Lin takes a step and stumbles.
Hitoshi snags her arm. “I got you. I know. It’s really something.”
“Dude…” is all Lin can muster, still looking up as Hitoshi escorts her down the ramp. The groups split up, with Isaac leading their group. “You’re so calm about all this,” Lin says.
Hitoshi smiles. “Uh, yeah…confession. On Astris, I kind of didn’t want to leave the ship. All my questions in EV prep were about space monsters.”
The terrain slopes downwards, and it’s a bit like hiking. Ahead, rock slabs stick out like natural steps. Isaac heads towards the steps, swaying his silver case. Lin keeps pace with Hitoshi, navigating the rock steps and sidestepping down the loose and slanting slope, the whole time watching Isaac happily bobbing ahead, looking like a kid jogging to a candy store. Lin’s helmet mic picks up a bit of wind and a slow, rhythmic whooshing. Ocean waves, she realizes. As the sound grows louder, the slope levels out, and they round a corner to emerge on the beach.
Neso’s beach is surprisingly white, the type of white sand beach she’d only seen on Earth’s exotic destination postcards. Where ocean water flows over its shallows, it has the pale azure hues of a tropical beach.
Isaac claps his hands and says, “Yes!”
Lin steps into the sand and admires her bootprint before wading over to him. “Isaac, you, uh, find something?”
“Evidence,” Isaac says. “For my theory.” He kneels, scoops up some sand with his glove, and sprinkles it out like an hourglass into his other hand.
Lin squints at the falling sand. It’s powdery, almost white, and sparkles like snow in sunlight. “C’mon, Isaac. Spill the beans, man.”
Isaac stands and dusts his hands, picking up his silver case. “Let’s go over to the water, first.” He enthusiastically trots towards the shore.
When Lin looks at Hitoshi, Hitoshi just shrugs, and they both follow.
Isaac arrives at the spot where the water laps up over the sand and opens his silver case, producing two flasks. He steps forward a few paces and wades ankle-deep into the ocean.
Hitoshi tenses. “Careful…”
As Isaac uncorks his flasks, Hitoshi flicks the safety off his pulse pistol. The weapon dings a warning.
Isaac is halfway through bending down when he stops and looks back. “Uh, Hitoshi, you see something?”
“No,” Hitoshi says. “Just this is the part where you bend over to get something out of the ocean, and the giant tooth-filled mouth snaps up to gobble you down. Don’t mind me. Do your science thingy. I’m just going to shoot the crap out of it.” He sets his hand on his pistol’s grip.
“Oh, but scans showed no markers for life,” Isaac replies.
Hitoshi nods. “Uh-huh.”
Isaac hesitates. “Right. I’m just going to fetch my sample.” He bends down and scoops up some water and submerged sand. Once he’s clear of the ocean, Hitoshi eases. Isaac samples some dry sand with another flask and carries it over to them. He sets the case down and inserts the first flask into its analyzer. Its screen illuminates as he enters the sample information. “So, I chose this spot based on spectrography from the orbital photos. First hints were there.”
Lin smiles. She has the feeling that Isaac is having his Sherlock moment. “Okay, I’ll play along. First hints of what?”
Isaac squints. “First hints where all the oxygen came from.”
Hitoshi glances over at the ocean. “You think there are cyanobacteria in the ocean, like on Astris?”
Isaac shakes his head. “No, nothing in the water. In fact, cyanobacteria would be problematic because they make ferric ions that act as an oxygen sink, so all the oxygen made from my theory would be locked up in the ocean if there were cyanobacteria.”
“I’m not following,” Hitoshi says.
“So, on Earth, when you look up at the Moon, it looks white, but there are parts that are more blue-white and parts more red-white. Depends on what minerals are on those parts. So, when we took Neso orbit pics, the beach sands looked more blue-white, like the Moon.”
Isaac’s analyzer completes its cycle, and he grins ear-to-ear. “Oh, look at you!” he says to the sample. He points at the readout. “All of Earth only has a few hundred square kilometers of this mineral, yet here the beaches are lined with it. Probably everywhere.” He shakes the flask. “This is rutile sand.” When Lin and Hitoshi give him puzzled looks, he adds, “Titanium dioxide. Titania.” He stands. “Remember Oceania, the water planet in Centauri that had a small amount of oxygen in the atmosphere?”
“Right,” Hitoshi says. “UV split the water vapor into hydrogen and oxygen.”
“Bingo,” Isaac says. “But Alpha Centauri was a bright yellow star like the Sun. Lots of UV.” He motions up to the orange sphere of Luhman 16A. “Little UV from Luhman, but that’s okay because titania is a photodissociation catalyst that works with near-ultraviolet. So normally not enough solar energy to split water, but sprinkle in some titania, and magic happens. Oxygen from water and sunlight.” He points at the beach. “Titania. Water. Sun that never sets. Abiotic oxygen. No life needed.”
Lin nods slowly, getting it. “If that’s right, and there’s no preexisting life here but air we could breathe, people could live here, right?”
“Luhman is an L-type dwarf. No fusion, just heat from formation. Slowly cooling. It will gradually get too cold to live here.”
“How gradually?”
“Couple hundred million years.”
Lin blinks. “So, people could live here for a couple hundred million years?”
“Yeah. Guess so.”
She holds out both of her hands. “Guys, it’s our mission! We found our first world!”
18
Dark Side
Julian drifts out of the pantry with both of his hands wrapped around a half-dozen drink bulbs. A murmur of approval sounds from the crew.
“Oh, hey, now! The good stuff.” Hitoshi says.
Julian fumbles with the shifting drink bulbs, some trying to drift away in the zero-gee. Finally, he releases his grip entirely and just lets them float in a shifting mass. He snatches one and holds it up. “2068 Cristal. I admit, it pained me to transfer it into these bulbs, but I could not predict how we would drink it, and this was the only way to be safe. The first goes to Isaac, who solved the mystery of Ianthe.” He tosses the bulb, and it sails in a straight line, slowly rotating. “The second to Ava, our lady life detective.”
“Oh, thank you,” Ava says, snatching the bulb from the air.
After Julian dispenses the remainder, James raises his bulb. “Here’s to the best damn crew in the universe.”
“Hear, hear,” Julian says.
Hitoshi clicks his wine bulb against Lin’s. “Clink!”
“So, Julian,” James says. “I’m curious if you think we can walk on Ianthe without suits.”
Julian drifts over to the table, pulling himself down into a seat next to Ananke’s hologram. “I suppose that’s more of a principle question than medical. Medically, there is no risk from the air, radiation is even less than Earth’s, and there are no microbes to breathe. But the principle is whether we intend other humans to set foot there.”
Ava nods. “Ah, this is a fundamental xenobiology question. The first rule of alien life is that you leave it untouched, and you make great efforts to avoid contaminating it with Earth microbes. But for a world like Ianthe, where there is no life, the real question is whether you want to keep it pristine. Every breath we exhale, even the surface of our skin — it’s all saturated in microscopic life. The microbes we shed won’t survive on Ianthe. After all, there is nothing for them to eat. They won’t even decay because there are no bacteria to cause decay.”
“Yes,” Julian says. “If we are the first of many, then evidence of humans does not matter. Even with our suits on, we have already left footprints in Ianthe’s soil.”
Ava squints. “James, are you thinking we’ll go back down?”
James leans forward. “
It’s something to consider. We’ve got everything from 16A cataloged, and tomorrow we move onto 16B. Before we head out to Tau Ceti, we could spend some time on Ianthe. Shore leave before the next leg of our trip.”
“Shore leave?” Hitoshi says. “Boss, what are you thinking, like, hit the casinos, buy some saltwater taffy?”
James chuckles. “Whatever we want. We have the whole world to ourselves. Camp out under the stars.” He blinks. “Or…star. Guess there’s just one big star.”
“Yeah, that’s an understatement.”
James continues. “We could also leave things for those who come after us.”
Ava smiles. “It’s interesting that Julian mentioned footprints in the soil. We have the augments in the Sunroom that are bioengineered for red light like Luhman’s. We could terraform a patch of dirt, convert it to soil, and plant the augments. We could have a soil bed waiting for the first colonists.”
“Ava’s Garden is growing,” Willow says.
“You know,” Lin adds. “We could slap some solar cells on one of the rovers. It’s got arms for sample collection. It’d make a cute little robo-gardener.”
Hitoshi smiles at her. “You’re totally going to program it to wave its arms and announce ‘Danger!’ when there are problems.”
Lin squirts a stream of wine into her mouth, gulping. “Uh, yeah. That’s a given.”
“I like it,” Ava says. “You know, even if the experiment fails, the colonists will be able to learn something from it for their crops.”
“Good stuff,” James says. “Let’s plan on it.” He pauses. “You know what else we’re going to need? Jackets. Think we can design and fab some?”
Lin’s eyes widen. “Oh, like matching space fleet jackets with patches and color-coordination and all that? Dude, I was born for this.”
“We’ve got plenty of synthetics in ship’s stores,” Hitoshi says.
“I’ll help you, Lin,” Ananke says.
Lin holds out her fist for a bump, and Ananke virtually taps it. Lin explodes her fist.
James nods. “Awesome.”
“So, Isaac,” Willow says. “Do you have names yet for our two new 16B worlds?”
“Oh,” Isaac says, “you mean for the two major planets there? Why, yes. Sao and Cisseis. Sao is a Nereid and means ‘safe passage’. Chose it for the warmer of the worlds. Cisseis is one of the nymphs of Mount Nysa who was a companion to Dionysus. What do you think?”
“I think there might be a bit of a poet in you, Isaac. I love them.”
Hitoshi sips his wine. “So, boss, what’s the plan for tomorrow?”
“We don’t have a Riggs boost to bleed off for this one, so we can jump straight to Cisseis and drop probes there,” James says. “Slowtime it to Sao. Isaac, how’s our life prospects looking for the two?”
Isaac frowns. “Not great. No oxygen, both colder, although Sao has some liquid water. You never know, though.”
James nods. “Well, we’ll see what we see.”
The Luhman system is unusual. It’s like having stars at Earth’s and Jupiter’s positions. At a separation of twenty-nine light-minutes, the fasttime jump between the two lasts only eleven seconds. James watches the bridge screen as Ananke sits at her science station, sliding her hand along the Riggs controls.
Ananke says, “Wave collapse in three, two one…” The blue glow in the center of the screen inflates to a giant icy sphere, stars gliding back to their home locations. “Space normal velocity. Fifty-thousand kilometers from Cisseis.”
On the screen, Cisseis is a large white sphere dimly lit by Luhman 16B’s glow. Most of the surface is covered in snow that transitions to icy oceans. In parts, gray rock shows through the snow, revealing gashes and flaws in the surface. There are no clouds, just a hazy blue glow from a hint of an atmosphere.
“Rocky world,” Isaac says. “Sixty-percent Earth mass. Snow is frozen nitrogen, and the oceans appear to be water-ice. Trace atmosphere composed of nitrogen and carbon monoxide. Temperature, minus two ten Celsius.” He looks over at James. “Perhaps Cisseis wasn’t the best name for this planet.”
“Don’t sweat it,” James says. “I still like the name. All right, I’m going to rotate Promise for decel. We’ll launch the interplanetary probes and get some camerawork before I kick in the burn.” He taps the flight controls. “Pitching up, ninety degrees…and… mark.”
The floor pushes up gently as the thrusters kick in. On the screen, Cisseis rotates down as Luhman 16B drifts into view. The star is thirty percent larger than 16A but is also cooler. Where 16A’s stripes glowed like molten steel, 16B’s are the dull red of cooling iron with a faint purple light simmering around its great ashen clouds. Thirty-one minor planets flank it. One of those planets is the exception, large enough that it’s a discrete blue crescent. The bridge display tags all of the planets with their provisional names. The blue crescent’s tag is Sao.
“Birds are in the tubes and ready to go,” Beckman says.
James nods. “Launch probes.”
Promise shudders as the bay releases its probes. Six multi-spectrum interplanetary probes appear on the ship’s tactical display, flight path graphics extending from each to its target world.
“Opening forward optics array,” Isaac says. A blue bracket locks onto Sao. “Visual wavelengths.” Sao pixelates for a moment. When the processing is complete, Sao is an icy white sphere splattered in sapphire and rust. Cracks spider along its surface, giving it a fractured appearance. The side facing the star darkens into the deep navy blues of a liquid ocean with a few faint cloud wisps spiraling in the atmosphere. The night side is heavily cratered and multi-hued. A fuzzy haze envelops the world and trails behind Sao, leaving a spectral fog in the world’s wake as if Sao were a comet shedding its tail. “Interesting,” Isaac says. “Volcanic activity. Colorful ejecta. Cryovolcanos are ejecting water into space, making a ring around the star.”
“Like Enceladus around Saturn,” Ava says.
Isaac nods. “Exactly. Nitrogen atmosphere. Let’s have a look at infrared.”
When he toggles to IR, the sphere is a red to blue gradient, as expected. The ocean side is slightly above zero, but the shadow side is one hundred and eighty below.
“With all the volcanos, conditions could be right for vent life,” Ava says.
Isaac taps his console. “Switching to ultraviolet.”
Sao glows entirely in shades of blue and violet, its continents delineated. The east-most continent has a hook of land defining a bay. A blue UV pinpoint sits on the hook like a pimple.
Isaac squints. “Huh.”
Hitoshi murmurs, “It’s never good when the astrophysicist says ‘huh.’”
James leans in. “Can you magnify that?”
Isaac says, “Adjusting optics.”
The image pixelates and reconstructs itself. The light is a string of pinpoints running along the shore with a brighter dot on the land. A ghostly, threadlike filament extends straight up until it disappears off the screen.
A moment of silence passes over the crew. “Isaac, is there a natural explanation for that?”
Isaac shakes his head. “Not from a planetary perspective. Stars or artificial lights generally emit UV.”
“Some deep-sea animals have bioluminescence and UV sensors,” Ava says.
Ananke looks over at James. “It’s also possible this is technological.”
“Can you zoom in any further?” James asks.
“No,” Isaac says, “we’re at maximum magnification.”
Ananke opens a readout from her science station. “Based on the scale, the surface dots are spread out over a distance of twenty-three kilometers.”
“Any emissions?” James says.
Willow glances over from her comms station. “None.”
James rubs his chin. “Can you see where that line ends?”
Isaac pans the camera up. The ghostly blue line fades out at the edge of the planet’s atmosphere as if a single spotlight were pointing up throu
gh foggy skies.
“Distance from us to the light source?”
Ananke says, “One point two million kilometers. At standard acceleration, we could arrive in six hours.”
James catches Beckman glancing at him, mentally urging caution. He hesitates. “Let’s hear some options.”
Hitoshi starts. “Well, uh, we just gave off a huge EM burst with the Riggs flash. It’s like a big flashing arrow pointing us out. They might already know that we’re here. We could wait and see if they contact us. Or blast us with a death ray. Either of those two things.”
“What about us making the first move?” James says.
“Here’s where it gets tricky,” Ava says. “We don’t know if they’re spacefaring or if they’ve had contact with other species. Us initiating contact could be extremely disruptive.”
“Might be hostile,” Beckman adds. “Or might be peaceful except when uninvited aliens show up and ring their doorbell.”
James eyes the system schematic, watching their interplanetary probes crawl along their arcs. “What about retasking one of the probes to do a fly-by?”
Beckman nods. “Good. Intel gathering and less risk for the ship. That’s easy enough. How close you want to get?”
“How close for hi-res pics?”
“Ten thousand clicks should do it. Are you planning on transmitting anything from the probe or running silent?”
“Running silent,” James says. “I’d say turn off the probe’s strobes, too. No need to call attention to it since we’re not trying to initiate contact. How long for the probe to get there?”
“Fourteen hours. We staying here or falling back?”
James scratches his chin. “Ananke, if those are Silver Stars, how long would it take one to jump to us?”
Ananke’s voice carries a touch of worry. “Four seconds, assuming they have the same capabilities as the Janus Star.”
“And if we jump back to our last location at 16A?”
Bernard's Dream: A Hayden's World Novel (Hayden's World Origins Book 8) Page 16
