“Notice anything about the surface?” Pogo said.
Immediately behind Pogo, Lucas tried to halt but fell on his face, a victim of a high center of gravity. The others helped him up; no damage, thank God. It was a real concern, since, from his perch on the front of rover Buzz, Zack could see that there was less snow beneath their boots and wheels.
More amazingly, there was also none of the expected gray, lunarlike soil. What they were walking on, what stretched before them to the cleft, was a flat, cracked, and weathered surface that reminded Zack of an ancient Roman roadway.
“Venture and Houston,” he said, trying to hold his helmet cam steady. “Are you getting this?”
Houston only copied, but Tea said, “Jeez, all you need is a welcome mat.” When she added, “Be careful, baby,” he smiled like a teenager with his first crush; maybe she did still like him.
They pressed forward, the cleft now clearly visible as an opening. “Not only do we have some kind of pavement below us,” Pogo said, “there’s obvious machining on the opening.”
Zack could see it, too: scarring and scraping that looked too regular to have been made by hand tools. And there was something else—
“Anyone feeling any different?” he asked.
“You mean, other than extremely nervous?” Lucas said, violating every unwritten rule concerning astronaut demeanor.
“I’m getting better traction on my boots,” Natalia said. “And sled feels heavier!” Zack had noticed that under stress, Natalia’s otherwise-excellent English began to shed its articles.
That confirmed Zack’s perceptions. “The rover’s not sliding as much.”
“Could gravity be increasing?” Lucas asked.
“Could it be that we’re on firmer footing rather than sliding on ice?” Pogo snapped.
“Houston and Venture, we offer that as food for thought,” Zack said, short-circuiting a pointless debate. “We are inside the cleft now.”
They had all moved from sunlight to darkness. “Lights going on,” Zack said. Rover Buzz had been designed to operate in lunar night, so it had a set of honest-to-God headlights.
“We have portables,” Natalia said, bending to the sled. “Give us a moment.”
As she and Lucas went to work removing several lights and stands, Pogo returned to the rover. “What do you think?” he said. “Leave the rover here, or take it into the cave?”
“We need equipment, we might need shelter. As long as there’s room for it, I say drive on.”
Houston concurred. Then Pogo said, “I’m having comm problems. Going to Channel B.”
His voice sounded different in Zack’s earphones. “What do you think of the Coalition bringing portable lights, rappelling gear, and a sled?”
Zack had been wondering the same thing. “They had some idea they were going spelunking.”
“I wonder what else they know that we don’t?”
“Lucas says he’s nervous.”
“Let’s hope the lights are the only tool we actually need.”
After a pair of lights was set up, all four explorers took a meal and rest break. Elapsed EVA time was two hours, not in itself a problem. Typical station EVAs ran seven to eight hours. But here the astronauts were working in gravity, slight but nevertheless real. And not one of them had really rested for today’s expanded activities. Zack, in fact, had already spent an hour on the surface dealing with Yvonne’s injury.
And who knew when any of them would be able to stand down. At the moment, the into-Keanu EVA looked open-ended.
Realizing that dragging the sled across the “pavement” would be difficult, Zack offered to move the Coalition’s gear to the racks on rover Buzz. “Canny,” Pogo said. “We move more easily, and we get to see what else they’re carrying.”
If that was Pogo’s goal, he was disappointed. The Coalition gear consisted of half a dozen unmarked containers, although Natalia donned a set of microfocals that attached to her helmet. “For geological study,” she said, volunteering an explanation without being asked.
With the exit lights growing smaller behind them, now relying on Buzz’s headlamps, the explorers probed deeper into the cleft. Zack walked point, in Pogo’s phrase, while his fellow astronaut drove Buzz, and the Coalition partners flanked him.
“Comm is getting ratty,” Pogo said. This time he wasn’t kidding. The standard VHF signals wouldn’t travel far through Keanu’s rock, and even the Coalition’s cable was suffering dropouts. It was obvious from the spool that they were almost out of cable, too.
“How deep is this thing?” Zack asked.
Lucas aimed the radar gun. “Maybe a hundred meters to go.”
“Then what?” Pogo said, not bothering to hide his irritation.
“Ah, it’s very confusing.”
“How confusing can it be? It’s a hole or it’s a wall.”
Natalia came to Lucas’s rescue. “It looks like a junction. Branches.”
That possibility was as terrifying as it was exciting. “Houston, Venture , Zack. We might be coming to a fork in the road at the same time we go dark.”
This time both Houston and Venture had the same firm reaction. Weldon said, “You’re closing in on three hours elapsed EVA time. Hold at the junction.”
Bangalore and Taj were even more insistent with the Coalition pair.
There had been no further change in the environment, aside from a general sense that he was getting heavier. (How heavy, ultimately? If they reached the equivalent of Earth gravity, they would barely be able to move; the EVA suits weighed more than a human being. Rover Buzz wouldn’t move far, either. Its suspension had been engineered for lunar gravity.)
The same “paving stones” lined the floor of the cleft. The walls and ceiling had the same scraped look. How long ago had this been carved? Zack wondered. Ten thousand years ago? About the same time human beings were figuring out how to cultivate crops?
A hundred thousand? When humans were barely out of Africa?
A million? When there were no recognizable human beings on Earth?
Maybe ten million—maybe longer!
He could hear Lucas and Natalia patiently debating their situation with Taj in Brahma, and Nayar at Bangalore. “How can we stop here? What have we learned?” Lucas said. The young Brazilian clearly had not absorbed the astronaut rule book, either about admitting fear or having open debates with mission control.
But Zack was glad he was along. Every group needed someone who would say what the others secretly thought.
More troubling, it appeared that Natalia’s EVA suit was overheating, a common problem with the Russian-built unit. So far it was likely to be an inconvenience rather than a disaster for the EVA.
Zack motioned Pogo forward, almost beyond the range of Buzz’s lamps.
“Houston, Venture, Zack. How do I read?”
“I’ve got you,” Tea said. A few seconds later, there was a static burp, presumably Houston.
“Tea, what would you be doing if you were here?”
“Call me chicken. I might camp out in the rover.”
“I hear you, but I’m too wound up to get any real rest,” Zack said. “While our friends are catching up on news from home, I think we’re going to recon this junction.”
Pogo was so excited he trotted ahead of Zack. “Take it easy, cowboy.”
“Come on, Zack! I mean, look at the situation: Keanu slows down and goes into orbit. It’s got a big old entryway at the logical landing site. Doesn’t it all add up to them wanting us to say hello?”
Zack had known Pogo for almost a decade—knew him to be religious, a straight arrow . . . and also, in spite of his physical chops and manly skills, a bit of a geek. The Air Force jock had read far more sci-fi than Zack, who gave up quickly on movies and books when presented with space battles that looked like aerial engagements from World War II. “I’ll give you this,” he said, huffing and puffing. “It’s what we signed up to do.”
They were deep into the junction now,
a terminus of sorts where the main shaft ended, and at least four passages branched off at different angles. Pogo suddenly disappeared around the right one, leaving Zack alone and, except for his helmet light, in the dark.
“Pogo, you can’t get ahead of me like that—”
Zack found him a few meters into the next passage, frozen in what struck Zack as an awkward posture, his head tilted back as far as it would go in the suit. “Okay,” Zack said, catching his partner and tapping him on the shoulder.
Pogo only said, “Look up there.”
Directly in front of them stood a marker of some kind, a stone plate embedded in the wall of the passage several feet above eye level.
All Zack could say was, “Oh.”
The plate showed a gauzy helix of some kind, monochrome, at least as far as they could tell by their helmet lights. “If you move your head, it changes,” Pogo said. Zack did better than that . . . he actually stepped to one side.
The helix seemed to expand. “It’s 3-D,” he said. He raised his hand, hoping to see it pass through the image, if that was what it was. But he couldn’t reach it.
“It looks like a model of a galaxy,” Pogo said.
This was Zack’s area of expertise, and he knew that current galactic models were less helical and more spherical. But they had changed once in his lifetime; no reason to assume they wouldn’t change again. Besides—
“Is that a marker of some kind?” If you accepted the idea that the 3-D image showed a galaxy, a bright dot was placed halfway between the end of one spiral arm and the fuzzy center.
“Maybe it’s their version of the Voyager record.” One of the first deep-space probes back in the 1970s had carried a laser disc filled with music, art, samples of what passed for human culture . . . just on the slim chance some alien intelligence might pick it up.
An alien intelligence that also possessed a laser disc player, which would put them far ahead of anyone on Earth. Zack knew all about the challenges of creating any sort of message that would last hundreds or thousands of years . . . it wasn’t just content, it was delivery system. “Maybe they’re telling us where they came from,” Zack said.
“Who, exactly, is ‘they’ ? ”
They heard voices on the radio—Lucas and Natalia were trying to catch up. “We’re in the right passage,” Zack told them, just as flickering shadows alerted him to their arrival.
They stopped and stared. “Welcome to the next sign,” Pogo said.
Lucas sounded annoyed. “What sign?”
Zack explained, “He just means, the next bit of evidence that we are encountering an alien life-form.”
“Ah, evidence of life-form,” Lucas said. “Not the life-form itself.”
“Not yet,” Pogo said.
“What do you see?” Zack asked the new arrivals.
“It almost looks like DNA helix,” Natalia said.
Now that Zack stood back, he recognized Natalia’s suggestion as a possibility. He had grown up with DNA models that consisted of tiny colored balls arranged in a double helix . . . but suppose a more advanced view was more complex and chaotic? Might a DNA model resemble a galaxy?
“Nah,” Pogo said. “A galaxy makes more sense.”
“To us, maybe,” Zack said. “But if it’s DNA, it might be a way of saying, ‘If this is you, come on in.’” He suddenly wished for direct, real-time communication with Houston and the Home Team. Wait until they see this—
As Natalia carefully recorded images from every possible angle, Lucas jumped, trying to touch the marker. Top heavy, in low gravity, he really only waved at it, but one thing startled Zack.
He thought he heard a faint scrape as Lucas’s boots reconnected with the pavement. Sound? Impossible!
He stomped his own boots on the pavement. All he learned was that it made his feet hurt. “Did anyone hear anything?”
“Why would we be able to hear?” Pogo said.
“Because we have a trace atmosphere,” Natalia said. She was holding a small instrument that reminded Zack of a light meter—a portable barometer! “Still some way to go before it gets as dense as that of Mars, but measurable.”
“Composition?”
“This only shows me pressure.”
“Could it be from the rover?” Rover Buzz’s pressurized module would leak some of its air; other pieces of equipment, such as the fuel cells, inevitably emitted gas, too.
“Not unless your rover has a serious leak,” Natalia said. “Even then, I think this space is too large.” She was being kind. A moment’s rough calculation proved to Zack that there was no way the rover’s outgassing—or a dozen rovers’ outgassings—would account for a pressure reading of any kind.
“Hey,” Pogo was saying. “Do you see anything strange on the plate?”
He had moved from spot to spot, experiencing the changing views possible from different angles and heights. “Our marker has been damaged.”
Zack looked closely. The plate behind the 3-D projection appeared to have been partially eaten away, as if splashed with acid. The edges of the damaged area were unexpectedly regular, however. “That’s strange. Someone’s been naughty here.”
“Maybe we aren’t the first to find this sign,” Natalia said.
“You mean we’re looking at two alien races?” That was Patrick. “This is getting even cooler!”
“Are we sure we’re even dealing with one?” Lucas turned away from the marker, as if it made him nervous.
“Let’s let the experts decide and decipher,” Zack said, not especially eager to give up the lead role—but not wishing to have his team waste time debating when there was clearly more exploration to be done. “It would help if they could see this.”
It took half an hour to restring the cable and bring the camera to the site of the marker. As the startling images traveled at light speed along the cable, back to Brahma and Venture, and then, two seconds later, to Houston, Bangalore, and the world, Pogo gestured at the high ceiling—higher than a basketball hoop—and broad passage.
“Whoever or whatever they are, they’re big suckers.”
This is so frustrating!!! I used to be able to watch shuttle and ISS EVAs minute by minute! How come we’re only seeing a few reports every couple of hours?
POSTER UK BEN AT NEOMISSION.COM
Shuttle and station missions used TDRS satellites that provided almost constant coverage and communications. Destiny and Venture rely on their own antennae. Welcome to flight Beyond Earth Orbit, fan boy.
POSTER JIM FROM KSC, SAME SITE
Tea Nowinski’s father had an expression that, unfortunately, perfectly described his daughter’s job during the EVA into Vesuvius Vent. Forced to serve as the link between Zack and Patrick and mission control, she was “the meat in the sandwich.” Squashed, covered in mustard, not a pleasant place to be.
In fact, she also had to serve the same role for Dennis Chertok and his commander aboard Brahma. For the past four hours, all she had done was flip switches to change frequencies on the radio, back and forth from the direct link to Zack and Patrick, and at times Lucas and Natalia, then another channel to Houston (formerly Weldon, now the Stay-2 shift director Josh Kennedy), then a third channel to Taj in Brahma.
All the while watching the startling imagery that flickered on the small screen on Venture’s control panel: the view from the bottom of Vesuvius Vent; the pavement; the cleft; the dark, forbidding passage.
The marker.
Maybe it was better that she was so busy, or she would have been paralyzed at the implications . . . that she and Yvonne and Dennis and Venture and Taj and Brahma were sitting not on the icy/rocky surface of a Near-Earth Object, but on the hull of a giant interstellar spacecraft.
And possibly a few kilometers—or meters!—from its crew!
She was only able to hear fragments of the reaction in Houston, the automatic use of the stoic word copy to acknowledge the latest bombshell, broken by Kennedy’s occasional honest blurt of “Wow” or “Oh man.”
What was going on with the Home Team? For that matter, what was her father thinking, back home in Woodland Hills?
What was really going through Zack’s mind a kilometer from here?
She wanted to be dealing with those matters, not feeding Yvonne Hall and checking her dressing, or searching out bandages and medical gear and food and water for Chertok, all the while struggling with the question of what the cosmonaut was seeing, and whether he should see it.
Her immediate goal now, at EVA plus four hours, was to get Dennis out of Venture.
Yvonne rested in a hammock stretched across the rear of the Venture cabin at nose height. There was another set of attach points even higher up—it was where Yvonne was originally supposed to sleep. (Venture’s main cabin was taller—four meters in height—than it was wide, a design necessitated by its dual use as a vehicle capable of lifting off a planetary surface. In lunar gravity, there was no danger in falling out of a hammock eight feet off the ground.) But that would have put her out of reach. Even so, Dennis had had to stand on a stool to perform his basic surgery.
“I have done all I can do,” Dennis announced. “She will be stable for at least a day. In this gravity, possibly more. But my professional recommendation is that you return her to Earth at first opportunity.” He smiled to show that he was aware of the political and operational challenges of that decision.
“I’ll tell Houston.”
He indicated the airlock. “I will need some help suiting up.”
“Get started and I’ll be right with you.” As the cosmonaut slipped through the hatch into the next chamber, Tea climbed the stool to have a look at Yvonne. “How’re you feeling?”
“About like you’d expect.”
Tea had conflicting views of her fellow astronaut. She had known Yvonne for a decade—had actually served as the astronaut in charge of training Yvonne’s group of candidates, so she had seen the young engineer’s baby steps into the program. She had proved to be middle-of-the-pack in most regards . . . she lacked the operational strengths of some of her colleagues—those who had come to NASA from military units—and sometimes let her temper show.
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