“Sebastiano,” he began, “once we are back home on Earth, what are you going to spend your share of the money on? The newest exo model?”
The Italian sniffed at this. “What would you do?”
“Me?” Doug pondered, rubbing his temples. “I don’t know.”
“Let’s be honest, what would an exoskeleton do for me?”
“You could walk again.”
“But on Earth I still would always be a cripple.”
“On Earth?” People are very tolerant, Doug wanted to say, but when he heard that sentence in his head he realized this was exactly Sebastiano’s problem. His cook would never really belong.
“On Earth, yes, but not in space,” Sebastiano said.
“I understand.”
“Therefore I won’t buy an exoskeleton, I’ll buy a ship of my own. In zero gravity you are the one who is impeded by having legs. I, instead, will be my own captain.”
“There would be a market for it,” Doug said. “You only have to think of all the flights from the lunar station to Mars. Everyone else wants to get down to the planet again as quickly as possible. You would have a real advantage.”
“My thoughts, exactly,” Sebastiano said. “An exoskeleton would just be in my way.”
Doug gave him another thumbs-up and then focused on the monitor in front of his seat. Maria was steering them around the rear part of the asteroid. He called up a few images from the archive depicting this area during their initial approach, and the difference was noticeable. The machines they had brought along took apart 2003 EH1 rock by rock. They melted them, extracted everything useful from the molten mass, and left the rest behind on site as brown slag. As programmed, the machines had started at the rear of the asteroid and were now feeding and moving forward on a spiral course. According to the computer estimate, the heavy equipment would have turned about four-fifths of 2003 EH1 into sought-after resources by the time they reached the orbit of Earth.
Doug was grateful to the bureaucrats of Earth. All of this could have been done solely by automated systems, but in the renewed Space Treaty of 2055, all nations agreed that a license for asteroid mining required the presence of at least two humans on each celestial body. The idea behind it was to leave something for the latecomers to the market, such as the African countries. The license became free again as soon as a corporation pulled its entire staff from a mined asteroid. This way, countries and corporations could not simply stockpile and reserve any celestial body in range by leaving their marker on it. This allowed for crews like Doug’s, at least in theory. So far, he knew of no individual entrepreneur who could afford to invest this much effort.
“One g,” he heard Maria’s voice say. Doug involuntarily grabbed the armrests of his seat. It was a long time since he had felt as heavy as on his home planet of Earth, not since the deceleration maneuvers during their arrival on 2003 EH1. The engine thrust pressed against his stomach like a fist. He realized that he really should train more often in the basement. Sweat ran down his forehead, and he carefully glanced to the side. Maria seemed to do her work effortlessly. He knew she sat in that torture instrument he called the mill more often than he did. One time they even met there for sex! Doug smiled pensively. Even back then he had resolved to do more training sessions in the basement. Would he keep his resolution this time?
Doug called up their trajectory on the screen. Kiska would be accelerating for another hour, and afterward Maria would switch off the engines. Ten hours from now they should be within range of that strange object. Doug had already worked out an interception program for when they actually encountered it, but before they initiated this plan, they would first try to establish contact using standard protocols. The thing might be from another solar system. Doug tilted the seatback and extended the footrests. He would take a little nap before their encounter.
January 4, 2072, Kiska
“Doug, it’s another half an hour.” Maria’s voice seemed to reach him from far away. The warm hand on his shoulder must be hers. Doug opened his eyes and looked at the monitor in front of him. Where was the thing they had been pursuing? He couldn’t find it!
“You still seem to be a bit confused,” Maria said. She must have noticed his questioning look, as she changed the monitor’s settings. The ship was decelerating with the stern aimed forward, of course, and the camera which had previously looked ahead was now pointed backward toward the sun. Doug once more saw their target on the screen. The foreign object was marked with a blinking cross, but the crew still could not discern its shape.
“Do we know more about it yet?” he asked.
“Its external hull should consist of metal, according to the spectrometer,” Maria explained. “This thing is small, no more than five meters long but even considering that, it is amazingly dim on the radar screen.”
“Are there any active defense measures?”
“Whether it uses camouflage?” she asked. “That’s possible, of course, but it would make no sense. It simply flies along and does not give the impression of trying to escape us. It shows no activity at all.”
Doug was impressed at how well Maria had familiarized herself with her work responsibilities, despite this being her first space voyage. Three weeks after their departure from Earth, she had already learned the basics of steering the ship.
“Have you tried to establish contact?” he asked.
“We wanted to wait for you,” Maria replied. “You were sleeping like a log.”
Doug was surprised at himself. But he also had not missed anything important. “Well, then let’s try to phone this thing.”
“Did you say, ‘phone?’” Sebastiano asked from behind him.
“That’s what they used to call conversations across long distances,” Doug said.
“Just kidding,” Sebastiano said with a grin.
Doug got up and walked toward the cook’s chair. “You just watch it,” he said, waving his fists, “as long as we are still decelerating, I have the upper hand.”
Sebastiano laughed.
“Stop making jokes that nobody understands. Get to work, boys!” Maria commanded.
“Yes, boss,” both of the men answered in unison.
“You know what? I am going to open a communication channel myself. Both of you are too silly today,” Maria said. She tapped the monitor screen in front of her seat and started speaking. “Mining spaceship Kiska to unknown object, please identify yourself.” The automatic system added a data package to the message, one that any terrestrial spaceship control system would recognize as the command to send its identifier. Then it broadcast this on all commonly used frequencies.
Doug stood on tiptoes in order to see what was displayed on Maria’s monitor. He only saw a dashed line getting longer and longer. The unknown object did not reply. Maria turned around and looked at him.
“No answer,” she said.
That was obvious, but Doug immediately understood why Maria pointed it out. If the object had been built by humans, it would have to react to such a request. Even if the pilot was unconscious, dead, or not in the mood for conversation, the control system should at least report the registration number of the ship. This was a legal requirement in all countries of Earth. While there were rumors about pirates who allegedly chased their prey in modified, camouflaged ships, no one had ever actually met such a space buccaneer. Reports about them in the media had later turned out to be fakes, created by pilots who tried to cover up their own mistakes. If someone really managed to get hold of a spaceship, it would be much easier to make money with it the legal way.
“Try it again,” Doug instructed. “Maybe there was interference.”
Theoretically, a solar eruption could have interrupted the communication at that very second. Although this was highly improbable, they could only exclude it by means of a second attempt.
“This is mining spaceship Kiska.” Maria tried once more. “Please identify yourself. Do you need help?”
While the unknown object
was still tens of thousands of kilometers away, the radio message needed less than a second to cover the distance. They received no answer.
“Still nothing,” she reported.
“Hmmm,” Doug said. Nothing like this had ever happened to him before. It simply could not be.
“I would say we just take a look at what is happening there. Maybe their radio transmitter is broken,” Sebastiano suggested.
“If we want to take a look, I will have to adjust the course. You’d better buckle up,” Maria warned.
“Good,” Doug said as he went to his seat. “Let’s take a look. But in the meantime we keep trying to radio this thing. If its antenna is damaged, we might get through once we are closer.”
He sat down and buckled his safety belt. Soon after the usual click he heard vibrations coming from the engines. New forces pushed him against the armrest of his seat, as Maria was performing the announced course correction. Ten minutes later they became weightless.
“Now we are moving toward the object in free fall,” Maria said. “We will catch up with it in about an hour. Then I can match our speeds.”
“Is there any reaction over the radio?” Doug asked.
“No,” she replied, shaking her head.
“Then we’ll just fly there and see for ourselves,” Sebastiano said.
“I don’t know,” Doug said. “I wouldn’t want to enter a strange ship as an uninvited guest. But if we want to find out what is going on, we might not have a choice.”
Forty minutes later, Maria announced, “I’ve got an image now. I am going to send it to your display.”
Something appeared on Doug’s monitor. It reminded him of a jungle gym on a playground: Struts, strips, and boards seemed to have been nailed together haphazardly, creating a shape vaguely resembling a tower. At the bottom of the structure there was a barrel, at its top a block-shaped chamber without windows.
“That’s weird. Have you ever seen anything like it?” he asked.
“At the playground in Tsiolkovsky,” Maria said. “It wasn’t that tall, and it was assembled more systematically.”
Doug was glad they both made the same comparison. They were probably envisioning the same playground.
“Looks like it was cobbled together in a hurry,” Sebastiano observed.
“Now it’s clear why this thing showed up so dimly on the radar screen,” Doug added. “Its parts reflect in all different directions. Do we know what it is made of?”
“Metal,” Maria said. “So it apparently did not take off straight from the playground.”
“What kind of alloy?” asked Sebastiano.
Doug had an idea what he was hinting at. If the object was of terrestrial origin, the metallic parts would have a certain composition. However, if it was made of alloys which were uncommon or even unknown on Earth—no, that would be an almost incredible coincidence. That thing had certainly been made by human hands.
“We would have to get closer to determine the exact composition of the alloy. But I can reassure you the object was not made by aliens,” Maria said. “See that barrel at the end?”
Doug nodded.
“I compared it with our image database. It is a spare ion drive that was manufactured by Virgin Galactic, a supplier of NASA.”
“Spare ion drive?” Doug asked.
“NASA equipped some expeditions with building kits for remotely controllable satellites,” Maria explained. “This allowed the astronauts to assemble a research probe with specific scientific instruments, just as needed.”
“How do you know so much about this?” Sebastiano asked.
“It’s part of the image description,” she said.
“And what about the measuring instruments? Can we detect any of them?”
“No, Doug,” Maria replied. “We only see a drive at the rear, a framework in the middle, and the capsule in front.”
“The framework seems to be a completely useless part of this structure,” Doug said.
“Not if it serves as a clean separation between the contents of the block and the ion drive. It is always good to keep some distance between cargo and drive,” Sebastiano said.
“But only if the content of the cargo containers would suffer damage from being too close to a radiation source,” Doug retorted.
“Nothing could have survived inside this little box,” Maria said. “Just take a look at its trajectory. This object took some 20 years to get here from Jupiter. And I do not see any signs of a life-support system.”
“Is the object completely dead?” Doug asked.
“No, the drive is almost as cold as space,” Maria said. “It must have been in sleep mode for a very long time, but the block at the front is showing weak energy signatures. There is something there,” Maria said.
“Then let’s find out what it is,” Sebastiano said from behind.
“Yes, I am bringing Kiska alongside, just be patient. You can already start the training.”
Doug smiled. That’s so much like her, my Maria, he thought. Instead of going by the book and waiting for the commander’s permission, she made the decision herself. He was not angry about it, though. It had been clear to him from the very first moment this would not be an ordinary space voyage.
Climbing out of his seat, Doug carefully moved toward the exercise bike. Sebastiano followed close behind. For the Italian, a similar device had been modified in such a way that he could exercise using his arms. Doug reached for the oxygen mask. Before exiting the spaceship they would have to decrease the nitrogen saturation in the blood, which required a lot of sweating.
“If we had a porthole, we could spot the object now,” Maria announced ten minutes later.
“So is it time to get out?” Doug took off his mask while asking the question, but still kept pedaling.
“You can already start suiting up,” she said.
“Give us a little more time, because the oxygen levels aren’t yet where they are supposed to be,” he said.
“You’ve got all the time—”
Maria was interrupted by a chirping sound. It was the radio receiver. Maria tapped somewhere on her monitor screen, probably launching the decoder.
“Good afternoon,” they heard a voice say in what sounded like slightly antiquated English.
“Will you please identify yourself?” Maria reacted to this call in a surprisingly calm manner.
“I... I would rather not.”
“This is mining spaceship Kiska. Please identify yourself,” Maria repeated.
“I just told you I cannot accommodate your request.” The man clearly spoke English like one from the educated British classes.
“If you refuse to identify yourself, we will have to pay you a visit and find out ourselves,” Maria said. Doug could see on the monitor that she was still sending increasingly urgent identification requests via the data channel. If it was manmade, whatever software steered the unknown ship would have to react, even if the operator tried to prevent it. By law, this protocol was integrated into any flight control software.
“You can cancel your excursion and start the return flight to 2003 EH1,” the voice replied.
“We are detecting an unidentified spacecraft ahead of us, which obviously houses a passenger,” Maria said. “We are legally required to make sure the passenger is doing well. Otherwise we would be guilty of failure to render assistance.”
“But don’t you see that I don’t need your help?”
“As required by law, we have to assume the opposite due to your refusal to identify yourself,” the pilot said. “Something is not right. Otherwise you would follow the protocols.”
“There are other reasons for my wish to remain anonymous,” the voice said. “And by the way, you can stop your attempts to force me to cooperate on the data level. It won’t work.”
Maria spread her arms in a gesture of apology, yet she also seemed to express her bafflement about the situation. Doug had been admiring her patience. He removed his oxygen mask.
“This won’t get us anywhere,” he finally said. He spoke loudly, so the voice in the unknown spaceship understood everything. “We are now putting on our suits and we will check in person that everything is okay.” He felt uneasy following through with this veiled threat. In their spacesuits they would be especially vulnerable, and who knew what they could expect over there? The box containing their conversation partner did not seem to possess a hatch. This meant they would have to use force to enter it. However, what if their actions caused the mysterious vessel’s atmosphere to escape? Doug already had the deaths of two people on his conscience. No, they would not go so far as to attempt this.
“You will be disappointed,” the voice said. “Please stay in your spaceship. A spacewalk would only expose you to unnecessary danger.”
“Please leave the evaluation to us,” Doug said, deciding to stay unyielding for as long as possible.
“As you wish,” the voice said.
Damn. Doug had the feeling they were really getting into trouble. The cosmos was no playground, and no word was as misleading as ‘spacewalk.’ They risked their lives during each EVA, or extravehicular activity. Normally, Doug tried not to think about it. Otherwise he would not be able to walk around the asteroid whenever he felt like it. However, on the asteroid there was nothing that was out to get him. The dangers were manageable and few. For one thing, the huge boulder itself shielded him against half of all potential grazing shots from space.
But now the asteroid was far away. They were alone with this unknown being. What if it simply activated its drive while they were approaching the rocket? An ion drive did not generate an enormous amount of thrust, but it would suffice to throw one of them against the framework at an odd angle, maybe even damaging a breathing hose. He did not want to think about the possible difficulties. Doug decided that he would not have to, because they were not going outside. If there was no other solution, they would have to just let the unknown object leave.
The Hole Page 4
