She stepped forward, across the thin layer that covered the ground in front of the wall. She had to plant each footfall carefully so she didn’t slip. She turned and gestured for Stevens to stay back, on the dry ground. He looked more than ready to comply.
Another step, another, a third, and she was there, at the wall. She reached out and touched a long stalactite of ice, as thick around as her waist where it hung from a ledge over her head. Her glove was well insulated and she couldn’t feel its cold, but she could imagine it, imagine the way it would burn to touch that ice with bare fingers.
She looked up and saw that the ledge wasn’t level—it sloped down to one side. She made her way to her left and then reached up, looking for handholds. The ice was rough and varied enough that she found purchase. She hauled herself upward, swinging her aching leg up to get over the edge; then with incredible care and slowness she climbed up until she was standing on top of the wall.
Her lights speared out ahead of her. The mist had mostly cleared, and she could see for hundreds of meters. Beyond the wall of ice lay… more ice. As far as she could see. Away from the wall, it settled down into long gentle hills and valleys, with liquid water pooling in the low points. Nothing marred the white surface, no rocks or plants or any sign of life, much less intelligence. She thought of the ice valleys of Antarctica, which had remained untouched for millions of years before they were first seen by human explorers. Great frozen deserts where nothing lived.
She turned and looked back at Stevens, who stood in a little oasis of light a dozen meters behind her. She could barely see his face through his helmet, but she could read his body language just fine. He looked hopeful, expectant. He was waiting to hear what she’d found up there, on top of the wall.
A deep convulsive spasm ran through her chest, made her back shiver. It wasn’t a sob, but it was something like it. An upwelling of anguish and emotion. An inescapable, existential feeling.
She kicked at the ice at her feet, sending chips of it flying into the air. She kicked again and nearly tripped, nearly fell backward off the wall, but caught herself in time. She kicked at the ice again, and again.
“Jansen?” he called.
She rose to her full height. She wished she could wipe her mouth, but her helmet was in the way. She gave the ice one last, vicious kick.
“There’s nothing here!” she cried.
HANDSHAKE PROTOCOL
ROY MCALLISTER: We remained in constant contact with Orion throughout the period while Jansen and Stevens were inside 2I. As frustrated as I might have been with her refusal to follow my orders, I was desperate to know what she found inside. I know that General Kalitzakis was waiting with as much anticipation as I was. This might be our best chance to find out what 2I’s crew wanted with Earth.
Where the hell were they? Rao checked the time. Jansen and Stevens had been gone only a few hours, but… how long was this supposed to take? Every minute that passed with no word from them felt like torture. If something had happened to them—how would anyone ever know? They would just disappear, and there would be nothing they could do about it. She knew Hawkins wouldn’t risk going over there to look for them.
It would have been easy for Rao to spend the entire time in the cupola, watching 2I and waiting for them to come back. It was very much what she wanted to do. So she forced herself not to do that. Instead she headed back to the dormitory section of the HabLab, where she would be less tempted to stare out the windows.
She tried to focus on Orion’s primary mission by running a series of experiments with the tunable laser mounted on the front of the HabLab. The thought was that perhaps 2I’s builders didn’t use radio waves for communication, so they would try to send a signal using various colors of visible light.
The main problem—as far as keeping her distracted went—was that the experiment was almost totally automated. The laser drew a series of shapes on 2I’s surface: a circle, a triangle, a series of conic sections. Perfect shapes that never appeared in nature, shapes that only intelligent beings would recognize. Anything to try to get a reaction. When it finished that pattern, it changed color—it was currently in the green part of the spectrum, around five hundred nanometers—and started again. All she had to do was watch the output log from the laser and make sure the equipment didn’t break down. Meanwhile cameras on the HabLab’s outer skin swept back and forth, looking for any sign that 2I had responded with its own light show.
It didn’t. She hadn’t expected it would. She scrolled through the camera logs, looking for even the slightest change in the light reflected by 2I, but there was nothing there. The numbers changed, but never in meaningful ways, and—
“Soup’s on.”
She flinched so hard she heard her neck pop. Rao whirled around, wide-eyed, and saw that Hawkins had stuck his head through the soft hatch between the wardroom and the dormitory.
Right. It had been several hours since Stevens and Jansen left. It must be their scheduled time to eat.
“I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“It’s fine,” she said. She stirred herself, pushed away her thoughts. “I’m sorry, I’ll be right there.” She saved the analysis she’d been working on and then followed him into the wardroom. ARCS had heated up two food tubes. It was clutching a handrail with one hand, holding a tube in each of the others. She grabbed one of them at random and started to kick back toward the dormitory.
As she passed by one of the wardroom’s screens, though, she saw something weird. The screen was full of a jumble of random characters.
At first she thought it must be output data from Hawkins’s experiments with the multiwavelength antenna. But no, that should be a time-stamped log pretty much like the one the tunable laser used. This looked more like when a cat walked across a keyboard, honestly.
She kicked over to the screen and reached to touch it and call up a diagnostic app, but before she could get there Hawkins waved her away. “That’s mine,” he said.
Something was wrong. Hawkins was the kind of guy who prided himself on his self-control. His steadfast refusal to show his emotions on his face. But his eyes were wild now. Bright and out of control, and there was a faint sheen of sweat on his forehead.
Something had happened, she thought. It couldn’t be news about Jansen and Stevens. He couldn’t possibly be such a monster as to keep that from her. Then—what?
“What is this?” she asked, looking at the screen. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
“It’s encrypted. A message from Joint Space Operations Command.”
She frowned. “You mean the space force? Aren’t all of our communications supposed to come through NASA?”
“Not this. This is—it’s part of my job. My mission specialization.”
He reached over and cleared the screen.
She moved away from him, intending to head back to the dormitory. To get back to work. She had enough on her mind without this new mystery.
“Rao,” he said. “Hold on.”
She stopped by the hatch and looked back at him but didn’t say a word.
“Look, I know you and I have never really been—”
“Please don’t say close,” she told him.
He gave her a sad smile. “Fine. The truth is, we’ve barely spoken a dozen words to each other this whole mission. But you need to know this. I think you need to hear it.”
She could tell from the look on his face that what he meant was that he needed to talk to somebody about it. Whatever news he’d received from Earth had shaken him so much it had broken right through his tough guy veneer.
Which made her desperately want to hear whatever it was.
There are some calls you have to take.
McAllister stank, after days in the control room. He really would have liked to shower and shave. He needed sleep, and he desperately needed to eat something, even though worry had tied his stomach in knots. He wasn’t given time to do those things, however.
General Kalitzakis had ini
tiated a conference call, and everyone was getting patched in. The Joint Chiefs of Staff. McAllister’s own boss, the general administrator of NASA. Several members of the National Space Council, and the national security advisor.
Everyone.
Which meant the news had to be bad.
McAllister dropped into a chair in his office and touched the device on his ear, and a chime announced that he had joined the call. It was voice only, presumably so it could be kept tightly encrypted. Everyone was talking at once, and they all sounded scared.
“You promised us, General, that you would have a coherent plan by now,” the advisor said, sounding like a manager giving an employee a terrible performance review.
“Give the man a chance to talk!” That was the secretary of defense, he thought. After that he didn’t even try to identify the various voices.
“Are you sure about these numbers?”
“Nobody’s sure about anything! But we can’t just bring this to—”
“We need better data than this.”
“We have the data! What we need is solutions!”
All the voices fell silent at once, muted by whoever was controlling the call. There was a click, and a series of tones—McAllister knew that meant the connection was being tested, to make sure it was secure.
Then a new voice, a very calm, quiet voice, announced that the president of the United States had joined the call.
McAllister sat up straight at his desk, even though no one could see him.
The president didn’t speak. Everyone knew the protocol here. Kalitzakis would present his news in the clearest, simplest terms he could, and then he would wait in case the president had any questions.
“Mr. President, sir,” Kalitzakis began. He sounded as tired as McAllister felt. “I represent the Joint Space Operations Command. We have been monitoring the object known as 2I as it approaches Earth. And we have been looking for a military option, in case it turns out to be hostile. Today we finished modeling what would happen given a direct nuclear strike on the object.”
Kalitzakis cleared his throat. Was he stalling for time, or just trying to collect himself? McAllister hadn’t expected good news, but now he started to grow worried. Frightened, even.
From the beginning he’d planned Orion’s mission around one certainty. That if his crew couldn’t make contact with 2I, or if it turned aggressive, then Kalitzakis was waiting. Waiting with a plan for how they would fight back. How they would destroy 2I before it could reach Earth.
Now—
“Mr. President, all of our models agree. The effect of a nuclear strike against 2I would be negligible.”
McAllister’s heart pounded in his chest. He couldn’t accept this. No, Kalitzakis had to have the numbers wrong, or—
“We ran multiple different simulations, all based on the most up-to-date information NASA and our ground-based imagery could provide. What we discovered is this. The superstructures on 2I’s hull are highly effective at absorbing energy. Even the energy of a thermonuclear explosion. Our largest warheads would damage 2I, but we can’t guarantee they would even penetrate its hull. The outcome from multiple coordinated strikes didn’t turn out any better—the initial impact would simply create a large cloud of orbital debris, which would mitigate the effect of secondary and tertiary weapon strikes.”
There was silence on the line for several seconds. Kalitzakis was perhaps letting the meaning of what he’d said sink in. Or maybe he was struggling for words. McAllister’s heart went out to the poor man—called on the carpet like this, before the most powerful leader on Earth, he had to tell him how much that power was worth.
“We have, of course, not given up. We’re looking at alternative weapons systems. While nuclear weapons seemed like our best bet, we are currently modeling what we could achieve with kinetic impactors, particle beam weapons and THELs. That’s tactical high-energy lasers, sir. We’re even trying to model the weapons systems of other nations—specifically, the Chinese have an electromagnetic railgun in orbit that could deliver a high-speed payload outside our current capabilities, but—”
Kalitzakis’s voice was cut off abruptly. McAllister knew that meant the president wanted to ask a question.
“What exactly are you saying, General?”
“I’m saying,” Hawkins told her, speaking very slowly—as if he couldn’t believe the words himself, “that we currently don’t have a weapon that can destroy 2I.”
Rao floated there in the middle of the HabLab. Suddenly she was very aware of the expanse of space all around her.
“You’re saying if 2I attacks the Earth—if it just power-dives right into the Midwest—there’s nothing we can do to stop it. We’re defenseless.”
“We’re not going to stop looking for solutions,” Hawkins said, holding tight to the console in front of him. “No one’s going to just give up and surrender. But—it doesn’t look good.”
She’d never really thought about 2I being hostile. She had considered it such a remote possibility that she hadn’t given it any of her mental time.
Then again—2I was moving toward Earth inexorably. Without responding to any of their communications. Under those circumstances—
Had she been hopelessly naive?
“So… what do we do?” she asked.
“We try diplomatic options.” He scowled as if he realized how flippant that sounded. “Sorry—look, that’s what Orion’s mission was all along, right? Make contact with the aliens. Convince them to talk to us, and maybe not kill us all.” He turned and looked to the side, and Rao knew he was looking in the direction of 2I, if only in his mind. Looking at where Jansen and Stevens had gone.
“We have no idea what’s going on over there right now,” he said. “Maybe they’ve made contact. Maybe KSpace has been talking to the aliens this whole time.”
“Maybe,” Rao said.
It was possible.
SURFACE CONTACT
KSpace Wanderer, acknowledge.”
“Commander Foster, please come in.”
“This is Jansen of the NASA Orion. Please acknowledge.”
“We are at the discontinuity in the ice, on a direct bearing from the location of your base camp. Can you please advise as to your location? We’re here to help.”
“Crew of the Wanderer, if you can make any signal—send up a flare. Ping our suits. Shout if you can hear us. If you’re unable to respond…”
Jansen hung her head and closed her eyes and for a moment just let herself despair. Let her brain go where it wanted to go.
Then she took a deep breath and opened her eyes again.
“Come in, crew of the Wanderer. Come in, please.”
AMY TARBELIAN, FLIGHT PSYCHOLOGIST: There have been a number of studies on the effect of prolonged darkness on the human psyche. The prognoses are not good. I remember reading in college about the “prisoner’s cinema,” which is a poetic way of describing how inmates in solitary confinement will begin to hallucinate within hours when they suffer a total lack of visual stimulus. We evolved to live in a well-lit world, and when you take that away from us, we deteriorate rapidly.
“What do they want?” Jansen asked.
Stevens had been sucking on a tube full of sugar water that snaked up inside his helmet. They’d been inside 2I for nearly five hours, and he was starving. The syrupy water did little to alleviate his hunger, but at least he was getting some calories.
The two of them were taking another rest, this time facing each other.
“Who wants what now?” he asked.
“The aliens,” Jansen said. “The people who built 2I. They planned a mission that would take thousands of years to complete. They sent this thing out into the galaxy, clearly hoping it would wash up… somewhere. At some nice, friendly planet. Why? What did they hope to achieve, sending us an empty ship?”
Stevens stared at her. “You think I have an actual answer?”
Jansen shook her head. She fiddled with the knobs on the front of her
suit, adjusting her radio. After a second she let out a frustrated grunt and got back to her feet.
“Listen,” Stevens said, “I’ve been thinking. I’ve been thinking we should go back.”
“Give up, you mean.”
Stevens scrambled to his feet. “No, no, not—I mean, temporarily. Just temporarily. If we go back, though, maybe we can accomplish something. I was thinking about—well, don’t call it experiments. Call it strategies. Strategies for finding Wanderer’s crew.”
She didn’t scoff at the idea, at least not right away.
“We can bring the tunable laser in here,” he said. “Mount it up by the airlock. We could use it to scan the entire interior of the drum. Look for anything the shape of a human body—”
“You think they’re dead,” she said.
Stevens grimaced. “I didn’t say that! Look, how about—I mean, I have other ideas. There’s a 3-D printer on the Wanderer. We could use it to build little robots. Rovers, like NASA sends to Mars, right? Little rovers that could do the searching for us. That has to be better than us just walking around, hoping we see them.”
Jansen walked back over to the ice wall and climbed its face again. When she was standing on its top, she turned and looked down at him. “We have plenty of air and water in our suits. We can stay here another three hours before we need to turn back.”
“Are you even listening to me?” he said. “There’s no way we can search this whole place!”
Stevens’s heart sank. She wasn’t listening.
“Stay down there and rest awhile longer,” she told him. “I’m going to try raising Foster again, from up here. In a minute we’ll get moving again.”
“Sure,” he said. “You’re the boss.”
AMY TARBELIAN, FLIGHT PSYCHOLOGIST: The records of experiments with people living for prolonged periods in caves are even more chilling to read. Without light, our circadian rhythms quickly get decalibrated and we lose all sense of time. You can sleep for an entire day and think you’ve just taken a quick catnap. You can be down underground for months and think it was just weeks. Artificial light doesn’t help, because you can turn that on and off. If you take away the difference between night and day, you start pushing the human mind right to the brink of insanity.
The Last Astronaut Page 13
