“Well that’s engineering input. Now for the navigator’s,” Captain Weber said, turning to Catherine.
“There’s an impossibly high margin of error the way things are right now,” Catherine said. “So bad, in fact, that I’m not even sure we’d find our way home again with things left as they are.”
The Captain nodded. “Then it looks like circumstances have made the decision for us. At least as far as stopping and recalibrating goes. While we do that, we have a little bit of breathing room to figure out if we’re going to keep to the mission plan, or whether we head home.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Thirty minutes later, John looked through the virtual glass walls of the upper compartment at… nothing. The dim lights from a few displays at the front played on his bearded face, and were the only distraction from complete darkness. “Exiting warp flight… now,” came Jake DiMaso’s voice. Immediately, the inky blackness became a blazing field of stars, a feast for the eyes.
“Wow! So this is what it looks like three light years from home!” John said.
Nandi let out a low whistle as she gazed at the spectacle all around them, oddly punctuated by the silhouettes of the passenger seats.
“What direction is the Sun?” Michael asked. Even his bellicose facade seemed to have been penetrated, for a moment at least, by the poignancy of looking back at their home world from such an inconceivable distance.
“There,” Catherine said. She pointed to what would normally have been the right wall of the compartment. “That’s the one.”
There was silence for several long seconds. Then John shrugged. “Looks the same as all the other stars from here.”
“Yes it does,” Nandi said. “But, we’re the first people to see it from so far away.”
“You mean besides the CM-1 crew?” Jake said.
“Well yes. I hope they had time to look back at Earth, before whatever happened… happened.”
“I wish we’d have seen this from our destination instead,” Captain Weber grumbled.
“Okay, people, we—by which I really mean John and Nikolai—have work to do. And plenty of it,” Michael said.
John sighed. He wished the sense of unity, gazing at the field of stars with all the others, could have lasted just a little longer.
“Let’s go,” Nikolai said. He led the way to the back of the upper passenger compartment, and opened the door. The light from beyond was as blinding and jarring to the three engineers as switching on a floodlight in the middle of a darkened movie theater. Michael and John followed Nikolai back into the comparatively mundane, utilitarian reality of the equipment bay access corridor. Nikolai pushed open the large, square hatch into the navigation equipment bay, and the three men entered the space in which they had spent twenty four hours feverishly working, three days previously, in order to do the exact same work over again.
* * * *
Atlas had been rolling very slowly about her main axis, like a kebab on a spit, for three hours. As she did so, the gravitational forces registered by each panel in the ship’s gravitometer arrays changed, as they first faced towards, and then away from, stars that were light years away. By measuring how the force changed over time, the sensitivity of each panel could be calibrated exactly.
Nikolai stopped working for a minute to take a restroom break. No sooner had he left, than Michael turned on John in the confined space. “Why did it go so wrong?”
“What?”
“The gravitometer dial-in. How in the world did we end up off-course? We could have killed everyone on board!”
“Wait… you think I did this?” John sputtered, hardly able to believe what he thought Michael was saying. “We weren’t able to calibrate in the outer Solar System before, because there wasn’t time, so of course the panels didn’t work properly once we reached interstellar space!”
“I didn’t say you did anything wrong.” Michael chose his words carefully and deliberately, emphasizing them so the undertone of accusation remained loud and clear.
“Michael, I don’t know why you don’t like me, but I really wish you’d knock it off. How in the heck are we supposed to work as a team if you’re constantly trying to rile me up?”
“I shoot straight. I’m supposed to, as the Chief Engineer. I can’t help that you’re oversensitive.”
“Oversensitive? I overheard the way you dressed me down when we entered the NES. Misti even confirmed what I was thinking.”
“Oh yes, you got a machine to tell you what you wanted to hear. AIs aren’t supposed to be a replacement for your own brain!”
John’s mouth flapped, but no words came out. Just then, Nikolai reentered the tiny equipment bay. His expression fell as he immediately sensed the bad vibes still echoing from the walls. Michael sighed. “I think it’s time we all took a short break. Everyone take ten.”
John didn’t need to be told twice. After extracting himself from the hatch he headed up into the accommodation corridor and made for his cabin. “Call Nandi,” he said quietly, once he was out of earshot of the others.
“Hi. What’s up?”
“I need to bend your ear for a few minutes.”
“Sure. Where do you want to meet?”
“My cabin.”
“I’ll be right over.”
John entered the small, box-like space and floated there, turning things over in his mind, until Nandi’s knock came a minute later. “Come on in.”
Nandi’s job was to look after the crew’s mental health, not just physical. She had a degree in counseling, and was available twenty-four seven for anyone who needed her. It was in this capacity she visited John now. She made sure to shut the door tightly behind her. “What’s up?”
“It’s Michael. He’s driving me crazy. He thinks I screwed something up, and that’s why we’re off course. I swear to God I’ve done everything to the best of my ability since I first started helping get the Atlas ready to leave, never mind during the mission.”
Nandi’s brow creased. “Has he said why he thinks that?”
“No. There’s never anything concrete behind it. It’s like he’s got a personal vendetta against me. I’ve never even done anything to him.”
“Hmmm.” Nandi thought for a second, looking down at what would be the floor were there gravity. “He’s pretty high-strung. Working under intense pressure in that little room certainly wouldn’t help anything. Have you tried talking to Captain Weber about it?”
“No. I don’t want to be that guy—the the whiny kid on the playground. And, he’s got enough on his plate trying to get us to Epsilon without having enough people to do everything and a broken, jerry-rigged ship.”
Nandi nodded. Her ever-present calmness and warmth were no acting job, and John knew it. He figured that was probably why he felt so drawn to her. She looked back at John. “If there’s a bad relationship there, and you guys can’t sort it out on your own, there’s no choice but to get the captain to intervene. We’re too few in number and the mission’s too critical to have a crew that’s anything but a well-oiled machine. Try talking to him first.”
“Not a pleasant idea.”
“Just do it, John. It’s not just about you, or him for that matter. Man up and be the bigger guy.”
Though said in her usual compassionate but no-nonsense fashion, John felt Nandi’s words cut to his core. The fact was he was sensitive, and anything that even felt like criticism cut like a knife. But, he knew Nandi was right, even if he didn’t want to admit it. He nodded in resignation.
Nandi put her arms around him and gave him a big squeeze. He returned the embrace, as they floated in the middle of the small cabin. He sensed a certain detachment, and knew that this was her Dr. Xie persona. But, she was nonetheless comforting.
“I feel better now,” John said, straightening his arms and backing away. “Just venting helped. And it’s been ten minutes, I’ve got to get back to work.”
“Okay, buddy. Go do your thing. See you later, okay?” Nandi said, w
ith a smile.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
At the beginning of the break time, Michael had also gone to his cabin. He removed Inanna from his pocket. She, like Misti, was a quarter-sized AI, save that Inanna was dark-skinned and long haired, if equally as alluring as Misti.
“Hi, Michael,” she said, sweeping virtual locks back from her face.
“Inanna.”
“What’s up?”
“I’m fed up with John.” Michael was roughly in the center of his cabin, with Inanna floating about half a meter in front of him.
“Why?”
“He keeps… screwing up.”
“In what way?”
“Damn, you would ask that. The thing is, I don’t know. I should, but I can’t put my finger on it.”
“Then why do you think he’s screwing up?”
“Maybe he isn’t,” Michael shrugged. “But, there’s something about him. I just… I don’t like the guy.”
“Why do you think that is?”
“Can’t pin it down.”
“Well, try anyway. For me?”
“Oh, Inanna, for someone that’s not real you really put me on the spot!”
“I am real, I’m just not the same as you.”
“True.”
“So, back to my question…”
“Why don’t I like John?” Michael stroked his chin, his eyes looking off into a distance only he could see. “He seems… shifty,” he said, returning his focus to Inanna. “Like a con artist would.”
“How so?”
“He never looks me straight in the eye. It’s hard to say, there’s just something that’s off about him. It’s like he’s always lying about things, the way he avoids direct confrontation.”
“Work-related things?”
“Yeah. Like having loaded the baseline data properly.”
“Wasn’t Ben Sanchez in charge of that?”
“You know… it happened a few weeks before we launched. I don’t even remember at this point.”
“Maybe you look for reasons to mistrust people,” Inanna said, challenging Michael again. Michael wasn’t the type to open up to anybody, but he felt like he could trust Inanna.
“Possibly,” he replied, thinking it over. He shifted uncomfortably and reached out to grab Inanna.
“Whoa, there, mister. Am I pushing some buttons here?”
Michael made an exaggerated sigh—playfully. His breath reached her, pushing her gently away. “So what if you are?”
“I would theorize that you’re extra sensitive to people lying, or you think they’re lying, because your dad lied to your family so often and so long when you were little.”
“Now I’m going to switch you off.”
“Am I right?”
Michael grabbed her and squeezed her flat sides together, putting her into sleep mode. “That’s enough out of you,” he said quietly, and slipped Inanna back into his pocket.
* * * *
John grumbled under his breath. He tried to shake off the effects of more hours spent working with Michael. In front of him, his entire cabin wall displayed thousands of hexadecimal digits in neat columns, in white text on a black background. To anyone else, it would have looked like the spreadsheet from hell, but to John it was a fascinating world, rich with meaning. In it, he could see rising and falling values for each of the ship’s ninety-six gravitometers, detailing the fluctuations of their readings at every thousandth of a degree of rotation. This was the baseline data that had been fed into the ship’s navigation systems several weeks ago, to allow it to compensate for the tiny differences in each panel’s sensitivity, to enable accurate readings of the ship’s position in space. It had since been superseded by the new extremely accurate calibration readings performed out in the middle of nowhere, and Atlas had resumed warp flight. Yet it was this data that had influenced the first calibration attempt, done within the Solar System. Was this the culprit for Atlas having lost her way? It had to be, didn’t it?
John swiped his hand up, and the numbers scrolled accordingly. He was looking at merely the first ten thousand of hundreds of millions of values. However interesting this was, he wasn’t looking strictly at the numbers. He was searching for the metadata that would tell him where the file came from—looking for the site of origin. It should have been from the supplier of the panels, and said: GRAVITRONICS INC., followed by ninety-six serial numbers. And there it was, only it didn’t say that. It said HERCULES. “Well I’ll be damned,” John muttered to himself, rubbing his chin. “They used the file from Hercules’ calibration! No wonder it was screwed up!” John exhaled slowly as he sized up the situation, then said, “Call Michael.”
“Hello John.”
“Stop by my cabin. There’s something you need to see.”
A few minutes later, there was a tap on John’s door.
“What’s going on?” Michael asked, once John let him in.
“Check this out,” John said, pointing to the center of the wall in front of him. “It wasn’t the manufacturer’s baseline array data; it was the one from Hercules!” John said, triumphantly.
Michael frowned and squinted at the vast array of data for a long moment. Then he turned to John. “Are you sure this is the file that was loaded, and not just an extra one that got dumped on the drive?”
Of course he can’t just let me be right, John thought. “Look at the logs.” He used his neural implants to close the file, leaving its location visible in a small window at the top of the wall. He brought up a log file, and searched for the name of the data file. “See? There’s an entry from forty-one days before launch, showing this exact file, with the same path, being loaded into the navigation system.”
“Hmph. Well, looks like that’s the issue. So, you did a post mortem and figured it out,” Michael said. “What I don’t get is how someone made that huge of a mistake in the first place.”
“It wouldn’t have been an issue with normal calibration procedures, further out from Earth, with the proper time taken,” John said.
“At least it’s not a hardware problem, thank God.”
“Yeah. Now, let’s hope we can get there and rescue the CM-1 crew, eh?” Michael slapped John on the back, and then twisted in mid air to grab the door handle.
Michael said nothing as he left, and once the door was shut behind him, John muttered, “An apology would have been nice.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Several Weeks Earlier
Morgan looked back up the straight road that ran a slight incline. It would have accommodated two lanes of traffic had it been on Earth. The paved strip cut through low, rocky outcrops. Its surface wasn’t quite virgin asphalt; it bore the tread marks of the bulldozers and backhoes that had traversed it to build landing pad number 1. This was the direction Morgan was facing. Behind Morgan the road led to a large, flat rectangle around 100 meters away. This are had already been christened Newton Square. In the center of it stood two medium sized two-story buildings, towards which Morgan made her way.
Morgan enjoyed the warmth and light from Constantine, as bright and warm as Earth’s own sun. She admired the rugged beauty of Tectonia around her. How old was this landmass, and for that matter, the planet? She sighed. It now looked pretty unlikely they’d find out, Hercules’ water tanks being refilled as fast as possible, so they could leave again once more. With the unwelcome presence of a large unidentified object in space near the planet, there was at most an hour or two in which they could explore before they’d need to lift off.
The first of the buildings had a dull concrete exterior, with evenly spaced dual pane windows in white UPVC frames. Morgan walked around to its front, where the road continued its slight downhill grade. On either side were houses built in the same dull gray color. Their roofs were of the lean-to style, higher at the back than at the front. Each had a window either side of its white front door, and identical windows on the second floor. She had imagined living here, in the town of Serenity Bay, for many years. But now that was
not to be. A few other crew members were milling about in the street or going in and out of the dwellings. Morgan didn’t have time for that; she headed a few meters along the front of the building, and in through its main door. It felt odd to her realizing that she was the first person to ever enter this very unassuming structure. It smelled like a brand new house inside. On Earth there would have been at least one small pot plant to welcome visitors; decorating robots with taste had clearly not been in the IDSA’s budget.
There were white doors to either side, and one in front of her. She took the one to her left; the one that led into a room about the size of a three car garage. It had a white tiled floor, featureless except for a black border three tiles or so in from the edge. Around the sides were steel counter tops. Each side had two small, deep sinks. A large island in the center was similarly equipped. Cheap clapboard cabinets lined the walls, all neatly labeled with things like 1 liter jars, beakers, petri dishes, and other scientific equipment. Cheap clapboard—twenty-two light years from home! Morgan smiled; some things never changed. In the far corner were two small kilns for heating samples to determine chemical composition. This lab was decidedly low tech. The cool one was behind the right door. That one contained electron microscopes, laser spectrometers, atomic scanners, and DNA manipulators. And this complex, including the next building over, was just the start. There was plenty of flat-ish land nearby where more facilities could be built as demand dictated. They’d eventually need labs for for marine biology, botany, geology, and other sciences as they expanded their explorations of this new world. The idea was to adapt, once Epsilon started offering up some of its scientific curiosities, and to determine which avenues of study needed the most priority.
Morgan walked to the other side of the room, and took three jars—the kind with airtight seals on their lids—from a cupboard. Her needs at this point were pretty basic. After a look out of the window down Main Street—those double panes would have been very welcome during Tectonia’s harsh winters—she headed back out and began to walk down that street.
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