Project Sail

by Anthony DeCosmo

  Leanne Warner’s voice came over his radio headset: “185 to Alpha capsule, you are looking good on our end. Dr. Kost says to expect strong wind gusts above ten thousand feet, then it calms. Surface temperature is seventy degrees Fahrenheit and falling.”

  He radioed back, “So you are telling me I came twenty-two light-years for the beach and I packed my bathing suit for nothing?”

  She answered, “If you brought it, use it now; Kost forecasts this region will drop to sixty in the next ten hours, and only down from there. Oh, and don’t worry about sunburn because there won’t be any sun for about two weeks.”

  The cabin rattled and bobbed as the engines fired a hard burst. While a bit disconcerting, the computer assured they remained on course.

  “Roger that, 185, touchdown in ten seconds.”

  Lacking an implant, Stein used fingers to work the controls and ensure they came down on top of the beacon they had dropped by drone eighteen hours ago. Information from the sensor indicated the ground was solid, dry, and clear enough to accept the capsule.

  As they neared touchdown, the only light on this side of the orbiting moon came from the glowing thrust of the capsule’s retrorockets. That glow lit the open field into which they descended, causing what resembled short green grass to flutter in the unnatural wind created by the falling machine.

  The final burst from the engines lasted until landing struts touched ground, the heavy shock absorbers softening the impact.

  Stein switched on the floodlights, bathing their surroundings in a sterile white. The light shined on flora resembling grass and bushes. Further out and barely inside the circle of light, the visitors saw what might have been trees with cylindrical trunks, gray bark, and flat-topped crowns sparsely covered in leaves. They seemed more like columns of stone pillars than woodlands, but Coffman found them fascinating.

  “Look, yes,” he said as he worked a camera screen and focused on the growths. “At first glance, I would say those resemble baobab trees. I see grass, scrubs…”

  His words faded from Stein’s ears as he received a transmission from Hawthorne.

  “Bill, what is your status?”

  “We have landed safe and sound. Professor Coffman is drooling to get outside.”

  “Nothing for sixty minutes,” Hawthorne reminded. “Watch for signs the environment is reacting to your presence. What’s the capsule’s status?”

  He checked the computer and answered, “Systems show green and we have fuel for the return trip but damn, we burned plenty coming down.”

  “Okay, sounds good. Remember, sit tight for sixty minutes.”

  For Stein, that hour felt longer but for the other three it must have passed fast because they busied themselves with surveying their surroundings. While Coffman and Soto sounded like kids with their nose pressed to the candy store window, Wren remained silent, perhaps worrying a show of excitement would ruin his reputation as a surly grump.

  Finally, Professor Coffman said, “We have done all we can from in here. Let’s have a look outside.”

  “Yeah, open the fucking hatch already,” Wren shared the professor’s sentiments in his own way.

  The group attached oxygen tanks to their suits and then took turns checking one another’s seals and life support gear, following a rigid list of inspection points.

  Stein felt weird asking, but he had seen enough movies so he did anyway: “Professor, what’s to say their isn’t a giant tiger-alien-creature outside waiting to pounce when we open the hatch?”

  Coffman answered over the proximity radio, “Mr. Stein, we have been observing G-Moon for almost two weeks now and have not seen any creatures larger than insects and birds.”

  “Sure, but a predator might hide until it found something to munch on.”

  “I am saying there are no animals for a large predator to eat. Now possibly evolution here developed a predator that only dines on extraterrestrial visitors, but I think that is unlikely.”

  Before their conversation could go any further, Wren put his helmet on and broadcast, “Can we get the fuck outside?”

  Because the capsule did not include a separate air lock, they followed special protocols before exiting the ship. First, they released vaporized hydrogen peroxide to decontaminate the interior and the outer layer of their suits. Next, the air inside the capsule was replaced by atmosphere taken from outside.

  At that point the hatch opened and everyone onboard—even Wren—allowed Professor Coffman to take that first step off the ladder onto the surface of an alien world. Of course that world felt like a lonely stage: a circle of light projected from the capsule surrounded by pitch-black.

  Coffman ventured out about five feet before hunching over and touching the ground with his gloved hand.

  “Feels similar to soil on Earth, perhaps a bit finer like sand and the grass is even green, although a shade paler than what we have at home. Mr. Soto, be sure to take samples.”

  “Yes, professor,” the medical assistant and biologist vacantly replied as he took in his surroundings.

  Stein stood at the hatch and watched, content to have landed with the capsule, not needing to do so with his feet. A part of him still worried that a giant shark-gorilla-dinosaur would emerge from the darkness and turn them into a meal. He would feel safer with a carbine slung on his shoulder.

  Wren eyed the two-inch tall grass-like turf at his feet.

  “No signs of decay or dead plant life. If this moon spends half of its eight-hundred and forty hour orbit in darkness and the other half in light, shouldn’t there be a cycle of growth and decay?”

  Coffman guessed, “Everything we see here, from plant life to microbes, evolved under the current day and night cycle, the huge temperature swings, and sunlight deprivation. I can only imagine what we will find. Perhaps the plants here have a different means of storing their energy. We are also dealing with a red dwarf sun; I imagine photosynthesis is different here.”

  Soto examined a portable scanner and announced, “One thing that is not different is the air. I am reading a nitrogen-oxygen mix at seventy-eight percent to twenty-two, the rest consists of argon. I would say similar to Earth and breathable to humans.”

  “Thank God,” Stein said and reached for his helmet. “I hate wearing this.”

  In unison, Coffman and Soto raised their hands and shouted, “Don’t take off your helmet!”

  “You said it was breathable.”

  Wren stared at the pilot and said, “Are you fucking nuts? Honestly, you probably should take off your helmet and with any luck the gene pool will grow stronger.”

  Coffman explained, “The atmosphere is breathable but what else is in this air, Mr. Stein? Bacteria, viruses, or other particles our equipment cannot identify?”

  Stein moved his hands from his headgear as if backing away from a hissing cobra.

  Coffman went on, “Conversely, how might you contaminate this ecosystem? Our bodies are full of microscopic organisms, which is why we have to undergo microbiome therapies when in space for extended periods. But those same microbes that help us might be as deadly to this environment as smallpox was to the Native Americans.”

  Stein held his hands up in surrender.

  “Okay, I get it, I’m an ass. Forget I said anything.”

  A transmission from orbit asked, “Ground team, what is your status?”

  Coffman answered Hawthorne, “Ah, we have exited the capsule and are examining the area directly outside the ship. Much of what we see is quite familiar: trees, grass, and plant life. At the same time, this ecosystem must have developed amazing properties of resilience and energy management to survive.”

  Hawthorne replied, “Sounds good, Professor. You have eight hours on the surface. Remember to allow another hour for decontamination.”

  “We’ll be moving away from the landing zone and exploring our surroundings at a maximum distance of one hundred meters from the capsule. That will allow us to secure a sample of the ocean water as well as everything else
.”

  “Happy hunting, professor.”

  Stein helped them unload equipment from the cargo compartment, starting with walking tripods topped with spotlights. These robots would follow the research team, illuminating the darkness. Additional wheeled rovers served as scouts and pack mules, investigating their surroundings and carrying gear for the landing party.

  For the next seven hours, Stein sat in his space suit inside the capsule coordinating their survey. Soto secured twenty soil samples, each containing white invertebrates resembling worms or maggots ranging from a quarter of an inch to half-a-foot in length. Wren filled three one-gallon jugs with ocean water, and Coffman alternated his time between taking scrapes from the trees and plants and cataloging their surroundings with various cameras and sensors.

  As they gathered their gear and stowed the bounty taken from the surface, excitement gave in to fatigue, to the point that Wren did not even have the energy for snide remarks and Stein thought he heard Coffman snoring inside his helmet.

  G-Moon’s gravity was on a par with Earth’s, so blast off put the passengers through the same rigors as an Apollo rocket taking to the sky.

  Minutes later, they orbited toward SE 185, which welcomed them with another hour of decontamination and observation until they could exit the capsule. When they did, Coffman had only one thing to say to Commander Hawthorne.

  “We are going down again tomorrow.”

  38. Beacon

  Still wearing his space suit except for the helmet, Professor Coffman led Stein and Wren away from their capsule, returning after a survey trip to a savannah near the equator. They exited the bow launch chamber and turned right, passing through an open bulkhead and onto the catwalk above engineering.

  After having spent an hour in decontamination, Coffman was eager to follow up on the results of their survey.

  “I will retask a satellite to do another pass of our landing site. We might be able to measure the water table.”

  Coffman’s enthusiasm came from a water sample. The possible discovery of dioxins in that sample led to a spirited debate with Wren arguing that dioxins could occur naturally and Coffman seeing the pollutant as another sign that G-Moon once hosted a civilization. Given it had been Wren who discovered the rock cut and possible road, the debate had not been as vigorous as it might have been a week earlier. Still, Wren was a cynic and he kept quoting Carl Sagan: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”

  Wren said, “I’m taking the sample to Soto in the medical lab for evaluation.”

  Coffman heard Stein mumble, “I’m going to grab a beer,” which struck the professor as odd; he did not think there was any beer onboard.

  As they reached the other side of engineering, the catwalk again passed through an open bulkhead into a compartment hosting the two aft pod bays. There was also a set of stairs to the left and an elevator to the right. The trio took to the stairs.

  “If I recall correctly, Commander Hawthorne is doing an atmosphere survey in the shuttle,” Coffman mused aloud.

  “More like a joyride,” Stein said.

  The next deck up was the crew level. To their right, the hall opened to the common room with the closed doors to medical on the port side.

  Sheila Black led Rafael Soto from the common room, by Coffman, down the hall, then into her cabin.

  Coffman scratched his chin, recalling that Captain Charles had forbid trysts. Then again, Charles was no longer in command and they had been away from Oberon for almost six weeks.

  “Leo, I think you will have to wait on that lab analysis for a while.”

  A different crew quarter’s door opened and Matthew Carlson emerged, followed by Andy Phipps who hurried down the stairs.

  “Ah, I was off duty, heading to engineering now, professor.”

  Carlson, for his part, went up the stairs toward the command deck at a fast walk.

  It amazed Coffman that they were on man’s first interstellar voyage orbiting a planet with a dynamic ecosystem and people still cared about—let alone had time for—fooling around.

  He continued up to the command deck and then to his project room. A flurry of activity greeted him as five different displays relayed data from satellites, drones, and cameras. Beeps, buzzes, taps, and tones reminded him of an old-world print newspaper room where reporters tapped away on their ancient typewriters preparing the next big scoop for the evening edition.

  Wait a second…tapping on typewriters?

  He did not have equipment that tapped, so he followed the noise to a computer panel near the prong-covered box that was Probe 581’s pincushion.

  That dead link was alive again and sending a message, over and over.

  “Holy shit.”

  ---

  Hawthorne flew SE 185’s heavy lifter shuttle, which resembled and flew like a larger space plane.

  While capsules rode rockets of intense thrust straight up into orbit with little pilot control, space planes reached orbit in a comfortable, leisurely fashion and were far more maneuverable.

  Pilots, such as Jonathan Hawthorne, saw it as freedom incarnate. Unlike capsules, the shuttle could fly, change course, descend, gain altitude, even dip into the atmosphere and then pop right back out into space like a swimmer testing pool water. Better yet, the vehicle came with a fully pressurized cabin and artificial gravity, although the latter deactivated when entering the atmosphere of a planet with significant gravity.

  On day eighteen at G-Moon, Hawthorne decided to indulge himself. Under the pretense of an atmospheric survey, he took the shuttle around the moon with Tommy Starr in the copilot’s chair and Kost, King, and Thomas onboard to assist.

  In truth, he wanted to enjoy the visual treat of G-moon moving through the shadow of Gliese 581g in an eclipse. Seeing 581 block the rays from its red dwarf parent was a spectacular sight, one that also made him feel small and powerless in the face of the universe.

  On this flight, he did not intend to land even though visiting the moon had become routine.

  That first surface visit to the archipelago had come on day thirteen, followed on day fifteen with a return trip to the same site by Stein, Coffman, and Soto. On day sixteen, Carlson piloted Dr. Kost and Sheila Black to the shoreline of a continent in a temperate zone.

  Yesterday—day seventeen—saw two landings at the same time, both by capsule, the first being Hawthorne, Wren, and Thomas making planetfall at a river delta, the other Stein flying Coffman and Soto to the northern pole.

  Coffman directed all scientific research on the mission, and he wanted quick, hit-and-run landings to gather specimens and collect general data. He planned to invest in longer visits once the moon’s outer surface bathed in the full force of Gliese’s red rays, which would occur in a few days.

  They would then establish one primary base on the surface for intensive research. Nonetheless, what they had found thus far filled the ship with such excitement the crew nearly forgot that their Captain had been deposed by armed mutiny and remained confined to his cabin.

  The weather was the first reason for exhilaration. The atmosphere was active and lessened the temperature swings with strong circulation. The outer face’s night side was not as cold as it would be otherwise, although temperatures varied based on latitude. So far, they had not measured anything below forty degrees near the equator, although the poles had already sunk under zero degrees Fahrenheit.

  Geothermal heating also helped and meant that G-Moon was geologically active. Carlson spent hours at a time scanning the surface in search of volcanoes.

  On the other hand, King and Soto spent their time examining the ecosystem. Plants, insects and worms did not sound exciting, but these were the first forms of life larger than bacteria discovered anywhere other than humanity’s home planet.

  Two missions saw creatures resembling marmots. While not large enough to feed Stein’s fear of gigantic predators, their existence was further evidence of a vibrant and thriving environment.

  Yet there was s
omething familiar about this place. Despite differences in appearance, the trees, plants, insects, and animals played roles identical with the ones their distant cousins played on Earth, although adapted to survive in the moon’s climate.

  The fundamentals of photosynthesis differed and from what Soto could detect, the vegetation had developed complex energy conservation systems to deal with the day and night cycle. Overall, the result was resilient flora that could thrive in environments that would kill their Earthly relatives.

  Meantime, as Hawthorne steered the plane toward the southern pole, he called through the open cockpit door to Lieutenant Thomas: “Take shots of this region; as tight as you can with both normal and infrared.”

  Kelly sat at a workstation using the ship’s imaging module to capture pictures. Kost leaned over her shoulder and helped Kelly work the equipment, although they spent their time talking about vertical farms and what Kelly would do when she left the military.

  Across the short aisle, Dr. King alternated her attention from the window to a data stream coming from drones sent to collect samples from the upper atmosphere.

  Hawthorne banked to port and gained altitude. While not as enthusiastic a pilot as Stein, he welcomed the chance to fly, despite worrying that when he returned he would find Charles released from his confinement and waiting for him with a posse.

  He tried to take his mind off that by making small talk.

  “So how did you get drafted for this mission, Tommy?”

  “Commander, just so you know, I like Captain Charles and I do not believe he is some sort of spy. He has always been good to me.”

  Apparently, the excitement had not caused Starr to forget the mutiny.

  Hawthorne felt his heart beat fast but found the voice to reply, “Okay, fine, but I have my orders.”

  “Sorry, Commander, that is a cowardly way out. We are twenty-two light-years from home and orders given by a corporate suit do not mean much out here. We are supposed to have one another, but I guess that went to hell.”

  Truth was, Hawthorne agreed with Starr. Considering the resulting mistrust among the crew, they would have been better off rooting out the spy before the mission and taking their chances on a European man-of-war arriving at 581g.