Table of Content
Table of Content
ROSETTA
Chapter 1 The Comet
Chapter 2 The Dipper
Chapter 3 The Bar Counter
Chapter 4 The Bomb
Chapter 5 The Interview
Chapter 1 of THE LOST JUPITER The Message
Books by Fiona Rawsontile
ROSETTA
Maura’s Gate, Book 2
By
Fiona Rawsontile
Copyright © 2014 by Fiona Rawsontile
All rights reserved. No part of this story may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.
Image acknowledgement: Image courtesy of Keerati at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.
Chapter 1 The Comet
“Rose, I need to talk to you.” Leo appeared at the door with an open folder.
“I’m leaving for the day.” Rose logged out the computer and briefly organized her desk. It was related to the donation, she knew.
“About the Rosetta project …” Leo looked down at his folder and frowned. He had a sophisticated look when he frowned—she admitted—with neatly parted and moussed hair, well-kept figure, and the slick sport jacket that must have cost him a fortune. Yet whenever she saw him, the name of a four-limb reptile would pop up in her head, lizard.
“We’ve given them seventy-five million over the past few years. Seventy-five million! My lady. And I just saw you added more last week. Why, why do we have to do this?”
“You asked the wrong person.” Rose checked her handbag one more time to make sure the envelope was still there before she left her desk. She was a tall woman with springy curls and dark blue eyes—eyes in which men had claimed to see moons and stars, while she enjoyed staring back at them from the same level. “It’s from our Nebular Budget. Part of Nick’s will.”
“Nick, my dear Nick. Yeah, I know it’s for science, but we are a profit company, and …” He paused as an ambiguous smile crept up his face. “I’ve heard rumors …”
“Whatever rumor you’ve heard, I can tell you it’s true.” Having been a widow for five years, Rose had learned that the most effective way to stop gossip was to acknowledge it immediately.
Though, this time the rumor was true, indeed.
She made no stop when she walked past him. It was five thirty, but through the frosted glass door ahead she could still make out people’s moving silhouettes in the hallway. Most of her employees would not leave before she did.
“Come on, Rose!” Leo followed her. “They’ll be there tonight. It’ll be over soon—thank God! We don’t have to do this anymore, do we?”
“Speaking of rumors …” Rose turned back abruptly, her eyes narrowing. “Are you the one who’s been proposing to spend some of the money on a movie instead? A movie that’s been rated NC-17?”
He looked away. “I thought it might be worth …”
“I don’t want my company to be known that way. What’s that woman’s name? The so-called plastic queen?”
“All right, all right.” Leo retreated with his hands up. “Fine, Rose. It’s your company, your money, your call!”
She resumed walking, not wanting to be with that guy—lizard!—for another second. Were he not Nick’s cousin she would have gotten rid of him long ago.
Before she opened the door to the hallway, her secretary caught her up.
“Ms. Melandroinno, Mr. Perez is wondering if you would like to have dinner with him tonight.”
“I’m going to the Dipper. You knew that.”
November twelfth. That was the day she had to be there.
“Yes, but Mr. Perez said he would be truly disappointed if you turn down his invitation.”
“Then wish him better luck next time.”
* * *
“That’s it!” Matt exclaimed. “Right there! Look at its coma. It’s so pretty!”
Devin smiled, resting in his chair and watching the first-timer pacing in front of a window in the bridge of Rosetta. Whenever he saw Matt, he was reminded of his honeymoon in Italy twenty-seven years ago. All those young men full of passion, with their neck-length dark hair, polished manners, and an aura of readiness to break into a dragon-guarded castle at any minute for the rescue of his captive princess.
It’s good to be young—Devin continued his thought—when you have all the potentials to discover new worlds and have your name printed in textbooks. Devin was no longer young, despite the agility of his mind and the sturdiness of his body. It had more to do with the heart.
“I’ll go get dressed!” Matt vanished from Devin’s view while his words were still wafting in the air.
Devin walked over to where Matt had been standing and peered outside. Right now they were halfway in between Earth’s and Mars’s orbits. Since the ship and Comet 195F were flying toward each other, the distance was quickly diminishing. The plan was to skirt to the back of the comet and approach it from behind.
And then what? Devin sighed, rubbing his short straight hair and subconsciously wondering when it would all turn gray. Or fall out. Since his last fruitless mission to Planet Mullos 17b five years ago, there was no question that he had begun fading out from NASA’s hot missions, like those projects related to the exploitation of extraterritorial resources. And from the public’s eyes. This wasn’t the first time for mankind to step onto a comet, and they’d just had the famous Colossus last year and the Fireball four years ago. Devin and his colleagues were sent here mainly because Comet 195F had a period of twenty-five hundred years, and people didn’t want to “miss anything”. With a longitudinal dimension of only 2.2 km, Comet 195F had nothing exciting and did not even deserve a name.
But that was okay. Devin left the bridge and headed to his cabin. Now that the girls were gone for college, he didn’t mind spending more time at home with Tracy.
* * *
An hour later he and Matt were waiting at the front hatch of the ship, fully dressed in their spacesuits. In between them stood the lander, which more or less resembled a large metal suitcase with extra handles here and there. Devin bent over and checked the tethers connecting their spacesuits to the lander.
“Do we have to be chained all the time?” Matt said through the intercom, pointing at the maneuvering units attached to their backs. Once they landed they had been advised not to detach the tethers over the entire duration of the mission, because of the comet’s low escape velocity.
“Even if we escape,” Matt continued, “we shall be able to fly back.”
“I think it’s better to stick to the rules,” Devin replied. During his thirty years’ career as an astronomer, he had learned enough lessons from colleagues who had failed to take proper caution.
After the inner hatch had been lifted, they rolled the lander over to the exit. Connor checked with them briefly through the intercom to make sure that everything was all right. Then the inner hatch was resealed at their back before the outer hatch slid to the side.
“Now I’m going to turn off the gravity,” said Connor. “Are you guys ready?”
“Yes,” Devin and Matt said, each holding one side of the lander.
As soon as the artificial gravity disappeared, Devin pushed a button on the handle, and the lander began running forward at a preset speed. The comet was right ahead of them, rotating slowly as it headed in the direction of the sun. It wasn’t Devin’s first time to travel in outer space this way, but after a while, he began feeling disoriented. He almost suggested to Matt that they went back to the ship and took a break. Maybe drinking some water would help. But sensing how anxious the young man was to proceed and trying not to appear weak in front of a junior colleague, he decided to press on. Fo
rtunately the condition quickly went away.
As they drew near, Devin knew they had also started orbiting the comet, based on the way the star-field background was shifting, even though he could hardly recognize his body movement. In the absence of gravity, humans’ perception of motion was strange and unreliable, to say the least.
It’ll be over soon, he said to himself, wishing that the earlier disorientation was not a sign of age.
* * *
“Hmm, it’s more regular than I had expected.” Matt said as they were carried along by the lander. “Almost symmetrical.”
Staring at the comet nucleus ahead, Devin agreed. He hadn’t been to one before, but he’d seen pictures. They may resemble gigantic rocks on Earth, but their surfaces were usually rougher because of the lack of weathering and erosion in outer space, except for the solar wind they had to put up with every time they came close to the sun. The surface of the comet in front of them, however, was quite smooth. Overall, it looked like a filled basin attached with a long handle. And as an astronomer, Devin couldn’t help thinking of …
“I’d like to name it Dipper,” said Matt.
Exactly! It reminded Devin of the Big Dipper.
As they got closer to the comet, Devin sensed a readjustment of their speed and direction. With a sensor embedded in its front, the lander constantly modified its motion according to the current surface image and its location relative to the comet. Eventually it would “lock” to the exact spot they had chosen for landing and gradually pull up the distance.
For a while, the two had nothing to do but hold on to the handles of the lander. Then without warning, the dizziness struck Devin back, and the blood in his legs seemed to have been drained off. To distract himself from fretting about his physical condition, Devin tried to start a conversation.
“So why did you choose this project, Matt? I heard they initially asked you to join the Phoebe No. 6.”
In fact, if Devin had met him earlier, he would have talked him into taking the mining project. As a beginner, one was always advised to get in the most promising line of missions.
“I came here because of you,” Matt said, turning slightly to look at Devin. “You’re my role model, Devin. I’ve always wanted to learn from you.”
Really? Devin made no reply. He wondered if he deserved the young man’s worship. Nevertheless, Matt’s words seemed to have abated his sickness.
“Ur, Devin, do you mind if I ask …” Matt suddenly sounded hesitant. “About that rumor, is … is it true?”
It took Devin a while to figure out what he was talking about. “Of course not.”
People were hopeless, Devin reflected, or maybe they were just jealous. Soon after the project had taken off, they began receiving donations from a biotech company. And he remembered going out to dinner with the donor once—normally Kenton was the one who dealt with those kinds of things, but he had a family emergency that night. Anyway, Devin couldn’t even recall what she looked like. Rose McLand … Melandroinno. She was a tall woman; that was all he remembered. Over the years that company had been quite generous to their project. Almost loyal. That was indeed a little offbeat, considering the obscurity of this mission. But that was it. Nothing like what his colleagues had speculated.
“Devin,” Connor’s voice sounded in the intercom. “You’ll be landing in about five minutes.”
Devin pushed another button on the handle. An “umbrella” stuck out of the front of the lander and expanded into four legs. Two minutes later, they were only a dozen yards away from the surface. A harpoon shot out from the lander and plunged into the surface. As the cable connecting the harpoon and the lander shortened, Devil felt as if he were a kite being gradually pulled back to the ground. Soon he and Matt were resting on the surface of the comet, while the lander beside them wasted no time drilling and sampling.
“Can you imagine we are sitting on something that hasn’t been touched for billions of years?” Matt’s voice quivered.
Devin smiled. He remembered being as excited as Matt was when he first stepped onto an extraterritorial land. After all, how many humans had the opportunity to do that? Space tourism was getting popular, but still not affordable to most people. As he aged, however, he had started appreciating his daily life more than his job. Yes, we may not see that comet again for the rest of our life, but so may not with the friend to whom we said farewell on an ordinary day.
“We have the surface temperature,” he heard Matt saying. The lander had a touch panel to display the results as soon as they became available. “Seventy-nine Fahrenheit.”
They were on the dark side of the comet. Devin reckoned the temperature must have exceeded a hundred Fahrenheit on the sunlit side.
He rose up and wandered on the surface, unable to go too far due to the restraint of the tether. He walked past a few rocky areas and arrived at a soil-like spot. Stooping, he fumbled inside a pocket on his pants and fetched out a portable drill. The lander must be doing a better job than he was, but he’d like to get a feel of it. That was why they sent humans here, wasn’t it?
At first, the drill bored into the soil easily. Then he sensed some abnormal vibrations and switched it off. Slowly, he pulled out the drill and examined it. Something was coiling around the drill bit. He turned on his headlight and carefully unraveled it. The cord-like thing had a textured skin. Pliable, but sturdy. Kind of like a tree root …
“We got the soil composition!” Matt’s announcement almost startled him.
Devin tucked the thing in another pocket and turned to the direction of Matt, who was bending over the lander and reading the panel.
“Silicates, carbonates, water, metal sulfides …” Matt stopped abruptly, his posture freezing.
Devin swallowed hard. He wasn’t sure about the exact items on the rest of the list, but he had a feeling that Matt’s assertion about them visiting a place that hadn’t been touched for billions of years was incorrect.
“Amino acids and proteins.”
Chapter 2 The Dipper
It was completely dark when Rose’s car entered the area called the Dipper. There was no moon on this autumn night, and not a single wisp of cloud. Looking out through the car window, Rose was dazed by the numerous light dots crowding the suburban’s sky. Where was the Big Dipper? She wondered. It was supposed to be low in the fall or the winter, right?
In the past, they always searched for the Big Dipper on the way here. Nick was pretty good at it. Nick … She sighed quietly. It had been five years since he died. Could the star field have changed? The silly idea flashed in her mind before she started laughing at herself. Five years! That seemed a long time to her, but did the universe even notice it?
She made another attempt to locate the Big Dipper but felt dizzier. The car was riding up and down on the country road paved with layers and layers of leaves. The whole place was shaped like a dipper, with its longest distance around two and a half kilometers. Right now they were moving inside the “handle”, which was a valley roughly half kilo wide. Soon they would arrive at the basin, with its lowest point three hundred meters below the regular ground level. In fact, some geomorphologists believed that the basin used to be much deeper, but had been gradually filled up over thousands of years.
A beautiful, peaceful place. In the spring, the valley slopes were bestrewed with wild flowers, all common types carrying a tinge of exoticism for no apparent reason. A few years before the house was built in 1860s, someone claimed to have found gold in the area, which led to a brushfire of gold rushes. But the result was quite disappointing, and soon everybody left. The house was the only notable architecture here because the abandoned mines had rendered a lot of areas unsuitable for major constructions.
Anyway, Nick bought it when they got married. It came with a large vineyard that produced the best wine one could hope to find within a hundred miles. During their twelve years’ marriage, they had spent most of their summers here, and Rose had envisioned this place as their permanent home afte
r retirement. But since Nick left, she had only come here briefly for business issues related to the vineyard. The house was too vast for a single woman and too busy for her mind.
The road kept descending. She took out the envelope from her bag and switched on the overhead light. Since she received the letter from Nick’s lawyer a week ago, she had gone through it several times, but now she still needed the affirmation that she wasn’t imagining the whole thing. In the letter, Nick told her to come here on November twelfth, 2073, the day the Rosetta spaceship was supposed to send astronauts to Comet 195F. Apparently, there was a room inside the house she had never been to, and now she was to enter that room following the instructions in the letter.
Rose put the letter back and tried to recall the last days of Nick’s life. After he had been diagnosed with terminal cancer, he came to the Dipper a few times without her. She had considered it his way of coping with stress and desperation. He had always been a strong person. A man who refused to reveal his vulnerability even to close family members. Now she realized that wasn’t the full story. He was up to something, and didn’t want to tell her at that time. But why would he want her to find out now? And find out about what?
* * *
Dinner was ready to serve when she stepped into the house. She was hungry and eager to visit the secret room, but still took time changing into a sequined gown. In a Chateauesque-styled mansion with steeply-pitched roofs, crystal chandeliers, and golden railings alongside spiral stairways, one simply couldn’t wear a business suit. After dinner, she carried a wicker basket with wine and magazines into the elevator. Who knows what’s in that room? She might have to stay there tonight, and she hoped it wouldn’t be too boring.
There were five floors in the building with a basement. After the door had closed, she pressed and held the number “3” with one hand while punching “1-5-2” in sequence with the other hand. Then she released the buttons, subconsciously hoping that the elevator would run upward and stop at the second, the third, and the fifth floors, as it normally would do. To her dismay, the elevator immediately began moving downward. Well, didn’t that make sense? She tried to ease herself. Wouldn’t it be easier to hide a room in a basement, which was not shown on the elevator’s control panel, than to place it on an open floor?
Rosetta (Maura's Gate Book 2) Page 1