The Orthogonal Galaxy

by Michael L. Lewis

  O’Ryan shook his head, and asked again. “No, I mean how are you feeling?” He hung on the last word for a moment to help clarify its meaning.

  “Ah—you mean emotionally,” Paol looked at Blade and a brief silence ensued.

  After a deep sigh, Blade commenced. “We ain’t gonna kid you, Garrison—it ain’t easy comin’ to realize you’re leavin’ everythin’ behind fo’ more and a dozen years—” He swallowed hard. “—Or worse.” His voice trailed off.

  Paol stepped up to complete his partner’s train of thoughts. “We really have no clue if we’ll make it back, right? You go through every imaginable horrible scenario. I didn’t see Camp Mars first hand, but I saw plenty of pictures. The thing that annihilated your home up there—well, that’s the thing we’re hitching a ride on, right? You can’t find a wind tunnel in the Solar System that can shake this tin can up enough to know that it will hold up in the barrage of particles traveling at twenty five thousand times the speed of light. Then, how many hostile settings can you think of for this planet that we haven’t the foggiest notion about. But you know what’s worse than thinking about all of that, Garrison?”

  Garrison shook his head silently.

  “What’s worse is thinking about it over and over for the next twenty-seven thousand light years of travel.”

  “But it’s supposed to go in a blink of an eye,” said Garrison in amazement. “As far as I understand what the physicists are saying, you guys are going to sleep through most of it.”

  “Really, Garrison?” Paol’s eyes narrowed as he probed the astronaut’s expression for any clues to help him discern his thoughts. “Why, then, did every astronaut—including yourself—refuse the opportunity to come on this mission?”

  O’Ryan was not prepared for this loaded question. He stammered through some unconvincing vocalized pauses, and weakly mumbled words like “family”, and “Mars.” After collecting himself, he admitted. “Guys, I know—this isn’t anywhere close to a slam dunk, and I thought through many of the same issues, but even if I did want to go, I was still traumatized from the Mars incident. Besides, I couldn’t leave my young family. My son would grow up without his father—he would be 19 years old when I returned. My baby would be a teenager before she even had a chance to meet her father. You wouldn’t go either if you were in my shoes.”

  “Nope. I wouldn’t.” A blank look of bitterness swept over Joonter’s face, and in a blink, every moment since his arrest flashed through his mind in an instant—the unjust verdict, the ridiculous sentence, the red-eyed and tear-stained face of his wife, the plane crash in Nevada, his injuries in Brazil, and now this—a mission touted as a certain suicide by many rational individuals.

  A voice over the communication system interrupted his thoughts. “ST3, this is Moon Orbiter do you copy?”

  Paol turned his head towards the cockpit, but in his mental state, he found himself rooted to the spot. Blade grabbed hold of the side of the vessel, and spun himself around awkwardly. Making his way towards his seat, he sat down and placed a headset over his right ear.

  “This is ST3. We copy ya’.”

  “Fueling is complete, and we are ready to untether, but I think you have one of our crew on board.”

  “Yes we do,” Blade said. “He says it’s more cozy here, and he’s thinkin’ ‘bout takin’ a spin with us.”

  “That’s a negative ST3,” the voice replied with a chuckle. “Tell Mr. O’Ryan that he missed his opportunity, and will have to wait for the ST4 mission now. Over.”

  “Copy that, Moon Orbiter. We’ll have yer boy back with ya’ in a short moment. Over.” Blade slowly pulled the headset off and placed it in its compartment next to his seat. He allowed the weightlessness to distance himself from his seat, and turned around to the other two astronauts.

  “Well, Garrison. You go have a safe ride back home. We’ll have a lot of catchin’ up to do in, say, twelve years or so.” Blade offered a firm handshake.

  “Godspeed, gentlemen. I do wish you all the best.”

  “Thanks, Garrison,” said Paol with a tight-lipped smile. “Don’t worry about us. We’re going to do everything imaginable to make this mission a success.”

  O’Ryan nodded and winked at Joonter, as he backed out of the spacecraft.

  “Hey, Garrison?” Paol called out as he began to shut the portal through which he had entered.

  “Yeah, Paol.”

  “I’d appreciate it if this exchange remains off the record. I don’t want Joyera any more worried than she needs to be while I’m gone.”

  “Absolutely, Paol. Everything we talked about stays right here until you guys open this hatch up at Kennedy.” And with a quick wave of the wrist that hatch sealed shut again, with a sound that reverberated like the bars of the cell at the penitentiary.

  Paol and Blade strained to hear the detachment and departure of the Moon Orbiter, and when they were absolutely certain that there was no audible sign of their fuel tanker, they slowly returned to their seats and watched the diminishing figure of the orbiter in the video monitor on the domed ceiling. Craning their necks backwards in their reclined seats until the dot of the spaceship was no longer visible, they realized that they had seen the last thing from their home planet for more about a dozen long years ahead of them.

  In an instinctive impulse to latch on to anything that would continue to connect them to their home planet, their heads turned to the left where the miniscule blue and white Earth sat a little less than half illuminated from the Sun. Diminished by the immense horizon of the moon below them, it was hard to fathom how they used to live there along with nearly ten billion other inhabitants. How utterly small and insignificant it seemed in the vast panorama of stars that filled their little planetarium. Speechless, they paid their final homage to this place they used to call home and then mechanically set a course in the opposite direction for a destination that was indiscernible among all the thousands of stars in their view.

  …

  “Looks like we’re half way there, Buddy,” Blade announced.

  “Is that so?” Paol replied lifting his eyes from the monitor where he was reading the navigational display. The data demonstrated that Star Transport was now “204,975,___” miles from Earth and “204,974,___” miles from Jupiter. The reason that the least significant digits were blank was simply because they were hurtling towards Jupiter at several hundred miles every second. At these rates, the odometer changes so quickly that there is no way to perceive anything in the lower digits.

  “You know,” began Paol. “Time seems to be going by faster than I thought it would. I thought that sitting in the same seat hour upon hour would get tedious.”

  “I thinks it helps that NASA gives us a good schedule to follow,” surmised Blade. “The daily activities seems broken up pretty well.”

  “Good point! There really is nothing on the schedule so lengthy as to make the time go slow. Between meals, exercise, scientific experiments, journals and logs, reading, and communications, the day does go by quite naturally.”

  “I understand now why they told us how important it is to stick to the schedule. Our bodies are used to the night fo’ sleepin’, and the daylight fo’ bein’ awake. But up here, all 24 hours are exactly the same. The body needs the schedule to keep from gettin’ into some whacky state. I was thinkin’ when I woke up this mornin’ that the body would be used to, say, a 27 hour schedule if that’s how fast Earth rotated. I wonders what kind of schedule the body would naturally fit into if there was no night or day. I could see things gettin’ totally random, and that would be unhealthy, since there’d be no regular pattern of sleep.”

  This became food for thought, and both astronauts were silent in their musings on this matter, as they stared—literally—off into space. Jupiter was a focal point of much staring to be sure. First, it was their next destination, and further, it was directly in front of them, but even more than that, it was quickly becoming the most recognizable object in the sky. Occasionally, t
hey would force their planetarium to turn to a different location, and most often they would choose to turn 180 degrees around, to watch the sun growing more dim and cold. It was shrinking and they knew that in the coming days, Jupiter would begin to appear larger than the Sun.

  A series of three soft chimes directed the astronauts’ attention back to the control panel in front of them. In large letters, the display splashed the text, “Communication from: Joyera Joonter.” It had been eight days since their departure from the Moon, and Star Transport was now far enough away from Earth that communications between the vehicle and its home base now required well over a quarter of an hour before arriving at its destination. As a result, there were no conversations per se, just messages sent back and forth at regular intervals of the day. Immediate family had a phone number they could call to leave a recorded message. Mission control specialists would then package and send these conversations up at regular intervals up to a few times each day. While Blade’s uncle or mother had stopped calling when they were unable to speak to Blade in real time, Joyera continued to call her husband once or twice every day.

  Paol eagerly grabbed a headset, and placed it on his head to receive the message from his wife. “Paol, my love, as I continue to monitor your spaceship on the computer, you are getting so far from Earth that it is really starting to set in now that we will be apart for a long time. But, the days still go by quickly. The media still call for interviews and updates. I can’t go out in public without being thronged by people with encouraging remarks and compliments. You are a real hero, and I’m so proud. Oh… the boys… I almost forgot. They received an invitation to the White House by the President’s son. They say they’re ‘wildly ultra-dimensional’—kids and their slang these days. I still haven’t decided if I’m going to Paris, but NASA’s public relations office is putting on quite a bit of pressure. They fear that if I refuse the offer from President Chartier, she may take offense. The problem is that I know it will remind me of our tenth anniversary in Europe. It’s going to feel empty there without you, Dear.

  “Regarding your last message, I’m about half way through Seddy’s book. I agree with you that his theories on extra-terrestrial intelligence evolution are quite interesting, but I have to point out they are just that—theories. We still haven’t discovered a single intelligent communication coming from anywhere in the Milky Way. I know, I know… distance between stars, dark energy interference, yada yada. I do have to reiterate, Paol… please be careful on Earth2, and don’t take anything for granted. Even if you find intelligent beings, don’t take anything at face value. Unless the same human seed was used to fill inhabitable planets, we can’t assume anything that anybody says or does. Just… just be careful, Love!

  “Well… gotta run now. I’ll look forward to hearing your voice when I return home this evening. Have a great day, and tell Blade I said hello… poor fellow. It must be hard not having any family to talk with, especially at this time of such change. I’m sure he could use some encouraging words. I love you, my hero!”

  Paol slowly removed the headset and mechanically returned it to its holster beside his seat. He looked over to notice his companion lying back with his eyes closed and a peaceful smile on his face. He reached out with his right hand to get his partner’s attention, and then drew it back, thinking it was better not to disturb him in such contemplative peace and relaxation. Instead, he slipped the headset back on and listened to Joyera’s message a couple more times. Hearing her voice helped him feel that she wasn’t so far away, even though he knew that hundreds of millions of miles were beyond his comprehension.

  After perhaps a half dozen times through the message, he again removed the headset and after looking down while replacing it in its compartment, he was startled by an apparent flash on the video display. Slightly worried, his eyes shot all about the domed display, looking up, to the left, right, behind, and straight ahead. Nothing appeared out of the ordinary, but had there not been a flash of light out of the corner of his eyes?

  “What’s up, Partna’?” Blade asked curiously, having sensed the sudden movements of Paol. Noticing Paol’s wide eyes glancing about in different directions, he restored his seat to its full upright position, and was restored from his meditative state to full attention.

  “Nothing—I—think” was Joonter’s reply.

  Blade’s stare was persistent. “I’m thinkin’ that was a bit less than convincin’ there, Paol. What happened?”

  “No, I—I just was putting up the headset and I thought I saw—”

  Paol’s sentence was cut off abruptly at the second flash, which equally caught both of the astronauts by surprise. Neither directly saw the brief flare that flashed directly in front of the Star Transport, but there was no denying a brief and sudden explosion of white light directly in front of them.

  Blade forced a smile onto his face. “No, wait! Ya’ know how much I love guessin’ games. You thought ya’ saw a flash of brilliant white light out in the front of the ship, didn’t you?”

  Since both were now staring at the video display with both eyes fully open, Paol couldn’t see the expression on his companion’s face, but having familiarized himself with Blade’s playful inflections, Paol responded, “Why, how on Earth2 did you know that, Blade?”

  “Lucky guess, Partna’… lucky guess.”

  Complete silence in the cockpit added to the tension, when all of a sudden.

  “Whoa!”

  “What the—?”

  A third, nearly blinding flash occurred.

  “Blade, can you see?” Paol questioned, while shielding his eyes. “I was practically looking at that thing straight on.”

  “I know what ya’ mean.” Blade’s eyes were closed, but he was feeling around the control panel when he saw a fourth and fifth flash through his eyelids. Locating a compartment underneath the panel, he pulled out a pair of dark glasses and put them on. Shielding the top of his eyes with his left hand, he squinted through his glasses, while searching the darkened control panel for the right button, as a few more flashes occurred with increasing frequency.

  “Ah, there ya’ are,” Blade addressed the button of interest. In a moment, the flashing ceased, as the planetarium quickly transitioned from video display to cockpit lighting. Both astronauts were left squinting and blinking rapidly, as the lights came on.

  “Thanks, Buddy,” Paol said. “Good thinking, on shutting off the display.”

  “Sure thing, Cap’n, but what the heck is goin’ on out there.”

  “That’s a good question.” Paol was reeling from the excitement, but quickly regained his focus, and went to work. “Can you start a communication to Ground Control? Send them a video feed starting at time 14 hundred 12 hours. Give them a full 360 video. I know we only saw flashes directly in front, but let’s not rule out any pertinent data. Let them know that I’ll provide them with full diagnostic reports in ten minutes. I’m going to head to the back of the ship first, to make sure mechanical and life support systems aren’t impacted by the event. I’ll be back in 2 minutes.”

  With that, Paol quickly flipped himself out of his seat and drifted towards the back of the vehicle, and the cockpit was a blur of activity. Paol opened and closed panels, took note of monitor and gauge levels, while Blade threw on his headset and spoke out his message while fervently working with the buttons and touch screens on the control panel.

  While floating horizontally and holding on to a handrail with his left hand, Paol worked through the panels and meters with his right hand, when he started to feel a tug on his left arm. Star Transport was beginning to slowly lurch. He fixed his gaze towards the front of the ship in order to assess the change in direction of the vehicle.

  “Blade! Why are we drifting downward?” Paol shouted to gain the attention of his companion in the middle of his message to NASA.

  “—at least eight or ten flashes in increasin’ frequen—hold on—we’re moving. Yes, Paol. You’re right we are pitchin’ fo’ward gradually.
Um—debris detection, Paol… debris… the nav-comp says we’re goin’ through a debris field. You might want—you should come buckle up buddy, I don’t know what kind of course correction this system’s gonna do to us. Uh. Mission Control, please corroborate event. Do the flashes correspond to debris detection event? Over.”

  Blade flipped off the recording and pushed the transmit button. “Gimme yer hand, Paol,” Blade partially fastened his seat harness with his right hand while looking back and extending as far as he could with his left hand.

  Paol grabbed his partner by the hand and around the wrist, as the latter gradually pulled him back into the cockpit. He clumsily tossed himself into his seat, and both engaged full seat harnesses.

  “Ok, Cap’n… d’ya ever remember hearin’ the Star Shield team mention flashes? Could this thing be zappin’ debris? Would that cause the light?”

  “Makes sense, Pal. All of the flashes were almost directly ahead of us, which is where the impact of debris should be occurring, but you’re right. I don’t remember being prepped for the extreme light show. By the way, what is our heading now, Blade?”

  “Looks like we’re ‘bout 0.8 degrees below ecliptic and 2.3 degrees to the left side.”

  “Aha! Here we go.” Paol exclaimed while working one of the monitors. Pointing to the screen, he presented his findings. “Right there. An asteroid about 50K miles down range. The computer estimates it at about five hundred meters wide! That’s definitely an object worth steering around.”

  “Ya’ think the flashes was debris from the asteroid, then?”

  “I think we can figure out if it was.” Pointing to a monitor, Paol described his assessment. “You see, the first flash occurred right here around 14 hundred 15 hours. We should pass the orbit of the asteroid at about 14 hundred 28 hours. That means the debris on the other side should cease around 14 hundred 45, say 50 at the most. We’ll try to fade up the video display around 14 hundred 40 hours to see. In the meantime, we’ll want to capture the entire video, and Star Shield sensor data and wrap it up for NASA.”