Slowly, pain from his foot wormed its way into his consciousness. He was surprised that he was still alive. His inner clock felt like he was traveling for several minutes now. Then there was a bounce. Artem’s heart nearly exploded. He held Sobachka tight, very tight. Was that the hull or the inside of the airlock? There was no further bump. He was blind and deaf and could not tell whether he was motionless or moving still. The pain in his foot increased, but the temperature indicators in his suit were calming down. That seemed to be a good sign.
Then things got bright. Was that the light one would supposedly see just before death? Or had somebody pulled the net away? The light was so bright that he shut his eyes.
“Less light,” a woman said. What was her name again? He had silently made fun of her. In his language it was something about an oven. But the light obviously was not the end of the tunnel. He had made it. He was on Solar Explorer.
“Oh, look what he has brought with him! A dog! How sweet!”
Heather, exactly. Heather is her name, he remembered now.
“Sobachka,” he said, “this is…”
Then he lost consciousness.
June 5, 2074, Solar Explorer
“She is so sweet! Come, doggy!” Artem heard a woman talking. He tried to open his eyes, and with some effort they followed his command. He was strapped to a medical examination plinth in zero gravity. He saw a woman with short blond hair. She had her back turned to him and was bending over something. Her jogging pants were tracing her favorably. Artem was curious how she might look up front.
“Hello,” he croaked. He noticed how his throat burned. There was an infusion needle attached to his right arm.
The woman turned around. She had a nice but bland face, light brown eyes, and a slight frame. She was probably just over forty.
“I am Heather,” she said. “You are on board Solar Explorer.”
“Artem,” he answered.
“And the doggy?”
The woman pointed down. Sobachka apparently had heard his voice and floated toward him with a wagging tail. She made a funny picture moving in zero gravity. Clearly, she had made it, too. Artem was incredibly relieved.
“The doggy is Sobachka. Which means doggy. A girl dog.”
“I thought so, because of the ending. In Russian…”
“I am Ukrainian.”
“I am sorry, Artem. You were on board a Russian ship. That is why we thought…”
“Yes, of course,” he said. “I am used to being taken for a Russian. And I must apologize. You were in great danger because of me.”
“But you also saved us from that danger.”
“That would not have been necessary if I…” He was stuck. So, what exactly? If he had not flown the mission, somebody else would have had to do it. Did he even have a choice? Still, the feeling of having failed did not go away. He should never have dealt with this company. Or maybe he could have disabled the AI much earlier if he hadn’t been so caught up in the wonders of the alien station.
“You can tell us the whole story later, okay? I need to look at your foot now.” The woman bent over his leg. “No worries, we have pumped you full of painkillers, you won’t notice anything.”
Pumped full, is it that bad? Or worse? What had happened to his foot?
“My foot?”
“You had heavy burns. But the doctors on Earth are saying it will be fully healed before we get back to the Ark. We don’t need to cut you up.”
“You wanted to operate on my foot?”
“Amy, the commander, is a doctor. She is taking good care of you.”
“What is the Ark?”
“Have you been behind the moon these past years? You don’t know about the Ark, where we wanted to save mankind from the catastrophe?”
“‘Behind the moon’ is pretty close. I was on various asteroids.”
“Alone?”
“No. With Sobachka.”
Heather turned around. Then she reached for Sobachka and brought her close to Artem’s head. The animal licked his cheek. Artem turned his head away and laughed.
“A dog in space, I have never heard of anything like that,” Heather said.
“It isn’t a problem. It would help small crews a great deal on long-term missions. You simply can’t pick a fight with a dog like you can with colleagues.”
Later that afternoon Artem sat up for the first time. His leg was wrapped in a bandage all the way up to the knee. Heather had added extra gauze to protect the wound from accidental impacts. Zero gravity helped a lot, as he could move around in relative ease and without using his leg.
All five aboard Solar Explorer were meeting in the command module. Artem had already met the other three crewmembers. The unusual composition had surprised him initially, but it made sense once he knew their individual histories. And it seemed to have worked out quite well. Amy had let him know that the only reason they hadn’t been first to arrive at the alien station was that she insisted on protecting her crew. That would have been unheard of on an RB expedition. Was that an advantage or a disadvantage? If the Watson AI had fully gotten its way, Amy’s decision would have saved her crew but many others would have paid with their lives. Artem was sure that the RB Group would have demonstrated its newfound powers at least once to show off the abilities of the station.
Amy, Callis, Heather, and Alain were spread around the small table. Artem gazed at each of them to study their expressions. Then he launched into his story, including his criminal background. It felt good to lay everything in the open even if it would get him into trouble, since his thefts surely were not yet beyond the statute of limitations. He would serve time in jail for a few years. However that felt better to him than to be blackmailed by RB again.
He counted on disbelief as he described the alien station, but got amazement instead. Callis provided the explanation. “We saw your ship being destroyed in an annihilation process. Seeing you materially here before us proves that you are telling the truth.”
The others sat in silence after he finished his account.
“I believe you didn’t have any other choice,” Alain opined after a while. “Sure, you should have chosen a different line of work, but for any of us it is impossible to guess all of life’s developments beforehand.”
“I should have noticed earlier just how unscrupulous the RB Group acts. It would have been easy to steal one of the two spaceships.”
“They would have hunted you forever,” Alain countered.
“What is more, they would have sent somebody else to the sun. And who knows whether that person would have countered the AI?” added Callis.
“I don’t know,” Artem answered. “My ideas accelerated the construction of the radio telescope. Without me they would have detected the station much later and you would have been first.”
“Retrospective makes you more clever, always,” Callis said. “Of course you are responsible for your decisions, but one can’t expect anybody to read the future. You did not even know what the radio telescope was to be used for.”
“Talking about the future,” Amy said, “have you considered your next steps?”
“I have no problem being judged by a court. But I am afraid that RB will find me sooner or later if I return to Earth, and eliminate me no matter what a court may decide.”
“And if it went according to you?”
“Give me a small and nimble spaceship and I’ll take care of myself.”
“I am afraid that is naïve,” Callis said. “The times when you could strike out on your own are long gone.”
“I have an idea,” Amy said. “You were the only person on the alien station so far. Nobody would be in better position than you to lead the further exploration of the station.”
“I really am no scientist at all,” Artem said.
“I don’t see that as a scientific position. It would be more a question of safety, a head of security like Karl Freitag on the Ark. Earth must ensure that nobody can use the technology for
personal purposes. That also means that the station will need to be protected from visitors.”
“That would be an international mission with all nations taking part. Russia would certainly object to me.”
“We saw your spaceship being converted to pure energy. You are dead and there are no other witnesses. You could take on a completely new identity.”
“And if the Watson AI had already sent information to RB headquarters?”
“The AI tried to destroy an international expedition and kill four people. The RB Group will not want to discuss that publicly. I have no problem telling Shostakovich personally.”
The commander really was convincing. Artem could understand now why she had been chosen despite her age. A new identity would protect him from prosecution in court, too. On the other hand, everybody would recognize the astronaut with the space dog. And he was not going to give up Sobachka.
June 13, 2074, Solar Explorer
“Artem, look what I just found in a recording.” Heather stood beside his couch and held up a display. He only saw reddish orange, probably the sun. “Don’t you see it?” She zoomed into the picture, somewhat off center, and pointed to several black pixels.
“A small sunspot?” he asked.
“No, something threw a shadow.”
“On the solar surface?”
“However that would work, Artem,” she said with a trace of sarcasm. “No, on my telescope of course.”
“And what was it?”
Then Artem’s mind clicked. Heather was showing him the picture, so it must have to do with him.
“The yacht,” he continued before Heather could respond.
“Correct. But the really interesting part is not what you see. It is what you don’t see. Look here.” Heather swiped to the next picture and zoomed in again. “Here you would have to see the yacht again,” she stated.
“But you don’t. When were those pictures taken?”
“The first one is two days old, the second one from yesterday. I didn’t check them until today. Then I used the trajectory data to take a picture of the right place again today, but the spot remains empty.”
“So we know that the yacht fell into the sun sometime between yesterday and the day before.”
“That’s what it looks like.”
“Thank you, Heather.”
Artem shut his eyes after Heather had gone. It made no sense whatsoever, but he missed Watson. AIs weren’t strictly regulated without reason. Mankind was differentiating, drawing lines where no line was reasonable anymore. Watson had not been a free entity. The RB Group had enslaved the AI, just like Artem had chosen enslavement to the Group in lieu of prosecution—or worse—for stealing from them. Would Watson have attempted to kill four people if he had retained his free will?
A human criminal could get a second chance. The AI would not have gotten any pardon, however. Even in the so-called free western world, it was illegal to host an AI that had killed a human.
How had Watson died? Would he have felt anything? Artem remembered the instant when he stuffed the industrial cable into the onboard electronics. It had been necessary, yet it felt cruel. But maybe he had just knocked out the AI. The static memory where it was saved might have survived the 200 amp jolt. Had he sent Watson to be grilled in the sun? That was unlikely. The yacht had kept radio silence until the end. So it had died while sleeping.
And still, Artem would have wanted to speak to Watson one last time. He would have explained his reasoning. The AI could not act freely, but it would understand. That seemed to be the core cruelty, to design an entity that was perceptive, yet unable to go from understanding to action.
How would he have taken leave from Watson? Artem thought for a long while before he came to a conclusion.
“Tell me a story,” he would have said. Watson would have liked that for sure.
June 27, 2074, Earth Orbit
A soft bump notified the crew of their successful docking at the Ark. Karl Freitag had sent them a heads up. The return of the ship from the alien space station was making headlines worldwide. Large media outfits with the necessary budgets had sent their reporters up to the Ark. All crew members were expected to be available for interviews.
The hatch opened with a grinding noise. Heather was going last. Amy as the commander had to go first. Callis was waiting to go before Heather. They held hands while they waited.
“Welcome!” Karl Freitag pushed his face into the open hatch. He grinned and seemed to be genuinely pleased. Then he pulled back. One after the other they floated out of the hatch, head first.
Heather turned around briefly. Artem had to stay behind. He would come out later, once the journalist horde had left the Ark. He was getting around quite well on his own, even though his burns had not yet healed as fully as predicted.
Freitag led the four into the command room, which offered the largest contiguous space on the Ark. Heather thought she recognized it. Four years ago the launch ceremony for the Ark had been broadcast from here. Over eight billion people had been watching live—an everlasting and unique record, set at what they thought was the end of it all. Everyone on the entire planet had expected to die shortly. Apparently they all recovered pretty quickly and got used to life again, Heather thought. And the same was true for herself, or else she would not have been so distraught when Solar Explorer nearly crashed into the sun.
Several floating cameras covered the command center. Part of the Ark team was present. They applauded when the crew of Solar Explorer entered to the sounds of rousing music. An anchorman presented the four astronauts in several languages, explaining their investigation of a mind-boggling space station left behind by technologically-advanced aliens.
Most of the reporters zeroed in on Amy, well known for her role in the Enceladus mission. Heather was glad to stay in the background. French-speaking journalists seemed to flock around Alain. She saw a group of dark-skinned people surround Callis, who appeared to be the preferred subject of African reporters. Heather, drawing no attention from the media folks, kept slowly inching back until she bumped up against the wall near the exit.
“Oh, you too?” A man to her right had spoken to her. She turned. It was Karl Freitag, smiling.
“I am really glad to be so unimportant,” she said.
“Same here,” the head of security agreed. “I would dearly love to be somewhere else right now.”
“Ditto. And where would your ‘somewhere else’ be?”
“Oberilzstausee,” he said.
That had to be German. It sounded like his nose was clogged. She was tempted to be silly and say, ‘gesundheit,’ but instead asked, “And what is that?”
“A wonderful lake in the southwest of Germany. Its banks have this special green, so intense that it takes all the tension away.”
“That sounds really good.”
“If you are in Germany sometime, you should pay me a visit.”
“I promise!”
“And where are you headed from here, Heather?”
“A few meters from my telescope there is a wall where I like to sit. The view looks down onto the infinite ocean. Absolute freedom.”
“Just like in space.”
“Space is too much for me. I prefer having up and down.”
Karl swiveled suddenly and stood on his head. “I understand very well what you are saying,” he said, laughing.
“What have you found out about the alien space station?”
Heather was catching up, watching Amy’s interview with NASA TV on a small screen in her cabin.
“We are pretty confident that the station is able to manipulate the magnetic fields of the sun, within certain limits.”
“What limits?” the reporter asked.
“Well, the sun won’t be able to go twice as bright. But it probably could cause global warming or global cooling or disrupt communications on Earth.”
“Isn’t the construction dangerous, then?”
“In the wrong hands, maybe.
But we—meaning the international community—will work to prevent that. The United Nations is going to pass a plan with specifics quite soon. Besides, the station seems quite capable of protecting itself from unwanted visitors. We witnessed how an unidentified ship was destroyed during its approach to the station.”
“Who had sent the ship?”
“A committee has been formed to investigate that very question.”
Amy was holding up very well, having no trouble establishing the legend they had agreed on.
“Does the station endanger us?”
“That does not seem to be the case right now. But we must keep up the efforts to continue investigating it.”
“Can we learn something from the aliens?”
“I am afraid they are so vastly superior, it would be as though ants tried to learn from humans.”
Heather remembered how Alain had first brought up the ant analogy.
There was a knock on the door of the small cabin. Heather switched the device off and opened her door. It was Callis.
“That was a challenging day,” Heather said, closing the door behind him.
“But it was good, too,” Callis said as he started massaging her back from his floating position.
“You think so?”
“It was good to speak with other people for a change.”
She steadied herself with her hands against a wall. His massage was working its way into her.
“May I?” he asked.
“Yes.”
His hands delved below her sweatshirt.
“Weren’t we interesting enough for you anymore?” Her muscles responded to his hands, tension fled, and she suddenly felt warm.
Silent Sun: Hard Science Fiction Page 24