Magellan

by Scott Baird

  He attached the respiration hose to his mouth and lay back in the stasis box, then pushed the button to begin closing it. Frigid liquid bubbled into the container near his feet, merging around his body as Abigail's reply echoed through the rear module.

  “You'd better come home, Roger Nelson. Do you hear me?”

  He couldn't reply. Instead, he concentrated on breathing evenly and deeply as the sedative gases filled his lungs and settled his brain into a deep, low-energy state.

  The stasis box's lid closed with a hiss, enveloping him in darkness, and the liquid filled in around his head and shoulders.

  Outside the box, the comms speaker uttered one last whispered plea, but it couldn't penetrate the stasis chamber.

  “Come home, Roger.”

  6 – Titan Approach

  It was eighteen months later, to the day, that the white box again slid open. It divulged its occupant, coughing and shivering, onto the floor next to it. Nelson stood for several seconds, struggling to get control of his body's new breathing rhythm and fighting the strangeness of a circulatory system that was just returning fully to life after a year and a half in hibernation.

  The Magellan was silently moving through space at immense speeds, but from the view on the monitor and judging by the feel of the floor under his feet, it appeared stationary. Gravity felt good after so long floating in the viscous liquid of the stasis box. Nelson raised his eyes, blinking away chilly droplets, and noted the steady rotation of the ship’s rings on a monitor nearby.

  Earth was no longer visible to the rear. On another monitor showing the view out the cockpit window, however, Saturn loomed large and pale with rings sweeping into view at a scale that photographs had never done justice to. It was a sight that would have been breathtaking if his mind and body were fully awake, but he felt numb.

  Hoping the sensation would pass quickly, Nelson tugged a Mylar blanket and a small towel from a compartment in the wall by the box. Time enough for Saturn and its moon in a few minutes. He sat and closed his eyes, willing his body to normalize. A low background hum was the only sound in the ship aside from Nelson’s breathing.

  “Good morning, Commander Nelson.” The voice broke the silence with even, measured tones, fading into life just slowly enough to avoid alarming the Magellan's solitary crew member, but maintaining an encouragingly professional sound.

  The disembodied but well-spoken voice belonged to the ship's A.I., which Nelson knew as Ferdinand from his training sessions. The name had come from Abby's team, and was an obvious choice for a ship named after the Portuguese navigator who had first circumnavigated his planet.

  Nelson knew the voice was programmatic, inhuman, unreal. But it was comforting nonetheless, as Abby's team had meant it to be. A.I. had come a very long way in the last several years, thanks in no small part to Abby herself. “Morning, Ferdinand,” he responded.

  “How are you feeling?”

  Nelson sighed. “All right.”

  He opened his eyes and blinked as he looked around at the space he was in. Every centimeter of the flat walls and flooring was white, except for a stretch of insulated cladding along two of the walls near the low ceiling. The walls sloped at the corners and were studded with cargo bins and panel lights. He could see the cockpit area through the hatch that marked the boundary of the detachable X-57 Lander portion of the ship, with its blinking console lights and black pilot’s chair. Near at hand were cargo containers and the stowed equipment around the stasis box, as well as the small laboratory facility he would use later to examine whatever could be brought back from the surface.

  There wasn’t much to it, but it was his home and workshop for the next several years.

  Reaching out to the wall, he pulled a medical kit from a compartment and took a roll of tape and a swab from it. “I'll feel better once I get these tubes out of my arm,” he continued. “But my brain is starting to function again, so that’s good.”

  “I'm glad to hear that, Commander. Please proceed with attaching your health monitors.”

  Nelson took a pulse oximeter from the cabinet and attached it to his finger tip, then velcroed a pressure cuff to his arm. “Hey, Ferdinand, are you still working on your chess game?”

  There was a puzzled silence, carefully timed to convey confusion where the A.I. lacked body language. “I am well-versed in the game of chess, sir.”

  Nelson looked up, but his eyes found nothing to focus on. The voice came from linked speakers embedded in every surface of the ship's interior. He realized that conversing with the computer alone would take some getting used to. In training, there were always others listening in and watching him, which changed the dynamic, leaving openings for jokes and side comments. Now it was just he and Ferdinand. “I guess they wiped your training memory. You and I had some good chats during mission rehearsals. But don't worry about it. I'm feeling a bit wiped myself.”

  “I understand, sir.”

  Nelson rubbed his eyes. He was finally starting to feel awake now.

  “I need a complete systems report, please.”

  “All systems are currently nominal, sir. Number of Single Event Upsets total six, with minor software corruption and zero hardware malfunctions. Software corrected without further incident.”

  Nelson nodded his satisfaction, confident that Ferdinand would see the motion through one of the fish-eye lenses in the corners of the spacecraft interior.

  “Eleven days ago there was a momentary glitch in the water circulation unit that caused the cabin humidity level to drop four percent,” Ferdinand continued. “But an auto-restart on the unit fixed the problem.”

  “Keep an eye on that for me,” Nelson said, carefully pulling out the I.V. tubes connecting him to the stasis unit. “I don't want to be getting chapped hands in here.”

  “Commander Nelson, you have removed your stasis I.V. prior to completion of health monitoring.”

  “Sorry, Ferd. Almost done?”

  “Thirty seconds of monitoring remain, sir.”

  “Good enough. I feel okay.” Nelson bandaged the puncture point with medical tape. Not even a drop of blood had made it to the surface of his cold, retracted skin. “What's our current position and ETA?”

  “We are approximately 8.49 astronomical units from Earth, and will be intersecting Saturn's planetary orbit in just less than twenty-four hours.”

  “Excellent. What are we getting from the advance probe?” This stage of the mission had ended up including the delivery of a probe into orbit around Titan a few weeks prior to the Magellan's arrival, to monitor the area of interest on the surface and help in mapping the area and triangulating the signal.

  “The T6 probe has completed an orbital survey and is sending its data to us live. I have maps available for you to study, and an approximate location of the signal's source.”

  “How accurate is that location?”

  “Within four square kilometers, sir.”

  Nelson pulled off the rest of his health monitoring devices and stood.

  “You appear to be in optimal health, Commander.”

  “Good to go. How many dispatches from NASA?” Nelson pulled on a pair of blue scrubs. He wasn't cold anymore; the interior temperature of the spacecraft was elevated to help him recover, but would automatically cool slightly before he got too warm. The onboard computer knew not only his preferred air temperature, but also the internal temperature of his body, and could anticipate desired changes. Nelson figured it was a matter of time before the modern smart-homes included that feature in every room. Abby would probably already have it installed by the time he returned to Earth.

  “There are currently two hundred and twenty-nine messages awaiting you.”

  “Ugh. How many of those are designated 'important', Ferd?”

  “All of them, sir.”

  Nelson sighed.

  He slowly made his way into the cockpit, past the white bulkheads with their cargo pouches and meticulously-labeled compartments. He eased himself into the pil
ot's seat and took stock of the controls, the light indicators, and the view out the window of Saturn and its small moon that was slowly growing larger. Mentally, it seemed like a few hours at most since he had left this seat and climbed into stasis. His body told him it had been much longer.

  His fingers began playing across the controls, bringing up NASA's messages on the central screen. There were indeed hundreds to get through, but fortunately they were sorted by a combination of command priority, arrival date, and sender. One from Becker was near the top of the list, bold and slowly pulsing. Nelson opened it.

  His wife's image appeared on the screen, in full moving color. She had a new haircut and was wearing a crisp outfit that suited her new look well.

  Leaning toward the camera with a playful smile on her lips, she raised her eyebrows. “Are you awake yet, Roger? Come on, honey, I'm getting desperate here.” She pulled back in her chair and fixed the camera with a challenging stare. “Nf3. I'll be here all day.”

  Nelson grinned. The first move had been made, starting with her knight, a classic opening. “Oh, it's on,” he said, and stood up to get his own chess pieces from his personal supplies.

  He scooped up the lightweight set, a forward-thinking token from his wife and some cooperative shipboard techs, then went to the eight-by-eight grid painted on the bulkhead near the stasis box and began arranging the little magnetic pieces. It was one small concession to the fact that this ship had a human on board, and even if he would only be awake for a fixed number of hours at a time, he needed the psychological uplift.

  Minutes later he made his play, a carefully calculated black pawn advancement, and replied to Abigail’s video message with his own. Then he leaned back, studying the board again.

  “Transmission time is what, and hour and twenty minutes, Ferdinand?”

  “One hour fourteen minutes. Would you like me to play a round with you?”

  “No, thanks, Ferd,” Nelson said. “It’s the human element that matters here. There’s more to this game than shuffling pieces around on a board. At least, I hope so.”

  The A.I. was silent, and Nelson briefly wondered just how far its human psychology programming went. Abby had obviously made sure the computer could play chess, but that was Machine Learning 101. Was Ferdinand capable of understanding nuances of human relationships?

  “I’d better get through those dispatches before NASA calls. Let me know when we pass Saturn’s orbital path.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Saturn loomed giant against the black outside the cockpit window. It was so vast, so much bigger than anything Nelson was accustomed to seeing, his mind had a hard time putting it into context. He imagined Earth next to it, barely a tenth the size, and he had to shake his head to keep a grip on reality. The gas giant’s rings stretched so far out into space, he couldn’t see their full breadth even by craning his neck from side to side and peering out the corners of the Magellan’s little windows.

  “I’m actually here. I’m actually looking out at Saturn,” he whispered to himself. A smile crossed his face.

  Then the smile faded as he remembered how distant he was from Earth, and how alone. Well—there was the voice of Ferdinand. But it felt stranger than he’d anticipated to know that no one, living or dead, had ever been where he was now. He was alone in history, alone on the ship, and so far from human civilization that it would take years to get back even if he turned around right at that moment.

  Nelson reclined in the pilot seat and played through the various messages that had collected while he’d been asleep. NASA had compiled a series of brief mission status reports, but as Ferdinand had assured him, the Magellan was performing admirably and all systems remained nominal.

  The news from Earth was more interesting. “Here’s one for you, Ferd,” he remarked, still trying to get used to the sound of his own lonely echo in the confines of the ship’s cabin. “Becker says the Chinese National Space Administration sent their warmest congratulations on a successful launch. Apparently there was a whole video, but he didn’t waste bandwidth with that.”

  “Indeed.”

  “The Chinese government must be pretty steamed,” Nelson said, probing at his A.I. companion. “You think?”

  “It is certainly possible that some of the upper echelon Chinese officials are privately upset that we appear to be ahead in the competition,” Ferdinand responded. “You’ll find another dispatch dated one-sixteen that states they have delayed their launch for a year, and announced that they will be setting a trajectory for Neptune.”

  Nelson raised his eyebrows. “Skipping Titan, hmm? At least it won’t get crowded around here. I wonder if that changes our plans at all.”

  “Currently we are to proceed as originally ordered, Commander.”

  Nelson tapped a finger on the console. “Do you read all my mail, Ferdinand?”

  “All transmissions must be sent through our encrypted channel to be decoded by the central computer, so yes—although I ignore the contents of any message marked CLASSIFIED.”

  “Good to know.”

  “We will reach our trajectory in ten minutes, sir.”

  7 – Breach

  Abigail’s day, while certainly full of excitement, was not going at all as she had planned. After a few chess moves and congenial exchanges with her recently awakened husband, she had been approached outside NASA’s Mission Control Comms room by a man she recognized but hadn’t expected a visit from. He was dressed in a classic government-agent suit and had a partner, also suited, in tow.

  “Mrs. Nelson, a moment of your time, please.”

  The partner casually positioned himself to the side, blocking Abby’s path down the hallway without seeming overtly threatening.

  “My name is Timothy Jacobs, and I’m a Counter-HUMINT case officer with the Central Intelligence Agency.”

  Abby’s mind was blank. What did that even mean? “You’re from the CIA?” she asked, incredulous.

  She vaguely recalled a meeting with Director Becker and some other NASA, DoD, and JPL employees where they discussed security concerns with the mission and the A.I. she was working on, specifically. She might have recognized the agent from that meeting, but couldn’t quite remember his face. There were a lot of people and he very much blended in as an anonymous government entity.

  “I’d like to talk to you about an incident involving some digital traffic on your personal home network. Would you step into the conference room for a moment?”

  Abby eyed the room he was pointing to. It had clear glass windows all along the hall, so she didn’t suspect any funny business. The question was whether she should ask for Becker or someone to attend this impromptu meeting with her, as a legal precaution.

  At that moment, the Secretary of Defense came around the corner and up the hallway. His assistant was in tow, and another tall man in a suit was with him. They both spotted Abby at the same time and slowed as they approached.

  “Ah, there you are,” the Secretary said with an obvious undertone of distaste. “This is Commander Nelson’s wife, boys,” he told the agents. They nodded coldly. “Mrs. Nelson, you’re going to need to cooperate with these gentlemen. We have a security problem, and you’re… involved.”

  “So I heard,” Abby coolly managed. “Let’s get this over with.”

  She entered the conference room and the two officers who had originally approached her followed, while the Secretary and his entourage stayed out in the hall.

  “So what’s this about?” Abigail asked, standing by a chair just inside the room. The words came out harshly, but she stared unapologetically at the two men.

  Agent Jacobs, obviously seeing that long introductions and invitations to sit down wouldn’t get very far with Abby, dived right in. “Mrs. Nelson, yesterday evening our cyber security team detected some activity on your home network that was flagged as a potential breach by malicious third parties. You’ll recall that in the waivers signed when your husband took the mission with NASA you consented to mo
nitoring of your network traffic.” Abigail said nothing, but her glare was hard and cold. Jacobs continued. “We were able to determine that the activity originated from a server in Asia, and we believe it was indeed a hostile intrusion. Hard drives connected to your personal network have been compromised, and in attacks of this nature we also generally expect to find evidence of key loggers, surreptitious remote use of webcams, and email intrusions. That often leads to illegal activity on your bank accounts and other identity theft issues, although we haven’t detected anything like that so far in your case. We did take the precaution of freezing your credit and putting a hold on your bank accounts, to avoid further damage.”

  Abigail’s lips were pressed into a thin line. “This is not news I wanted to hear, today of all days. Why did you come here to tell me this?”

  Jacobs cleared his throat. “Mrs. Nelson, it’s crucial that we understand whether you’ve had any direct contact with foreign agents. Have you been approached by anyone recently that has tried to befriend you, find out details about your husband’s mission, or pressure you into taking any actions you wouldn’t otherwise have taken?”

  Abigail was about to fire back a withering reply, but she controlled herself and thought for a moment before replying. “No. I mean, I’m approached several times a day by people that want interviews, or want me to write a book or something. I have entire email accounts full of requests I ignore. But personally I’ve kept to myself—we’ve had a major mission to organize around here, in case you weren’t aware. I certainly haven’t had conversations with anyone about anything… secretive.”

  Jacobs asked a few more questions and then thanked her for her time, assuring her he would stay in touch regarding the cyber intrusion and any steps she should take. Then he and his partner left as suddenly as they had appeared.

  Abigail remained in the conference room, sorting through the difficult emotions that were now swirling through her body. Although she wouldn’t even admit it to Becker, putting on a good face for her transmissions to Saturn had been one of the hardest things she’d done in many months, and she felt exhausted. She’d answered the CIA officers’ questions truthfully. But the revelation that, in addition to all the personal difficulties and the terrifying publicity she had to deal with, she was now being targeted by malicious forces was nearly enough to undo her.