“Roger that,” Yeoh replied. “Okay . . . so now all you have to do is ask the computer to send the hammer to the coordinates displayed on the bridge’s screens.”
“That’s all?” Zell asked incredulously.
“What were you expecting, Doc?” Benny asked. “To pull a big lever or something? The whole ship is rigged for voice commands.”
“Ostensibly, yes,” Zell replied. “But remember that this technology failed the builders of this ship, so how do you expect us—”
Donovan touched his shoulder, a warm grin on his face. “Have faith, Elias. Nothing has ever been accomplished by believing it couldn’t be done.”
“Where’d you hear that rubbish?”
“Your father used to tell us that all the time.”
“Which only proves that you shouldn’t listen to old maniacs.”
“Whenever you folks are ready,” Wilson said with some irritation.
“Computer,” Donovan spoke up, trying to keep his voice steady. “Do you read the coordinates displayed on the bridge’s screens?”
“YES.”
“Please send the rock hammer located in the center of the bridge to those coordinates exactly ten seconds into the future on my mark.” Donovan glanced at his watch and waited for the second hand to reach twelve. “Mark!”
“ACCESSING WORMHOLE PROTOCOLS. INITIALIZING TEMPORAL AND SPATIAL COORDINATES. WORMHOLE FIELD INTEGRITY AT ONE HUNDRED PERCENT. ACTIVATING WORMHOLE.”
Donovan, Soong, and Zell watched from a safe distance as the hammer became immersed in the wormhole. The effect was odd. At first the hammer seemed to be encased in an ever-thickening vortex, not unlike a whirlpool. As the tool became hazier inside the vortex, they could hear its metal edges clanging against the deck plating. A slight breeze then brushed past their exposed cheeks as the air sucked in to fill the vacuum that had emerged inside the vortex. A second later the hammer had blinked out of existence.
Ten miles away, the remaining crew aboard the Copernicus watched as their mission clock counted down ten seconds from Donovan’s mark. A bubble began to form in the center of their cabin, a few inches above the flooring. The bubble seemed to morph Wilson’s perception of Yeoh’s face, which had suddenly taken on the properties of a fun house mirror—wide in the jaw at one moment, then narrowing at the forehead, then eyes bulging. Yeoh’s face became obscured as the bubble darkened. A moment later it was gone and the hammer appeared in midair, dropping to the floor in a rush of air and a definitive clank.
The three men stared at the hammer for several long seconds. Then Benny picked it up, half-disbelieving the slight weight he felt in his hand.
Wilson pressed his mike button. “Donovan, your . . . package has been delivered.”
“Are you okay?”
“We’re fine, Donovan,” Benny said as a smile broadened on his face. “The hammer’s fine. And we’re going home.”
“Wait a minute, Benevisto,” Wilson said suddenly. “We can’t go anywhere until we run some more tests. Besides, you two have to get on the ball and help Dr. Donovan download those files from the Astraeus’s memory core.”
“I’m sorry, sir. It’s just that—”
Wilson patted his shoulder and hit his mike button again. “Donovan, we’d like to run another test. Are you ready to bring the hammer back?”
“Sure. All we need from you guys are the protocols.”
Yeoh pressed his mike button. “Doctor, all you have to do is tell the computer to reverse the wormhole and bring the hammer back to the same coordinates.”
“Is it back in the same location?”
Benny placed the hammer back where it fell on the deck. “Affirmative, Donovan. We’re all set.”
“Roger, Benny. We’re all set down here.”
Donovan did exactly as he was told. Wilson, Yeoh, and Benny watched and waited for the bubble to reappear, but nothing happened as the clock ticked off ten seconds. As the men glanced at one another wondering what went wrong, they were suddenly seized by an incredible sense of vertigo. The hammer began to clatter on the floor as the floor itself fell beneath them. Wilson tried to look away, but he could barely turn his head to see the moonscape around him clouding with dust.
The vortex was opening up around the ship.
They were falling. They tried to hold on to the cabin interior, but the ship itself was falling as well. Wilson wondered if an underground cavern had opened up beneath them. The sensation was not unlike the time his plane was hit by a SAM missile in Iraq, but then he could still move, still blow his hatch and parachute to safety. Now he was frozen inside his own body, inside this vertigo, inside the vortex.
Ten seconds later a much larger vortex materialized in the center of the Astraeus’s bridge. Zell and Soong stood transfixed as the bubble in the air began to solidify. Donovan grabbed them by their collars and shoved them over a console just as a rush of air knocked them flat.
Zell stood up first and saw the Copernicus sitting serenely in the center of the bridge. “My God in heaven. Alan, Soong . . .”
Soong and Donovan helped each other to their feet and peered over the console as the Copernicus’s hatch began to open. A moment later Yeoh appeared on the porch in his grimy space suit and shot a stream of vomit onto the deck below. Donovan rushed up the ladder to steady him. He glanced inside. Wilson and Benny were alive but groggy.
Benny smiled weakly from his prone position. “Well now, that didn’t work out quite right.”
Donovan, Zell, and Soong soon helped their comrades down the Copernicus’s ladder and onto the deck of the Astraeus. Yeoh pressed his face against the cool plating and groaned. Wilson asked for some water and watched in amazement as Zell ordered some from one of the ship’s omnipresent screens. He reached into the screen’s belly and handed a cold glass off to each of them with a grin. Wilson eyed his water suspiciously but drank it anyway.
“You look pretty good for three men who were just sucked down the drainpipe of the cosmos,” Zell said, unable to contain his amusement.
“Never in my life,” Yeoh muttered as he sat up. “It was incredible—there’s no describing it.”
Wilson wiped his mouth and glanced at Benny and Yeoh. “You two want to tell me what the hell just happened?”
The two men looked at each other sheepishly. “I don’t know,” Yeoh said finally. “We placed the hammer exactly where it materialized. It was in the right coordinates—”
Benny shook his head. “No, it wasn’t, Bruce. It materialized a few inches above the deck. Setting it down on the deck must’ve screwed up the computer’s targeting mechanisms.”
“So it took the entire ship with the hammer?” Soong asked.
“The computer must have located the hammer in the general vicinity,” Yeoh explained, “but was forced to widen the field in order to receive all of the targeted object.”
“Receive all of it?” Wilson asked. “You’re telling me there’s a chance that the wormhole could’ve split the hammer—and therefore us—in half?”
“There was that possibility,” Yeoh said, his face reddening. “We figured it wasn’t likely to happen though.”
“Well, now at least we understand how this ship wound up on the Moon,” Donovan added as he looked around the bridge. “They must’ve been off with their coordinates somehow.”
“And wound up crashing into the Moon instead of landing on Earth,” Zell added.
“But that doesn’t explain how they wound up two and a half million years in the past,” Soong noted. “Remember, Joshua said that they planned on going to the early twenty-first century.”
“If they couldn’t get where they were going right, what makes you think they were any better at when they were going?” Benny said with a groan. “That’s all beside the point now. What the hell are we gonna do now stuck inside this ship?”
Yeoh smiled at him and sat up farther. “You’re far too cynical, Benny. We’re much better off than we were.”
Wilson sipped a little
more water. “Care to explain that, Yeoh?”
“Well, Colonel, from what Dr. Donovan has said, this entire ship is a fully interactive matter-energy converter, a massive 3-D printer as it were. We’ve just seen it generate water out of thin air. It’s likely the ship is also able to generate mechanisms in the same manner. Why else would it have no controls? No spare parts lying about? We could program the ascent engine’s specs into the computer and, in theory, receive a perfectly functioning duplicate.”
“Yeah,” Benny said, “sure that’ll work. But how the hell are we gonna get back to the surface?”
Yeoh shook his head. “Benny, we know the wormholes work provided we give the computer very specific coordinates. All we have to do is repair the engine, send the ship back through the wormhole, and blast off from the surface, as we had been planning to do.”
“Go back through the wormhole?” Zell repeated. “Are you out of your mind? The damn thing almost killed the three of you!”
“You said it yourself, Elias: they look pretty good,” Donovan said. “Aside from a keen sense of vertigo, the trip doesn’t seem to harm human beings. To me, it seems like our only shot of getting out of here.”
“Wait a minute,” Benny jumped in. “Why not fire up a wormhole to take us straight back to Earth?”
Yeoh shook his head. “We know the wormholes are stable across short distances. But a quarter-million miles? That didn’t exactly work out well for the people who built this ship. I’d rather reverse what we just did, since we know it works.”
“Suits me,” Donovan said. “Let’s go.”
“Donovan,” Soong said impatiently, “I know you don’t mind risking your life, but I for one—”
Wilson held up a hand. “I agree with Donovan, Dr. Soong. It’s our only shot.” Wilson turned to the others. “Yeoh, you’re in charge of plotting our next wormhole jump. I don’t need to tell you to make sure you get the coordinates right. Benny, you’re in charge of getting this computer to repair our ascent engines. As soon as that’s done, I’ll help you effect repairs. Then we’ll all concentrate our efforts on downloading the Astraeus’s files.” Wilson grabbed the edge of a chair and forced himself up from the floor into a sitting position. “We’re going home, people, and we’re not going home empty-handed.”
Donovan stepped forward. “Wilson, what about Mission Control?”
Wilson smiled. “If you’d be so kind as to help me get them on the horn, I think they might like to have another sitrep.”
June 30
Johnson Space Center
Houston, Texas
8:08 a.m.
Deke walked back to his office and collapsed in his desk chair. He had listened to every single word of Wilson’s transmission. He half wondered if Wilson was hallucinating because of his injury. But after letting it sink in, he chose to believe the report. How could he not? The important thing was that the crew was alive and would be able to blast off the Moon and ultimately come home. But everything else—the story of the Astraeus—was completely beyond him. Not in his wildest dreams could he believe that humanity would ultimately be capable of such a thing. Although skeptical by nature, he had never been a cynic. And what would the news ultimately mean for humanity? Would the world finally be able to stop all this madness, all this death and war, and be able to live with one another in peace? Would humanity finally become wise enough in their decisions with regard to genetic engineering? Maybe this generation, he mused, but we’re creatures of short-term memory. He doubted the lessons learned from our future would guarantee a safer one. And could the future even be changed by having foreknowledge of it? He put his head in his hands and rubbed his tired eyes.
He had equally been disturbed by the lockdown in Mission Control following his conversation with the President. She hadn’t informed him that the military would be involved and forcing anyone affiliated with the mission to sign nondisclosure statements under penalty of treason. In fact, the President had been warm and friendly on the phone, apparently pleased with the news. She even informed him that she thought the mission’s success would help to ease tensions with China over Taiwan. Why then the media blackout? Why all the secrecy? What the hell were they planning on doing?
Deke sat at his desk, staring out the window, thinking of the crew, of that ship from the future, of all the unbelievable things that had blown into his door and upended his life. When he finally thought to glance at his watch, more than an hour had passed. He had sat with this new world long enough.
There was only one thing to do. He knew it was right, even if it meant betraying his country.
He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and dialed.
“Hi, Mom?”
“Johnny? Johnny, what time is it? Is anything wrong? Did something happen with the mission?”
“No, everything’s fine. Looks like we’re going to get the crew home.”
“Oh thank God, those poor people.”
“Mom, uh, is Dad there? I want to tell him the good news.”
“Yes, certainly. He’s right here. Hold on.”
A shuffle was followed by his father’s rich baritone voice. He imagined the old man sitting up in bed and smoothing his silver hair down before reaching for the phone. His father always hated to look messy, even if he was only on the phone.
“Son, is everything all right?”
“Yes, Dad. Everything’s fine. The crew’s going to make it back home.”
“That’s wonderful news. Incredible. You guys must’ve pulled a rabbit out of your hats.”
“You’re not far off. Dad, are you still sitting on the committee to approve funding for genetic-engineering companies?”
“Yes. Why?”
“I need to see you soon, Dad. I might have some information for you.”
“Final check of the outer hull is complete,” Donovan heard Yeoh say through his headset. “We’re coming back in.”
Donovan circled the Copernicus once more, not so much looking for any flaws in its structural integrity but just looking at the craft in amazement. It was sitting in the exact spot where the crew had landed, its legs in the exact same impressions they had first made on the Moon. The Astraeus’s targeting systems had proved flawless. The trip itself through the wormhole had been another matter.
Regardless of how many times he thought about it, Donovan still couldn’t believe the ease with which they were able to repair the ascent engine inside the Astraeus. The ship’s computer had been able to scan and replicate an entirely new engine indistinguishable from the old one. Wilson had double-checked its systems and declared the engine functioning within normal parameters.
“Okay, I’m heading up the ladder now,” Yeoh said. “You coming, Benny?”
Benny looked off in the distance and sighed audibly. “Yeah, I’m coming.”
Donovan walked toward Moose’s shallow grave underneath the American and Chinese flags. So much of the mission had gone so terribly wrong. The explosion in orbit. The damage to the ascent engine. Yuen and Moose. Yet, somehow, they had been able not only to fix the engine but also download the Astraeus’s files and return to the surface with relative ease.
He wished he had had more time to examine the ship, do a proper survey. But that was a mission for another team somewhere down the line. His job was over now.
“Dr. Donovan,” Wilson’s voice echoed in his headset, “we’re just about ready up here.”
“I’m sorry. I’m coming.”
Donovan pulled open the Velcro flap of his left pocket and carefully pulled out his father’s silver astronaut pin. He placed it at the foot of Moose’s grave and made his way back toward the Copernicus. He smiled.
“You made it, Dad,” he said, feeling the years of anger and regret wash away. Donovan looked at the Earth, a giant blue bauble in the lunar sky. He sighed. It was time to go home.
They had work to do.
Chapter 16
July 1
The Tai-Ping
Lunar Orbit
/> 8:55 a.m., Houston Time
8 days, 2 hours, 40 minutes, Mission Elapsed Time
For everything that the team had endured by going to the Moon, and for all that had transpired while on its surface, the journey back to the Tai-Ping in lunar orbit had been positively uneventful. Benny, with Wilson’s aid, had piloted the Copernicus with relative ease back to a gentle docking. The two astronauts marveled at how, considering everything she had been through, the Copernicus actually flew better than she had before.
The Tai-Ping herself was almost as much of a marvel. Using the restart procedures Mission Control had given them, Wilson, Benny, and Yeoh powered up the cold and seemingly dead module with relative ease. Despite the freezing temperatures inside the craft, they took their time, confirming each step in the restart program with NASA’s engineers back in Houston before execution. Systems soon began humming to life all around them. Heat and fresh air began to flow through the ventilation system. Once they knew everything was functioning, they conducted a detailed inspection and made any necessary repairs. After several hours of intense work, the Tai-Ping almost looked as if it had never been switched off.
Wilson drifted through the tunnel connecting the Tai-Ping to the Copernicus. While the others were still getting reacquainted with weightlessness, he found himself more comfortable than he had been in days. His broken knee hardly bothered him, though he had to make doubly sure not to smack it against any equipment. As the others stowed gear in the Tai-Ping for the trip home, he made one final inspection of the Copernicus. He knew they had already transferred everything they needed from her, but he wanted to take one final look to be sure—and to say good-bye to the ship that had been their lifeboat during their perilous journey to the Ocean of Storms.
Wilson whirled around in the center of the Copernicus and used his momentum to shoot himself through the tunnel to the Tai-Ping. Benny was waiting for him on the other side, a knowing look in his eye.
“Ready, Skipper?”
Wilson nodded. “Seal the tunnel and get ready to jettison the LEM.”
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