by Samuel Best
Riley clenched his jaw while he thought about it.
“No,” he said at last. “Let’s send Canaveral a picture and see what the hell they want to do. This is above my pay grade.”
Noah stood in his dark office, holding a printed picture with white-knuckled hands – a picture of another company’s spaceship in orbit around Titan. His eyes blindly searched the surface of his desk as he strained for a way to make sense of the fact that someone else had beaten him to his goal.
He sank down into his chair. The anger faded only to be replaced by heartbreak.
I didn’t get there first, he thought.
He looked again at the picture. Someone downstairs had enhanced the image sent by Explorer I, zooming in on the other ship and cleaning up the slight blur that was in every photo taken while the ship was in motion.
MarsCorp, thought Noah. How did they do it?
He lingered on the design of the ship, noting its similarities to Explorer. Granted, it was possible that two separate companies working independently might arrive at a similar design. There were only so many ways to skin a cat, to state it crudely.
Yet there were certain elements of the MarsCorp design that so blatantly mirrored the ship built by Noah’s company that it would be foolish to blame everything on coincidence. The placement of the centrifuge was identical on both ships. If Noah looked at a similar photograph of Explorer I taken from the same distance, he wouldn’t be surprised if the diameters matched up perfectly.
The communications arrays for both ships were easily recognizable and likewise in the same position: behind each crew module in two identical clumps of delicate machinery, like twin metal tumors stuck to the sides of the vessels. It was a redundant design in case one of the groupings should fail.
Noah had always been wary of industrial espionage, ever since the beginning of his optimistic space endeavors. He had taken all the necessary precautions to safeguard his company’s secrets. Outgoing communications were monitored. Each employee had to sign a waiver agreeing to a spontaneous polygraph test should the need arise.
So far, it hadn’t.
As Noah looked at the picture, he realized he had been much too lenient with security. There was no real way to know how badly his proverbial ship was leaking. It was money, of course. Someone on his staff had taken a payout, and MarsCorp got his ship design. Judging by the fact that they beat him to Titan, they also stole his antimatter engine.
His phone rang and he scooped it up.
“Yeah.”
“Video feed’s coming through in five,” said Frank.
Noah hung up and stared at the receiver. He slowly crumpled the picture into a ball.
What about Frank? he wondered.
Aside from Noah, no one knew the intricacies of what went on at Diamond Aerospace better than Frank Johnson. He had been there since the beginning, back when Noah was still building models to try and impress the media.
Frank was the most dedicated employee Noah ever had, and it didn’t sit right that he would sell the company’s secrets to a competitor.
He isn’t the last person on the list of possibilities, Noah reminded himself as he rode the elevator down to Mission Control.
He forced his mind onto the artifact – the torus, as Riley called it.
Technically speaking, Diamond Aerospace had more of a claim on the object than MarsCorp. It was Diamond Aerospace’s probe who first made it to Titan and had sent back the blurry photograph. It might be a stretch to say the torus was a clear match for the blur in the first photo. Yet no one could deny the fact that MarsCorp had stolen Noah’s engine design and only knew about the torus because of D.A.’s groundbreaking antimatter engine.
The question was if MarsCorp would agree with that assessment. Noah doubted it. The next question then became whether or not he could convince a judge to side with his company. Past experience told him it was possible to sway a verdict, given the right amount of compensatory guidance.
He tried to console himself by admitting that, whichever way the chips fell, he stood on the precipice of a historic moment. How that moment played out was solely up to him.
Kate sat at her workstation, her eyes glued to the display wall, nervously chewing on the end of her pen. Rick had yet to show up for work. His empty chair was like a void at the edge of her vision, tugging at her every conscious thought. She hadn’t heard from him since he left her house with the folder he’d taken from company archives. Normally, not hearing from him wouldn’t have made her think twice. At the moment, things at Diamond Aerospace were far from normal.
The display wall in Mission Control had been reconfigured to give precedence to the main exterior video feed coming in from Explorer I, pushing the continuously streaming ship and crew data to the edges of the massive screen.
The ship was holding position a mere five-hundred kilometers from the outermost border of Titan’s atmosphere. The moon filled most of the display wall – a hazy, pale yellow disc suspended in the inky blackness of space. As Noah watched, two dark objects moved steadily across the screen, orbiting the moon. At that distance, the MarsCorp ship appeared to be the size of a bullet, and the torus was no larger than a wedding band.
Kate was having a hard time forcing herself to accept that she was looking at an alien artifact. Her initial reaction when the object came within visual range was that the MarsCorp crew was constructing some kind of satellite or docking station. As Explorer I approached, however, the logical possibilities for the artifact’s shape and function ground down to nil, at least as far as Kate’s own knowledge was concerned.
Within only a few minutes of seeing the torus on the display wall for the first time, it became easy to accept that it had not been built by human hands.
Noah walked briskly up the middle walkway between the rows of workstations and stopped next to Kate’s desk, a spot he frequently occupied while observing the display wall from the operations floor. Frank hurried to his side and stood beside him, red-faced and steaming as he glared up at the image of the other ship.
Kate studied Noah’s face and saw mostly anger, which, despite such an awesome discovery, led her to guess that he had only known about one of the objects in orbit around Titan. Kate assumed it was the torus, and the appearance of the MarsCorp vessel was an absolute and unwelcome surprise. Noah had shattered deadlines and expectations to be the first man to send a crew to Titan, and he had just discovered someone beat him to it.
“What’s our status?” he asked.
“We’re almost at peak delay for audio and visual,” Frank answered, slightly out of breath. “Everything we’re seeing now, Explorer saw seventy minutes ago.”
“Is there any way to get a closer look?”
“Juan,” Kate said, looking over at the tech, “zoom it in a little.”
Juan nodded and straightened up in his seat. “It’ll get blurry,” he said as he tapped on his monitor.
The area of Titan the objects were traversing became magnified, and the objects themselves turned into blocky representations of basic shapes over a muddy yellow background.
“Not much use at this distance,” Frank offered.
“Zoom back out, please,” Noah said. Juan complied and the image on the display wall reverted to its actual dimensions, with Titan looming large in the center. “How far are they from the ship?”
“Holding steady at about eighty kilometers,” said Kate.
Noah crossed his arms. “Let them get a little closer.”
“How close?” Frank asked.
“I’ll leave that to Commander Riley’s discretion. Ms. Bishop, have Explorer contact the other ship and ascertain what they’re doing at our moon.”
“What about the torus?” Frank asked.
“We’ll figure that out after we talk to the other ship.”
Kate adjusted her microphone. “It’ll be more than an hour before we hear back from them,” she reminded Noah.
He nodded. “I don’t think we’re going anywhere
before then.”
“Explorer One,” she said, “this is Mission Control. Your orders are to match orbital velocity with the MarsCorp vessel and attempt communication with its commanding officer. We’d like to know what they’re up to. Let’s take this nice and slow, Commander.”
She turned off her microphone and leaned back her chair. A few seconds later, the room speakers crackled to life.
“Copy that, Mission Control,” Riley said. “We will match velocity with MarsCorp vessel and let you know if we hear anything back.”
All of the various clicks and creaks in the room ceased instantly. The only sound was a distant hum from an air conditioning unit somewhere in the ceiling.
Noah grinned slowly. “The torus is boosting the signal,” he said, his voice filled with wonder. “It has to be. How extraordinary! Ms. Bishop, please tell the commander that we acknowledge his last message.”
On the display wall, the MarsCorp ship and the alien artifact continued along their orbital path.
Jeff and the other three crew members in the command module of Explorer I stared at the console in front of Riley’s chair after Kate’s last message. Riley cautiously reached forward and pushed a comm button on the console.
“Uh…Mission Control?” he said.
A few seconds passed before Kate answered. “Go ahead, Commander.”
He glanced around at the others. Jeff imagined he looked as confused as everyone else.
Riley pushed the button again. “Just confirming that communication between Earth and Explorer One is now instantaneous.”
Noah’s voice came in over the line. “That appears to be the case, Commander, although it’s not quite instantaneous yet. I suspect as you approach the artifact, we’ll lose the last remaining seconds of delay.”
“Copy that,” Riley said. He looked at Ming and she nodded. “Commencing maneuver.”
They began a fluid, synchronized ballet of movement as they flipped switches, pushed buttons, and twisted dials, performing the same functions simultaneously. The hull of the command module shuddered slightly as the small orbital thrusters fired. A moment later, the engines cut out and Explorer I drifted silently toward Titan.
“Preparing for turn,” Ming said. She reached over her head and pushed three glowing red buttons, then hovered a finger over a fourth. “Ready.”
Riley typed a long numerical code into a keypad in the wall next to his shoulder. A button on his console lit up green.
“Hit it, Lieutenant.”
The view of Titan began to slip sideways as Explorer I turned. They still drifted toward the moon, but small bursts of air from lateral stabilizing thrusters had begun slowly spinning the ship until it was parallel with the surface.
“And there goes the show,” Gabriel said as the last sliver of Titan disappeared from the command module window.
“Retro burn to match ship velocity in thirty seconds,” Riley said.
“Copy, Commander. We’ll catch up with them after they make one more full orbit.”
Jeff was no longer able to tell how close they were getting to the moon’s surface. His own console allowed him a detailed overview of every function aboard Explorer I, but he wasn’t patched in to the navigational computers. Anything he couldn’t see through the window was only trackable from the pilots’ chairs.
“Initiate retro burn,” Riley said.
The boosters fired and Jeff was pushed back against his seat. It was nothing like the bone-flattening crush he felt while under thrust to break free of Earth’s atmosphere – more like the gentle pressure one experiences on a commercial airplane during a banking maneuver shortly after takeoff.
“The ship and the artifact are about to overtake us, Commander,” Ming said.
“Final burn to match velocity,” he replied.
With the flip of a switch, the boosters gave one last push, then cut off. Ming tapped on her console screen and called up a radar display that showed two objects in near proximity to Explorer.
“Confirmed we are locked in Titan’s orbit along with…well, with whatever else is out there.”
“Lieutenant…” Riley said.
“Yes, Commander?”
“What would you think about swinging our caboose back around to where it was?”
“You want to face Titan again?”
“We’ve matched velocity with the other ship. I think I’d like to see it out the window instead of only on these tiny monitors.”
Ming tapped on her screen, parsing lines of dense text. At one point, she briefly pulled up a schematic of the pneumatic lines.
“We can do it. It would be safer to pre-program the maneuver so we don’t swing too far.”
“The less I have to do, the better,” Riley joked. “Mission Control, what do you think?”
Kate spoke a moment later: “Stand by.”
Ming started punching keys, recording an operations macro that the ship’s computer would activate when ordered. Even if Mission Control came back with a negative, she could simply delete the operation from the queue.
“Explorer,” Kate said, “if you want to see it with your own eyes, you are more than welcome.”
“Copy that, Canaveral. We are grateful.”
He gave the go-ahead to Ming, and she initiated the maneuver. Stabilizing thrusters at the back of the fuselage spurted air, and the aft of the ship swung away from Titan, the command module acting as a pivot point. A few more pops of air from thrusters on the opposite side of the fuselage, and Explorer I was steady once more, only this time with a better view.
Riley had ordered them within three kilometers of the MarsCorp vessel and the torus. At that distance, details of both were clearly visible. The one that immediately stood out to Jeff was the open hatch of the MarsCorp ship.
“Their airlock is open,” he said.
“See if you can get them on the horn, Lieutenant,” said Riley.
Ming twisted a dial on her console. “MarsCorp vessel, this is Explorer One. Looks like we’re going to be neighbors out here.” The line was silent. “MarsCorp vessel, do you copy?”
Noah broke in over the comm line. “Anything, Commander?”
“Negative. No response from the crew of the other ship. I can confirm their airlock is wide open.”
“I understand. Jeff, you are to proceed with EVA repair of the secondary fuel line sensor. Retrieve a backup fuel pump to replace the damaged one while you’re at it. Commander Riley, Dr. Silva…I want you both outside as well. Check that other ship. See if anyone over there needs our help.”
“What about the torus?” Riley asked.
“Under no circumstances are you to approach the artifact,” Noah said. “We’re going to take this slowly, one step at a time. We will consider the torus only if it becomes obvious there is no immediate danger.”
Jeff couldn’t help but crack a wry smile. Immediate danger, he thought. What about long-term danger? Guess that doesn’t matter as much.
Gabriel peeled off his headset. “Easy for him to say. He’s not floating around out here with a broken engine. All we are doing is wasting more time.”
“Can that talk, Silva,” Riley said. “Let’s just get it done.”
Noah strode purposefully into his dimly lit office from the elevator, rolling up his long shirtsleeves as he approached his palatial desk.
“Desk lights, business call,” he said to the room.
A narrow, rectangular hole opened in the middle of his broad desk, and a video conference screen rose silently from within.
Recessed lighting in the ceiling, and more so in the floor, illuminated to cast a warm glow on his desk and leather chair – a preprogrammed setting which lit Noah’s face mostly from underneath, giving him a faintly ominous appearance. The desired effect was a hint of intimidation and a gentle psychological reminder that the scales were balanced in Noah’s favor.
He dropped into the firm leather chair and jabbed at the intercom button of his desk phone.
“Neil,” he
said.
The response came back almost immediately: “James Whitaker on the line for you, sir.”
A small green light gently pulsed on top of the video screen. He shifted in his seat, leaned back into the leather, rested his elbows on the armrests, and steepled his fingers in front of him.
“Join call,” he commanded.
The video screen flicked on, showing a man in his early fifties seated in a black office chair. The blue sky over downtown Chicago lit his capacious penthouse suite through the wall-sized window behind his desk.
MarsCorp’s CEO cleared his throat and adjusted his navy-blue tie. His piercing gray eyes alighted on the camera for a split second before darting away. Noah thought James Whitaker had always seemed out of place in his position. Stark white hair trimmed in the flat-topped military style contrasted his perpetually-sunburned, bulbous face. Rugged lines creased his leathery skin. Retirement on a sailboat in Florida certainly wouldn’t treat the man better than what he’d already been doing, but at least it would get him out of Noah’s hair.
“Noah,” he said. “What can I do for you?”
“How about telling me how your company acquired the designs for my ship?”
Whitaker grunted laughter, his eyes sparkling. “Can’t say I know what you mean. We’re still slapping our ship together, remember? We took quite a hit when you snatched the Chinese contract out from under us.”
Noah leaned forward slightly. “Let’s not play this game, Jim. The ship in orbit around Titan is a replica of Explorer, and it has your company’s name smeared all over the side.”
Whitaker stared into the camera, his eyes narrowing, his hard frown just another line lost in a road map of creases.
“So you made it to Titan,” he said.
“You knew I would.”
“Not with that engine of yours. I thought my boys would be picking up the pieces of your ship on their way back to Earth.”
“Then your ship had a crew, after all,” said Noah.
“What the hell are you talking about? Of course North Star has a crew.”