“I will. Thank you, Bob. Thank you so much!”
“You’re welcome. Now go on, get out of here, we’re both busy men. I’ll see you again in a few months.” John didn’t need to be told twice.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Nandi hugged John long and hard before the start of the all-crew briefing, one day prior to departure. Despite the shower of congratulations John had received on becoming part of the very small, elite group of people who would fly Atlas into deepest space, this raised a few eyebrows. Michael Van Buren in particular, with his mop of ginger hair, registered surprise and then annoyance as the pair embraced at the back of the meeting room.
Within a few minutes, however, everyone was sitting down in the much smaller, more intimate conference room than the one they’d used before. The desk was a large square, and the crew sat around three sides of it. Captain Weber and Bob McFadden were in the center of the U-shaped group, facing towards the wall opposite. John and Nandi sat on the side to their left.
“Well, guys, I’m going to shut up this time,” Bob said. “I’m just sitting in, so over to you, Hans.”
Captain Weber nodded. “Thanks Bob. In addition to the twin milestones of welcoming John Rees onto the crew roster and this being our last meeting before the start of the mission, we are of course going to see what news Andromeda brought back. Like you, I’m extremely anxious to see what awaits us at Epsilon.”
With that, the wall opposite John and Nandi lit up with data. This included a map of the world, a 3D globe, and a countdown timer. It currently showed fifty-nine seconds remaining.
Nandi crossed the first two fingers of her delicate right hand. John had his hands on his lap, his right leg jiggling with anticipation. His forehead had a slight sheen of perspiration. He put his elbows on the desk, clasped his hands together, and rested his chin on his knuckles. His eyes narrowed as he focused on the screen.
Thirty,
Twenty-nine,
Twenty-eight…
“What are we going to see first? Pictures?” Nikolai Cronin asked.
“An overview of all the files she’s carrying,” Michael replied. “A folder, basically, with subfolders for comms from the crew, telemetry, photos of the landing site from orbiting telescopes, weather observations, logs of all radio noise on any frequency. The whole nine yards.”
Nikolai nodded.
Eight,
Seven,
Six…
John shifted position again, putting his hands flat on the desk this time. He desperately wanted to hold Nandi’s hand, but knew that however much comfort this would bring, this was definitely not the time or place. He was glad she was there, though. One thing he had done, however, was to place Misti on the desk in front of him. She wore an enigmatic smile, reminiscent of the Mona Lisa, blinking her eyes and moving her head slightly every so often. She was indistinguishable from an image of a real person.
Two,
One,
Zero.
The room held its collective breath. Andromeda’s presence, detected by radar, and the start of the download of her massive payload of data should have happened simultaneously.
One,
Two,
Three…
The seconds ticked past. Nobody dared say a word.
Thirty-one,
Thirty-two,
Thirty-three…
Then a minute had passed. “I hope to God she makes it back,” Captain Weber said, breaking the tense silence.
Then the screen came to life. PRESENCE CONFIRMED appeared at the top of the screen in large red letters. To the left, a graphic of the wedge-shaped probe appeared, about two Earth diameters above the planet. No orbital track was yet shown, as she was just beginning her long fall. Then her trajectory—shown as a line projected on a map of Earth—began to lengthen slowly, as she fired her engines in order to miss the planet and enter an elliptical path around it.
The right side of the screen lit up, as promised, with a large picture of a folder, similar to a Windows directory. Under it were labels for all the different types of data. “Woohoo!” “Thank you, Jesus,” people in the room hollered.
“Okay,” Bob said. “Now, we wait, as those in Mission Control start dissecting it all. In fact, let’s get on the conference line so we can hear them.”
A few seconds later, at the command of Bob’s brain, deep voices—those of older men—filled the room.
“That sounds like Hank Miller,” Bob said, his eyes narrowed with concentration.
“Now, let’s see, what do we got here?” Hank said. “She brought back a huge data payload, as expected. Her memory’s got several petabytes of stuff, so it’s gonna be a little while.”
“Yeah, even at this data rate it’ll take a couple of hours. Let’s prioritize the streams. Any messages from the colonists, followed by a picture of the landing site,” somebody else said.
“On it,” said yet another, younger-sounding man.
“The press is clamoring for answers,” came the easily recognizable tone of Johanna Locke.
“Well, they’re gonna have to wait. We may not have a conclusive answer for hours. We have to be as sure as we can be before talking to anyone outside,” Hank said.
“Yup.”
John looked at Bob, then Nandi, then around at the others. Their searching, fearful eyes said it all.
The data on the screen changed with each passing second, different diagrams, readouts, and charts flashing past as various teams within the IDSA interpreted each stream.
At last, one verdict came in: “There are no messages or communications of any kind from the crew.” John’s heart sank as a pall was cast over the gathering.
“Fuck,” Bob mouthed silently. Other lips in the room moved with silent prayers.
“Okay,” Locke said, her own voice laden with disappointment. “How are we looking on orbital images?”
“Going through them now,” an Indian woman’s voice answered. “There are thousands. The bad news is it was cloudy there most of the time that Andromeda was on site. The resolution is fine; we just can’t see anything. I’ve got dozens of people sifting through them now. We’ll let you know the minute we see Serenity Bay.”
“Okay, Madhavi. Godspeed.”
Next, a German voice spoke up. “We have found some anomalous radio transmissions in the millimeter range. It doesn’t match the frequency or signature of any type of equipment we have near Epsilon. However, it is also not cosmic in nature as far as we can tell. Dex is running it now to try and make sense of it.”
“Interesting,” Hank said. “Keep us posted.”
“That’s more than a little worrying,” Bob said.
“Damn right,” Hans Weber said. They kept watching and listening.
“We now have a clear image of the landing site, taken two weeks ago, the day before Andromeda set off back home,” Madhavi said, excitement evident in her voice. “We’re interpreting it now…”
The tension in the conference room could have been cut with a knife. Seconds dragged by, agonizingly slow. John closed his eyes, and drew in a long, deliberate breath to center himself.
At last, the answer came. “Hercules is there, looking intact. But, there’s nobody around. The rovers are still parked in their docks. Nothing’s has been disturbed at all.”
“So nothing’s moved at all since they got there?” Locke said, incredulous.
“I’m afraid not.”
Captain Weber exhaled slowly, as he scanned the faces in the room. All eyes were on him. “This doesn’t look good at all,” he said. “Hercules landed months ago, and with no signs of human presence. It all comes down to us, ladies and gentlemen. All of humanity is counting on us to find out what happened and bring them home.”
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Missing: The Lost Colony Series, Part One Page 5