by Rod Galindo
She shrugged. "It's different. It's romantic. And by that I mean heroic, adventurous, mysterious, not—"
"I know what you mean. And I'm not talking about the super-silly films. You simply don't understand the sci fi I enjoy. It's the human experience that really mattered in the early days of science fiction. Not the science. Or lack thereof." Bouchard looked around the room they were in, with its curved floor and ceiling. "And like I said, it wasn't all wrong. I can show you several films that you would swear were filmed right here in this room." He took his wife's hand. "Those old holofilms and books got me where I am today. What's your excuse?"
She chuckled, and ran her fingers gently across his bald head, stopping at his bare neck. "You."
He leaned in and kissed her on the forehead. "We'll be okay. Don't worry, Brea-baby. These aliens seem a little more reasonable than those in 'Independence Day'."
"In what?"
"Nevermind." He smiled. "So where are we on the engineering front?"
"Well," she said, crossing her arms, "Mags and I have rerouted all power and xenon to the two remaining ion arrays. I had to reroute a system or two to get the ACC station back to operational; something must have shorted out somewhere, gotta find that later. But you got your backup, um, back up, and we can fly the ship from here if necessary."
"Good job, as usual."
"Thanks, pet. So! All that's left now is suiting up and dragging our asses outside. Get eyes and hands-on our problem, better than what the mounted camera views can tell us."
"Understood." He took a deep breath. "Alright, well, much as I don't want to say this—what with aliens lurking about outside and all—we'd better get out there and get started."
She nodded. "Roger. I'll get Mags on the horn."
Before she could get away, he took her face in his hands. "You be careful out there, okay?"
She put her hands on top of his and looked up at him with those amazing, crystal-blue eyes that he could swear were real. "I'll start when you start."
He seared that beautiful face into his memory, memorized every line, the vector of every eyelash. On one hand there was no need to do so; he had memorized all these features a full decade ago. But today he was worried. For the first time since they had launched six years and three months ago, there was a slight chance that he may never see that face again. "I love you," he whispered.
"I know."
Their inside joke always made Don smile, moreso because he was happy she actually knew one ancient science fiction reference. Possibly the most important one of all.
They shared a quick kiss, then Brea tilted her head in an odd way. "Mags? Treads here. Please meet me in Airlock Four in ten minutes. We've just been given the 'Go' for EVA."
"Roger dodger," came the voice of the Mission Specialist over the tiny speaker in Don's implant. Each member of the crew had an identical one behind the ear of his or her choice.
Don received a pat on the butt as Brea strutted past him on her way to the elevator. He watched intently as her shapely hips swayed from side to side as she sauntered to the automatic doors. She wore the same royal-blue NASA one-piece they all did, but somehow, she wore it better than anyone else on board. And she still stirred those feelings deep inside him, the ones he felt when he first laid eyes on her all those years ago.
She turned and blew him one last kiss before the doors closed and she was gone.
"How does she do that?" he asked out loud to himself. Bouchard shook his head to clear it, and continued his inspection.
He walked along the curved floor until he reached another elevator, next to which was a stair that wound around it. Unlike the four primary elevators which connected both rings all the way to the hub, this one, and three others like it, only traveled between the inner ring and outer ring. All the elevators were fast, and in seconds he was at full gravity, 9.8 meters per second, relishing that wonderful fifty meters per second of tangential velocity. Here he walked comfortably just as he would on Earth, and strutted toward Explorer Two's Med Lab.
Like all the doors on the ship, he had to open the door to the lab manually. No luxurious automatic sliding doors on this boat, Don mused. He considered himself and his crew lucky they had automatic "lifts", and didn't have to climb hundreds of meters of ladders multiple times a day. Occasionally he and Brea took the ladders and stairs just for fun. Or what Brea called "fun", anyway.
Inside the lab Bouchard found Melodi Meng-Scalia replacing loose items back into their proper places. "Hey there, M&M."
She gasped, spun 'round, and instantly relaxed. "You scared me, Darko!" she said, her almond-shaped eyes giving him a glare.
"Sorry. You okay?"
"I'm fine. Just a little jumpy. All this time in the black has made us pretty complacent, huh? Never would have thought anyone else would be out here!"
"Yeah. A lot of people back on Earth are going to be saying 'told ya so' for the rest of their lives, and lot more are going to be re-examining their place in the universe."
"And probably going to church a lot more," the spritely doctor added, pushing her glasses up on her nose. "Or a lot less, depending…" She giggled like a schoolgirl as she arranged some equipment, in stark contrast to how Don pictured someone holding doctorates in biology, physiology, and medicine would act.
He glanced around and saw a lot of debris lying about. "Looks like an earthquake hit this place." He knelt down and started picking up boxes of gauze and other small items strewn across the floor.
"It kinda did!" The tiny woman's back was now to him. Her long black hair bounced normally here, unlike the slow motion in which it appeared to be in all other parts of the ship. "You just get used to things staying where you left them here in the ring, and then, boom! One little bump, and everything's everywhere!" She closed a cabinet door and turned in his direction. "What happened anyw—Hey, stop that!"
"What?" he asked from a kneeling position. "Just trying to help."
"I've got this, Commander, you've got more important things to worry about!"
Don handed her what he had picked up, and she began putting each item in its proper place. "Okay," he said, "But let me help you get the imaging—"
"No, no, no!" Melodi shook her head violently. "I have the McCoys to help with that heavy thing!" She motioned to the two surgical robots that appeared to be sleeping in their alcoves in one wall.
Sleeping? Or waiting for the right moment to attack? Bouchard hadn't yet decided which. "But those guys—"
"Are very helpful," she interrupted before he could express his mistrust like he often did. "Don't worry, I hid their claw attachments where they can't find them. Their delicate surgical finger attachments could barely snap a stick, let alone your neck. Now get along! Put the ship back together. Let the doctor take care of her office!"
Don raised his eyebrows. "Yes, ma'am!" He stood up, but slowly. Even with all the fancy know-how and velocity calculations that went into their beloved wagon wheel ring design, a person could still get vertigo, even after spending years getting used to the centripedal motion effect. While the ring's spin kept everything stuck to the outer wall—which the crew called the "floor"—Don's pituitary gland often picked up the motion of the cylinder. He had gotten used to it and therefore didn't get motion sickness or dizzy spells, at least not until he over-did it with sudden movement. At which time he was reminded once again that the weight he was so fond of wasn't due to real gravity. So he tended to take it easy when the situation allowed.
This was not one of those times.
His hesitation was misinterpreted by Melodi, who was now pushing him toward the door. Apparently he wasn't moving fast enough for her.
Don had forgotten how mighty she was, her little hands unrelenting. "Okay, okay, I'm going!" He stumbled over the threshold as he passed through the doorway.
"Bye!" She smiled, and shut the door in his face.
He jerked his head back just in the nick of time. "Good thing I'm not Pinocchio!" he called through the door, touch
ing his nose to ensure it was still there. Don sighed, and continued his inspection.
As he wandered from room to room, he found himself wondering just what the future now held. Their mission had been of a one-way nature from the start, so since they had never planned on seeing Earth again anyway, what could the aliens really do to them besides torture them or kill them outright?
Well, he thought, they could torture us. Or kill us outright.
Bouchard had planned on finally passing on from old age—one hundred twenty years on average these days—close to the utmost inner edge of where it was believed the Oort Cloud might begin. His goal was to make it exactly four thousand AU from the sun before buying the farm. He chuckled to himself that he might have made it too, were it not for these meddling aliens. "Hmm. Maybe Brea's right," he said aloud to himself once again, "I probably watched way too many old holos as a kid."
Bouchard did some quick calculations in his head. He found that, even if Mag-Lev could repair the engines to tip-top shape, and assuming they didn't run out of xenon gas, it would take them several years just to get back up to the speed at which they'd been traveling before the aliens attacked. Then another couple of decades after that to reach the 900,000 kilometers per hour they would need to get out to four thousand AU in his lifetime. Their ion engines simply couldn't physically accelerate them any faster, nor pass the 900,000 kilometer per hour speed limit. If Explorer Two's propulsion system remained reduced by two-thirds, they would fall far short of his goal by the time he "bought the farm." With only two engines providing thrust, there simply wasn't enough time for the slow acceleration of their bulky home to get "up to speed", so to speak. While their engines were some of the most efficient propulsion machines ever created, they were not the most powerful. Especially when the thing they were pushing weighed-in at just over one hundred and sixty tons.
He shook his head. "Figures."
He checked a thick pane of AlON5 embedded in one wall for cracks. Finding none, he looked outside. In the bright light of the hall, he could see little a slight spackling of stars as they moved slowly past the window. They weren't moving, of course, the ring rotated and made them appear to move. He saw no aliens, but then their ships were likely too small and too dark to be seen from this distance.
As he moved on, Don thought about how this incident would affect their mission. Or if they would even be allowed to continue traveling outward at all.
The crew of Explorer Two was hoping to pick up Voyager on radar sometime in the next year, out past the Heliopause, where the Sun's solar wind is overcome by the interstellar medium, and interstellar space truly begins. In another year and a half by their original calculations, they would have used their attitude thrusters to spin Explorer Two around to face Earth, and used their main engines to slow the ship down to around fifty-five thousand kilometers per hour. That was the approximate last-known speed of the ancient little probe when Earth's Deep Space Network had finally lost contact with it in 2027. They would refine their data once they had the little probe in their sights, and Jack and Ray could calculate exact numbers.
Once at the target speed—only a hair faster than Voyager 2 was travelling—Bouchard and his team would then spin the ship back around to face the wayward craft, and ever-so-carefully shimmy up right behind it. Upon matching its speed exactly, robot arms would then "flip" the probe onto its back, and caress it into their large maintenance bay, all of which was designed specifically for it.
Now inside the ship, Mags and Treads, surely with the help of X-Ray who would probably never leave its side, would physically grab Voyager and lower it to the deck, its dish facing up. They could then take all the time needed to conduct repairs, refueling, and upgrades.
When those were completed, the plan was then to lift the probe off the floor—where it would float in the zero-G of the bay—and then Pearls would simply drop Explorer Two's speed using reverse thrusters. The Voyager craft would eventually drift back "outside", never once losing its initial velocity over the entire adventure.
It would take patience for it to clear the bay, probably a couple of weeks. At that time, robotic arms, controlled by the ship's computer, would again flip Voyager, this time back to its original orientation, its dish and antennae pointing once again towards Earth. When Explorer Two was far enough back from the ancient spacecraft, Pearls could fire maneuvering thrusters, and "peel off" onto a new trajectory.
Voyager 2 would be tested, of course, before Bouchard and crew would leave it to its own devices. Most of its systems would be booted up while still in the Explorer's hangar bay. Once the probe had a clear line-of-sight with Earth, verification signals to and from would commence. Don would only say his final farewells to this famous little machine he had gotten to know so well over the last decade when he was certain it was alive, healthy, and ready to explore the galaxy with new hope and vigor.
Finally, Explorer Two's ion thrusters would be lit again, never to be shut down until she reaches maximum speed, or all her xenon gas is depleted. She would zoom onward towards whatever its destiny might be, maxing out at around 900,000 Kilometers per hour. Eventually, after allowing for acceleration from approximately 55,000 KPH to 900,000 KPH—which would take a couple of decades to reach—the ship would carry its crew fifty-one AU from the sun every single year. At that rate, Don figured he might see the four thousand AU mark in only ninety-eight more years. He would be the ripe old age of one hundred thirty-six.
Right on schedule.
That was the overall concept anyway. Sounded great on paper, Don thought. And they practiced the Voyager capture-and-release at least a hundred times in simulation before leaving Earth. But he didn't count on things going as smoothly upon practical application. He hoped he was wrong.
He hoped they would still get to find out.
With their upgrades, Voyager 2 should last several hundred more years before needing additional maintenance, as it continued on its own endless journey. Endless as far as the human mind was concerned, anyway.
Voyager 2's next destination, assuming the craft could avoid all astronomical objects that may fall into its path, was long ago calculated to be the stellar neighborhood of Ross 248, a small, red dwarf that is in fact hurtling toward our own solar system. In approximately 37,000 years, the star will more accurately rendezvous with Voyager, rather than the spacecraft travel outward to meet it! After that relatively close encounter of only a couple of light years, the probe will zoom toward the brightest star in Earth's sky, Sirius, passing within five light years of that sun. In approximately 296,000 years.
In the meantime, as propulsion concepts eventually improve to the point where astronauts can fly circles around Voyager 2 in the next century or two, the small relic would have no real need to relay new data back to Earth beyond mere nostalgic purposes. Thus additional maintenance would probably never be required after Bouchard and his crew conduct their refit. In fact, in the days leading up to Explorer Two's launch, news commentators postulated that one day in the coming centuries, tourists would be able to zip right up to both Voyagers, as well as Pioneers 1 and 2, New Horizons, Deep Journey, and even Explorer One, and marvel at the little curiosities of the early days of space exploration. Maybe they will even tune-in on their personal implants and listen to "the sounds of space" still being broadcast as a novelty some future entrepreneur can sell to the masses. Then they will fly off again on their way to work or play in one of thousands of as-yet unheard-of solar systems.
Don surmised that Explorer Two would by then be considered a museum piece as well, perhaps a memorial, a tomb for him and his wife and the rest of the crew. He could see Ray Isley still holding down the fort, so to speak, and greeting visitors every few years as they stopped by to marvel at the quaint vessel, by then useless to all but space historians and elementary school teachers.
Now at the other side of the LWR ring, near his and Brea's quarters, he considered popping in and seeing what damage had been done to the forest puzzle he and she had
been working on these last five weeks. But instead he examined another AlON5 porthole for cracks. Luckily, this one seemed fully intact as well. Soon his focus shifted from looking at the metal glass to through it. As he stared out at the black nothingness, he laughed at himself. It wasn't like he and his crew were forced to pull over into a weigh station for inspection before continuing down the highway. They had just made first contact with intelligent beings not of Earth! And here he was, worried about getting back on schedule to make his date with a long-lost, two hundred-year-old toy and a bunch of "dirty snowballs", as comets were often called. As far as mission success went, he could call this one "smashing." They could all go home right this very minute and be heralded as heroes, without ever even having truly left the solar system at all.
He shook his head and smiled nervously as he tried to wrap his head around the gravity of it all. "We just discovered aliens!" he said to the walls around him. "But what if they're the kind the late, great Stephen Hawking warned us about? And we just unzipped our proverbial flies and gave them a breadcrumb trail right back home?"
As if hit with a sledgehammer, Don wasn't all that concerned with Voyager or the Oort Cloud anymore. He was more concerned with whether the aliens would allow them, and all the people of Earth, to keep on keeping on. Explorer Two and Earth were nothing but sitting ducks at the moment. No, the aliens hadn't been overly hostile. Yet. But only God knew what they could do. And at any moment.
He activated his implant. "Pearls, it's Darko. Any change in the status of our new friends?"
"None at all," Adrienne replied.
"Roger. Thanks." He snapped off the circuit. "Yet" kept flashing through his mind. His nose twitched at the stench of burnt wiring. It must be drifting throughout the ship. He used his wristwatch to tell the main computer to run self-checks of all subordinate computers and server stacks. He hoped the short causing the stink wasn't anywhere near Explorer Two's "brains." Having her legs broken was bad enough.
That reminded him, he would need to transmit another report to Mission Control in—he glanced at his wrist—thirty-three minutes.