Overture

by Mark Wandrey

  “Do you think that will help you find us?” Lisa asked.

  “Maybe,” Mindy said. As she walked back to her chair, she noticed she could see more sky directly ahead. “You’ve been busy playing lumberjack, I see.”

  “Yeah, the guys dropped 50 trees in the last two days. We’re building a palisade to keep the damned Kloth out of our houses.” She pointed in the direction of the fallen trees. “Abbot said the strata in that direction suggest copper deposits, so that’s the way we went.”

  As Mindy watched, the edge of the sun peeked through the trees. It was the first time she’d gotten a look at it, and the sight stunned her. The sun was bluish, and big. “Oh shit,” she said.

  “What?” Lisa asked. Mindy dug through the scientific files sent by Abbot and Edwin. It took a minute to find the day/night observations and timings. It included details on the observations of the planet’s sun.

  “A blue giant,” she said, and dove into the Celestia software.

  “You okay?” Lisa asked.

  “Yeah,” she mumbled, “just onto something.”

  “Okay, I’ve got to go on picket duty. See you.” Mindy gave a half wave and didn’t notice when Lisa left. The portal shut down, and Mindy worked furiously, assembling candidates. She mumbled the whole time, chastising herself for not guessing what the star was. How stupid of her. She’d been Sol-centric in her thinking. Astronomers studying other stars didn’t spend a lot of time looking at their own sun.

  Almost an hour later, she reset the portal and saw that dusk was just passing into full night. She picked up her star spotter glasses and began marking candidates off her list. She deleted the least probable first. In 30 minutes, having made three trips on and off the dais to reset it, she had eliminated half her options. It took four more hours to eliminate half of those that remained.

  Then it happened. The new notch cut in the trees revealed a piece of the sky, the wheeling of the stars just like you would see on Earth, only there was a bright reddish star rotating into position. Her heart was in her throat as she took pictures and estimated the magnitude. About 1, she guessed and looked at her notes. Yes, yes, yes, it had to be! She looked at the newest star, and punched the data into Celestia. It was off, but it would be. She moved the POV to where her candidate should be and looked again. It was still off, but not by much. And, if she was right, another star would be coming up in an hour. She set her alarm and chewed on the data.

  Several people came and went; a few tried to talk to her. Mindy might as well have been on the other planet. Her immersion in the dance of the spheres was so deep, she didn’t realize anyone else was in the dome. As she finished her calculations, she checked her watch. She had 15 more minutes. She realized she was hungry. Her usual lunch time had been hours ago. Absentmindedly, she snatched her bag and fished out a protein bar. Old instincts from long hours in an observatory and watching real time telemetry in an astronomy lab had made her throw them in her pack days ago. She didn’t even taste it; the bar was nothing more than fuel. When her phone alarm sounded, she nearly fell in her haste to step off the dais and back on.

  She grabbed her camera and searched for a bright white star, but it wasn’t there on the tree line. She swallowed her bitter disappointment and leaned a little closer to the portal. There it was! The star was several degrees above the trees, further along than it should have been.

  “I’ve got it!” she yelled, jumping up and giving a victory cheer. She caught everyone in the dome completely off guard, and one man even let out a very ladylike yelp of surprise. She snatched up her phone and dialed Leo’s number. He answered on the second ring.

  “Skinner,” he said.

  “I’ve got it,” she told him, victorious.

  “I’ll be right there.”

  * * *

  It took an hour to assemble the scientific staff. The broody, cast-wearing agent Volant was there as well, hanging back out of the way. Both Leo Skinner and George Osgood were standing by the portal where Mindy waited, fidgeting and nervous.

  “I think we’re ready,” Skinner finally said.

  “Yes,” Volant spoke up, “I’d like the young lady to explain how she did in a couple of days what fifty astronomers couldn’t do in two weeks.”

  “They weren’t here, for one thing,” Mindy said, annoyed. She started explaining. The trick was the angle. They didn’t know if the other world was even in their galaxy. You had to find a landmark, a star that was either unique or situated next to something you recognized. She could only see about 20 degrees of the night sky, and that wasn’t much. Then she mentioned she hadn’t looked at what type of star the planet was orbiting, and she realized that was a stupid mistake.

  “Why’s that?” Volant asked.

  “It gives you another point of reference,” Osgood said. Mindy nodded and pointed at him.

  “Exactly, and the star that planet orbits happens to be a big old O-class. Teams looking for exoplanets—that’s planets around other stars,” she explained, looking right at Volant, “have not spent a lot of time studying O-class stars. They’re too bright, and don’t live very long.”

  “Please proceed,” Skinner encouraged her, “let’s get to the conclusion.”

  “Right,” she said and activated the projector on her laptop. It showed a series of stars matching her candidate. “Once I figured out the center, the job became one of elimination. I am aware of a few groups of O-class stars; I just needed to eliminate enough to figure out which one this is.

  “Then tonight, I noticed they’d cut down a bunch of trees. That gave me a view I’d never had before. Early in the evening, a big, bright M-class rotated into view.” The scientists listened like kids listening to ghost stories around a campfire. Volant was attentive, but obviously tuning out a lot. “It wasn’t exactly where it should have been, but it’s a long way from here. If it matched, I knew another star would be in view within an hour. Just before I called you, the second star, Meissa, showed up. It lined up perfectly, and quite a bit brighter. About 250 light years brighter. The first star, the M-class, had to be—”

  “Betelgeuse,” Osgood gasped. Mindy clapped her hands and pointed at him. “That means this planet is around—”

  “Bellatrix,” about a dozen people said at the same time. Skinner shook his head, even as she pulled up the star map, generated by Celestia, showing how the stars lined up almost exactly as she’d described.

  “That’s not possible,” Skinner complained. “Bellatrix is no more than 50-60 million years old! Our candidate world has complex lifeforms that couldn’t have evolved in so little time.”

  “Unless someone put them there,” a researcher said. He was a botanist Mindy had seen around. Mindy nodded and spoke again.

  “The report we have suggests a very simple biome, ‘so simple it looks designed,’ were the exact words Edwin used.” She patted the dais, making the portal appear. “Can making one of these be any harder than terraforming?” Skinner started to say something, then shook his head and closed his mouth.

  “Bellatrix,” Osgood said and beamed. “Well done.”

  Mindy smiled. “I want to match a half-dozen more stars before we write the report, but I can’t do that from here; the portal is at the wrong angle.”

  “Then give the off-world team the observation points to make,” Osgood instructed and pointed through the portal. SGT Simpson and two other soldiers stood there, curious about the presentation going on.

  “Can I tell them?” Mindy asked. Osgood chuckled and gestured to the headset. In a moment, Mindy was talking to Lisa.

  “What’s up?”

  “I found you! You’re on a planet orbiting Bellatrix, in the constellation Orion, about 250 light years from Earth.”

  “Oh, cool,” Lisa said. “So, what was the exciting meeting about?” Mindy sighed.

  * * *

  Mindy’s high continued well into the afternoon when she returned to her desk in the trailer. The women were excited to hear her news, even if they rea
lly didn’t understand what it meant. She used a whiteboard to draw a picture of the Orion nebula, then shifted perspectives to demonstrate how she extrapolated the data to figure out that the world was around Bellatrix. When she turned to look at them, she saw the blank stares people got from attending a lecture that went completely over their heads. Still, they all smiled and applauded.

  An hour later, when the NSA guard came to escort them back to the hotel, Skinner appeared and asked her to stay. She thought she knew what it meant.

  “You did a good job,” he said. “I turned the data over to the astronomy group at NASA. You embarrassed the shit out of them. The department head tried to resign.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you did by yourself in just days what they couldn’t do with all the administration’s resources in weeks.”

  “They’re being ridiculous,” she said, and he nodded in agreement. “Bureaucracies have their disadvantages.” She was thinking about the computer files she’d been examining.

  “Still,” he said, “we owe you. What do you want?”

  “In on the project.”

  “You already are.”

  “No,” she said, “really in.” He looked at her as it was the first time they’d met, like she hadn’t known him for years.

  “I’ll talk to them,” he said. “We’ll think about it.” Skinner turned to leave.

  “Who’s them?” Mindy asked. He paused for a second.

  “I can’t tell you that,” he said, then he left. An NSA agent was waiting outside. He gestured for Mindy to follow him. As they walked out of the compound toward the hotel, she understood that staring through the portal was as close as she was likely going to get to the other world, but she couldn’t stop thinking about Bellatrix, only a few degrees off from Betelgeuse. Five years ago, a signal from Betelgeuse ended her career as an astronomer. Did coincidences like this actually happen? She didn’t know.

  * * * * *

  Chapter Eighteen

  May 8

  Assistant Director Mark Volant set the paper down and looked up. On the screen, his boss considered the information.

  “And you believe this…portal, leads to a planet 250 light years away?” the man asked.

  Volant ground his teeth to take his mind off the pain in his arm. He had decided not to take another hydrocodone until after the meeting, and now he regretted that decision. It felt like someone was slowly drilling into his wrist with one of those hand-cranked tools.

  “Yeah,” Volant replied, “I do. If you heard those sloth things yourself and looked through the portal, you would too.”

  “Special effects are pretty advanced,” the other man said. “If anyone could pull it off, NASA could.”

  “It’s too much,” Volant said. “Too much and too complex. I’ve seen some impressive illusions over the years. This? This is real.”

  “So that means you believe the alien bullshit, too.” It wasn’t a question.

  “I haven’t seen that with my eyes,” he said. “But, who else could make a one-gigaton bomb?”

  “Maybe the Russians,” the other man grumbled. Volant snorted. “Yeah, fine, you’re right.” The director looked aside, and Volant had the feeling someone else was with him, watching the meeting. He didn’t ask, though, as it was none of his business who the boss took into his confidence. “What do you advise?”

  “Proceed with project Bifrost.” The boss looked away from the camera again.

  “There’s always Excalibur,” the director added after a few moments.

  “You read the briefing.”

  “Right,” the director said. “We’ll review it and get back to you within 48 hours.”

  “What about the eggheads?” Volant asked. “They want to send through more men and equipment.”

  “We can send 144, right?”

  “That’s what they think. The lights go out as people go across. If we stop them, NASA will get suspicious.”

  “Agreed. Don’t stop them. The files we intercepted suggest they only plan to transition a couple more people over the next two days.” Volant nodded. “Increase security; it looks like everything might hinge on you.”

  “Understood,” Volant said and severed the connection. He looked at his watch; it was nearly five a.m. He opened the laptop again; he had more meetings to attend and arrangements to make.

  * * *

  Despite completing her task, they didn’t revoke Mindy’s portal access card, and Mindy walked to the dome the next morning after her escort delivered her to the compound. The portal was already active and, judging by the partially empty pallet near the portal, someone had just gone through, and more probably would later.

  She wandered over to the dais and found the same young man marking items off the list on his computer. She’d been hoping for that.

  “Hi,” she said. He glanced over and, when he realized it was Mindy, a huge smile broke his features.

  “Hi, yourself! I heard you found the planet over there,” he said.

  “Yep.”

  “Astronomy isn’t my thing,” he admitted. “I had to look it up. Only 250 light years away; it’s practically our neighbor.” She nodded in agreement. “With that done, what are you going to do as an encore?”

  “I’m kind of between jobs,” she admitted, a slightly downcast look on her face. She hoped she looked convincing; her previous boyfriend had said she wasn’t a good actor. “My last job, when I lived in Portland, was in logistics.”

  “I could put in a word for you in my department,” he said. She could tell by the expression on his face he thought that was a stellar idea.

  “You’d do that?”

  “Sure,” he said, “we have our hands full organizing all the stuff in the warehouse.” Lisa, over on Bellatrix, waved when she saw Mindy, who waved back. “It would be fun to work with you,” he said. I’m sure it would, Mindy thought, as she grinned to herself. Her little side project just got a lot simpler.

  Back at her desk, Mindy spent the day correlating the observational data against the astronomical data from star records. Now that she was sure the star was Bellatrix, she was able to fine tune the results. It was becoming clear why NASA couldn’t make a match. They worked in strict precision, out to several decimal places. The data she collected was slightly off, by less than 2% overall, but still off. Only, not all the star fixes were off. That was curious to her, and she didn’t want to let it go. NASA was right about many things, and where stars should be was one of them.

  After a lunch of not-quite-fresh sandwiches from a local deli, one of the project coordinators visited her and presented her with a new pass. There was no ceremony, he just took her old pass and gave her a new one. She worried it wouldn’t have the dome symbol, but when she looked, the symbol was still there. In fact, this ID looked identical to the old one, only the code was different.

  “What’s this?” she asked the harried-looking man.

  “They assigned you duties in transition logistics,” he explained, “since you don’t have as much star gazing to do.”

  “I’m trying to work out the details of my observations,” she said. “Can I keep working on that, too?”

  “If your take care of your other responsibilities, I don’t care,” he said, and left. Samantha and Alexis beamed and welcomed her. They all worked in the same group now. During the afternoon, she had a chance to inquire about the two women’s lives. She carefully worked some personal questions into the girl talk. Both were on the pill, and neither had married or had children. She made some notes in a new spreadsheet she kept on her laptop. She was beginning to form a plan.

  * * * * *

  Chapter Nineteen

  May 10

  As the information about LM-245’s course toward Earth was now public, the government had little choice except to come clean about Excalibur. The ship was robotic. A probe originally designed to intercept a comet the following year had been quickly re-tasked. The guts of the probe, guidance, telemetry, and a prototyp
e ion drive, became the heart of Excalibur. The rest was a cold war relic, left in a hangar at Lockheed Martin’s skunk works—an orbital platform holding four-nuclear tipped missiles.

  The two heavy-lift launchers carried components of the probe. The first held the guidance, targeting, and telemetry systems from the comet interceptor. The second had the payload and boosters. There wasn’t a big enough rocket in the world to loft the entire package into a transfer orbit, so it went up in sections and was mated robotically prior to the boosters blasting it out into deep space.

  On the morning of May 10th, the world awoke to the announcement by NASA that Excalibur was about to reach its target. There were lots of reports about NASA’s and the United States government’s optimism that the robotic asteroid killer would accomplish its mission.

  “The mission has two phases,” the reporter explained, reading from papers provided by NASA. “The first stage is the kill mission, as NASA describes it. The probe has four modified Minuteman III missiles, each carrying three 500 kiloton warheads. That’s a total of six megatons of nuclear destruction aimed at an asteroid just 12 miles long! However, the speed of the target and the approaching missiles creates a challenging shot, even for the experts at NASA.

  “The second phase is known as the diverter. The probe split three days ago; the original comet intercept component used its special prototype ion drive to slow as quickly as it could. It will, if necessary, fire its remaining rockets to bring it to the asteroid and land on the backside. Once there, it will again fire its engines, and divert the asteroid from its probable impact with Earth. Experts say this is, by far, the most audacious part of the plan. It represents more of a last-ditch attempt than anything else.”