon’s propulsions and mechanics side. They were a crotchety pair, and while her husband’s preferred moniker was Rich, Bonnie was known to use another nickname for Richard when she was annoyed.
“Eat something, Jane,” Cheyenne offered. “You need some protein in that little body.”
Jane looked at her quizzically for a moment before her brain connected that Cheyenne was referencing her small stature and not the baby she herself had just learned existed.
“So, what's the next big priority?” Cheyenne continued. “What are we talking to NASA about today?”
Jane lowered her voice, knowing Bonnie was in the kitchen. “We’re sort of at an engineering standstill, I think.”
“How so?” Cheyenne asked.
“Well,” Jane said, “So far, I've worked out keeping the lab station hot enough for the metal to stay expanded while the robot loads it with the quartz disc chambers, but Rich has to get the cooling process in the launch chamber more precise in order to snap the metal tight enough to initiate the piezoelectric reaction that powers the jet. Hot for a long time, then controlled cold in a split instant.”
The Whyse’s problem for a year had been applying the pressure necessary to catalyze the mechanical stress inside their capsule, in other words, to squeeze the gems, but in a NASA database that catalogued and cross-referenced all the organization's projects, Jane had seen a connection with the seemingly unrelated creation of an experimental metallurgist. While the metal was a failure for Dr. Riddhi Bidell's purposes, it was the discovery that made all the difference for the Whyses.
Her metal, called FAD454, was so strong, you could nearly land a jumbo jet on a sheet thinner than paper, but its unique composition made it overly sensitive to temperature. Like a highway bridge buckling in the heat or cracking in the cold but magnified thousands of times, FAD454 would wrinkle and crack unless used in precisely controlled temperatures. Jane's brilliance had honed the current prototype to further success with each advance. A temperature drop initiated thermal contraction of the FAD454 capsule, applying mechanical pressure to the quartz which powered her jet to unimaginable speeds.
Cheyenne nodded as Jane spoke. She wasn’t sure how much science the administrator understood and didn’t want to be rude, so she continued.
“ Trevor Fox, Rich’s propulsions engineer, is still figuring out the deceleration for entry into the receiving deck we call 'the catch.' We aren't making much history if the thing blows up each time we try to catch it, which it still does in most of our predictive models.”
“It won't just coast to a stop like a car running out of gas?” she suggested.
“It would, but it would run out of height and crash first.”
“What if you could outpace the curve of the earth?” Cheyenne asked. “And free fall?”
Jane nodded eagerly, impressed with the quality of the suggestion. “Actually, this is NASA we're working with, so some kind of orbiting or space flight is in the long-term plans. Ask me again in three years. Do you think he'll ask me about that on the call today?”
Cheyenne rose from the table. “Nah, a check-in seems pretty standard to me. We’re on the bottom of the planet. Isn't Colonel Edwards the one that named this the Semotus Lab? They want to be sure no one is going crazy, that we aren’t out of food, and that there isn’t a polar bear at the controls.”
“Polar bears live in the arctic,” Jane said, adjusting her ponytail.
“What the— Newbie, are you seriously correcting my joke?” Cheyenne said in mock anger.
“I'll see a bear?” Sebastian asked as Jane laughed.
“No, sweetie, but we’re still hoping Hal finds you a penguin to photograph,” she said.
“Yeah, ok,” Sebastian frowned. “Penguin. No bear.”
With breakfast complete, Jane placed their dishes on the counter and nodded an appropriately grateful thanks in response to Bonnie’s heavy sigh from over the dishpan.
After dropping Sebbie off for his school lessons, Jane vomited up her small breakfast, brushed her teeth, and walked in just as Cheyenne was keying up the video conference.
“Ready?” Cheyenne asked.
“Let's do it,” Jane replied.
Just as Cheyenne connected the call, Bonnie ducked into the room.
“Mind if I join you?” she asked, but before Jane could reply, the face of NASA’s Colonel Keith Edwards appeared. He was mid-forties like Cheyenne and extremely fit with carefully trimmed dark hair.
“Good evening, Split Horizon,” he said.
“Good morning, sir,” Jane replied with a smile. “Dr. Jane Whyse here, with our base administrator Cheyenne Marx and Dr. Bonnie Chapman, apparently.”
“Great,” the Colonel said with a nod. “Let’s have it, Doctor Whyse. Am I taking a three-minute flight to Andromeda any time soon?”
Jane laughed uncomfortably and looked at Cheyenne. Colonel Edwards was a puzzle to the physicist. Energetic, passionate, and sometimes bordering on silly, he somehow still commanded great authority. They'd only met a few times in person, but everyone seemed equally comfortable laughing with him and saluting him. He was some kind of Department of Defense liaison to NASA, serving high up in the Science Mission Directorate; he served as Split Horizon's primary off-site supervisor.
“Loosen up, Jane,” Colonel Edwards continued, waving his hand. “I know how this works. It’s science, and you’re experimenting. You're not supposed to invent the flux capacitor or the Arc Reactor overnight. Just tell me what’s been going on so I can justify spending all this money.”
“Yes, good, so Lucas, that’s my husband, the other Dr. Whyse, is on schedule with the robot assembly for the piezoelectric discs which means that—”
“I read your reports, Jane,” he interrupted.
“Sorry?” she said.
“I read your reports,” he repeated, raising his hands. “Don’t tell me what you wrote. Tell me what’s happening down there. How do you feel about the progress? Do you want to alter any goals? Do you need anything else?”
“Oh, I, uh...” Jane stumbled, flicking a finger around on her tablet as if she’d find a folder marked ‘feelings and casual banter.’
“Actually, sir,” Cheyenne said, leaning forward, “Our supplies are fine, and the morale of the group is good. For my own part, I had a lot of reservations about using kids as lab rats.”
“Come on, they’re not—none of us are lab rats,” Jane said, we’re doing research, and since the location was remote, they’re just tracking our team’s progress psychologically and emotionally.”
“To use the data to predict the best teams for future Mars colonization.”
“Well, when you say it that way, it sounds—”
Cheyenne interrupted, “We’re all enjoying the new base! This is my tenth summer down here, and compared to a couple of them, Semotus Dome is like the Ritz.”
“Glad to hear that,” the Colonel chuckled. “And your miniature colleagues are in good hands with Candace Hartwell.”
“Everyone loves their boss’s daughter, right?” Bonnie interjected.
Jane frowned slightly even though the Colonel chuckled along with Bonnie. Candace’s father was well known as the Acting Administrator of NASA.
Nepotism had nothing to do with her placement on this team, Jane thought in annoyance.
“She’s a wonderful contributor,” Jane offered, having gathered her thoughts while Cheyenne shared. “Now, to answer your questions, I feel everyone is doing well. Everyone knows their role and has good connections to home for emotional and professional support.”
“Good,” he said. “Any news on the catching part? Are we going to actually grab hold of this thing, or will it blow up?”
“Honestly, we might blow up a couple before we figure it out,” Jane replied with a wrinkled nose.
Colonel Edwards smirked. “As long as you don’t kill any people or polar bears.”
Jane opened her mouth to correct him but Cheyenne laughed hard enough that she thought better of it
.
“Ok, Dr. Whyse,” Edwards said, “So to summarize, Project Split Horizon is underway and on target, right?”
“Right, sir.”
“Then we’re done here, unless you need anything else,” he said.
“We have a list of supplies we'd like included in the February transport to McMurdo,” Cheyenne added. “I’ll email it.”
“If the weather cooperates, you’ll get whatever we can fit in,” he replied with a thumbs up.
“Thank you, sir,” Jane said. “We’ll keep in touch.”
“Ok, go make science-y magic.” The screen went dark as the Colonel signed off.
“Science-y magic?” Jane repeated.
Cheyenne laughed. “I told you it was nothing to worry about. You’re obviously this guy’s pet project. Boy, he isn't what I expected.”
“I don’t think he understands this at all or takes us seriously,” Bonnie said. “You really should have gone to bat for us, Jane.”
“What? What are you worried about, Bonnie?” Jane replied. “I think he sounds excited.”
“Respect!” Bonnie said, standing up. “He clearly doesn’t think we are actually going to succeed!”
“I’m not sure I do either, yet,” Jane said, folding her hands. “I’d rather have a boss who’s realistically enthusiastic about our chance of success than someone who might threaten cancellation if we hit a roadblock or a delay, wouldn’t you?”
“I’d rather have a boss who knows what she’s doing.”
“What he’s doing,” Cheyenne corrected.
“Oh no, she meant what she said,” Jane said, maintaining eye contact with Bonnie. “Let’s have it out, Bon. What did I do?”
“You’re not focused, Jane,” Bonnie said, pointing a finger like a teacher to a petulant child. “You’re not pushing the teams hard enough to actually make progress. You think our full four years are guaranteed, but they aren’t! If we don’t impress people this season, we’re never coming back to try and change the world. Split Horizon will be over before it ever gets started.”
“Colonel Edwards seems perfectly relaxed,” Jane said, shaking her head. “And this is only the first month of the first year.”
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