“And if we don’t, we have bigger problems,” Sawyer said. “What else?”
“What do you think of cutting the equipment on the fliers? There’s a lot of sensor gear there. If we cut out either the multi-spectral scanner or the ground imaging radar that’s a good percent of our weight right there.”
Sawyer considered this. The fliers were electric ultralight aircraft, powered by photovoltaic film in the wings, and modified from a commercially available model to fold up for storage in the lander. She hated to lose any of the sensor gear. “If we take out one of those, could we rig the flier for an extra passenger? Might come in handy.”
Fred’s brow furrowed as he thought about it. “It’d be heavier with three people, but it might be workable. We want to make sure we have margin. The radar is heavier, and the biologists will care more about the multi-spectral anyway.”
Personally Sawyer cared more about the ground radar. Overlying vegetation, which the radar could see through, often hid interesting geophysical details. But the multi-spectral scanner could also reveal things about surface chemistry. And it didn’t hurt to keep the biologists happy—she winced as she remembered who the new lead biologist was—it was the fact that there were clear signs of life in the Alpha Centauri system that was driving the mission, after all. “Okay,” she said, “let’s do the biologists a favor.”
“Speaking of biologists, I have a training session with them tomorrow. We’re going on a field trip.”
“You’re teaching them geology?”
“Yes and no. Surprisingly, there’s not a paleontologist in the bunch.”
“But I thought—”
“Oh, sure, they know some, especially in their own specialties, but no field paleontologists. They want me to show them what to look for in terms of possible fossil-bearing formations. Actually, I think they wanted you, but you’ve got your hands full.”
“Tell me about it. So what did you have in mind?”
“A couple of ten- or fifteen-kilometer hikes through some interesting formations. I’m limiting it to what’s most likely to be in range of the landing areas, so nothing too arctic.” Orbital mechanics meant keeping the landings away from the poles to maximize their payload.
“Okay. By the way, I don’t know when he’s due Earth-side, he may already be back, but George Darwin is now leading the biology team. He’s Grainger’s replacement. If he’s back he’ll be joining your field trips, he needs time with his team.”
“Darwin?” Tyrell’s expression suggested that he wanted to add some comment but wasn’t sure if he should. He settled for saying: “He’s been on the Moon for what, several months now? He won’t have his Earth legs back yet. I’ll go easy on him.”
“Don’t.” At Tyrell’s startled look, she realized that had sounded more mean-spirited than she’d intended. “The planets we’re going to are Earth sized, and we’ll be spending two weeks or so in zero gee before we get there. He’s going to need to rebuild his muscles before that. He’d tell you the same thing.” Knowing Darwin’s stubborn pride, she had no doubt of that.
Tyrell still seemed skeptical, but nodded. “All right. I hope for his sake he’s been keeping up his exercise program.”
“He was a fanatic about it on the way to Mars. The man’s a born overachiever.”
“And you’re not?” Fred said, then looked down and mumbled “Sorry”.
Sawyer wasn’t offended. “Yes, I guess I am. That’s probably why we got along so well,” she with a wry smile.
Chapter 4: Field Trip
Geology Field Training Site 1, Earth
Fred Tyrell surveyed his troupe of biologists, who stood looking expectantly at him in the morning sun. He waited as the rotor throb of their helicopter faded in the distance. He’d met all of them before at various training and orientation sessions, of course, but except for the American crew, he didn’t know any of them well.
There was Dr. Jennifer Singh—they all had at least Ph.D.s in one field or another—the botanist, part of the Indian contingent. George Darwin, of course, who didn’t seem in the least perturbed standing there in gravity six times what he’d been living in for the last few months. We’ll see how long that lasts, thought Fred. Xiaojing Wu, the Chinese microbiologist. Then there was Dr. Ulrika Klaar, whose picture could be in the dictionary beside the definition of “Nordic beauty”. Tall, with long, straight, almost platinum blonde hair which normally hung loose to her waist but now was done up in a more sensible braid. Fred wondered if she’d get it cut before the mission left, long hair could be a hassle in zero gee.
It hadn’t occurred to Fred before, but looking out over the team he realized the disproportionate representation of females in the biology team. He shrugged. Nothing wrong with that.
“All right people, listen up,” he said. “We’re going to head north for about eight kilometers to where the chopper will be waiting to take us to the next site. It’s not a race but it would be nice to be there in time for lunch. We’ll be traversing a mix of rock types, from sedimentary to igneous—” Dr. Singh coughed and raised her hand.
“Yes?”
“Why igneous? Surely there would not be any fossils in igneous rocks?”
“In general you’d be correct.” At least somebody was paying attention. “We certainly wouldn’t find fossils in granites or basalts, although it helps to know what isn’t biologically of interest too. However a lava flow or volcanic ash-fall can preserve larger structures like trees, or footprints, and I’m sure George or Xiaojing could tell you all about microfossils near hot springs.”
“Of course, thank you.”
“No worries. If anyone has questions, just call them out, let’s keep this informal.”
He checked the map on his omniphone, looked up at the sun as though to confirm his sense of direction, and gestured toward a low hill a few hundred meters away. “All right, let’s head out that way.” He began lecturing as they hiked. “What we’re walking on is shale, where it shows between the vegetation. It’s a layered stone, made from mud and clay, with a lot more silicate than your limestone, and where it does show fossils they can show a lot of fine detail . . .” Fred had given lectures like this often enough that he could probably do them in his sleep. It occurred to him that they wouldn’t be relying on their omniphones much on the planets of Alpha Centauri. They’d have satellite photos and some location information from the ships that remained in orbit, but nothing like the network of navigation satellites which girdled Earth. Perhaps he should throw in a lesson on reading a compass. At least the planets they were going to had magnetic fields.
Chapter 5: Departure
Interstellar Quarantine Facility, on the Moon
“Director Darwin, I wasn’t sure we’d be seeing you before you returned from Alpha Centauri.”
“That’s ex-Director now, Doctor Kemmerer is the Director.”
“Of course. It was a courtesy title. So, one last look around before heading off into deep space?”
“Something like that. Does Charles know I’m here?”
“He does. He had planned to meet you here himself but got called away at the last moment. He said he’d be back as soon as he could.”
Darwin sighed. “I know how that goes.”
At that moment Charles Kemmerer came in through the hatchway leading to the rest of the base. “George, welcome back. Sorry about not being here in person,” he said, shaking Darwin’s hand.
“No worries. And I’m not here to jog your elbow. Mostly just give the place a once-over, and to congratulate you.”
“Congratulate me? On what?”
“You’re no longer Acting Director, you’re confirmed as the full Director of this place. I can’t have two jobs at once, so my resignation as Director here has been accepted, I’m now the ‘Director of Field Exobiology for the Alpha Centauri Expedition’.”
“Well, thank you, and congratulations to you too. And you’re welcome to it. This is about as far as I want to get from Earth,” Kemmerer
said.
“Ha! Fair enough. So, shall we go say hello to a few folks? And if you have any questions, now’s your last chance to ask them.”
With that, the two left the reception area and headed down a hallway in an easy low-gravity loping walk. Darwin had to watch his step. His month on Earth had altered his muscles and reflexes, but the method came back to him, like riding a bicycle.
Kemmerer picked up the conversation. “I was your deputy for six months, I probably know where more bodies are buried than you do,” he said, and grinned. “But how long do you have? When we heard you were coming, some of the gang wanted to throw you a bon voyage party.”
Darwin smiled at that. “I’ll be back here in a couple of months, albeit as an inmate rather than Director—”
“Guest,” Kemmerer interrupted, “or perhaps at worst patient. Inmate sounds a bit. . .depressing.”
“Guest, then. I need to leave tomorrow to rendezvous with the Heinlein and the rest of the fleet, but sure, I’m up for something informal this evening.”
∞ ∞ ∞
The going away party was indeed small and informal, as Darwin had hoped. The staffing level at the facility would rise when the Centauri crew was due to return, and many of the technicians involved in the construction had already departed, so what was left was a small maintenance crew of technicians and biologists to maintain the samples they’d be testing for exposure to anything brought back from Alpha Centauri. It was similar to what had been done for the first few Apollo Moon landings a century ago.
Toward the end of the party, Kemmerer produced a small gift-wrapped package and handed it to Darwin.
“What’s this?” Darwin asked, taking the package.
“Go ahead and open it. It’s too late for your Mars trip, not that you needed it, and we hope you don’t need it at Alpha Centauri either.”
Puzzled, Darwin shook the package gently. It didn’t rattle or make any noise, and whatever was inside felt moderately dense. He had no idea. He tore the wrapping off and opened the small specimen box inside, then laughed.
“A potato?”
“Yes, Solanum tuberosum. We had extras.”
Darwin grinned and held it up for the others to see. “Thank you all. I may have briefly been a Martian, but I’m no Mark Watney. Let’s hope I don’t need this.”
That drew a round of applause and congratulations.
A short while later Darwin bid everyone his goodbyes and retired to his room. He’d be leaving first thing in the morning.
∞ ∞ ∞
Aboard U.S.S Heinlein, approaching the fleet
Darwin had rendezvoused with the Heinlein in orbit above the Moon several hours ago, now they were approaching the area beyond Luna where the rest of the fleet, and a handful of support vessels, were gathering. He watched through a viewscreen as they drew closer.
The interstellar ships were all similar, a cylindrical midsection with a rounded, conical forebody and widening aft to a curved heat shield with engine nozzles around the periphery, very similar to a popular class of commercial single-stage-to-orbit vehicle used in Earth-to-orbit operations. Three of them were designated as landing vehicles, with over half the volume taken up by the chemical fuel tanks for landing and take-off, the deep space plasma thrusters not having sufficient force to lift a vehicle from an Earth-sized planet, and the warp drives only being useful well away from atmosphere.
The landing vehicles—Chandrasekhar, Krechet and possibly the Anderson—were each fitted with a large fat cylinder which completely circled the ship and held the warp drive units and a tokamak-based fusion engine to power them. Officially this was the IPM, or Interstellar Propulsion Module, but everyone referred to them as warp collars, or donuts. A ship would undock from its warp donut and leave it in orbit during its time on-planet, to save weight for the return launch. Darwin chuckled to himself as the comparison came to him, of an ice-cream-cone rammed through a donut, although that really wasn’t a fair comparison. The ships were wider and shorter.
The design of the Heinlein, and of the Chinese ship Xīng Huā, was subtly different. Never intended to land (except on the Moon after they’d returned), the warp and fusion systems were built into the structure, and the space which would have been taken up by chemical fuel tanks became additional cargo space.
∞ ∞ ∞
The fleet, beyond Lunar orbit.
Drake looked over at Darwin, who was watching the viewscreen. It would be nice to have some idle time like that. The previous month had been a blur of final shakedown flights, crew re-integration, supply loading, fueling, and countless reports. There had also been far too many bureaucratic meetings for Drake’s comfort. Finally here they were, a million kilometers from Earth.
As the support ships retired to a safe distance from the Centauri expedition fleet, Drake left the cockpit—bridge, he told himself, we’re using nautical terms now—to inspect the USS Heinlein’s interior one last time. She looked good.
He drifted back into the bridge area and strapped himself into the center couch. His second in command, Elizabeth Sawyer, had already strapped in and was reviewing the checklist on one of her screens. “Darwin, straps?”
“Right.” Darwin had been wearing them loosely, at this reminder he pulled them tight.
Drake scanned his display console. One screen showed his ships own displays, an other showed telemetry summaries from the other ships. They showed everything in readiness. The center screen was set to a fleet-wide teleconference, giving him views of the ships’ captains.
Given the status displays, verbal confirmation was a formality, but a socially necessary one. “Commander Sawyer, is the Heinlein good to go?”
“That’s affirmative, Sir. All systems go.”
“Thank you.” Drake unmuted his microphone. “All ships, this is Commodore Drake. Please stand by to report status. Xīng Huā?”
“This is Lee on the Xīng Huā. We are go.”
“Thank you. Krechet?” The Russian ship.
“Da, Krechet is go.”
“Chandrasekhar?”
“Affirmative, we are prepared.”
“Anderson?” The second US ship, a backup lander, captained by his old friend, Geoff Tracey.
“The Poul Anderson is go.”
“Stand by, Fleet.” Drake muted his microphone and said in an aside to Darwin, sitting on his left: “I’ve wanted to say this for years.” He tapped the mute button again. “All ships, prepare for warp!”
The four other ships of the fleet were positioned at the corners of a square three kilometers on a side, with the Heinlein in the center, like the five-side spots on a six-sided die. “Take your aim point precisely at Alpha Centauri B.” The two stars were a few seconds of arc apart, amounting to hundreds of millions of kilometers. Drake wanted everyone going in the same direction. “Our first hop will be a short one. We’ve all calibrated our systems individually; let’s see if our calibrations agree. At ten second intervals from my mark, engage warp for exactly one thousand milliseconds.” That would take them some seventy million kilometers, or about four light-minutes. “We’ll coordinate at the second rendezvous.”
The calibration flights had fine-tuned the ships’ alignment scopes, their warp module mounts, and the warp fields themselves. But there was no way to see or steer while in warp, so maintaining formation was impossible.
How much they spread out in this first jump would give Drake some idea of what to expect on the longer hops..
“Okay, at ten seconds from my mark, Heinlein will warp first. At ten second intervals after that, the Xīng Huā, then Krechet, then Chandra. The Anderson will take up the rear.” Drake paused, watching the countdown timer on the control panel. His next word was redundant; the other ships would have already synched up to the clock on the Heinlein. As the last digit flipped back to zero, he said it anyway: “Mark!”
∞ ∞ ∞
Elizabeth Sawyer sat with her finger on the warp button. That was as redundant as Drake’s speech had
been—the sequence was programmed in to all the ships—but there was something fundamentally satisfying about a manual override button, even if that button was itself connected to the computers. She watched as the timer counted down from Drake’s mark. As it reached five, she counted aloud: “Warp in four, three, two, one, now!” Even as her finger mashed down on the button she felt a strange tingling jerk, like being mildly startled. Probably just adrenaline, she thought. The counter ticked over the next second and she lifted her finger. She looked over at Drake. “Secured from warp.”
Darwin piped up from the other seat. “Are we there yet?”
Jerk, she thought. What did I ever see in him?
∞ ∞ ∞
To the other ships of the fleet, it was as if the Heinlein had just disappeared. One moment it was there and then, without a sound, without weird stretching effects, without even a flashy light display, it was gone. It left just a faint glowing trail from solar wind particles kicked to higher energies by the edge of the warp field. The trail faded almost immediately. At the specified ten-second intervals, they too each in turn disappeared in a faint violet flicker.
∞ ∞ ∞
Darwin watched the aft “window” view-screen. The sun, a glaring disk behind them, disappeared and then reappeared, perhaps a third smaller. They’d certainly moved. But where to?
“I want a navigation fix,” Drake said, voicing Darwin’s thought. “I want to know exactly how far we jumped and in which direction. At the ten second mark start hailing the Xīng Huā.”
“Roger that.” Elizabeth’s voice, smoothly competent. That was part of what had attracted him to her in the first place. Darwin would have been tempted to add “hailing frequencies open” just to lighten the mood, but he suspected it would have the opposite effect with these two, if they even got the reference.
Alpha Centauri: First Landing (T-Space: Alpha Centauri Book 1) Page 2
