Kenjiro opened the interior door.
Maxim didn’t sense any change. He looked at the computer on his arm to check the ambient conditions. It was a few degrees above zero, and there was low air pressure. They were standing in an almost square-shaped space, maybe two meters tall, with a footprint of approximately twenty meters on each side. The ceiling was transparent, and the sun was shining into the room.
“As you can see, this location is optimal. We only need additional lighting a few days a year. But no more talk right now. I need you to bring me your buckets quickly,” Ken said.
He checked the contents of each bucket by touching the surface. “Looks good. It looks like the sludge only froze to maybe a centimeter deep. Now, I’ve got to spread it out.” Kenjiro took one bucket at a time and shook its contents onto the ground, which had been divided into four beds, before exchanging the emptied bucket for the next full one and moving to a new area. Maxim was happy that they couldn’t take off their helmets in here.
“So, when can we expect our first harvest?” Yue asked.
“I’m hoping the bacteria will transform the moon dust into fertile soil,” Ken explained. “But it’s only been tested with simulated regolith before. So, don’t get your hopes up for fresh food just yet.”
“Have you forgotten the promise of a transporter packed full of food from Earth?” Wayne asked.
“Realistically, it will be a good four months until we have vegetables from the greenhouse on our table for the first time,” Ken said. “But that wouldn’t even be a possibility without your help today, so I’ve got to thank you all. And now, I’ve got to work the sludge into the ground. Thanks again for your help. And Yue, you should get your suit cleaned off before you step back into the base, okay?”
“What is that?” Wayne stopped suddenly, and Maxim narrowly avoided running into him. The engineer pointed toward the ridge of a crater in the east. The jagged mountains were in silhouette, their shadows reaching almost up to Mons Malapert. Maxim was used to this view. But there was also something different now, something that didn’t fit in with the usual lunar landscape. A silvery arc was slowly rising from the horizon.
But nothing like that should have been there. It was impossible, like a hallucination, like they were part of a simulation, like watching a play and the stagehands were slowly pushing a table into view from off stage. It would have to be a giant table, that was already clear, although they could only see a small part of it at the moment. It was positioned precisely where the Earth was supposed to rise that day. Maxim closed his mouth. He hadn’t even noticed that he’d opened it. He’d once seen a movie where a space expedition found out at the end of their journey that their ship had never even lifted off.
Had they been put in a simulation like that? If so, the projector that usually projected the Earth onto the walls around them must’ve just failed. But then how did they simulate the low gravity, and why had none of them noticed anything or gotten suspicious before? Most importantly—what would be the point of all of this?
“That’s the Earth,” Yue said, her voice flat-lined from fear.
“That is not the Earth,” Wayne countered. “That definitely cannot be the Earth.”
But what was it? The arc was growing into a disk. The silvery glow had disappeared, and it was now a uniform white color. It was exactly the same white that the sun emitted in the black sky. But the illumination was flawless, with no brighter or darker spots. The object, which had just then risen completely over the horizon, couldn’t have a natural origin.
“We should get back to base as fast as we can,” Maxim said. “Whatever that thing is, it’s giving me a bad feeling.”
Nobody answered. Wayne was staring at the disk as if it had hypnotized him. Something reminded Maxim of an old movie in which all the people were being remote-controlled by external powers. Was he the only one who was still master of his mind? He nudged Wayne with his left arm.
“Sorry, boss,” Wayne said. “You’re right. We need to get back. We’re not going to learn anything about what that thing is out here.”
Yue turned around without a word and suddenly started to run.
“Hey, Yue, wait!” Maxim said through the helmet radio.
She continued to run a few steps, but then stopped and stood in place. He caught up to her and touched her on the shoulder. She was standing very stiffly. Slowly he turned her around and looked her in the eyes. Yue’s eyes were wide open.
“Hey, whatever that thing is,” he said, “we’re going to find out and then respond as necessary. Trust me. Okay?”
Yue nodded.
“Come on. We’re going back to the base.”
“What about Ken and the away team?”
“We’ll get your suit cleaned off, get inside, and send them a message when we know more.”
Yue immediately sat herself down at the radio when they got back to the control center. “Capcom, please come in.”
Good idea, Maxim thought. If anyone knows anything, it’ll be the guys on Earth. He trusted this wasn’t some kind of simulation. If he had been kept away from Irina for this long, only to play lab rat for some psychologists in some underground base somewhere... That would make him furious. Hadn’t there been a provision in his contract that he’d found strange at the time? ‘Employment in the project does not constitute a guarantee that the signee will travel into space,’ or something like that, was how it had been worded.
“Capcom, please come in.”
Maxim was standing behind Yue, who appeared to be changing frequencies. Then she tried again. “Capcom, please come in. Gao Yue from moon base here. We have a few questions.”
“No answer?” Maxim asked and pointed to the headphones that Yue was wearing.
She took them off. “I’ll put it on speaker,” she said and pressed a button.
“Capcom, please come in.”
There was only the sound of static from the speaker. The Earth was not answering.
“Is that thing still there?” Maxim asked.
Yue brought up the image from the exterior camera onto the screen. She pointed the camera toward the east. The white disk was above the mountains now. On the screen, it looked like someone had punched a template out of the black sky. It didn’t appear to be a threat.
“Maybe Earth can’t get through,” Wayne said, having taken a place next to them.
“You mean you think that’s some kind of wall made out of shiny white material between us and Earth?”
“Well, that’s how it looks, boss. Do you have some other idea?”
Maxim was unsure. But his skepticism won out. “You’re the engineer, Wayne. It seems that a disk like that would be extremely heavy, and someone would’ve had to place it right exactly in our line of sight with the Earth.”
“Hmm.”
“Can you measure its dimensions exactly, Yue?” Maxim asked.
Yue enlarged the image and called up a digital ruler on the screen. “Hmm. The disk isn’t complete yet,” she said. Then she moved the current image to the side and opened the file system. Lightning quick, she scrolled through the stored photos. Maxim wasn’t able to keep up with her.
“There, that’s a match,” she said finally and opened an image. It looked exactly like what they saw in the sky right now, except the disk wasn’t white—it was blue. It was the Earth. Yue clicked on the current photo and then used a key combination to overlay the two images. The disk was exactly the same size and shape as the face of their home planet.
“That can’t be a coincidence,” Wayne said.
“‘Coincidence?’ I think you’re thinking in the wrong categories,” Maxim said. “A coincidence would be if a meteorite struck our greenhouse right after Ken had finished spreading out our sludge. A disk like that, hanging over us in the sky, is so ominous that it makes me think I’m in a dream, or there’s been a breakdown in the fundamental logic of the universe. Will someone pinch me, please?”
Wayne pinched his upper left arm. But o
f course, that kind of test didn’t mean anything. It could all still be a dream. There had even been a movie once where everything that people experienced was part of a simulation. What was it called? Whatever—their current situation reminded Maxim very much of it. What he was even more afraid of was that this wall might be real.
“Capcom, please come in.” Yue was trying again. Her patience reassured him in a strange way. “Capcom, please come in.”
“You’re very good at that,” Maxim said, and he meant it seriously. Maybe all they had to do was wait a little while longer, and whatever that strange phenomenon was would disappear all by itself.
“Maybe all we’ve got to do is wait a while for that thing to disappear on its own,” Wayne said.
Maxim laughed out loud. “I was just thinking almost those same words.”
“Capcom, please come in.”
“Capcom, please come in.”
Yue had been speaking into the microphone now for a half hour with a calm, steady voice. Maxim was again impressed by her patience. He would have long ago banged his fists against the microphone. The door opened behind him. He turned to see Kenjiro.
“Capcom, please come in,” Yue said.
No answer.
Kenjiro remained in place and looked first at Yue, then Wayne, and finally Maxim.
“Why all the doom and gloom? What’s wrong with all of you, and why isn’t Capcom answering?”
“You haven’t noticed?” Wayne asked.
“Noticed what?”
Wayne pointed to the computer, which had just decided to activate its screensaver.
“Nice, flying ducks,” Kenjiro said.
Yue snickered. Then she typed something. The ducks disappeared, and a picture of the lunar surface appeared again. She pointed to the white disk above the mountains. Ken came closer and studied the image. He looked at it so intensely that Maxim had the feeling that he was trying to absorb every detail.
“Hmm,” he said after about three minutes.
“Hmm?” Maxim asked, “that’s all you’ve got to say?”
“Hmm.” Ken scratched his chin. When he moved his fingers across his stubble, the noise was louder than the constant hum of the climate control system.
“Hmm?”
“Well, something’s happened to the Earth,” Kenjiro said, “that’s pretty clear.”
The Earth? Maxim was perplexed. Then he realized that all three of them had been concentrating on one interpretation of the situation to the extent they’d overlooked other possibilities, like one of those optical illusions where one person sees two facial profiles while someone else perceives a vase. Maybe what they were seeing wasn’t a disk positioned exactly between them and the Earth. Perhaps it was the Earth. It occurred to him that they could easily check if they could just change their perspective.
“We need to look at whatever that is from a different point of view,” he said. He purposely avoided the word ‘wall.’
“A different explanation for what we’re seeing?” Wayne asked.
“No, I mean it literally. If that is the Earth, like Ken believes, then we should be able to prove that from a different location, a different perspective.”
“We could drive a few kilometers north,” Kenjiro suggested.
“That would take a while,” Wayne said.
“We could contact the away team,” Yue suggested.
“But they’re outside the libration zone on the side facing away from the Earth. They wouldn’t be able to see the Earth at all from where they are,” Maxim said. Shouldn’t Yue have known that?
“I don’t want them to observe the Earth, I want them to contact ARES,” Yue said quietly. “The Mars Expedition crew would have a completely different point of view of the Earth than we do.”
Maxim uttered a silent apology to her in his mind. That was an excellent idea. If there was some kind of barrier in front of the Earth, the ARES should be able to see past it.
“Uh, why don’t we just call the ARES ourselves?” Wayne asked.
“For the next two days it can only be reached from the other side of the moon. Exactly where Jon and Atiya are right now.”
“Can you please try to reach the away team, Yue?”
“Yes, Commander, but they won’t be able to answer right now. Shortly after midnight, they should be back in our tower’s transmission area on the summit of Mons Malapert. When they activate the new laser link, we should be able to talk with them.”
“Well, then, I guess we’re going to need some patience.”
January 11, 2035 – Mars Ship ARES
“So, how do I look?” Giordano asked.
Judith reached for his collar and straightened it. Then she opened the top button of his shirt. He pulled his jacket tight. “Presentable,” she said.
After three weeks on board, today was the first day he wasn’t wearing his favorite sweatsuit. The reason for this fashion change was because of television. Interstellar object 2I had become a big topic in the mass media. And since he was one of the scientists whose names appeared under the publication’s title, he was supposed to record an interview today. At least one, if not all, of the other authors would probably be jealous of him, but he couldn’t do anything about that. His celebrity status as one of the Mars astronauts had almost certainly influenced the network’s decision on whom to interview. His face would be shown that night on all of the most popular American news broadcasts.
The time delay in the transmission wouldn’t be a problem. The network was going to send him the questions in advance. As soon as he had them, he was supposed to answer them one after the other in front of the camera. Everything would then be edited together back on Earth. The viewers would think they were watching it all live from space.
“Just float there in place,” Judith said.
To make the image look as exotic as possible, he was supposed to position himself below the ceiling and float around a bit as he answered the questions.
“People love zero gravity,” the moderator had told them.
Judith would control the camera. She had received a list of detailed instructions also. They already had a TV camera on board, because they were supposed to film their egress from their lander onto Mars. The camera was a robotic model with four wheels. The plan was to first let the camera out of the airlock and onto the surface after their arrival, so that it could record the first step of a human onto the surface of a different planet for all eternity. Naturally, the honor was supposed to go to an American. ESA and CSA had been given no choice but to agree to that stipulation as junior partners in the expedition.
The robotic camera’s disadvantage was that it couldn’t initialize itself in the zero gravity inside the spaceship. It completely lost its orientation. It was just a software bug, but there wasn’t enough time to reprogram it. So, Judith would have to be the camerawoman.
“Should we do a test run?” she asked.
Giordano looked at the control panel. The moderator’s questions were supposed to have arrived five minutes ago. But that was typical. First, the broadcaster would make everyone stressed about being ready on time, and then something else would always come up to cause a delay. And he’d gone to the extra effort of putting on his suit! The shirt collar was scratching his neck. There was still nothing on the control panel indicating there was a new message.
“Let’s do a test,” he said.
“Float right in front of the life-support control unit,” Judith said. “I think the plots it displays on its screen will give the shot a nice, technical look.”
“But the newswoman didn’t want any distracting motion in the picture.”
“Do a few plot lines indicate motion?”
“I don’t know.”
“They wanted blinking lights,” Judith said. “Couldn’t that be considered motion too?”
“Maybe only if the lights were also changing their positions.”
“Let’s just try it with the life support. I think it’ll look good.”
“Okay.”
Giordano gave himself a push and floated upward. Then he anchored himself by putting one foot behind a bar. “Like this?”
“Just a second, there’s not good lighting on your face. I’m going to have to put a spotlight above the panel.”
Judith simply let go of the camera. With such expensive equipment, Giordano still had the reflex to catch them before they crashed to the ground. JR had already become better accustomed to zero gravity. She floated down to the compartment below the control panel, where they stored a battery-powered spotlight. Then she switched it on and left it floating above the panel.
“Better anchor that to something. Otherwise a draft of air might blow it to the side while you’re filming.”
“Good thinking, Giordi.”
Judith reached into her pants pocket, took out a rubber band, and attached the base of the spotlight to her seat’s backrest.
“That should work,” she said.
“Are the questions here yet?”
She leaned over the control panel. Then she shook her head. “Come on. I’ll film a couple of tests.”
She had probably long ago noticed how nervous he was. He’d only been on TV twice before, first when the expedition was announced, and then right before the launch. Judith had always done the talking in their appearances. That had been fine with him.
“Let’s see a big, exaggerated smile,” she said and pointed the camera at him.
He curled up his mouth as big as he could.
“No, I said smile, not snarl.”
He smiled at her comment.
“Yes, just like that. Mr. Bruno, how did you come up with the brilliant idea to point the ARES’s telescope at the interstellar object?”
He played along. “Ms. Rosenberg, that is an excellent question. I... I’ve always been interested in astronomy and... then I got this tip from Earth. Ah, this sounds stupid. I don’t know how to explain things.”
The Wall: Eternal Day Page 7