He dreamed of Victoria Beach. It was his favorite summer retreat when he was a kid, a narrow strip of sand between two stone breakers stretching out into the sea like knobby gray fingers. He and his family spent just about every Friday there during the hottest weeks of the year. Adán and Saul had passed the time hunting for sand crabs and feeding the anemones that clung to the rocks. Sometimes his mother would buy a loaf of stale bread from the dollar store, and they’d break off little pieces to throw to the gulls. Adán never tired of watching the flock of white and gray birds sprint toward their snacks. He always felt a little sorry for the younger birds, the ones that were small and still mostly gray, and would make a point to toss plenty of bread where they could reach it before the adults could snatch it away. Once, he held out a piece for nearly ten minutes before one gull got up enough courage to pluck it off his palm.
When the days grew late and the tide started to come in, his mother would announce it was time to pack up and go. Adán still remembered the last time she waved to him from the car. He was on his boogie board out past the cresting waves. As he sat there watching her, he noticed as if for the first time the graceful curve of the shore, how it bowed inward like a giant letter ‘C’. The waves rolled into it in gentle white coils, licked the dark, wet sand with their wide flat tongues, and then retreated back beneath the next set of waves. It reminded Adán of a picture he’d seen once of an ancient Mayan king sitting atop his throne surrounded by row after row of bowing subjects. The waves bowed to the shore in unceasing veneration.
If he had known then that he’d never see the ocean again, that his mother would die before the next summer, he might have lingered there a little longer. Instead, he had paddled forward, caught a wave, and raced to shore where he hopped up and ran to the car without even looking back to say good-bye.
The memory gave him a nauseated feeling, like when you wish so desperately for the chance to correct some wrong, but you know you can’t. So, he was grateful when something woke him from the dream. At first, he felt relieved, and then the regret, the isolation descended on him once again.
The slow, steady beep seemed unnecessarily loud in the empty cockpit, and it sent Adán’s heart racing. He sat up, cursing himself for falling asleep.
The signal remained steady. Adán peered out the cockpit windows, worried that the motion detector had picked up on something. Yet he saw nothing but the vast orange desert and the still silver shelter. Confused, he glanced down at the E-Tab. The signal wasn’t coming from there at all. It came from the cockpit itself—from the communications panel.
It was an incoming hail, a signal from another ship. Someone was trying to communicate with them!
Adán blinked hard. After three days of sending out signals and getting nothing in return, this was a relief. More than a relief. It was a miracle.
“Computer,” he said, “receiver on.”
A holo image appeared several inches above the built-in pad in the control panel. The NASA logo appeared, followed by a string of words blinking against a blue background:
Incoming Transmission 027111:
Ensign hailing Carpathia—Please respond
Ensign. The fleet’s flagship and first shuttle to leave Earth. Adán reached for the ‘Accept’ button on the controls, but then hesitated. Only the shuttle commander was supposed to receive transmissions. For a moment, he considered comm-ing the shelter, but it would take several minutes at least to get Dryker up and in here, and by then it might be too late. The signal might be cut off. He would first respond to the hail, he decided, and then comm Dryker.
He typed in the command:
Carpathia acknowledges Ensign
A few moments passed, and then more words appeared beneath his message:
This is Commander Edward Parks of the U.S.S. Ensign.
Please activate visual and auditory transmission.
Adán grabbed his E-Tab and quickly switched it on. He spoke into the mic. “Tink!” he hissed. “Tink, wake up!”
He heard a crackling noise come from his speaker and then Tink’s tired voice.
“Did I sleep through my alarm?” Pause. “Wait, I’ve got another hour. What’s this about, Adán?”
“Tink, we’re being hailed.”
Another pause.
“Are you serious?” asked Tink.
“You’d better get Dryker up here pronto.”
“Sure. Right. Give us a minute.”
Adán turned his attention back to the holo transmission. He typed in the code Tink had showed him earlier, hoping he got it right.
An image of a man appeared on the screen. An older man in his late thirties, Adán guessed, dark skinned with a long, thin bearded face and a broad chest and shoulders. Adán peered at the image, hardly believing his eyes. No one that old had boarded any of the shuttles. All the crews had been young, most no more than twenty-three or twenty-four. In the prime of their lives.
So, what was a middle-aged male doing hailing him from Ensign?
Adán punched the transmission key, hoping whoever was sending that message was capable of receiving one as well. The light in the console switched on, indicating that the camera was recording.
“This is fleet shuttle Carpathia responding to your transmission,” said Adán. “I repeat, this is fleet shuttle Carpathia. Your hail has been received, but the signal is erratic. Can you hear me? Over.”
The holo image of the man flickered and then disappeared. Adán panicked. What happened? Had he done something wrong? Cut off the lines of communication somehow? But no. The image reappeared, clearer this time. The static was gone.
“Sorry,” said the man, and now Adán could make out the early signs of wrinkles around his eyes and a touch of gray in his hair. “I adjusted the frequency to target your incoming signal. Is that better?”
“Yes,” said Adán, relieved. “Much better. Thanks for answering our hails. We’ve been trying to reach you for three days.”
The man’s forehead crinkled in confusion.
“We haven’t received any incoming. You answered our hail. We’ve been sending these out periodically for years, but honestly, we gave up hope of getting a response a long time ago. I can’t believe you’re out there.”
Years?
“Who are you?” Adán asked.
The man’s eyebrows rose curiously. “I’m the captain of the fleet shuttle Ensign. Who are you?”
“You’re Ensign’s captain?”
“Yes. Captain Edward Parks.”
Eddie Parks? It couldn’t be. Eddie and Adán were the same age when they left Earth. Impossible.
“But you’re…you’re older.”
Parks’ expression was somber. “Are you Commander Dryker?” he asked.
“No. I’m Mission Specialist Adán Fuentes.”
“I see,” said Commander Parks. “I need to speak directly to your commanding officer.”
Adán looked out the shuttle window. There was no sign yet of Scott or Tink.
“Our commander is unavailable at the moment, but we’re trying to locate him. Can you hang on a few minutes?”
“Of course.”
Adán couldn’t believe it. He was speaking to Commander Eddie Parks of the Ensign, but Eddie had aged at least a decade, maybe two. Unless this wasn’t really Eddie. And what did he mean he hadn’t received their hails?
“Are you on Gliese 581g?” asked Adán.
“Yes,” replied Commander Parks. “I’m transmitting our coordinates to you now.”
“What about the rest of the fleet, the other shuttles? Are they with you?”
There was a pause before Parks spoke again. “We were unable to rendezvous with any of the other shuttle crews. It took us a while, but we eventually pinpointed the distress signals of three. We sent rescue teams, but when we arrived, we found the crews all dead. We assumed the Carpathia had met the same fate, but your location was simply too far for us to investigate. We only have one rover that runs on limited battery cells.”
/> “Too far? You mean you’ve known our location all along?”
“You’re more than two hundred miles away from us, and our hails were never answered—until now.”
Adán thought about what Tink had said, about a glitch that may have blocked incoming transmissions from the fleet. And Parks said the Ensign hadn’t received theirs. Seemed Tink was successful in fixing the problem.
“What about your shuttle?” Adán asked.
“The Ensign suffered significant damage when we landed. We couldn’t take off again. And as the years have gone by, we’ve dismantled much of the hardware to use for other things.”
Again that word—years.
“How long ago did you land?”
“We reached our present location fifteen years ago,” said Parks. “Listen Specialist Fuentes, I really would like to speak to your commanding officer.”
Adán leaned back in the pilot’s seat. Fifteen years. So, Parks and the Ensign’s crew, no doubt, had aged normally in that time while the Carpathia’s crew had stayed in cryo and had hardly aged at all.
Parks spoke again, his tone solemn. “Fuentes, is your cargo intact?”
“Cargo?”
“Your embryos. Did any of them survive?”
“Embryos? What embryos?”
“You haven’t watched the vids?”
Vids? Embryos? What was he talking about? Through the window, Adán finally caught a glimpse of Tink and Scott leaving the shelter. It didn’t look good though. Scott was leaning heavily on Tink for support, and they were moving at a snail’s pace. Adán waved for them to hurry.
“Captain Dryker is on his way,” Adán told Parks. “Hang on, all right?”
The interior of the shuttle was dark, but when Tink and Scott entered the hatch, the overhead lights detected motion and flickered on. Jonah moaned as the unexpected light brought an abrupt end to his sleep.
“Who turned on the lights?” he grumbled, blocking his eyes with his raised elbow. “Isn’t there some way to keep those things off?”
“Sorry,” said Adán, opening the cockpit door to let Dryker through. “Go back to sleep.”
Jonah grabbed the edge of his blanket with both hands and tugged it up over his head. Fess hadn’t stirred. He was laying on his stomach, half his face buried in his pillow. Adán was pretty sure he was drooling.
Tink delivered a trembling Scott into the copilot’s chair in the cockpit. They closed the door behind them. Like all of them, Scott wore his assigned white pajamas with the NASA logo below the left shoulder. His skin had a pale, clammy pallor.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“A transmission came through from one of the other shuttles,” Adán explained.
“Which one?”
“The Ensign.” Adán took a minute to quickly bring Tink and Dryker up to speed on his conversation with Commander Parks thus far, carefully explaining the time that had passed and Parks’ age. When he was done, Scott re-opened communications.
“Commander Parks, I’m Commander Dryker. Mission Specialist Fuentes here has briefed me about your situation.”
“Yes,” said Parks. “I was just asking if you had viewed the vids. Dryker, you were to run the NASA control vids on waking.”
Dryker cast a questioning glance at Adán and then Tink, who shook his head. “I’ve been in the archives searching for stuff on the electrical systems. I didn’t look for anything else.”
Parker explained. “Only the Mission Commander has access to them. Dryker, you should have the code.”
Adán thought Dryker appeared confused at first, but then he nodded as if remembering something important. “I, uh, was incapacitated,” he said. “But I’ll view them now. Seoung, is the connection to the main viewer functioning?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Pull it up.”
After a bit of fidgeting with the control panel, a separate screen on the cockpit wall lit up. Scott punched a series of numbers into the keyboard, and the NASA logo appeared.
“It’s up,” said Scott.
Parks cleared his throat. “As I was explaining to your fellow crew member, the Ensign reached the rendezvous sector fifteen years ago. Unfortunately, our shuttle had to make an emergency landing and was damaged beyond repair. We discovered too late that one of our crewmembers was a mole for the Earthside terrorist group Terrestrial Brotherhood. He destroyed most of our cargo and tried to sabotage the mission, but we took him down. We believe the same thing happened to each of the other ships. That’s why they didn’t make it.”
Sabotage? The idea that someone would intentionally kill the shuttle crews turned Adán’s stomach. He thought of his own crew, most of whom were lying dead beneath the sands of Gliese. He thought, too, of the gash in the shuttle’s side. Had the Carpathia been sabotaged as well?
“So, these vids explain all that?” asked Commander Dryker.
“Well, not quite. They do explain why we are where we are and what we are expected to do now that we’re here. They do not provide any alternatives should our original mission be compromised, which it has.
“You will need to view the vids before we can proceed. We’ll continue this conversation tomorrow and see if we can’t form a strategy to rendezvous. Until then, Parks out.”
After Parks’ face faded away, Scott, Tink, and Adán sat in silence, staring at the blank screen.
“I have a feeling,” said Tink, “our mission is not what we thought it was.”
Scott keyed in a second code. On the main viewer screen, the NASA logo vanished, and a new face appeared, one which Adán and the others knew well. General Travis Berkeley was age-worn with deep grooves sprouting from the corners of his lips and eyes, evidence of countless battles both won and lost, and years of commanding soldiers. He had been called out of retirement to head up the Planetary Colonization program. Despite his gruff exterior, he had been surprisingly kind and patient with his young crew members. He spoke now with a solemn expression on his face and a voice that was steady but somehow sad.
He spoke slowly and with authority:
“If you are viewing this video stream then you and your crew have arrived at your destination, which, you may have already discovered is not Europa. You may feel betrayed, believing you were lied to, tricked. Let me assure you this deception was born out of necessity. Should the world discover our true intentions, there would be anarchy and chaos on our hands. When faced with certain annihilation, human beings are capable of the worst kinds of inhumanity.
“To maintain worldwide peace, NASA, the International Space Council, and NGIS crafted the plan to send the shuttle fleet to Europa as the first phase of a long-term colonization program. The world population believed the process of colonization would take place over the course of decades, an entire generation, and that it was a unified international journey into a new future.
“This, unfortunately, simply isn’t true.”
Commander Berkeley sighed and swiped his fingertips across his perspiring forehead.
“The Earth will not survive decades. It won’t survive two years. Our scientists calculate that due to significant solar radiation levels, the hole in our ozone layer will soon break wide open, and when it does, temperatures on Earth will rise by a hundred degrees, possibly twice that, in a matter of days. All life on this planet will die, and all liquid water will be vaporized. By the time you view this vid, everything I have just described to you will have happened long ago.”
Adán gripped the armrest of the pilot’s seat. Heat rose from deep inside of him, making every inch of his skin burn. He had already begun to guess there was some dire reason they’d been sent to Gliese, but the General had more to tell, and waiting for it felt like that horrible moment at the top of a rollercoaster just before the final drop.
“You are probably wondering why we did not send you to Europa,” the General continued. “We had to take into consideration the reactions of the populace to whatever plan we promoted. Europa was, quite frankly, plau
sible. There has been talk of sending colonists to Europa for years, but the truth is Europa’s inhospitable climate would require more resources to construct a viable colony than we have time to gather. We needed a planet with a life-sustaining atmosphere and water, with temperatures comparable to Earth. Somewhere humans could survive without a dome or other construct that could get damaged or worn out over time, resulting in yet another catastrophic extinction. The nearest such planet is Gliese 581g, twenty million light years from earth. The world’s top engineers and scientists have been working around the clock to design spacecraft capable of traveling that distance at a speed never before achieved.”
So Tink had been right in his calculations, and his brilliance astounded Adán. Yet the confirmation that they were so far from home, without even the remotest chance of returning, left him feeling gutted.
“Your mission is as you were initially instructed—to dig a well, construct greenhouses and plant food, and to build a colony with whatever resources are at your disposal. Yet there is one additional responsibility of which you are not yet aware.
“Each shuttle has been equipped with a special compartment located in your laboratory. Inside you will find five thousand frozen zygotes, fertilized animal eggs. Not all species are represented. That would have been an impossible task, but our scientists have selected a diverse population and divided them among the twelve shuttles.
“In addition, your shuttle carries one thousand human embryos, carefully selected from fertility centers all over the world to represent the most genetically healthy and racially diverse population possible. There is an equal ratio of male to female, and of one ethnicity to another. These are the survivors of the human race.
“Once the initial colony is sustainable, it will be your responsibility to establish life on your new planet. We have provided each shuttle with three incubation vessels for developing the zygotes into viable fetuses. Your BIO squad is trained in their use.
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