The Beacon: Hard Science Fiction

by Brandon Q Morris

  He opened the medpack, pulled out an appropriately labeled syringe, and handed it to her. Francesca, who was looking pale, jammed it into her thigh.

  “There. It’ll get better,” she said, wresting a smile from herself and turning on her microphone.

  “Dear passengers,” she said, “we have had a minor incident, but it has since been resolved. We are out of danger, and you can take off your masks again. Is everyone okay?”

  One after the other they reported. All of them had survived the collision. Only one of the men had vomited. Peter only now realized that he still had the radio on his lap. He pulled the USB, pocketed it, and stowed the radio back under the seat.

  “Good. Unfortunately, our orbit is now nearing its end. I ask you to fasten your seatbelts again. The descent will be a bit rougher than the ascent. But in return, we will be able to admire the earthly landscape in all its beauty.”

  Peter looked out the window during the entire descent. He had thought Francesca was joking. After all, they were headed for the New Mexico desert.

  But it was true. After their close call up in space, the Earth seemed all the more beautiful.

  An ambulance, surrounded by a small crowd of people, was waiting at the exit. Francesca didn’t miss the opportunity to say goodbye to all the passengers. The dark spot already stretched almost to her hip, but she didn’t let on. Then she was escorted to the ambulance by a man in a white labcoat.

  An older man identified himself as the head of Spaceport America. He thanked all of the passengers for their prudence.

  Then he turned to Peter. “Mr. Kraemer, we appreciate your extraordinary help after the collision,” he said, reaching out to shake Peter’s hand. “We would very much like to invite you on another flight so that you can fully enjoy the experience as well.”

  “I can’t complain at all,” Peter replied. “It was only a small hole after all. I enjoyed the flight very much.”

  “Well, if you change your mind, drop me an email. Maybe your partner would like to travel with us one day?”

  The man handed him a business card. Peter looked at it and pocketed it. What he’d like was to go to his rental car, now. There was time to make it to Albuquerque today, where he had to return the car. Maybe he could still get a flight to Houston from there.

  “Well, thank you for your hospitality,” he said.

  “Just a minute, Mr. Kraemer. I’ve got some reporters here who want to ask you a few questions. It’s not every day, after all, that an object hits a civilian space flight, and then a passenger repairs the spacecraft.”

  A motley group surrounded him, pointing cameras and microphones at him and shouting questions. Peter surrendered and described again and again in great detail how he saved the VSS Astra with a cloth handkerchief.

  April 4, 2026 – In Transit

  “Can I get you another drink?” the stewardess asked.

  “No, thanks. I have everything I need,” said Peter.

  He’d treated himself to business class for the overnight flight from Houston to Frankfurt. He had just under 20,000 euros left over from his mother’s house. Now he could spend that, too. He took the notebook from the empty seat next to him. Francesca had said she didn’t want to hear from him again until the matter was closed.

  It was time for a message.

  “Dear Francesca,” he wrote. “I have good news. SigmaLaunch has confirmed that the beacon, whose signal should save the solar system from destruction, is no longer trying to leave its orbit. So it is now fulfilling the task I gave it for the next two years, and I have also succeeded in my task, at least in the aspects I have control over. I will be home tomorrow at noon. I would be very happy if you were there too. In the last weeks, you probably had the impression that I only had my hobby in mind. But, I was thinking about you all the time. If the catastrophe that I believed was coming would have only affected me, I wouldn’t have had the strength to prevent it. The necessary energy was given to me by thoughts of you. Even though I admit that this sounds corny, it is the truth. I really hope you can forgive me for having seemed to ignore you. Yours, Peter.”

  April 15, 2026 – Fonimagoodhoo

  “It’s so dreamy here,” Franziska said.

  “It’s great that you like it,” Peter said.

  His wife had been smiling ever since they’d arrived on this island paradise. Yesterday afternoon they’d even had sex. It was almost as if they were newly in love. The turquoise sea, the white beach, the vegetation with all its shades of green, and the delicious food seemed to have an almost magical effect. It had been a good idea to spend the last euros from the house sale this way.

  “I’m going to get something else from the buffet,” Franziska said as she stood up.

  As soon as she left, restaurant chef Majib was standing next to the table.

  “How are you?” he asked in English, as he did every morning. “Everything good?”

  “Everything is fine.”

  “If you need anything—”

  “Then we’ll get back to you.”

  Peter’s cellphone vibrated. There was Internet access only in the restaurant. Should he get his phone out? It would be a good opportunity. Franziska seemed to be waiting at the buffet for an order. The chef was preparing custom omelets again today.

  His phone vibrated once again. He took it out of his pocket and looked at the display. He had a new e-mail. The sender couldn’t be seen in full, but the e-mail address ended in .se, so the message came from Sweden. He immediately thought of Stockholm University—Melissa Holinger, the astronomer. The message could only be from her.

  Peter unlocked the device and opened the message.

  “Hello, Mr. Kraemer,” he read. “I’m still curious about your theory. Have you made any progress yourself?”

  Oh, you bet I have.

  “I read about your heroic action at Virgin and wondered if it had anything to do with your research subject. But anyway, that’s not why I’m writing to you. I made measurements again on the stars we both studied. We had, after all, come across the fact that radio emission at a certain frequency correlated negatively with whether a star disappeared on a certain spherical shell.”

  We? I’m the one who came up with it!

  “I have now taken a closer look at these stars, and I am sorry to inform you that we must have been mistaken. One of the stars where the supposedly protective signal was definitely detectable has now also disappeared. So we can no longer assume a correlation.”

  What the hell?

  His beautiful theory had just collapsed. If the signal didn’t protect against the destruction of a star, then his beacon couldn’t protect the solar system from death, either. He involuntarily looked up, as if the sky was about to collapse then and there. But all he saw was the artistic wooden construction of the ceiling, in which large lamps had been embedded so as to give off a very soft light.

  “Honey? Do you want to try some of my omelet? It’s delicious. Now, please put that stupid cellphone back in your pocket.”

  Majib pulled back her chair so she could sit comfortably. He looked at his wife. Franziska was beautiful. She always tanned quickly.

  It would be good to follow her request, but the message was important. Either the sun would be destroyed in a few days... or his calculation could have been inaccurate, and he had spent a good half million euros in vain.

  His eyes returned to his wife. No one else mattered. Let someone else save the world this time. He turned off the phone, tucked it into a pocket of his shorts, and reached for his fork. He took a bite of the omelet. He slipped the warm mixture into his mouth, chewed slowly, swallowed, and tried to determine the flavors. Egg—of course. Spring onions. Salt. An exotic spice he didn’t recognize...

  “Yes,” he said, “it really is delicious.”

  5th of the Spring Month 1897 – Lokkor

  “Wormitor, come over here!”

  The old Explorer came shuffling up to him on his six skinny legs. Krognatur realized that he
had been disrespectful again. His colleague had already survived eight winters. He should have brought the imaging device to his elder.

  But Wormitor did not complain. He never complained. Maybe it was because he’d grown up in the middle of the brood war. Krognatur was lucky. He belonged to the first intermediate generation and would never have to experience a brood war. Only his children’s children were threatened with this future fate. But he probably wouldn’t find a female interested in his seed packets, anyway.

  He was glad that he at least had an interesting job. Studying the signals that the umbrella plants received from universal space was always exciting and surprising. Wormitor must be old enough to have known the investigator who had discovered this special property of the iron leaves of the umbrella plants. The leaves transmitted signals to the water circuit of the plants, from where they could be extracted. It was as if one could hear universal space thinking.

  “What’s up?” Wormitor asked. He curiously pushed back on the hard shell that protected his body and neck. The red dots on it looked washed out, another hint to Krognatur of his colleague’s advanced age.

  “Look at this text,” Krognatur said. “The Antsen just transmitted it.”

  The Antsen had developed the ability to interconnect their brains in their huge castles, which were thousands of pairs of legs in size. This enabled them to solve difficult problems in the blink of an eye—for example, translating broadcasts from universal space. Krognatur tapped the vision device with his foremost pair of legs, magnifying the text and allowing Wormitor to read it more easily.

  “Hey! I’m old, but I’m not blind,” Wormitor said, resetting the attitude.

  Then he read aloud.

  We crawl back and forth in the soft mud / Of the silk tomb almost to its lid / And see on the outside of the suspended grass / The umbrella plant for the second time with spots.

  We flutter to the sunny places of rest / Where strangers’ calls never shooed us / As we flay our limbs entwine / We dine while blood dragonflies glow.

  We feel joyfully how with silent urge / From leaves light reflections drip on us / And only see and hear when in pauses / The leaky branches prop themselves into forks.

  “Where did you get that?” asked Wormitor.

  “From universal space, and then processed with the Antsen communicator according to our own presets, as we had agreed.”

  “It’s obvious that this is coming through universal space. But from where, exactly?”

  “According to my calculations, a small yellow dwarf could be the source, about ten light-leg pairs away from us.”

  “That’s exciting,” Wormitor said. “You’ll definitely have to pass that on to the clear-cut artists. They’ll create a wonderful light sculpture out of it.”

  Author's Note

  Dear Readers,

  The world is saved. Or is it? It’s hard to say. Peter was both a hero and a victim of the prevention paradox. He couldn’t prove he was right without leaving Earth in danger. On the other hand, this showed that he was never focused in being right. I think we need people like that, who don’t focus on themselves, but on the big picture.

  But of course, this story is not over either. You may already know that everything is interconnected in my universe. Do you remember the crack that suddenly appeared in the Earth’s sky in The Rift? Could it have been the danger—or might it have been the black hole in The Hole? Or, in the end, was the danger only in Peter’s head?

  We’ll probably have to pay him and his helpers another visit. After all, it’s only 2026, and Francesca, who will make her outer space career in The Enceladus Mission starting in 2046, still has 20 years to go. If you don’t know Enceladus yet, take a look! There you will meet the young woman again as a tough space pilot.

  I will also be happy to have you visit me, for example, on Facebook, or on my website, where I report several times a week about current events from the universe. Some of the names in my books have been suggested by my fans on Patreon, to whom I express my sincere thanks.

  I have one more critical request before you go—no, two. First, this book plays a vital role in my Master of Space Science degree. I would like to determine what knowledge has stuck with you. What do you remember? Please fill out the questionnaire at

  hard-sf.com/links/1777854

  Second plea: A review. Without reader reviews, it is much more difficult for potentially interested readers to discover a new book. That’s why I’m depending on your help. Please use this link:

  hard-sf.com/links/1730990

  ...or scroll to the end of the book, where Amazon will ask you for a star rating and offer you the opportunity to leave a review.

  As always, you can get an illustrated version of A Guided Tour of Multi-Messenger Astronomy by requesting it here:

  hard-sf.com/subscribe/

  I hope to see you in the next book!

  Sincerely,

  Yours, Brandon Q. Morris

  Resolution

  What’s the deal with the chapters that have strange names like 22 57 27,98 20 46 7,8? And what do the peculiar texts you find there mean? The resolution, of course, has something to do with the plot, so I won’t deprive you of your reading pleasure by giving it all away from the start. But if you’ve had enough of puzzling, don’t scroll back now, but continue reading after the spoiler alert.

  Attention: Spoilers ahead

  The chapter names are coordinates. First, you find the right ascension in hours, minutes, and seconds, succeeded by the declination in degrees, arcminutes, and arcseconds. There are always concrete objects behind the coordinates. The first five readers who email me the names of all objects (see imprint for address) will receive a free paperback of their choice. Tip: To infer concrete objects from the coordinates, you can use the search function of the object dictionary SIMBAD, (http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/).

  By the way, at the end of the Guided Tour, I also explain the basic terms of astronomy, i.e., what these coordinates are all about.

  The texts are messages. They are encrypted with the Red 13 method. Perhaps you’ve already recognized it. To decode them, you have to replace each letter with the one that is 13 letters ahead in the alphabet. Or you can make it easy and use a decoder like https://rot13.com. Or you can make it even easier and go to hard-sf.com/decoded. There, all texts are listed decoded. Which of the texts do you like best?

  By the way, I didn’t write the poems myself. I am not that confident of my poetic competence—let’s put it that way. That’s why I helped myself to John Keats, William Shakespeare, Rainer Maria Rilke, and others. Can you tell which poem is by whom? On the page referenced above, I have added this information in each case.

  Also by Brandon Q. Morris

  The Triton Disaster

  Nick Abrahams holds the official world record for the number of space launches, but he’s bored stiff with his job hosting space tours. Only when his wife leaves him does he try to change his life.

  He accepts a tempting offer from a Russian billionaire. In exchange for making a simple repair on Neptune’s moon Triton, he will return to Earth a multi-millionaire, enabling him to achieve his ‘impossible dream’ of buying his own California vineyard.

  The fact that Nick must travel alone during the four-year roundtrip doesn’t bother him at all, as he doesn’t particularly like people anyway. Once en route he learns his new boss left out some critical details in his job description—details that could cost him his life, and humankind its existence…

  3.99 $ – hard-sf.com/links/1086200

  The Dark Spring

  When a space probe returns from the dead, you better not expect good news.

  In 2014, the ESA spacecraft Rosetta lands a small probe named Philae on 67P, a Jupiter-family comet. The lander goes radio silent two years later. Suddenly, in 2026, scientists receive new transmissions from the comet. Motivated by findings that are initially sensational but soon turn frightening, NASA dispatches a crewed spacecraft to the comet. But as the
ship approaches the mysterious celestial body, the connection to the astronauts soon breaks. Now it seems nothing can be done anymore to stop the looming dark danger that threatens Earth...

  3.99 $ – hard-sf.com/links/1358224

  The Death of the Universe

  For many billions of years, humans spread throughout the entire Milky Way. They are able to live all their dreams, but to their great disappointment, no other intelligent species has ever been encountered. Now, humanity itself is on the brink of extinction.

  They have only one hope: The ‘Rescue Project’ was designed to feed the black hole in the center of the galaxy until it becomes a quasar, delivering much-needed energy to humankind during its last breaths. But then something happens that no one ever expected—and humanity is forced to look at itself and its existence in an entirely new way.

  3.99 $ – hard-sf.com/links/835415

  The Enceladus Mission (Ice Moon 1)

  In the year 2031, a robot probe detects traces of biological activity on Enceladus, one of Saturn’s moons. This sensational discovery shows that there is indeed evidence of extraterrestrial life. Fifteen years later, a hurriedly built spacecraft sets out on the long journey to the ringed planet and its moon.

  The international crew is not just facing a difficult twenty-seven months: if the spacecraft manages to make it to Enceladus without incident it must use a drillship to penetrate the kilometer-thick sheet of ice that entombs the moon. If life does indeed exist on Enceladus, it could only be at the bottom of the salty, ice covered ocean, which formed billions of years ago.