“Send it to my ready room.” Juliana turned to Dylan. “Make yourself at home. I’ll check on the repairs. Please join me once your call is done. I’m glad to continue our conversation later, if you like.” She pushed off from the ceiling with a practiced motion and drifted through the door to the spine.
Dylan pushed off toward her desk, grabbed its edge and flipped himself into her chair. Proximity sensors decided he wanted to sit, activating silent yet surprisingly powerful air ducts in the chair. He was smoothly pulled into a seated position and held in place almost as if there were gravity. He found a switch to close the door and another to play the video transmission.
It was Sara Wells. “Commander, I’m afraid we uncovered bad news. The Chinese launched their second ship toward Mars. I’m sorry, we thought you had a few days before they’d be ready. They made no secret of the fact that they’re angry about what happened to the Kuànggōng.” She swallowed visibly. “Pissed that Americans left their crew to die.”
Dylan furrowed his brow. “How long until they reach Jupiter?” He waited several minutes for his question to reach Earth and several minutes for Sara’s reply.
“We don’t know, commander. The second ship’s initial acceleration was similar to their first ship’s, maybe a bit faster. The trouble is, we lost track of them forty-six hours out. They’re using a stealth technology the first ship didn’t have. It makes it hard to detect them further out. If they can keep up their initial acceleration for the entire flight, I suggest you finish your repairs and be underway. As of now, you’re probably two weeks ahead of them.” Sara gently bit her lip. “There’s something else, Commander Lockwood. Their mission commander is Colonel Long Jianyu. He’s a well-connected Air Force officer known to be a hard-liner. He’s also the uncle of the first ship’s commander.” She frowned. “Commander, watch your back.”
#
Repairs took longer than anyone hoped. For two weeks, Mars Station and Jupiter Express personnel worked around the clock to make the ship ready. In spite of the brutal schedule, the repair teams maintained good spirits and exhibited exceptional skill.
Commander Cotto, Dylan, and Ian watched through a viewport overlooking the Jupiter Express. “I think she’s about ready to set sail again,” Commander Cotto said. “I’m afraid she looks even more cobbled together than when you first set out, but I have it on good authority the repairs will hold.”
“Thank you for everything you’ve done for us, commander.” Dylan rested a hand on her shoulder and gazed at the repair team. They floated about the Express inspecting the day’s work.
“I’m impressed with your crew,” Ian said. “They’re about as tight-knit and professional as they come. They made us feel right at home when we showed up at your doorstep. I’m sure it’s a reflection on your command style.”
Commander Cotto’s eyes narrowed. “Bucking for a promotion, major?”
“I… no, I just…” Ian said.
Commander Cotto smirked. With a firm yet kind tone, she put him at ease. “I’m kidding, major. Thank you for your words. I think of my crew like family.”
“You made us feel like family, too,” Dylan said. “Thank you for that. It means a lot to us.”
“Aren’t we all family?” Juliana asked, looking at each of the men in turn. “What is a family, really, but people who decide to love and support each other through life? I find the best starting point is to treat everyone like family.”
“Everyone? There are plenty of people out there that don’t make for good family.”
Juliana’s eyes glanced down, and she thought for a moment. “There are people in my biological family that don’t make for good family.” She looked up, directly at Dylan. “I choose to love them, to help them be all they can be. That, not shared genetics, makes us family.”
“You’re a saint Juliana,” Dylan said. “I suppose the world would be a better place if we could all think more like that.” He turned his attention outside again.
Juliana looked out the viewport as well. “I wish we had another week or two, but we have done everything essential. The repair team is almost done. Once the crew finishes and grabs a meal, we’ll go over everything with you and your team. You can do your final inspection then get underway.”
An hour later, the Jupiter Express crew boarded their ship and checked and rechecked all systems. They proceeded as quickly as they could but followed protocol to the letter, lest some unseen defect become apparent half-way to their destination.
This is taking too long, Dylan thought. The Chinese are bearing down on us, and we’re going through the book, step by step. “Musa,” he shouted. “How’s the drive ignition sequence going? We need to get moving.”
“Sir, I’m going through the checklist as fast as possible. Chad took some of the items, too. Even though he’s not certified on the procedures, I’m confident he can handle the tasks I gave him.”
Dylan looked around. “Yeah, good. Good, keep it moving as best you can.”
After eight hours of preflight inspection, the Jupiter Express was ready to resume course. The crew met Commander Cotto and the Mars Station repair crew at the airlock.
“On behalf of myself and the crew of the Jupiter Express,” Dylan said, “thank you for the exceptional work repairing our ship and for the exceptional hospitality during our visit.”
“Major Weems, Lieutenant Commander Malik, Dr. Tanner.” She hesitated for the blink of an eye. “Commander Lockwood, thank you for the pleasure of your company on board Mars Station. It was an honor to help with your journey. May the rest of your voyage be safe and successful. Godspeed.
A TRACE OF ANGELS
Definitely Alien
“I see it!” Ian said. “The Great Red Spot.”
The others scooted to the command deck.
“Where? I don’t see it,” Musa said.
“There. There it is.” Chad pointed toward Jupiter. “It’s hardly a fleck still, but I can make it out.”
“Amazing. I looked up from my radiation analysis, and there it was.” Ian was beaming.
“It’s official,” Dylan said. “You’re the first human ever to see the Great Red Spot with the naked eye.
Musa drifted closer. With a gesture, he overlaid the ship’s telescopic image of Jupiter on the viewscreen. The massive planet loomed large now. Beige bands circled the spectacular gas giant, each composed of intricate, almost delicate, brown and copper swirls. Then there was the Great Red Spot, easily visible in the enlarged view, a vast vortex of reddish matter large enough to hold two Earths. Somewhere deep under the swirling clouds, the pressure was sufficient to force hydrogen into a liquid metal state, powering the planet’s gigantic magnetic field.
“Hmm.” Musa removed the overlay. “I do see it now. Who would have thought we’d be the first humans to see it? Even if I am the last of the first. The colors are beautiful. They remind me of fall. You know. Hot chocolate, apple pie.”
He brought the overlay back up and panned the view around the planet’s equator. Still focused on his search, he said, “I don’t know. All that liquid hydrogen evokes deep winter for me.” He zoomed to a spot on Jupiter’s equator. There was a dark smudge, tiny and pixelated.
“The alien structure,” Ian said, almost to himself.
“Yep.”
“What do you think it is?”
Musa increased the optical magnification, bringing the pixels into sharper view. “My money’s on a ship of some kind. Look at those lines, at the axial symmetry.”
“You’re looking at it through human eyes,” Chad said. “Aliens probably have vastly different ideas about how to design things. Anyhow, an intelligence advanced enough to travel the stars and park something in orbit around Jupiter likely has uses for structures that we can’t even conceive of. Hell, maybe it’s the real-life equivalent of the monolith from 2001, encouraging intelligent life on Jupiter’s moons. Maybe we’ll pull up, and it will be such a mystery we’re forced to leave empty handed.”
&n
bsp; “Let’s not give up just yet, boys,” Dylan said. “How’s Jupiter’s radiation belt behaving today?”
Musa called up a holographic visualization of Jupiter’s magnetosphere. A minuscule point denoted Jupiter itself. A transparent green sheath surrounded that point, extending millions of miles from the planet toward the sun and almost to Saturn’s orbit.
“I knew the magnetosphere was big,” Chad said, “but it seems massive when visualized like that.”
“If it were visible from Earth,” Musa said, “it would be five times larger than Earth’s moon in the night sky even though it’s vastly farther away.” He seemed pleased to share a science fact that Chad didn’t know.
Smaller, transparent, yellow and orange sheaths indicated regions of higher radiation. All four of the moons visible from Earth through a small telescope, the Galilean moons, were encompassed by this zone.
“I’m tying into the NASA nanosat network for real-time readings,” Musa said. The hologram updated with a red sheath extending past the orbit of Jupiter’s innermost Galilean moon. “It doesn’t look good. Flux measurements are fifteen to twenty-one percent above baseline. That cuts our time on target dangerously short if we orbit the Express around Io.”
“Damn.” Dylan scratched the scar on his forehead. “OK, let’s set course for Europa. At least the Jupiter Express won’t be time limited that far out.” And she’ll be much farther away from the dinghy if the exploration team needs help. “I want everyone to take some downtime. We’ll reach orbit in two days. It’s the last chance we’ll have to recharge our batteries.”
The crew spent the next day on a minimum duty schedule. They told stories, played cards, and listened to music. Mostly, though, they speculated about the alien structure and contemplated its significance for mankind. Dylan insisted every crew member schedule eight hours of sleep each day, but he doubted they slept even half that. He sure didn’t.
Forty-six hours after Ian first saw the Great Red Spot, he eased the Jupiter Express into orbit around Europa. The Spot was now visible in great detail. The colorful vortexes composing Jupiter’s bands were clear to the unaided eye. His focus, though, was on the moon below. “Striking, isn’t it? It’s one of the smoothest objects in the solar system, out here in the wild environment around Jupiter. Miles of ice hiding an ocean twice as large as Earth’s.” He and Dylan watched the surface of the large moon drift by fifty miles below. They selected a low orbit to better hide from the inbound Chinese ship, which was likely not far behind.
As they watched, a massive plume of gas shot skyward a few hundred kilometers ahead.
Musa drifted onto the command deck. “What’s that?” he asked.
Ian magnified the spot. There was a tear in the ice sheet dozens of kilometers long and perhaps a hundred meters across. Fractured ice scarred the smooth surface, creating a path for water from a deep ocean to burst out and boil in the moon’s tenuous atmosphere. “Tidal flexing cracked the ice sheet. It’s a pretty small break. It’ll probably seal up by our next orbit.” A few minutes later, the fissure passed under the ship.
Chad entered the command deck.
“There, look.” Ian panned the viewscreen far to port and zoomed in. A metallic hemisphere, like a dull gray igloo, came into focus. “Dr. Skye’s mission. The Europa Lander. In just a few months, it might tell us if there’s life below Europa’s ice. A year ago, I would have believed that was our best chance of discovering other life in the universe. I would never have dreamed I might be out here too, in person, with a shot to discover alien life first.” The igloo passed out of sight. “The orbit is stable. Dylan, do you want to go over anything else?”
“Nope, I got this, Ian. We’ve been over it enough. You get down to the dinghy and take Dr. Tanner on over to Jupiter. Go see what that alien thing’s all about.”
“I wish you wouldn’t call our approach vessel a dinghy,” Ian said.
“All right, I don’t want to put a jinx in it,” Dylan said. “Get on down to the Explorer.”
“Are you ready, Chad?” Ian asked. The engineer didn’t answer. “Chad?” Ian nudged him.
Chad looked up, as if from a remote place. “Ready? Somehow, my whole life has been leading up to right here and now. You bet. I’m ready.” His eyes were bright with expectation.
#
Ian and Chad drifted from the command deck to the common area. There, they donned suits made of centimeter-thick, carbon-metal composite, a highly flexible material, spongy yet resistant to tearing and puncturing. A power cell strapped to their chest energized super-conducting pathways braided into the suit, creating a magnetic field that would deflect a portion of the radiation bombarding everything around Jupiter. The small helmets were made of a clear, somewhat flexible material that afforded perfect visibility. The two opened a hatch at the rear of the living quarters. Beyond was a narrow tube with golden walls, just large enough for the suited men to slip through. They went in one at a time, feet first. The tube led to a cramped cockpit with two seats molded to the contour of their suits.
“You comfy?” Ian asked.
Chad grunted a reply.
“Flooding the access tube,” Ian said. He moved his fingers over a surface, causing both sides of the tube to seal and water to fill the hollow space. The water would provide a reasonable buffer against Jovian radiation, enhancing the active shielding in their suits and around the Explorer. He held down a button and spoke over the radio, “Ready for launch.”
Dylan’s voice filled their ears. “You boys be careful now. Godspeed.”
The Magneto-Encapsulated Jovian Explorer, known to NASA as MEJE-1, drifted away from the Jupiter Express. “Magnetic shielding, activated,” Ian said. The Explorer was designed to operate in the intense radiation surrounding Jupiter. Combining prototype active magnetic shielding with thick layers of metal, water, and organic protection, the craft provided a crew of two a survivable environment for up to a week. The shielding was not perfect, though, and radiation exposure is cumulative. Even in the shielded craft, the longer a crew remained near Jupiter, the greater the chance of radiation shortening their life. The Explorer accelerated around the side of Europa facing away from the planet. After a few moments, Jupiter began to rise. Massive, imposing, Europa’s beautiful and deadly planet filled half the sky. The Explorer changed course, leaving orbit around the moon and heading straight for the gas giant.
“Exterior radiation is eighteen percent above baseline, but we’re holding just fine in here,” Ian said. He zoomed the viewscreen on the alien structure’s projected position around Jupiter. “There it is. We have a visual lock. Intercept course calculated and laid in.” He looked at Chad, whose eyes were again distant. “It’ll be several hours. Try and get some rest.”
#
“One hour to intercept,” Ian said. His voice was calm and his expression stoic.
Chad strained in the cramped space to look at his pilot. “How are you not overwhelmed by the beauty of Jupiter? By what lies just an hour ahead of us?”
Ian turned his head to Chad. “Overwhelmed doesn’t even begin to describe it. I guess it’s the military training and the NASA conditioning on top of that. Plus, I suppose it’s in my nature to be calm on the outside. On the inside, I have jitters enough for the both of us.”
Chad laughed. “I’m glad it’s not only me.”
The two admired Jupiter in silence. The massive planet dominated the sky.
“Hey, look at this,” Ian said. “We’re getting better visual detail on the… the thing. The structure.” He projected the image over the forward viewport.
The organic lines were clear now, smoothly spiraling curves that twisted up and over each other. On one end the lines were narrower. They held an almost perfectly clear sphere through which Jupiter’s light shined. The structure’s body curved gradually, its shape almost resembling a beetle. At the far end, the swooping lines held an elongated sphere, like a crystal egg with both halves equally shaped. The planet’s golden light filtered thro
ugh it.
“Those spiral lines,” Chad said. “They look like a double helix, don’t they?”
Ian zoomed the image. It became more pixelated, making it no clearer than before. He squinted. “I think you might be right.”
The image sharpened as the Explorer drew closer. The central body revealed a pattern. Nine stripes wrapped around the shape, alternating between a smooth surface upon which wisps of iridescent plasma danced and a surface etched in an interlocking hexagon pattern. The larger, crystal spheroid revealed additional detail. It held six objects suspended in its middle. Objects that resembled chairs suited for approximately human anatomy.
“I’m pretty sure the Chinese didn’t build it,” Ian said, his eyes wide and filled with awe.
Chad was silent for a moment, his eyes focused on the image. “It’s… it’s beautiful,” he said in a quiet, reverent voice. “It’s so elegant. So warm. Inviting.”
Without warning, the bright and beautiful ultraviolet auroras at Jupiter’s poles, made visible by UV sensors overlaid on the viewscreen, flared brilliantly.
“What the…?” Ian’s fingers flew over the instruments.
Chad’s mind raced. “We need to increase the shielding. Now.” As he spoke the words, a radiation alarm sounded.
“Boosting magnetic shielding,” Ian said. “Maximum power.” He inspected readings flashing across the viewscreen. “We can’t keep this up long, maybe twenty minutes before we risk thermal failure of the power circuits.” The interior radiation alarm silenced. For now.
The exterior camera began to fail, one pixel after another turning black. Their view of the outside world was limited to an ever-smaller mosaic of functioning screen.
“Can we make it to the structure?” Chad asked, his voice a touch higher than usual.
“Our momentum will carry us pretty damned close.” Ian checked each of his instruments in turn. His motions were efficient and calm. “Lidar is still online, at least according to internal diagnostics. If our course is accurate, I should be able to acquire the structure and guide us in. But if this radiation keeps up much longer, that will all be moot.”
The Gods We Make Page 21