The Dark Spring: Hard Science Fiction

by Brandon Q Morris

  “What’s it like on the moon?” asked Yunus.

  “Boring, to be honest.”

  “Then come to us!”

  “I asked Mission Control, but they’ve got other things to worry about. And our provisions will last a few more days.”

  “Makes sense. Can’t your friend Ihab do anything for us?”

  “I’m afraid my demand for compensation angered him. I can’t get through to him. He seems to have given instructions to say he’s not there.”

  “Then just launch to the Gateway yourselves.”

  “Do you understand the systems on the station well enough for us to dock safely?”

  “I don’t know. Slava, can we operate the coupling mechanism?”

  “No idea. I haven’t tried yet.”

  “In that case we’re better off staying down here,” said KK. “Then at least we can go for walks when we’re bored.”

  “You could fly to the Gateway’s orbit and then transfer via the airlocks without docking.”

  “And then five of us hang around in the Gateway? No, if we could dock the lander... Five in how many square meters?”

  “Cubic meters. The floor area’s irrelevant in zero gravity.”

  “Whatever. But no, we’ll stay here until the problem’s solved.”

  “If it does get solved,” said Yunus. “The Orion capsule hasn’t made contact again.”

  August 31, 2026 – SpaceShip SS1

  “Orion here. We’re experiencing thruster malfunction. Please don’t come here. I repeat. Abandon the rescue mission.”

  The voice rang out clearly through the SS1 control room, as though they’d broken through some magical barrier behind which Dave and Livia had been hiding.

  “Dave, is that you?”

  “Daniel? I can’t believe it. You can hear us? What did you do? Shoot a relay to 67P?”

  “No, Dave, we’re nearby.”

  “We can’t see you.”

  “No, we’re still around fifty kilometers away from the nucleus. We can see the nucleus but not the capsule.”

  “How did you get here?”

  “Chatterjee loaned us the SS1.”

  “Us?”

  “I have Brandon Mitchell on board. The author.”

  “You’re insane. We specifically warned against sending a rescue mission. Two deaths are enough.”

  “You weren’t the only ones who warned us. The German scientists who first recorded the changes to 67P were against the expedition. So was Chatterjee.”

  “And you didn’t listen to them. That was stupid.”

  “Clearly.”

  “Still, I’ll be glad to see you.”

  “Me, too,” said Livia. “I don’t share Dave’s pessimism, by the way.”

  “You mean you think we’ll get out of this?”

  “No, Dan, I wouldn’t go that far. I think the four of us have a few more exciting days ahead of us. What’s happening here is sensational, and we’re the only eyewitnesses.”

  “All I can see so far is a bulging potato,” said Daniel. “I’d rather get you home. But first I need to let Mission Control know we’ve found you.”

  He switched channels and activated the high-gain antenna. What had taken a matter of seconds in the Lunar Gateway now took a whole minute. The functions were there, but they were hidden so the tourists didn’t stumble across them. Daniel managed it anyway.

  “SS1 to Houston. We’ve re-established contact with the Orion.” He pressed send, then waited. Ten seconds, twenty, thirty. Nothing happened.

  He looked at Brandon, who bit his lower lip. This couldn’t be happening.

  One minute. More than a minute. Maybe Mission Control was just preoccupied with something else.

  Two minutes. Brandon tapped him on the shoulder. He already knew—the comet had captured them.

  “Orion? Can you hear us?”

  It was silent for a moment, and Daniel’s heart raced. What if they were suddenly alone? Maybe they’d just imagined the conversation with Dave and Livia.

  “Hello, Dan,” said Livia. “We’re all ears.”

  “I’ve lost contact with Earth. It’s as though we’ve crossed some barrier.”

  “The barrier between life and death,” said Dave. “It was the same for us.”

  “You sound like an oracle,” Livia said.

  “That’s quite typical of a dynamic system,” Brandon proffered. “Everything seems normal at first, even though the writing’s already on the wall, and then the balance tips. It’s unavoidable at that point.”

  “We were worried when we suddenly lost contact,” Livia said.

  “But turning back wasn’t an option,” said Dave. “A specific course had been calculated for the capsule that would eventually take us back to the moon, and we couldn’t change it.”

  “The thruster was too weak?” Daniel asked.

  “Exactly,” said Dave.

  “Then maybe we can do it with the SS1. It’s much more powerful.”

  “What condition is the capsule in?” asked Brandon. “You said something about thruster malfunction.”

  “We were flying toward the comet,” explained Dave, “and noticed that we’d deviated from our intended course.”

  “You were afraid you’d collide?”

  “No, my friend. The opposite. The new course would have flung us hyperbolically out of the solar system. So we had no choice, we had to deliberately steer the capsule toward the comet. That’s what caused the thruster malfunction.”

  “Still, that was quite an achievement,” said Daniel. “The capsule wasn’t built for landing on a comet.”

  “Nothing’s built for landing on a comet. 67P’s far too light.”

  “What about the Philae lander? It landed here twelve years ago.”

  “You’ll have to excuse Brandon. He has a tendency to talk too much. And he thinks he’s always right.”

  “I am always right.”

  “See what I mean? Still, he’s proving to be a sensible crewmate.”

  “Well, we’re excited,” said Dave. “I’ve never met a real author before.”

  “I hope we’ll be able to meet here on the ship tomorrow at the latest,” said Brandon. “By the way, what made you think colliding with 67P would be better than flying out into the solar system? The comet’s orbiting the sun, too.”

  “Sure. But this way, at least we get to observe the effects of the dark matter on the solar system.”

  The comet looked like a cross between a dinosaur and a rubber duck. Brandon swiped the image back and forth across the screen with his fingers. There was the head, the neck, and the back, which appeared to be covered in huge scales.

  Brandon zoomed the image out until 67P was the size of a sugar cube. Then he curled his index finger and flicked. His finger stopped just in front of the screen. Unfortunately, it wasn’t that easy. Churyumov-Gerasimenko wasn’t more than four kilometers across at any point, but a bathtub duck of this size still weighed 10 billion tons.

  He switched over to the optical camera and deactivated the automatic contrast adjustment. Daniel had shown him how to access new software functions that had been there all along. If only he’d known about them earlier! The screen went almost black, and the comet disappeared. It was black as charcoal, and they were too far away to see it without visual enhancement.

  He slowly swiveled the camera. The sun was on their left, and he centered on it. It was calm, almost lifeless, and much colder than it looked from Earth. It wasn’t until you were up here that you saw it as a star like any other. Now the other side. There was the Earth, still surprisingly large. Brandon was glad. He’d always fantasized about flying to Mars on one of the first colonist ships, but seeing the Earth as if it were just another star in the sky was a frightening proposition.

  How was Jenna getting along? She was probably besieging Mission Control, along with her fellow journalists. Having lost contact with a second vessel, NASA would have some explaining to do. The administration had perhaps alread
y started receiving the first letters of resignation. Brandon wasn’t worried about himself. Whatever happened would happen. But it would be a shame if MOM and everyone else at Mission Control had to shoulder the blame. They’d chosen to pursue this mission of their own free will.

  The dark matter spring out there was indeed a puzzle. It was like something he might have invented in one of his books. It was a pity they didn’t have time to study the phenomenon. Dark matter could be explained without any amendments to the standard model, and it was so close—it must be a dream come true for the physicists.

  What was its relationship to the microwave background? Where was the Bose-Einstein condensate coming from? Or had it always been there, undiscovered until now? What had unleashed the spring? Or had it always existed, but only recently fully opened up?

  He’d love to have been able to discuss it with one of the scientists. His fellow space travelers didn’t seem to have the nerve for questions like those, but they were important questions. A direct line to this Karl Stoll in Darmstadt, or a conversation with Jenna? If he were given the choice at that moment, he would have chosen the German.

  September 1, 2026 – TU Darmstadt

  The curve looked like a snake that had been run over by a truck. Where 67P was currently located in space was its head. Then its body curved around the sun without coming much closer, and finally it swung back out toward Jupiter’s orbit, becoming increasingly wider due to the increasing uncertainty depicted by the simulation.

  At Jupiter’s orbit, where 67P would arrive in around three years, the tail looked like a scarf. It reached its farthest distance from the sun there, its aphelion—5 to 6.5 AUs out. Then the flattened snake curved back toward the sun. It had much more momentum than previously. At this point 67P would be 20 to 100 times heavier than it was on its previous orbit, meaning the comet’s path would intersect with Earth’s orbit.

  Karl overlaid the actual orbits of the planets. Mars would be on the other side of the sun in six years, but the Earth was flashing red. The scarf, describing the comet’s path in the year 2032, fanned out. It gently brushed past the blue planet, and then, as though nothing had happened, continued to swing around the sun.

  Nothing happened in this simulation because the orbits of the planets were only superimposed, but the encounter wouldn’t play out so peacefully. If a rock weighing between 200 billion and one trillion tons hit the Earth, the face of the planet would change forever. Karl didn’t need a simulation to know that. The extinction of the dinosaurs would be no more than a fart by comparison.

  How great was the danger? The scarf that described the comet’s potential orbit was around 20 times wider than the Earth. The comet itself would still only measure a few kilometers across. So there was a roughly 1:20 chance of collision—that was almost comforting. Karl zoomed in on the image. The problem was that the Earth was almost right in the middle of the scarf, where the simulated potential orbits were most likely. It was reminiscent of a frequently-used road, where the traffic was mostly concentrated in the middle. The risk was greater there, too. And this was exactly where their home planet would be in six years!

  Karl activated the probability distribution function and integrated the Earth’s profile, which gave him a more accurate result. But it wasn’t any better—the risk increased to 1:12.

  Mission Control needed to know. The whole human race needed to know. There was an eight-percent chance that a significant number of them would die in six years. But it wasn’t his responsibility to inform eight billion people. That was what politicians were for. His job was to tell Mission Control. One more reason to recall SpaceShip SS1.

  He dialed himself into the conferencing system. He could tell something must have happened when he saw the blank projection wall. Half the desks were empty. MOM was sitting at the front left, typing.

  Karl announced himself in the chat.

  “Hello, Karl.” MOM sounded tired. Very tired.

  “I hope I’m not disturbing you,” he said.

  MOM gave a short laugh. “Distractions are welcome.”

  “Has something happened?”

  “You don’t know? We lost contact.”

  “Shit.”

  “Please don’t make me repeat the details. You can read it in the report.”

  “Of course, MOM.”

  “And now, please tell me you have good news. Anything. I can’t take any more bad tidings today.”

  “I, umm... Then maybe I should wait till tomorrow.”

  “That bad? Tell me. I wasn’t serious.”

  “It can wait, really. A long time.”

  MOM rested her chin in her hands. “Time. That sounds good. But tell me, anyway. I won’t keel over.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay.” How could he formulate it in a way that would make it easier to hear? “It concerns a future point in time,” he said. “Not tomorrow—much further out.”

  “Good. We’ve got enough on our plates right now.”

  “But it’s not good, even though it’s in the future. The time frame I’m talking about is six years from now.”

  “That’s the time it takes for 67P to orbit.”

  “Exactly.”

  “The comet will pass dangerously close to the Earth on its next orbit.”

  “You guessed right.”

  “You didn’t congratulate me, Karl. Don’t they say, ‘You guessed right, congratulations?’”

  “Not in this case.”

  “But there are loads of asteroids that come dangerously close to Earth every year. Tell me it’ll be like every other time. The media will warn us of a Russian killer comet, and then Churyumov-Gerasimenko will pass us by, way out beyond the moon’s orbit.”

  “That would be nice.”

  MOM sighed. “What’s really going to happen?”

  “The danger of a collision is 1 in 12.”

  “Shit. That’s not good.”

  “It’s not.”

  “Karl?”

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t pass this information on. We have to avoid a panic at all costs. I’ll discuss it with my superiors.”

  “I understand. But I should point out that any amateur astronomer could come to the same conclusion. We won’t be able to keep it quiet for more than a few days.”

  He couldn’t stop thinking about the road-kill snake. Karl played around with the parameters of the simulation. Somehow he had to keep the Earth out of the comet’s future orbit. Or the other way around. They had experience with that! Four years ago, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test, DART, struck the asteroid moon Didymoon. The ESA’s Hera probe, for which he was jointly responsible, was supposed to measure the precise effect of the impact of the DART. Didymoon was only 160 meters across, but the force of the DART was also small. It was a relatively simple mechanical problem.

  But they clearly couldn’t wait until 67P returned in six years’ time. Humanity wouldn’t learn in six years how to reroute 200 billion tons of mass by hundreds of kilometers. But 10 billion tons, if they began six years earlier and employed a lot more force than the DART? It didn’t sound impossible. But he had to work it out before he gave anyone too much hope. Himself, for example. This time he needed the supercomputer. The calculation time for the simulation had now increased ten-fold. He wanted the answer by tomorrow.

  He reached for the phone and called Sylvia.

  September 1, 2026 – Lunar Gateway

  “I can’t just sit around and do nothing,” said Yunus.

  “What do you want to do?” Vyacheslav asked.

  “I don’t know. Help those people out there.”

  “We have no contact with them.”

  “Yeah, exactly. The day before yesterday, we were the only ones receiving the Orion’s signal. We’re farther away from Earth than anyone. If anyone can make contact with the crew, it’s us.”

  “You’re an illustrator, Yunus.”

  “I know. And you’re a sculptor a
nd pianist. But we have our common sense.”

  “That won’t help us. They need experts.”

  “You underestimate general knowledge. Let’s just try. If you can’t understand someone, what do you do?”

  “I ask them to speak louder.”

  “That doesn’t apply in this case. They can’t hear you.”

  “I cup my hand behind my ear.”

  “You increase the sensitivity.”

  “And try to get closer to them.”

  “That might be difficult in our case.”

  Yunus thought about it. They’d heard the Orion because they were orbiting so far out. Was there any reason not to increase the Gateway’s orbit? “Maybe that’s a possibility,” he said.

  “But then KK and the women won’t be able to reach us. The lander’s provisions—”

  “That’s true, Slava. But those three are doing fine down there. They’ll last a while longer.”

  “KK didn’t sound like he would when we talked to him yesterday.”

  “If we have a chance to make contact with the spaceship, we can’t worry about him.”

  “He’ll never invite us again.”

  “Haha.”

  “You’re right, Yunus, it wasn’t funny. But would widening our orbit even be enough?”

  “Probably not. But think about the hand behind the ear.”

  “The sensitivity.”

  “Exactly. The Gateway has high- and low-gain antennas. The more sensitive high-gain antenna connects us with the Earth, the other connects us with the lander on the moon or the Orion capsule.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “The design’s on the internet. NASA listed pretty precise specifications.”

  “So you don’t know, you just read about it.”

  “We’ll obviously have to take a look outside. We’d have to go out anyway, to swap the connections on the two antennas so we can reverse them.”

  “You don’t think that can somehow be done with software on the central computer?”