When Ananke speaks through Promise’s forward lights, the lead Star strobes its commands to the cage Stars. James wrestles with the ice block’s inertia as he tries to level out. It seems to take forever to pick up any speed, but eventually, the floor and walls glide away, the entrance aperture growing larger and larger. Snowflakes streak in gusts just outside the entrance.
“Here we go,” James says, pushing the ship outside.
The first wind gust slams into the ship, and James grabs his console, bracing himself. Promise barely shudders. That’s right, James thinks, we have fourteen million kilos of mass to push. The wind is having as many issues moving us as we’re having moving us. He steadies himself and edges Promise upwards, lifting the nose.
“Looking good over here,” Lin says, reading her structural display.
“Engines in the green,” Hitoshi adds.
Promise accelerates like an old Saturn V rocket, barely moving at launch but ticking up speed slowly and steadily. As James pitches the nose up to nearly an eighty-degree angle, metal protests underneath the ship from the weight redistribution. The gravitational force now rotates to the back of James’s chair, and he really does feel like an astronaut in a twentieth-century shuttle launch, the sky straight ahead and the ground beneath his shoulders. Usually, he wouldn’t launch with this steep of an angle, but the goal is to pass through the least amount of atmosphere, and, in particular, to avoid heating the ice.
As Promise rises above the shoreline complex, the overcast clouds plunge the ship into murky gray, only the blue rod lights of the lead Star and speckled eyes of the cage Stars glowing in foggy halos. Somewhere in the distant clouds, lightning crackles, briefly showcasing the black silhouette of the ice cage that extends far past Promise’s nose.
“The Stars say that there is strong wind and sleet ahead,” Ananke says.
The sleet immediately arrives in a skittering racket. With each wind gust, the cage connections creak and snap, sending a shimmy through James’s chair. A dazzling purple lightning strike carves a branching path directly ahead of them, narrowly missing the cage and causing a brief dimming of lights from the EM pulse.
“Okay,” James. “Keeping us on our toes.”
“Passing twenty kilometers,” Isaac says.
Willow reads from her console. “We’re losing telemetry with our satellite. Storm interference.”
The sleet wall relents, and the racket on the hull subsides to buffeting wind. James watches the acceleration drop slightly. “Give me dorsal cameras four and six.”
“They’re up,” Beckman says.
Promise’s running lights illuminate foggy clouds. On the hull, a glistening translucent blue sheen cakes up.
When James glances back at the acceleration reading, it’s slowed further. “Dammit,” James says, “we’re picking up ice. Isn’t that ironic? It’s adding mass and slowing us down.”
“I can push the engines into the yellow arc,” Hitoshi says.
James nods. “Do it.”
“We’re getting ice on the cage, too,” Lin says.
Hitoshi reads from his console. “Engines five percent in the yellow. Thermals are holding.”
The acceleration display ticks back up.
“Fifty kilometers,” Isaac says.
In the belly-camera, wind blasts the cage. The Stars are covered in an icy sheen, swaying with the cage’s motion.
James glances at Ananke’s screen. “How are the Stars doing?”
The lead star pulses: Stars like ice, but not lightning.
“Trust me,” James says, “we’ll try and avoid it if we can.”
“We’ve got satellite telemetry back,” Willow says. “On screen.”
The orbital view of Sao shows the roiling storm covering half of the eastern hemisphere. Massive clouds flash with chaotic lightning bursts. To the south, the coma shape of a high-energy storm swirls.
“Well, that’s going to suck,” James says. “Guys, it’s gonna get bumpy.”
“That was the smooth part?” Hitoshi says.
Isaac continues reading from his panel. “Seventy-five kilometers.”
Something above the roof cracks and slides off Promise’s hull. In the aft camera, ice sheets tumble into the dark clouds, fragmenting. When James reads the acceleration gauge, it climbs back up. “All right, we just lost our ice! Hitoshi, put the engines back in the green.”
The winds have increased, and Promise is rocking in the storm. The ship's nose breaks through a cloud layer, and, for a moment, they’re in a clear swathe of air with a ceiling of endless cloud towers above them and a bed of gray murk beneath them. Dozens of vertical lightning strikes connect the two cloud decks, strobing the cage in purples and greens. Just as quickly, Promise pierces back into the gloom of the storm. A blast pushes the ship’s nose off-axis, the cage’s momentum steering Promise without input, and James struggles to turn it back. As he wrangles the controls, the sky explodes in electricity with a thunder blast that sounds like it’s inside the room. Promise jolts hard to the starboard side, the bridge lights flickering, and red icons stack up on the screen. When James pulls the controls to the port, the ship turns in slow motion.
“Camera two!” Hitoshi says.
Camera two overlooks the starboard nacelle. Orange sparks streak from a blast mark on the nacelle’s nose.
“Lightning strike on engine one,” Lin says. “Hang on. Everything’s scrambled from the power surge.”
James pulls the ship’s nose back on-axis. The acceleration reading, however, is negative, and Promise’s speed is decreasing.
Tension edges in Lin’s voice. “Power surge tripped a bunch of things in engine one. It’s down. We’re pushing out eleven meganewtons with the remaining three. We’re going ballistic.”
Ballistic isn’t good. Ballistic is just falling in a nice arc. To cement the point, Promise’s nose slowly drops. If their angle flattens too much, aerodynamic forces will rip both the ship and the cage apart.
James catches a glimpse of the blinking jettison icon on his panel. There’s no way in hell he’s pushing it. “Hitoshi, give me something,” he says.
“Redlining the other three,” Hitoshi responds.
Promise presses against James as the engines ramp up, the ship’s nose slowly lifting. The ship breaks out of the clouds, the arc of Sao’s horizon curving underneath them with the first stars visible overhead.
“One hundred kilometers,” Isaac says.
“We’re barely squeaking by on thrust,” Hitoshi says. “Getting an overheating alert on engine two. Other two are joining it.”
“I’m rebooting everything on engine one,” Lin says. “It’s going to take a minute. Need to degauss the inductor.”
Hitoshi’s voice is urgent. “Engine two is way too hot. Something’s going to pop.”
“One hundred and twenty kilometers,” Isaac says.
So close, James thinks. If they can reach one fifty, they’ll be clear of atmospheric drag and able to achieve a stable orbit.
A shrill alert sounds from Hitoshi’s station and a cavalcade of red icons stacks on the damage assessment screen. Hitoshi slams his palm on the console. “No!” He chokes up. “We just fried the phase inverter on engine two.”
Promise’s nose sinks again, the starry sky yielding back to the curve of Sao.
James’s stomach drops. At fifty-percent thrust, they’re not going to make it. It’s almost worse than failing in the clouds, where they would have died quickly. Instead, they’ll miss their minimum orbital altitude and have atmospheric drag pull them all down over the course of several orbits. If he jettisons the ice cage now, Promise will make orbit, but the cage will fall and burn up. The Stars will be able to flee it like a sinking ship, but it won’t matter. It’ll just delay their deaths until after their ship runs out of ice. If he doesn’t jettison the cage now, Promise and the cage will ride the decaying orbit back into the atmosphere, where he’ll be forced to ditch the cage or burn up with it. “Hitoshi, Lin, Anan
ke…do you have anything else for me?”
“Sorry, boss,” Hitoshi says. “There’s nothing I can do. We’re not going to make it with two engines.”
James eyes the blinking jettison button. He furrows his eyebrows. What would he want if he were in the Star’s shoes? He’d want a chance and time to take it. “Keep ‘em redlined, Hitoshi.”
“It’s not enough, even redlined,” Hitoshi says. “We’re going to lose the other two engines. We won’t be able to pull out of the atmosphere if that happens.”
James squeezes his fist, staring at the stars and willing his ship forward. The acceleration is negative, and the ship’s velocity is decreasing. They’re ballistic once again, arcing back to Sao. As he’s staring, a new force pushes the floor gently against his feet. The ice cage groans from its contact points with Promise’s hull. James looks over, “Did we get power back?”
“It’s not us,” Hitoshi says. He looks up at the screen. “It’s them.”
The acceleration index ticks up another tenth of a gee. It’s not enough to give them a positive acceleration, but they don’t need to be positive at this point. They just need to be less negative, enough to coast to the finish line.
The lead Star says: Promise damaged. Stars are exceeding limits for a short time. Some damage, but able to replace bodies if we survive. Calculations predict we will survive. Agree?
The Stars redlined their engines, James thinks. That’s where the extra thrust came from.
“One hundred forty kilometers,” Isaac says.
Another alert from Hitoshi’s console. “We just lost another engine,” he says.
“And I just got one back,” Lin says. “Number one is rebooted and online.”
“One forty-five,” Isaac says. “Now passing one fifty.”
“Take the last engine out of redline,” James says.
Isaac continues counting up. “One fifty-five. We’re clear. Ready for orbital transfer.”
James speaks to the Stars with Ananke translating. “Agree,” he says to them, smiling. “Good job, my friends.”
The interior of engine one’s nacelle is a long trapezoid with yellow personnel ladders on opposite walls straddling large geometric chunks of equipment. Currently, the nacelle is pressurized with atmosphere, which makes it easier to work, and the environmental lighting is on, making it feel a bit like a subway tunnel. Hitoshi and Lin both drift in zero-gee, each wearing their orange maintenance suits with snoopy hats, clustered around a cylinder that’s attached to an even larger cylinder with an open access panel. In Hitoshi’s augmented goggles, schematics and parts overlay everything. He reaches into the panel and buries his arm up to his shoulder. “Who designed this thing?”
“I’ll bet it was some super-sexy space hero engineer,” Lin responds.
He pulls his arm back, holding out his hand. “Hydrospanner.”
Lin smiles. “Does that make me Chewy?”
He opens and closes his fingers quickly. “Sonic screwdriver.”
She smirks. “I would make a pretty good Companion.” She reaches into her tool bag and fetches a wedge-like tool. “I’m assuming you want a spudger.”
“Well, that’ll do.” He accepts it and fishes back into the panel. Something clicks. “Gotcha!” He lifts out a small circuit module. When he holds up the module, there’s a burnt smudge along its connections. “And that little smudge there is what almost killed us all.”
“Technology is good that way,” Lin says.
Hitoshi hands her the fried module. “One toasted phase inverter.”
Lin accepts it and hands him a brand new one. “Be nice to this one.”
Hitoshi pats it gently on the head and tucks it into the access panel.
“Should I expect all of our trips to be this exciting?”
“Our usual rhythm is scan planet, no life, boring, scan planet, no life, boring, scan planet, OH GOD RUN FOR YOUR LIFE! So, if you plan around that, you should be good.”
“Noted.”
Hitoshi’s slate dings. James appears, sitting on the bridge. “Hey, Hitoshi. How’s it looking?”
“Pretty good. Just swapping the inverter now. Maybe forty-five more minutes to test everything, pull the locks, and power it up.”
“Great. The Stars are about to jump up the ice. Thought you’d like to see it.”
“Uh, yeah!” He motions to Lin, and she drifts over next to him, huddling around the slate.
James switches to Promise’s exterior cameras. The Star’s ship has repositioned itself to within half a kilometer of the ring. The ice block they’d flown up two days ago is still mounted on one of the ship’s faces, and the vine-like distribution system the Stars had jury-rigged wraps around the cylinder. Their lone ice block has done its job and gotten the ship to this point. Now that the ring is back online, it’s time to bring up all the ice.
Lin wraps her arm around Hitoshi’s waist, snuggling up against him.
A flickering blue pulses like a heartbeat in the ring’s center. The flash blossoms into a spherical fireball, as if a star had been teleported there, and the fireball shrinks back to a blue point. Where space had been, a quarter-kilometer-long ice block floats motionless in the ring’s center.
“Now, just think about that for a second,” Lin says. “For it to be motionless relative to the ring, it has to come out of jump with its full orbital velocity. So they’re not just teleporting it up, they’re also giving it a huge tangential velocity, kind of like a sideways Riggs boost.”
“You know you’re right. If we could figure out how to do that, we wouldn’t have to slowtime it to get our orbital speeds correct after a jump.”
The Star fleet flies aways from the cylinder ship and swarms around the ice block, lifting it out of the ring and carrying it over to their ship.
James says, “Pretty cool, huh? So, how long do you think before the other engine is ready?”
Hitoshi glances at Lin. “About three hours?”
Lin nods.
“Awesome,” James says. “Any concerns with taking Promise planetside tomorrow?”
“Um…technically, no. I’m afraid to ask why?”
“The Stars have invited us to a face-to-face in the tower.”
Hitoshi pauses. “Do they have faces?”
“We’ll find out tomorrow.”
“Great!”
“Yup. Talk to you soon,” James says, closing the channel.
Hitoshi sags his head. “I miss scanning boring planets.”
28
A Parting Gift
The storm over Sao’s eastern hemisphere has finally broken, leaving clear skies with a few wispy cirrus clouds. It’s just after sunrise with the behemoth of Luhman 16B rising above the horizon. A lone Star flies in front of Promise, leading it into the blue glow of the tower’s opening.
Yesterday, the Stars said to James: Our environments are too different for us to survive, but we have created a place within limits for both of us, we think. We do not know Human limits. Are these acceptable?
When James reviewed the limits with Julian, they were four degrees Celsius, one hundred and twenty kilopascals, three percent oxygen, and ninety-seven percent nitrogen. The atmosphere would be like an early winter day, and slightly thicker than average, but with way too little oxygen. They would lose consciousness within twenty seconds. When he replied to the Stars that they required fifteen to twenty percent oxygen, the Stars said: These levels would oxidize stars. This is a fatal amount of oxygen. Normal levels are less than point-two percent.
After a brief discussion, James and Julian agreed upon half-face breathers. The breathers were clear, people could talk wearing them, and they would self-contain the oxygen they exhaled, which was important because they didn’t want to kill their new friends with their poison oxygen breath. This led to the more critical discussion about whether they should risk an encounter with the Stars without their exosuits.
“Of course, as your doctor, I must say that you are safest in your exosuit,” Jul
ian said. “But, I understand the importance of matching the Star’s gesture. From the air samples I took when we were in the tower, the air is sterile and nearly pure nitrogen. The information the Stars shared about their bodies is that their surface is polyoxometalate and diamond. They do not breathe, although they do absorb nitrogen through their surface and transpire water. Their water contains no microbes. The Stars say that all life on their planet evolved from repeating crystal structures, and there are no such things as microbes for them. If you should touch a Star, it will be frigid, minus twenty-five Celsius, but not cold enough to injure you in short durations.”
James scratched his head for a bit on this one. Even he had to admit, the idea of going suitless in a first contact felt nuts, but it also felt like a test of faith. He’d come this far, and he’d talk it over with the crew.
So, here they are, Promise gliding along behind a Star, the tower’s superstructure whizzing by them. A new structure has been constructed to the left of the floor’s hexagons, a fifteen-meter-wide white geodesic sphere nestled in a bed of smaller spheres. Pale blue up-lights wash over it. Eight Star exosuits are parked in an arc, wreathing around the geodesic sphere. Each has its rods retracted so that it is a simple dodecagon. A conduit connects each to the geodesic sphere.
The Star leading Promise slows to a stop just past the hexagons. James eases his ship down onto the landing pad and powers down the engines. As everyone finishes their shutdown lists, one of the twelve-sided faces of the geodesic sphere extrudes itself towards Promise. The extrusion isn’t a solid dodecagon but instead is just the perimeter walls, forming a tunnel. A metallic clang sounds as it contacts Promise’s starboard airlock. James has to give them a hand — the Stars are exceptional engineers and builders.
The next ten minutes are a surreal blur spent with the entire crew in EV prep putting on their jackets and breathers. Lin’s jackets are fun, a light gray fabric with horizontal blue and red bands traversing the shoulders and thin silver and blue stripes stretching vertically on the sides. She’s designed a new patch that sits on the jacket’s left upper chest. In it, a stylized version of Promise rockets over a starry background with the text HPT-E17 Bernard’s Promise wrapping around the circumference. The left sleeve also contains a new patch with a graphic of the Sun rising over a blue Earth. James smiles as he puts his on. Next, he presses the clear half-face breather over his mouth and nose and takes a few breaths, testing it. When he’s satisfied it’s working, he activates its seal. Finally, he pulls on a pair of light gloves.
Bernard's Dream: A Hayden's World Novel (Hayden's World Origins Book 8) Page 26
