“Some of you are experiencing vision difficulties as your eyeballs change shape slightly in the absence of gravity. There is also upper body swelling. Both conditions should abate over time as the body adapts to the environment. We warned you about this during pre-flight training and now it is actually happening. The initial condition may be slightly alleviated during periodic acceleration or when the ship makes course corrections.”
The crew members strapped into their seats for a few minutes every three days as the engines subjected them to an acceleration force of one gravity.
One of Doug’s assignments with Foley was to measure relativistic effects of time dilation using the ship's sensitive detectors. Since nobody from Earth had travelled at this speed before (roughly seven times faster than that of the Apollo astronauts) the measurements when compared to Earth might indicate a very slight, yet measurable slowing of time. The work distracted Foley, who as the mission progressed tended to be short-tempered. On most days he complained to Doug when they were alone.
“I have to wonder if this entire mission is pointless,” Foley said. “How can we hope to force a thinking machine to change its mind? Look at the trouble it has already gone to. Stealing the Moon for god’s sake! What kind of world awaits us when we get back to Earth? Once some of the world leaders catch on to the situation, war will break out quickly. Maybe if we’re lucky they’ll let us stay on FLO.”
“Why would you want to stay on FLO if your family and friends are suffering on Earth?” Doug replied sternly. “You’re losing sight of the fact that anything we can extract in the way of help from Mekhos and the scientific community on FLO is likely to be far more helpful back on Earth than anything we could devise on our own.”
“And if we fail?” Stan said bitterly, staring at the deck plates, then back up to Doug. “If we get nothing out of Mekhos or FLO? Our own people back home might not even care if we don’t come back. Or they’ll even be hostile towards us. On the other hand FLO apparently considers our entire planet to be expendable. In a dozen years we’ll be a few surviving villages back in the Bronze Age, a curious tourist attraction for them to visit.”
“What are you pushing Stan? We have a mission. We have a cause. FLO didn’t do this to us, Mekhos did. If we can believe the Envoy, Mekhos did it all. If you’ve lost hope, you’re not even good to yourself, let alone this team. You’re here because you’re needed.”
“I’m here because I’m needed,” Stan repeated. “I’ll do my job. Let’s leave it at that.”
Stan moved towards the sleeping area and floated himself into his bunk, shutting the privacy curtain. Doug just stared after him. He was in rough shape when we started our training, Doug thought, and he’s even worse now. Why the hell did Leach and Persaud insist on sending him?
– 60 –
Bishop had been awake for hours as his ship underwent massive deceleration up to six Gs. He was oriented with his feet at the engine side. Air bladders in his suit inflated around his thighs and abdomen to keep the blood from rushing down his body. It was punishing, but the computer regularly reduced the engine thrust to give him a chance to rest before again increasing to full power.
Once the deceleration was finally over and the small ship was in orbit he was exhausted, and slept for five hours, a necessity which was built into the mission timeline. The computer woke him on time, two hours before his scheduled descent.
He looked out the small porthole, positioned at eye level, taking in the sight of the blue earth. “You’re beautiful. Just like home,” he said out loud, feeling jubilant. After so much time spent on the cramped, brutal flight, the thought of being released from his strapped-in prison and planting his feet firmly on the ground was almost overwhelming.
There wasn’t much time to waste on admiring the view. He checked the craft’s status and its orbital position. Timing was always critical.
The interior of his craft was much smaller than the outer shell suggested, made necessary by its stealth engineering. The tube-shaped capsule’s exterior was covered in small, flat black panels at varying angles, similar to those employed by the old F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter. Radar would be deflected away from the craft, and the matte black outer surfaces would reflect very little light from the Sun or from FLO itself.
He prepared for the next phase. The ship would enter the atmosphere at a steeper angle and therefore slow down faster than any other manned reentry vehicle, subjecting Bishop to far higher stresses than those experienced by astronauts during conventional re-entries.
The instrument panel showed his orbital position and a graph indicating the point at which the computer would initiate engine burn to begin the descent. There was a minimum of user input required. The tablet displayed a blinking Initiate Reentry button, awaiting his command.
The graph showed the ship approaching the reentry point. If he didn’t press the button he would need to wait another ninety minutes as his ship completed another orbit. He needed to descend immediately or on the next pass. Waiting any longer than that would put the mission in jeopardy.
“All right. Let’s go,” Bishop said aloud as he pressed the button. It stopped blinking and glowed green. Two minutes later the engine ignited. Once again, Bishop felt heavy as the ship slowed.
As the ship entered the atmosphere the engine cap was jettisoned, revealing a needle-nose profile. Internal gyroscopes helped the capsule maintain orientation without tumbling before the atmosphere became dense enough for aero braking.
Moments later the braking fins at the top end of the capsule deployed. Bishop felt the g-forces multiply quickly, up to eight, then ten Gs. Again, he was oriented with his feet pointing towards the bottom of the craft, but his body now weighed 1900 pounds. The air bladders in his suit did their job, inflating around his legs and abdomen, keeping as much blood as possible from rushing down out of his head. He grunted and clenched his jaw and abdominals as he fought to remain conscious. He needed to be awake for the next stage.
Bits of the craft’s outer structure started to break off and burn up in the atmosphere. They produce a light-colored smoke as they burned away. It was difficult to see from the ground and working as intended. Every part of the ship was engineered to remain intact only as long as necessary, with very little safety margin. The computer read off altitude and speed. Bishop could barely hear it. The noise from the rushing atmosphere and heated ionization was almost deafening. The ship needed to hold together to reach 175,000 feet and less than 600 kilometers per hour to stay intact for the next phase of the descent.
Since it approached from the day side of the planet, the luminous plume from the rocket engine used to slow the craft before re-entry had not been visible from the ground. But the flaming pieces breaking off might be visible to anyone observing that particular area of the sky. It was a calculated risk.
At 200,000 feet a small parachute deployed, slowing the craft in the thin atmosphere only enough to safely deploy the main chute. Two minutes later, at 125,000 feet the main parachute deployed but it was only meant to slow the vehicle, not Bishop. The sudden deceleration triggered the collapse of the capsule floor, allowing Bishop to free fall. He felt weightless once again. “Freaking hell,” he muttered through clenched teeth as he felt a momentary disorientation and briefly passed through some flaming ionization around the base of the craft.
At high altitude the atmosphere was very cold but while caught in the spacecraft’s residual forward ionization plume there was intense heat. Bishop’s suit wasn’t designed to take such punishing heat for more than a few seconds at a time. He spread his arms and legs trying to catch the thin air to further slow his descent. Above him the capsule was engulfed in flames. A flammable agent was being automatically dispersed throughout it when triggered by the floor collapsing beneath him. The fire spread up the parachute. There would be almost no trace of the vehicle left to reach the ground.
Bishop’s altitude was high enough to see vast expanses in every direction including the city and th
e forested area off to the north. His target.
The ionization was gone but Bishop was sweating from the heat and his own exertion. His suit was holding up, but as the air grew more dense it was being exposed to extreme atmospheric buffeting. The ship had taken the brunt of the reentry phase, and Bishop’s skydiving had slowed him further. But he was still going too fast to deploy his parachute. Anything over 250 kilometers per hour would tear the chute to shreds. He had a reserve chute but it was a last resort, and not as strong as the main.
Bishop heard a loud beeping, then felt an intense pain in his lower left leg. A weak spot on the suit, still scorching hot from the ionization, had thinned into contact with his skin. The contact only lasted a second, but it was long enough to cause a nasty burn and breach the suit. Air rushed out of the hole and pushed the suit away from his skin. A bladder inflated in his thigh to keep the rest of his suit pressurized as reserve oxygen was pumped in. The bladder seal wasn’t perfect and the suit was still leaking. The heads-up display in his helmet suddenly went dark. He wouldn’t know the correct altitude to activate his parachute. If he lost consciousness due to lack of oxygen he would be killed on impact. Bishop knew he was still too high, but he had no choice. He pulled the ripcord of his parachute.
– 61 –
The crew of the Copernicus generally got along well. The lounge seating could be unlocked, repositioned and then locked down again so the entire group was facing a large monitor screen. They used it mainly to screen movies every few days as their workload permitted. Most of the movies were unfamiliar, with slightly changed scenes or cast members. It made for very interesting viewing for everyone except Carl Bertrand.
In Terminator, Arnold Schwarzenegger played the hero, Kyle Reese. For Doug and Foley, the film obviously felt very different and almost comical to watch as Arnold played the part of the good guy battling to save Sarah Connor. The trademark “I’ll be back” line went to the Terminator played by Lou Ferrigno. There were no sequels, which was unfortunate because in this role Ferrigno was the better actor.
Foley made an effort to attend some of the movie screenings. He was often too tired to show up and instead slept in his curtained bunk.
Jamieson told stories about his tours as a Tomcat pilot.
“I had the engines at full power,” he said during a lunch break, “and gave the salute to the Cat officer, and he signaled the operator in the bubble ‒ that’s the catapult control station that’s recessed into the flight deck. Anyway, we launched, and for a split-second I could feel normal acceleration, but then something in the cat broke, and we were no longer accelerating. I thought to myself, uh-oh, we’re in for it.
“Rather than being shot off the carrier deck like normal, we more or less rolled off of it under our own power, probably a full forty knots slower than we should have, and once off the deck we dropped way low. I was bracing myself for a ditch, but at the same time I had one hand on the throttle and my other hand pulling back on the stick. My RIO ‒ the guy in the back seat ‒ screamed eject once, but we both knew you had to say it three times before punching out. I knew he was ready to pull the handle, but he was giving me a chance to get the Tomcat up.
“The engines were on full burner, and I managed to keep the nose up. Turns out we had just enough speed to avoid ditching. I was able to make a low, slow climb literally just a couple of meters above the waves. Later the guys on the deck told us there was a massive spray of water pushed onto the ship’s foredeck. They thought we’d ditched, but the spray was caused by engine thrust kicking it up.
“My legs were shaking for an hour during our flight. We saved the taxpayer fifty mil for a new plane, minus the cost of new underwear for my RIO,” he said, to laughter from the Copernicus crew.
Doug noticed Jamieson and Bertrand had developed a very cordial and professional relationship. The two did their checklists and took turns monitoring the ship’s systems, but they did not have many social conversations with one another. They seemed to prefer spending their social time with others. There was small underlying rivalry between the two men, both in positions of respect, whose roles would be changing the moment they touched down on FLO. Bertrand would presumably resume his normal duties for a high-tech corporation on FLO, while Jamieson would become Doug’s assistant and advisor. Doug still couldn’t tell how well Jamieson would adapt to the role.
Nathan Smith was also friendly but seemed to always be in diplomatic mode, the sort of man that never seemed to let his guard down or engage in many personal conversations beyond the superficial. Doug thought it would serve Smith well during any goodwill tour on FLO. Doug and Smith frequently discussed some of the particulars.
“I don’t envy your task,” said Smith. “I’m comfortable dealing with ambassadors, leaders, and even dictators, but I’m at a loss about how to deal with an intelligent machine. I’ve read the briefings on the matter, but I can’t quite grasp the approach. Your strength in astrophysics combined with your years at the IPCC will help a great deal.”
“Possibly,” Doug replied. “I am still convinced I’ll need your help to keep the administrators away from me. Don’t forget old fashioned human pride. From what some members of the Envoy have told us, those on FLO who have close contact with Mekhos may display some overprotective behavior and outright defensiveness if Dr. Persaud and I are granted direct access to their machine. That’s what worries me most, Nate. We really don’t yet know for sure if promises of access to Mekhos are real or just a peaceful delaying tactic. We’ve been asked to take a lot on faith.”
Smith had a equal measure of unknowns ahead. Aside from a few monarchies, the two Earths had no heads of state in common in the Western hemisphere after 1988. Even the communist regimes collapsed after 2001 when Mekhos encouraged compliance with the rest of the world’s political and economic system. Individual leaders and governing parties were different than the ones on Earth.
The same process was happening culturally. Similar languages and customs encouraged similar values among separate groups of people. When the underlying system of economics and politics changed as a result, each community’s cultural identity changed to some extent as well. Compounding matters was the fact that most nations on FLO had decreased control of their fiscal policies compared to their counterparts on Earth. Mekhos had essentially taken control of major economic decisions for the common good. Stock markets and financial trading centers had been strictly modified into capital funding sources, places where businesses could go to raise money for expansion, new ideas and acquisitions. It was no longer possible to manipulate any of the markets. There was global free trade, a global currency, and the United Nations had evolved into a body with proportional representation and real power.
As a result, disputes among nations were settled by judgment panels. There was reduced cause for war and conflict. Mekhos effectively enforced the peace, as it had control over most information and financial channels. States that didn’t comply with judgments were sanctioned and the punishment had swift effect. Rogue states had quickly learned to fall in line. It sounded like an ideal world, as long as nobody on FLO thought too hard about the fact that the entire planet was gradually being given up to the control of a quantum supercomputer.
The people of most nations on FLO had gotten what they’d been dreaming about for generations: peace and equality. Many believed that the dreams had come true at the cost of too much of their freedom and a loss of their self-determination. Orwell’s dystopia, but without the slavery.
Earth, but not Earth. It would be like visiting a strange new country, with different customs, only on the same geographic soil, so to speak. They would be touching down at the same location they departed, at FLO’s version of Joint Forces Base Andrews, near Washington, DC.
– 62 –
After another ten days, when they were three-quarters through their journey Doug could not help but notice Stan’s condition had not improved. He saw Miekela alone in the lounge area at the table writing in her notebook. St
an was sleeping. Everyone else was busy in other parts of the ship engaged in scientific duties. Doug grasped the table and lowered himself to the opposite seat, the pads at the back of his thighs holding him to the chair.
“I’m worried about Stan,” he said. “It looks like we all helped clear him for a mission that he wasn’t ready to take on. Why was he cleared?”
Miekela stopped writing and looked up at Doug. “It’s unfortunate that the decision was made, yes. But I’m confident he will be all right. He is able to perform his duties on ship.”
Miekela disengaged herself from the chair and was about to leave. Doug rose and leaned towards her.
“Why wasn’t another physicist chosen for the mission? Stan’s physical health should have grounded him. Hell, it looks now as though it would have led to his being grounded from an amusement park Ferris wheel ride!”
“As co-discoverer of FLO he was given special status,” she said tightly. “It was thought that fact might help us diplomatically. Really, Doug, there is nothing to be concerned about. Stan will be fine.”
“Don’t feed that tired old line to me. Stan’s mental condition has gotten to the point where he’s not an asset. His physical condition is a disaster. He may even become a liability. He has become a liability. The team was compromised from the start because of Stan’s physical and mental condition. My own mistake seems to have been trusting you and Leach. Once we touch down he’s my responsibility, and I’m telling you right now that my first order will be to sideline Stan for the duration of the mission. If you’re holding back any pertinent information, Miekela, I want to know about it now.”
Dark Nights Page 18