Serendipity

by Dennis Ingram

  David reached for the joystick again, tapping his fingers against it before gripping it. While it was still cold, this time his hand didn’t stick to it.

  “Thruster vector control, check.” He looked up to see Jack above him. “Jack, this is Dragonfly One. Ready for separation, over.”

  “Roger Dragonfly One, copy you ready for separation.”

  “Disengage dock on my mark – three, two, one, mark.”

  The Dragonfly vibrated and David saw the docking collar disengage.

  “Thrusting down.” He gave the Dragonfly a squirt on the upper cold gas thrusters and it drifted away from the shuttle.

  “Good separation.”

  “Roger, Dragonfly. Confirm good separation.”

  David hummed to himself as he checked his visuals and the radar. He gave the cold thrusters another long squirt and the shuttle fell away.

  “OK, Dragonfly, let’s see what you’ve got.”

  Ernie had expected David would fly over to Hope and dock.

  He didn’t. Instead, he flew up, down, forward, and back. He accelerated as fast as he could in all directions, and as slowly as he could. The Dragonfly spun forward and back and rolled from side to side. Then he’d spun and rolled at the same time for good measure, testing the limits of his ungainly machine.

  At last he came to a stop halfway between Hope and Jack and spent more time checking the state of his spacecraft.

  Ernie cleared his throat. “Er, David?”

  “Copy, over.”

  “How much fuel do you have left?”

  “I’m reading twelve percent, over.”

  “Er, roger that.” Ernie looked at John, who just shook his head and smiled.

  “David, I wondered if you could test docking with Hope?”

  A moment of silence, then David’s reply came. “Roger that, Ernie. Docking with Hope this time, over.”

  Ernie let out a breath he hadn’t realized he held. He glanced at John. “Is he always like this?”

  John looked up and to the side for a moment. “Well, let’s just say he’s serious but thorough about these things. Oh, and so far as I can tell, there’s nothing in this galaxy that makes him nervous. Nothing at all.”

  “Yeah,” Ernie said, “I get that. Not me, though.” He looked out of the cockpit window to watch the little fireflies of winking light marking David’s progress across the void toward Hope. “Some things make me nervous.”

  Elizabeth checked the last item off her list with satisfaction. When David appointed her commander of the orbital mission, she’d taken her responsibilities seriously. She’d plagued John, Heidi, Ernie, and anyone else she could think of, until they gave her fabricator time to assemble the things she needed.

  Elizabeth would take a party of five adults and twenty children up into orbit, together with a large amount of provisions. They would also carry seeds and embryos, just in case. Just in case we need to start all over again. She didn’t want to think about that. If that ever happened, it meant the worst of scenarios – David would have failed in his mission to stop Opportunity and would be dead. Elizabeth had no doubts he would either succeed, or die trying. Her devotion to David had only deepened in the weeks and months following the war. He’d saved them all again, never complaining about his own troubles, his own pain.

  Elizabeth glanced at the small mountain of provisions again, and thought about being crammed into the shuttle for a month with twenty children. She sighed. It would take superhuman childcare skills to preserve her sanity for so long.

  She looked over to where Joyce was helping Simon and Sabine, and frowned. Joyce presented the only fly in the ointment. Elizabeth didn’t quite know what to make of her. She knew of her history with David, and this made her wary, especially since … since Vasily had died.

  She’d seen David and Joyce together. About the only good thing about having Joyce Abramovich on the mission was that it kept her away from David. She knew Joyce had more experience at the very job David asked her to undertake. This made her even more determined nothing would go wrong.

  17

  “Status, please Hope.”

  “All systems are nominal, David.”

  David cast his eyes over the crew. They’d decided to take only six on the mission: Franz, Ernie, John, Nathalie, Heidi, and him. He’d agonized over taking both John and Nathalie – it didn’t seem fair to risk both parents from the same family. But he rationalized it by convincing himself they were both too valuable to leave behind, and Elizabeth would be safe. He’d made sure Elizabeth and all of her siblings would be aboard the shuttle.

  It felt surreal to be back on board Hope with the other three originals, familiar faces but different, their faces etched by their life experiences. The four of them wore ship suits, discovered waiting for them in their old cabins. Now they looked through the lens of time, back before Serendipity, before children, before Opportunity. Until now, they’d considered that the toughest time of their lives. The peril of a crippled ship. The uncertainty of whether they’d find a world to live on. Not knowing if they could survive there if they did find one.

  In hindsight, their earlier trials seemed minor compared to the hell unleashed upon them by Edward and Carla.

  David straightened his shoulders. Time to deal with their next challenge. Perhaps then, their troubles would be over at last. Perhaps then, they could turn to politics and terraforming, raising children and building cities.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  “Ready,” came the answer, even from Franz.

  “Hope, start the fuel pumps and report status.”

  “Acknowledged, fuel pumps started.”

  It had been several months since Hope had last fired her engines, so David wanted to play it safe, making sure everything worked as it should before engaging thrust.

  The pumps connected to Hope’s aft fuel tank churned, pushing water along the pipes to the quantum thruster at the stern of the mighty ship. The water passed through, the thrusters still idle, and sprayed through the exhausts at the tail of the ship. Their screens showed the water disappearing into clouds of ice crystals, sparkling with reflected sunlight.

  “Fuel delivery systems are nominal,” Hope said.

  “Very well. Initiate thrust, five percent.”

  “Thrust to five percent.”

  The ice crystals on screen disappeared as they accelerated beyond the view of the camera. They felt a gentle tug to the rear as the ship gained momentum.

  “Engine performance is nominal. Fusion reactor nominal.”

  “Thanks, Hope. Spin us up some gravity please, Serendipity standard.”

  “Acknowledged. Commencing gravity spin.”

  Thrusters up and down the ship fired and Hope began to rotate. Minute by minute, they sensed weight returning until Hope announced the simulated gravity matched Serendipity’s.

  Hope increased thrust until they accelerated at one tenth of an Earth gravity, the best she could manage. Her drive didn’t run at its maximum efficiency at this rate, but time was of the essence.

  They all had to adapt to the effects of their artificial gravity pulling them down toward what seemed like the floor, and their acceleration pushing toward the aft bulkheads.

  The others saw little of either David or Franz. David divided his time between observing Opportunity as it grew ever closer, and sitting in Dragonfly One, simulating the mission as best he could in his mind.

  In marked contrast, Franz spent most of his time in his cabin. What did he do in there? Did he prepare himself mentally? Or did he not care? Unlike David, he hadn’t yet put Dragonfly Two through its paces. On his inaugural flight he flew it from the shuttle to Hope without taking the time to test his spacecraft. He hadn’t returned to the vehicle since he’d docked. David did not approve of this approach, but was loath to criticize a fellow pilot. Perhaps Franz was one of those talented seat-of-the-pants types, who preferred to leave everything to the last minute and work it out then.

  They would soon f
ind out.

  Opportunity was hurtling toward them at a speed guaranteed to impart an enormous amount of kinetic energy to their home world, should it strike. Their thrust plan had three phases: First, they accelerated outbound from Serendipity. Second, they decelerated to counter their outbound acceleration. Last, they accelerated back toward Serendipity to match the velocity of Opportunity, timing their thrust so Opportunity caught up with them. All going well, they would be at zero velocity relative to Opportunity four weeks after leaving Serendipity orbit.

  David made the most of the clear views from the main telescope while they accelerated and hence faced Opportunity. Once they flipped end-for-end and commenced the second and third phases of their flight, their view would come through the smaller secondary telescope facing aft. Hope’s drive exhaust would also distort their view in a similar way a planet’s atmosphere distorts the view from a ground-based telescope.

  By now he’d seen enough to judge the daunting challenge he faced. Not only did Opportunity tumble on all axes, it changed as it did so. A thick blanket of ice covered the asteroid. This sublimated into space as it grew closer to Tau Ceti.

  Opportunity was a freak, as much a comet as an asteroid, suggesting it originated from the outer belt. It was perfect for mining. Not only would it have a metallic core for construction materials, its clothing of ice and other organic compounds would be ideal for fuel and other chemicals. The bad news was, the surface changed as he watched. The outgassing volatiles would make flying near the surface … interesting.

  David redoubled his efforts. His method was simple: focus and practice. He did this over and over again, until his actions burned into his subconscious. When he landed on Opportunity, he wanted his reactions to be automatic, instinctive. If he had to think about everything he did, he’d be lost.

  Which was why he worried about Franz.

  Opportunity proved to be an unimposing lump of ice and rock. Hope finished her final acceleration burn and flipped over, so they could see the asteroid with their own eyes through the observation dome.

  There it was, only a kilometer away.

  “Not very big, is it?” John said.

  “Big enough,” Nathalie said. “Seven hundred and eighty-two meters in diameter on average. At its current velocity, it won’t destroy all life on Serendipity, but a direct strike on Atlantis would destroy Haven and most life on the continent. A strike in the ocean would generate a tsunami that would engulf Haven.”

  “Yeah,” John said. “Not good.”

  “Time to get out there,” David said, his eyes on the prize. He turned to Franz, who had joined them for once. “Coming?”

  Franz shook his head, a thin smile on his face. “After you.”

  David pressed his lips together. He now doubted his decision to bring Franz. It seemed clear the success of this mission lay on his shoulders, and his alone.

  “I’ll be out in Dragonfly One,” he said, and turned to leave.

  “I’ll come with you,” John said. “To the cargo hold, I mean. Help you with the pre-flight.”

  The two of them exited the observation dome and headed aft, leaving the others to their view.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” Ernie asked, looking at Franz with cold eyes. “We didn’t bring you all this way for nothing!”

  “I’ll do this my way,” Franz replied. “Or not at all. Unless you think you can do better?”

  Ernie said nothing. Franz smiled. “I didn’t think so.”

  He pushed off and headed for the hatch. Ernie opened his mouth to say something, but Heidi stopped him with a look. After Franz had gone, she said, “Let him be. I agree he’s not doing this the way we’d like, but he is risking his life. We don’t need to distract him right now.”

  Ernie looked doubtful. “It’s lucky we have David is all I can say.”

  David hauled himself out of the Dragonfly and into Hope’s airlock. He was tired, soaked with sweat, and frustrated.

  “How did it go?” John asked, helping him out of his flight suit.

  David shook his head by way of reply. He’d spent the past two days buzzing around Opportunity like a mosquito looking for a blood meal. He’d had to revise his understanding of the task he faced. For one thing, Opportunity turned out to be smaller than he’d imagined. On an intellectual level he’d known that, but in the magnified view from their telescopes he’d envisaged it would be like landing on a large object, like a moon. Once the human mind forms a belief, the box is formed and thinking outside of it is almost impossible to achieve. In reality he wouldn’t land, so much as dock with it. Rather than flying along valleys and dodging mountains, he’d need to spot a landing site and dart in.

  The spin created the main problem. To land or “dock”, he had to fly around the outside of the asteroid and match its spin. That raised a few problems. Number one, it tumbled at different speeds along all of its axes. This seemed straightforward enough from a physics point of view, but in practice, trying to fly around the asteroid and match its rotation long enough to find a spot that didn’t move relative to you, proved to be almost impossible.

  Number two, to fly around the asteroid in a circular path, the Dragonfly had to thrust continuously in order not to fly past it. That generated g-forces that made his blood either rush away from his feet or away from his head. He had to choose between risking blackout, or thumping headaches.

  Number three, all that thruster activity ate fuel. He had at most twenty minutes per run to find a place to touchdown. The number of times he’d flown into the correct orientation for a touchdown to date: zero.

  David had been trying for two days. He had one more day. After that, their starter packages wouldn’t have time to build thrusters and nudge Opportunity enough to miss Serendipity. The only positive had been the silver lining to Franz’s lack of activity – he had more fuel to practice with. Even so, between them they had only enough left for six more runs.

  David went straight from the cargo hold to the bridge, seeking out Franz. He half floated, half walked as Hope resumed her gravity spin.

  He found Franz in the gym. “We need to talk,” he said, his jaw clenched. He shouldn’t be here, not without taking time to recover, but his patience had come to an end.

  Franz looked up from his data pad and frowned. “Let me guess, you want to know when I’m going to practice landing on Opportunity.”

  “Something like that.”

  “I’m working on it.”

  David stepped forward. “How, exactly? We’ve been here for two days. We only have three. Aren’t you leaving your run a bit late?”

  Franz pursed his lips. He turned his data pad around to show David. The screen showed detailed images of Opportunity marked up in red.

  “What’s this?”

  “What does it look like?” Franz said with a sneer. “It’s not a picture of my mother.”

  David’s nostrils flared. He gripped a handhold, fighting to control his composure.

  “Oh, don’t worry. I’ll do my part,” Franz said. “My way is different to yours, is all. You might prefer to fly around day after day working up a sweat, but I’m taking the time to plan. You will see.”

  He stood and walked past David, who turned to watch him leave, not trusting himself to speak. We’d better see, or tomorrow I’ll kick him out the airlock myself.

  Last day.

  David was trying to snatch a couple of hours of well-earned sleep when John woke him. “I thought you’d like to know. It’s Franz. He’s out in his Dragonfly.”

  David pulled himself out of his bunk and reached for his ship suit. “What’s he doing?”

  “Right now, not much.”

  “Meaning?”

  “You’ll see.”

  They made record time getting to the bridge, where Ernie had Dragonfly Two up on screen. It floated several hundred meters from the surface, nose first, unmoving.

  “He’s been sittin’ there for a quarter of an hour,” Ernie said. “Not doing anything.”<
br />
  “That’s all he’s done?” David asked.

  “He went out about half an hour ago and spent some time flitting around, trying his thrusters and such. Then he went and parked there and hasn’t moved since.”

  “Hope, connect us to Dragonfly 2,” David said.

  “Connected.”

  “Franz.”

  “David. You’re awake.”

  “What are doing?”

  “Didn’t you want me to land on the asteroid?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  David’s eyes focused on the Dragonfly. He made out tiny flashes of light as the thrusters fired. The Dragonfly began to move.

  “You can’t land that way. You can’t just go straight in.”

  Silence.

  “Franz!”

  “I know you killed her.”

  David stared at the screen.

  “Carla. I was there. I was there when you did it. You didn’t see me; I lay buried under the rubble.”

  David felt the others’ eyes on him. No one said a word.

  “I was one of the lucky ones,” Franz said, like he and David were engaged in a casual conversation over dinner. “The rocks crushed one of my legs and broke a hip, but they fell in a way that left the rest of me in a space where I could breathe, and reach my mask. Lucky for me they found me before my power ran out.” He laughed. “They fixed my body, but they couldn’t fix my mind. I couldn’t forget what I heard.”

  The Dragonfly came to a halt fifty meters out.

  “It was war.” David forced the words out. He didn’t want to think about Carla, or what he’d done.

  “Don’t misunderstand me. I don’t blame you. I should’ve done it, but I was too weak. For this I blame myself.”

  “No!” The word erupted from David’s mouth of its own accord.

  “Yes,” Franz replied. “I do. I should’ve been you, but I wasn’t. Too late now.”

  “Wait, Franz. You don’t have to do this.” David recalled what he’d seen on Franz’s data pad. He’d marked the fissures and depressions on Opportunity and added calculations for acceleration rates. That should have warned him, but instead he’d indulged in his own frustration. He saw what would happen now, but he couldn’t prevent it.