Then something caught her eye and she looked sideways and saw a smear of white light, a curved bow of impossibly bright radiance from behind the superstructures on 2I’s exterior hull, so bright it cast the spiky towers into flat silhouettes.
She wept until the tears formed pools across her eyes, until she couldn’t see anything except that light, the light of the sun rising from behind the hull.
“Pasadena, this is Orion. This is… this is Parminder Rao. I’m out. I’m out.”
Roy McAllister had his hands over his face. He looked through his fingers, up at the big screen.
He was back in the control room, surrounded by his people. Charlotte Harriwell sat in a swivel chair next to him. She drew in a deep breath.
McAllister realized he was holding his own.
“Acknowledged, Orion,” he said. “Rao. It’s just you?”
The neutrino telescope was no longer receiving a signal from inside 2I. The neutrino gun had been strapped to Jansen’s suit, and when she’d entered the brain it had stopped transmitting. This was the first McAllister had heard from any of his people since then.
He’d almost forgotten how long it took to talk to Orion. It was nearly fifteen seconds before he got his reply.
“Affirmative, Pasadena.”
On the screen he saw the view from Rao’s helmet camera. He saw the superstructures of 2I pass beneath her, saw Orion floating ahead of her. Not far now.
His device vibrated against his ear. He touched it and saw he had a message from Kalitzakis.
HOLD/FIRE???
He stared at the message floating in the corner of his eye. It felt like forever since Kalitzakis had first asked, but then he realized it had been only a few minutes. He didn’t answer the message immediately. “Dr. Rao,” he called. “Did Jansen make contact?”
It took forever for the answer to come.
“I can’t confirm it, but—I think so,” Rao told him.
McAllister bowed his head. He wanted to weep.
“Sir?” Rao called. “Sir—my suit batteries are just about depleted.”
He wanted to slap himself. “Acknowledged, Dr. Rao. Please return to Orion and prepare to return to Earth.”
On the big screen, nothing had changed. Nothing at all.
He tapped his device and opened a connection to Kalitzakis. He started to type FIRE AT WILL. He hesitated before sending the message, however.
A smaller screen opened up before him and showed 2I’s magnetic field. It was growing.
“Nguyen?” he asked.
The physicist jumped up out of her chair.
“What does that mean?” McAllister asked.
“It’s—it’s spreading its wings,” she told him. “It’s accelerating.” She bent over her console to check something. McAllister gritted his teeth. When Nguyen figured out whatever she was trying to figure out, she looked up at him and almost whispered what she said next.
“It’s accelerating away from Earth,” she said. “On its current course it’ll miss us by at least a million kilometers.”
The room erupted in cheers. McAllister erased the message he’d been about to send and wrote a new one. HOLD AND STAND BY.
But there was a question, one that would bother him for days to come as they watched 2I swing around the Earth and head off on a new course.
Where the hell was it going?
PERIAREION
PARMINDER RAO: After we—after I got back, NASA decided to lift the secrecy around our mission, and the whole world learned about 2I. I can’t speak to how that information will change humanity, or what people make of what we did and what we saw. I’ve seen the popular account of what happened, the stream book called The Last Astronaut, and I wasn’t impressed. Even in the good parts of it, the stuff based on actual data we recorded… there’s a lot of speculation. There has to be, of course. Nobody can know what Jansen did, what she felt in those last moments. As a scientist I hate relying so much on what comes down to sheer guessing. The author of that book got in touch with me after I gave it a bad review that kind of… went viral. He asked if he could speak with me and figure out what he got wrong. He wanted to write a new edition of the book with better information. I’m hoping that by sitting down for this interview with him, I can set the record straight. If there’s one thing I want him to put in his book, it’s this: Sally Jansen was a hero. She didn’t kill Blaine Wilson. She saved three people on Orion 6 the only way she could. She didn’t kill Sunny Stevens. She couldn’t have known what 2I was, not on her first expedition inside. And in the end she saved the world. I want the writer to make sure, when he tells her story, to get it right—all of it, even the sadness she kept from everyone, her sense of failure. But he’d also better make her look good.
Three months later Roy McAllister left his office and walked across a tree-lined street to another building at JPL, one that used to house educational exhibits but now had been repurposed. There was a bored-looking guard standing by the door who just nodded at him, not even bothering to glance at his badge.
McAllister stepped into the building and through a decontamination airlock full of old dust. On the far side of the airlock was a small lobby—it made him think of the entrance to the neutrino telescope. The far wall of the lobby was made of thick glass, and it looked into a gleaming laboratory. He had to put on a pair of sunglasses—the walls, ceiling, and floor of the lab were painted a bright, glossy white, and the lights inside were turned all the way up day and night.
There was only one person inside the lab. Parminder Rao was seated in front of a large white work surface. Dozens of screens floated around her, showing medical imaging data. She was dressed all in white herself, and she was holding the wand of a handheld MRI. At that moment she was passing it very slowly over her cheek, over an old scar that had mostly healed.
“Roy! Good, you’re here. I’m starving.”
He smiled and held up the bag of food he’d brought her. Vegetarian wat stew and sour injera bread, from the best Ethiopian restaurant in the city. She had a working kitchen and a well-stocked pantry inside the lab, but whenever she wanted something special he brought it over by hand.
A smaller airlock was built into the glass wall. He placed the bag inside, then watched as it passed through to her side. She grabbed up the bag and dug into its contents. She never set the MRI wand down, though, and as she chewed on a piece of injera she ran it over her cheek again.
“I spoke with your doctors,” he said. “They tell me there’s no sign of necrosis or any foreign bodies.” He placed a hand on the glass. “They say your quarantine can be over whenever you’re ready to come out.”
Rao glanced over at him. She didn’t stop scanning. “I was exposed to an alien environment. We can’t take any chances. If even a tiny piece of one of those tendrils got inside my wound—”
“I know, I know.” He took his hand away from the glass.
“I’m the expert here. I’m the only person on Earth qualified to say whether I’m safe to leave this room.”
“I know.”
She looked down at the screen in front of her. It was a long time before she spoke again.
“Roy, I killed a man.”
McAllister flinched. What did it have to do with her quarantine?
He knew what to say in response, though. That was easy enough. “A lot of people would say you had no choice. Hawkins was crazy.”
“Was he?” She looked him right in the eye. “If Jansen had rescued Foster and Channarong. If she’d tried to bring them back to Earth, even after they’d been exposed to 2I like that—would you have let her? Should you have?”
McAllister sighed. He was very glad he didn’t have to answer that question. “They tell me the darkness affected all of you, psychologically. The stress of the mission, the harsh conditions—”
“I was there. I felt it.”
“He was pushed past his limits. He snapped. You didn’t.” He scratched his chin. “Parminder… There are a lot of people out he
re who want to thank you. To shake your hand—”
He saw a shudder go through her small frame.
“—to let you know that what you did meant something. I hope… I hope that soon you’ll be willing to come out of there and meet them.”
She nodded and went back to her work. If she got lonely in there, she’d never given him any indication. She had plenty to do. She kept track of her medical data, of course, but she was also putting together a scholarly monograph on 2I and its life cycle. Whatever she wrote, it would automatically become the most important work ever published in the field of astrobiology, and it would cement her academic reputation for the rest of her life. She’d told him he could read it when it was done. When she had compiled and synthesized enough data.
He would do what he could to help her with that. Maybe when she finished she would come out of her glass room.
“I have something else,” he said. “Some telescope data I think you’ll want to see. It might help with your book.” He reached up and touched his device, sending her a video file. She loaded it immediately, and they watched it together.
The video showed red sand and brown rocks, a desert landscape half-obscured by drifting dust. The sky in the video was a deep yellow—it had been just before twilight when this was taken.
“What is this?” Rao asked.
“2I set down this morning, about two a.m. local time. This was what happened next. As for what it means—I’m hoping you can tell me.”
The camera passed over a broad valley between the rims of two craters. At first it showed only some scattered pieces of wreckage—broken chunks of stone a darker red than the surrounding soil. Pieces of broken superstructure from 2I’s hull. Then a larger mass came into view. Most of the alien starship had survived the landing intact, though now it was half-buried in fine dust.
There was a rupture in the hull about halfway down its length, a crack that grew wider as they watched. A flow of what looked like pale liquid seeped from the opening. First just a trickle, then a steady stream, and finally a gushing eruption spilling out onto the planet’s surface.
The view shifted as the telescope zoomed in, and Rao gasped as they saw that the flood wasn’t liquid at all. It was a cascade of millions of worms emerging from the rupture, swarming over each other in their haste to get out of the corpse of their mother. They spread out in every direction from the crash site, many of them already burrowing their way down into the dirt.
“Oh, wow,” Rao said. “Roy—”
“Hold on,” he said. “And, um. Brace yourself.”
The telescope zoomed in still further, focusing on the crack in the hull. As the worms continued to spill out from the darkened interior, something came into view, something that wasn’t a worm. It was hard to see—the camera was at the absolute limit of its resolution—but it appeared to be a human figure in a white space suit.
The faceplate of the helmet had been shattered. Its pieces were held together by a thick growth of tendrils that completely obscured the figure’s face.
Rao gasped. Roy McAllister had already seen this once. It still made his heart jump in his chest.
The figure seemed to take a good look around, then began to climb down the side of the wreck, down toward the red soil. Its left leg swung uselessly beneath it, but it moved with a lithe grace all the same.
Before it could reach the ground the video ended, the telescope having lost its fix on the red planet.
Mars. Sally Jansen had always wanted to go to Mars.
AUTHOR’S NOTE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The depiction of NASA and of human spaceflight circa 2055 in this novel is an intentionally pessimistic one, purely because that fit the needs of the story. I make no claim to be a futurist, and this book should not be taken as a prediction of future events.
NASA continues as of this writing to make incredible discoveries in the depths of space and to carry out missions of enormous scientific importance. Despite constant budgetary wrangling and a capricious public attitude toward space, NASA represents the absolute best in human nature and shows an unflagging commitment to science and exploration. It is also important to note that, in 2019, there are a lot of very talented, very passionate people working to make sure that human spaceflight remains a priority for the administration. If humans do ever go to Mars, it will be because of the hard work of these astronauts, scientists, and administrators.
In the course of writing this book, I was honored with the chance to speak with two actual astronauts. Without exception it was an inspiring experience, and I am truly grateful for their time and their generosity of spirit. Anna Fisher, who was one of the earliest female astronauts (and who went through astronaut training while pregnant!) helped me understand what it means to live and work in space—not just the mechanical and factual details but what it feels like to actually be there. I owe her a great debt.
The other astronaut I spoke with asked not to be named here—a decision I fully respect. They have my gratitude.
I would also like to thank Megan Sumner at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, and Andy Turnage of the Association of Space Explorers, for all their help.
No book reaches the printing press without a team of people working very hard on its behalf. I would like to express my thanks to my agent, Russ Galen, my publicist, Ellen B. Wright, and to Alex Lencicki (always). Fred Van Lente helped me talk through some of the plot complications, and find the thread when it was hard to see.
While most books are shepherded toward publication by one editor, this one saw no less than three: Will Hinton, James Long, and Priyanka Krishnan. All of them provided creative input and worked very hard to bring order to my chaos. This book would not exist without them.
Finally I would like to express my endless thanks and love toward my wife, Jennifer. Whenever I am in danger—as I often was while writing this—of tumbling off into the infinite, cold void, Jennifer is my tether, my personal life support system, always there to pull me back to safety, light, and warmth.
David Wellington
New York City
2019
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if you enjoyed
THE LAST ASTRONAUT
look out for
SPLINTERED SUNS
A Humanity’s Fire Novel
by
Michael Cobley
The key to the secrets of the galaxy is hidden on an ancient spaceship. Finding that ship is only the beginning…
For Pyke and his crew it should have been just another heist. Travel to a backwater desert planet, break into a museum, steal a tracking device, and then use it to find a ship buried in the planet’s vast and trackless sandy wastes.
Except that the museum vault is far more than it seems. And Pyke isn’t alone in seeking the tracking device: another gang of hunters, led by his old adversary, the devious Raven Kaligara, are on its trail. Not to mention the ship is a quarter of a million years old and more than a mile long, and somewhere aboard it is the Essavyr Key, a relic to unlock all the treasures and technologies of a lost civilization…
CHAPTER ONE
Dervla, the planet Ong, the city of Cawl-Vesh
“Damn it, Brannan Pyke,” she said. “Where the hell are you?”
Dervla was standing at the only window, hands resting on the sill as she stared out at a maze of dilapidated rooftops. The metal mesh fixed to the outside was rusty and dented but fine enough to give a decent view, and to let late afternoon sunlight into the horrible hot compartment they had been stuck in for more than four days. But this was the kind of spartan discomfort you had to put up with on a job like this, especially when your employer was the staggeringly wealthy Augustine Van Graes.
You’d think that he might have booked us into someplace a little more upmarket, rather than this shoebox, she thought. Something about not drawing
attention to ourselves, apparently…
So here they were on a desert planet called Ong, so far off the beaten track that Earthsphere was unheard of and the mighty Sendrukan Hegemony was known as the semi-legendary Perpetual Empire. As for this stuffy rib-walled compartment, it was one of another two hundred stacked in a girder-and-platform structure situated in a down-at-heel quarter of Cawl-Vesh, a city suspended over a deep canyon by a catenary of titanic cables. Not what you’d call an exotic holiday destination. All they had to do was infiltrate the well-guarded Eminent District, break into a high-security museum and steal one specific thing from its vault. Except that inside the main vault was a bio-vault which only a bio-genetic key would open—which is why they were languishing, bored and baking, in this sun-trap, waiting for Pyke to show up with the key. And he was late.
For roughly the thousandth time Dervla wished she was aboard the Scarabus, enjoying privacy and a shower, but the ship was in orbit around Ong with dependable Oleg at the helm. Their only link with the ship was a chunky, scuffed and worn handset and it had been aggravatingly silent all this time… apart from the fourteen or fifteen calls Dervla had put in to the Scarabus, just to check on the current status.
She straightened and looked over her shoulder. Bunks jutted to either side while opposite the window was the door, made of the same scarred, stained metal as the walls. Kref and Moleg were off scoring provisions, but Ancil sat at the unsteady drum-table—made out of an actual old fuel drum—reading something on his factab. Black-haired and wiry, he had changed into some of the camoed fatigues found in Van Graes’ setup package which had been waiting for them on arrival, and somehow the new duds accentuated his skinny arms and narrow chest. Next to him on the table was a half-eaten bag of kelp-based snacks, a pack of cards and the handset. Dervla had barely taken a single step towards the drum-table when Ancil’s free hand snaked out and neatly swept the handset away. Without altering his seated posture, Ancil glanced up at her with a mischievous “who, me?” expression.
The Last Astronaut Page 38