Magellan

by Scott Baird

  MAGELLAN

  novelization by Scott Baird

  based on the film from Firespire Productions and Arrowstorm Entertainment

  written by Scott Baird and Rob York

  copyright 2017 :: Scott Baird

  *

  Watch the Magellan feature film at arrowstormentertainment.com

  Contents

  Prologue

  1 – The Question

  2 – The Call

  3 – The Separation

  4 – Starstruck

  5 – Into Stasis

  6 – Titan Approach

  7 – Breach

  8 – Titan Landing

  9 – The First Beacon

  10 – Stability Deficit

  11 – Rendezvous

  12 - Chatter

  13 – Transmissions at Triton

  14 – On Triton’s Surface

  15 – Transmission Anomalies

  16 – Distant Echo

  17 – Solitary Wanderer

  18 – Rising Voices

  19 – A Long Journey Ahead

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  As we look out into the Universe and identify the many accidents of physics and astronomy that have worked together to our benefit, it almost seems as if the Universe must in some sense have known that we were coming.

  --Freeman Dyson

  The field of stars stretched out into infinity, silent and massive on a cosmological scale. There was no darkness—space was only black to those whose sight was cut short, whose eyes couldn’t take in all the light that poured across the expanse. Glowing orbs of fusing gas and spiraling streams of looser matter filled the space between the galactic core and its outer arms, brilliantly beating in a symphony of sidereal interplay that had to be witnessed in its fullness to be cognized by mortal mind.

  Closer in to Earth’s home system, but still mind-breakingly far from the pale blue dot that had sheltered humanity for its few brief eons, Eris rode its quiet track in silence. The icy surface of the rocky astronomical body glistened in sunlight that had traveled fourteen billion kilometers over the course of several hours to get there from the yellow dwarf around which both it and Earth swung, dense balls caught in the slowest of tides.

  Farther out, free from the Sun’s influence but still hundreds of years from the Oort Cloud, Earth’s pioneering spacecraft Voyager accelerated toward the deep unknown. Following it came its sibling, barely escaping the heliosheath, and then New Horizons on its long post-Pluto journey, and the Pioneers came after. These obedient robots, unthinking and half-blind, bore their parts well as Earth’s initial emissaries.

  Eris saw them go. Eris wasn’t so blind as they. The dwarf planet listened, and it heard its kinsmen on Saturn’s Titan and Neptune’s Triton singing the first signs of interstellar awakening from the little water-world that circled Sol.

  “Soon”, they said. “Watch them. Soon they will reach the Slumberer. Soon they will wake it, and we will begin signaling the blue planet.”

  1 – The Question

  Roger Nelson cleared his throat as he took center stage. It had been a while since he’d rocked a publicity event, and he felt surprisingly nervous in front of the small crowd his wife’s community college had gathered. His deep brown eyes passed over the rows of students, who had calmed down and were now waiting in quiet anticipation. He resisted the urge to check his tight brown hair or fiddle with the bottled water that had been left for him on the lectern.

  “Midway through the last century,” he began, using the familiar lines that had gotten him through a dozen of these presentations in the past, “a few of mankind’s brightest minds got together over lunch to seriously discuss a question which until then had been relegated to the pages of Astounding Science Fiction. The question was ‘where is everybody?’, asked on a cosmic scale.”

  He held out a hand and raised his eyebrows as if to say “Good question, right?”. The crowd was keying in on him well, especially the girls in the front row, and his nerves began to die away. He could see Abigail standing in the back of the small auditorium, arms folded as she watched. She gave a shake of her short, dark hair, a half-conscious cue for him to get on with it.

  He decided to ham it up a little for her sake. His wife took her role as a coder for NASA very seriously, and although she had quickly moved on from this tiny school to far more prestigious academic institutions, she was still counting on him to impress the alma mater for which she still carried a lot of nostalgia and pride.

  “In a galaxy vast enough to encompass a hundred million black holes and a thousand times that many burning stars,” he went on, backing up a step, “we naturally expect to see some signs of life beyond this little speck we’re living on. So where are they?”

  He waited a moment too long, as if really expecting someone to answer, then picked up the monologue just before some awkward student could raise a tentative hand. “Since that lunch-time chat among very nerdy but very, very smart physicists, we’ve extended our reach beyond the solar wind’s farthest traces, and our sight all the way to our universe’s horizon. But despite the staggering biodiversity here on earth, we have yet to encounter a single piece of evidence that says we aren’t alone. Suffocatingly, blindingly alone in a deaf, uncaring universe of rock and ice and gas.

  “So, are we an anomaly? A lonely group of chance biological specimens cast adrift by forces we barely comprehend, and which refuse to comprehend us?” He shook his head. “You’re science students, most of you. You know that by its very definition, an anomaly is unlikely. It should never be assumed as the likeliest explanation for anything. But the possibilities for all this deafening silence, the reasons we haven’t yet sensed an alien presence anywhere we’ve looked, range from the terrifying to the sublime.”

  Nelson briefly considered outlining some of those possibilities for the students: the interstellar predators, the grand simulation, the cosmic zoo. But therein he had lost crowds before. These kids wanted to hear what it was like to bum around the ISS, and when Osiris Rex was due to land in Utah.

  So he just threw up his hands and then pointed at a kid in the front row, a geeky-looking fellow with a bulky tablet in his hands. “Where are the others, and why can’t we find them?”

  The guy spluttered, and Nelson talked smoothly over it while the other students snickered. “The answer would be mankind’s most important discovery, would it not? And so we search, hoping with each passing decade to observe something that might give us an answer. We send out our little robotic wayfarers, and we listen for radio signals, all the while clueless as to whether we’re even in the right arena of communication.

  “But! If we could find so much as a petroglyph on a distant planetoid, or a chunk of worked metal floating through space, or even a snatch of some more-interesting-than-usual static coming from a distant star, then just imagine how our world would change. Overnight, it would no longer be ‘you and I here in the U.S. of A.’ It would suddenly become ‘us here on Earth’ and ‘them out there’.

  “That could mean a worldwide panic attack, if the news isn’t good. But it could also mean a sudden end to war, a new era of global cooperation, and the launching of a wave of space exploration and colonization that would take us swiftly from a single-planet species to a multi-system spacefaring civilization, of such grandeur and reach that our finest terrestrial achievements would be looked back on like the cavemen poking sticks in the fire.

  “And that, boys and girls, is why we’re going up in space, and building complicated machines to send out, and listening so carefully at Atacama. Contrary to what some congressmen seem to think, it’s the only project that really matters at all, on the cosmic timeline. That’s why my current project, the X-57 experimental orbital lander, is now being called ‘the tip of th
e space exploration spear’.

  “Questions? I’ve got thirty-five minutes.”

  Abigail met him afterward near the podium, and he gave her a sly glance. Her lips were pursed, but Nelson thought he caught the tell-tale dimple in the side of her cheek that showed she was holding back a grin.

  “How’d ah do?” he asked in a playful cowboy accent. He folded his arms to accentuate his muscular upper body, and raised his square chin.

  “Well, you came across as patronizing, narcissistic, and infatuated with your swell job,” Abigail said. “You must think you’re the only astronaut ever to grace this auditorium with your illustrious presence!”

  One girl, the last student to leave, caught the exchange and hurried away with a mortified look on her face.

  Abigail grinned, dropping the accusatory tone. “But I think they loved it. Aren’t they adorable?”

  “Pretty good crowd,” Nelson replied, taking Abby’s hand in his and interlocking fingers. “A couple of them had interesting questions. I wanted to tell that one kid we were looking for microbial traces on Europa, the discovery of which would make his biology teacher wet himself, but I’m not sure how much of that has been announced publicly yet.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “I thought it was all supposed to be public domain, above-board stuff. Isn’t that the whole point of NASA?”

  “Well, most of it, yeah. But we don’t go spouting off every technical measurement and mission plan. Public Affairs would be pretty bummed if we let the Chinese program get a leg up on us. You’ve only been coding A.I.’s at the agency for what, three years, honey? Sooner or later you’ll probably be on the receiving end of a long, grouchy meeting from the public affairs director telling you how to funnel all communications through them, and which font to use in your slides, and which is the official NASA gray.”

  Abigail frowned. “I didn’t… was I supposed to clear this lecture with somebody? I didn’t even think of contacting Public Affairs. I just got an email from my old dean asking whether my astronaut husband would do a forum, and I said yes.”

  Nelson put on a frightened expression and began to tremble all over. “Oh, no. Abigail, you didn’t… you… we’re both going to be fired!”

  “Stop it,” she said, hitting his arm and trying not to laugh.

  “It’s fine,” he said, cutting the act. “Crew members do these all the time. And anyway, what Public Affairs doesn’t know can’t hurt them.”

  Abigail shook her head. “I still feel new at NASA. You have to give me a heads up about that kind of thing. I don’t want to look like an idiot. Speaking of which, did you clear your schedule for my A.I. symposium lecture?”

  Nelson squinted at the ceiling. “Let’s see, that’s tomorrow night, correct?”

  “No, that’s on Saturday morning. Tomorrow night we’re barbecuing with Ben and Jacqui. Did you clear your schedule like I asked? Come on, I came to hear you speak. You have to be there for me on Saturday!”

  Nelson held up his hands in surrender. “Yes, I cleared it. I’ll be there. Don’t take everything I say so seriously!”

  Abigail rolled her eyes and sighed. “You’re an astronaut, Roger. If you can’t be taken seriously, then mankind is in serious trouble.”

  Roger grinned and leaned in to kiss Abby on the lips, adding a little more heat than would normally be appropriate for a guest lecturer at a university. Just to make her squirm in front of the faculty who were still milling around the back of the room.

  “See you tonight, honey. I’m looking forward to finishing that chess match after dinner.”

  He hurried to the exit, leaving Abigail flushed and stammering behind him as her former dean approached to thank her for arranging the event.

  2 – The Call

  The stars were out in full force by the time Nelson got the grill fired up the following evening. It was getting dark much earlier now that September was over, but in Florida October was still fine grilling weather. Porch lights were on up and down the row of neat houses, and Roger Nelson had run a couple of shops light out on extension cords from his garage to cast pools of light around the lilac bushes along the driveway.

  The Nelson’s neighbors, Ben and Jacqui, had three kids running up and down the block with sparklers left over from the Fourth of July, and one of Roger’s crew mates, Michael Thornton, had brought his girlfriend along to enjoy the evening with them.

  Roger was turning the juicy meat when Abby backed out of the kitchen doorway carrying another plateful of raw steaks. They hissed and sputtered as Roger slapped them onto the grill. “Is that the last of them?” he asked.

  Abigail nodded. “And NASA’s on the phone,” she added, pulling a portable handset from her back pocket. “Thought you might like to know.”

  Roger quickly closed the grill lid, wiped his hands on the “Trophy Husband” apron Abby had gotten him for his birthday, and traded his barbecue fork for the phone. He answered, moving away from the noise, but Abigail hovered after him, ignoring the grill for the moment. “If it’s Becker, tell him you can’t go,” she loudly whispered. “Your wife is speaking at a very important symposium and you have to be there or she’ll kill you. Literally kill you.” Abigail brandished the long fork, still dripping with marinade.

  “Yes. Absolutely,” Roger said into the phone, turning away from Abby. She danced around to get in front of him again, much to the amusement of their watching friends. She mouthed the words “symposium” and “have to go” at him, but he shook his head with a half-grin and concentrated on the phone conversation. “Tomorrow at ten hundred hours. I understand. I’ll be there. Thank you.”

  As he hung up, Abigail lowered the fork she’d been mischievously waving, and her gentle face registered as genuinely crestfallen. Her friend Jacqui looked on with concern.

  “Roger?” Abby began. “You’re seriously going in tomorrow? Right at ten?” She stamped her foot. “Becker does this every time! What is up with him? Whenever I—”

  “That wasn’t Becker,” Roger said, looking at Abigail with forced composure. There was suppressed excitement in his voice, and Ben and Michael edged closer to hear what was up.

  “Well, then who was it?” Abby asked. “And why can’t they leave you alone for one weekend out of the entire year so that I can—”

  Roger interrupted his wife again, gently. “They were notifying me of an urgent briefing. Something about the X-57 going up sooner than anticipated.”

  Abigail stopped, further invective caught in her lips. “A… mission briefing?”

  “Sounds like it.” Roger’s composure slipped and he grinned widely. Abigail let out her breath and then grinned back. Roger caught her up in his arms and she wrapped hers around his neck as they stared into each other’s eyes. It seemed that dreams were about to be fulfilled, dreams long deferred.

  Michael clapped Roger on the back. “They’re finally sending you to space, man?”

  “I think they just might,” Roger replied without looking away from his wife. “No one else can pilot the X-57 at this point, not solo.”

  Abby laughed with delight, and Roger picked her up and swung her around, setting her back down on the lawn.

  “Roger, this is it! You’ve been waiting for this for… how long?”

  “Oh, a decade or two,” he said, still trying to keep his voice casual. He gave his wife a fierce hug. “Sorry about the symposium, though. Really.”

  She pulled away and gave him pouty-lips. “Yeah, well, NASA’s in trouble with your wife. Tell ‘em that tomorrow morning.”

  Roger nodded, grinning ear to ear. He still had the phone clutched in one hand.

  “Hey, uh, Roger?” Ben asked, not wanting to intrude on the couple’s moment. “Congrats, man. Maybe you’ll rescue the planet from an asteroid or something. Now, Abby, if you’ll hand me that barbecue fork, I’ll go rescue us some steaks. ‘Cuz I’m pretty sure they’re burning up on reentry right now!”

  Abigail scowled and yanked the fork out of reach. “That’s not fu
nny, Ben. No more jokes that could jinx us. My husband’s going to space!” She hurried over to the grill and pulled out several well-done steaks.

  While chewing his later, Ben made another quip about slathering his with aloe vera, and nearly got his hand skewered with the barbecue fork. Then the talk turned to speculation about what a mission involving Nelson’s X-57 craft might involve. The suggestions got more outlandish as the evening wore on, and they celebrated late into the night, toasting Nelson and the stars above with their drinks.

  Commander Roger Nelson took the seat offered him in the windowless conference room, a seat right at the head of a long table. That told him he was likely the only man in the room that didn’t know what he was about to hear.

  He was dressed in his best suit, a crisp gray Hugo Boss, on Becker’s tip that the Secretary of Defense would be in attendance. Roger hadn’t gotten around to looking the man up, but assumed he was the beefy, balding fellow that had taken a chair on the right side of the table, with a pretty blonde assistant in tow.

  On the left, holding a folder of important-looking documents, sat Gerald Becker, the middle-aged director of Nelson’s experimental spacecraft project. The X-57 was hardly experimental at this point—it had gone into low earth orbit four times so far—but its intended mission was a future deep-space asteroid probe, so it technically hadn’t put on its big-boy shoes yet. Nelson was ecstatic at the possibility that it might finally get a chance to leave orbit, particularly with him in it this time, and he could tell that Becker was as well. But there was something else that gave him pause, a somber cast to the director’s features that meant they should tread carefully in this meeting.

  Another NASA employee, Matthew Hardiman, was backing up Becker with a large tablet that could connect to the room’s projector. The young man was clearly nervous to be on the spot in front of the Secretary of Defense, and kept adjusting his squarish glasses. He waited for Becker’s cue; Becker deferred to the SecDef.