“Increase to eight thousand Newtons,” he said.
Again, nothing happened.
“Computer...”
“Sir,” the machine interrupted. “I would not recommend increasing force any further. There would be a significant chance of damaging the door’s sliding mechanism.”
“Understood.” Jack withdrew the bar and said, “Try retracting the door now. Maybe we got lucky and loosened it a bit.”
There was a brief pause before he heard the answer he was expecting. “The door is still unable to retract.”
“Damn,” Jack whispered. He returned the crow bar to the tool case and withdrew a pair of metal cutters that reminded him of large gardening sheers. “Let’s see if we can pull away some of the sheet metal around this frame...” He tried forcing the edge of the blade into the crack, but even at its thinnest point the blade was too thick. Rotating it for a better angle, he made another attempt but quickly realized it was futile. The sheers couldn’t get enough of a grip to cut into the metal sheathing.
“Captain,” the computer said.
“What is it?”
“You have ten minutes of safe exposure time remaining. You will need to begin returning to the bay within three minutes.”
Jack didn’t answer as he stared at the thin crack. What should have been a quick fix was becoming a real problem.
“Captain, did you hear my...”
“I know, I know.” Though the damage didn’t directly threaten their lives, or the ship’ function, it was essential that they be able to launch navigation and exploratory probes during their approach to Epsilon Eri system. Without these remote eyes, they would be literally flying blind into an unknown system. “Is there an airlock mechanism between the probe loading room below and these doors?”
“No, but the launch tube has its own set of interior doors, and there is an emergency, air-tight bulkhead in case the doors are breeched.”
“Are they closed?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Keep both sets closed and retract the lower door here.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Just retract the lower door. I need access to the tube so that I can completely remove the upper door. All we need is a clear opening so we can launch the probes tomorrow.”
As the door pulled back, Jack retrieved a powered socket wrench. “If I remember right, there are four retaining bolts holding the door onto the retracting mechanism.”
“Correct,” the computer answered.
He pulled close enough to the door, so that the glass of the pod’s window was nearly touching the frame, and reached in as far as he could with both arms. “Activate left arm camera – display center.”
A computer-generated image of the interior of the launch tube appeared in front of him. A small lamp on his mechanical arm illuminated the front section of the darkened tube. Easily visible were the four bolts he needed to remove. Twisting his arm, he maneuvered the artificial limb into position and began removing the bolts.
“Sir, your time is approaching critical,” the computer warned.
“I know,” was all Jack said in response. The last bolt came off quickly and he pulled hard on the door, but it didn’t budge. He reached in further with his left arm, and lost most of his view as the arm-mounted camera pushed up against the tube wall. There was no choice though, and he began grasping blindly, trying to get a hold of the door. The arms’ pressure sensors served as his sense of touch, and on the fourth try, confirmed that he had a good grip. He pulled back hard. The readings showed the door shifted slightly. Pulling again steadily, he called out, “Computer, increase force to maximum.”
“Sir that may damage the retractor mechanism...”
“I don’t give a damn at this point, just do what I said!”
The pod lurched to his left as the door finally broke free. Jack used one of the mechanical arms to stabilize himself, before awkwardly sliding the door out. Peering down the long, dark launch tube, he confirmed that it was indeed clear and let out a barely audible “Yes.” The problem now was what to do with the door. At nearly two meters across and over fifty kilos, he could hardly toss it aside. It would likely puncture a fuel tank if he dropped it from this height. There was only one real option: he’d just have to carry it back inside. Without any further hesitation, he commanded the pod to maneuver to ascent position and return to the bay.
Though the machine climbed quickly, it didn’t compare to the speed of his descent. It took nearly a minute to reach shuttle bay level. By the time the pod had scurried along its track and was back in the bay, his clock was down to a bare twenty-five seconds. As the doors closed behind him, the computer lightly admonished him for cutting things so close.
“But we made it back in time didn’t we,” he shot back with a smile.
The machine knew better than to answer.
Chapter 2 – May 11, 2124
Kurt stood alone in the primary conference room, studying a large map of the Epsilon Eri system. A brightly colored, holographic schematic of its twelve planets and their orbits floated gently over the simulated pine table. Large, banded Jovian globes were strung along sweeping outer ellipses that spanned the entire table, while four small rocky-brown worlds and a lone blue and white globe circled the bright central star on a set of tightly bunched inner orbits. His eye jumped from planet to planet, examining the system that he would be seeing with his own eyes in only a few more weeks. He was of course familiar with its population of planets, moons, asteroids and other bodies. His gaze was more of a futile attempt to glean some extra shred of information from a map he’d seen hundreds of times before. Compiled from the rudimentary information first collected by the powerful telescope arrays back on the Moon, and updated with details from the advance probes launched from the Magellan nearly three years earlier, the map accurately laid out the orbits and positions of Epsilon Eri’s planets. However, the bottom line was, they really didn’t know much more now than they did before they left Earth. The advance probes, released while the Magellan was traveling at over half the speed of light, carried that high velocity with them. It was impossible to fit them with engines powerful enough to slow down, and as a result, they had traversed the entire star system in under two days. To say this severely limited their data-gathering ability was an understatement. In essence the probes did little more than confirm what they already knew. The truth was they were flying blind into an alien system.
Today’s launch of a new set of probes would give them their first detailed charts. Starting out at a tenth of the speed of their predecessors meant that their engines would be capable of doing some meaningful deceleration. These would be more than ephemeral fly-bys. Though not strong enough to stop and go into orbit around any of the bodies near Epsilon Eri, the probes’ encounters would last long enough to provide detailed maps of several of the planets, as well as identify any debris down to one kilometer across that may lie in their path. The mere thought of debris drew Kurt’s attention back to Epsilon Eri’s Kuiper belt. Traveling across this expanse was arguably the most dangerous part of the trip. Lying on the edge of the star system, and spanning nearly ten-billion kilometers, this belt was thick with dust and contained hundreds of thousands of comets and planetoids. The couple dozen that rivaled the size of Pluto were not of great concern. They could easily be seen in advance, and the Magellan’s course adjusted to avoid them. It was the thousands of smaller fragments that posed the real danger. Made up of frozen gasses and rock left over from the birth of the star system, their surface temperatures were near absolute zero. More importantly, their billion-year deep freeze meant that there would be no infra-red signatures to look for. Their soot-black surfaces would likewise render optical surveys equally futile. With the Magellan still moving at thirty-thousand kilometers per second, a collision with even a fragment could be devastating. The new probes would at least map out the zones with the greatest concentration of debris, allowing them to plot the least risky passage through the be
lt. Radar scans and vigilant watches by the crew though would still be necessary to make it safely.
Kurt looked up as Jack walked in with George Palmer, the first officer. Palmer, a stocky, muscular man, stood a couple of centimeters shorter than Jack’s two-meter frame. His straight posture and mostly gray crew cut hair spoke of his military background; his face, rigid as always, concealed any hint of his thoughts. Jack gave Kurt a quick hello, to which Palmer added a barely detectable nod of acknowledgement. Kurt responded with a smile and said, “Good morning. So are we ready to do some real work for a change?”
Before Jack could answer, Don Martinez followed them in saying, “I don’t know about you, but I’ve been doing real work for a long time now.” The slight edge in his voice didn’t surprise Kurt at all. He was quite sure the chief science officer completely lacked a sense of humor, not to mention most interpersonal skills. Don was a short, high-strung man who always seemed on edge. His temperament had taken its toll on him though, giving him appearance of a man at least a decade beyond his fifty years. Kurt, however, didn’t hold his attitude against him. He knew well that Don was under immense pressure today; even if most of it self-imposed. Don was counting on the probes to settle once and for all, an argument that had been smoldering for decades but burst into the open over the past two years – whether there was intelligent life on Epsilon Eri-D.
There had never been any direct proof of the planet hosting an active civilization; only some very suggestive circumstantial evidence. Though the official motivation for the mission was to travel to the only life-bearing world close enough to visit, it never would have been funded without the serious hope of at least finding some evidence of an intelligent race. Two open questions in particular begged to be answered. First was the fact that at just under a billion years old, many believed the star system was too young to host the fully evolved biosphere that had been detected. The planet’s atmosphere showed evidence of wide-spread complex life and photosynthesis; something that took the Earth over three billion years to achieve. Wishful thinking led some to even propose that an advanced race had terraformed the planet. That speculation would have remained on the fringes had it not been for the discovery of several unusual lines in its atmospheric spectra. The signals were too weak to be conclusive, but they suggested heavy, complex molecules; possibly even perfluorocarbons. These synthetic compounds certainly had no business being on an uninhabited planet. Adding that to the fact that decades earlier, serious papers had been written on using these very gases as a means to warm and terraform Mars was proof enough for Don. The on-going debate, however, stemmed from attempts to reconcile the atmospheric evidence with the lack of radio noise from Epsilon Eri-D. Though easily written off with the assumption that whatever race lived there simply didn’t use radio waves for communication, it still ate at every member of the crew. The problem was that even at this distance, they still hadn’t detected any communication at all from the planet; not even the weaker, indirect signals that would be the by-products of technology. The planet simply remained silent.
A few had proposed that the inhabitants were just too primitive to use radio. Don however had argued vehemently against this. And, Kurt had to agree; if those spectral lines were from heavy, synthetic compounds, then it required a certain level of technology. Others suggested that the aliens might not use radio based communications, a fact bolstered by the Magellan’s use of frequency-modulated lasers to communicate with Earth. But this didn’t explain the planet’s total silence; there should be at least some sort of background electromagnetic emissions. Occasionally someone even revived the unpopular idea the alien civilization could be dead – either by their own hand or by some other catastrophe. Inevitably that proposal was quickly quashed and faded away. Even without the probes, they would know for sure in two months when they finally arrived at the planet. Kurt was quite sure, however, that the simple fact of not knowing was too much for Don; and two more months of uncertainty would be nothing short of sheer hell for the man.
“Verify probe statuses,” Palmer called out.
Kurt paid him no attention until Palmer spoke again, too loudly to be ignored. “Lieutenant Commander Hoffman...”
“Yes...Yes, one minute,” Kurt answered. He didn’t care much for Palmer’s use of his rank, but it was his way. A decade together on the ship, and the man still had trouble calling people by their first name. He shook the thought from his head and quickly brought up a status display on his hand-held terminal. “Nav-probes one and two are go; comm-relay probes one and two are go; and, planetary probes one and two are ready. We are set for launch.”
“Good,” Palmer answered. “Captain, we are ready.”
“Alright, proceed with launch,” Jack said.
Kurt looked around the table once before entering a command into the terminal. “Nav-probes one and two are in tube-one and ready...outer doors open...launch confirmed.” A view from an exterior camera was displayed on the conference room wall. The probes with their propulsion stages resembled old, dome-capped, cylindrical ICBMs being launched from their silos. The image, though, wasn’t as spectacular as a titan launch might have been. In place of flame was a short burst of compressed nitrogen that pushed the two probes with their unlit engines clear of the ship. Since the Magellan was constantly decelerating under the force of its antimatter drive, the un-powered probes rapidly fell away toward Epsilon Eri. Their engines would be ignited in just over a week, allowing them to get far enough ahead of Magellan to provide the necessary advance view. The data they radioed back would be critical for navigating the Magellan’s path through the outer parts of the star system.
Palmer stared at his display and said, “Nav-probe trajectories are on target. No course corrections are necessary.”
“Good,” Jack answered.
Taking that as his queue, Kurt announced, “Planetary reconnaissance probes one and two are in the tube and ready for launch.”
“Proceed,” Jack called out.
Kurt touched the launch button again and the view-screen showed what could easily have been a replay of the nav-probe launch.
“Planetary probes are confirmed launched.” The tone in his voice reflected the obvious redundancy of the statement.
“Trajectories look good,” Palmer called out. “No course corrections are necessary.”
“Comm-relay probes one and two are in place and ready for launch,” Kurt said. These probes would move out about ten-thousand kilometers to either side of Magellan, well clear of exhaust from the antimatter drive, enabling them to relay communications coming in from the other probes.
“OK, proceed with launch,” Jack said.
Kurt issued the command and after watching the video feed said, “Launch confirmed.” Shortly after they were away, each extended a long, spindly boom, and gracefully unfurled a large, mesh, dish antenna. A moment later they rotated according to pre-programmed commands, aiming themselves toward the other, now distant probes. Once stabilized, their engines ignited, allowing them to move out from the Magellan and keep pace with her. They only had enough fuel to match the Magellan’s deceleration for about four weeks – just long enough to relay data from the fly-bys.
Kurt continued staring at the screen, only looking away when Jack asked Don to run a comm. test.
Don answered without looking up from his terminal, “Already on it.” It took about a minute before Don spoke again. “Links with both comm-relay probes look good.” He then worked at his keyboard some more before saying, “Nav probe one checks. And...nav probe two is good too. Transmission and reception are strong and clear.
“Planetary probe one is sending and receiving fine...” Don’s voice trailed off. The pause that followed was just long enough for Kurt to begin growing impatient. Jack however broke the silence, “Don, what’s the matter?”
Don ignored the question and typed furiously at his terminal. Jack’s patience lasted barely a minute longer. “Don, answer me. What’s going on?”
�
�Planetary probe two is unresponsive,” was Don’s barely audible reply.
“Are we getting its automatic beacon?” Kurt offered.
“No, nothing.”
“Palmer,” Jack said calmly. “Do we still have a reading on its trajectory?”
“Yes sir. It’s still falling toward Epsilon Eri at its initial velocity.”
The room stayed quiet in deference to Jack. Kurt watched his friend look past the rest of them. It was certainly not the gaze of someone who was distracted.
“Don, anything yet?” Jack asked without looking at the man.
“Not a damn thing.”
Then, turning to Palmer he said, “Prepare to ignite its engines. Let’s see if we can slow it down and catch it as we go by.” Without waiting for a response, Jack continued, “Computer.”
“Yes captain,” the machine responded politely.
“Prepare a line with a magnetic grapple. Use the emergency retrieval gear for the shuttles. I want you to try and catch probe two as we pass it.”
“I will need a couple of minutes to prepare.”
“Fine, it’ll take at least that long before we catch up to it anyway.
“Palmer,” Jack said.
“Yes sir?”
“Ignite the engines.”
“Ignition command sent,” was the quick reply.
“Don, is there any confirmation signal?”
“No, still nothing.”
“Palmer, what about its trajectory. Any change?”
“No sir.”
“Resend the ignition command. Computer, can we can get a visual?”
“No sir, there is no line of sight. The probe is already behind the drive shield.,” the machine answered.
“Damn,” Jack said softly, his voice finally showing a hint of frustration.
Kurt watched Jack run his hands through his short, salt-and-pepper hair. It was times like this where he thought he saw more gray than black in it; though it seemed to be more a sign of weathering than age. At fifty-six years, Jack was the senior member of the crew, but his athletic frame precluded any thought of him as a man past his prime. The intensity in his eyes said more about him than any wrinkle or gray hair. There was a strength behind his gaze that came from a man who was firmly in control, and who hated defeat of any kind. Kurt feared that though he was five years Jack’s junior, he was the more aged of the two.
Prelude to Extinction Page 2
