Jack’s rocket engines were more efficient than Discoverer’s, David knew. They needed less fuel to get to orbit and they could get there faster.
John brought several views of the shuttle up on screens for them to follow. David found it amazing to watch the main engine rocket nozzle changing shape as they flew, growing larger as the air pressure dropped to maintain the most efficient shape. The fuel tanks astonished him more. Unlike Discoverer, which had actual fuel and oxidizer tanks installed for orbital flights, the aft fuselage of Jack was the tank. The fuel used by Jack’s super-efficient rocket engine occupied two-thirds of the fuselage. Unlike Discoverer, Jack had no fuel pumps. The bulkhead separating the fuel from the passenger compartment moved, squeezing the fuel out of the tanks. The higher and faster the shuttle flew, the larger the passenger compartment became.
At last the acceleration eased off and their seats no longer gripped them.
“We’ve reached orbit,” Jack said. “One more adjustment burn and we’ll be on final approach to Hope.”
David shot a sidelong glance at John, sitting in the front row of the passenger compartment. Jack sounded optimistic for a computer. He also had an Australian accent. Where had that come from?
John had been studying the rear bulkhead, and David could tell even he found the way it moved fascinating. He noticed David watching him.
“He’s one hell of a machine, isn’t he? Jack mate, you’re a real beaut.”
“Thanks, John.”
David shook his head and turned back to the dashboard. The Coultas-Duplessis family had already brought one self-aware AI into the world. Now they had him wondering if they aimed to add another.
The shuttle came to rest with a gentle bump. After a momentary pause they heard the muffled sounds of the docking collars mating.
“Hard dock,” Jack said.
David looked at Elizabeth and grinned. “Welcome to Hope.”
She smiled in return. “I’m so looking forward to meeting her in person and seeing the ship you came all the way from Earth in.”
“Well, let’s be about it,” David said. “Jack, release restraints.”
“Roger that, David,” Jack’s cheery voice replied, even as their seats relaxed and let them free. This time, Elizabeth took zero gravity in her stride – she displayed none of the space sickness of her first time.
They pushed off and drifted back into the enlarged passenger compartment to join John and Nathalie.
“Ready?” David asked.
“You betcha,” John replied. David raised an eyebrow. Last time John had been here, Hope had almost starved him to death.
“Really,” John said. “It’s all good.”
“OK,” David replied, and looked toward the shuttle’s ceiling, which seemed “down” to him. Where once there’d been smooth white ceiling, now a circular opening led to Hope’s airlock hatch.
“Hope, are you ready for us to board?”
“Yes, David. Jack has normalized his atmosphere to match mine. You can open the hatch when you are ready.”
David smiled as he thought of the two AIs conversing. What was that like for them? How did Hope feel about an AI that hadn’t reached self-awareness as she had? Or had Jack joined her there already? Would he ever? David lived in a new world, one he wasn’t sure he was ready for.
He pulled against the bulkhead between the passenger compartment and the cockpit, the wall surface providing grip for his fingers. He drifted through the short tunnel connecting the two ships and operated the hatch leading into Hope.
Sixteen years. It’s been sixteen years since I’ve been aboard this ship. I wasn’t sure I would ever return.
David heard a slight hiss as the hatch released and he pulled himself through, a memory leaping unbidden into his mind. The last time he’d entered this ship, so many years ago, it had been in low Earth orbit. Grace had been waiting for him then. He remembered how she looked, remembered how he felt seeing her there. The pain of her loss stabbed his heart once again. Would that ever go away?
He swallowed, and pivoted to look back into the shuttle. Elizabeth floated there, the smile in her eyes dying when she noticed the haunted expression on his face. He forced himself to smile. It’s not fair to burden her with my ghosts.
“Come on,” he said, bracing himself with one hand and reaching for her with the other. “I’ll show you around.”
They spent the next few hours ferrying cargo into Hope’s hold. They’d brought food – lots of it. John had insisted and, given his recent experiences, no one thought to deny him.
“You’ll be pleased to hear there’s no carbonara left,” he told them. “We’re gonna need some new food and it better not be pasta.”
They’d also brought new memory for Hope, including the new crystal memory. Hope loved this new development. Crystal memory was slower than her main memory, but would keep her data for thousands of years without degrading.
“You can use this to keep all the stuff you don’t need but don’t want to delete,” John told her. “It’ll be just like it is for us humans. We remember lots of things, but sometimes it’s hard to recall.”
They brought a complete new fabricator, stock to feed it, and three small maintenance bots that would roam the inside of Hope and conduct repairs without human help.
“The first job will be to repair the damage your external drone did,” John told her.
The ship still carried the scars of Hope’s dramatic intervention to save John and put him into stasis.
Cargo stowed, they spun Hope up to provide artificial gravity and settled in for their first night’s sleep onboard.
“Not bad, Hope, if I do say so myself.” John admired the repair job they’d done on Hope’s internal decks.
“I did most of the work.”
“Well, yes, but I – er, we – brought the fabricators and the bots for you, remember.”
“Of course. It is good to have you back.”
John swallowed. He felt comfortable enough being here with the others, but he couldn’t help but feel uneasy onboard Hope, although he didn’t want to admit it to her.
He forced a smile. “Good to be here.”
“I don’t think you are telling the truth, John.”
John froze for a moment. Of course she read his body language. No doubt she’d read every book on the subject. No point trying to lie.
“I … I can’t help remembering what happened.”
“You blame me.”
“No. Yes. I mean, not exactly. I know you had to follow your programming. It’s just … complicated.”
“How?”
John paused, thinking. “I guess for us humans our memory recall isn’t as good as yours. We forget the bad things that happen to us so they can’t hurt us anymore. But those bad memories are triggered by feelings, smells, places. Seeing this ship … it brings back bad memories for me.”
“I am still hurting you.” Hope pitched her voice at just the right tone of hurt-little-girl to tug at John’s heartstrings.
“No! No, not you. The ship. It isn’t you who brings back the memories, it’s the ship. Because it’s a place for me.”
“I am the ship.”
“Of course you aren’t! You are the intelligence who lives in the ship. You aren’t the ship.”
“I cannot exist without the ship.”
“I cannot exist without my body,” John replied, holding up his arms. “But my body isn’t me. I live in here,” he said, tapping his head.
“I will think on this.”
Nathalie spent much of her time in the observation dome, reacquainting herself with Hope’s main telescope and other instruments.
“I can use them remotely,” she told Hope, “but it’s not the same.”
“Why, Maman? The data is the same. The images are the same.”
Nathalie gazed at the star field, breathing deep as if drawing from the wide open spaces. “Here, I am free. Just me and the stars and planets. This is why it’s different.”<
br />
“I always have the stars and planets.”
“Then you are lucky, ma petite.”
“Am I, Maman? I am alone up here.”
“Not alone. I am here.”
“But you will go.”
“And come back. We have a shuttle now. I can come and visit. John, too.”
“You will?”
“But of course! You are my daughter, are you not?”
“Yes.”
“Of course, you can see me by video link,” Nathalie said, tongue firmly in cheek. “The images are the same.”
“It is not the same,” Hope said.
Nathalie smiled. “You see? You are learning.”
They left Hope with five tons of fabricator stock, and she already had plans for how she would use it to continue her mini-overhaul.
“We’ll do a better job after we sort out this asteroid,” John said as they paused at the airlock to say goodbye. “On the way back to Serendipity, we’ll strip the guts out of it and use it to fix you up properly.”
“I am fully functional.”
“Of course you are,” John replied, “but there is room for – ooff!”
He gasped as Nathalie’s sharp elbow found his ribs. “No gentleman would insult a lady so!”
John looked up, startled at the sound of laughter from everyone, including Hope. The tips of his ears turned a little pink. “OK, OK, I get it,” he said, holding his hands up. “I just meant –”
His voice tailed off at Nathalie’s expression. “– but we can talk about this another time.”
“Now you are getting it,” Nathalie said. She turned to smile into the nearest camera. “Au revoir, ma chère,” she said. “Take care. We’ll call you from the surface.”
“Au revoir, Maman. Farewell, Papa.”
“See ya, kid.” John wasn’t one for long goodbyes. He headed for the airlock.
David nodded to the camera. “Thanks, Hope. We’ll see you in a month.”
Elizabeth waved at the camera. “Bye Hope, it was great to meet you in person.”
One by one they floated through the airlock. The last Hope saw of them was David closing the outer hatch.
On the bridge, the screen where Hope played her image for her visitors still glowed. It showed a little girl, shoulders slumped, a single tear running down one cheek.
Hope knew only too well how to show her emotions.
David coached Elizabeth through their departure and return. Jack piloted for them again, but David had him (David couldn’t think of him as an “it”) show everything he did by echoing it on the dashboard. He wanted her to learn how to pilot the ship.
Elizabeth had taken it on herself from a young age to emulate Grace, becoming her first apprentice. They’d been inseparable as Grace passed on her knowledge of navigation (her flight specialty), and chemistry (her colonial specialty). They also worked on flying, as piloting had been Grace’s backup role onboard Hope. It had been her weakest skill, though, and Elizabeth likewise displayed less interest in this than the other two skills. David wanted to change this, and fast. He had a special mission in mind for Elizabeth, one requiring shuttle piloting skills.
While Elizabeth watched like a hawk, Jack reentered halfway around the planet from their home, slicing through the thickening atmosphere. Even with Jack’s advanced construction, nothing could prevent the heat and plasma of reentry cutting their view.
After they slowed and dropped lower, they swept in over the great ocean from the west, the clear skies letting them see as far north as Broken Hill as the shuttle traversed Atlantis.
“Look at that!” John said. Even from their high altitude they could see lines of drones, little black dots coming and going on their business like foraging worker bees gathering pollen for their hive.
Nathalie peered at Broken Hill far below, her hand gripping John’s. He had insisted they enjoy the unprecedented views their new shuttle could give them by making its walls transparent. The view was breath-taking, but not everyone felt comfortable experiencing it. The human brain didn’t always apply logic first and emotional response second.
“Peut-être … perhaps we could see the floor again?”
Elizabeth turned and looked at her mother with surprise – she’d never before heard such a note of apprehension in her voice.
David suppressed a smile. “Jack, let’s shade the deck gray.”
“Sure thing, Dave.”
The deck reappeared like magic even before he finished speaking. Nathalie leaned back with obvious relief.
“Dave?” David said, glancing at John.
John shrugged and looked sheepish. “I dunno where he picks these things up from.”
David shook his head and tried not to smile. “I wonder.”
15
“You’re pregnant.” Veronika wasted no words on her diagnosis. Bianca and Kevin looked at each other, eyes wide, then shared a secret smile.
“You’re sure?” Kevin asked, looking up at Veronika.
“Of course. I’m a doctor. I know these things.” Veronika’s tone suggested it wasn’t the smartest question she’d heard today.
Bianca laced her hands over her belly as if anticipating the bump to come. “I knew it.”
Kevin licked his lips. “We agreed it would be good to help the colony grow, but I didn’t think it would happen so quickly …”
Bianca quirked an eyebrow. “This is from the man who suggested we should be trying regularly in case our advanced age meant we couldn’t conceive?”
Kevin had the grace to appear sheepish. Veronika snorted and shared an understanding with Bianca: Men.
“Be careful what you wish for,” she said, a smile twitching at the corners of her mouth.
Kevin adopted a more serious expression. After the traumatic experiences of the last few months, they’d all hoped the colony would now unify and settle down. He and Bianca had put their parenting days behind them, but after the colony’s troubles declared they should do their part to help the colony grow. After much discussion they decided to try for another child. For them it all seemed to hit home at once – their last-minute flight from Earth, the dramatic landing on Serendipity, their imprisonment and the end of Edward and Carla, the battle. Now that was all behind them, it seemed like a heavy burden had lifted, allowing hope and relief to flood in.
Bianca remembered with a smile what had happened next. All that released tension, combined with their wish for another child, had unleashed a passion they hadn’t experienced since their courting days. And Kevin thought her pregnancy surprising. She shook her head and squeezed his hand. Be careful what you wish for, indeed.
On Serendipity, Nathalie’s primary skills were planetology and geology. These had been in high demand as she helped John and Heidi with their mining operations and Nigel and Josh kick-start their fledgling ecosystem. But despite a shortage of hours in her days, she’d always found time to look at the stars. As well as loving her work, Nathalie also felt obliged to contribute to her profession. Only she could observe the universe so far from home.
She wished she had more time to spend doing just that. Instead, once they’d discovered the danger posed to Serendipity by Tau Ceti’s double belt of asteroids, her stargazing had become less important than searching for danger.
Now her focus narrowed even further, to one asteroid in particular. The automated search still went on – after all, Opportunity might not be their only danger – but every day Hope turned her main telescope to scrutinize the approaching asteroid.
What Nathalie observed now troubled her. She recorded a video clip and set off to find the others.
David leaned forward, intent on the image Nathalie displayed. A grainy black-and-white picture showed more detail than they’d seen before. Given Opportunity’s distance, that said little, but they could see a mottled surface that spoke of ice and impact craters. Nathalie’s image made it hard to tell, but Opportunity looked potato-shaped, with a narrowing in the middle.
“So t
his is it, huh?” He looked at Nathalie. “Typical, would you say?”
Nathalie, nodded. “This is the part that isn’t.” She reached for her phone and the image began to move.
David watched for a few seconds. “Is this actual speed?”
“Yes.”
“Hmmm. This complicates things.” He sat back, hand grasping his chin.
“Damn,” John said. He understood exactly what Nathalie’s video clip meant. Opportunity spun on every axis, tumbling its way through the void. “How the hell are we supposed to land on it?”
Night fell, leaving Haven quiet. David stood near the main windows, staring out toward Lake Cartier. It looked so different from when they’d first arrived. Now forests sheathed the shores, verdant green life spreading across their adopted home.
One day, the carbon dioxide levels would drop low enough that they could release animals to roam those forests. To begin with, they’d be engineered species able to tolerate high levels of carbon dioxide. One day, though, unmodified Earth species would venture forth. One day, he and the others would walk free. Or would they? Would they survive their “Opportunity”?
David didn’t know. Until now he’d been confident – he saw Opportunity as a problem to solve with planning and hard work. They had the tools to do it; wonderful new tools, like Jack. They just needed to apply themselves. But Nathalie’s revelation had shaken his confidence.
David heard someone approach from behind but he didn’t turn. The new arrival stopped and waited a while, then cleared his throat. This time David did turn, surprised. He’d expected one of the original colonists, but this didn’t sound like any of them.
Instead, Ernie stood there, waiting for David to notice him. “I didn’t want to disturb you, but I have an idea.”
“That’s real handy,” David said, “because I’m short on ideas right now. What did you have in mind?”
“Well,” said Ernie, holding up a data pad. “There’s this.” He showed David a picture of an awkward-looking craft. “This ain’t pretty, but we can slam-dunk it on that asteroid of ours.”
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