Orb

by Gary Tarulli

  O R B

  Gary Tarulli

  Copyright © 2011 by Gary Tarulli

  All rights reserved

  First Edition

  Cover illustration by Phil Young

  youngfx.squarespace.com

  eBook edition by eBooks by Barb for

  booknook.biz

  Thanks, Doc

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Approach

  Kelly Takara

  Orbit

  Thompson

  Landing

  Possibilities

  Ixodes

  Sighting

  Intelligent Life

  Spheres

  What Are They?

  Many More

  Internalizing

  Ambassador Angie

  OceanOrb

  Larry Melhaus

  “But We Must Try”

  The Unthinkable

  Heartfelt

  D Major op. 61

  Imagining the Unimaginable

  Visionaries

  Addendum

  About the Author

  Approach

  I WAS ATTEMPTING to escape the confines of the box I found myself in, the one I had spent the last forty-one years creating.

  Watching Earth disappear from view, I wondered if I was taking my concept of self-improvement a bit too far.

  My name is Kyle Lorenzo. On 10 August 2232, I found myself onboard the research vessel Desio heading outbound on an eight-hundred-trillion kilometer to a planet some galactic cartographer devoid of imagination designated as 231-P5.

  In due course you will learn much about me, but you have been sufficiently forewarned: I am a writer. You know this because there were individuals in the scientific community who openly objected to my joining Desio’s crew. Their accusation: I lacked a doctoral degree in any of the hard sciences which had served as the principal criterion for filling the complement of an exploratory mission. For this grievous offense I was tried in that ubiquitous and fickle court of public opinion known as the Cloud and summarily found guilty. The verdict, bereft the weight of law, enabled all sides to prevail: I managed to slip the bonds of Earth—only to be placed in solitarily confinement, with crew, onboard ship.

  In my defense, the decision to recruit someone other than a scientist or physician for an extrasolar expedition was long overdue. I just never believed that person would be me. Or any writer, the profession having been assailed—marginalized—by two-hundred-fifty-odd years of facile communication and virtual entertainment choices. Reading, regarded as too demanding on one’s valuable time and energy, has fallen out of favor; the quaint phrase “I can read you like a book” morphing to mean “not at all.” Commensurate with the precipitous decline in reading there has been a decline in writing. Can a writer subsist without a sympathetic audience?

  A few persist. Fewer can afford the insurance, a “malpractice” policy indemnifying against charges of plagiarism that have become commonplace ever since an army of copyright lawyers began accessing the Cloud AI to cross-match that brave new novel with all that was ever written. The lawyers inform us that there’s nothing new under the Sun. I hope to avoid the problem.

  Where I’m heading there is a different sun.

  They tell me it’s blue.

  Those inclined to mathematics may chose to characterize my recruitment in terms of numbers. Or, to be more precise, percentages. Sixty percent of qualified applicants, counseled on the physical and psychological demands of prolonged spaceflight, had the good sense to drop out. (I refused to be dissuaded.) Of the remainder, seventy percent were eliminated by an exhausting series of physical fitness tests. (I keep fit, thanks to swimming and other water-related activities.) A merciless battery of mental health/aptitude tests subtracted another eighty percent. (Weeks later, Bruce Thompson, the mission leader, claimed that if the psych scores had not been graded on a curve there would have been nobody, especially me, left to choose from.)

  A host of other screening criteria were applied, some I’ll never know, nor the reason why the Crew Selection Committee was so intent on a writer joining the expedition. Whatever the underlying motive, when you do the math, five hundred applicants were distilled down to a select dozen.

  Who proceeded to effectively eliminate themselves.

  Two candidates, claiming bragging rights for making such an elite group, their egos inflated to the size of the destination planet, unexpectedly bowed out. I subsequently discovered they intended to co-author an account of their “ordeal.”

  One candidate excused herself after coming to the realization that she could not endure the emotional traumas of being separated from family and friends. Conversely, there was one writer who was deliberately trying to evade people intruding his life. (A few hundred trillion kilometers and a wormhole work exceptionally well). He learned firsthand the meaning of cruel irony when his one-man protest against lack of government funding for the arts, together with any chance of recruitment, ended upon detention for income tax evasion.

  Yet another hopeful said she had come to her senses and “no longer found romance in squandering seven months of life cooped up in a tin can hurtling through the abyss while being forced to consume recycled human waste products.” Or overworked verbiage to such edifying effect.

  These eleventh hour defections (twenty-third hour, military time compels me to say) put me in serious contention, but it was an odd stroke of good fortune that came into play: The person selected ahead of me, awarded a government grant to study the effects of electronic media on the arts, removed himself from consideration at the last possible moment.

  And so here I am, onboard a star-class vessel, assigned the responsibility of creating, “as accurately as is humanly possible, a written record of the significant events of what will certainly be a great and historic scientific voyage.”

  As best I can recall, that was the Central Space Agency’s (CSA) attempt at visionary words. They elicited this response from me: “Accuracy requires total objectivity, an impossibility when inevitably the observations a person makes are selectively filtered through the senses before entering the brain, whereupon they suffer repeated collisions, lose momentum, only to emerge in some altered form, at some later date, with some ulterior motive.” With this qualifying statement (which somehow didn’t impede my appointment) I informed the CSA that I would gladly do my very best. I’d make every attempt to be as honest and, using their word, accurate as humanly possible.

  I then proceeded to press my luck by adding one more caveat: Humanly (again, their word) may not suffice either, if, as was fervently hoped for, the expedition encounters an advanced alien life-form.

  And because I am the first filter evaluating what is to follow (you being the second), a brief, but necessary, word about this “box” I created for myself and the reason I was trying to climb out.

  One facet of the damn thing may be painfully obvious: I was having a tough time earning a living. I like to believe it’s because anything longer than two-thousand words is a tough sell. Perhaps the expedition to 231-P5, anticipated for the last two years by most of Earth’s population, would provide some desperately needed name recognition, a rocket boost to my flagging career. It might even provide a wellspring of inspiration.

  Here’s another facet: I characterize myself as borderline antisocial. In practice this means I have a tendency to keep to myself and (with one notable exception which I will soon make apparent) rarely enter into permanent relationships. I’ll have little choice but to address that personality quirk as I spend “seven months hurtling through the abyss cooped up in a tin can” along with the crew of Desio.

  So I begin my exposition, but with a final word of caution: I am not a scientist. I will not be providing much
in the way of scientific detail for what transpires. For such information I strongly encourage you to peruse the ship’s extensive logs, compiled by the five other crew members: four scientists and a medical doctor, each one preeminently qualified in their respective fields.

  Good luck reading their accounts.

  Although a significant chunk of my life was to be spent on the Desio, yet I had no knowledge of the illustrious person lending her a name. I assumed she had not been named after someone presently living. That practice had repeatedly proven itself as far too risky, human behavior being prone to failings that, when examined in the bright light of day, often result in a positive reputation being subjected to negative revision. This vexing problem is somewhat less applicable to the dead, although even the character of the deceased can be assaulted by the exhumation of damning personal revelations or reevaluated to suit the sensibilities of the time. To this last point, I’d not be too surprised if Vlad the Impaler had or will have an edifice of some import named after him.

  But what of Desio? With a minimum of research, I uncovered a full name and bio.

  Ardito Desio. Born in 1897. Died 2001. Explorer, geographer, and geologist. Leader of more than twenty scientific expeditions to isolated and geologically diverse areas of the globe; organizer of the first team to reach the summit of K-2 after five prior attempts by others had failed; author of seven hundred scientific papers—in sum, an adventurer who consumed eighty of his one hundred and four years traversing Earth during that period of time when remote and mysterious lands awaited discovery. A remarkable individual who, along with his name, had been relegated to the back shelf of history with the passage of time.

  He was long gone but apparently not completely forgotten. Somebody bestowed his good name upon our ship. I made a point of finding out who. The appellation was selected, as is presently customary, by the ship’s commander, the aforementioned Bruce Thompson. The choice told me a little about Thompson. I would soon be finding out a whole lot more.

  As for the Desio herself, form followed function: She was a sturdy, compact, and highly automated ship. I made her acquaintance during intensive training sessions when, along with the other members of his crew, Thompson instructed us in the function of everything from a recycling toilet to a gravity compensator. By teaching us himself, he would never have to hear bitching, would he, that we were not adequately instructed.

  The personal touch and thoroughness of our training was atypical. Each member of a starship crew is normally designated responsibility for only two specialized assignments. Thompson insisted this was pure nonsense; we were sufficiently intelligent (and don’t let the remark go to your heads) to have a working knowledge of nearly all of Desio’s systems. His first objective was to rotate the crew through the tasks necessary for keeping his ship running at peak efficiency. Secondarily, he firmly believed that the challenge of acquiring and utilizing multiple skills would help reduce boredom. If you needed a third reason, it was because he said so. During training I came to know and respect Thompson. For one thing, he definitely knew his ship. There was no question about her he could not answer. For another, I have a particular appreciation for his brand of sarcasm.

  The intricacies of some of the ship’s automated systems—propulsion, guidance, waste treatment, artificial gravity—I did not completely comprehend, nor was I required to. I did, however, learn enough to be amazed by their elegant and imaginative design, which approached an art form. I also came to appreciate just how dedicated mission engineers were to assuring the crew’s physical and psychological well-being.

  One example was Desio’s optimized artificial gravity, set at 1.03E, where E=Earth. I asked the ship’s physician, Kelly Takara, about this. She explained that P5s gravity was only 0.93E, meaning an individual weighing 75 kilograms onboard would instantly “lose” 7.5 kilograms once on the planet, thereby mitigating the deleterious effects of physical inactivity during the prolonged voyage. Nine days of exploratory work would be conducted with greater comfort and, more important to mission planners, with greater efficiency.

  Then again, there was the sound-canceling technology designed to eliminate the persistent hum emanating from the various life-support systems. Unfortunately, the technology worked too well. On those occasions when canned music was not playing, the ship was haunted by a deathly quiet, as attested to by every member of the crew, save one—the ship’s physicist. For the rest of us, the eerie silence heightened a pervasive feeling that lurking just beyond the ship’s thin protective bulkhead was a kindred eternal silence—a troublesome reminder that we had become the most isolated humans in the history of humankind.

  The sense of isolation we experienced and other psychological problems of prolonged space travel had been studied for years. So had the methods to counteract them. Still, what I did not anticipate were the sheer number of design elements that were planned to specifically address this problem. Early in the training regimen, when Desio was being outfitted, we were instructed to complete questionnaires regarding personal preferences in the arts—music, painting, sculpture, and the like. Assuming this was yet another psychological test, and to find out if anybody was truly paying attention, I volunteered Edvard Munch’s The Scream as my favorite painting. Two days later, Thompson, vouchsafing for my sanity, had to patiently explain the joke to a concerned CSA psychologist. I thanked the mission commander for lying on my behalf, at the same time reminding him of the statement he made about lowering the psych profile standards for writers.

  Later on I discovered that the questionnaire was actually used to help appoint the ship: Monet reproductions adorning the bulkheads; Mozart symphonies wafting over the sound system; mocha-colored paint gracing the cabin walls. All were attempts to keep the crew happy and well adjusted.

  A word about compartment layout. There were six sleeping quarters, or cabins—one for each member of the crew. Space being at a premium, each was just large enough for a bed, a workstation, and a small enclosed area for toilet and personal hygiene. For privacy, since there was precious little elsewhere on the ship, the cabins were soundproofed. Each had a coded door lock, with Thompson having override capability.

  Two of the crew, Paul Bertrand and Diana Gilmore, elected to share one of the six cabins. Never finding a reason to marry, their relationship had flourished during two decades of successful cohabitation—an enviable model for couples trying to beat the long odds. This fact didn’t deter mission engineers from happily forging ahead, designing separate quarters for each of them “in case they elected to dissolve their arrangement.” This did not sit well with Diana, who relentlessly chided the engineers for their inspirational vote of confidence.

  Early in the outbound voyage, the ship’s physician, with Thompson’s permission, converted the extra cabin to a treatment room.

  The common areas of the ship consisted mainly of four compartments, the largest being the mission room, forty meters square, used for meetings, meals, and socializing. Its two most notable features were a large composite worktable that occupied the center of the floor space and an oval viewport that dominated one wall. An adjoining compartment served as the science lab. Here lay the domain of the scientists, which I had little cause to invade. It housed built-in stations for conducting experiments, an equipment storage area, and a secured zone for quarantine and retention of specimens. Centered above these compartments was a smaller level divided roughly in half by a command and control room, complete with seating and viewports, and Desio’s navigation, communication, and nerve center.

  Above all was an enclosure housing a rotating turret equipped with a guided laser weapon system of modest capacity. There was an unconfirmed rumor that privateer ships were circling Earth, but the official justification for the system was the obliteration of space junk, a real and ever-present threat to ships in, or leaving, orbit.

  The doors to all compartments and the laser turret were installed with high-tech security locks that could be activated at Thompson’s discretion.
<
br />   Outbound.

  Three long months have elapsed. Desio and crew, quite uneventfully, have nearly completed the journey to 231-P5. I was not alone in my cabin. Angie was quietly sleeping in my bed, she being the notable exception, the one permanent attachment I previously alluded to. Her presence warrants an explanation.

  Flash back four months. I was standing in front of the Crew Selection Committee with an unusual petition: Allow Angie to become the expedition’s seventh. I had belatedly come to the realization that abandoning her on Earth was not an acceptable option. If need be, I would relinquish my seat on the Desio and a trained alternate would eagerly take my place.

  And so I emphasized my companion’s extraordinary attributes. There was no need for hyperbole. She was, after all, exceptionally bright, disciplined, well-trained, healthy and personable.

  Unfortunately, there were more practical concerns which made Angie’s inclusion a virtual impossibility. She represented excess mission weight. Oxygen and waste-processing requirements would have to be recalculated. There was the matter of her special dietary needs. And, as one committee member stated with a fair attempt at humor, “the ship already has, in Dr. Bertrand, a French crew member.”

  The committee was resolute, but for some reason agreed to defer their final decision. I remember one crewmate, Diana Gilmore, advising me not to give up hope.

  She was prescient. Two days later, the committee relented. How could they not? Angie is a damn cute pooch, miniature poodle by breed, seven kilograms, black coat, a medium shaggy kennel clip, bright, clear eyes, and a sweet disposition. The crew, almost without exception, was delighted, welcoming her with open arms. In no time at all she became our little mascot.

  If there was an onboard routine that Thompson enforced it was for the crew to convene the same exact time every morning. Considering herself an essential part of the crew, Angie rose, stretched, and leaped off my bed to follow me into the mission compartment. As she and I entered, Thompson greeted me with his usual friendly sarcasm.