The Final Frontier

by Neil Clarke

  It was just a way life went. Nothing serious happened in years and suddenly he’s got minutes.

  He knew there was only one thing to do. So he gave a command for the valves in the outer reactor coating to open. Then all the gas would leak outside. The ship would be useless without it, but it was the better one of two bad scenarios.

  So far, only a minute had elapsed from the breakdown.

  In the next few seconds, things went from bad to worse.

  “Shit,” exhaled Dimitri as he felt how the Kittiwake started spinning. One of the valves must have been stuck, so that the gas started leaking outside in just one direction. It quickly sent the ship into rotation.

  Dimitri tried to compensate it with thrusters on both RCSs, but then Kittiwake shook hideously and then many of the screens went down. He realized what happened.

  The rotation was too much. The ship was never constructed for this. There was too much tension in wrong direction . . . She tore apart.

  Still coping with the rotation, he checked the systems. He was right. The engine section was gone. He was lucky that the habitation section was still operating almost normally. There was his chance.

  This section’s reaction control system was apparently still working. The RCS’s thrusters were small, but it was all he had.

  He tested them with a short blast. Actually working; good. He used them to provide a little more distance from the other remains of the ship and then reviewed his situation more calmly. He had to land if he wanted to live; and he needed to do it quickly, otherwise he’d drift into space with no means of correcting his trajectory.

  He smiled rather sadly.

  About twenty minutes after the turbine breakdown, Dimitri was now leading the rest of the ship down on Sedna and praying he could actually land instead of crashing.

  “Dora?” he called. He hoped she’d pick up the transmission. “Dora, can you hear me? The reactor had a breakdown and the ship tore apart! I’m left with our section’s remains. I have to come down . . .”

  Theodora was driving her rover frantically to the landing site. She could not contact Dimitri, but that didn’t mean anything; the antenna could have been damaged, while most of the ship could be perfectly fine. It’s all right. He is fine.

  She wished she could go faster, but as on most ice-rocky bodies, Sedna’s surface could be treacherous. It had far fewer cracks or ridges than Europa or Ganymede and was actually very smooth compared to them, but it was still an alien landscape, not resembling anything on Earth at all. Himalaya’s glaciers were children’s toys compared to Sedna. The perspective was wrong, the measures were wrong, the shadows were wrong; it wasn’t a land fit for human eyes and spatial recognition.

  Finally, she approached the site. Her heart skipped a beat when she saw the habitation section in the lights of the rover. It seemed almost intact.

  She ran to the nearest reachable airlock. It was still functioning; she could get inside.

  It didn’t look as if the ship had been through a bad accident. The corridor looked nearly normal. Everything was strapped or permanently fixed anyway, so a sight of total chaos wasn’t to be expected. However, most of the systems were disabled, as she found out by logging into the network.

  The door of the control room opened in front of her, a little damaged, but working.

  “Dimitri!”

  He found time to get in an emergency suit and was safely strapped in his chair. Good. Theodora leaned to him. He looked unconscious. She logged into his suit and read the data quickly.

  Time of death . . . Suit’s healthcare mechanisms could not help . . .

  “Oh, Dimitri,” she croaked. Her throat was dry and she felt tears coming to her eyes. She forced them down. No time for this. Not now. She must do what he’d do in her place.

  She moved his body in the suit to the cryosleep chamber. Once she managed it there, she ran a similar procedure as they had gone through many times before. Only this time it was slightly different, designed to keep a dead brain as little damaged as possible, in a state usable for later scanning of the neural network. Theodora knew that her Dimitri was gone; but they could use this data, complete it by every tiny bit of information available about his life, and create a virtual personality approximating Dimitri. He wouldn’t be gone so . . . completely.

  After that, she checked on the ship’s systems again. No change whatsoever. Nothing needed her immediate attention now, at least for a short while.

  She leaned on a wall and finally let the tears come.

  This is a part of an older log, but I don’t want to repeat all that happened to me . . . I must go to sleep soon.

  Kittiwake is dead now, as is Dimitri. I could do nothing in either case. I’ve got only one option, a quite desperate one. I have to equip my landing module in a way that it could carry me home. We went through this possibility in several emergency scenarios; I know what to do and that I can do it.

  Of course, I’ll have to spend the journey awake. The module hasn’t got any cryosleep chamber and the one from the ship cannot be moved. But if the recycling systems work well, I can do it. I’ve got enough rations for about five years if I save the food a little. It doesn’t get me anywhere near Earth, but I looked through the possible trajectories into the inner solar system and it could get me near Saturn if I leave here in three weeks, before this window closes. If I don’t make it in this time, I’m as well as dead. But let’s suppose I make it, I must . . . During the journey, I can contact Earth and another ship, even if only an automatic one with more supplies and equipment, could meet me on the way. I’ll get home eventually.

  If I succeed in rebuilding the landing module for an interplanetary journey. No one actually expected this to happen, but here I am. I must try.

  The next few days were busy. Theodora kept salvaging things from Kittiwake and carefully enhancing the module’s systems. In most cases, enhancement was all she needed. Then she had to get rid of some parts needed only for the purposes of landing and surface operations—and finally attach the emergency fuel tanks and generate the fuel.

  The module had a classical internal combustion engine. High thrust, but despairingly high need of fuel.

  Fortunately, she was surrounded by methane and water ice—and purified liquid methane and oxygen were just the two things she needed. Once she got the separation and purification cycle running, the tanks were slowly being refilled. At least this was working as it should.

  She’d very much like to let Earth know about the accident, but she couldn’t. Most of the relay stations were behind the Sun from her perspective now and the rest was unreachable by a weak antenna on the module; the one on the ship was too badly damaged. The Earth would know nothing about this until she’s on her way back.

  The plan seemed more and more feasible each day. She clung to it like to what it really was—her only chance of surviving.

  When a message that the drilling probe had reached its target depth and stopped drilling appeared on the screen of her helmet, Theodora was confused for a couple of seconds before she realized what it was about. It seemed like a whole different world—mapping the surface from above, sending probes . . . In the last three days, she had little sleep and focused on her works on the module only. She had completely forgotten about the probe.

  Well, after she checks the fuel generators again, she should have some time to look at it, she was well ahead of the schedule. After all, true explorers didn’t abandon their aims even in times of great distress.

  I’m glad I decided to have a look at it. Otherwise I’d die desperate and hopeless. Now, I’m strangely calm. It’s just what a discovery like this does with you. It makes you feel small. The amazement and awe . . .

  Theodora couldn’t believe the results until she personally got down the shaft into a small space the probe had made around a part of the thing.

  She stood in the small ice cave, looking at it full of wonder. She dared not touch it yet.

  The surface was dark and smooth.
Just about two square meters of it were uncovered; the rest was still surrounded by ice. According to the measurements, the thing was at least five hundred meters long and had a conic shape. There was no doubt that she discovered . . . a ship.

  You cannot possibly imagine the feeling until you’re right there. And I wasn’t even expecting it. It was . . . I cannot really describe it. Unearthly. Wonderful. Amazing. Terrifying. All that and much more, mixed together.

  I gave the alien ship every single moment I could spare. My module needed less and less tending to and I had almost two weeks until the flight window would close.

  I named her Peregrine. It seemed appropriate to me. This wasn’t a small interplanetary ship like Kittiwake; this bird could fly a lot faster. But still . . . she seemed too small to be an interstellar vessel, even if this was only a habitation section and the engines were gone.

  It was probably the greatest discovery in all human history yet. Just too bad I didn’t have a chance to tell anyone. I really hope someone’s listening.

  Theodora directed all resources she didn’t vitally need for her module to Peregrine. Only a day after her initial discovery, the probes picked up another strange shape buried in the ice not far from the ship.

  When they also reached it, Theodora was struck with wonder. It was clearly an engine section!

  While she worked on her module, she kept receiving new data about it and everything suggested that Peregrine used some kind of fusion drive; at this first glance not far more advanced than human engine systems. It seemed to her even more intriguing than if she had found something completely unknown.

  I was eventually able to run a radiometric dating of ice surrounding the ship. The results suggest that she landed here some two-hundred and fifty million years ago. The ice preserved it well. But I must wonder . . . what were they doing here? Why have they come to our solar system—and why just this once? Although I don’t understand a lot of what I see, the ship doesn’t seem that much sophisticated to me. Maybe it’s even something we could manage to make. But why use something like this to interstellar travel? With too little velocity, they’d never make it here in fewer than hundreds of years even if they came from the Alpha Centauri system!

  Unless . . . the distance was smaller. We still don’t know the history of the solar system in much detail. It’s supposed that Sedna’s orbit was disturbed by passing of another star from an open cluster, where the Sun probably originated, about eight hundred astronomical units away not long after the formation of our system.

  But what if an event like this occurred more times? Could it possibly have been also a quarter of a billion years ago? Just about any star on an adequate trajectory could have interfered with the solar system. In some million and half years, Gliese 710 should pass through the Oort cloud. We wouldn’t have much evidence if an event like this happened in a distant past—only some perturbed orbits and more comet and asteroid bombardment of the planets later.

  Hundreds AU is still a great distance, but surely not impossible. Hell, I’m almost one hundred AU from the Sun now, although I haven’t traveled the whole distance at one time. If we used a gravity assist from the Sun, we could overcome even distance of a thousand AU within a decade only! They could have done it too, maybe hoping to reach the inner part of the system, but something had prevented them. And possibly the very first object they encountered, quite near their own star at the time, was a frozen dwarf planet from about a hundred to almost a thousand AU far from the Sun, sent on its eccentric orbit by an earlier passing star and now disturbed again. They must have been lucky that Sedna wasn’t captured by their star at the time. Or could it have been that theirs was the original star that deviated Sedna’s orbit that much? Anyway, they’d have had to cross hundreds AU, but that’s doable. If we had a sufficient motivation, we could manage a lot more.

  Let’s assume for a moment that my crazy hypothesis is right . . .

  Then, I wonder what kind of motivation they had.

  It happened three days before her planned departure.

  She was at the surface at the time, which might have saved her life—or rather prolonged it.

  The quakes came without any warning. She was getting a little sleep in her rover when it woke her up. Four, maybe five points on the Richter scale, Theodora guessed. Her throat was suddenly very, very dry.

  The fuel generators . . .

  After the quake stopped, she went to check on them. Overcoming the little distance between her and them seemed to take an eternity; new cracks formed in the ice.

  When she saw them, Theodora knew she ought to feel anger, panic or desperation. But she just felt impossibly tired.

  Two of the tanks were completely destroyed and the generators were damaged. She performed a more detailed control anyway but the result did not surprise her.

  They couldn’t be repaired; not in time. Maybe in months . . . but she’d be too late in less than a week.

  She sat back in the rover, exhausted but suddenly very, very calm. What was a threat a while ago was a certainty now. She wasn’t going to make it and she knew it.

  The best what she could do was to use her remaining time as effectively as she was able to.

  When I’m done here, I’ll freeze myself. But this time I’ll set the . . . final cryogenic procedure.

  If you found us and it’s not too late . . . Well, we might talk again.

  The original shaft was destroyed by the quake, but she used the remaining probe, continued drilling with a maximum achievable speed and kept measuring the ice layer via the ultrasonics. While these processes were running, Theodora tried to find out more about Peregrine. She was able to get spectroscopic readings which suggested that its surface consisted mainly of titanium, however, she couldn’t read all the spectral characteristics; the alloy seemed to have many components.

  She also obtained more results on the thickness of the ice crust. The probe got almost two kilometers deep. Its results suggested that a liquid ocean beneath the layer might be possible—maybe fifteen, maybe twenty kilometers deeper than she was now. Theodora knew she’d never live to see a definitive answer; but these measurements might still be useful for someone else. If they could intercept her message.

  She tried several times to send the data back to Earth, but she knew the chances too well to be even a little optimistic, although she salvaged a bigger antenna from Nerivik 2. But the transmitter was still rather weak and the aim far too inadequate. Without reaching relay stations, her message would become a cosmic noise, nothing more. The most reliable way to let the humanity see the data someday was to store them here in as many copies as she could and hope it would suffice. She didn’t have much of an option.

  She kept thinking about the alien ship. If her dating was correct and it landed here a quarter of a billion years ago, it would vaguely coincide with the Great Permian-Triassic Extinction Event. It was usually attributed mostly to geological factors, but there was a possibility of a contribution of other effects—a disturbance of the Oort cloud and more comets sent to the inner solar system afterward would do. She was recently able to measure how long Peregrine had been exposed to cosmic radiation and it seemed to be just several hundred years unless there was a mistake or some factor she didn’t know about. There was no chance any ship like this could have come here from another star system in such extremely short time—unless the star was really close at the time. It started to make more and more sense to Theodora, although all she had was still just a speculation.

  “And it will remain a speculation until someone else finds us,” she said aloud, glancing at Peregrine. “But they will. You’ll see.”

  However, she wasn’t so sure. Would the company send a new expedition after they realize that Theodora and Dimitri were not going to ever call back? It depended mostly on the budget; she was rather pessimistic. And about other companies or countries, she couldn’t even guess. But Sedna’s distance would grow each year. Before another mission could be sufficiently prepared and l
aunched, years would probably pass. And other years during its voyage. Then even more years on the way back.

  She had to admit to herself the possibility that no one was going to discover them soon—maybe until the next perihelion. So far away in the future she couldn’t even imagine it.

  She looked at the other ship and touched the dark metal surface. But still closer than how long you had to wait . . .

  “You were shipwrecked here too, am I right?” Theodora managed a little smile. “Pity that we cannot talk about what happened to us. I’d really like to hear your story. And it looks like we’re gonna be stuck here together for a while.” Her smile grew wider yet more sorrowful at the same time. “Probably for a long while.”

  I hope you found us and heard our story, whoever you are. I really wish you did.

  “Very interesting,” said Manuel. “We must report these findings to the Consortium immediately.”

  Without waiting for an approval from Chiara or Jurriaan, he started mentally assembling a compact data transmission with the help of Orpheus. In a few minutes, they were prepared to send it.

  Neither Chiara nor Jurriaan objected.

  When he was done, Manuel sent them a mental note of what he intended to do next.

  “No!” Chiara burst out. “You cannot! They don’t deserve this kind of treatment. They died far too long ago for this procedure to be a success. You won’t revive them; you’ll get pathetic fragments if anything at all! They were heroes. They died heroes. You cannot do this to them.”

  “It has a considerable scientific value. These bodies were preserved in an almost intact ice, sufficiently deep for shielding most of the radiation. We have never tried to revive bodies this old—and in such a good condition. We must do it.”