“Nothing,” Hal replied. “We just got back in from the outer rim, and we're having a coffee break. I'm going down now to check with Cheyenne.”
“I'll go store the snowmobiles,” Peter said, ducking away.
“We have a launch in two hours,” Bonnie admonished them. “Science team’s due in the console room in fifty minutes.”
The group broke up, and Lucas went to look for his wife.
“Jane?” he called softly in her deserted lab.
“In here,” she said from a workstation in the corner.
Lucas didn't say anything, but he went and sat down beside her.
“Are we doing the right thing?” she asked after a few minutes. He saw the little green laptop was humming on her desk.
“I don't know,” he replied.
The panel on the wall lit up with Bonnie's voice. “Jane, we have a boatload of checklists to complete. You wanna come give me a hand?”
“Sure,” Jane said, her shoulders sagging.
She looks tired, Lucas thought.
The light on the panel turned off. Jane reached out and combed her fingers through the white hair at Lucas's temple. She waited as long as she felt she could, then reluctantly stood up.
“There's no harm in trying, right?” she said as she walked out.
“I guess we'll find out,” Lucas said.
After Jane left, Lucas put his face in his hands for a few minutes. His back ached from sleeping wrong the night before, so he bent his arm up above his head and leaned over slightly. As his fingers grabbed his shoulder, he recalled sitting still as the tattoo artist detailed the lettering there that proclaimed the Lord's mercies were new every morning.
I do believe you, Lucas said in his heart. His hands fell into his lap, and he sat in stillness, praying earnestly. Feeling unsettled with the silence, he stood up. Standing in the doorway, he looked to the right, towards his bedroom, where he could lay down, listening for answers in the silence.
Instead, he turned left and walked towards his lab.
“Kenji, what's up?” he asked his lab assistant a few moments later.
“Everything's ready for today,” the young assistant replied. “We're locked and loaded; our job’s done. Just getting a head start on some paperwork before we walk down in an hour.”
“MILO, show me the duty schedules for tomorrow,” Lucas addressed the wall. Immediately, a chart appeared on the nearest screen. He frowned until he remembered Ana’s thesis. A fresh distraction, he thought, pleased.
“Aha!” he said, pulling up his email. “Everybody, grab a chair and dig into this new idea with me. Apparently, Ian’s mom gave Dám some ugly dolls that gave her nightmares when she was a toddler but staring at them gave Ana an idea…”
Chapter 68
“Eight weeks left for three launches, Semotus,” Colonel Edwards said as his feed came online in the console room. “I’m eager to put one more checkmark in the 'success' column here at the halfway point.”
“Yes, sir,” Bonnie replied.
“How much farther are we going?” he asked.
“Well, the, um, the catch, has been travelling further away this whole time,” Jane answered. “Since the last launch I mean, so, it’s—what we’re really testing is the limits of a single jump, like we’re going the same speed but for longer, so a bunch further.”
“Very precise, Dr. Whyse,” Bonnie said.
The group had already run through the lengthy list of now-familiar launch procedures, but Jane had hardly listened. Bonnie had to say her name twice to get her to look up when it was her line.
“Is everything ok?” Bonnie hissed in her ear while Ana was doing her regular weather verifications. “You're in here without half your brain.”
“Calm down, Bonnie,” Jane responded.
Bonnie looked at her suspiciously but resumed her duties anyway. “Countdown, please?”
“T-minus one minute, eight seconds to launch,” Ana replied.
Lucas moved silently across the room to sit next to Jane. He slid into the seat next to her and wrapped his fingers around hers.
Suddenly, Kenji called out, “Hold on, it's smoking again!”
Everyone snapped into action, banging buttons and calling commands to MILO. Lucas growled and toggled the video feeds on his monitor to show the capsule.
“MILO,” Jane said, “Take independent readings of the temperature, pressure, humidity, and chemical composition of the air in the launch bay twelve times per second from now until a minute after launch.”
“Command confirmed,” the screen read.
“And ultra-high-speed pictures, too, MILO. The best resolution you can get,” she added.
“Command confirmed,” the screen read.
“Are we scrubbing?” Kenji asked.
“We still have no reason for the visual anomaly,” Jane said. “And, last time it worked.” She took a sip of coffee and tried to look calm.
“Proceed as planned,” Bonnie said, “Everything was fine last time despite some extra steam or smoke or whatever we’re seeing. Go forward unless we violate a safety protocol.”
Jane and Kenji began reading aloud all the data they were seeing as Ana counted down.
“Are we within all the prescribed windows?” Colonel Edwards asked at T-minus seventeen seconds.
“Yes,” Bonnie replied.
“And the Néel whatever for the magnet will be ok?”
“Still good,” Jane said.
“Launch it,” Bonnie said as Ana reached 'three-two-one'.
As the sonic boom shook the base, Bonnie asked for reports from every department. “It’s away? Good. Somebody figure out what the heck is steaming before we launch again. Go back to the basics. There's got to be an explanation. There just isn't that much equipment in there! The whole darn thing's smaller than Sebastian.”
“What's our exact ETA for confirmation?” Colonel Edwards asked.
“If it worked, we’ll get confirmation from the satellite catch in... six minutes, eleven seconds.”
“How come no one's rushing down to the launch bay this time?” Ana asked.
“Well, if there was an equipment malfunction,” Jane said, “odds are, if there was, it wouldn't have happened the same way twice.”
“So we're probably looking at some sort of unintended consequence to the new science we're making?” Ana suggested. “I mean, we’ve proven solidly that we’re past FTL, right? This is instantaneous travel; we haven’t hit a distance limit yet. The capsule arrived at a point in space in the same ‘no time’ it crossed one continent. That’s several orders of magnitude different in distance.”
Jane nodded, tuning Ana out as she scrolled through the temperature and pressure data. She wrinkled her brow as each new reading looked exactly as it should. The temperate was dropping exactly as expected, following the planned curve precisely to the thousandth of a degree, and then the sensors stopped recording.
If nothing's wrong, what’s the haze we’re seeing? she wondered. And why are the sensors failing?
Kenji and Lucas were staring at the monitor, comparing four images, which MILO had tiled for comparison. They all looked completely identical: a view of the hazy launch bay, with the capsule framed in the middle.
“These are the last four, immediately before launch,” Kenji explained as the screen reloaded.
“MILO,” Lucas said. “Highlight any inconsistencies.”
“Specify.”
“Is there anything different between the four photos? If so, show me in yellow.”
After a moment to process, MILO turned almost the entirety of each image yellow.
“Really? There's that much different? Ugh, the stupid haze is moving,” he realized aloud. “Maybe we need to look at them bigger. MILO, put each image on a different wall screen. Scrap the yellow.”
The group members stood up and pored over the images, searching for anything that might indicate what was happening.
“Can you show them in sequence, MILO?
” Jane asked. Why is it moving? What’s generating it? There’s no air flow in a vacuum chamber.
All the screens changed to show the last four images, in order, an ultra-slow-mo movie.
“Again, please,” Jane said.
“Anybody got anything?” Bonnie asked.
“Wait, run it again, MILO, Jane said, “But this time, include another previous four. Show me the last eight.”
The images scrolled in sequence while everyone stared, trying to look for anything of meaning.
“MILO, time update?” Bonnie asked. “When will we hear back from the satellite?”
“Expected confirmation will arrive in two minutes, two seconds,” MILO said.
“Run the sequence of eight again, please, but add the first four images from after the launch,” Jane said, adjusting her ponytail.
“What do you see, Jane?” Bonnie asked.
MILO projected the images, but most of the scientists were watching Jane instead of the screens now. Her eyes flitted all over the wall, dancing, trying to comprehend a truth that eluded the rest of them. After the pre-launch pictures, MILO projected the post-launch pictures as requested, but — except for the now-absent capsule — everything still looked the same.
“MILO, play the entire chain of images from beginning to end,” Jane suddenly said. “Zoom in on the area in the top right.”
“But you won’t even be able to see the capsule then,” Bonnie said. “What are you looking at?”
Before MILO made the adjustments, the countdown reached zero, and the console lit up with a dozen red alarms and beeping noises.
“What happened?” Bonnie asked as everyone ran back to their monitors.
“That's the failure code,” Cheyenne said.
“From the catch,” Ana added. Maybe we found the distance limit after all, she thought.
“The catch failed?” Edwards asked on the screen. “My satellite?”
“No, we received the signal the satellite is programmed to send if the catch does not receive,” Bonnie said, frowning at her tablet as she silenced all the alarms.
“Could it be an error?” Edwards asked.
“It's a three-piece system,” Jane replied. “The main catch is the big piece, but it has two drones that float with it, in its close vicinity for monitoring and as a communications fail-safe.”
The console beeped and lit up red again, as if on cue.
“That was the other drone,” Ana said quietly. “The confirmation failure code.”
“Well, we have to—” Bonnie started, but Edwards interrupted.
“Look, we need an explanation,” he said. “I'll leave you to it. You have a week to figure it out. Don't focus on any more launches, because I'm scrubbing the last two unless I can get concrete answers for what's happening with that steam or whatever and solutions to fix it.”
“But scrubbing the next two without knowing what even failed—” Bonnie argued.
“Is a lot more sane than continuing without knowing what failed, Bonnie,” Edwards interrupted, shaking his head. “Give me a reason to let you continue, and you know I will. Now figure this out. You have eight weeks left in Antarctica this season. No more launches unless we have an explanation and a solution.”
Chapter 69
That night, Jane sat cross-legged on the floor, sharing peanut butter crackers with Sebbie. Lucas was across the room, bagging puzzle pieces.
“Hon, just leave it,” Jane said. “He might want to finish it after he eats.”
When there was no response, she said it again. “Lu… Lu?”
“Sorry, what?”
“Never mind, you're done now, babe. I was saying not to clean up the puzzle in case Seb wanted to finish it later.”
“Isn't he going to bed soon?”
“I guess. I just thought he might want to finish it after his snack.”
“Sorry.”
“No big deal.”
“Mommy?” Sebbie asked.
“Yes?”
“Was today real bad?”
“Oh, man, sweetie. Today was not a good day for Mommy and Daddy's work, no. But now, I'm having a snack with my best guys, so it's pretty good.”
“Can I have some milk?” Sebbie asked.
“There's only the powdered stuff left, buddy.” Sebbie wrinkled his nose and shook his head.
“Never mind then. Hey, Daddy?”
“Yep?” Lucas asked.
“Was your day bad or good?”
“Some parts were good and some parts were bad. Right now's good.”
“Me too.”
“How was your day, kiddo?” Jane asked.
“Fine. I drew a picture of us. MILO, can you show Daddy my picture?”
“He can do that?” Lucas asked.
“Yes,” Jane said, “Candace puts all his stuff on my personal drive.”
“Hey, did she submit her thesis?” he asked.
“She said it’s in,” Jane said. “I’m proud of her.”
“There it is!” Sebbie exclaimed, seeing his handiwork on the wall screen.
“I love it!” Jane said. “Tell me about it.”
“This is me, this is—”
“Wait! Don't touch the screen!” Lucas interrupted.
“What? Oh, sorry,” Sebbie replied, licking the remaining peanut butter off his fingers as Jane reached for paper towels to undo the smears he'd already made.
“Ok, so this is me,” Sebbie continued, pointing, “This is you, Daddy, here's mommy, this is Hal, this is Candace, here's Dám and her mommy.”
“And is that a penguin?” Jane asked, pointing to two stacked ovals in the corner with an X over it.
“No.”
“Is it The Dome?”
“No.”
“Is it—”
“Stop guessing, Mommy!” Sebbie said, a little upset.
“Sorry, sweetheart. I wasn't trying to point out a mistake. Did you start something and need to move it over? Because everyone makes mistakes, and that’s ok.”
“No. No! I just... No,” Sebbie said, almost frantically.
“Honey, I didn't mean to upset you,” Jane said, looking at Lucas in confusion. “It's such a beautiful picture! Look, I'll email it to Grandma so she can see it, too.”
When Sebbie didn't settle, Jane felt frustrated. “Are you getting tired, Seb? I said I liked it. I'm really sorry I pointed out the mistake.”
“She wasn't a mistake,” he said.
“She who?”
“I wasn’t sure if I should draw Emily,” he said with red eyes. Jane suddenly felt her heart banging in her ears.
“Aw, bud,” Lucas said, walking over and sitting down with them. “I think that's nice. You could have drawn her in if you wanted to.”
“I was going to, but I don't know what she looks like,” he said. “And I didn't want to make you sad again, Mommy. Are you sad again now?”
Jane wrapped her arms around Sebbie and stared at the scribble in the corner of the picture. “I'm not sad, sweetie, not at all. It's nice that you thought about drawing her. You know, I wonder what she looks like, too.”
“Do you still think about baby Emily a lot?” he asked.
“Yes, but not as often. And I'm not always sad when I think of her now,” Jane replied.
“Really?” Lucas asked thoughtfully.
“I think that's healthy, or whatever,” Jane said. “You don't?”
“No, I think that's great. I think...” Lucas' expression changed. It showed disappointment more than encouragement now. “I think it would be great if it were about healing and acceptance. Unless it's about anticipation. Because you think you're going to—”
“Now, Lucas? Really?” Jane said, her anger rising. “We're going to do this in front of Sebastian?”
Sebbie looked confused and stared back and forth between his parents as they looked hard at each other.
“Are you sad again, Mommy?” he asked.
Jane sighed and looked away. “I'm not sad, Sebbie, Daddy an
d Mommy are just talking about work. Sorry, now can be family time, and we'll leave work for tomorrow.” Jane used a very annoying teacher voice that grated on Lucas' nerves.
“You sound mad,” Sebbie said.
“Sorry, Sebbie,” she said, softening. “Maybe it's getting too late. Finish your cracker, and we'll brush your teeth. You have all day tomorrow to draw more pictures. I can't wait to hear what Grandma says!”
She grabbed the plates with more force than was necessary and clanged them loudly as she dumped the crumbs into the trash.
Later, as Jane was tucking Sebbie into bed alone, MILO chirped that she had an email. It was from her mother-in-law, responding to his drawing.
Mustering her remaining energy to sound excited for her son's sake, she exclaimed, “Oh, Sebbie, look, Grandma sent you a kissy face and says she thinks your picture is 'creative and artistic.'“
He was still smiling as Jane went through the mechanics of singing and praying without any soul. She snuggled in with him and had finally relaxed when she remembered how much work she had to do.
What a bust of a season, she thought to herself glumly. Assuming he was asleep, she stood up. She was about to ask MILO to start up the monitor when Sebbie's sleep voice asked, “So... then it's ok for me to draw Emily if I want to, right, Mommy?”
“Yes, Sebbie. We want to remember her always.”
“I wish I knew what she looked like.”
“Me too.”
“Goodnight, Mommy.”
“Goodnight, Sebbie.”
“I love you, Mommy.”
“I love you too, Sebastian.”
“Mommy?”
“Yes?”
“I think Emily loves you, too.” Jane cupped his cheek in her hand and slid the door closed softly.
Sitting on the corner of her own bed, she stared at nothing for several minutes before she decided to abandon work for the night.
“MILO, turn on Sebbie's monitor please. And, where is Lucas?”
“Doctor Lucas Whyse is in his lab.”
“Page him for me, please?”
A light flashed to indicate the channel was open.
“Hey, Lu?”
“Jane? Yes?” her husband replied, sounding surprised.
“Are you alone?”
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