by B. V. Larson
“It does seem a little warm in here to me, sir,” he said smoothly. “Perhaps it was that long burn we pulled. The heat shields aren’t as good as they were decades back.”
I gave him a half-smile. We both knew he was sweating due to the possible content of Captain Singh’s reply, but since it would have been rude to point this out directly, I avoided doing so.
Instead, I opened the channel and listened to Singh’s response privately.
The captain’s face had transformed into a mask of rage. His fingers gripped the arms of his chair like claws.
“All right, Sparhawk,” he said. “We’ve pinged your vessel. According to our estimates, you’re correct, you don’t have the fuel to go back to the object and return to Earth in a timely manner. However, you could return and stay on station until a relief ship arrives. I’m hereby ordering you to do exactly that. If you do not comply, I’m going to formally request that you be transferred off my command roster. While I can’t directly revoke your commission, I can assure you that you’ll never see another promotion in the Guard. Make your choice and get back to me. Singh out.”
Slumping back in my seat with a sigh, I turned to Rumbold. “Kill our engines and begin to glide, Chief.”
He stared at me for a long moment. “But sir…we aren’t up to cruising speed yet—”
“Immediately,” I ordered.
Rumbold reached out and throttled down the engines. We coasted in silence, and weightlessness quickly resumed.
Rumbold watched me uneasily. “A bad message, sir?”
“Indeed.”
“What are your orders, sir?”
“I’m thinking.”
He fell quiet. The rest of the crew muttered and watched us curiously. They wanted to know what was going on, but they didn’t quite dare to approach and demand answers. That was just as well as my mood had turned grim.
Singh had called my bluff. I was within my rights to disobey his order to amend my report. However, he was within his rights as my commanding officer to punish me for my transgressions. He could post me out here as long as necessary to get me to write a report that pleased him.
I fought to push back my anger and resentment. I’d signed with the Guard, and like it or not, I was subject to the whims of my superiors in situations like this one. As I always did in such moments, I returned to the letter of the law for guidance. Honorable service and the discipline of the Guard, those two pillars always clarified my thinking.
After surveying the pertinent regulations, I could find no loopholes. Singh could order me to stand this post indefinitely. In the meantime, he could freely trash my reputation with the flag officers, while I was stuck out here, unable to defend myself in person.
“Rumbold,” I said, “what’s Jimmy’s prognosis?”
“Pretty good, sir,” he said. “He’s stable, and he’ll make a full recovery after they grow a new hand for him back home.”
“That’s going to have to wait,” I said.
“Excuse me?”
“Captain Singh has seen fit to order us back to the object to reevaluate it. He’ll send a relief ship eventually as we’ll no longer have sufficient fuel to return after complying with his orders.”
Alarmed, Rumbold tapped rapidly at his board. He slapped a hand to his face and covered his eyes with it when he’d finished.
“You’re right. It would take years to return without relief. We’ll be stuck out there.”
“An unfortunate circumstance.”
Rumbold closed his eyes and bared his long teeth. “I almost wish Jimmy was dying.”
I looked at him. “No you don’t,” I said.
He sighed. “You’re right, Skipper. No, I don’t…but may I make a suggestion?”
He’d lowered his voice and his eyes were intense.
“Speak.”
“Change the report right now and take us home, sir,” he said quietly. He was almost pleading.
His statement indicated that he’d listened in on Singh’s transmissions. I could have chastised him for this, but I chose not to.
“I can’t do that,” I said. “There’s something going on out here, Rumbold, and I’m not going to paper it over. The object—it’s not safe. It’s not normal. Didn’t you feel it?”
He hesitated. “Yes sir, I guess I did. Very well. Reversing course.”
The crew groaned and complained aloud, but in the end, we returned to the strange object that drifted in space toward Earth. Too bad it was moving so slowly.
As we closed again with the anomaly, I wondered about my choices. Was I being pigheaded? My mother would have said I was. But I just couldn’t bring myself to alter my report.
I couldn’t bring myself to lie. There was something odd going on out there. I hadn’t intended to investigate and learn the truth alone—but now, I had no choice.
My tiny ship and sparse crew were going to be stuck out here in the dark with this mysterious object for a long time.
-11-
There was little sense of urgency in my crewmen as we turned around and faced the anomalous mass we’d left behind in space. Instead, there was an air of wariness, almost dread.
We no longer called it a comet—we didn’t know what it was, but we knew it wasn’t something natural and harmless.
“Take us in slow, Rumbold,” I said. “Let’s conserve fuel and look for opportunities.”
“Opportunities? What kind of opportunities, Skipper? A chance to die mysteriously?”
I glanced at him quizzically. “What are you talking about? The object isn’t dangerous.”
His eyes all but bugged out of his head as he studied me. “Have you forgotten Jimmy’s hand, sir?”
I shrugged. “A freak accident caused by a scrap of debris—probably by one of these tubes whirling along in a fast orbit.”
Rumbold shook his head. “The boys in back have run the numbers. It’s not possible, sir. The tubes aren’t sharp. As blunt at they are, they’d have to be moving at an amazing speed to sever a man’s hand.”
“A freak meteor, perhaps. A rock the size of a bullet might have struck out of the blue. We’re only half an AU from the belt, after all.”
“I’d agree, that’s the most likely case, but as I examined this mystery I came upon another possibility.”
“Explain.”
“These orbiting tubes—they’re moving too fast. They should be able to escape the minimal tug of an object this size. That’s when I discovered this snowball has more gravity than it should have.”
His statement made me frown. On the face of it, Rumbold was right. Only dust could be effectively captured by the gravity of a rock this size. In all the events of the day, I hadn’t had time to consider the ultimate nature of the object before us.
“Let’s see the gravitational readings,” I said.
Rumbold had been waiting for that request. He instantly flicked his screen and sent the data to my console. I examined the details with a growing sense of disbelief.
“How’s this possible? That object can’t exert such a powerful pull. It’s like a small moon—I don’t believe it. The sensors must be off.”
Rumbold shook his head slowly. “That’s what I thought at first, too, when I noticed the readings. That thing is pulling as if it’s made of collapsed stardust.”
Turning back to the raw imagery, I could see the object growing on my screen again. Dark edges. Bright reflective surfaces. My mind raced.
“There are only two possibilities,” I said. “Both are alarming. Either that object actually has a collapsed core, and is an escaped chunk of stellar debris, or it has an artificial field around it. In either case, it has a stronger gravitational field than it should.”
“Like I said, sir. It’s a mystery—and it’s dangerous.”
After considering my options I spoke again. “Let’s approach more slowly this time. Try to analyze the pattern of debris. Track it carefully, map it. We want to get close without damaging the ship.”
Several shifts passed as we revolved around the object at a safe distance. We hung back, staying farther out than we’d done before. I didn’t want any more strange accidents.
“Rumbold,” I said with a yawn some thirty hours later, “you’ve been with the Guard a long time. How come you never sought promotion into the officer ranks?”
“Ah,” he said, smiling at me. “You’d think an old spacer like me would seek it out, wouldn’t you? That I’d demand my turn at the tiller. Well sir, let me explain—none of us here want your job.”
I eyed him in surprise, uncertain if I was being insulted or enlightened. I suspected it was a little of both.
“Go on,” I said in a neutral voice.
“You see, sir, it’s like this. A man who’s in the officer ranks is eventually forced to retire. There are only so many spots left in the Guard, and every young fellow who graduates from the Academy dreams of a command—like you sir, no offense.”
“None taken. Continue.”
“Well,” he shrugged, “that’s about all there is to say. I want serve in the Guard, so I take the job that’s least sought after. When the cutbacks come every few years, I’ve always been passed over and left alone.”
I nodded thoughtfully. “That’s dedication,” I said. “I’m impressed.”
“That’s part of it, certainly.”
Glancing at him again, I frowned. “What’s the other part?”
Rumbold shifted uncomfortably. We’d served together for years, but I’d rarely asked him probing questions about his personal choices in life. I guess that’s because we’d never been in space so long together before. A week-long mission didn’t compare to the one we were on now. Before this was over, we would experience many months of being just a few feet apart.
Rumbold sighed. “I suppose someone ought to tell you our motivations. Why would rattling old men like Jimmy and I choose this life? The truth is we don’t have much choice. It’s the longevity drugs, sir. Active-duty personnel get them for free. Once we’re out of the service, well, we won’t be able to afford them.”
“Ah,” I said in sudden understanding. “I get it. You can’t leave. If you did, you’d die.”
“That’s the long and the short of it, Captain. We’re old, and we’re fragile. Without those drugs…” He shrugged.
“You might not last a year,” I said thoughtfully. The whole system seemed monumentally unfair. But longevity was a tricky thing. Long ago, Earth’s government had publicly stated they would dole out extended life on the basis of service and merit.
But the truth was that Earth’s wealthy citizens could expect to live on without concern for centuries. Average men like Rumbold could never afford the treatments on their own. They had to serve in the Guard to stay alive.
“Rumbold, would you mind another personal question?” I asked.
“Another one? All right, why not?”
“Tell me, how long have you been around? Can you recall how life was on Earth before the Cataclysm?”
“No,” he said. “I was alive back then, but only as a baby. My parents often spoke of the early days, however. They said it was a golden time. Trade ships came every month from the colonies bringing foods, fabrics and entertainments we can only dream of now. Visitors came as well, some taller than any earthborn man. Others sported strangely colored flesh or wore outlandish costumes. What I would give to have seen them myself in person.”
“Yes…” I said thoughtfully. I’d been half-joking when I’d asked him if he’d been alive so long, and his answer had surprised me. The Cataclysm had broken the network of wormholes that connected Earth to her colonies over a hundred and fifty years back.
How old did that make Rumbold? A hundred and sixty? Amazing.
“My age should better explain why I must stay in the Guard,” he continued. “When I started taking longevity drugs, they were primitive. Today, the new formulas rewrite a man’s DNA. They erase errors at the tail end of the sequence and youthful cells are produced in abundance. But they didn’t have that kind of technology when I started.”
“Right. What was the old method? Cellular replacement?”
“Yes, exactly. The first drug in wide distribution was called Rejuv. We thought it was a miracle back then, and so it was. But all it did was cull out cells that were produced with errors. It didn’t stop the aging process completely. Consequently, my body continued to age for half a dozen decades, albeit slowly. When the rewriting drugs came out, my original programming had faded away. Even the best drugs can’t repair and improve my cells, returning youth, because all of those original DNA strands had been edited out. It’s as if they lost my disk, and I’m running on a RAM-only copy.”
He seemed to find his predicament funny, but I found his references dated in the extreme. Modern computers never used anything like disks or RAM.
He laughed until he had a coughing fit, then laughed some more. I smiled politely, as I often did for the benefit of my most ancient crewmen.
In time, we plotted a course through the debris and eased our way closer to the surface of the snowball. Nearly a week had passed by the time we found ourselves touching down on the surface.
During that time, Singh had occasionally contacted me for updates. He informed me that Altair had been ordered to render assistance to Cutlass directly because no other ship was in range.
These new orders hadn’t improved his mood. He’d meant to punish me with a long sit out in space, but that objective had backfired. Now he’d been ordered to fly out and meet me.
Fortunately for everyone involved, Altair’s engines were far larger and more efficient than those possessed by my tiny pinnace. They’d reach us within a week’s time. We were to investigate cautiously until the destroyer arrived.
Rumbold watched me carefully when I received this news. “You know sir,” he said in a conspiratorially low voice, “we could just sit here and wait. We’ve surveyed half this snowball from a few meters above the surface. No one could claim we haven’t done our assigned task.”
I shook my head. “No,” I said firmly. “I’m going for a walk. I want Weaver and Yamada to join me. You stay at the boards to watch over us.”
“There are likely to be crevasses and the like,” he protested. “This slushy surface is unstable and dangerous. Let’s just send the probe—”
“You know as well as I do our probe is faulty,” I said.
Rumbold shrugged. “So? If it falls in the snow and gets sucked to the bottom, who’s to know? We’ll make our report, showing we did our best, and wait for Altair.”
On the surface of it, Rumbold’s suggestions made sense. His ideas were cautious and almost foolproof. All I had to do was drag my feet a little more, and we’d be cleared of all responsibilities.
But I wasn’t interested in shirking my duty. Far from it. I found it annoying, in fact, that others continually suggested I should do so.
“Tell Weaver and Yamada the three of us are exiting this ship,” I repeated more forcefully. “We’re going for a walk in one hour. Issue them spacesuits with the best integrity among those we have left.”
Releasing a heavy sigh, Rumbold stopped arguing and did as I’d ordered. Soon, he had the two spacers I’d requested dressed and prepped for the walk. They were all grumbling, but not loudly enough for me to overhear their specific words. That was acceptable in my book.
When the hour had passed, we climbed out onto the surface of the tiny, ice-crusted world. Yamada was slight and quiet. Weaver was the polar opposite, a loud, broad-shouldered man with opinions he couldn’t keep to himself.
I had no idea then that the three of us were about to change the fate of all humanity.
-12-
We were hip-deep in the slushy surface with the first step. The frost covering the rock was like the finest powdered snow imaginable back on Earth. Fortunately, the gravity was only a fraction of what we were used to. If we’d been heavier, we would have sunk in and possibly vanished.
“All right,
hook up belts and keep vigilant,” I said. “We’ll start off tethered to the ship.”
“With any luck we’ll take that down too,” Weaver complained, “when we find a crevasse that’s deep enough.”
I’d brought Weaver along as he was one of the most muscular, physically capable people in my crew. He was quite young, compared to the majority, as was Yamada.
Unfortunately, he also had a big mouth. I’d known that, but I’d selected him anyway. I almost turned to reprimand Weaver, but I decided to let his comment pass.
My crew wasn’t made up of the easiest going people in the fleet. They’d been assigned to Cutlass as a form of neglect at best, a punishment at worst. They had a right to be annoyed.
Ensign Yamada brought up the rear of our three-person team. She was the closest thing we had to a biologist aboard Cutlass and the only other officer. She was essentially a medic with training in scientific instrumentation. Unlike most of my crew, her longevity treatments had kicked in early in life and she looked to be less than thirty years of age—although I knew she was older.
She had out a device in her hands that operated as a mobile sensor array. It didn’t have much range, but this rock wasn’t very large to begin with.
“I’m getting a reading off to our right,” she said. “A lower density area of snow.”
“Thinner?” demanded Weaver. “How can it be thinner? This is like swimming in cotton candy as it is!”
“General direction and distance, Yamada?” I asked.
“Two o’clock. Less than a hundred meters out, Skipper.”
I veered right and headed in the indicated direction. Weaver trudged after me. He was up to his chest at times and almost floundering. He was the heaviest member of the team, and the snow seemed to be hampering his movements the most.
“Can I ask you something, Captain?” he asked.
“Certainly,” I replied.
“Why are we heading toward a hole? When we get close, we’ll slide right in. You might not have been on small, ice-crusted rocks like this before. You don’t want to find the thin spot, let me assure you.”