The Hole

by Brandon Q Morris

  “What about the technical system? Is everything okay there?” Tim asked.

  “I think so, but why don’t you tell me?” Nicole asked.

  If something had really gone wrong, she would have already heard alarms sounding and seen lights blinking red. However, indications reported that all satellites were orbiting as usual. The last few days prior to the disaster had been chaotic due to the many supply flights to the Ark, but those would soon be over. Once the vessel departed Earth’s orbit, which was expected to occur on the 28th or 29th of the month, Nicole would take her previously packed suitcases and go on her last big vacation. The Ark group had only rented the control center for this special project, and afterward it would be shut down.

  Suddenly Nicole noticed a yellow blinking dot on one of her monitors.

  “Wait a second, Tim,” she said. “Something is approaching your orbit.”

  “You’ve got something?” he asked.

  “One moment.” She searched her database to see which object this might be. “It can only be Tiangong-3.”

  “You mean the old Chinese space station?” the astronaut looked surprised. “Isn’t it supposed to crash soon?”

  “That’s what I thought, too, Tim. I’ll contact my colleagues over there.”

  In such situations it was usually best to go outside of official channels. Unless the object served a military purpose, Nicole normally received an answer quickly, and indeed she got a reply within seconds.

  “My colleagues confirmed it is the Tiangong-3, but they have no idea why it is in a higher orbit. They are looking into it,” she said.

  An Earth satellite could only get into a lower orbit if it was decelerated by the edge of the atmosphere, but to get to a higher orbit, an object would have to accelerate. Who was responsible for accelerating Tiangong-3? The station had been officially unmanned for years, and was scheduled to perform a controlled crash to Earth soon.

  “CapCom to Ark, are you still there, Tim?” Nicole asked.

  “I’m listening,” he replied.

  “Please stay nearby since we don’t know what is going on,” she instructed.

  Tim grinned and said, “Oh come on, I couldn’t leave here anyway.”

  “Good, I will let you know if anything changes. CapCom over.”

  Two hours later the color of the dot changed from yellow to orange. Nicole made another call to the Ark.

  “CapCom to Ark, come in.”

  “This is Tim Peakes. Is there any news?”

  “Tiangong-3 is coming closer,” she answered. “The Chinese have not found out anything yet. Could you modify your orbit?”

  “What? For what purpose exactly?” he asked. “Except to waste fuel?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe so it will take longer for Tiangong-3 to reach your orbit? Or perhaps to reduce the probability of a collision with it?”

  The astronaut shook his head. “Maybe, but that is a waste of resources. The whole thing must be intentional. We will only find out what it is when it happens.”

  “And what if it is related to the sabotage of yesterday?” Nicole asked.

  “We cannot run away forever, plus a higher orbit would jeopardize our schedule. Also the supply flights would need more fuel and carry less cargo.”

  “You are right, Tim.”

  “Tell us when the thing turns red,” he said.

  Almost instantaneously, the control center computer sounded an acoustic warning. “Now it is red,” Nicole reported.

  Her colleague in orbit moved out of the camera’s field of view. “I am just looking for the frequencies the Chinese use,” Tim said while doing so.

  She watched the red dot drift closer to the Ark. The horizontal distance was still half an Earth radius, but vertically Tiangong-3 and the Ark were almost at the same level. Nevertheless, Tiangong-3 moved on a more ellipsoidal trajectory. If the station accelerated further, there could be a collision with the Ark after the next orbit.

  “I have it,” Tim announced.

  “Is it Tiangong-3?” Nicole asked.

  “Yes—I meant, I established communication with it,” said Tim. “I will add you to the call.”

  “...demand that the People’s Republic of China receive a number of passengers on the Ark commensurate to its population,” said a man’s voice in English, though with a heavy Chinese accent.

  “This is the CapCom of the Ark. Identify yourself,” Nicole said.

  “I am Tang Shixin, Major of the People’s Liberation Army. I have three people on board Tiangong-3 I demand places for on the Ark. This is the only way my glorious country will be sufficiently represented in a future mankind.”

  “This is not possible, Major Tang,” Nicole said firmly. “You know that all places were distributed according to transparent criteria. There was no intention to have nations proportionally represented.”

  “The fact that my government accepted this is a scandal, but it doesn’t matter anymore, because this regime will be swept away four months from now. Let’s not forget you have eight free places now. If you refuse to accommodate my requests, there will be no Ark left. Luckily I found a few comrades-in-arms to help me during this mission.”

  “We will not give in to blackmail,” Tim said.

  “Then all of you will die.”

  “You must understand that I cannot decide this on my own,” Nicole said.

  “I give you half an hour, and then I’ll reactivate the engines. You know what that means.”

  Shit, shit, shit! Why did this have to happen to me? The Frenchwoman had expected a few nice, uneventful shifts before finally going on vacation, but nothing like this! She reviewed her instructions to determine where to go from here. Security issue. That was it. It was time to make a call to Karl Freitag, the Security Director.

  “This is Freitag.”

  The man answering the call was obviously German. Nicole herself was French, but she had worked long enough in Darmstadt to recognize the German’s accent right away. This gave her confidence. She explained to him what was happening, yet Freitag did not display any emotion in his voice.

  “It’s alright,” he said. “Do not get excited. We were prepared for something like this. When you contact the Ark again, simply mention Plan 18.”

  “Plan 18? Don’t you want to deal with this attempt at blackmail?” Nicole asked, incredulously.

  “Sorry, I am really busy. However, I will alert the Chinese that their old space station has been hijacked. Otherwise, you have your instructions. And if you would now excuse me.”

  Nicole once again contacted the Ark. “CapCom to Ark. Tim?”

  “That was fast,” he said.

  “Yes, it was.” It almost seemed like magic to her. The German’s self-assurance must have rubbed off on her.

  “I am supposed to mention Plan 18 to you,” she said.

  “Plan 18?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Oh.” Now Tim apparently remembered and momentarily disappeared again from the camera’s view. Nicole heard paper rustling.

  “Found it.” He held an envelope labeled ‘Plan 18’ up to the camera. Then he silently read the text on the sheet.

  “Ah—I have been wondering for a long time what this device was for. I thought it was a spare console. Just a moment, I am going to start it up,” Tim said. “Okay, everything worked. Indicator lights are green, just as described here. Now you just have to tell this Major Tang that we accept his demands.”

  Nicole’s eyes grew wide with disbelief. “Excuse me?” she said.

  “Tell him, ‘We accept them.’ Quite simple,” the astronaut instructed.

  “But we cannot give in to blackmail!”

  “This is what Plan 18 says, and we are following it.”

  “Okay, I will do it, though I don’t understand it.”

  Nicole established a connection to the Chinese station. Major Tang seemed to be as surprised as she was, but obviously tried not to show it.

  “Very sensible,” he sa
id. “The Chinese nation is in your debt.”

  She ended the connection, hoping that this mysterious Plan 18 was going to work!

  “CapCom to Ark, come in.”

  “Sorry, Nicole, we are really busy here right now. Plan 18, you know,” Tim answered.

  “Mission Control needs to know what is going on up there.”

  “You are just curious.”

  “I can look up the appropriate regulations if…” she cautioned.

  “Please, no threats. I am going to let you share my video feeds,” he said.

  Nicole sat upright. Things were happening on her monitors, and then she could see a live display of what was happening 400 kilometers above her. Tiangong-3 was approaching the Ark very slowly now—it obviously had matched its speed in the meantime. The space station’s coupling port was aiming for its counterpart at the bottom of the Ark. Tim must have launched a drone, because everything was shown from an overhead perspective. The Ark and Tiangong-3 were floating below the camera like two components about to connect. The Chinese space station itself was about 15 meters long, and when it was approximately 200 meters away from the Ark, Nicole suddenly saw two arm-like extensions move, one at either end of the Ark. Each hurled something toward Tiangong-3.

  “Ark, what is that?” she asked nervously.

  “You will see in a moment,” Tim said, trying to reassure her.

  “Are you trying to destroy the station? You will get hit by the wreckage!”

  “Don’t worry,” he said calmly. “Plan 18 is brilliant.”

  The recording drone moved closer to one of the projectiles. Nicole saw that the object had an elongated shape and something seemed to be moving inside it. It must be made of a soft material, she assumed. Then the first projectile hit its target. It did not destroy Tiangong-3, but instead wrapped itself around it. At the same time, its momentum made the station started to rotate. The second projectile hit, behaving just like the first, and the rotation of Tiangong-3 increased.

  Nicole noticed the Ark was activating its engines now, as the ship’s crew obviously wanted to increase their distance by a few meters to be safe. She watched the data displayed on her monitors. The old Chinese space station lost velocity, and its orbital plane decreased rapidly. The violent rotation prevented it from counteracting the assault with its own engine. The image sent by the drone showed the station using its attitude-control thrusters to stabilize itself, but they seemed to be too weak.

  Nicole had seen enough. She could imagine the fate of Tiangong-3—if the crew was lucky, the station would not crash, but it definitely did not have enough fuel on board to repeat the attempt. The blackmailers in the station would probably find a way to return to Earth. China could take care of this.

  “CapCom to Ark,” she said into the microphone. “Congratulations! And you better reload your catapults, just for safety’s sake. The Chinese might not be the only ones to get such ideas at the last minute.”

  March 24, 2072, Seattle

  Today was going to be stressful. Outside of Maribel’s office door waited about a dozen men and women, each of whom needed to see her urgently for one reason or another. Then, the first face she saw after sitting down at her desk had to be that of her ex-boss.

  “Good morning, Maribel,” he said. Zetschewitz looked bleary-eyed, his skin gray.

  “Good evening, Dieter. What’s the time where you are?”

  “I don’t know exactly. Late, I think. Right now, that’s not very important for me.”

  “I am sorry to hear that.”

  “Compared to the burdens you are bearing, this is nothing. I was so relieved to hear you got out in time.”

  “Thank you, Dieter,” Maribel said. She did not even want to think of the moment she realized the other seven passengers died in a ball of fire, and that she was supposed to have been with them.

  “I am contacting you on behalf of the Chinese party leadership,” Zetschewitz said. “They don’t want to apologize in public, as that would mean losing too much face. But I am supposed to tell you now that this won’t happen again. Tang was a conservative dissident. Obviously five years in a reeducation camp were not enough for him. If you ask me, he must have had support in the party apparatus. A lot of things seem be happening there behind the scenes. But the Ark reacted very decisively.”

  “I had nothing to do with that,” Maribel explained. “It was organized by Karl Freitag, our Security Director.”

  “A German name,” Zetschewitz noted.

  “Yes, he is your compatriot. Do you know him?”

  “No, Maribel. Is there any other news? Any chance for us to escape the catastrophe?”

  “It doesn’t look like it. But the tip about the asteroid mining crew was useful. We are now in direct contact with them, without using Shostakovich.”

  She told her former boss about the exchange of ideas she’d had with the mining crew concerning the black hole. “Do you have any clue how we could pay off these energy debts I discussed with them?” she asked Zetschewitz.

  He was not the first person she had asked about that. Soon after hearing of the theory she had presented this scenario to leading physicists, but so far without success. Her status as the leader of the Ark project helped a lot, since many seemed to believe she had personally picked the passengers for the Ark. Instead, the passengers had been selected according to criteria developed and implemented by an independent commission. While she had helped choose the commission, she had played no other role in the selection process.

  “Not right now, Maribel, but I will try to find out.”

  “Please don’t mention a word to Shostakovich. I don’t trust him.”

  “You are well advised not to, Maribel. We will talk later. I urgently need some sleep, because tomorrow morning we are going to the mountains, to the FAST telescope.”

  “Have a good trip, Dieter.”

  As if he had been listening behind her office door, Karl Freitag popped his head in the moment Maribel’s monitor screen turned black again.

  “Sorry, but it’s urgent,” he said.

  “Today, everything is urgent.”

  Freitag approached her and gave her a hug. “I am glad we have you back,” he said.

  She had not expected the man to be so affectionate. She thought she might be blushing, so she turned around and sat down again before he could notice.

  “What’s up?” Maribel asked.

  “I have the final plans for the launch of the Ark, which still need to have your okay,” Freitag said. “The Russians made it, just in time.”

  “The reactor is already in flight?”

  “It is on the launch pad. By the 28th it is expected to be in orbit. Then we could start on the 30th.”

  “Another six days,” she said.

  “Yes, six crazy days. Anyone seeking to spoil our plans has to shift into high gear now. I am afraid I will barely get any sleep until we’re safely underway.”

  “You will manage, Karl. By the way, those catapults were a great idea.”

  “We thought for a long time about how we could defend the Ark against threats,” he said. “Destroying an attacker with a conventional weapon could be lethal in orbit, as the debris created is almost more dangerous than a single spaceship.”

  “Where should I sign?” Maribel asked as she glanced at the paper.

  “Don’t you want to check the plan?”

  “What can I say about it?”

  “Okay, then go to the last page, look at the paper and say, ‘I agree.’”

  Freitag held out the document to her. Maribel took it and skimmed the text. On the last page she said, “I agree.”

  Freitag burst out laughing.

  “What is going on?”

  “Just a joke,” he said laughing. “Too bad I did not record it. You must be reading too much science fiction. Of course you have to sign the old-fashioned way, so the e-paper can verify your signature.”

  “You’re such a clown.” Maribel looked for a pen on her de
sk. Then she scribbled her name on the paper. She didn’t like her own signature. It looked like a ten-year-old trying out her penmanship. Out of nowhere a green checkmark appeared next to her signature.

  Maribel looked up and handed Freitag the papers. He didn’t bother leaving.

  “Anything else?” she asked.

  “There is one last question that needs to be resolved,” he said.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s your place on the Ark. We have already found replacement candidates for the seven people who died. But who should take your place?”

  “Couldn’t we decide this by the regular method?”

  “No, because your spot did not belong to one of the three contingents,” Freitag explained. “If we hand it to one of those, we’ll cause a lot of unnecessary trouble.”

  “You mean I should decide?” Maribel asked.

  “According to the most recent surveys you are enormously popular, even more so after the Florida incident. At least you decided to share the fate of the ten billion others, no matter what. I think people won’t mind, whatever you decide.”

  Chen, she thought, Chen should get this spot. But then again, he would never accept this gift. Then she had an idea.

  “You should go, Karl.”

  “Me?” Karl Freitag, her security director, actually turned pale as he said this.

  “We are going to need someone like you on board, someone solid as a rock who knows a lot about security and technology,” Maribel said. “Terrible times await the crew of the Ark. They will have to watch live transmissions showing how their parents, children, friends, and relatives on Earth are killed, except for those who find refuge in bunkers and will survive for a few weeks or months. And then the real work will start. They have to colonize an asteroid and ensure their survival in darkness.”

  “Maybe,” Freitag said, “but what would my partner say?”

  “If he loves you, he will let you go. So talk to him. How much time do we have?”