by S. K. Vaughn
No doubt Ian knew exactly why he’d come, or had a good idea. And either he had accepted the meeting simply to see Stephen grovel or he was inclined to agree. Probably both.
On the plus side, out of all the entities in the world who did have the capacity for helping May, Ian was the clear front-runner. His military efficiency, illustrated by his launch complex, combined with his daredevil approach to shredding the envelope, had already made him the future of space travel. NASA, along with other state-sponsored space programs, was a dinosaur, a lumbering behemoth so mired in its own bureaucracy that it could barely move, let alone adapt. For decades it had enjoyed a monopoly, but as technology advanced at the speed of light, men like Ian had used the billions they made in business to reach the stars. Space was no longer just the final frontier; it was a profitable enterprise with unlimited potential, and Ian was already tapping into it.
It was also one of the reasons Stephen hated the man.
Stephen looked at the sealed plastic bag that Ian’s drone-like minion handed him. There was a full-body suit of some kind inside.
“What is this, a hazmat suit?”
“Of a sort—but for communications instead of pathogens. The suit does not allow any electronic signals in or out. Mr. Albright’s facility is surveillance-free, and he would like to keep it that way. Any more questions?”
Stephen shook his head, and the drone walked briskly away. He had come by private helicopter to the Albright Space Exploration Center, which was built on an artificial island off the coast of Florida. The facility was just outside US maritime boundaries and was made up of seven low, windowless structures arranged in the shape of Ian’s logo, a seven-pointed star. Appropriate to Ian’s personality, he’d chosen the heptagram because it represented the seven planets historically known to alchemists, which he considered himself a modern form of, and it was an ancient Christian symbol for the seven days of creation, which worked perfectly with his relentless and often publicly stated desire to be God.
After donning the suit, Stephen surveyed the interior of the receiving module, the building they’d taken him to after bringing him to the island. With its gleaming metal walls curved and molded into impossible shapes and sprawling field of cubicles with thick glass partitions that projected a dizzying array of images, the place looked like a breeding hive for robot insects. Fittingly, the workers were all dressed in the same pale gray uniforms, moving in perpetual motion with tablets seemingly surgically attached to their palms.
“He’ll see you now.”
Another minion had rolled up in a motorized cart. Stephen sat in the passenger seat, and they drove silently down a series of switchback concrete tunnels that took them deep underground. At the end of the road, they stopped at a thick metal wall the size of an airplane hangar door with the words “Launch Command Center” stenciled on the outside. A beam of red light traced the outside edges of a door, and that portion of the wall vanished. The driver motioned for Stephen to go in alone.
Stephen walked through the door and heard a muffled hiss. When he turned, the door was gone, and he was stunned by his surroundings. Nothing at NASA even came close to this level of engineering sophistication. The space was circular and as wide as a professional soccer stadium. The entire inside wall used a special type of particle projection to live-stream Ian’s current missions. The images were contained within the screen area but were fully three-dimensional, tactile for human interaction, and rich in all sensory information. Unlike NASA’s Mission Control teams, passively observing mission data screens and interacting with them through devices, Ian’s teams physically interacted with their astronauts and equipment as if they were aboard his vessels.
“Trippy, isn’t it?” Ian walked up, barefoot, wearing torn jeans and an old “I’m with stupid” T-shirt with a gloved cartoon hand pointing straight up.
“It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen,” Stephen said, referring more to Ian.
“You ain’t seen nothing yet,” Ian said arrogantly. “Step into my office.”
He walked, and Stephen followed. Another door opened in a perfectly smooth spot on the floor, and they climbed down a metal ladder into a square concrete bunker with no furniture. The door above them closed, and suddenly Stephen could see Ian only in black and white. His clothes, skin, and hair had no color.
“Instant film noir,” Ian said, sitting on the floor. Stephen sat across from him.
“Rod light,” Stephen said. “The rods in our eyes see us, but the cones don’t.”
“Not bad,” Ian said. “Also makes it impossible for camera sensors to see.”
“There’s always a method to your madness, Ian.”
“I’m going to get that as a tattoo,” Ian said, smiling. “Do you still hate my guts?”
Stephen almost lied, but realized that would be a fatal error. “Like poison.”
“It must have been hard for you to come here to ask me for something.”
“Normally I would say yes, but not this time,” Stephen said firmly.
Ian examined him as he would a strange piece of art. “You’re a noble man,” he declared.
“I’m a frightened man. There’s nothing noble about that.”
“I disagree. You’ve set aside your personal feelings and beliefs, which you cited in great detail when you rejected my proposal—sorry, my lucrative proposal—for Europa. All for the woman you love.”
“Yes.”
“But there’s more to it, isn’t there?”
“What do you mean?” Stephen asked.
Ian laughed. “Come on—you were doing so well being brutally honest to gain my trust. Don’t stop now.”
“And her unborn child,” Stephen said softly.
Telling Ian about the baby felt like selling his soul to the devil. He didn’t dare look at the other man’s face. If he saw the slightest whisper of gloating, he would lose it.
“Thank you,” Ian said with a shockingly even tone.
Stephen could feel his fists clenching. Ian saw it immediately.
“Stephen, please look at me. I’m not your enemy.”
“I wish I could believe that,” Stephen said, looking up.
Ian smiled warmly. His face held no trace of hostility. “Signal playback, please,” he called out.
“Stand by,” his AI said, its voice so immersive that Stephen could feel it in his skull.
Inside Stephen’s hazmat suit, a screen overlay was projected onto the inside of his hood glass. An audio wave scrolled across the small screen. It was playing a traditional Morse code SOS tone. Beneath it were data readouts.
“Identify source,” Ian said.
The screen pulled up identifier numbers and the words “Landing Vehicle—Cargo Rig—Hawking II.”
“Date of transmission.”
The date appeared.
Stephen started. “How did you—”
“You really think I would tell you? Show recent flight path.”
The screen showed May’s flight path through the asteroid belt and back to a blip with the words “Hawking II” and the vessel’s identification numbers below it.
“Can you verify those numbers, Stephen?” Ian asked.
Stephen nodded his head, dumbstruck.
“End.”
The projection switched off. Before Stephen could begin to ask anything, Ian was already providing answers.
“I’ve been spying on NASA, you, and everyone else involved in this mission ever since you foolishly decided to trust them with your life’s work instead of me. Pretty sophisticated stuff, if I do say so myself. Makes the NSA look like a bunch of voyeurs. You see, your rejection made me the reluctant villain in this melodrama. Did you know that’s usually how villains are made in mythology and works of fiction? They begin wanting the same thing as the hero, but when the hero wins out, his ego insists on having all the glory. The villain is like the devil, or, more accurately, a fallen angel. Even cast out, he must still pursue his dreams, but then it becomes by any means at his di
sposal—aka the fiendish plan. Mine was to wait in the wings until NASA dropped the ball, as I was certain they would with Robert Warren in charge, so I could pick it up and run with it. Beginning to get the picture?”
Stephen felt weak and helpless as the reality of the situation dawned on him.
“Come on,” Ian said, getting up off the floor. “I want to show you something cool.”
59
A minion drove them across the island to Ian’s launchpad. The entire launch zone was hidden behind a colossal black shroud held in place by skyscraper construction cranes. There was a single access road, just large enough for one vehicle. The security around the perimeter resembled that of an army field base in the middle of a war zone. Ian trusted no one, not even his most loyal employees. And for good reason: he was constantly being watched by intelligence agencies all over the world, as well as by his competitors. There were no limits to the resources they would commit to getting their hands on his technology.
“You’re about to see what few others on this planet have seen,” Ian said as they drove down the access road to the shrouded launchpad. “It’s also the answer to the question you never got to ask back there, but that we’re not going to talk about. I’m just giving you the tour.”
The driver dropped them off at the heavily guarded entrance, and they went in. Because of the shroud, the place was lit up with powerful stadium lights. What they were trained on took Stephen’s breath away. It was a ship of some kind, around 230 feet tall, attached to Ian’s towering multistage rocket with two side-mounted core boosters. Standing on end, it was cylindrical in shape, with a low-profile flight deck and crew cabin positioned flat on the outside and running half the length of the vessel. Stephen was fixated on its deeply black, seamless exterior. At first he couldn’t figure out what was so odd about it. Then he realized that it did not reflect light. In fact, it appeared to absorb the millions of lumens the stadium lights were blasting on it from every angle.
“Looks alien, right?” Ian said.
“The shape of it certainly does. It feels more organic than mechanical.”
“Structural plasticity. The shape can adjust to different conditions and maintain its integrity. Makes it almost indestructible. Kind of like your wife.”
“What’s the surface made of?” Stephen asked, ignoring Ian’s reference to May.
“Proprietary material. Game-changing, history-making, all that. What it does is more interesting, because it’s one big fusion reactor. It absorbs light and turns it into energy. In space, it will absorb matter and turn that into energy as well.”
“Like a star,” Stephen said, somewhat skeptically.
“Only in the sense that everything is its fuel source. Which is why launching it will be a bit dicey. As you can imagine, something that absorbs matter the way a fat man eats cake would be a fairly dangerous proposition in our atmosphere. If it works, we’ll park it at my space station and expand on it from there.”
“If it works?”
“Prototype. Never had a test flight. Technically, it’s not really even finished yet.”
“How do you propose to—?”
“Come on,” Ian interrupted. “You haven’t seen the best part.”
They boarded an elevator that rose slowly up the side of the ship. When they got to the top, Stephen could see the craft was completely hollow in the middle, and the interior surface was lined with millions of metallic black and gold tiles.
“This is the reason she’s going to be the fastest vehicle ever made.”
“New propulsion technology?” Stephen asked.
“No, still EmDrive, but with a twist. Instead of having separate engines, the whole vessel is a microwave cavity thruster, maximizing potential thrust. In addition to being one big engine, she’s also one big fusion reactor. And we’ve stripped her down to minimize internal power use. Not a lot of room for crew, and certainly not much in the way of creature comforts. But when you combine her ability to generate power and speed, there’s no telling how fast she can go. Theoretically, she may be able to reach speeds three to four times greater than our fastest starships, maybe faster. When time is of the essence, this is your gal.”
After Stephen had viewed the ship for a few more minutes, he and Ian went back to the concrete bunker to finish their discussion. Even though it appeared Ian was going to attempt to rescue May, something Stephen was grateful for, his motivations had not been made clear. Also, the fact that it was a foregone conclusion put Stephen off. He wondered whether, if he had not reached out, Ian would have even told him about his intentions. Why would he?
The villain analogy Ian had shared could also be applied to May. If the man knew everything, he surely knew about their divorce. Ian had been obsessed with May and was utterly destroyed when she dumped him; perhaps he saw this as his second chance. He had already made more money than God, accomplished everything there was to accomplish, and vanquished every challenger, but May was the prize that had eluded him for years. For a megalomaniac inching closer to death, this opportunity was made to order.
“Based on the Hawking II’s current position and velocity, she’ll arrive at Mars orbit in eight weeks,” Ian said. “My ship can be ready for launch in two, and I can be there in four.”
“Theoretically,” Stephen reminded him.
“I’ve lost only one vessel in test flight, and the garbage booster rocket Uncle Sam sold me for three times its value was to blame,” Ian said. “That was so long ago that you’d need a time machine just to remember when it happened.”
“Sorry, Ian. That was out of line. Aside from God himself, you’re the only one capable of getting to Mars in that short a time.”
“That’s not necessary, Stephen.”
“What?”
“Stroking my ego to get a seat on the ship. You’re going, all right. And so is your friend Raj. Payment for this grand gesture of mine is your life’s work. I want all of what you denied me before, along with whatever is needed to completely reverse-engineer that fabulous ship Raj designed. I want to be the one who presents the discovery of extraterrestrial life to the world. The Europa ocean water samples are, in and of themselves, worth the expense and the risk. But the NanoSphere on top of them? I told you years ago I wanted to work with you because I wanted to change the world. If I recover that ship, I’ll be able to change it several times over. Robert Warren and NASA will burn, and I will fucking own space exploration.”
Stephen couldn’t hide the shock that was written all over his face.
“What? You think I would do this for love?” Ian laughed so hard that he fell over on his side and could barely breathe. Any notion Stephen had coming in about Ian’s motivations went right out the nonexistent window. He felt like an idiot. All his insecurities were likely projections, and he had allowed them to destroy his marriage.
“I’m sorry,” Ian said when he saw Stephen’s look of despair. “That was pretty crass. To be quite honest, at this point in my life, it’s impossible for me to mask my true feelings about anything—one of the great benefits and curses of a man in my position.”
“It’s all right. As you can imagine, this has been hell for me. I’m just happy May has a chance. And as hard as it will be to hand over my work, it’s a very small price to pay for that chance. So thank you.”
“It’s my pleasure,” Ian said. “Now, then, first things first: we need to restore communications immediately. I’ve already taken some steps toward that, and just have to tie up a few loose ends. However, I’m confident we can have full contact, with all-important telemetry, in the next twenty-four hours.”
“How are you going to do that? Robert has—”
“Fired most of the mission team without warning or cause. And he’s subjecting many of them to the scrutiny of military investigators. These are people with very specialized skills in sudden need of employment.”
“You poached them.”
“I’ve never understood why people use that word to refer to offerin
g someone a patch of grass that is truly greener than the one they’re standing on.”
“Good point. But what about the investigators?”
“Smoke screens. Fear tactics. Legally untenable.”
“He certainly did a good job of intimidating Raj and me.”
“As he should. You two are real threats. And combined with me? We’re Robert Warren’s doomsday device.”
“Which means I’m in serious danger.”
“Since the moment you arrived here today. As of now, we need to assume he’s anticipating the rescue mission and will do anything in his power to stop it. For your own personal safety, I recommend you stay here until we’re able to contact May. After that, if you insist on returning to Houston, just get what you need from your house and vacate it for the duration. Same for Raj. If it were me, I wouldn’t go home at all.”
60
“Danger. Danger. Danger. Danger. Danger . . .”
An alarm, along with its accompanying robot warning voice, was bouncing off the engine room walls and hitting May’s ears like an ice pick. Flashing warning lights made the whole area look like a crime scene. She was on the floor, awkwardly twisted under the housing for the damaged induction unit, grunting and struggling to reach something.
“Eve,” she yelled angrily, “can’t you turn that horrible racket off?”
She slid out from under the metal curtain, smacking her ear on the way out.
“Eve,” she screamed.
“I cannot disable an alarm indicating hazards that could result in crew fatalities.”
“But I can’t concentrate, and this is hard enough as it is,” May said, nearly in tears. “I can barely reach under the housing curtain, which is sharp as a guillotine, and . . . shit, this can’t be right. You’d have to be a goddamn octopus to get under there.”
“There is a maintenance panel release—”
“No, there is not,” she yelled. “I’ve been reaching around trying to find it for the last hour, and all I’ve come up with are greasy dust bunnies. And the smell! God!”