Dark Secret (2016)

by Edward M. Lerner

  Dana almost went with him. Instead, wondering if it was curiosity or deference to authority that held her, she ordered, “Hear them out.”

  “Do you trust this man, Captain?” Dennison asked.

  “With my life,” Dana said. “Every time we launch.”

  “Then he’ll do,” Hawthorne said.

  “Gee, thanks,” Blake said.

  “I respect the captain’s opinion,” the governor said. “Sit, Mr. Westford.”

  He sat.

  “If you hadn’t guessed,” the governor said, “what you’re about to hear is classified. You can’t discuss this with anyone. Not with your loved ones or your closest friend. Not with your doctor, psychiatrist, or priest. Not with your goddamned cat. Am I clear?”

  “Yes,” Dana said, experiencing Space Guard déjà vu. The longer superior officers put off the bad news, the iffier the mission would be.

  This mission would be bad.

  “Understood,” Blake said.

  “Dr. Valenti?” the governor prompted. “Will you bring everyone up to date?”

  Antonio had shrunken in on himself. He mumbled something Dana couldn’t make out.

  “A bit louder,” the governor encouraged.

  “I can’t,” Antonio said, barely above a whisper, fingering the scar on his chin. “Not…again. I’m…tired.”

  Dennison sighed. “I know how you feel.”

  “An imminent GRB,” Jumoke said. Her face had gone slack, and her shoulders slumped. “That’s what Antonio found, after he deployed his new observatory. I swear, I first heard about it today.”

  Blake translated. “Gamma-ray burst. Cousin to a supernova.”

  (He had once told Dana that the cruise line insisted its officers chat up the passengers, even the quiet ones. And laughed: most shipboard hook-ups began that way. The schmoozing must have become habit, because she’d seen him chatting up Antonio on their flight. She guessed the two had talked astronomy.)

  “But the sky is full of GRB’s,” Blake went on, turning toward Antonio. “Astronomers see them across billions of light-years. That’s what you said when we deployed your probes. Is this particular GRB somehow special?”

  Antonio’s head bobbed jerkily.

  “Christ, yes,” Jumoke said.

  “If I may summarize, Governor?” Hawthorne said. “I’ve done research since Dr. Valenti first came to us. He can correct me if I misspeak.”

  Dennison nodded.

  “Picture it,” Hawthorne said. “As though someone threw a celestial switch, a star blazes in the sky. It’s too bright to look at directly. Even at high noon, if that’s when this happens, the star casts its own crisp shadows. But the light fades after only a minute or two.

  “As intense as that visible light was, what you couldn’t see was fiercer. The atmosphere blocked the event’s gammas and X-rays—and in the process emitted an electromagnetic pulse that fried every computer, electric motor, power grid, and satellite on that side of the world. Only the collapse of civilization is the least of your worries.”

  As Antonio rocked in his chair and Jumoke slumped in hers, as the governor, grim-faced, watched Blake and Dana, Dana understood that—somehow—this was the future foretold.

  Hawthorne had not finished. “Hours later, moving at a hair under the speed of light, the deluge of subatomic particles hits. Think cosmic rays, though by comparison the hardest cosmic rays are a gentle rain shower. As the particle storm slams into the atmosphere, it throws off cascades of many more subatomic particles—”

  “Muons,” Antonio interjected.

  “Muons,” Hawthorne acknowledged. “Billions per square centimeter. Many times the lethal dose, down to two kilometers deep in the oceans, down to a kilometer deep in solid rock. Everyone on that side of the world soon dies.”

  Two kilometers deep? Only one world had such oceans. Horror and relief—and shame at her relief—washed over Dana. “You’re saying the GRB will strike Earth. Not Mars.”

  “Both,” Jumoke said hopelessly. “More. It’ll blanket the solar system.”

  Blake broke a lengthening silence. “You said a minute or two. That leaves half of each world untouched. What about people, animals, all life on that hemisphere?”

  “Ordo…vician,” Antonio intoned, his face expressionless. “They’re dead. Everyone is dead. Everything is dead, only…more slowly.”

  Dana couldn’t not ask. “How?”

  Hawthorne finger-swiped his datasheet several times, skimming. “From the ozone layer half-blasted away. The solar UV pouring through has become withering, lethal. Much of the oxygen from dissociated ozone recombines with atmospheric nitrogen. I’m hazy on the chemistry, but it means extreme acid rain, with widespread slaughter at the bottom of the food chain.”

  “And also a haze of…reddish-brown nitrogen…dioxide reflecting the sunlight. It starts an…ice age.”

  Blake shivered. “What’s this Ordovician thing?”

  “The Ordovician Extinction.” Antonio straightened in his seat, stroking his scar faster than ever. His voice strengthened, taking on the tone of a lecture. “Four hundred fifty…million years ago. Before anything lived…on land. The second largest extinction ever…of marine life. Animals not native to the…ocean depths soon…died off.” His voice faded and cracked. “Paleo…climatologists…have reasons to believe…a gamma-ray burst did that.”

  “When?” Blake asked. “When will it happen?”

  “It has happened,” Antonio said. “More than seven thousand…years ago. In three…years at most…the blast…hits us.”

  At Dana’s side, Blake trembled. He said, “Respectfully, Governor, people should be told. They deserve the opportunity to make peace with what’s coming, to spend time with their loved ones. Why fritter away their last days in meaningless toil? Why bring babies into the world only to die before they’ve had the opportunity to live?”

  “Meaningless toil?” the governor said. “That attitude, Mr. Westford, is why you will keep quiet. Why everyone in the know must keep quiet. The universe has declared war on humanity, and war demands secrecy and sacrifice.

  “Without a functioning economy, we have no options. Let the people suspect that the end is near, that we’re all about to die, and society will implode, whether from neglect, looting, or panic. On this world, and the Moon, and countless asteroids, everyone will die for the lack of oh-two or food or water long before the GRB strikes.”

  Was ignorance bliss? Or was withholding the truth immoral? Dana didn’t know, couldn’t guess, could not begin to confront the questions. She couldn’t get past the death of everything and everyone she knew, written in the stars.

  It was too much, too fast. Her thoughts skittered. Her head spun.

  But what was that about options?

  Dana asked, “Where are you sending us, Governor? What is our mission?”

  4

  The only conceivable “mission” was spending time with loved ones before the end. And digging very deep holes, for all the good that would do. Mission? Blake saw nowhere to go. Dana was in denial, hoping that duty could fill her remaining time.

  They’d see about that. Dana was family, too, damn it.

  In a fog, Blake heard Governor Dennison answer. Her words took a moment to register.

  “Scouting the way to a new home.”

  Some deep recess of his mind latched onto the governor’s words. Now you’re in denial, Blake told himself, even as the dispassionate, problem-solving facet of him stirred.

  Dennison continued, “To survive, humanity must send out starships. Colony ships. Clermont will lead the way.”

  Because with its DED, Clermont wasn’t limited in its range by the fuel it could carry. It could, in theory, accelerate till it reached relativistic speeds, could get clear of the solar system before the GRB struck. Clermont could reach the stars.

  No matter that their test program had them still two flights away from first attempting a trip to Jupiter, humanity’s farthest outpost. Their longest f
light to date had gone a few millionths of the distance to the nearest star—with the DED breaking down once both coming and going.

  And no matter that “dark energy” was less an explanation than a label for astrophysical ignorance. Something made the universe expand faster and faster, and Jumoke had found a way to move a vehicle with that something. No one could say what dark energy was. Not in any nuts and bolts, or gluons and quarks, terms a lowly ship’s engineer could understand.

  Suppose they made the DED reliable. At relativistic speeds, the ineffably thin gas and dust between the stars would become a hailstorm of radiation—lethal, if still nowhere near as intense as a GRB. And if they overcame the radiation problem? They could never carry enough supplies for a years-long flight. And no one had a clue what they might encounter between the stars. And no one had ever tried to navigate across such vast distances.

  The practical problems seemed limitless, but Blake couldn’t help but consider each as it occurred to him. Maybe he didn’t dare let his thoughts run any other way.

  “How many?” he asked.

  “People?” Dennison said. “A few thousand, just don’t ask me how. Without at least that much genetic diversity, any colony will eventually fail anyway.”

  “Which star?” Dana asked calmly.

  “One second, Dana,” Blake said. He could not move past one fundamental problem. “Do I remember this correctly, Antonio? The beam from a GRB is many light-years across. In three years, how can any ship get us to safety?”

  Antonio gave one of his awkward, forced smiles, the kind that never got as far as his eyes. “No, you’re right. But I think…this one will just…graze us. The gravitational waves are polarized, and that…suggests the…direction of the beam.

  “Which star?” Dana asked again.

  “We don’t know that yet, either,” Hawthorne said. “Dr. Valenti will be working on that.”

  That’s how it would be, Blake realized: lurching from one hasty decision to the next, wondering at every turn if it was already too late.

  Jumoke flinched when Blake touched her sleeve. He said, “Tell me what you’ll need.”

  She frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “Clermont couldn’t make it to Jupiter, much less to another solar system. What’ll you need to failsafe the DED?”

  “You don’t understand,” she said. “I’ve got to focus on getting people up to speed, here and on Earth. That’s the only way we’ll ever scale up the drive to accommodate colony-sized ships. It’s the only way we’ll go from a handcrafted prototype—a kludge, you once called it—to mass production.”

  “Because it is a kludge,” he snapped back. “And a poorly understood kludge, which is why it drops offline every few days and why you cluttered my main engine room with sensors and lab gear. Face it, you’re needed aboard Clermont.”

  “You’re right,” Jumoke said, almost in tears. “You’re right about all that. But I’m needed more here. So, you…”

  “Me?”

  Dennison smiled. “Do you begin, Mr. Westford, to understand the interview you just had?”

  “I’m the backup DED expert?”

  “Aren’t you?” Hawthorne asked. “You only need to keep the drive running, accumulate more flight time with it, do some fine-tuning. No one expects you to explain it. Dr. Boro assured us you are familiar with her prototype, that without you she could never have integrated it into Clermont’s systems.”

  “You and Jumoke worked side by side for three months,” Dana said. “You can do this, Blake, if anyone can.”

  “More to the point,” Hawthorne said, “you can do it now. Anyone else would need training. You’ll have access to Dr. Boro by comm.”

  “Time is of the essence,” Dennison added, keeping up the full-court press.

  Better to die trying than die waiting, Blake knew. But nothing was ever that simple.

  “As the tests continue,” he said, “we make longer flights. Correct? ‘Scout out the path to another solar system,’ I believe those were the governor’s words.”

  Dennison nodded. “That’s what I said.”

  “So at some point, we don’t come back.”

  “You wouldn’t want to,” Dennison said. “Not if you plan to live. Quit dithering, Westford. Are you in?”

  “You tell me.” Blake took a deep breath. “I’ll not desert my wife. If you want me, Rikki comes, too.”

  5

  “Surprise!”

  Rikki Westford jerked to a halt in the doorway. Family and friends packed all she could see of her and Blake’s apartment. Mom wriggled through the living-room crowd to give her a hug. Dad, tending bar in the dining room, raised a beer stein in salute. Her three surviving grandparents grinned from the living-room sofa. Two nieces bounced and giggled on the loveseat. Even her ex was there in a corner.

  It was all Rikki could do not to sob.

  “Smile and go in,” Blake whispered from behind her. “For their sakes.”

  Fighting back tears, she did her best. “Umm, hello, everyone.”

  “Wow, we did surprise you,” Aunt Lucy said. “You’re not that good an actress.”

  I’m not any kind of an actress, Rikki thought, but I need to be one now.

  With a hand on the small of her back Blake guided her through the door. He slipped past her into the crowd. “Hi, everyone. How about a hint? Whose birthday or anniversary did I forget?”

  The quip got a hearty chuckle, leaving Rikki to marvel how he did it. The ready charm she understood. That was just…Blake. But how did he keep on the brave face?

  Aunt Lucy gave Blake a peck on the cheek. Like all Rikki’s relatives, she towered over him. “You two didn’t expect to sneak away to Titan without saying goodbye, did you?”

  More like, sneak away to another star. But they couldn’t say that. The cover story, of a short-notice mission departing for Titan, already strained credulity.

  More like, leave everyone behind to die.

  “I suppose not,” Blake said. In a stage voice, he added, “Someone tell me. What does a guy have to do to get a drink in his own house?”

  “I estimate about four meters this way,” Dad answered, laughing.

  And another piece of Rikki’s heart died.

  Her kid sister pressed through the crowd, towing by the hand a skinny, tattooed guy Rikki guessed was the latest boyfriend. Whoever he was, an apartment filled with Janna’s relatives seemed not to faze him. A serious BF, then.

  You’re all doomed! Somehow, Rikki held the shriek inside.

  “My, you’re quiet, Sis,” Janna said. “What’s up?”

  “What’s up with you?” Rikki countered. “As in, who’s your…friend?”

  “This is Glenn.” Janna slipped an arm around his waist and snuggled close. “As you would know if you hadn’t been holed up for the past three weeks. Glenn, meet my sister Rikki and her husband Blake.”

  “Hi, guys,” Glenn said. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

  Blake offered his hand. “Glenn, I’m pleased to meet you. And though it pains me to admit it, you could do worse than Janna. You’d have to search high and low, but you could.”

  “Good to know,” Glenn said as Janna mock-scowled at both men.

  “I still need a beer,” Blake announced. “Can I bring anyone anything? No?” He headed to the other room.

  Rikki left her greeting at “Hi.” She wanted to say, grab life while you can. She wanted to say, enjoy every day to the fullest, because so few days remain. She wanted to say—

  “Here you go, hon.” When Blake returned, offering the beer she had not wanted, she shook her head. Alcohol would only make her sadder.

  Glenn, with a grin, accepted her bottle. “Titan? Man, that’s far.”

  “And cold,” Blake said. “But if Saturn is half as beautiful as Jupiter was, wow.” He and Glenn clinked bottles.

  “So tell me, Sis. What’s a science historian do on Titan?”

  “Are you kidding?” Rikki said. “The first crewed missi
on to Titan is history and science.”

  “She’s a natural,” Blake said.

  No, I’m an imposter, Rikki thought. Whether on the scouting mission or the colony ships to follow, science historian might be the last specialty anyone needed. But humanity needed scouts and the scouting mission needed Blake—she believed that, whether or not he did—and so she must go. So, she had trained her ass off.

  Every day comparing herself with the experts—scientists and engineers, prospectors and explorers—who’d been selected for what they knew and had accomplished. Every day, finding herself wanting.

  At least she wasn’t an Earthworm. She’d lived her entire life under pressurized domes. She reacted instinctively to leak alarms and recognized the tell-tale signs of hypoxia. She’d been in space, if no farther than to the Moon. Breathing gear and pressure suits were familiar.

  To pull her own weight, that left her with only a million other subjects to master. When Blake and Dana were off-world, stress-testing the DED, Rikki studied everything she could find about standard shipboard systems, and the half-dozen nearby solar systems any of which might be chosen as their destination, and about terraforming. With Clermont undergoing its final overhaul and provisioning, she haunted the shipyard, asking questions, tagging along behind Blake and Dana for whatever insights she could absorb without getting in their way. And in any time left, she pored over the latest life sciences. Astrobiology had changed a lot since her undergrad days, no matter that the very existence of its subject matter remained in dispute.

  Not that with any of these topics she could do more than skim the surface. Mostly she hunted down libraries and knowledge bases that might be useful, adding them to the near-endless list of digital resources the still-to-be-integrated shipboard AI would continue to ingest for as long as the ship remained within comm range of Mars. And fretted about what else she could be doing, or should be doing, or might have done.

  Till Hawthorne, of all unlikely people, had ordered her home for a day of R & R.

  “Rikki, sweetie, are you all right?” Janna asked. “You look exhausted.”

  “Maybe a little tired,” Rikki admitted. “The mission trainers work us hard.”