The Tau Ceti Diversion

by Chris McMahon

  She closed her eyes for a moment and nodded, as though in defeat. When she opened her eyes again, she spoke with a heavy resignation. “The heat pumping into the planet’s day side from Tau Ceti might be having drastic effects. It could be driving tectonic activity across the whole planet — earthquakes, tidal waves, super-volcanoes, seas of lava that appear without warning from beneath the crust, dissolving vast areas of land—”

  “So, if the planet’s environment is hostile, we have to know, before we take the lander down,” said Karic.

  “Yes, but the … pod could be lost,” said Mara. Everyone in the room knew what her momentary hesitation meant. It was not the pod’s destruction that concerned her — the Starburst was equipped with seven — it was the pilot’s.

  “So let us be clear, then. You are asking one of us to carry out a suicide mission, Karic,” said Janzen.

  Karic smiled ruefully. “That’s why, if it has to be done, I’ll be taking the pod down.”

  It was an agonizing decision for Karic. After taking control of the Starburst, the last thing he wanted to do was to leave Janzen free to work mischief, but he could see little choice. He himself was the best pilot left alive. Hopefully, the unmanned probe would do the job.

  Janzen fidgeted with his data-glasses and remained silent.

  “You all have your tasks cut out for you,” said Karic. “As soon as we have control of the fusion drive, we will enter suspension. We will drop into a close orbit around the fourth planet and drop the probe. Then, if we have to, I’ll pilot a pod into the planet’s atmosphere and reassess our situation based on the data we receive.

  “Either way, Starburst will then break orbit and move further out into the planet’s shadow.”

  Karic stared at Janzen. “I expect you to get that uniform off. You can wear a plain officer’s uniform without insignia for now. Bolan was about your height.”

  “How dare you!” snapped Janzen.

  Karic held out his hand. “I’ll take the badge now.”

  Janzen’s hands shook as he pulled the gold diamond off his left epaulette and handed it to Karic. His eyes never left the badge as it disappeared into Karic’s fist.

  Janzen stood up, struggling to keep his face impassive. He turned and left the room quickly, followed by Ibri.

  “You know what to do, Andrai,” said Karic. “Just make sure that Janzen pulls his weight. If you have any trouble with him, let me know.”

  Andrai shook his head and smiled. Then he left the room.

  Karic and Mara remained behind.

  “I should have seen it,” said Mara, face twisted into an angry frown. The astronomer had struggled for weeks with inadequate equipment and found nothing. Even more, she had missed observing a powerful sun that was a danger to all of them: a black hole.

  “Don’t be too hard on yourself, Mara. This was a tough one on all of us. Now we just have to survive.”

  “I don’t need any sympathy from you, Karic.” Her face softened. “I am worried about this descent. The manual states all planetary work should be undertaken in the heavy lander unless there is absolutely no option.” She searched his face, then took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “The pods do not have enough propulsion to regain orbit, Karic. You know that.”

  Karic felt energized. At last he was in control of his own destiny, his own dream. The Starburst would complete her mission on his terms, not Janzen’s. “I know the risks are pretty high, Mara, but all of us are in danger. We may all die in a second radiation surge before we even reach the planet. Transporting to the planet’s surface is the only way to ensure we survive until a rescue ship can reach us.

  “Have you thought of names for the black hole, or the planets?”

  Mara smiled weakly. “I haven’t even thought about it.”

  “You are the astronomer. You should be the one to name them.”

  Mara’s brow creased in concentration for an instant. “How about planet Oasis? After all, it’s a stop on our way home. A place to rest. Besides, I think ‘New Earth’ would be a bit premature, don’t you?”

  Karic laughed.

  “I wouldn’t count on any palm trees,” said Mara.

  The words had a strange effect on Karic. Whether the planet sustained life or not remained a mystery, yet one thing was for certain — no sun or moon had traveled the sky of the dark side for many millions of years.

  His dream returned, bringing with it visions of an empty ebony sky.

  CHAPTER 5

  The explosive bolts fired away, loosing the pod from the body of the mother-ship. The small craft trembled and started to tip as it dropped away from the Starburst. Karic quickly stabilized its fall using maneuvering jets and swept his gaze across the console. He checked and rechecked his position. He shuffled against the harness straps, uncomfortable in the bulky spacesuit. Almost ten months had passed since the surge that took so many lives. Most of that time had passed while they were secure in stasis — with around two months of “live time” that had been a blur of furious activity in preparation for their arrival at Oasis.

  His eyes wide with intense focus, he felt fiercely aware. The interior of the pod brightened, every display and polished surface brought to an unreal brilliance by the adrenaline that flooded his brain. After all the planning, all the analysis and decision-making, he was here, hurtling toward the planet’s surface.

  He had volunteered for the descent in the pod if the unmanned probe failed — and it had. They had waited anxiously as the little probe dropped through the upper atmosphere, finally shedding its outer heat-shield and deploying parachutes. The signal had lasted only a few minutes. Whether it had even reached the planet’s surface was a mystery. The intense storms in the atmosphere below must have given the little probe a rough ride, yet even so, it should not have been destroyed so quickly. It had vanished without a trace below the seething atmosphere of Oasis.

  Karic looked through the viewport, catching his last view from the relative calm of space before the thick, cloud-strewn atmosphere claimed him. They had positioned the drop just inside the line of the terminator. He could see its bright line in the distance, held in place for time immemorial. The glare of the yellow sun was hidden by the bulk of the planet. Soon he would lose sight of the terminator as well.

  The planet loomed. A dark, featureless orb slowly swelling to fill his vision. Oasis. It looked anything but a haven. Above him, the bulk of the Starburst vanished into darkness as she shifted from her temporary low orbit and began a series of station-keeping maneuvers deeper in the planet’s shadow.

  And he was alone, racing toward an alien world. Perhaps the first human in history to visit a planet outside Earth’s solar system.

  “This one’s for you, Grandad.” Of all people, his grandfather, Lein, would understand what this meant to him. Lein and a small group of elite astronauts had been selected for the first interstellar mission to Alpha Centauri, almost sixty years before Starburst set out. Their ship, the Starsurfer, had never left the Lagrange docks. It was left abandoned and half-built as the nuclear strife of the late 21st century raged on the planet below, his grandfather’s dreams of space exploration unrealized.

  He fell toward the planet for long minutes, using the small maneuvering rockets on the outside of the craft to adjust his angle and position of entry. It was critical not to use too much fuel in the initial phase of descent. The pod was designed to use its heat shield for the bulk of entry breaking. The external tanks for the descent — fitted to the top section of the pod — completed the classic, tapered upper section of a cone-shaped entry capsule that would have been recognized by the Apollo astronauts. Except for size. It was bigger by far than its 1960s counterpart, and could accommodate up to four personnel in an emergency, although the weight of the additional crew would make post-descent flight problematic.

  In its atmospheric entry configuration, the pod would use fuel only for course correction. As it approached the ground the fuel in the external tanks would be used in a
sustained burn to halt its descent. Then the pod would jettison both the external tanks and the lower heat shield, revealing a sleek, aerodynamic shape — a flattened lozenge of a central cabin with short, stubby wings and a short flaring tail, the maneuvering jets extending like stubby landing legs from its undercarriage. Its heavy shielding gone, the pod would become a miracle of lightweight materials that could use its onboard fuel and maneuvering jets for short-range atmospheric flights. At that final stage, it would be planetbound for good. There was no return to orbit for the strange little aircraft it would become. Or its pilot.

  The target landing zone was some one hundred kilometers inside the dark side of the terminator and it was Karic’s mission to put the pod down as close as possible to that point. If all went well, his beacon — indicating the surface was safe — would then guide the lander down from Starburst with the rest of the crew. He sighed, watching as the planet drew slowly closer. The pods were notoriously difficult to pilot, and it was going to be a rough ride.

  An image of his grandfather came back to Karic. The aging astronaut stood on his front porch, looking up at the stars. On this particular night, Karic had been working late, trying to finish an assignment for his undergrad degree. He had taken a break and wandered up the street from his parents’ house to visit his grandparents, as he had a hundred times before. The soft, fall air of Boston carried the earthy scent of a nearby stand of oaks and the sweetness of a late-flowering vine.

  Karic’s grandfather and the other Starsurfer astronauts had been genetically modified so they could achieve a partial hibernation state. The gene-splicers had assured Lein the altered DNA would not carry to the next generation, but they were wrong. Karic’s father had been spared, but his whole life, Karic had struggled against unpredictable fugue states. His brain would switch to a hibernation mode even though his body and his senses remained at full alertness.

  Lein could often be found out the front of his house, looking up. Sometimes he would be lost in fugue, and Karic would wait silently. Other times, he would just be watching the night sky.

  Karic climbed the steps and stood beside his grandfather on the porch. He followed Lein’s gaze across the familiar constellations.

  “Never forget they’re real, Karic,” Lein said, without turning. “Some people go their whole lives and never really think of them as anything more than points of light.”

  The darkness had softened Lein’s gaunt face into youth, the gray wavy hair a dark blur in the night.

  “They are suns, Karic. Real suns. People know it, but how often do they look up and understand it? Really feel the truth of it?”

  A warning tone filled the pod’s small cabin. He had entered the upper atmosphere. Karic lowered the heat shield over the outer viewport, blocking the view. It was built to withstand great pressures, but the clear polymer would quickly lose structural integrity, and eventually rupture, if subjected to the intense heat of atmospheric entry. Darkness enveloped the pod. He activated the external cameras he would use to make the descent.

  “Good luck, Karic,” said Mara, over the com. “We’ll be coming to pick you up soon.”

  Karic smiled at Mara’s optimism.

  “Don’t wait too long.”

  As acting first lieutenant, Mara was the most senior crewmember after Karic. In his absence, she was acting commander. He hoped she could deal with Janzen.

  After having taken command from Janzen, he had unlocked the restricted news that had reached them at Epsilon Eridani. What he found troubled him. The absolute control that United Earth maintained over the off-world colonies and space stations had been shattered. Only thirty-three years after Starburst left on its mission, a coalition of colonies inside Earth’s solar system — comprising Mars, the Moon, and settlements on the Jovian moons — calling itself the Free Colonies, had put an embargo on trade with Earth. It was a stranglehold. Earth relied on its off-world facilities for almost all its raw materials, fuels and high-tech goods. Well planned and executed, it had taken Earth completely by surprise. All their attempts to launch fleets were blocked by orbiting weapons. It was the perfect, bloodless coup.

  The first act of the Free Colonies had been to seize all off-world assets. The Davis Industries Platform in the Lagrange point between the Earth and Moon — notorious for its poor living conditions and safety record — had been shut down and disassembled, the modules distributed across all the Free Colonies. For DavisCorp, it was a killer blow. The huge mega-corporation, once in the top ten on the World Exchange — privy to the decisions of the United Earth itself — was finished. It had dropped out of the top ten only three years after they left Earth system, suffering an endless series of contractions. Only two months after the embargo, it collapsed completely. Janzen’s legacy was just a memory.

  Yet ExploreCorp remained, a highly speculative stock on the fringes of the market. Although they were the first to send out a ship, nine others had left between 2157 and 2190, when the embargo had ended the interstellar program. All of them were faster and better targeted, the last capable of cruising at over 0.34c — almost fifty percent faster than Starburst. Although, Karic noted with a feeling of pride, all still used his suspension technology.

  The success of the Starburst’s mission was the only thing that could restore Janzen’s fortune. He had already proved himself ruthless, willing to risk lives. So far the deaths had been accidental, the result of bad errors in judgment. How far would he really go, now that everything was riding on the outcome of this mission?

  Karic adjusted the image of Oasis on his console. It was as black as the void. A jolt of fear sent his heart racing. He could be killed in entry or landing. And if he found the surface was unsuitable for the lander, he would slowly asphyxiate as the pod’s supply of oxygen ran out.

  Karic and Andrai completed a series of radio checks. The transmission began to break up under the influence of the planet’s intense magnetic field and increasing cloud cover.

  “Just keep listening for my beacon!” shouted Karic through the link.

  The reply was garbled, lost in static, and Karic switched off the radio. Communications would be useless now.

  His small craft dropped through the atmosphere, buffeted by turbulence as it sliced through the thick cloud. So far the craft’s orientation was still good — allowing the big heat shield to perform its task of entry braking without endangering the pod.

  The magnetic field of Oasis was unusually strong. The associated magnetosphere would act to deflect the charged particles of Tau Ceti’s solar wind and other high-energy particles, even more effectively than Earth’s own magnetosphere protected it from the Sun’s similar effects. Without it, Oasis’s atmosphere would be vastly different, water and oxygen literally be pushed out into space by the solar wind, much like Mars and Venus, which both lacked a strong magnetosphere. Together with Oasis’s thick atmosphere, the Starburst’s crew would be well protected from harmful radiation on the surface, yet those same factors made his mission perilous. Once having attained the surface, he would attempt to assemble a directional transmitter and send a signal to those who waited above. If the beacon did not reach the ship, they would have to assume he had failed. He would be abandoned on the surface; cut off from the Starburst and all those he had left behind.

  Karic entered the lower atmosphere. Life — awareness — contracted to a tiny shell of exotic alloys, heat-resistant ceramic, and plastic. A capsule of life, rushing downward. The pod was designed as a robust reentry vehicle, yet within the alien atmosphere, it seemed as fragile as an egg.

  Karic was dropping faster than the speed of sound and still accelerating. The exterior heated rapidly. The pod shook and spun. He fought to stabilize it, using the pod’s small rockets to adjust his attitude. He worked frantically, sweating as the interior heated. The instruments monitoring the temperature of the heat shield climbed to max then abruptly dropped to zero. The sensors are fried.

  A high-pitched warning tone cut through the stuffy air in the cabi
n, a light on the console blinking red in time with the alarm.

  “Damn!”

  The exterior temperature of the pod’s shielded upper section — containing the fuel needed for its deceleration — was over its safety limit and still climbing. They had known that the planet’s gravity, slightly greater than Earth’s, might cause complications, but they had hoped the safety factors used in the design of the pod would compensate. Apparently not. If the shielded fuel tanks that formed the pod’s tapered upper section ruptured — the explosion would shred him and the pod into a thousand fragments of metal, plastic and flesh.

  Karic fought down panic. His eyes swam as he tried to watch every inch of the console at once. He could not fail now. Not now.

  A shimmering began at the edges of his vision. An all too familiar echo of the changes starting in his brain.

  “No! No!”

  It was too soon, but Karic had no choice.

  He engaged the entry burn. The main thruster ignited with a thump that shook the whole pod. Its distant, low growl powered against Oasis’s gravity, slowing the craft’s acceleration. He watched his instruments anxiously, eyes flicking between readings of downward velocity, altitude and dwindling fuel stocks. The pod was slowing, but too damn slowly.

  His mouth dry, he tried to swallow past a sudden constriction that had grown in his throat.

  The fuel in the external tank was burning fast. The minutes crawled. Time stretched and still Karic pushed against its flow, as though he could fight his own fate through sheer strength of will. Even so, the moment arrived.

  The muffled roar of the main thruster cut to eerie silence.

  I’m too high.

  His mind dull with shock, his body took over, hands moving quickly across the console in a sequence he had practiced — and executed — hundreds of times.

  The core section of the pod trembled as explosive bolts fired beneath it and above it. Outside — amid the dense clouds of Oasis — he knew the heat shield would be tumbling away beneath him, the heavy main thruster with it. The empty external tanks had been ejected from the pod’s upper section, launched to either side of him by tiny rockets on the tanks. Now, only the insubstantial hull of the inner framework was left.