The Enceladus Crisis

by Michael J. Martinez

  “Then you should make haste back there at once and ingratiate yourself in with these savants,” Nelson said. “You might learn something of what they’re up to. We’ve a few merchants in Cairo who have supplied information for us. You can report in through them.”

  Finch smiled. “Yes, everyone in Cairo knows who the English spies are. Actually, in Arabic, they’re called the English-spy-merchants. Never subtle, are we?”

  “So you’ll do it?” Nelson asked—demanded, really.

  “Only because I want to find these items first,” Finch said. “I’ll see to it that you remain informed of Bonaparte’s activities. But the alchemy—leave that to me.”

  Weatherby looked over at his old friend, a frown upon his face. “Finch, remember what’s important here.”

  Finch’s smug demeanor softened. “I know, Tom,” he said softly. “Rest assured, I will act appropriately should greater threats arise.”

  Weatherby nodded, relieved, though Nelson looked decidedly unimpressed. “You had better, Dr. Finch,” the admiral growled. “There are rumors, sir, of the reasons you left the service.”

  Finch gave Nelson a wicked smile. “Then let me assuage you, admiral. I left the service to join with friends and comrades in the revolution in France. And then I left when I saw that revolution come to naught under that fiend Robespierre. That, sir, should answer you.”

  “And what guarantee do we have that you won’t side with the frogs now?” Nelson demanded.

  “Because France has squandered its promise and is now sliding toward either anarchy or totalitarianism, depending on the day,” Finch countered. “At least England is consistent and, for the most part, agreeable when it must be. I am English, sir, I assure you. And moreover, I bear my responsibilities as a practitioner of the Great Work most seriously. I cannot with certainty say the same for these French invaders.”

  Hours later, having finally calmed Nelson to some small degree, Finch had joined Weatherby aboard Fortitude for a private dinner between two old shipmates. Lt. O’Brian had also been invited, having also been posted to Daedalus as a midshipman during the extraordinary events of 1779, but the younger officer declined graciously, knowing that there were some bonds that should be renewed privately. Indeed, only Weatherby’s valet was allowed in and out of his great cabin, and even then only to deliver dishes and wine.

  “You’ve a Venusian for a valet now?” Finch asked as the servant—a three-foot tall bipedal lizard creature with a pronounced sharp beak and three-fingered hands, left after bringing a second bottle of wine for the two.

  Weatherby nodded as he filled their glasses. “The Venusians are surprisingly hard workers when the poor creatures aren’t enslaved,” he said. “Gar’uk is the most efficient, fastidious valet I’ve ever had in the service, his attempts at humor notwithstanding. He still has yet to fully grasp idioms, it seems.”

  Finch smiled broadly. “I love the Venusians. I wish I had more time to be in their company. I did a survey there back in ’89, just before leaving the service. Fascinating people. It would be wise to learn their ways before we destroy their culture entirely.” Finch paused to take a swig of wine. “Do you take Gar’uk home with you? How does Margaret like him?”

  Weatherby smiled and glanced at the small portrait of a little girl at the edge of his table. “She believes him to be the best sort of toy, and Gar’uk suffers her patiently, though perhaps not with great enthusiasm. She is coming of an age now where she must learn that living, intelligent creatures should not be considered playthings.”

  They both laughed at this. “How old now?” Finch asked.

  “She shall be seven in two months. My sister tells me she grows smarter and more beautiful each day,” Weatherby replied with evident paternal pride. “And as much as Nelson’s assignment infuriates me, I must say that if I can actually bring these prizes home in one piece, I will rejoice in seeing her again sooner than expected.”

  “It is well that your sister does so much for the both of you, but have you thought of perhaps seeking marriage once more?” Finch said, perhaps too bluntly.

  Weatherby, however, was used to Finch’s lack of boundaries and good taste in such matters. “I’ve not the stomach for it, old man,” he said. “I’ve loved twice in my life. The first time, I was in the wrong and paid the price. The second time, I lost Mary to childbirth. I’m not sure I could weather a third attempt.”

  Finch nodded. “I’ve heard news of Anne, should you wish to hear it.”

  Weatherby’s jaw tightened a moment before he relaxed once more. “Would’ve been better had you not mentioned it. Now that you have, damn you, out with it.”

  Oblivious as usual, Finch continued to dine. “She remains in the company of the Count St. Germain, it seems, though they’ve changed their names. Again. Last I’ve heard, they are somewhere on Venus, in the Dutch holdings.”

  “And that is all?” Weatherby asked.

  “All I know,” he replied. “But if nothing else, she is still out there.”

  Weatherby nodded and stared into his half-empty glass. “I was a fool, you know.”

  Finch nodded. “Absolutely. But it’s been nineteen years, Tom. Time to let it go.”

  “And how do I do that?” Weatherby asked, a small, sad smile upon his face. “It’s not as if those years have helped matters.”

  “Gar’uk!” Finch called, noting the sullen look on his friend’s face. “I think we need more wine!”

  CHAPTER 3

  August 1, 2134

  Mars: a bleak, frigid dustbowl; a has-been planet that saw its best years back when the Sun was still new. The first landing happened nearly a century ago, and since then, it was probably the most explored planet in the Solar System after Earth itself. There were even high-priced tour groups making landings there now.

  And yet Dr. Evan Greene couldn’t imagine being anywhere else.

  “McAuliffe to Greene, come in. Over,” squawked his comm.

  The astrophysicist keyed the appropriate button on his suit gauntlet to respond. He hoped he wasn’t going to get more crap for being outside when the experiment was conducted. Yes, it made more sense to be back at McAuliffe Base, nice and warm with a cup of coffee in hand, instead of in a pressure suit out in the middle of nowhere.

  But the people on base now hadn’t been there two years ago. They didn’t see what he saw. If something was going to happen, he wanted to be out here, responding to it, recording it, experiencing it again.

  “Greene here, go ahead.”

  “Jimenez here, Doctor. Our board is green. Just give the word and we’ll light this candle.”

  Greene smiled as he went over the multiple streams of figures on his datapad and the heads-up display on his helmet visor, confirming that everything was in order. He then glanced around at the rust-red surface of the planet before him, the vaguely pinkish sky—and the massive mechanical tube before him that stretched off hundreds of kilometers in either direction. It was nothing less than the largest particle accelerator ever built, and it had taken less than two years to complete. This huge ring, some 250 kilometers in diameter, could be the key to unlocking the secrets of the universe. Actually, Greene thought, the multiverse. As he scanned the length of the accelerator, the HUD in his visor ticked off the various diagnostic programs that had been up and running for weeks now. All systems were in order.

  “Looking good, colonel. The word is given,” Greene said into his comm.

  “Roger that. Commencing startup sequence,” responded Col. Javier Jimenez, a U.S. Air Force officer and the commander of McAuliffe.

  Greene looked down at his datapad and watched the readout being fed from the base, comparing it with his own sensors on the HUD. The cycles were beginning as expected. How it would end was anybody’s guess.

  Normally, a particle accelerator would simply send electrons or protons colliding into each other, and sensors would collect data on the sub-atomic particles created in the collision. In some cases, the accelerator would co
llect positrons, or anti-protons, to smash into regular protons. But in this case, they were taking huge, complex molecules and sending them onto a collision course with each other over and over again, stripping them down repeatedly into fields of highly energetic particles that, ultimately, would be reduced into the smallest of sub-atomic particles—a slew of positrons, antiprotons and antineutrons. Finally, the antimatter particles would collide with their positive counterparts, creating a matter-antimatter annihilation. The energy, focused at a single point over and over, would start to produce gamma rays and, theoretically, Cherenkov radiation. If the latter happened, that might signal enough energy had been created at a single point in space-time to create a fracture.

  And that’s where the fun would begin.

  Two years prior, with little more than spare parts and a keen knowledge of physics, Yuna Hiyashi created a particle accelerator near McAuliffe Base, under the Martian terrain itself, and managed to open a portal between our world and . . . another. That other world, Greene believed, was related to our own, and may have been split apart in a kind of quantum singularity ages ago. It had taken the better part of a year to scrounge up the funding, but Greene had finally been able to convince the Joint Space Command to allow him to begin accelerator experiments that would try to replicate the conditions surrounding the dimensional rift—though ideally without the aggressive alien warlord that they encountered last time. Half of Mars had been closed off to resource exploitation as a result, and there were more than a few folks—Greene’s boss included—who felt the idea was pretty dangerous. But Greene, a former Peabody-winning science journalist and holovision star, could be pretty convincing when he needed to be.

  “Peak power,” Jimenez reported, confirming Greene’s own readouts. “We have a strong Higgs field now. Ready to knock it down?”

  Greene nodded, unnecessarily given that nobody was watching. “Let’s do it. Go for final sequence.”

  The last several positrons were gathered and sent flying into the anti-positrons collected by the previous collisions within the accelerator. By aiming this collision at a magnetic suspension of Higgs bosons—another byproduct of the multiple collisions within the great metal tube—the matter-antimatter annihilation would tear apart the Higgs particles as well, destroying the last structure of physical reality within the testing chamber and, ideally, creating a rift in space-time that would re-open the portal between dimensions created on this spot two years prior.

  Greene stopped looking at his datapad, instead staring off at the testing chamber some 100 meters away from his position. His HUD zoomed in on the chamber while readouts at the edge of his vision showed the buildup of energy surrounding the intense collisions, now occurring every nanosecond. Waves of energy started leaking out of the containment chamber, and Greene smiled as his HUD and datapad both started to flicker slightly.

  “Tachyon emission!” Jimenez said over the comm. “Repeat, we have a tachyon emiss—”

  A sudden surge of light from the testing chamber filled Greene’s vision as the comm cut out. His HUD winked out, his datapad went dead and he felt the rust-red ground under his boots begin to quake. This . . . this . . . this was what he was looking for! Even as he staggered backward, the grin on his face grew wider.

  And then the light winked out just as quickly as it surged, and all was quiet. Greene stood silently, looking around, struggling to peer out at the testing chamber and particle accelerator without the zoom and data readouts his helmet usually provided.

  A hiss of static erupted in his ears. “. . . McAuliffe . . . systems . . . repeat. McAuliffe to Greene, systems are offline. What’s your status? Over.”

  Greene stabbed his comm button again, just as his HUD winked to life once more. “Greene here. Lost electrical, but my systems are rebooting as we speak. What about the experiment?”

  Jimenez sounded subdued. “We have a lot of data to analyze, doctor. Meantime, why don’t you come on in. We’ll send the techs out to look at the accelerator.”

  In other words, we just spent billions of terras to create a pretty light, Greene mused silently. Again. “Roger. Heading in. Greene out.”

  Minutes later, Greene was in his rover, speeding past the Martian terrain en route to McAuliffe, passing by several now-abandoned mining efforts. Just two years ago, Billiton Minmetals had a team of sixty miners here, primarily after deuterium from the Martian ice cap, but also mining everything from uranium to gold. Now, the base—most of the Martian south pole, really—was under a strict JSC quarantine as Greene and his team tried to recreate the rift between worlds.

  Between worlds, Greene thought. That’s the trick, isn’t it? It’s between worlds. Not one forcing its way in on the other. He thought back to the immense alien structure that arose from the Martian desert, the archaic mysticism that the people on the “other side” had used in place of science, how dupes on both sides of the dimensional rift had worked in concert, without even knowing it, to almost unleash an ancient evil onto both worlds.

  By the time Greene arrived at McAullife, a giant once-white dome turned pink with a thin layer of Martian dust, the physicist’s fears and theories were confirmed. He knew intuitively what the data would say. He parked his rover and headed into the airlock. Once the woosh-hiss of air came over him, he lifted off his helmet and entered the garage-like ground floor of the base.

  Waiting for him was Jimenez, the Spaniard’s black hair perfectly in place, his slight frown another confirmation. The colonel handed Greene a datapad. “Same as before,” Jimenez said simply.

  Greene walked over to the suit lockers and set the pad down on a bench so that it would project the data holographically as he unsuited. By the time he pulled off the top half of his suit, he had seen enough. “Three tachyons this time?” he said with a rueful smile.

  “New record,” Jimenez said. “At this rate, we’ll achieve interdimensional travel in about four thousand years.”

  “It was sixteen thousand last week,” Greene said as he stepped out of his pressure suit. His coverall wasn’t the typical red-and-black of McAuliffe’s assigned personnel. Instead, his black uniform bore patches of the American flag and of Joint Space Command—and a third emblem, that of Project DAEDALUS.

  The name was originally in homage of the events that occurred on Mars two years prior, and moreso to the other people involved. But someone at JSC managed to make it an acronym that actually worked: Dimensional And Extraterrestrial Defense, Analysis & Logistical Unified Services. Greene remembered there had been some debate about the S, but he didn’t care at the time. Still didn’t, actually. Those events prompted him to leave his highly rated award-winning holoshow and rejoin JSC as DAEDALUS’ science lead. For the first time in decades, he was doing real science, cutting-edge science that mattered.

  But he and DAEDALUS were going to need some help. Getting it would be the hard part. There were only so many failures the higher-ups would tolerate.

  “Unless we can generate more power—exponentially more—we’re stuck,” Greene said. “What made it work here before was that the folks on the other side were working on the same problem at the same quantum space-time point, give or take.”

  “So why aren’t they doing experiments as well?” Jimenez asked. “I mean, they seemed to be pretty smart, right?”

  Greene smiled as he thought back to the alchemists and mystics he met. “Brilliant. But they also needed some pretty rare materials to make their rituals work. A few, apparently, were the work of lifetimes. Even considering the different temporal flows, I’m not sure they’d be right here doing it anyway. They could be doing it anywhere.”

  Jimenez took his datapad back. “And I assume you guys are looking for signs elsewhere, yeah?” His question, and the grin that accompanied it, was familiar to anyone working in space or military circles—the signs of someone trying to find out information that he wasn’t cleared for.

  Greene simply smiled back. “I better report in.”

  “We sent the data
back to Washington. Diaz already sent a vidmail back. I have it up in conference two, waiting for your DNA key,” Jimenez said.

  The two men climbed the stairs leading up out of the “garage,” past the labs and common areas on the second floor, and up to the command center atop the dome. While Jimenez checked in on his crew, Greene ducked into a small room off to the side. Sitting down at the conference table, he opened a holostation and keyed a button. To think this base used to have actual keyboards and screens two years ago. “Greene, Evan. Access vidmail.”

  A small line of red light flashed over three separate areas of his body, scanning and decoding his genome and matching it to the encryption key. The computer cleared Greene’s DNA and a holoimage of his boss, Brigadier General Maria Diaz, U.S.A.F., sprang from the center of the conference table and began talking.

  “Hey, Evan,” she began, sympathy in her voice. “We thought third time might’ve been a charm. We’re going over the data now, but by the time you get this, I figure you’ll come up with the same conclusion we will. No dice. Not sure how we can ramp up the power without blowing a hole through Mars, but you’ll have some time to ponder it on your way back home.”

  Greene’s eyebrows shot up. He wasn’t due to leave Mars for another three months.

  “BlueNet is gonna be operational in about four weeks’ time, and I want you back here when we switch it on,” Diaz continued. “I know your project brief isn’t complete there, but if your both-sides theory is correct, then you’re not going to get anywhere on Mars unless we get some kind of sign that the guys on the other side of the fence are working on it too. This way, if you’re here and BlueNet gives us a ding, we can jump on it with our best guy and maybe make some progress.”

  Flattery gets you everywhere, General, Greene mused.

  BlueNet was DAEDALUS’ first major initiative, a network of sensors blanketing the Earth—on the ground, in orbit, on the Moon—all designed to detect unusual levels of Cherenkov radiation. Non-ionized and harmless, Cherenkov radiation appeared as a blue light that occupied a very narrow band on the visible light spectrum. It was commonly found in and around fusion reactors, but it was also a telltale sign of the passage of a tachyon. During the Daedalus incident, it seemed half of Mars was turning blue.