General Abigail Worthington, commander of the Joint Space Consortium, looked up at him. “I’m not convinced.”
“Her psych evaluation was stellar. She’s in prime physical condition.”
“I don’t doubt either of those things.”
“What’s your concern?”
“She’s never been married, no kids.”
“What does that matter?” Colonel Richards asked.
General Worthington rose and turned to face the window that looked out over United City. The windows were heavily tinted, a necessary concession to the blinding rays of the sun. Far below, people hurried along the sidewalks. Two centuries ago, the city had boasted four distinct seasons but now it was always hot. The only wool garment Worthington had ever seen had been a sweater that belonged to her great-great grandmother. It was an heirloom kept in cedar chest, a dated novelty.
At first, climate change had been gradual. A couple of degrees a century that most people didn’t even notice. But then, as manufacturing increased to meet ever-rising consumption, the process sped forward at a break-neck pace.
Year after year, the warnings of scientists had fallen on deaf ears. Unbridled capitalists, concerned more about the bottom line than the devastating impact of climate change, had joined forces with the religious zealots in condemning science as an affront to God and the people took the bait hook, line and sinker. By the time the people woke up and The Global Council outlawed fossil fuels, the planet was decades past redemption.
Until the Joint Space Consortium had started picking up radio transmissions from Utuquq.
A planet only four light years away, it was very similar to Earth and it was reachable. For more than two decades, Earth’s best scientists had been communicating with the best scientists on Utuquq and learned they’d avoided climate change by utilizing unique, sustainable energy sources.
Back here on Earth, the stakes were high. Without a significant scientific discovery, United City, along with the rest of the planet would be reduced to nothing but dust inside a hundred years. Worthington, a career military scientist herself, was willing to do anything she could to save it and a mission to the planet Utuquq was her best hope. “I’m scared that her biological clock is ticking. She’ll be thirty-five when she arrives and thirty-six when she leaves. What if she meets someone?”
The colonel shook his head. “She’s a scientist, Abigail, not a brainless breeder. If anyone besides us recognizes the importance of this mission, it’s her. Plus, she’s worked her whole life for this chance. A successful mission means a promotion is certain. She wouldn’t screw that up.”
He only used her first name when he was trying to persuade her to see his side of things. While she trusted Colonel Richards more than anyone else on her staff, there was plenty he didn’t see, wouldn’t see.
“You’ve never been a woman who’s trying to squeeze it all in before it’s too late.” As far as science had come in the last few centuries, the window for fertility wasn’t much wider than it had been before.
“Not everyone’s definition of happiness is a mate and children.”
By the time Abigail had realized it was her dream, it had been too late. “That’s true but we don’t know what will happen when she arrives on Utuquq and interfaces with their natives.”
“Even if she does fall in love with one of them, what are the chances the genetic material is compatible?”
He had a point. “Low.”
“Right. She’s the perfect officer for this job.”
“What if she doesn’t want to come home?” Abigail asked.
He shrugged his shoulders and for the first time Abigail noticed how much he’d aged in the last few years. When she’d met him at the Aeronautics Academy, they’d both been fresh-faced twenty-somethings. Now they both had lines around their eyes and grey hair. “You and I both know that anything can happen on a mission. You have to make decisions on the knowns, not the unknowns.”
Down below, on the street, a woman dressed in a tank top and shorts pushed a stroller toward the fountain on the corner of A Street and 22nd Avenue. The fountain had been dry for months, but every day, Abigail watched as lines of people walked toward it, their hopes for fresh water, never flagging. She wanted to live long enough to see the water splashing and sparkling once more.
“Let’s brief her.”
Chapter One
SIX MONTHS LATER
It was the mission of a lifetime and Lauren Hascamp was more than prepared.
At thirty-one years and three days old, she’d spent the last six years as an astronaut for the International Space Consortium, waiting on a chance to distinguish herself. She’d orbited Earth and the Moon so many times it was no longer novel. With more than a dozen colonies on Mars, it wasn’t much different from home these days. So many of her friends from college had jumped at the opportunities colonization offered but she hadn’t been sold. She’d dreamed of bigger things, more challenging things.
But Utuquq?
That was a whole different world. Literally.
It was a dream planet.
Covered in snow and ice, it was inhabited by a tribe that identified themselves as The Siku. In their frequent radio communications with earth, they claimed to have populated the northern regions of Earth eons ago. Similar to tribes that were historically located north of the Arctic Circle, they’d found a way to turn back climate change on Utuquq.
Lauren had spent her whole career studying global warming. It was her passion, had been since she was in third grade. Her mother, a single parent who was always trying to stretch every dollar into a dollar and a half, loved yard sales. Even though it meant getting up early on Saturday, Lauren always begged to go along. She’d loved digging through boxes of knick-knacks and broken toys. That morning, she’d found the treasure of a lifetime. In an old house, just off Main Street, the sale had been housed in an old garage. Near the back wall, she’d found a box filled with odds and ends but on the very bottom, there was a book. While she’d seen a few, most of them were behind glass on the top floor of the library, she’d never held one until that morning.
The cover was faded but she’d immediately loved the weight of it. After flipping past the first few pages of text, a whole new world had opened. More than five centuries old, the book contained photographs of an Earth that was largely unrecognizable to Lauren.
In many of the pictures, white snow blanketed the ground. Instead of tank tops and loose cotton shifts, people were heavy coats, fleecy scarves and wooly hats with pom-poms on the crown. Lauren couldn’t imagine what that kind of cold might feel like. In her world, full of blazing sun, blistered skin and the constant scouring of dust, it was like a fairy tale.
And now, twenty-five years later, she was headed to Utuquq.
She’d never imagined she’d get the nod for this mission. Not only was being an astronaut highly competitive, it was political and Lauren had burned a lot of bridges, too many to count. She had a reputation for being brash, opinionated and too confident and she’d never thought it would work to her advantage.
Lauren checked her five-point harness and put on her headset. In less than three minutes, she’d fire the rocket boosters and there would be no going back. For one year, she’d be living on Utuquq, trying to understand how they’d avoided climate change.
Satisfied her harness was adjusted properly, she took a deep breath and snapped on her helmet.
“Have a safe flight.” The voice of General Worthington came through her headset. “I hope the sweater is helpful.”
“I appreciate it, ma’am. I have it tucked into my footlocker along with my book and a few coins from the old United States. As soon as I land and get my radio station setup, I’ll make contact.”
“Make sure to follow the protocol.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And enjoy the cold.”
“You can count on that.”
“Godspeed, Hascamp.”
The headset went quiet and the o
nly sounds Lauren heard were the whirr of engine fans and the sound of her own breath. While she was excited about the mission, a flash of anxiety flared up in her chest.
It’s not like I’m leaving anyone or anything behind. I know what I’m doing. I’m mentally and physically prepared. I’m ready.
“This is Mission Control. T minus 120 seconds.”
Another deep breath. “All systems prepped and ready for takeoff.”
“T minus 90.”
Lauren focused on her controls. After flipping the two switches, she said, “Engines are ready.”
“T minus 30.”
Her heart rate ticked up and beads of sweat popped out on her forehead despite the cooling system housed in her helmet.
“T minus fifteen, fourteen, thirteen . . .”
Her control panel lights flashed and flickered.
This is what you’ve been waiting for your entire life.
The engines, two ion engines fired by xenon, purred to life.
She allowed her years of training to take over as the thrust of the engines propelled her upward until the Earth was nothing but a tiny, blue dot on a distant horizon.
Chapter Two
FOUR YEARS LATER, PLANET UTUQUQ
Pukak felt the change in the air weeks before he saw the silver machine tumbling from the sky.
Something or someone is coming.
The sentence played over and over in his head like some strange mantra. He’d been to the Highest Priest several times but he couldn’t seem to explain the way his skin prickled, the way he couldn’t stop watching the sky for signs, the way the hair on his neck stood on end with every unexpected sound or movement. The cleric had shrugged him off and made him feel like he was making something out of nothing.
He’d even accused him of heresy. It wasn’t the first time. The Highest Priest was suspicious of everything Pukak said, did or read.
But this time, Pukak knew he was right. Something was about to change.
As an academic charged with studying the history of his people, The Situ, he knew they’d once traveled through space, populating other planets. But hundreds of years ago, in the Age of Change, priests had ordered the dismantling of the spacecraft, believing any manner of flight was an affront to the Gods and would only lead to the destruction of The Situ.
After spending years learning the history, Pukak thought the proclamation had more to do with controlling The Situ than with the Gods.
But there was that one text. The one he couldn’t stop thinking about. The one half of his colleagues had written off as the ramblings of a sick old man, Miki, who’d claimed, after years of terrorizing his own people as a clan chief, that he’d become a prophet and the Gods spoke to and through him.
Our people, from far away, will come from the sky bringing proof absolute.
In her hand she will hold the White One,
The sacred one,
And the truth of the ages will be revealed.
But there was no evidence that any of Miki’s prophecies had come to pass. Moreover, there was no proof that he’d even said it. Even the most reliable sources were divided on that point.
Pukak shook his head, trying to clear it of the academic arguments that rattled around in his brain perpetually. The whole point of this hunting trip was to leave the dusty books and diaries behind and get back in touch with his own life-force. He paused, pulled the frosty air deep into his lungs, and tried to hear the silence.
But, as usual, he failed.
He adjusted the strap of his quiver, gripped and the bow in his hand, and walked toward the large field just ahead of him. He was nearly to the edge of the trees when he heard a whistling sound. Even though he’d never seen anything in the sky, save the White Star and Twin Orbs, he instinctively looked up. High in the green expanse of the heavens, a silvery disk roared toward Utuquq at a terrifying speed, the light of the setting White Star glinting off its shiny surfaces. The noise, deep and metallic, hurt his ears. His heart sped up until it was pounding in his chest, racing as if he’d just chased a Four Legs through the forest.
Pukak ducked into the cover of some dense evergreen trees and hid beneath the low-hanging boughs. He watched as it came closer and closer, heat coming off the silver disk in waves. As it neared the snow-covered ground, it slowed and the sound became more of a low hum. It sank closer and closer to the surface of the field.
The disk was nothing like anything he’d ever seen before. There was certainly nothing like it on Utuquq, not even in the thousands of tomes that lined the walls of the college library.
I should be scared.
He tore his eyes away and looked down at his hands. Covered in Four Leg skin gloves, they were as steady on his bow as always. His heart had slowed and now he watched the thing descend with nothing but burning curiosity.
Three rods emerged from the underside of the craft with a high-pitched whine and it hovered just above the surface of the snow for the better part of a minute before it balanced on the rods, using them as some sort of tripod, like the ones hunters used to balance their blow spears.
The noises stopped and, for the first time since Pukak had started this journey five lights ago, he heard the silence.
***
Satisfied the landing was a success, Lauren shut down the engines and all the other systems on the spacecraft. She’d had plenty of time to face and overcome her fears, but when she killed the power switch to the radio, the only communication she’d have with Earth for the next twelve months, a wave of anxiety rushed over her.
What if I die here? What if they’re not expecting me?
That was ludicrous. The radio operators had patched in their communications with The Siku. She’d heard them herself, with her own ears. Not only were they expecting her, they wanted to learn from her.
You’re a trained and capable scientist. This is the chance of a lifetime.
She set her jaw and looked out the window. There was nothing but white. Even though the glass was tinted, something she was especially thankful for as she’d passed the sun and then the star central to this solar system, the whiteness was overwhelming and she blinked repeatedly. Before she exited, she wanted a good read on her bearings. She needed to figure out the best way to the nearest village.
From a small drawer underneath the control panel, she pulled a tattered map. Drawn from the information communicated over the radio, she’d studied it until she knew it as well as she knew the streets of Union City. Convinced this field was the place she’d intended to land, all she had to do was walk east for about two miles and she should start seeing the beginnings of the main village, Egakik.
Get dressed and go. The days are short here and you don’t want to get caught in the woods of a strange planet. At night. Alone.
She smiled to herself as she dressed in the uniform designed for this mission. Her inner dialogue sounded ridiculous. Lauren pulled the tight-fitting beanie down over her ears and buttoned her coat. After her initial briefing at the Joint Space Consortium, she’d spent every moment she wasn’t working on her physical and psychological readiness, reading about The Siku. The logs, kept by the radio operators who routinely contacted the people on Utuquq, were filled with information about their daily lives, social customs and belief systems.
They were eerily similar to the native peoples who once inhabited the land near and above the Arctic Circle. While those tribes had disappeared altogether on Earth, there were plenty of sources, mostly written by twentieth and twenty-first century anthropologists, that made the language of The Siku accessible to the radio operators because it was so similar to languages of the Inuit peoples. The Siku claimed to be the ancestors of the vanished tribes. On Earth. While that was highly unlikely, she was thankful for the clear similarities.
Lauren had practiced Inuit languages the entire journey. She was convinced communication wasn’t going to be a problem.
As cozy as this mission sounded, she didn’t want to make the worst mistake any scientist can ma
ke: assuming her data was one-hundred percent true.
What if the atmosphere isn’t what the Joint Consortium believes it to be? What if you take one breath and it’s nothing but sulfur gas?
On the other hand, she knew this mission might be the only chance to save Earth. Without some reliable information about how to stop or reverse climate change, her home planet was doomed. It was in the best interest of the Consortium to make this expedition a success.
Shelve your anxiety. Get to work.
Lauren stood at the door of the spacecraft and placed her hand against the cool metal. After four years of being totally alone save the voices from Mission Control in Union City and the music they piped into the module, she longed to rush out of the craft and experience Utuquq. Forty-eight months was a long time to go without any human contact save the voices on the radio. And even if The Situ weren’t precisely human, at least she spoke their language.
She hefted her backpack onto her shoulders and opened the latch.
Stay open-minded and aware of your surroundings. Don’t get too comfortable too fast. You can do this. You can totally do this.
Lauren was totally unprepared for the cold. The force of it, brutal and assaulting, flooded into her lungs, making her gasp. While everything but her face was covered in a synthetic fabric designed to make her comfortable in temperatures well below zero, the freezing air still found a way to crawl underneath her clothes. She shivered and wrapped her scarf more tightly around her neck.
She’d never imagined cold would be painful. While on Earth, solar powered air-conditioning units kept the interior of her home and her office hovering around eighty degrees, she’d thought with the synthetic clothing, it wouldn’t feel that different. In fact, she’d imagined it as a great relief.
Boy, was I wrong.
Lauren looked around and tried to get familiar with her surroundings. The spacecraft sat in the center of a field, ringed on all sides by a forest of evergreen trees. They reminded her of the Fraser firs tree she’d seen on a training expedition to northern Canada. Everything was perfectly still, completely quiet, as if the snow was absorbing all the sound in the world.
Baby, it's Cold in Space: Eight Science Fiction Romances Page 42
