THE FIRST EXOPLANET
(Third Edition)
by
T.J. Sedgwick
PROLOGUE
January 4, 2056 Alliance Citadel Space Station, Low Earth Orbit
Things hadn’t turned out the way he’d expected, as Dr Aidan Lemaie considered what he thought he’d found. At this point in his month-long stint on the orbiting space station he should have been looking forward to going back home to his wife and kids in Seattle, but with just two days to go he had other things on his mind. He took a moment to ponder, looking out of the window. The pattern of lights demarking the west coast of North America glided serenely by 380 km below. Thinking back to his late-thirties—a decade ago now—it was another unexpected turn of events that had led to what he knew was the find of all finds. The Very Large Direct Imaging Array—nicknamed Helios after the all-seeing Greek god—had almost never happened. It was a project he’d poured his devotion into since it was conceived as a replacement for the aging James Webb telescope. With budget cuts happening all around him, Helios was one of the first victims of the bean counters. Several months later, though, an unprecedented step was taken. Helios was reactivated and actually fast-tracked with priority funding. No one knew why at the time and it was fully operational by 2050. He still did not know why, but knew things wouldn’t have turned out the way they did had Helios stayed on the drawing board.
“Hey, come and take a look at this!” he shouted to his American colleague, Dr Scarlett Hansen. Both scientists had been assigned on rotation to the Citadel lab module since its completion four years earlier. Lemaie was of small, solid build. He grew up the son of a British expatriate father and Malaysian mother, having lived in both countries and several others besides. His calm, brown eyes betrayed a mind working at hyper-speed, only shutting down for his six hours sleep, which even he needed eventually. He looked years younger than his chronological age of forty-eight owing to good genes and clean living. Intellectual discovery was his stimulant of choice with some hard, dopamine-inducing exercise thrown in for good measure. His colleague, Scarlett Hansen, was three years his junior and grew up the daughter of a single mother in Texas. Against adversity, she won a prestigious Ansari scholarship aged seventeen and attended Stanford and UCLA before pursuing her career as an exoplanet researcher. Scarlett was of equal height to Lemaie, blonde-haired, blue-eyed and with classic movie actress beauty. Scarlett’s IQ was low-case one-thirty-five, high case one-forty-five, depending on which test you believed.
Scarlett sighed, secured her beaker of coffee and floated over to her colleague in the zero-g environment of the brightly lit lab module. She’d lost count of the times Lemaie had ‘found something interesting’ and doubted this would be anything novel or inexplicable. Lemaie had been studying the latest images from the Helios telescope array, positioned at the L2 Lagrange point between Earth and the Moon. The two space-based scientists often got a preview of new images before closer analysis took place down on Earth.
Starlight could be analysed before and after an exoplanet crossed in front of a star to divulge its atmospheric make-up. The basic principle had been used effectively since 2018. Being in the habitable zone of orbit around its star was the first step in filtering the million or so candidate exoplanets for being Earth-like. To be in the habitable zone, a planet needed to be close enough to its star to have liquid water on its surface, but not so far away that water would freeze. ‘Find liquid water; find life’ was the guiding principle. The second criterion was whether it was rocky like Earth or a gas giant like Jupiter. After that, they needed to establish its atmospheric composition—not much good being a rocky, Earth-sized planet in the habitable zone if the atmosphere was like Venus, the surface would be far too hot. Thankfully, these tests had been achievable years ago. This left the final elusive question: did life exist and, more intriguingly, did intelligent life exist on these exoplanets? Nothing had been found by any of humanity’s exploration missions within the Solar system, aside from some fossilised evidence of microorganisms on Mars and Venus. And nothing, save for the handful of now defunct probes languishing in interstellar space, had left the Solar system. The size, energy requirements and sheer cost of interstellar probes had, until recently, made such feats seem insurmountable.
“This time it’s different—I can assure you of that, Scarlett,” Lemaie proclaimed confidently with a warm smile in his eyes. “The old starlight negation model dismissed Avendano-185f as a second-Earth candidate a long time ago. It told us the atmospheric composition is unsuitable … or so it said. That’s why we never used Helios to look at it in detail and crossed it off the shortlist. However,” he said, still smiling, “last month’s patch of the starlight negation model put it back on the shortlist. Today, Helios gave us its scheduled close-up of the planet. It looks like it does have an atmosphere very similar to Earth’s. But that’s not all...”
“Don’t tell me,” Scarlett said in jovially mocking tone, “there are little green men running around there?”
“Not exactly, but right colour at least. There’s green alright—take a look for yourself...” replied Lemaie.
“Vegetation?” Scarlett asked, now beginning to take him seriously, her eyes growing wider in the hope that this was real.
“Yes, I’m convinced it is, I’ve seen it with my own eyes—literally seen it!”
Helios, the Very Large Direct Imaging Array, was an array of optical telescopes many times more powerful than its Hubble and James Webb predecessors. It was simply the most formidable set of optics humanity had ever built. It was more than capable of reading the date of issue on a penny sitting on the surface of Mars.
“Ok, well, let me have a look,” Scarlett replied urgently.
What was revealed on the display was a sight to behold. A computer-enhanced visual image of a glowing blue and green orb in the inky blackness of space sat before her in super high resolution.
“It’s beautiful alright and so ... so similar to Earth,” she breathed, revealing her thoughts.
She could see the swirls of clouds and weather systems and the blue of oceans. Swathed across the equatorial parts of the land masses were dark green bands, grading to lighter green in the temperate zones to its north and south. Nine years before Helios was launched in 2050, the reflected photons from vegetation, sea and cloud on Avendano-185f started their voyage across interstellar space. After a fifteen-year journey those photons reached the light sensors of the Helios space telescope array. Shortly afterwards they became humanity's first glimpse of extrasolar life.
Chapter One
February 11, 2056 Western Global Alliance Summit, Seattle, WA
The Western Global Alliance was formed in 2031. The simmering Cold War II with a resurgent Russia turned hot in 2030. A private jet, carrying top US tech industry figures and politicians to a trade convention in Beijing, was shot down and Russia was found guilty. It was the straw after the straw that broke the camel’s back. A limited naval and air engagement followed that year with several proxy wars in the next decade-and-a-half. China remained officially neutral, preferring to concentrate on building her economy and technology base. The WGA developed from NATO and the old British Commonwealth countries, including India, and involved full military union plus extensive economic and political cooperation. The Russians had expanded their sphere of influence to once again include many of the old Soviet republics, installing compliant puppet regimes to do their bidding. Their loose alliance countering the WGA included many Latin American and African countries alienated by decades of perceived Western hypocrisy. In many cases, they also had a shared view of how a country should be run.
The powerhouse of the WGA scientific and space establishment was based in Seattle, Washington in the N
orth Western United States. The sprawling, high-tech WGA Headquarters housed research and space centres as well as the headquarters of the WGA Space Force. The scientists in Seattle took four weeks to examine the Avendano data before anyone was confident enough to call the snap conference. There were careers on the line and nobody wanted to call a summit based on unverified observations. The fact that world leaders and eminent scientists could free up their calendars at such short notice was testament to the historic gravity of their find. There was no doubt, this was real—a visual image of life on another planet fifteen lights years away.
Chief Scientist Dr Alan King reviewed the summary section of his team’s report, his rimless engineered glasses resting on his aquiline nose. The report was sent the previous week to delegates of the next day’s summit to be attended by the WGA member states’ leaders. The green colour seen by the Helios telescope array was definitely vegetation—there was no mistaking the spectroscopy. What no one had seen until closer analysis in Seattle were the hints of an oxygen-nitrogen based atmosphere and industrial pollutants in the differential spectroscopy map. This differential spectroscopy compared the light signature of the star before and after the exoplanet transited in front of it. This gave a tantalising clue to the possibility of civilisation; although King knew only too well that myriad natural causes could be the explanation. There had been other exoplanets with similar signs of oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide and methane—but nothing showing the chlorophyll of plant life. It was not just the colour that supported the vegetation theory, there was the pattern of green around the warmer equatorial belt and a distinct absence of green where several rain shadows inland from mountain ranges existed. This mutually-supporting evidence was what science was all about in King’s view, weight of theory based on weight of evidence. But when the consequences were so far-reaching it had to become the Alliance’s and humanity's top priority. Estimates of the planet’s mass were based on it being ten percent more dense and four percent larger in volume than Earth. It orbited in the so-called Goldilocks zone of Avendano, a G-class star of similar mass to the Sun. It was the same size as the Sun and the same class, so, although the gravity on Avendano-185f was higher than that on Earth, the light from its star would be yellow-white like the Sun’s. All the data pointed to the holy grail of exoplanet research—a potential second Earth.
King finished his coffee, ran his fingers through his collar-length grey hair, letting out a tired sigh. Ever since the findings from Helios came in four weeks before it had been non-stop sixteen-hour days. It was a small blessing, King supposed, that he’d been divorced from Carolyn for eighteen months now. Deep down though, he knew his first love, his work, was the cause not the antidote to their split. However, every cloud had a silver lining, thought King, as he surveyed the shapely behind of his PA Jenna Perez. Still a handsome, solid man of middle age, King was quite flattered when the attractive and wonderfully fit forty-two-year-old Jenna had shown an interest. Her dark, glossy, shoulder-length hair framed her elegant face complemented by high cheekbones and brown, almond-shaped eyes. King went crazy for her curvy, yet petite frame. In fact, he’d never slept with such a beautiful woman before, even in his younger days when he could attract more youthful women than Jenna. She was recently divorced herself after a long, childless marriage to a high school sweetheart. She’d decided to pack her bags to start afresh two years ago, transferring from her career as a personal assistant at an aerospace firm in Texas.
King had been seeing Jenna for over three months now but, quite understandably, she did not want to take the next step and move in with her boss. And neither did he. Busy, complicated lives that didn't need commitment. King wasn’t really sure of the consequences of sleeping with a subordinate, but he was sure they were nothing either of them would welcome. So their dalliance remained secret, and that was fine by them both.
Too worn-out to contemplate another lovemaking session that night, King checked with Jenna on last minute preparations for the conference there. He was due to present to the most powerful leaders in the world tomorrow and being of a competence-type personality, he was paranoid about getting it just right. The office in which King sat was open-plan and egalitarian in its allocation of space. It was a hive of activity as his team repeatedly went over the facts. They looked into alternative scenarios and sought out evidence from other sources to backup or refute their discovery. It was all a lot faster track than the academically-minded research team were used to, but its historic gravity called for the conference sooner rather than later. Well trusted, security cleared professors from two US and two European universities had reviewed the data too and found the same landmark conclusions. King reviewed the real agenda for the two day conference—the public agenda was very different, ostensibly about the WGA alliance’s anti-ballistic missile defence. The question at the top of the real conference agenda was what to do next. Decisions needed to be made. Who should be brought on board? The old Cold War enemies: the Russians and their allies? The officially neutral but hardly-trusted Chinese? Should radio messages of peace and cooperation be directed to Avendano taking fifteen years to get there and another fifteen for any reply to come back? Big uncertainties remained. There may be no reply if it were just forests, grassland and non-sentient or pre-industrial civilisation. What was the state of play with the Faster-Than-Light technology? Rumour told that it had been discovered over a decade ago, but kept top secret until recently.
Knowing only the basics, King was glad he wasn’t responsible for presenting on the FTL drive—that’d be Engineering Design Chief, Adam Chesters. Chesters and his team were charged with applying the FTL drive technology to future probe and spacecraft designs. King, as a security-cleared staffer, had at least a rudimentary grasp of the FTL drive if not the details of its operation and underlying theory. In 2054, two years earlier, FTL travel was demonstrated openly for the first time in the orbiting WGA Citadel lab. The method, which bent space-time to a singularity, allowed a nano-machine or other object to be passed through it to another place. Could it be made reliable? Could it be scaled up to something useful? Would it be safe for organic life? All unknown territory. It was rumoured that the discovery of FTL was the real reason for the Helios telescope’s fast tracking. With the means to travel to the stars, the Alliance would need a better way to observe planets worth going to.
It was 6pm and some of the staffers with families had already gone home while others made last minute preparations for the next day. For Dr Alan King, there was literally nothing more to check, nothing more to rehearse in the remaining time before tomorrow. For once King would satisfy himself with a mere twelve-hour day and try to get a good night’s rest. Jenna, his assistant and lover, had other ideas and they spent the night acting on the carnal desires still burning hot after three months together.
***
With energy levels propped up for the morning by caffeine, King gave a sharp, if a little fast paced, view of all they had learned. He concluded his talk. After sitting engrossed in Dr King’s presentation for the last hour, US President Stephen Powell spoke first. He addressed King, who was standing aside a large presentation wall.
“Thank you, Dr King. I don’t have to tell you all that this discovery will change the course of history,” he said, with the other world leaders and WGA staff assembled in person and virtually watching and listening. “What I understand is that this is a unique find. That out of the one million exoplanets so far discovered this is what we have been looking for: life on an Earth-like planet. Is that correct, Dr King?” asked the president.
“Yes, Mr President.”
“And furthermore you and your team are highly confident in your findings?” the president continued.
“We are, Mr President. Experts from the security cleared pool of university and observatory associates fully concur. As detailed in Section Five of the report, sir,” replied King.
President Powell surveyed the reaction and body language around the long confe
rence table. He’d read the report the week prior and been briefed by his science chief but still found the discovery astonishing. At the conference table sat his Secretary of Defence, Diego Romero, the British Prime Minister, Michael Carlton, and leaders and representatives from some of the thirty-five countries of the WGA. Those not there in person were there virtually as 3D holographic renderings. Against the walls sat aides and more junior staffers. Only the largest meeting room in the glass and steel WGA research facility would do. The reaction seemed split between enchantment at hearing these revelations and a pent up urge to ask questions in the limited bandwidth the plenary session offered. The WGA Space Force chief, General Fred McIver, was chairing. When it was clear that Dr King had more to say, General McIver waved him on to go ahead.
“So,” continued Dr King, “we anticipate that the first questions on everyone’s mind are: what’s the right way forward? Specifically: who do we tell and how do we investigate further?”
Nods and the body language of agreement around the table signalled that no one objected to this line of questions—or, at least, there were no objections strong enough to interrupt King.
"As you will see from Section Seven of the report, we have made some recommendations. Fundamentally, we do not believe that this thing can be kept secret. It's just too big. It’s going to involve too many people and too many agencies. Our proposal is to be as open as we can with the other space faring powers: the Russians and their allies and the Chinese."
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