by J J Perry
“Are you two going to join the conversation?” Raul asked.
“I agree with Cyrus,” Lucinda responded. “I doubt anything we send back is going to make the slightest difference.”
“That is not what I said,” Cyrus said.
“Looking at the message we just received,” Lucinda continued, “I doubt anything understandable will get there. This was sent three months ago. It might take four months to get some little broken message back. The news cycle is not that long.”
“That just makes me feel so warm and fuzzy inside,” Raul said. “Such optimism!”
“Lucinda has a point,” Savanna said. “The little message will need to be potent to get the attention of the media, the public, the politicians, as well as Command. Maybe everybody should draft a message. Make it less than a hundred words.”
“‘REAP Riders Write Request Regarding Revering Repopulation and Renouncing Retreat,’” Maricia said.
“Please,” Raul said.
“What?” she responded, eyebrows elevated in innocence.
“When is our assignment due, Ms. De Clerq?” Lucinda asked.
“How about tomorrow at dinner? We can go over them as we attempt to digest this new diet.”
“Never insult the cook,” Spoon said as he wheeled over to the table.
“Never trust a skinny chef,” Raul said.
“If I am skinny, you are a toothpick,” Spoon wheeled in front of Cyrus. “Oh, quiet one, what is the difference between a spaceship and a porcupine?”
Cyrus looked lost for a moment. “The differences are huge.”
“With a porcupine, the pricks are on the outside.”
“Very amusing,” Cyrus said dryly. “To think that you waited six months to come up with that one. Such patience.”
“I have more where that came from.” Spoon bused a stack of dishes away as he played a raucous rendition of “When the Saints Come Marching In.”
“Why don’t you tell us what you are doing in Science, Lucinda?”
“All I have time to work on is telescopic information. There is not much to report, although I might have something tomorrow. Raul asked me if we passed through debris when we were hit a couple of months ago. Our front and rear facing telescopes are set at a slight pitch to avoid having the ship take up half the image. We could not see directly behind us at the time, but we might be able to see more since our big turn. At this point, about a quarter of a light-year from the sun, the low-light level requires a long exposure. Exposure times are limited by our yaw even with the ability to track over a small angle with the scopes. Unless there was something pretty reflective, we may not see it. Savanna and I started a comparison of images that consumes a lot of computational ability, looking for a comet trail or debris. It should be completed sometime tomorrow.”
“What about thermal imaging and images from nonvisual wavelengths?” Raul asked.
“Same problems. We are looking and analyzing every day.”
“How does the solar system look from here?” Maricia asked.
“Just a very bright star. You have to know what you’re looking at to make any sense of it. It’s not like a schematic in a textbook.”
“Thanks, Luc,” said Savanna. “Does anyone have something that needs discussion or announcement?” Savanna asked as she looked around the table. Seeing and hearing negative responses, she stood. Everyone meandered out of the room, leaving Spoon to clean.
Raul carried a clear plastic stemware about half full of red wine substitute. His mock T was soft and smooth, his pleated pants hung perfectly, buckling over the top of his loafers. Maricia’s clothing was a little wrinkled, relaxed, and less refined. She had not cut her blond hair, and it hung straight, well below the top of her shoulders. She carried a cup of decaffeinated coffee. Together, they walked slowly to the stairs and up.
Ahead of them were Lucinda and Savanna, chatting in hushed voices and moving energetically above to somewhere above quarters. Cyrus had been the last to leave and had gone into the Recreation area.
As the sound of footsteps in the stairwell ended, Cyrus looked at his handheld and saw he was alone. He selected a program in the five cents and entered. Soon, he heard the call to prayer. He spread his rug, knelt, and prayed, something he had never done before as an adult until the last month. He spoke with an old fundamentalist imam. He listened and learned.
7.1
LAUNCH + 182 DAYS
At 2:03 a.m., the main computer completed the analysis of the rear camera images obtained over the last three weeks. It had compared these images to those from the forward-looking telescope obtained immediately prior to the course change. This comparison was daunting, even for a computer with enormous processing power because it was looking for dust from angles almost 155 degrees apart and without star targets for standardization. As an afterthought almost, astronomer Savanna had also programmed the computer to look at their new trajectory from images acquired prior to course change and after.
A soft beeping sounded in Lucinda’s cabin as well as in Savanna’s. The sound started very low, thirty decibels, and slowly increased in intensity until silenced. They awoke about the same instant and silenced the tone. On screen in both rooms was a generated message in red letters.
ATTENTION: POTENTIAL IMPACT PREDICTED IN ONE TO TWO WEEKS. HUMAN ANALYSIS OF IMAGES IS RECOMMENDED. A COURSE CHANGE IS RECOMMENDED AND WILL COMMENCE WITHIN 24 HOURS UNLESS OVERRIDE SEQUENCE IS INITIATED. CONTINUE FOR MORE INFORMATION.
Both women looked at additional data. Lucinda saw that Savanna had been notified and had viewed the alert. She threw on her standard one-piece zip-up medical suit and walked the two flights up to Science. Savanna, without changing from her scant sleepwear, walked over to Cyrus’s cabin and entered. She touched him on the shoulder, awakening him. He looked at her in confusion as the veil of sleep lifted. He started to smile.
“It’s not what you think, Cyrus. We have a collision warning. I need you in CAC.”
“What?”
“Look at your screen.” Savanna took a couple of steps and activated the screen and tapped the flashing warning icon. “See you up top in a minute.” Savanna left as quietly as she entered. Cyrus rousted himself and read.
After Savanna dressed, she walked up to Science, where she found Lucinda going over the images on a one-meter rectangular screen in a room lit primarily by red lights. She was toggling a marker by tapping a key. She was studying closely a corner of the screen. “What do you see, Luc?”
“If it were me looking at these images, I would have seen nothing. But in this area,”—she hit a function key and pointed at an elliptical blue mark—“there is a faint, vague streak hiding in all these stars. As my eyes accommodate better and as I look at it longer, I am more certain it is real.”
“If I see what you see, it doesn’t look like it is in front of us.”
“That’s because these images were taken prior to a course correction of twenty-five degrees. Now,”—she stroked a different key—“you see it is ahead. This was taken yesterday. It is moving and in our flight path.”
“What does the computer say we should do?”
“I have not looked yet. I wanted to see the images first.”
“Are these pictures available to all computers?”
Lucinda tapped a dozen keys. “They are now. But this screen and the ones in CAC and CAN have the best images. I’m not sure they will show up on the others.”
“Can you enhance them?”
“The computer has already done it,” Lucinda said as she touched another icon. The almost-invisible streak became colorized in amber against the black-and-white array of stars, its brightness tripled and now elegantly visible. “We’re in comet heaven.”
“It could be hell for us,” Savanna replied.
“Not with a course correction.”
“I woke up Cyrus. I�
��m going to meet him in CAC.”
Savanna left as Lucinda was mumbling, “Let’s see what additional information I can coax out of old Bitelzebub.”
Savanna noticed the lift was in operation as she passed the door and reentered the stairwell ascending. She and Cyrus arrived on CAC about the same moment.
Thirty minutes later, Lucinda came up. The colorized image was displayed on the large main screen. Cyrus was immersed in sines and tangents, thetas, alphas, and betas. Savanna had the course change recommendation in front of her on one screen and her share of navigation computations on the other.
“You called. I’m here,” Lucinda announced. Savanna looked up.
“Good,” she said. “Talk to me.”
“It looks like we are headed into a comet trail, probably on the edge but still fatal at our velocity. Our course is at a thirty-degree angle to the comet. The computer estimates it at 250 hours away with a 98 percent margin of error of seventy hours either direction. You guys are the pilots, but a two-degree course change toward Arcturus started now and completed in twenty-four hours would put us well outside the dust trail.”
“We were just debating if a two-degree change was safe enough,” Cyrus said. “I would rather make a larger correction.”
“It is up to you, guys. I’m the medic struggling to keep the science lab running. Do not let me fly this thing.”
“I think the computer’s recommendation of two degrees is overkill.” Savanna opined. “If this obstacle is just 150 hours away, at a two-degree change, we will still miss the center by, what, 2.8 billion kilometers or so. That’s huge. A one-degree change gives us 1.5 billion clicks away, still huge, and our course recorrection is obviously less. If it is three hundred hours away, a one-half-degree change seems totally safe.”
“The sooner we change, the less the change is, right?” Lucinda asked.
“Yes,” Cyrus and Savanna answered simultaneously.
“So if you started the change now instead of waiting for the computer to initiate tonight, that would mean a smaller change. How far do we travel in twelve hours?”
“About six billion kilometers,” Cyrus answered after doing the math. “I guess a one-degree correction started now would give us a huge margin of safety.”
“Then, Cyrus, initiate a course correction of one degree over one hour toward Arcturus. Program to recalculate route in three hundred hours.” She had a twinge of misgiving that she brushed away immediately, which she would later regret.
“Acknowledge.”
“One of us should stay on the bridge until correction is complete and verified,” Savanna said.
“I’ll stay,” Cyrus volunteered. He focused on the screen before him as he accessed the computer generated course correction and modified it, which took about two minutes to make the correction and another two minutes to override the security features. “Correction initiated,” he said as he hit the return icon. There was no perceptible change in the ship.
7.2
Lucinda and Savanna entered the stairwell and started down. Lucinda was keyed up. “Looks like you guys are still in separate rooms,” she said after half a flight of descent.
Savanna yawned. “Oh, yeah.”
After another flight down, Lucinda spoke again. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“Should I?”
“Sometimes it helps, sometimes it hurts.” Lucinda was trying to overcome the defensive routine that Savanna frequently and effectively employed.
“And sometimes it is hard to tell the difference.” Footsteps clacked and echoed. “Stress strips away the facades we use. I need to readjust to the Cyrus that I see now, not the one that applied for this post.”
“How long have you been married?”
“Technically, we’re not.”
“You know what I mean.”
“About seven years ago. Did you and Chen get joined or married?”
“Married. Catholic ceremony, big cathedral, happy family, lots of people.”
“You don’t seem like a Catholic.” They arrived at the third floor and stopped outside Lucinda’s room.
“Chen is—was. His Chinese family has been Catholic for generations. Come in for a minute. I don’t want to wake up Paulson-Trujillo.” They went inside and sat on a pair of chairs as Lucinda continued without a pause. “I had to go to classes and get baptized to keep the peace. Where did you guys get joined?”
“In Nice, on a long weekend break from the agency.”
“What was that like?”
“We went down with a few friends, paid for a ceremony on the beach, and partied it up for a couple of days before we took our hangovers back to work.”
“What kind of a union did you get?”
“Seven years.”
“So, technically, at this very moment, you are neither married nor joined.”
“It is a month past, but what does that really mean up here or anywhere?”
“Nothing,” Lucinda said, “unless you split. Maybe you have.”
“No. This is a holding pattern. There is something not right with him.”
“That is vague for you, Savanna. You are usually decisive.”
“He is enigmatic. It’s probably being cooped up all the time. This is a lot of togetherness in a tight space in infinite space.”
“What specifically bother you?”
“The time of day to be talking. I should be sleeping. So should you.” Savanna stood and moved to the door.
“We should discuss this at a better time, then.”
“Maybe. Things will work out. They always do. One more thing, Luc.”
“What’s that?”
“Finding this dust ahead was pure luck. Why did you do this analysis when you did?”
“Like I said, Raul brought it up. Ask him.”
“I will,” Savanna said. “I wonder if he will attribute it to God. My parents were Catholic. And mean. I don’t get why people believe in gods. Spirituality and the search for meaning is a human affliction. Religions focus on either on a ‘sky-god,’ or on a tenebrous spiritual essence connecting humans, animals, all life, Earth, and the universe. On the whole, it’s probably a good thing. It can teach positive sociological behaviors and give hope and meaning to life, a beneficial deception. Of course, occasionally the sky-gods du jour demands extermination of some entity or assigns real estate to the favored people. Or maybe a god just gets hungry for a virgin or a warrior’s beating heart. Religions mature as time passes, but the concept never goes away. Christianity is evolving, since Christ has, so far, failed to show up clad in scarlet to step on the Mount of Olives. In spite of the bad examples, the effect of faith is usually peace and the betterment of man’s behavior, sometimes at the expense of scientific advancement. Maybe it is not a bad compromise.”
“You tend to go off like this when you’re tired. So much thinking makes me confused.”
“Fortune is mystifying. I want an explanation. It’s too easy to attribute stuff like this to God. I would prefer to blame some old guy behind curtains pulling ropes. This time, it was kismet.”
“I’ll thank God and take the good fortune. Why do you agonize so much about stuff like that?”
“I like answers, knowing why.”
“Peeling onions makes you cry.”
“Let’s get some sleep, Luc. I’m wrecking heaven, and you’ve started rhyming.”
Savanna left. When the door was closed, Lucinda said, “Heaven’s not reached by social climbing.”
In her room, Savanna tossed around in bed for half an hour, troubled and unable to sleep. Frustrated, she got up, grabbed a pink-and-beige capsule, and headed down to Recreation. She selected a vacation on the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico. Soon, she was there, lying on white sand, walking in warm September rain. She went into a deep and dark cenote, a freshwater cave, took off her cl
othes, and swam. The cool water brought clarity to her thinking and certainty that her mission would succeed. As she toweled off, she saw a peculiar, short young woman across from her, watching, sitting in the darkness. She wore thick glasses, carried a book, and emanated admiration. Rather than feeling fear or embarrassment, Savanna thanked her.
She was instantly awake, her heart pounding against her throat, her breathing staccato. She thought she should lay off the pink-and-beige for a while. That nonsensical vision had become a little too real.
7.3
LAUNCH + 183
Maricia left Medical exhausted. She walked up to Science. She knew Lucinda was there. She saw her face in the glow of a screen. Lucinda looked in her direction.
“You look tired, Mar.”
“Look who’s talking. I came to tell you we have another good embryo.”
“That’s seventeen. We are almost there.”
“I wish I could have told everyone at dinner tonight.”
“The news will keep. Thanks for coming up.”
“I’m going to let Savanna know. You should stop working. You were up five nights ago plus the double shifts. Go relax.”
“I think I will. When you talk to Savanna, see if she wants to have a drink.”
“Good idea if we can stay awake.” Maricia looked at her locator. Raul was not in COM but down in Rec with Cyrus, probably relaxing or exercising. She trudged the two flights up to CAC where Savanna was alone at the pilot’s console.
“Raul, let’s climb again.”
“No. I need to cool down. I’ve had a good workout.” He could never keep up with Cyrus and wanted to cool down with something easy.
“Do you need to stay fresh for Maricia?”
Raul rolled his eyes and said nothing. He climbed on a stationary bicycle, lifted a bottle to his mouth, and took a small sip. “I appreciate you helping out in engineering, Cy.”
“I do nothing but show up and look to see if there is work to be done. There seldom is. You altered the programming, right?” Cyrus climbed on the adjacent cycle. They both started pedaling at a moderate cadence.