Alpha Centauri: First Landing (T-Space: Alpha Centauri Book 1)

by Alastair Mayer

  “You might want to start looking.”

  “Indeed.” The security officer ran a hand through his hair and let out a low whistle. “It would explain a few anomalies, and some of the orders that Chinese companies have been placing, or refusing.”

  “We’ll have to bring them into line. What we found is just too big and, frankly, too scary for Earth not to face with a united front.”

  “Yeah, but good luck with that.”

  “I guess it depends what we find at the next star we go out to.”

  “Let’s just hope we don’t find the Chinese there first.”

  Epilog

  Near Epsilon Eridani, 10.5 light years from Earth

  The Chinese Dragon, or Longzi, class starships Xinglong Huā and Tianlong Huā came out of warp well above the plane of Epsilon Eridani’s ecliptic. The star had two asteroid belts, as well as a cometary belt twice as large as Sol’s Kuiper belt, so it was prudent to take the last steps of the approach carefully. Captain Lee didn’t want a repeat of what he’d only faked at Alpha Centauri.

  From Earth, telescopic observation had given strong evidence of planets, and hints that one might be life-bearing, but the crowded system made it difficult to be certain from ten light years away. The Chinese mission would find out. The odds were long, Epsilon Eridani was less than a billion years old, and in Earth’s history, life had barely gotten started by that point. But something showed a hint of blue and a surprising oxygen line in its spectrum.

  The Xinglong and Tianlong moved deeper into the system, observing everything. There it was, well within the inner asteroid belt, at a distance from the star that would put it between Venus and Earth if were orbiting Sol. Since Epsilon Eridani was slightly dimmer than Sol, this put it within the not-too-hot, not-too-cold Goldilocks zone.

  The blue planet had a single large moon, and as they approached the planet, telescopic observation showed clouds and continents. It looked startlingly Earth-like, although perhaps with more land and less ocean, it would be dryer, like a larger, partially terraformed Mars. It had sizable ice-caps at the poles.

  The ships settled into low orbit around the planet, then sent down a remote drone for close inspection and sampling. The crew watched the monitors as the drone ejected its heat shield and came to flying speed, soaring away under its own power.

  “Look there, a group of flying creatures.”

  “Bring the drone closer,” ordered Lee. “Let us get a look.”

  “They are avoiding the drone, but look,” Wu froze a frame and enlarged it. “Two wings, two legs, a beak—”

  “—and feathers. Are those birds?”

  The drone pilot was still watching the live feed, now flying it low over the broad open plain they had targeted as a landing area. A herd of large animals grazed there, disturbingly familiar looking animals, with shaggy hair or fur. “I do not know about birds, but those,” he pointed to the screen, “could be cousins to elephants.”

  ∞

  END BOOK I

  The story continues in Book II, Alpha Centauri: Sawyer’s World

  Glossary

  Alcubierre*: Miguel Alcubierre derived a series of equations consistent with Relativity which describe warping of space in a way which permits Faster-Than-Light travel. Several others have built on Alcubierre’s work, showing lower-energy ways to achieve a warp bubble (q.v.)

  ANT scan*: Anti-Neutrino Tomography scan. Analogous to a CAT (computerized axial tomography) scan in current medical use, except on a planetary scale and using anti-neutrinos instead of x-rays. Neutrino tomogrophy in real life is a budding field in the geosciences, but it uses solar neutrinos or those emitted from natural nuclear decay deep within the Earth. Neutrino detectors have also been considered for identifying nuclear reactors which may be generating weapons-grade fissionables.

  EECOM*: Electrical, Environmental, and Consumables Management (EECOM) Monitors electrical power sources (batteries, fuel cells), and electrical distribution systems; cabin pressure control systems; and vehicle lighting systems. atmospheric pressure control and revitalization (O2/N2/CO2 management) systems, the cabin cooling systems (air, water, and refrigerant loop), and the supply/waste water system.

  EECOM’s critical function is to maintain the systems, such as atmosphere and thermal control, that keep the crew alive. (From Apollo/Shuttle terminology)

  FIDO*: Flight Dynamics Operations. Responsible for the flight path of the space vehicle, both atmospheric and orbital. The FDO monitors vehicle performance during the powered flight phase and assesses abort modes, calculates orbital maneuvers and resulting trajectories, and monitors vehicle flight profile and energy levels during re-entry. (From Apollo/Shuttle terminology)

  Finazzi instability*: In 2009, Stefano Finazzi, Stefano Liberati, and Carlos Barceló applied a quantum analysis to the Alcubierre warp metric and deduced that quantum fluctuations could destabilize the warp. The term “Finazzi instability” is mine, from the first-listed author.

  Interstellar Quarantine Facility: A base on the moon to receive returning planetary and interstellar missions to prevent any contamination of Earth by extraterrestrial organisms. Something like Michael Crichton The Andromeda Strain’s “Wildfire” facility but on the moon, and with more accommodation for returning humans. Based loosely on the Lunar Receiving Laboratory of the Apollo era.

  omni: Short for omniphone - compares to today’s smartphones as smartphones compare to walky-talkies. (Search for “Nokia Morph” on YouTube for a nearly-there concept video.)

  omniphone: See omni.

  parsec*: A distance of approximately 3.26 light-years.

  SSTO*: Single Stage To Orbit. A concept (with a variety of possible implementations) for highly reusable spacecraft which can launch from a planet (Earth) to orbit, and return to a safe landing, using a single stage (thus requiring as little as just refueling to launch again). As of this writing, no practical SSTOs have been build (it is just within the limit of technical feasibility) although several examples (Atlas, the Shuttle External Tank with 6 Shuttle Main Engines) come close. See the work of, in particular, Phil Bono and later, Gary Hudson. More recently Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin are getting closer with their reusable launch vehicles, but aren’t there yet.

  Terraforming*: The hypothetical practice of engineering a planet, possibly including giving it a biosphere, to be more Earthlike. This could range from thickening Mars’s atmosphere to (at a much more technologically advanced scale) changing the crust of a planet and/or modifying its rotation rate to make it long-term stable (as would need to be done, for example, to terraform Venus).

  Unholy War: A nuclear war which took place in the early part of the 21st century, involving primarily the smaller nuclear powers, purportedly for religious reasons.

  Warp bubble*: The thin shell of highly curved space that surrounds a ship in FTL flight. Based on Van Den Broek’s lower-energy configuration of an Alcubierre warp metric.

  * Items marked with an asterisk are non-fictional, at least in a theoretical or hypothetical sense, in 2016. The others may or may not be in the future.

  Acknowledgments

  Several of the scenes here, in particular the early landing phase, were inspired by commentary and illustrations in Duncan Lunan’s book Man and the Stars (Souvenir Press, 1974), with illustrations by Ed Buckley. In particular, the use of aerospike SSTO landing vehicles. See Philip Bono and Kenneth Gatland’s Frontiers of Space (1970) for more on the concept, although my landers were more inspired by Gary Hudson’s Phoenix-C and Phoenix-E from Pacific-American Launch Systems circa 1980.

  I received valuable feedback on early drafts of this book from a number of fellow writers, including Lou, Danielle, Miranda, RGW, and Jill. Of course any omissions, errors, boring bits, or other screw-ups are entirely my fault. Well, and the computer’s, of course.

  Thanks to my kids, Selena, Robert and Arthur for tolerating their father’s idiosyncrasies during the too-long writing of this novel, and to the many readers
of my earlier T-Space works who nagged me to get this finished (hi Jason).

  My son Robert, currently working toward a degree in paleontology, provided useful insights into which flora and fauna may have arisen before the KT extinction and survived, and those that evolved far too late to be ancestral to any extraterrestrial T-space denizens.

  And while I discovered them late in the writing of this novel, Dr. Martin Beech’s non-fiction books Terraforming: The Creating of Habitable Worlds, and Alpha Centauri: Unveiling the Secrets of Our Nearest Stellar Neighbor, both from Springer (2009 and 2015 respectively), made for fascinating reading with useful insights.

  Preview: Alpha Centauri: Sawyer’s World

  The following excerpt is from the upcoming Alpha Centauri: Sawyer’s World, set immediately after the events of this book. It is still a work in progress, so some details may change.

  Chapter 1: Landing

  USS Anderson, above Planet Able

  Aboard the Anderson, Captain Sawyer throttled back the engines to idle as they began their drop through the atmosphere. The black sky out the window lightened to a deep indigo blue as the air grew thicker, then brightened with pink and orange streaks as the energy of the ship’s near-orbital speed heated it to plasma.

  Sawyer felt herself pushed into her seat with the increasing gee force. She scanned the instruments and reported back to the Heinlein. “On descent track, everything looks nominal.”

  “Roger that. You are GO for landing.”

  “Like we have a choice?” Sawyer replied, amused. They didn’t have the fuel to abort now. “Roger GO.”

  The orange glow faded as they descended through the stratosphere, the ship shuddering at odd intervals as the upper winds buffeted them. Sawyer felt as much as heard the turbo-pumps spool up as the engines began increase their throttle, readying to apply braking thrust for landing as they backed towards the ground.

  “I’ve got visual on the landing zone,” Finley, flying copilot, said. “Looks like we’re tracking a kilometer east, we’ve got some winds.”

  “Okay.” Sawyer tweaked the throttles and adjusted the attitude to bring them back to track. They were headed for the edge of a broad plain—no river valleys after what had almost happened to the Chandra—and were worried enough about herds of large animals that they didn’t want to land in the middle of it.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Sensors in the Anderson’s landing gear lit a panel light as soon as one of them touched the ground.

  “Contact light,” called Finley.”

  “Okay, engines off, pumps off, auxiliary to detent.”

  “Check.”

  Sawyer keyed her microphone. “Heinlein, Sawyer here. The Anderson has landed.”

  “Good to hear from you.”

  “Touchdown was real smooth. A little bit of crosswind at altitude but nothing to worry about.”

  “Roger that. Very good, Anderson.” The voice from Heinlein became more serious. “Obviously there’s no immediate return option, but you still need to follow protocol.”

  “No worries, Heinlein. The biologists are already checking the atmosphere. They’re about ready to deploy a canary—odd name for a white mouse—shortly. We’ll be in BIGs—” biological isolation garments “—for the next forty eight hours. Check that, fifty-two hours, we’ll have longer days here.”

  “Roger that, Anderson. Give us a status update when you have something or in two hours, whichever is first.”

  Sawyer checked the mission clock and keyed in a reminder. “You’ve got it, Heinlein. Anderson is listening out.” Sawyer clicked off the microphone and turned to the rest of the crew.

  “All right, people. I want preliminary atmosphere readings, chemical and biological, in a half-hour. If it all checks out, Ulrika Klaar and Roger Dejois,” the zoologist and the ecologist, all both had broad ranges of experience, “will suit up in BIGs for initial survey. Let’s see how much we can give them in two hours.”

  Chapter Two

  Anderson landing site

  “All right,” Sawyer said, after the initial team had returned, “our top two priorities are: One, researching the planet and its life in general, to determine if, as seems likely, this planet was also terrafomed. If so, then also anything we can about the terraformers. Two, making sure we can survive here indefinitely, and setting up whatever we need to do that. I’d give that latter our highest priority but researching this planet feeds directly into that. Everyone with me so far?”

  There were general nods and mumbles of agreement.

  “Okay. Dr. Singh, you’re the botanist, I want you to do a survey with an eye to both plants that we can eat and of those, which could be easily cultivated.”

  “Cultivated?” Naomi Maclaren, the engineer, interrupted, “You think we’ll be here long enough that we have to become farmers?”

  “Would you rather have it the other way? What if we’re still here come winter with no food left? Better to be prepared.”

  “Plants are a lot more likely to contain toxins than animals,” Jennifer Singh said. “Most mammals and birds on Earth are edible. If life here is descended from that, the way life on Kakuloa seems to be, shouldn’t we focus on finding food animals?”

  “We’ll do both, of course. If life here isn’t Earth-descended then plants may be a better option.” Sawyer was reasonably sure that even in the worst case, they could rig up some kind of fermenters and digesters to process plant material down to basic sugars, oils and amino acids, but they were already sure from spectrographic analysis and the data returned by the drones that the vegetation was biochemically almost identical to Earth’s, and to Kakuloa’s.

  “Right,” said Jennifer.

  “Dr. Klaar, start on an animal survey to similar ends. Including bugs, if it comes to that.” Sawyer ignored the wrinkled noses of a couple of team members.

  “Sure. I also want to check for any venomous or stinging animals or insects.”

  “Good point. Folks, assume any animal is poisonous—”

  “Venomous!” Ulrika Klaar said.

  Sawyer glared at her. She knew the difference. “—poisonous or venomous until further notice. Don’t eat it, and don’t let it bite you.” She looked around the cabin.

  “Okay,” she continued. “so much for food. Next, shelter. We’ve got a roll of solar film we can use for power. We do want the aircraft running and we’ll want to keep some film in reserve, but we can set up enough to run instruments and communications. At some point soon I’d like to move the cooking to regular fire. We can shelter in the ship for now, but we’re going to want more space before long. We have tents like we used for additional working space on Kakuloa, but we might want something more secure if we’re sleeping there. Also, I’d rather not wear out the ship’s plumbing.” She looked around. “Finley.”

  “Yes?”

  “You have extensive field experience, you’re in charge of setting up a field latrine. Check with the biologists about concerns that any of our intestinal bacteria don’t set off a plague that kills everything else on the planet. And no,” she said, holding up a hand, “I know that’s extremely unlikely.”

  “Anyone else with camping experience, help Finley or investigate what we can use to set up shelters other than the ship. Coordinate with me. The rest of you—think about everything you’ve ever read about surviving in the wilderness, any wilderness, fact or fiction. If you’ve read Swiss Family Robinson, or Mysterious Island, or Tunnel In the Sky, then write down everything you remember about survival techniques. If it’s something we have in the ship’s database or library, that’s great, make a note.” Sawyer was sure that all that and more was in the ships computers, the required storage would be tiny, and survival manuals of all kinds would be a logical inclusion. What she really wanted was the team to focus on what might important to survival if they weren’t picked up within a few months. Best to plan ahead. Sawyer thought for a moment. What else? “Finley?”

  “Yes?”

  “When you’re done
with the latrines and are ready to start your geology surveys, think about potentially useful mineral deposits. We can probably come up with some plastics for the fabber from organic matter, and maybe some ceramics that will work, but our supply of metals is limited.”

  “Right. Tyrell can get started on that from the orbital survey data, that should point us at interesting places to look.”

  “Good. But let’s focus on what’s nearby. We don’t want to have to mount a major expedition to find a bit of copper, and I’m sure Tyrell doesn’t want to face another hundred-mile hike if the plane crashes.”

  Tyrell blushed, and then said “Well, maybe if Ulrika was along.” She and Tyrell had faced just such a hike when a double bird strike had broken their prop back on Kakuloa. Tyrell had been the pilot.

  “Okay. That’s all I have for the moment. Anyone else? Questions? Comments? Rude remarks?”

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  “This is your lucky day, Dejois,” said Finley. “I’m going to show you how to dig a latrine.”

  “Très drôle. You know there was a reason I never joined the Scouts or the Armed Forces. I have an allergy to digging latrines.”

  “Oh, come on, at this stage it’s just a trench. It’s covering them up later that’s the fun part.”

  “Strange sense of fun. But where are we going to dig? The landing area is a pretty thin layer of soil over solid rock. I don’t want to be hiking a mile or two just to go to the bathroom.”

  “Heh, you haven’t seen how I dig. Here, hold this.” Finley handed a bulky piece of equipment to Dejois, then opened another storage locker and began pulling out metal tubes.

  “Okay, this is the drill, n’est-ce pas? What are you going to do, just drill a bunch of adjacent holes?”