Home Planet: Awakening (Part 1)

by T. J. Sedgwick

  Naturally, I’d seen best-estimate impressions of Aura-c during training. Being Earthlike, they all looked, well, like Earth with a few notable exceptions like a slightly darker blue sky and potentially purple sunsets. But no one knew for sure, as neither probe nor people had visited at the time. Now I knew neither was true and imagined the two people I’d heard via the long-range transceiver—John on his simple fishing vessel somewhere in the ocean south of the colony, the woman sitting in a capsule seated on a white sand beach fringed with the green of alien trees and plants. So far, I’d not seen much of the planet—just the thin crescent of white with the naked eye. Once the ship’s orbit allowed viewing of the dayside of the planet, I’d be able to make out some of the landmasses. On comparing them to the maps, I’d know which side of Aura-c it was. Eventually I’d use my observations to decide where to land, hopefully in cooperation with the survivors I’d heard on the transceiver.

  I rolled up the eastern hemisphere map and made for the starboard telescope enclosure. As I walked across the great observatory in half-light, I looked around me. Last time, I strolled through with the thirty or so other colonists I was part of the induction tour. The place was brightly lit and brilliant white with a polished floor, scientists working quietly at terminals in the glass-sided offices and conference room. The old professor, bald with a gray mustache, came over from his map table and said a few words—something about how the telescopes worked as a small array or something like that. Then he scuttled off toward his office. Now, the white wall panels were a murky off-white and the glass room sides dull and mold-ravaged.

  The flickering red standby light on a terminal caught my eye and I jogged over to investigate. A few double taps followed, but it was as dead as the other terminals with no such standby light. After trying a few more nearby, I gave up and continued to the starboard telescope dome. On reaching it, I saw the dome had an internal hatch, which opened to reveal a narrow airlock with space for just one person. I closed the internal hatch, opened the external one, and saw the small, dark cockpit, which reminded me of a flight simulator. On climbing in, it felt like I’d walked into an oven—it must’ve been well over a hundred degrees in there. I placed my hand under the air vent baffle on the low ceiling and found part of the reason. The other reason was that with Aura beating down through the greenhouse-like cupola, the heat had nowhere to go. At least it meant I had the correct side, the telescope facing Aura and its rocky disciple. I removed my fleece, laying it down. There were two seats either side of the large-bore telescope, which protruded through the front wall at an angle of forty-five degrees, the viewing lens stopping about five feet above the floor. But it was what—or should I say who—sat on the left chair that made me stop in my tracks.

  I stepped around and looked down at the skeletal remains dressed in the remnants of what was once a pair of mixed fiber slacks and reddish short-sleeved shirt. The cotton components of his clothes had rotted away, leaving the thin tatters of synthetic fiber to adorn his bones. Only three things retained full integrity: his black shoes, the pair of grimy smart-glasses that had fallen onto his chest, and his watch. I recognized the watch from the induction tour—only months ago in my mind—as belonging to the old professor. It was an unusual model. In some ways old-school, in others cutting edge. I respectfully removed the watch and wiped the back clean. It bore an engraving reminding me of his name, G.J. Heinz. Under the name was inscribed, A & A, Juno Ark, 2070. Perhaps it had been a team souvenir and A & A meant ‘Astronomy & Astrophysics’. It made sense. Around the lower rim of the back cover were the manufacturer’s name and the model: Eternity Perpetual, Thermochemical and a few other details. This type of watch was not a smartwatch, it just told the time, date and year. An old-school watch for an old-school professor. It had tiny electronic date and year panel on the face and the three hands of an analog watch. After wiping the glass clean, I could read the face clearly. And when I did, I stood staring wide-eyed, my mouth open, unable to comprehend what my eyes saw. The second hand was sweeping around just as sure as a planet goes around its star. This thing really was perpetual, using ambient heat to generate electricity, which kept the watch going. Although essentially meaningless, it read 10:44 a.m. What was anything but meaningless was the year: 2584. The Juno Ark had departed Earth in 2070. I shook my head, my lips pursed. How could it be? A quick calculation in my head blew me away: five-hundred and fourteen years since launch. After rubbing my eyes, I checked again. Still July 15, 2584. There had to be some mistake.

  I pocketed the watch in my fleece, picked it up and left the sauna-like cockpit for the cool of the observatory proper. Jogging with purpose, I made for the offices on the right and searched them for other bodies. There were none, but I continued surveying every square inch of surface, every drawer, and every closet until I got what I needed. Another souvenir watch, which had drawn the heat from the air for years, powering its movement. The second hand no longer swept the face and the minute and hour hands were static too. Something in the mechanism must’ve failed. But the electronic display did still work and it read July 15. 2584, just like the professor’s watch. The first could’ve been a malfunction, but now the second watch corroborated it there was no way. I sank to the floor staring at the two watches side-by-side.

  How could it be? Five centuries … not one. As in half a millennium...

  To understand the sense of timescale I thought back five centuries of history from when we left Earth—back to the mid-fifteen hundreds. They’d not yet invented the telescope and Galileo was unborn. They were still burning people at the stake and it’d be half a century before Jamestown was established, two more decades until the Pilgrim Fathers reached America on the Mayflower.

  I pictured the remains I’d seen in the stasis pods. Designed for twice the anticipated mission length of a hundred and twenty years, I imagined them failing progressively over the years until mine was the last one standing. Only a tiny minority had kept going, leaving only Reichs, John, the woman and yours truly. Was my cop friend, Mike Lawrence, another one of the lucky few? And then to my mind came the face of Kate Alves—not the one of a beautiful young woman, full of life, but the dying, contorted Kate that so very nearly made it after five hundred years of stasis. That she’d nearly survived made her death all the more painful. I pushed thoughts of my friends from my mind and considered the implications. Tiro had definitely logged Reichs as being alive when he reset the network. And I was definitely still sane enough to know that I’d heard the long-range transmissions from the planet below. Although the insane didn’t know they were insane, I hadn’t been alone long enough to start hearing things. I hoped that was true, anyway. So that meant the survivors on the planet could’ve been there for generations, even centuries.

  If that were true, why weren’t they in communication with the Juno? Why weren’t there shuttles going back and forth and other signs of an established colony, an established civilization? There could’ve been all kinds of reasons. They could’ve abandoned the ship long ago and not yet developed the industry to become spacefaring once again. Then I thought of the Janus—the sister ship of Juno Ark. She should’ve arrived centuries ago, too, and with the pace of development on Earth, others must have been sent—faster ships, capable of much more than an average thirteen-percent light speed. None of this made sense and, rather than bring answers, Module 3 had brought more questions. However, I’d long believed that any complex problem could be simplified to something comprehendible. What mattered were my next moves. In a way, nothing had changed. I still needed to get to the planetary surface, contact John and Jane Doe and find Reichs.

  Looking at Professor Heinz’s watch and it read two-minutes past eleven, so I pocketed it, then got out the two-way radio and switched it on.

  “Hello, this is Dan Luker. Do you read me Reichs?”

  Just static, no reply.

  “Repeat, this is Dan Luker, survivor on board the Juno Ark; do you read me Arnold Reichs?”

  Nothing.
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br />   The walkie-talkie stayed on for two and a half minutes more—still nothing. Disappointed, I replaced the two-way in my fleece and unzipped it to access the intercom badge on my chest.

  After activating it, I said, “Intercom, connect me with the network.”

  The intercom woman said, “The network is unreachable. The communications network is inactive.”

  Her reply was getting old. No surprise, though, but I had to try.

  I said, “Okay. Intercom, initiate direct badge-to-badge communications. Any node.”

  “No active intercom nodes within range.”

  “Intercom, repeat last command.”

  “No active intercom nodes within range.”

  “Damn it …”

  Reichs must’ve found and switched off the hidden badges. Either that or they’d ran out of charge or were out of range. I couldn’t recall the effective range going node-to-node as we always used the network before stasis. Hoping for the out-of-range theory, I vowed to try again later and shut down the badge.

  Nothing was easy on this cursed vessel. I yawned, a wave of fatigue washing over me. Everything seemed worse when tired, and as I relocated to the dark corner of a corpse-free office, I reminded myself it’d been less than a day since I’d awoken. Now the time had come for my first normal sleep in over five hundred years, I couldn’t get comfortable on the hard, cold floor. After finding a sofa in a small staff room, I crashed there savoring the delights of upholstery and cushions. Even musty, dirty ones. It took just minutes to become drowsy and I willed my mind to find solutions that sometimes came to me in my dreams. Questions plagued my mind in those final seconds of conscious thought. Where is Reichs? Where is everyone else? On the planet below? Dead? And where, in the vastness of space, am I? In five hundred years, we could’ve traveled seventy light years. That brought dozens of additional star systems within range. Moments later, I fell asleep.

  My dreams revealed faces from the distant past, starfields providing the canvas on which they appeared No solutions came. Just hopes overwhelmed by fears, alone in the darkness of space with only the dead for company. It’d been a huge stroke of fortune that I hadn’t joined them. Now I had to keep surviving in this radically altered reality. And I had to do justice to my lost friends and find out the truth.

  15

  I awoke for the second time in five-hundred and fourteen years. Feeling in my pocket for Professor Heinz’s watch, I checked the time. It read 8:15p.m. Nine hours’ sleep and feeling way better for it. I put on the watch, pushing the buckle tongue through the hole nearest the end. The date still read July 15, 2584. I exhaled, shaking my head, looking to the ceiling for explanation but finding none.

  Once my yawning had died down, I sat up and tried again with the walkie-talkie and then the intercom badge. Same results: no radio signal, no network, no nodes within range. Wasting no time, I got up from the couch and took a left out of the staff room toward the starboard telescope dome. Once inside the oppressively hot viewing cockpit, I considered Professor Heinz but decided to leave him where he sat. I removed my fleece, laying it down on the seat beside him. He wasn’t in the way and I’d come to think of the ship like a war grave. There were few signs of a vermin problem and most had decomposed to the point of no disease risk. So, in absence of anything better to do with the dead, it was better to leave them. Moving to the eyepiece of the telescope, I noticed the temperature had relented some compared to last time. The only explanation was the ship’s orbit had taken the starboard side out of direct sunlight—or at least changed the incidence angle.

  The eyepiece pointed upwards compared to the telescope tube. Next to it, sat another eyepiece connected to a thinner tube, which ran along the right hand side of the telescope, extending out through the front of the room.

  The viewfinder, I thought

  I removed both eyepiece covers and put my eye to the finderscope first. All I saw was black. Next, I tried the main eyepiece, but same result: pure darkness. With Professor Heinz beside me, I pondered for a moment, then got back up and started searching the dark floor. The metal outline soon betrayed the trap door’s presence. It opened easily, telling me there was pressure below the wedge-shaped trapdoor. Had there been a breach in the cupola—due to space junk or seal failure—the door would’ve been impossible to open. I climbed down the short ladder onto the narrow platform with the cupola, telescope and space beyond. The enclosed space had kept the transparent dome quite clean. The view was spectacular. As I’d slept, the ship had orbited the planet and the planet had turned. Now I could see three quarters of it in sunlight and I thought back to the maps—one for western hemisphere and one eastern. I visualized the shapes of the continents, the mountain ranges and the forests. Then there were the candidate colony locations and the primary one: Hyland-A. As the planet hung serenely in view, illuminated by its parent ball of fusion, I could see none of these features. The globe in front of me was not greens and blues and browns but entirely white.

  “What the hell is going on?” I whispered, in awe of its beauty but mystified by its appearance.

  There was no way they could’ve got it this wrong. The near-Earth space telescopes had thousands of viewing hours on Aura-c as betold by Professor Heinz’s surface maps. Was this a different planet in the Aura system? There were two other rocky planets in the system: Aura-d and Aura-e as well as gas giant, Aura-b. What I was looking at was definitely a rocky planet. Aura-d orbited closest to its star and had a thick atmosphere of highly reflective sulphur dioxide—similar to Venus. Perhaps that was it. But the color—or lack thereof—looked all wrong. Aura-e orbited further out than Aura-c and was a frozen, cloudy planet like the one I could see. Unable to remember the exact habitability index, I didn’t think it was high and I’d be surprised if John and Jane Doe had settled there. But where else could the transmission have been from? They must have made the white planet their home.

  Then another possibility came to mind: was it a different system entirely? I knew they’d planned a diversion contingency for the case where Aura turned out to be uninhabitable, but that was supposed to be one chance in five hundred or something like that.

  Long odds, but not impossible, I thought. Five hundred balls in a bag, one red the rest white. What are the chances? Low, but not impossible.

  With no network and little access to the few functioning terminals, I still needed to observe the planet directly to see if it was Aura-e or something else entirely. And if John and his lady friend were there, where were they?

  Dragging my eyes away from the stunning, perplexing spacescape, I looked along the telescope to its end above the cupola. I placed my hands around the tube, gently pulled down and found it rock solid. Next, I hauled myself onto it and slid along the top, pulling with my hands, pushing with my boots. On reaching the end, I looked down to see the black dust cover over the objective lens. There was some sort of actuator mechanism, which, under normal conditions, would open up the flap-like cover. But these were anything but normal conditions and I had to force it open, breaking the mechanism by the sound of it. After opening the finderscope cover, I found my way back into the observation cockpit and stood opposite the large hand wheel at the back of the room next to the entrance hatch. The sign above it said Manual Azimuth Operation. Another, identical wheel on the sidewall next to the empty seat read, Manual Inclination Operation. I turned the first wheel, yanking on it half a dozen times with all my weight to get it moving. When it did, the entire cockpit moved slightly with each turn. Next, came at least twenty round trips to the viewfinder as I adjusted the azimuth and inclination of the telescope and in doing so, the room itself. I put my eye to the finderscope. Perfect. The planet sat dead center, so I moved my eye to the main eyepiece. All it revealed was cloud cover. Swirls of higher cloud above a veil of thick, impenetrable white. I watched and I concentrated to the extent of my visual acuity, but still saw just cloud. There was something else though—the cloud appeared to be moving. Not as in swirling around as cloud does
, but shifting, translating across the field of view. Whatever magnification the telescope was on, it was close enough to give away the ship’s movement relative to the planet. I stood, enthralled by the recurring shapes, which drifted hypnotically by, hoping my pattern-spotting brain was aware enough to spot anything significant.

  If we’d diverted to another system wouldn’t the Janus be here too? I thought.

  Another theory arrived from my subconscious ideas factory.

  Could someone on board—a faction—have staged a takeover then deliberately diverted here to avoid the Janus and any future missions from Earth? Maybe they didn’t agree with the tenets of equality and a fresh start for all. Maybe they had a different society in mind.

  It wouldn’t surprise me and five hundred years travel time would cover quite a few star systems … But then I checked myself and found my mind wandering into conspiratorial back alleys. I reminded myself that it’s all about the evidence. No different from being a cop five hundred years ago on Earth.

  Only two theories made sense: what I was looking at was Aura-e, not Aura-c; or this wasn’t the Aura system at all.

  Then something occurred to me. Something I’d been looking at for the last few minutes but hadn’t recognized. The higher altitude white clouds remained but had become wispier, revealing more definition of what lay beneath. And it was no longer a blanket of thick white cloud. Now I could see what looked like the surface. Shadows betrayed the undulations of hills and mountains under an unbroken covering of ice and snow. This planet looked very much like a frozen world. The question was which frozen world?