The Final Frontier

by Neil Clarke

  She sent a mental note to Manuel. When can we go to the surface?

  The response was immediate. When I conclude it’s safe.

  Safe is bad. It’s stripped of fear, awe, even of most of the curiosity! I need them to work properly, they’re essential. Let me go there first.

  All right, he replied.

  Chiara smiled a little. She learned to use logic to persuade Manuel long ago—and most of the times she was successful.

  As she was dressing in the protective suit, a memory of a similar moment some years ago came to her and sent a shiver through her body. It was on Io and she stayed on the surface far too long even for her highly augmented body to withstand. When it became clear that she’d need a new one because of the amount of received radiation, she decided to give that one at least an interesting death—and she let it boil and melt near one of the volcanoes. Although her new brain was a slightly inadequate copy of the last one, thanks to the implants she remembered the pain—and then nothing, just a curious observation of the suit and her body slowly disintegrating—as if it happened to this very body.

  She didn’t intend to do anything like that here. No; here she perceived a cold and fragile beauty. There should be no pain associated to it, no horror. Fear, maybe. Awe, definitely yes. Standing there on the icy surface, the Sun a mere bright star, darkness everywhere—she ought to feel awe.

  Chiara felt she had a good chance of being the first human being who ever stood on Sedna. The dwarf planet was nearing its perihelion now, still almost a hundred astronomical units from the Sun, and there were no reports of any expeditions before them during the recent period.

  When the lander touched the surface of Sedna, she stayed inside for a little while, getting used to the alien landscape around her. It had a strange sense of tranquility to it. Chiara was used to the icy moons of the Jovian system which she called home, but this landscape was far smoother than what she knew from there. It was also darker—and an odd shade of brown-red.

  She turned off the lander’s lights and stepped outside through the airlock, into the darkness.

  It wasn’t a complete darkness. But the Sun was not currently visible from this side of the dwarf planet and it felt like being lonelier, further away than ever before. She was able to see the disc of the galaxy clearer than from anywhere else she had been.

  She knelt and slowly touched the surface with one of her suit’s haptic gloves.

  We’ve found something, Chiara, suddenly Manuel’s voice resonated in her head. See for yourself.

  He sent her a mental image of a couple of objects not deep beneath the icy surface found by one of the numerous little probes. The biggest one resembled a ship. A small, stumpy, ancient-looking ship, unmistakably of a human origin. They were not the first.

  But these must have come here a very long time ago.

  And a few miles further and far beneath it, another shape was discovered by their sensors. A bigger, stranger shape.

  Probably from much, much longer ago than the first one . . .

  It took less than an hour to drill through the ice to the first ship. Getting inside it then was a matter of minutes.

  Chiara saw the two bodies as the probes approached them. Both dead—but almost intact. One male, one female. The probes suggested the small chambers they found them inside were probably designed for cryosleep. They must have been prepared for the procedure or already frozen when they died.

  The ship was long dead too but that didn’t constitute much of a problem for the probes. They quickly repaired the computers and what was left of the data.

  They found the ship’s logs and sent it to the crew of Orpheus even before others had time to drill deep enough to reach the other object.

  Chiara was back aboard at the time they opened the file and heard the voice of the long gone woman.

  I think I don’t have much time left. I have no means of getting from here in time. But I know that there will be others who come here to explore. I hope you find this. I’m telling our story for you.

  Ten days ago, I discovered something . . . —wait, let me start from the beginning.

  “How is it going, love?”

  Theodora smiled while unscrewing another panel on the probe. “Good. Suppose we could use this one tomorrow on the last picked site. I’ve got just one more bug to repair.”

  She was wearing a thin suit, protecting her in the vacuum and cold of the storage chamber, very flexible and quite comfortable compared to EVA suits. Despite that, she’d prefer to be outside the ship, walking on the surface of Triton which Kittiwake had been orbiting for more than two years now.

  Kittiwake was a small ship, but sufficient for sustaining two people aboard even for a couple of decades if necessary. Provided enough hydrogen, easily extractable practically everywhere, its bimodal MITEE could function for half a century without any serious problems. If one element failed, it still had many others and could push the ship forward with a good specific impulse and a decent thrust while also providing the electrical energy needed by the ship.

  Now the mission on Triton was nearing its end. Theodora didn’t know whether to be happy and relieved that she and her husband would finally return to Earth, after so many years of isolation, or sad that she wouldn’t ever see this remarkable place again.

  When she was done with the ice-drilling probe, she went through several airlocks to the habitation deck. It was tiny, but sufficient enough for hers and Dimitri’s needs.

  “It seems we have a word from the outside world,” her husband smiled as she entered the cabin. “Kittiwake just picked it up.”

  After checking the signal for malware, the ship automatically showed them the recording. The face of their superior, OSS Mission Supervisor Ronald Blythe, appeared on the screen. He congratulated them for their results on Triton and mentioned that a window for another long-term scientific expedition was opening. Theodora’s stomach rocked. She was eager to find out. But still . . . a new expedition would mean yet more years away from the rest of humanity. The company picked her and Dimitri because they were a stable, non-conflict couple with steady personalities and a lot of technical and scientific experience. They were supposed to be able to spend years without any other human contact in a tiny space of their ship, exploring the outer solar system, without a chance for a vacation, without feeling the Earth’s gravity, smells, “wind . . . However, we had a contract for eight years. The time’s almost up. Are they proposing to prolong it? And what for? thought Theodora.

  “Last week, we received a signal from Nerivik 2.”

  “Isn’t it the probe sent to Sedna in the eighties that stopped transmitting before it reached an orbit?” murmured Theodora.

  It was. Blythe went on explaining how they lost contact with the probe for more than ten years and suddenly, out of thin air, it sent out a signal five days ago. Scientists at the FAST observatory who picked up the signal by accident were a bit surprised, to put it mildly. They began analyzing it immediately—and fortunately didn’t keep intercepting the transmission for themselves.

  “And the findings were . . . weird. It became clear that the probe lost its orbit, crashed, but probably regained control of its thrusters shortly before the crash and tried to change the collision into a landing. It was just damaged. It’s possible that it kept transmitting most of the time, but without aiming the signal, the probability of reaching any receivers in the system was very low. However, it probably had time to send down its two landers before the crash. They kept measuring all they were supposed to record—and among other tasks, they tried mapping the ice layer. That’s where it became really strange.”

  Theodora listened avidly as Blythe started explaining. Her interest grew every second.

  The ultrasonic pulses showed an intriguing structure some two hundred meters below surface. It could not be told how large it was, but it had at least one hundred meters in diameter; maybe a lot more. The signature seemed like metal.

  Blythe included the data in th
e transmission so that Theodora was able to look at it while he was speaking. It really was strange. It could have been a part of a metal-rich rock layer. But what would it be doing on Sedna? The dwarf planet was supposed to have a thick largely icy layer composed mostly of methane, nitrogen, ethane, methanol, tholins and water ice. Nothing even remotely like this. Maybe a big metal-rich meteorite buried in the ice crust after an impact then?

  “We don’t know what it is, or even if the measurement was correct. But it surely is interesting. It would be desirable to send a manned mission there. This looks like a situation that needs more resourcefulness and improvisations than robots can do,” continued Blythe.

  And for this, they needed someone with an expertise of frozen bodies of the outer solar system; someone stable, resourceful and determined; and of course, preferably someone whom the journey would take around five instead of ten years. Sedna was still quite near its perihelion, but growing away slowly every year. In short: They needed someone like two experienced workers closing their successful mission on Neptune’s icy moon Triton.

  “ . . . of course, I cannot force you into this. But with prolonging the contract, you’ll receive extra money for such a long stay on your own and all the associated risks. I attach the new version of your contract to this message. I expect your answer in three days.”

  Theodora didn’t have to look at the document to know the bonuses would be large; almost unimaginably large. There were medical risks associated with long-term radiation exposure, dangerous activities, immense psychical pressure, stay in microgravitation and above all, the cryosleep necessary to travel so far away without losing many years just by the voyage itself.

  But it wasn’t the money that primarily tempted her to accept the contract.

  Theodora and Dimitri looked at each other expectantly. “Well,” she broke the silence first, “looks like we’re gonna take a rather long nap; do you agree?”

  Theodora shivered. At the first moment, she felt exposed and frightened without any obvious reason, which was even worse. Then she remembered; she was in the cryosleep chamber and slowly awakening. They must be near Sedna now.

  “Dimi?” she croaked. There was no reply, although the ship was supposed to transmit every conversation to the other chamber—which meant that Dimitri hadn’t achieved consciousness yet.

  It took Theodora another hour before she could gather her thoughts well enough to start going through the data. When she was in the middle of checking their velocity and trajectory, the speaker in the chamber came alive: “Darling? Are you awake?”

  “Yes, how are you?”

  “Well, nothing’s better than a good long sleep!”

  Theodora laughed. Her throat burned and she still felt a bit stiff, but she couldn’t stop. They actually were there; further than any human beings ever before!

  In the next couple of days, Dimitri and Theodora had little time to rest although they didn’t do anything physically demanding and were still recovering from the cryosleep. First they searched for and found the Nerivik 2 crash site and the two nearby stationed landers. The ice in the area seemed different from other sites, as if it had been gradually modified by inner volcanic activity. That explained why Nerivik 2 sent both its landers there in the first place. Kittiwake sent down a probe, continued mapping the surface and after that sent a few other probes on different locations. It was a standard procedure, but it needed a lot of time.

  When the first results from the probe near Nerivik 2 arrived, Dimitri sat still for a moment and then found his voice and called: “Dora! You must come see this.”

  The readings were peculiar. The object buried almost two hundred meters below the surface seemed a bit like an asteroid now, more than a hundred meters in diameter in one direction and over five hundred in the other. According to the ultrasonic pulses data, its shape seemed conical and the layer reflecting the pulses quite smooth. A very unusual asteroid indeed.

  “What do you think it is?”

  Theodora shrugged. “Don’t know—and can’t very well imagine, to be precise. Until it’s proven otherwise, I’m betting on an asteroid, albeit a weird one. But let’s find out soon.”

  “I’ll send down the drilling machinery, shall I? Or do you propose to wait for even more readings?”

  “Send it.”

  Kittiwake had two major drilling devices—three before Triton—and one backup machine. Theodora and Dimitri decided to send two at once. It was riskier, but they wanted to compare the data from an area with the anomaly and from another place chosen because of its similar surface structures. The equipment was old but reliable and lived through many more or less improvisational repairs.

  At the end of the first day of drilling, they reached almost thirty meters below surface. On day three, they were about one hundred meters deep. On day four, the probe got through almost one hundred and fifty meters of ice and stopped.

  Theodora had the uncomfortable feeling of vertigo as every time she performed telemetric control. She guided the repair drone carefully to the drilling probe’s main panel. She felt strangely dissociated with her body when the robot picked the cover and she felt as if it were her arms raising it and putting it aside. There she was. “Oh, not this,” she sighed.

  No wonder Dimitri had no success trying to get the probe running again from here. It was no software bug, temporary failure or anything the self-repair systems could handle. Most of the processors were fried and needed replacing. The repair drone didn’t have all of the components. They could send them down during some of the next orbit. But—

  She lost her connection to the drone, as Kittiwake disappeared over the horizon from the drone’s perspective, before she could end it herself. She gasped. It felt as if her limb had been cut off. She gulped and tried to concentrate again.

  Yes, they could send the parts down. But Theodora feared that although the drone itself had more than sufficient AI for common repairs and had all the blueprints in its memory, it might overlook something else, something an AI would not notice and that might cause future trouble. She’d not be happy if they had to replace the processors again, like it happened once on Triton. She could control the drone from distance again, but there was no chance she could achieve that much precision and look everywhere through telemetry.

  Well, they wanted to initiate manned exploration anyway. It would just have to be sooner than expected.

  Dimitri watched Theodora’s descent. He knew that she had performed similar procedures many times before—but that never prevented him from worrying.

  The view distorted as Kittiwake started losing connection. In another thirty minutes or so, they would be out of range, so Dimitri moved the ship to a stationary orbit above her. The two satellites were operational and deployed on an equatorial and polar orbits would continue to scan the rest of the surface. He could have made them relay stations, but he liked being able to communicate directly with Theodora, her landing module, her rover and the drilling probe. Fewer things could go wrong. And after years spent so far from Earth, they knew that things often went wrong.

  He gave the engine command for more thrust and checked on the planned stationary transfer orbit. Everything seemed fine for a while.

  Until a red light flashed next to the screen and a warning presented itself.

  Theodora was descending through the tunnel in the ice. It was dark except the light from LEDs on her suit and the reflectors from the top of the shaft. Her rope was winding down gradually. She could see the drilling device below now.

  The light above seemed faint when she reached the probe. It took her only an hour to get it operational again. She smiled and let the winch pull her up again.

  Just as she neared the surface, she heard a noise in the speakers of her suit. “Dimitri?” she spoke. “What is it?”

  “Have to . . . come down . . .”

  She barely understood him through the static.

  “Dimitri!”

  For a while, she heard nothing. Then the sta
tic returned—and after that, Dimitri’s distorted voice. “ . . . have to land.” Cracking and humming. Theodora tried to amplify the sound frantically. “ . . . send you the coordinates . . . hope it works out . . .”

  A file found its way through the transmission. It was a technical report generated by Kittiwake. Theodora opened it and glimpsed through it quickly. “Oh no,” she whispered.

  Dimitri was doing his best to lead the remains of the ship on a trajectory ending with something that would approximate a landing more than a crash.

  It was less than twenty minutes from the moment he accelerated Kittiwake to reach the transfer orbit but it seemed like an eternity. During that time, a warning indicated that the main turbine in the ship’s power station was not working properly. He ran a more detailed scan and a moment later, everything was flashing with error reports.

  The turbine in the power cycle broke down. It was tested for signs of wearing down regularly, but a hairline crack might have been overlooked in the control. The ship was moving with inertia most of the journey, the crack could have expanded during the deceleration phase and ruptured now, when the engine was working a little more again.

  Things could go wrong. And they went wrong. Worse even, one of the blades pierced the coating of the reactor and the heated helium-xenon gas started leaking rapidly. The damage was too much for the automated repair systems. It was still leaking into the space between the coatings.

  And the reactor itself was overheating quickly. Once the turbine stopped working, the gas still trapped in the cycle kept getting more and more heat from the MITEE—but couldn’t continue through the cycle and cool down.

  It was not critical yet, but would be in another couple of minutes. Dimitri sent all the repair drones to help the built-in repair and emergency systems but could see that it was not enough. He had also shut down the MITEE and all the rods were now safely turned to stop the reaction. It still wasn’t enough. The overheating continued and could lead to an explosion. It could happen in a few minutes if not cooled down quickly.