The Io Encounter: Hard Science Fiction (Ice Moon Book 3)

by Brandon Q Morris

  Currently, these statements cannot be verified by other sources. Neither NASA nor the military nor intelligence services have replied to our requests for comments based on the available source material. If the information is confirmed to be accurate, this could mean the loss of the entire mission, which has cost more than 100 billion U.S. dollars. It would also confirm that alien intelligences are not necessarily more peaceful than terrestrial ones.

  April 15, 2047, West Virginia

  Robert Millikan saw the special report appear on his cell phone and felt a looming sense of panic. A disaster in space and my own son is playing an unknown role in it, he thought, shaking his head. Immediately, he realized that the first reporters were probably already on the way to find him, and it was almost a miracle they had not reached him by phone just yet.

  Millikan was about to prepare for a group of visitors, but instead he grabbed a bag of Georgina’s bagels, put on a jacket, since rain was expected, and walked to the Jansky Lab as fast as he could. He decided to hide in the control room. Once he locked the latch on the inside, the thick door would prevent him from hearing the knocking of the reporters on the outside. He calmed down a bit when he looked around inside the room and determined he could hold out for a while. There was a water faucet, and a while ago he had seen a bag of potato chips in one of the lockers.

  The window, I have to secure the window! For a moment Robert thought he saw journalists running toward the building, but he must have been mistaken. Just to be on the safe side, though, he lowered the blinds. Since his mobile phone would not work in here, he could only be reached by email. All these reporters with their various electronic devices will mess up our measurements, he thought, and then realized how silly the idea was.

  He sat down in the office chair in front of the control computer, the very same place where he had recorded the video for Martin. The tripod he had used for the camera was still in place. He hoped his son—and his son only—managed to decipher its hidden message. And he hoped it would be useful for him.

  Robert had expected something would happen with the space mission—but a hijacking? He was not absolutely sure what to think about this particular story, which so far had not been officially confirmed by authorities, but at the same time seemed insightful and logical. The story did not appear to be a random leak to him, but a version of the truth that authorities—probably from the Department of Defense—were trying to disseminate. How much of it was true, and how much false? The public would only find out the answer once contact with ILSE was reestablished, but would that ever happen? The high-gain antennas of the spaceship were the only way the astronauts on board could communicate across the enormous distances. If the ship was no longer controlled by the crew, that method would be blocked. Then he could only hope for the best for his son, and for his son’s colleagues.

  Robert Millikan folded his hands—not in prayer, but to stop their trembling.

  Half an hour later he flinched. Somebody was knocking on the window, behind the lowered blinds. He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. Had he actually nodded off? He decided to ignore the knocking. The reason he was here was to be alone.

  Robert booted up the computer and saw his email inbox was overflowing, as expected. Media from all across the world wanted to interview him, get his opinion, or hear some funny, exciting, or disgusting stories about his son. Instead, Robert deleted one email after another. He almost hit the delete button when he reached a message from Devendra Singh Arora. The CapCom had not used his official NASA address, but instead used a provider of disposable addresses. To gain Robert’s trust he mentioned a few details about their previous correspondence. Theoretically, it could still be a journalist or secret agent who had hacked into their emails, but Robert decided to trust this sender.

  Dear Robert,

  Apparently there is much more behind these strange events than we initially feared. If seeing my message gave you hope of finding out more about your son’s fate than what is contained in the official statements, I am sorry to have to disappoint you. Since command of the ship was taken over, we have lost all contact with the crew and have received no further news.

  However, the story dug up by the Washington Post seems very odd to us. Our own analyses did not reveal any trace of an alien intelligence on board ILSE. On the other hand, we did notice several forged authorizations sent from Earth to the ship. Maybe someone who has nothing to do with these events is somehow supposed to be framed. After you asked me for help, I sent our own observations to your son almost a month ago. I do not know whether this was helpful for him—it appears that wasn’t the case.

  If I can help you in any manner, please contact me via this address.

  Best wishes,

  Devendra Singh Arora

  Robert Millikan pushed the keyboard aside, placed his arms on the old desk, and lowered his head onto them. There had been a hijacking, he was sure of it, but only the crew of ILSE, if anyone, currently knew who had hijacked whom, and why. But, the hijacking could be reversed. The astronauts had at least a few days left to survive, and Robert could help them. While he could not hear from them, he was able to communicate to them. The transmission power of the huge radio dishes under his control could reach a small lander on the surface of a volcanic moon—unless the lander was locked inside a Faraday cage keeping out all radiation, potentially including such radio communications.

  April 15, 2047, Fort Meade

  Now it was public knowledge. Lining sat at the desk in her hotel room, drumming against the desktop with the pen provided by the management. Her colleague Shixin had hidden a part of the story from her until the very end. He apparently did not trust her—he might or might not have a reason to mistrust her, but he did so regardless. If he had trusted her, she would at least have a guilty conscience now. As it was, she could smile while she thwarted the plan these sticks-in-the-mud came up with. The story about a hijacking by an alien intelligence was clever, touching on the distrust most people have toward anything strange. And how alien must a creature be to consist of billions of individual cells, thinking and dreaming in an ice ocean since ancient times?

  It was easy to convince humans such an entity had its own goals, and the power to achieve them. Truth—what is truth after all? As long as the crew of ILSE was out there, without a chance of establishing contact, the Chinese and the Americans were in control of ‘truth.’ Even though only a few people knew this, everything depended on one person, Li Jiaying, whose parents were waiting in Guantanamo for their nice daughter to eliminate the alien intelligence. Then they must die—which was obvious despite Shixin’s false assurances—just like Jiaying and her friends must, because if ILSE returned to Earth, the carefully constructed story would crumble.

  Lining tried to remember the young girl who used to run next to her in the 100-meter races. At first she had no problem defeating this girl, who was a year younger, but in the end Jiaying had proved to be more strong-willed. She had tortured herself longer, giving up more of her leisure time, just to triumph in the end. Lining used to both hate and admire her, but she remembered always putting on a friendly demeanor toward her rival. For a long time she had even imagined being Jiaying’s friend.

  Today she knew better. Competition made friendship impossible if you were seriously striving toward the same goal. It was this insight that had enabled Lining to succeed in the army intelligence service. She would not hesitate to force Major Tang Shixin into retirement, and she almost suspected the old warhorse wanted it to turn out that way. Better to get unpleasant things over and done with? she wondered. Perhaps he realized the old, unflinching conservative line that he and his circle were following no longer stood a chance in the modern People’s Republic of China. Even if he did, he would not make her task easy.

  My task. Jiaying’s parents are my leverage, too, she reminded herself. If she got them to safety, as she had promised Robert Millikan, the whole fancy scheme would collapse. Without this bargaining chip over her head, Jiaying would a
bandon the mission she had been forced to undertake. She would find a way to regain control of the ship, return to Io, and pick up the rest of the crew. Lining recalled one of the last races she had won against Jiaying. Her rival, running on the inside lane, had suddenly stopped five meters before the goal line, because a young pigeon was walking toward the running track. The moment allowed Lining to make up the decisive meter. She had not even noticed the little ball of feathers getting itself into danger. Nevertheless, Lining complained to her coach afterward, saying she might have crashed if she had stepped on the bird with the cleats of her running shoes.

  Lining shook her head. She had abandoned this extreme form of ambition, since it was not healthy. But she would reach her goal of maneuvering her despised superior into forced retirement. She had to liberate Jiaying’s parents somehow, in such a way that their detention would look like Shixin’s fault. Lining did not know yet how she would help the old couple escape. Shixin had arranged with the Americans to keep them in Guantanamo, and therefore his superiors would blame him if it proved less than safe enough. On the other hand, she had met both of the Lis and could not imagine them trying to flee by themselves. She needed a different plan. Lining got up. Shixin would soon pick her up for a meeting at NSA Headquarters. It would still take a few days to complete her task.

  April 15, 2047, Io

  “Watson, environmental conditions.”

  No reaction. The AI did not answer Francesca’s request.

  “Hello, Watson, wake up!”

  Martin lifted his eyebrows. Watson would have to obey Francesca’s command now, or they were in big trouble.

  “Perhaps the microphones were damaged in the landing,” Martin suggested.

  “All the interior microphones at once? It’s impossible. Your brain must still be confused from the lack of oxygen during landing,” the pilot said.

  “Or maybe it’s the connection to ILSE?”

  Francesca tapped on her monitor.

  “The connection is available.”

  “But?”

  “Commands are being recorded and sent, but there is no answer.”

  Hayato got up, stood next to Francesca, and looked at her screen.

  “You’re right,” he said, prompting an angry look from the pilot.

  “Pilot to ILSE. Amy, please come in.”

  Francesca did what was to be expected. She stayed amazingly calm. However, the spaceship did not answer.

  “The connection,” Hayato said, tapping at Francesca’s monitor, “it’s becoming weaker. Not dramatically—but it’s noticeable. See here, Francesca?” He pointed at a particular spot.

  Martin got up to be able to see what Hayato was talking about. He looked at the intensity curves for the reception. It did not look like the effect of a radiation storm. The signal strength was continuously decreasing as if the sender was moving away with increasing speed.

  “What does the radar show?”

  Francesca switched to display the radar. The small dot representing ILSE had left its orbit and was moving in a parabolic course toward Jupiter.

  “Can you predict its trajectory if there are no course corrections, Francesca?”

  “Without corrections, ILSE will assume an elliptical orbit around Jupiter.”

  It made no sense. Why should ILSE choose a Jupiter orbit?

  “Then we will probably witness a course correction soon,” Martin said.

  “You really think she wants to return to Earth?” Hayato seemed to be suspicious of Jiaying. He was probably right. It would be an easy explanation for her recent weeks of odd behavior, but Martin still could not think of a valid reason for it. That bothered him.

  “I don’t know,” Martin said. “The more I see, the less I really know about Jiaying at all.”

  “We should be careful about blaming people,” Francesca said. “There are quite a few things wrong. Why isn’t Watson answering? What about the commander? Jiaying couldn’t move ILSE without her consent. And why doesn’t Marchenko answer? Wasn’t he supposed to be in control of Watson?”

  “You’re right,” Martin replied. “There is something you don’t know, yet. Marchenko and I found out about it together. Jiaying received some private messages and replied to them, then they were deleted using a faked commander’s authorization. The Watson AI seems to be behind it, and it was probably given much more wide-ranging authority than was suspected.”

  Francesca glared at Martin. “Why didn’t you tell us about this. And most of all, who is supposed to have given Watson this authority?”

  “That is exactly what we still didn’t know, so we were waiting to find out more. My father wanted to record any communication by Jiaying with Earth. You are right, we should have informed you.”

  “Well, arguing about it now is useless,” Hayato said. “We will have to wait and see. The course correction is surely going to happen within the next twelve hours. Then we can continue guessing what the hijacker—whoever or whatever it may be—wants to do with ILSE.”

  “Jiaying surely must be involved,” Martin explained, feeling a pang of conscience. “We received an encrypted message from my father. If Marchenko and I interpreted it correctly, somebody sent her parents to Guantanamo.”

  “So she is being coerced?” Francesca looked at him with a mixture of horror and pity.

  “That may well be the case. I just wonder what they need her for. Watson alone could steer ILSE perfectly well.”

  “Or Marchenko.”

  “What are you trying to say, Hayato?” Martin looked at the engineer, who showed no sign of emotion.

  “Why do you trust Marchenko so completely?” asked Hayato. “He always said he was in complete control of Watson. Is it possible the Enceladus creature is influencing him, without him even being aware of it?”

  “He explained it to me,” Martin replied. “He had primary access to all public interfaces, but he obviously couldn’t control hidden backdoor programs.”

  “That would be understandable, but it could also be an excuse to prevent him being suspected.”

  Martin wondered how to counter the argument, but he only could mention a feeling. He had a firm impression he was still dealing with the human being Dimitri Marchenko. After all, Marchenko had risked his own life for both himself—Martin—and Francesca. Could he use his feeling as proof? A few months ago he would have laughed about using a gut feeling as his counterargument.

  “I... recognized Marchenko,” he said softly, knowing full well how weak his argument was. To his surprise, Hayato and Francesca nodded almost simultaneously.

  “I understand,” Francesca replied, and it sounded as if she really did, even though Martin could not say he fully understood it.

  He nodded. “But that doesn’t help us now.”

  The pilot shook her head. “No, not immediately, but it will help once we know what we are dealing with. An erratic AI with a will of its own is a different opponent compared to software that is essentially remote-controlled from Earth.”

  “Or a woman who will do anything to save her parents,” Hayato added.

  Martin thought of Jiaying. Suddenly he remembered the moment, during the next-to-last EVA, when he had barely kept her from jumping into space.

  “Back then she must already have known it was about her parents,” he said quietly.

  As the other two looked at him, he told them of Jiaying’s near suicide. Then he slapped his hand against his forehead. “We were so stupid,” he said. “Jiaying installed an oxygen generator in the lander module! It was obvious she knew she would maroon us on Io, but she wanted to improve our chances of survival.”

  “And that was why she was so much in favor of implementing radiation protection,” Francesca added.

  “And because of it, I had hoped she’d gradually find her way back to us,” Martin said with a sigh.

  “We still should not forget that she is currently in a much better situation, at least as far as survival is concerned.”

  Hayato was right
. The three of them were stranded on a volcanic moon, right within Jupiter’s radiation belt. They had enough energy, and could generate oxygen and water, but the food supply did not look so good. Martin did not want to estimate when help from Earth could arrive, but his mind went there anyway. Maybe in twenty years? They would never manage to survive here for such a long time. Martin sweated. He wanted to take a shower, but the lander module did not have one. Maybe they could improvise one in the CELSS? He glanced at Hayato. The Japanese engineer was sitting in his seat again, with the seatback almost fully reclined. He appeared tired. Francesca was playing with the pendant on her necklace. She also appeared to need some sleep.

  Then Hayato sat up again. “I have one request,” he said. Francesca cast a curious glance at him. “I want us to either open the airlock right away or swear we believe in being saved, no matter how long it might take. Anything else would make no sense.”

  Francesca nodded and raised two fingers. “I swear,” she said.

  “Agreed,” Martin said. “But let’s take a break for a couple of hours. Afterward, we will try to come up with a plan.” Martin could barely fathom what sort of situation they were in. It did not seem like a good idea to dwell too much on it.