It had indeed taken months of daily work to pull off what would have been a dream a decade prior, but with Erin’s stalwart guidance and Mission Control’s occasional suggestions, it had become a reality. The proposed drop site on the map was marked with a hand-drawn X, along with a set of rough coordinates based on pure magic, given the shifting and unseen nature of their target.
“No proposed changes from Earth?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, let’s go make some mistakes,” Adam said, confirming the last of their parameters before heading to his lander. He imagined it being no more difficult than driving a car back home, as he quickly suited up and eased the tiny ship out of the station.
Piloting it to Draco’s tertiary ring, he nabbed the bell as it sat within the airlock on the first try. It seated perfectly against the mounting plate he had welded to the metal skin and pulled it free. “I’ve got it,” he announced, as if his omnipresent companion was in the dark on his whereabouts. “Bring up the flight path.”
The homemade probe did not include its own propulsion system and relied on a precise, accelerating kick from an external booster to push it out of the stable orbit and send it hurtling into the planet. Adam’s design decision, although with the added risk of having to pull out of such a steep dive, was much to the relief of the team back on Earth, who no longer needed to sacrifice a fully mission capable probe in pursuit of a few precious moments of data.
A series of lights along a decaying orbit appeared on the pilot’s display, showing the sharp slope that seemed to drive straight for the center of the planet itself. Adam took a deep breath as he eased the ship away from the station. “You’re sure we can do this, right?” he asked Draco through the radio. “I mean, you’re not going to stall the engines and send me down with this thing, are you?”
“Don’t be a fool; you are far too valuable at this point to contemplate termination and replacement.”
“I’m really glad I’m not party to your conference calls with the guys on Earth,” he said. “You probably give them a daily breakdown of whether it’s more advantageous to keep me alive or snuff me out.” Adam sneered at the dark humor that populated his worldview as he began to pick up speed, following the illuminated track on his screen like a sled down a mountainside, only tangentially aware of the glowing orb drifting outside.
At first, the speed was hardly discernable against the average pace of movement among the stars, but it steadily grew as Saturn’s immense gravitational pull took hold and began to drag the tiny capsule toward its unrelenting well. The disc of the planet filled every window outside at once, blurring against the intense force of acceleration. Adam glanced across the display and saw he had to keep the pace for five more seconds.
Each one ticked slower as he felt the ship falling faster toward oblivion, his hand caressing the back of the controls. It was only fear, he told himself, and if he gave in, the package would simply glance off the upper atmosphere and be lost in space. The timing was critical. It clicked down and zeroed out.
“Time. Deploying!” Adam managed as he ripped the manual release, feeling a sharp jolt as his experiment detached before he mashed the rocket throttle to the console. The tiny craft righted itself and fought the sharp change in speed atop a roaring column of fire. Black smoke billowed across all the windows as the engines ignited the local atmospheric concentrations.
Adam felt himself pressed hard into the seat, bottoming out instantly to the aluminum frame as the lander clawed its way to a stop, fighting against the crushing field. Every surface shook violently under the strain as he spun through the tumultuous air.
Over the roar of the engines, Adam felt an imperceptible flutter in its tone, as if a roaring diesel plant had suffered a single misfire. His chest clenched tight as a sputtering vibration grew within the frame and his eyes spun across the displays, trying to isolate the problem. They fell on the fuel gauge as it bottomed out, then went black, along with a cascade of failing systems across the consoles. The siren blared.
“Dra…” he managed, hardly above a whisper, as the darkness closed in around him, outside the cabin, across his controls, and within his own head. Adam felt his vision narrow, but there was no counteracting the sensation as he was planted firmly in the seat with his arms glued to his sides, merely an observer to the crumbling of his world.
***
There were two states with which Adam was familiar: Alive and Aware. The first was easy to identify as he maneuvered around his world, such that it was, and interacted in ways that benefited him or others. Awareness was sly, wherein his mind knew it was activated but only through a lazy oafishness did it process any sort of information. The feeling would hit often as he was falling asleep, waking up, or being born in a new body in some higher consciousness. A cynical shred of his being felt as if a repeat of his life was again about to collide with all that he knew, waking him up in some test tube where everything he had known would turn out to be a fantastic dream with no bearing on real life. His arm drifted up, searching for the wall of glass.
And felt a lock of hair.
The unexpected shift of possibilities kicked his mind into gear and shattered the final wall that hung between his inner mind and the world. Adam’s eyes flashed open, and he gazed upon Erin’s face as it hovered above his own.
An expression of deep concern melted from her face in an instant as she saw him move. “You’re alive!” she exclaimed through tear-stained eyes, embracing him as he struggled to pull himself upright.
Adam instantly felt cold and his lungs burned. His eyes could barely focus on the bright lights of the docking bay, once again populated by a pair of the standardized landers. He was home… maybe? How?
The doctor appeared to read his mind. “Your lander lost a thruster and it took all the power available to counteract the fall. You blacked out while Draco flew you back and sent for me. I found you unconscious inside the cabin just now and had to drag you all the way out here. Lucky me.”
Adam’s legs were numb as he propped himself upright and stared back at the open hatch of the lander. “It did?” he mumbled, slowly piecing the last few images in his head together. Something connected and he remembered the jolt, the plummeting fall into the gas giant. His eyes lost focus and he turned back to Erin. “I thought that was the end of me.”
“It would have been,” she said again, “but that’s why you’ve got me.”
“I just, I mean… Thank you,” Adam replied, looking her in the eye. “The probe?”
“You’ll need to see for yourself,” Draco’s voice broke in.
The tenor guardian stirred Adam back and he clumsily got to his feet. His stomach churned in the artificial gravity field as he stumbled forward, trying to keep his eyes caged on the doorframe leading into the storage pod. Between the lightness in his head and the vaporous sensations from his extremities, Adam felt a source of warmth surround his left hand, which pushed away the blank emptiness of his nerves. It took him a moment to realize Erin’s hands were clamped around his own as she guided him along, and although he could barely navigate around the doorframe, he had to smile in quiet contentment.
“Slow down,” he heard her command. “A second ago, I picked you up off the ground, and now you’re running away.”
“Sorry, I have to see this,” Adam said. “Please, just tell me it worked.”
“Fine, but after that you’re sitting back down before you pass out again,” Erin said as they passed through the observatory, illuminated by the familiar gaze of the planet. She looked about as they proceeded around the ring. “Unrelated, I know,” she remarked, “but I’m jealous with all this space you have to yourself.”
“You know you’re always welcome to visit. ‘Bout time you pried yourself away for once,” Adam said and stopped, staring back at Erin’s quizzical look. “I’m sorry, I don’t know where that came from.”
She laughed, shaking off the comment. “Don’t get ahead of yourself, but I might take you up on th
at sometime.”
Together they crossed through the connectors, Adam’s main living quarters, and into the command module. The panels were dark, save for the wall-sized screen to the right, which was populated with a large map and a myriad of numbers to the sides.
“That’s the flight path!” he exclaimed immediately, shuffling to the monitor. “It was transmitting…” he added, “all the way down.”
“Precisely,” Draco confirmed. “Your work on the shielding was commendable.”
The table of numbers on the side began to scroll down and picked up speed, until Adam could hardly make out the individual lines. “That’s a lot of data,” he whispered and turned to Erin. “That’s everything we wanted.”
“We had active sensors all the way to the surface,” Draco continued. “Full transmission rate with minimal corruption, thanks to the station’s collection array. I’ve already begun the processing.”
“You did it,” Erin said, wrapping her arms around Adam’s shoulders and hugging him tight. “I’m so proud of you.”
***
“Adam, it’d be an understatement to say you’ve caused some commotion around here over the past few days,” Sergey said from his normal position in the control room. While he would have normally taken the operator’s word for it, Adam could see the dim outlines of a stack of coffee cups strewn about the workstation, indicative of what must have been a marathon session of data processing and unbridled conjecture. “Never before have we obtained direct information from within a gas giant’s atmosphere, and especially not from so close to the surface. Obviously, there is much work to be done, but we’ll keep you comprised of our progress. After all, it’s your research.”
Adam nodded from his seat, a welling sense of warmth gently turning in his chest. The message had just arrived; Erin was asleep in the crew pod on the far side of the station and he had yet to wake her. He smiled as Sergey reiterated a list of speculations and information from the ground team, giving him both satisfaction of the job well done along with a hope for the experiments which were to come.
“And it’s for that reason that we’ve decided to allow you to present it to the team on Earth, in person.”
The astronaut’s eyes snapped open with a jolt that nearly sent him tumbling from the chair. The conversation had instantly turned surreal, as if Sergey had switched languages without warning.
“The operation has been in development for some time, but Dr. Dreher felt it appropriate to disclose at this critical juncture. Orbital Genesis has been in continual development, and we believe a solution is nearing that would allow us to put a crew into suspended animation and allow them to be revived on the far side; that’d be you. With a modified capsule and optimized trajectory, we could get the trip down below three years and you’d never even know it.” Sergey paused, as if he suddenly slipped away and took Adam’s place, instantly feeling the enormity of the mission. “It’d be similar parameters as the Hydra team; you’d barely sense it.” He smiled. “What do you say? Nine hundred million miles. Three years. See our home. Present your findings. Make a difference.”
The screen went dark, the silence deafening. “Video up,” Adam said, staring at the camera. “Only if Dr. Moroder comes with me.” He turned away. “Draco, send it.”
“Absolutely, commander.”
“I have no doubt that will cause no shortage of dismay and negotiation.”
“More than you know,” Draco replied.
“I heard that,” Erin said, rounding the corner of the doorway. She stared down at Adam, her eyes growing damp. Neither spoke for a long, cold minute. “Did you mean it.”
“Every word of it,” Adam whispered, his eyes caged on hers.
“You’d sacrifice our work?”
“No, I’d take us home. See Earth. Live like real people.”
“We’re not real people. This is our life, here and not on Earth.” Erin said, correcting him. “This is our mission, and it would fail without us.”
“We’ve spent our entire lives living on the outside of civilization and look where that sacrifice has brought us. They wouldn’t make the offer if it meant failure,” Adam said as he got to his feet and approached the doctor. “I have to believe there’s a way to do it.”
“From our perspective, it’s not a sacrifice, it’s an opportunity. Besides, you’d be in denial of the truth?”
“If that’s what it takes, yes,” he admitted. “The AIs can do most of the work themselves. A couple years there and back, you see home and return to a full array of data to analyze. A hundred new missions and a chance to hear from the Hydra orbiter.”
“You’re overselling it,” Erin said with arms crossed. “Would you have even asked me?”
“Of course, and I’d never leave without you,” Adam admitted, coming closer. “You’re my best friend out here; I’d never leave you like that.”
“Really?”
“It’d just seem… wrong, immoral.”
“I didn’t know you to try to be charming.”
“You think that’s what this is?” Adam asked, a thin smile emerging on his face.
Erin laughed. “Now, you’re definitely overselling it. And I didn’t say you were doing a particularly good job of it.”
“Oh.” Adam felt his shoulders fall, until his companion took another step closer.
“Notice I didn’t say it was a rejection,” Erin clarified. “If they’re willing to take the risk, I’d say you’ve earned it. Let’s have an adventure. You can see what you missed and quiet your heart over what it means to be human.”
***
“Their offer presents us quite the opportunity,” Erin remarked from her seat at the side of the command module, surrounded by the various scribblings of a technical expert buried deep within her own thoughts.
Adam looked up from his similar musings at the statement. “Do tell.”
“From a general standpoint, we have the chance to be the faces of the mission to the outer planets. At least until the Hydra crew reaches their destination. The public goodwill exposure is a given, since that will provide the administration leverage with their partners to continue development of successive missions out here,” Erin replied, looking up from her notes.
“If we’re able to transport the full load of data and samples we’ve collected back with us, we’ll be able to perform more analyses in real time, detect all the nuanced details we’re ill-equipped for out here. They have far better computing systems for sorting through a multiple-exabyte sky survey or the full makeup of your planetary cores. If you’re able to refine some conclusions, they’d probably let you defend a doctoral thesis before too long.”
“You think?” Adam’s eyes lightened for a moment.
“It’s probable. No one would be able to touch what you’ve seen out here,” Erin said. “Hell, I can barely grasp the scope of Titan, and I live here.” She paused to give a brief laugh. “Why? What would you like to do?”
“Meet my parents.” The thin smile on the doctor’s face froze as quickly as if her companion had just snapped a Polaroid. Adam judged by her reaction that the comment caught her off-guard to a degree from which she was ill-prepared to recover. He laughed “What’s wrong? Did I cause a stack overflow?
“That’s the best you can think of?” Erin asked with a raised eyebrow as she recomposed herself. “You think we have parents in any meaningful definition? Not in the way that anyone raised us.”
“True, I’d give that credit to Draco before I’d consider passing it to anyone on Earth,” Adam explained, “but I just think it’s a part of life I’d like to understand. A blank space to fill in.”
“It’s by your volition,” Erin said. “I’m not going to stop you, so you’d might as well ask the question. Might not want to blindside them with a request like that.”
“Agreed,” Adam replied and looked back to his screen. “Trust me, I’ll make all of this worth it.”
***
Everything on Draco station was modul
ar and interchangeable, Adam noticed more and more with each passing day. He had disconnected a pair of Orbital Genesis pods from their home in the lab and moved both to the equipment bay, which he would drag with them behind the heavy transport. They would be nominally able to make the trip without the extended pod, but with both astronauts on board, the decision was made to carry additional food and fuel to sustain their bodies.
Mission Control’s requirements continued to build as well. Three-quarters of the remaining floor space was dedicated to scientific samples. The Janus cores, bits of ring material, and the Hydra team’s surviving finds from Titan were all accounted for, along with an untold bank of high-resolution data that was beyond the bandwidth of transmission.
Adam attached the pods to the wall and connected the single control line to each one. The one cable had within it all the necessary feeds to power and sustain the person within, or so Sergey had explained. Aside from his own experience being grown within the pod, he had to take the operator’s word.
“That’s it. How long will the software update take?” he asked the station.
“Thirty minutes for the flash and verification,” Draco replied, “plus another hour to cycle the biological connections.”
The astronaut sighed as he scanned across the pods, along with the full load of supplies staged within the pod. “I still can hardly believe they went along with this.”
“There is a benefit to the mission beyond what you can immediately see,” the station advised. “Even though the program loses contact with you and the doctor for several years, you’ll be suspended, so there will be no loss in functionality. The stations will continue to gather data and upgrades over time, awaiting your return, and the team on Earth gets to show you in person as a product of their collective genius.”
“That’s a little cynical, I hope,” Adam remarked.
“Maybe, but remember, public perception is a huge piece of the mission. You represent much more than yourself to many people back home. If they see you in person, hear what you’ve accomplished, you’ll sway massive support to the continued exploration of the system. It’s a huge investment on their part, but in the end might be the deciding factor as to whether humanity remains a viable species.”
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