The Corps of Discovery Trilogy Box Set: Books 1-3: A multiverse series of alternate history

by James S. Peet

  Bill thought about it. Let’s see, 360 divided by 24 is 15 degrees. Hey, wait a minute, we just covered that. Okay, so 15 times seven is 105 degrees. Bill raised his hand and responded, “One hundred five degrees” when the instructor nodded to him.

  “Correct. So, where are you?” he asked the assembled class. “Here’s a hint, you can use a map.”

  The students dug out their tablets and pulled up maps of Hayek, which was more akin to the worlds they were surveying than the heavily anthropogenically-altered Earth. Soon they all found that it would put them either in the Atlantic Ocean near Eurasia, or on the western tip of Africa.

  The instructor had them run more exercises, breaking them down from simple degrees to the full degrees, minutes, and seconds required for finding one’s absolute location.

  He then had them work on the sextant, and assigned them homework to work on it in the evening when the moon, the planets, and the stars were out.

  At the end of the training, Bill and the others were feeling much better about their navigation skills.

  “Tomorrow we’ll practice taking sun shots from a Monarch, so meet at Bowman Field,” he said, dismissing the class.

  When Bill arrived back at the apartment, he found Meri already there, getting supper ready. The two had already discovered that Bill’s camp cooking wasn’t quite up to speed for real-world adventures in living, so Meri had taken over that task, leaving cleanup to Bill. Supper was a simple stir-fry which was soon gone. Afterwards, he and Meri went outside to find a good place for practicing using a sextant at night. They spent several hours in an open field and even managed to take some star shots of the North Star with the sextant Bill had brought with them.

  The next morning Bill reported to Bowman Field where he and the others got to sit in a Monarch and practice taking sun shots. That didn’t take too long, so the rest of the morning was spent going over the Monarch. As Bill had actually qualified as a co-pilot in one, he had less to learn than some of the others, but he paid attention nonetheless. After all, he thought, he wasn’t going to be piloting a Monarch if he was assigned to one as an aerial surveyor. After going over the plane inside and out the group was given the afternoon off and told to report in the evening, after supper, so they could take star, planet, and moon shots from the Monarch.

  While Bill was going through his rudimentary navigation course Meri was getting a refresher on flying the Monarch, which meant many hours in the plane, oftentimes operating as pilot. During initial surveys the pilot and co-pilot typically took turns flying the plane, with the automatic pilot often relieving whoever was on pilot duty for hours at a time. It was the only way to keep the plane in the air for a week at a time with only two main pilots. Bill thought that was definitely not something that would fly in Earth aviation, but, as he remembered, We’re not on Earth anymore, Toto.

  They had been in refresher training for less than a week when both got an email announcing their next assignments; co-pilot for Meri and aerial survey specialist for Bill, both on the same Monarch on an unnamed planet referred to solely as Planet 42. They were to report to the departure terminal at Bowman Field Friday morning, to meet the Survey Commander of Flight S-1-42/2. Monday morning they would be passing through the gate.

  At Bowman Field, they were told where to find the Monarch and its crew. They had borrowed a cart and hauled a week’s worth of uniforms and equipment with them. Duffel bags and secondary survival kits went into the cart while the two wore the rest of their regalia. Hauling the cart down the ramp, they spotted four Monarchs sitting together. One of them had the tail number they were looking for, S-1-42/2. It was obvious the last three letters had been freshly painted. Bill now understood that the last digits of a tail indicated the assignment of the plane. As Z21 was the twenty-first plane on the planet Zion, this plane would be the second one on the planet designated as Planet 42. They could see drop tanks under each wing.

  As Bill and Meri approached, Meri shouted, “Ahoy in there.” A male head popped out the pilot’s window and yelled back, “You Lewis and Clark?” Bill and Meri got a chuckle from that and confirmed they were. “Well, c’mon in and I’ll show you around.”

  At the door on the opposite side of the plane, they met the young man who was waiting for them. Bill could see a Survey ribbon with a small metal pine cone and two small metal acorns on it, indicating that he had been on seven surveys. Each pine cone meant that the Explorer had been on five surveys, and the acorns indicated a single survey. He held out his hand. “Ben Weaver, pilot. You must be the primary co-pilot,” he said, to Meri.

  “I guess so. I’m assigned as co-pilot, while my ersatz fiancé is an aerial surveyor.”

  Bill shook Ben’s hand, which had that rough feeling one gets from working with one’s hands outdoors.

  “Great. Well, come aboard. Karen’s trying to get us some better flight rats, but she’ll be back soon. I think logistics wanted to use up the worst tasting rats.”

  In the plane, Ben showed them to their assigned bunks and where to stow their gear. “Bill, you put your secondary kit under the crash seat behind the co-pilot. Meri, put yours in the co-pilot’s seat. Rifles go in your hanging lockers. When we’re airborne you wear all primary survival gear.”

  The inside of the S-1 was similar in layout to the CL-415 but smaller. More space was dedicated to remote sensing platforms and there appeared to be larger computer drives. One such was by itself inside a crash cage that was surrounded by a Faraday cage for further protection against electromagnetic pulses. Ben pointed it out to Bill and told him that Karen would show him the particulars on it.

  There were two computer workstations, one on either side of the fuselage. The port side workstation had a picture posted above the monitor of a petite blonde woman holding a toddler. Both workstations had three monitors, which Bill assumed was for each of the three sensing platforms he’d be running: visible light, near-infrared, and far infrared.

  Pointing to the picture, Ben informed them, “Karen Wilson’s the Survey Commander and head aerial survey tech. It’s her third initial survey, so she’s pretty familiar with how to run things.”

  “It’s our first,” Bill said. “How about you?

  “Second. First as pilot. Initial surveys are so draining; you only get to participate in one every couple of years.”

  Meri, having grown up listening to her father’s tales, knew just how grueling initial surveys were, but Bill didn’t. He thought they’d be flying along and taking images, and naively said so.

  Ben and Meri both broke out laughing, and then Ben explained. “Think of it this way. We’ll be up in the air for a week. Just the four of us. We’re all qualified as pilots or co-pilots for a reason: we all need to fly the plane. You’ll be doing your job AND flying. Very little sleep for a week, then off for a week, then back up for little sleep for a week. Get the picture?”

  “Uh, I guess so. Then again, isn’t that what we signed up for?”

  “That we did,” Ben affirmed.

  Outside, they heard a female voice yell, “Hey, gimme a hand here.”

  At the door, they found Karen Wilson towing a cart full of flight rations. Before unloading the rations, she introduced herself to Bill and Meri. She had a Survey ribbon and a Purple Heart. The Survey ribbon had several of the small metal pine cones on it.

  Once the rations were aboard, Karen gathered the crew around the small table next to the galley and filled them in on the assignment. “Parallel’s just opened a new planet, and so far, there’s no sign of human activity. No visual signs, radio, television, nothing. So, keeping with protocol, they’re launching a bunch of Monarchs. We’ll be out a week, off a week, then out a week, until we’ve covered the planet. Our particular mission is to survey the northern hemisphere from the Tropic of Cancer to the Arctic Circle. We’ll be flying at around 9,000 meters for the most part, but that’ll vary between night and day.” She was referring to the solar-driven electric engines that powered the plane in flight at altitude,
and the impact that the lack of solar energy at night would have.

  “Right now, the first flight is already running a survey around the Initial Point. When they’re done, we go in. They’ll have covered a radius of 150 klicks around the initial point, but since we’ve got that sector, we’ll start our survey from the IP.” The Initial Point was where the Corps entered the parallel Earth and began their surveys. Most IPs were at the same location as Bowman Field.

  “Our job,” she said, referring to Bill and herself, “is to scan everything using visible light, near IR, and far IR. We’ll be running analyses looking for any signs of civilization, such as straight lines, heat sources, you know, the usual. We’ll be taking turns, so when you’re off, sleep. At the altitude we’ll be operating at we should be able to cover about 3,200 square kilometers per hour. While that sounds like a lot, remember, the Earth has over 500 million square kilometers!” she finished with a grin.

  To the two pilots, she said, “Your job is to keep the bird in the air. We’ll also be relieving you guys for short spells to try and give you a full eight hours off at least once a day, but it’s pretty much gonna be watch on, watch off, for a week. I’ll try to expand the night off watches to be six hours, but no guarantees. When you’re off, sleep!

  “Any questions?”

  Nobody had any, Ben because he had already been there, Meri because she had already heard it all from her dad, and Bill because he didn’t really know what to expect or ask.

  “Great. So, all your gear is stowed?” Karen asked them, looking mainly at Bill and Meri. They nodded.

  “That’s it for orientation. Report here Sunday night. We’ll remain in the bird overnight and head out Monday morning.”

  She shook each of their hands, saying, “Great to have you aboard. Meri, you and Ben go over the bird and make sure we’re good to go. Bill, let’s you and I go through the equipment we’ll be using.”

  Karen showed Bill where the cameras were located, made sure he could get his workstation up and running; and then showed him how to transfer data to the protected server and the two backup field tablets stored with it.

  “Those are there just in case we go down. We always try to bring back as much data as possible, so in the event anything happens, we’ll transfer the data. You and I’ll be responsible for doing that and we’ll be the ones toting the tablets.”

  She also gently grilled Bill about the Caribou incident, making sure he was sound enough to fly with the team.

  “It’s not often they assign two rookies to an initial survey” she said. Bill could tell she was wondering why, but couldn’t offer an explanation.

  Several hours later, the crew took a break and headed to the field’s cafe where they joined other Explorers who were assigned to Planet 42’s initial survey. Bill was surprised to find out how many were still probationary Explorers: practically a third of them were.

  After lunch Karen dismissed the crew, saying that, in her opinion, the craft was ready to go. “We might as well have a last hurrah, or two,” she said, and offered to treat for a beer at the Cave Bear Cave. “I can’t stay too long, the little guy is waiting for me,” referring to her son, who was pictured in the photograph on her desk. Bill didn’t ask why a man wasn’t in the same picture. He figured she would tell them if she wanted to.

  The four, along with another Monarch crew, headed for the Cave, where they restricted themselves to a couple of pitchers of beer between them all.

  Karen left before the others, admonishing them to report to the Monarch no later than eighteen hundred hours Sunday. “We’ll do supper at the field. Crossing is at zero seven hundred. They want us through early and fast so they can use the gate to resupply a secondary survey.”

  After finishing the beers, Bill and Meri gave their farewells and headed back to their apartment for what would be their last privacy for some time.

  24

  By early Sunday evening, the Monarch crew was gathered in the plane and settled down. Wilson wanted them up at five o’clock in the morning to pre-flight the bird and make sure they were ready to cross over by seven.

  Seconds before the alarm went off, Bill was awake, staring at the bottom of the bunk above him, where Meri was sleeping. When the alarm did go off it caused a general stirring in the cabin.

  Bill hopped out of his bunk and started the coffee pot which had been set up the night before. By the time everyone was up and dressed the coffee was ready, and each had a cup before beginning the crossover preparations.

  Ben and Meri began their pre-flight inspection while Karen and Bill, who had far less to do, started up their equipment and made sure everything was good to go. Then the crew went to the airfield’s cafeteria to get the last meal they would have for the next week that wouldn’t be coming out of a retort package, the flexible metal bagged modern equivalent of canned food.

  By six thirty, the four were back in the Monarch wearing all the required survival equipment, seated in their respective seats, and wearing earphones, listening to ground control organize the gate opening and aerial convoy departure. Soon the Monarchs were told to start their engines. They were already in line, so they didn’t need to do anything else until given the go-ahead to cross over. Bill looked out the window next to his workstation and saw a long line of trucks waiting for the gate opening.

  Precisely at seven, the gate came to life, and seconds later the order was given for the Monarchs to move through it. Ben gave the bird more throttle and it began moving forward, following the lead bird. In less than a minute they had crossed from the smooth surface of the tarmac onto the gravel apron of a new crushed gravel airfield. Through the windshield, Bill could see a small control tower near the middle of the field with a small operations building behind it.

  Over the earphones, Bill could hear the new control tower giving the four Monarchs directions to park on the apron next to the control tower and shut down their engines. All Explorers were to report to the operations building immediately thereafter. Ben taxied the bird and maneuvered it so it was parked on the apron and off the runway. Shutting the engines down, Ben announced their arrival on Planet 42.

  Everyone unbuckled, gathered their rifles, and clambered from the plane, joining others making their way to the small building. On the opposite side of the apron was a parked Monarch: the first bird on the planet, the one that had run the initial survey around the initial point.

  When they stepped out of the plane everyone became hyper-vigilant. Unlike Hayek or Zion, there was practically no human presence here prior to their arrival to scare off predators, other than the engineers who had built the field and the small operations crew. Everyone’s heads were on swivels as they headed for the relative safety of the building.

  Soon, all sixteen Explorers were inside being greeted by the Survey Commander, another older Explorer. After welcoming everyone, she gave them a simple situation report on their findings so far: nothing. She then confirmed the flight operations for each crew and made sure they had the correct frequencies for the long-range radios, reminding them not to use them other than for emergencies.

  “So far, it looks like this is a non-impact planet. We’ve seen some mastodons wander by, and a couple of giant sloths, but haven’t seen any large predators yet. Keep your eyes out when you’re on the ground,” she admonished them.

  Once she confirmed routes, frequencies, and verified that all planes were prepared to go, the Survey Commander gave the order to begin taking off in tail number order. Bill’s plane would be the second in the air. She shook the hand of each Explorer, giving the Corps’ standard farewell of “Stay safe out there.”

  Taking care when returning to the crafts, the crews boarded, engines were started, and survey equipment activated. Within minutes, each pilot informed the tower they were ready to begin and requested permission to take off. The control tower gave 42/1 permission and then announced each plane could take off in two-minute intervals.

  Two minutes later Monarch 42/2 was taxiing to the e
nd of the runway. After reaching the end, Ben turned into the wind and pushed the throttles to the max. The plane accelerated rapidly and was soon airborne. Rather than make a beeline to where they would begin their survey, Ben took the plane up in circles around the airfield, gaining altitude.

  As the plane was climbing Ben announced over the intercom, “Welcome aboard Monarch 42/2, destination somewhere east of here. The captain, that’s me, has turned off the seatbelt light, but please don’t get up and make this little bird wobble with your funky gyrations. The smoking lamp is unlit, so please don’t light up stogies, blunts, or other noxious weeds. I expect we’ll arrive at our cruising altitude in twenty minutes, so please sit back and enjoy the brief break—it’s the last you’ll see for a week!” He got the requisite chuckles from the crew.

  Once the Monarch arrived at cruising altitude, Ben announced that he was transitioning from avgas to electric-powered flight. Looking out the window, Bill could see one propeller start up, and when it was running, the other stopped and feathered, reducing the drag on the plane. Karen and Bill got to work prepping the remote sensing equipment. Mission planning had the plane running north-south runs from the Arctic Circle to the Tropic of Cancer, so Ben started the plane north from the IP for the first leg.

  Bill started the first imagery capture using all three bands of the spectrum, while Karen watched over his shoulder. When she was sure he had a handle on it, she told Meri to take a break. “We’re gonna be up here a while, so no sense burning energy you don’t need to.”

  To Bill, she said, “Run the first analysis when we turn at the Circle. It’ll take us about nine hours until turnaround, so, in the meantime, just watch the screens to see if anything jumps out.”

  Karen and Meri made their way back to the crew quarters to sit, read, and relax. In the meantime, Bill took a photograph from his shirt pocket and taped it to his workstation. It was the picture of Meri that he had on Z21. He then paid attention to the three screens, looking for anything out of the ordinary. As with his first survey, Bill was amazed to discover just how boring it could be. For the most part, all he was doing was staring at the screens while Ben supposedly flew the plane. Bill suspected he had turned on the autopilot and was just checking his position periodically.