by Samuel Best
“But if the comet hits while he’s gone, he’ll be stranded on the space station with the others. Stuck in space.” She sank back into her seat. “Is he the lucky one, or am I?”
“I think you should revisit the problem in two months. If you still feel bad about it, we’ll talk.”
“You mean after the comet hits?”
He chuckled, and she couldn’t help but join him.
Eight hours later, she was bouncing in the back seat of a Jeep as the driver found every pothole on the way to the impact site.
The roads had been paved for a while before turning into a pitted obstacle course, and the colorful landscape was a welcome change from the storms outside her airplane window. Now, Kate had a hard time seeing anything because of the constant dust kicked up from the road.
Their driver was a stoic man named Farat, who spoke immaculate English and responded to every question as if it were the most serious matter on Earth.
When he had picked Kate and Neesha up from the airport, Kate asked about their luggage.
Farat bowed deeply and dramatically replied, “It will be brought…in another car.”
“I think I see it,” said Neesha, her voice bouncing along with the Jeep. “There.”
She pointed ahead, to a cloud of dust rising from the horizon.
Green farmland stretched around them to both sides, watched over by rocky mountains in the distance. Clusters of low huts punctuated the endless flat expanse.
As the Jeep approached the rising cloud of dust, Farat slowed, driving carefully around potholes that would swallow the vehicle.
“The worst I have ever seen,” he intoned.
After another deep bow, he left them at a military checkpoint two hundred meters from the impact site. There were no other structures set up around the crater, just a collection of green military vehicles, and two tanks.
Kate and Neesha showed their photo IDs to the guard at the checkpoint. He scribbled on a clipboard and handed them their security badges.
“Don’t lose these,” he said. “Anyone caught without them goes to a place they don’t want to go. Do you understand?”
They nodded, and he waved them through.
Colonel Brighton met up with them halfway to the crater. He was driving a dirty golf cart with a smeared windshield.
“Need a lift?”
Kate and Neesha climbed in.
“Welcome to your home for the next two months,” he said.
Kate looked at the flat landscape. “I hope there’s a bathroom.”
“It will be a small city by the time we’re all set up,” the Colonel assured her. Let’s take a look at what we’re dealing with.”
He parked the cart near the edge of the crater. The three of them approached it carefully, peering into the depths of its one-hundred foot diameter.
It wasn’t so much a crater as it was a hole punched into the Earth at a near-forty-five degree angle.
“My God,” Brighton whispered. “I had no idea it was so deep.”
Glowing blue goop plastered the walls of the hole, covering it like webbing. At the bottom of the pit, way, way, down, blue light slowly pulsed.
“We need to block all this off,” said Brighton, stepping away from the edge. “Kate, tell your people not to go anywhere near it until we get a system in place.”
Blue light pulsed from the depths of the pit.
“I don’t think I’ll have to tell them twice,” she said.
8
JEFF
The spacecraft Seeker hummed quietly along as it shot toward Venus.
One of several primary burns from its hybrid antimatter propulsion drive had occurred twelve days ago, just beyond the orbit of Earth’s moon. There had been two smaller burns since then, along with a half-dozen minor course corrections from secondary thrusters.
The Seeker was roughly a quarter of the size of Explorer I and II, the ships that had carried Jeff to Titan on his two missions to Saturn’s largest moon. It had been constructed without a rotating centrifuge, so there was no artificial gravity for the just-less-than two-week journey to Venus. With such a relatively short trip, there was also no need for a hypergel stasis chamber. Each “night”, Jeff slept zipped up in his sleeping bag secured to one side of the cramped crew compartment.
The Seeker had been built for speed. To accommodate that notion, it could comfortably carry no more than two crew members in its crew and command compartments. Rations could be added for more, and there was certainly enough space (if only barely), but the oxygen scrubbers couldn’t handle that much carbon dioxide.
While the two compartments that comprised the habitable portion of the vessel were diminutive compared to the ships Jeff had a hand in building, little had changed with regard to its propulsion system. The habitable portion of the Seeker was a mere seven meters from blunted nose to flared stern, with a single fin protruding from the hull which housed, among other things, the communications equipment.
The ship hauled a twelve-meter-long tube that was three meters in diameter—the antimatter propulsion system. A single bell-shaped engine wash housing protruded from the back of the tube.
Jeff drifted from the crew compartment into the forward command area and strapped into the pilot chair. A control panel of black glass curved around him. Above that was a slender rectangular window, in the dead center of which was the brightly glowing white speck of Venus.
Jeff swiped up on the control panel and waited as the screen populated with the controls for the spacecraft. He called up the design parameters for the propulsion system and swiped quickly through the schematics of its current iteration. His finger paused when he came across the specifications for the solid matter fuel chamber. Someone had tweaked its design so the solid fuel would collect in the chamber nearly two seconds longer before the core spike. Such a pressure variation was well within safety parameters, which meant that the simple two second delay allowed for significantly higher energy output upon fuel annihilation within the chamber.
The result appeared to be a net seven percent gain in efficiency over the original design. He couldn’t help but shake his head and smile in appreciation.
At the bottom of the schematic, a small logo for the company Deep Black caught his eye.
Following the dissolution of MarsCorp after Jeff’s first mission to Titan, there were now only two companies on Earth capable of designing and building spacecraft powered by the hybrid antimatter drive. Diamond Aerospace had survived a near-takeover from the U.S. Government during the events surrounding Jeff’s second mission to Titan.
Deep Black had not been so fortunate.
Once the fastest-growing private space company since Noah Bell founded Diamond Aerospace, Deep Black had innovated itself into a financial abyss. Within six months of Jeff’s return to Earth, they had liquidated most of their assets and sold the rest to the U.S. Government. The name remained unchanged, but the same could be said for little else.
Even though the ship had been constructed at a Diamond Aerospace facility, the majority of funding had come from Deep Black. Most of Diamond Aerospace’s corporate funds were tied up in the Mars mining and orbital shipyard projects.
He ran a quick systems diagnostic and received no errors for his efforts. He settled back into his seat and found a sachet of lemonade in the side pocket of his chair. Jeff drank it thoughtfully as he watched Venus grow ever-so-slightly larger in the window.
With a quick tap of the screen, he sent yet another message to the space station in orbit around the Sun’s second planet. He waited a long while, then pulled up another message and sent it back to Earth: Still no response.
Jeff released the empty sachet and watched it spin slowly around the cabin. He wasn’t sure what was worse: twiddling his thumbs for two weeks on a voyage to another planet, or sleeping in a hypergel tank and having to cough up that disgusting pinkish gel once he arrived at his destination.
He sighed and reached for the buckle of his safety harness when a yello
w box popped up on his console. Jeff tapped the box and it expanded into a video feed. The screen was blank but an undercurrent of audio static crackled over the ship’s comm system.
“Identify yourself!” squawked a shrill man.
Jeff blinked in surprise. He tapped the transmit button and said, “This is the Seeker, en route to Venus Lab.”
More than a minute later, the static returned. “You! You! Who are you?!”
“Um...Jeffrey Dolan. I’m a...pilot. I’m piloting this vessel.”
A minute later: “What was your point of origin? And don’t say ‘Earth’. I want specifics!”
“I launched from Cape Canaveral. It took me almost two weeks to get this far, and if you don’t want company tomorrow, I’ll flip this ship around and head home.”
The pause this time was longer.
“Okay. You are cleared for approach.”
What a relief, Jeff thought.
“But I warn you, for your own safety: we are not alone! See you tomorrow.”
The line went dead.
Jeff stared at the blank control console for a long time. Eventually, he unsnapped his safety harness and drifted back to the crew compartment.
He slipped into his sleeping bag and zipped it up to his chin. There wasn’t much else he could do before starting the orbital maneuvers around Venus besides rest, and if that peculiar conversation was any indication, Jeff would need as much as he could get.
9
RILEY
Riley sat at the back of the crew cabin of the small shuttle, harnessed between Piper Lereaux and a man named Kenneth Miller. He had introduced himself to Riley as Sergeant Kenneth Miller, but didn’t elaborate beyond that. He was young, wore the traditional close cropped buzz cut of a military man, and moved with precision, even while wearing a spacesuit. Riley could only guess at his purpose on the mission. Piper didn’t seem to know, either. So far, Sergeant Miller was not proving to be the chatty type.
The shuttle had launched from Canaveral mere hours after Riley's meeting with the Colonel. Brighton waived the standard preflight medical checks in favor of a quick launch, stating that if Riley didn't pass the test, he would send him anyway.
Commander Carol Brighton gently guided the shuttle along its trajectory. She sat in the pilot seat, hands hovering above the control panel over her knees.
As the small shuttle circled the Earth, their destination came into view, appearing as a gleam on the dark horizon.
Odyssey had been launched in pieces and constructed in Earth orbit. According to Brighton, it was mostly finished when Diamond Aerospace employees at the Mars mining facility went on strike, halting the arrival of the final materials.
After the first meteor hit, Brighton pulled some strings and called in old favors to get the remaining supplies into orbit. The last bolt had been tightened only two hours before Riley and the rest of the crew were to take command of the ship.
Whereas Diamond Aerospace prioritized function over form out of necessity, resulting in a more industrial aesthetic to their spacecraft, Deep Black’s government-approved design of the Odyssey seemed as if someone was trying to make a fighter jet in space.
Based on the schematics Riley was shown, they had succeeded.
Its exterior was a smooth shell from nose to stern. Wings served no purpose in space, yet the designer couldn't resist adding two stubby appendages to the midsection of the dart-shaped craft. The cockpit window bulged from the nose like a bubble about to burst. The stern flared over the engine compartment, which housed the powerful hybrid Thermal Antimatter Propulsion System.
All told, the vessel was forty meters in length, with more than half of that dedicated to breathable living space. Without a centrifuge to approximate a semblance of gravity, Riley would be floating free for the journey to rendezvous with the comet headed for Earth.
“Only five days for you and Noah,” said Piper with a slight French accent over the intercom of her helmet. “Yet five years for us back on Earth.”
“That’s the gist of it,” Riley replied.
“Tell me, how is that fair? I passed through my early thirties and you stayed…what, sixty-two?”
“I am not a day over my very early fifties,” he said defensively.
She laughed easily. “It’s remarkable to see you again. I only wish Noah had come back, too.”
“He…” said Riley, not quite sure how to finish. “He was happy.”
“As we all should be.”
“How’s Dex?” Riley asked.
Dex Hollander had been an engineer on the second Titan mission. He and Piper were good friends, last time Riley checked.
“Married to a French woman.”
Riley gasped in mock surprise. “But not to you?”
Piper laughed again. “Not for lack of trying. We are better as friends. He’s teaching in Munich.”
“Happy?”
“Very happy.”
As the shuttle approached the Odyssey, Commander Brighton leaned forward in her seat.
“What on Earth is that?” she asked.
“That wasn’t in the designs,” said Riley.
The design schematics showed a smooth, rounded nose at the front of the craft—part of the same hull piece that covered the entire ship. Yet an apparatus had been added in front of the cockpit window. A five-meter-square metal platform had been affixed to the nose, perpendicular to the craft. It gave the Odyssey the appearance of having its nose glued to a wall. Multi-jointed metal arms folded back onto the craft from the platform, as if the Odyssey had hit a robotic octopus at high speed.
“That’s new,” Sergeant Kenneth Miller said, speaking up for the first time since introducing himself.
“Any idea what it is?” Riley asked.
“Tensor platform,” he quickly responded. “The platform contains a steel net that extends beyond the mechanical arms.”
“What are the arms for?” asked Piper.
“They’re for holding on to whatever’s in the net.”
“Are they expecting us to catch the comet?” Riley asked.
Carol’s hands moved swiftly over the control panel as she started the docking procedure with the Odyssey.
“No, they expect us to blow it up. That tensor platform has nothing to do with our mission.”
“I think your dad would have at least mentioned it,” said Riley.
“That would have made sense,” Carol replied. “It’s funny what he leaves out sometimes.”
She piloted the shuttle to the Odyssey’s airlock on the port side. The two ships’ on-board systems communicated with each other to align the hatches and extend the docking clamps. There was a gentle bump, then Commander Brighton’s control panel pulsed green.
“Good seal,” she announced. “Don’t take off your suits until we disembark.”
Riley slipped out of his safety harness and floated over his seat, one hand barely touching the ceiling to stabilize a slight spin. Piper made her way toward the airlock, followed by Sergeant Miller.
“Hey, what’s his deal, anyway?” Riley asked after Miller disappeared. “He doesn’t say much.”
“He’s our bomb tech,” Brighton replied.
“We need a guy just for that?”
She shrugged inside her spacesuit. “It’s not exactly a pipe bomb, Riley. There are a lot of moving parts, and he knows all of them.”
“What about the shuttle?”
“Autopilot back to ISS. Unless you want to skip this journey and fly it back?”
“Not a chance. Speaking of which, why are you out here? I thought the Colonel said something about lockdown if you made it back from Titan. Something about your feet never leaving the planet again.”
She spun around in place to look at him. Her platinum pixie haircut was easily visible through her darkened face shield.
“You were on Titan,” she said, “so you know what happened to my brother.”
“I remember.”
“My father knows me, and I know him. W
e both knew he had to make a show of keeping me Earth-bound for the rest of my career. Who could blame him after losing his son? But we both also knew I couldn’t stay there forever.” She paused, and her gaze drifted into the distance. “Who could blame me after losing my brother?”
“For what it’s worth,” Riley offered, “I’m glad you’re in charge.”
She cocked a half-grin and slapped his shoulder through his spacesuit as she drifted past, toward the airlock.
“The good news is that we get a chance to see how much of your flight training you still remember,” she said.
“At least half,” he said to her back. “Probably.”
Not my fault they wouldn’t let me do anything on the last mission, he thought.
Riley hadn’t flown since the first trip to Titan, years ago. So much had happened since then that it seemed even longer.
It’ll be just like riding a bike, he told himself with muted confidence. You’ll see. Everything’s automated anyway, right?
He gently kicked off from the wall and drifted toward the airlock.
10
JEFF
The Seeker’s breaking thrusters began firing twelve hours out from Venus. At that distance, the planet’s pale white globe filled the window. A sand-colored patch stretching over the equatorial line turned Venus into a giant eye, impassively watching Jeff’s approach.
There was little to do but wait. Jeff made all of his docking preparations, then strapped himself into the pilot seat and passed the remainder of his outbound journey drifting in and out of a light sleep.
When the countdown timer hit twenty minutes, Jeff put on his helmet and slid the neck-lock into place. A burst of cold air hit his cheeks. Several data readouts glowed to life along the upper rim of his inner visor.
The newest version of the Constellation-class spacesuit, the Mark VII, boasted better radiation shielding than its predecessors. It interfaced with a broader spectrum of power packs, each one dependent on the goal of the spacewalk. That flexibility meant one didn’t have to carry different suits for different tasks, and turned the suit into a modular system. While its bright orange outer layer would never win a fashion contest, Jeff had grown to like it over the years.