by Les Johnson
I continued to ask about the Coraggio, and those clips also got played. One female host commented that my apparent concern was “touching.” She emphasized apparent. Of course she would. There was really nobody aboard the Excelsior.
The talkers had always seemed to me narrowly focused and out of touch with reality. And from my perspective approaching the asteroid belt, that hadn’t changed. But they had voices. And maybe that was all that mattered. I didn’t care if they were talking about a celebrity’s wedding dress or a corrupt politician. They had voices, and I, simply by listening, became part of the conversation.
***
Unfortunately, a flight through the solar system isn’t likely to be what most people expect. I’d have loved to soar past Mars, pick my way through the asteroids, get a good look at Jupiter, and glide through Saturn’s rings, but my course to Minetka wasn’t going to take me close to anything . . . other than Neptune.
I was cruising at three million miles per hour, so even had I gotten within a reasonable distance of Saturn, which I would have given much to see, I wouldn’t have been there long.
My reports acquired a boring sameness. Liberty, this is Excelsior. Running warm and still on schedule.
The operators always responded, “Copy that, Excelsior.” One of them, a woman whose name I never learned, asked me a couple of times if I was okay. Unlike the others, she seemed to realize, or allowed herself to pretend, that she was really talking to somebody. Soon, I didn’t hear her anymore and I wondered whether she’d gotten into trouble. I didn’t ask the other operators about her because, if something had happened, I didn’t want to risk getting her in deeper. I tried to convince myself that she’d simply been promoted, or had run off with an English teacher. But that was the incident that made me realize I seriously disliked Denny Calkin.
I never found out what, if anything, had happened.
I spent a lot of time just watching the basic image on the monitors: a black canopy full of lights. Where’s a good comet when you need one?
Morris had stopped calling about the time I cleared Jupiter’s orbit. By then the delay in any exchange was preposterous. If I’d asked Morris how he was doing, I would have had to wait an hour and a half for my answer. We kept communicating, though, but by voice message.
“The world is watching, Sara. You’re getting constant coverage. Right up there with America First and Wild for You. Harry Pavlo, on a talk show yesterday, said you should write a book. Mary thinks the book thing is a good idea. Anyhow, Adam’s teachers have asked if you’d be willing, when you come back, to talk to some of her students at the high school. We haven’t tried anything like that before, but I don’t see a problem with it if you don’t.”
On Day 8, I left Saturn behind. Or would have had it been in the area. I mentioned earlier that I’d wished I could have seen it up close. Actually, I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t. I’d refrained from checking its position because I wanted to keep the possibility open. But the odds were remote. And they held: it turned out to be on the other side of the sun somewhere, which meant I wouldn’t even have a shot at it on the way back.
In the meantime, the talk shows lost interest in the Eagle mission. We were replaced by Tim Hurst, the popular comedian, who’d been photographed at an orgy when he was supposed to be working on a new film; and by the on-again/off-again corruption scandal of Senator Brickhouse, who’d built his career as a crusader against lawbreakers of all stripes.
I knew that Morris had liked the press we were getting, and had hoped that interest would remain high. And I’ll confess I’d enjoyed the attention myself. So I manufactured an image of an asteroid flashing by, and sent it on to Liberty. It created a mild sensation. And of course no harm was done.
To really make a splash, though, I needed something more stirring than a chunk of rock. I was seriously tempted to arrange a close passage with a comet, but I was pretty sure I couldn’t get away with it.
One possibility would have been to create an alien vehicle, send a startled message back, along with pictures. ‘It tracked me for about an hour. Then it turned away and disappeared within minutes.’
But I couldn’t get that one past my conscience. And Morris wouldn’t have approved.
I also thought about an asteroid with a feature on it like a temple. Or a face. Faces were good. But it would have to get lost and eventually become a historical mystery like Stonehenge or the Mary Celeste or Judge Crater, and I knew I’d never be able to keep my secret. Eventually I’d unburden myself to Morris, and embarrass him. I couldn’t have that.
I did the right thing, of course, but what a blown opportunity.
On Day 24, I passed the orbit of Uranus.
One of the radio people noted the event, remarking that I was now in God’s country. The Kuiper Belt lay ahead, beginning near Neptune. Than Pluto. And finally the Oort Cloud, roughly a light-year distant. It would be a long ride even for the Excelsior.
***
I was several days beyond Uranus when Liberty relayed an interview from CBS. The interviewee was Colin Edward, who was identified as the chief of operations for NASA. Chief of Operations. That had been Morris’s title.
Damn.
Edward talked about plans for the future, where the space program hoped to be in ten years, and, yes, he said, the hunt for the Coraggio was on schedule. “But you have to realize,” he said, “that we’ve heard nothing from the ship for several weeks. I think we need to face reality: It’s lost out there, and our chances of finding it are slim at best.”
I’d never heard of Colin Edward. And when I did a quick search I discovered he’d been a major fund raiser for President Ferguson. He was another political operative. This time as chief of operations.
A few minutes later, I got another jolt: Calkin had resigned. His replacement was somebody else I’d never heard of.
I remember thinking that I was glad to be out on the far side of Uranus.
I waited, hoping to get a message from Morris saying he’d gone back to Huntsville. But there was nothing.
During the early morning on Day 30, the end of the first month, I made my standard report and signed off. By then, I was far enough out that a transmission exchange took seven or eight hours. A reply came in somewhat after 1300: “Copy your numbers, Excelsior. Your old boss asked me to say hello.”
They wouldn’t even let him near the mike. I guess they were afraid he might say something negative.
I responded by asking that someone tell Morris I missed him. Then I simply drifted through the electronic complex of what had become home while whatever remained of my enthusiasm for NASA and the Global Initiative melted away.
That evening I set the automatic responder to send the twice-daily reports to Liberty, and the timer to wake me when we were two days from Minetka. Then, for the first time since leaving Earth, I slept.
I had no sense of the passage of time. When I was conscious again, it was Day 62. I was more than four and a half billion miles out, well into the Kuiper Belt. Minetka lay some eighty million miles ahead: time to start braking.
To do that, I had to turn the ship around and point the tubes forward. I checked the scopes first to ensure there was nothing immediately ahead. Turning the Excelsior at its current velocity was the most dangerous part of the flight, because it brought the ship out from behind its shield and exposed it to whatever might lie in its path. When you’re traveling at 864 miles per second, it doesn’t take a very big pebble to make a very large hole. The turn would require four minutes and eleven seconds. Once it was completed and the engines had come online again, the danger would all but evaporate because anything that posed a threat would be blown away.
The Kuiper Belt, of course, doesn’t have anything as specific as a boundary. It constitutes a vast ring of dust, ice, and rocks orbiting the sun at a range of approximately three to five billion miles. Thousands of the rocks are more than a hundred miles across, several with a greater land surface than North America. Minetka ranks among these
.
I had to delay the turn for about half an hour because the scopes were picking up light debris in our path. When it was clear, I swung the ship around and started the engines. We began to decelerate.
I informed Liberty that the maneuver had been successfully completed. The response, “Copy that, Excelsior,” arrived thirteen hours later.
The Coraggio’s last report had been to signal completion of the same turn. She had gotten this far.
If you read about the Kuiper Belt, it sounds crowded: millions of rocks and ice chunks constantly bumping into one another. But seen through the scopes, it was strictly empty sky. I’d seen some of the images Lucy sent, so I wasn’t surprised. And I can’t say I was disappointed, because I didn’t want to get anywhere near a collision. Still, I’d have liked to see something. In any case, I didn’t go back to sleep.
Now and then I got a blip on my screens. But of course I never saw anything that was close. We were moving too quickly. Anything nearby became, at best, a blur. By then my velocity was down to 414 miles per second. Crawling along.
And finally it was time to send Lucy a radio message. Because I had no way of knowing where the Coraggio might be, my best chance was a general broadcast. “Lucy,” I said, “this is Sara. I’m in Excelsior. Do you read me? Are you there? Please respond.”
I got a lot of static back. After about twenty minutes, I tried again. And continued to resend at scattered intervals. If she was close to the plutoid, she’d hear it.
I’d long since stopped asking Liberty if the situation had changed, if they’d heard from Lucy. I remained coiled in a silence disturbed only by the rumble of the engines. As long as Morris had been there, at the other end, I hadn’t felt so alone. Now—
I looked out at the sky, illuminated by countless stars. And at the sun, which at this distance was no more than a bright star itself. And I wondered whether anyone else, ever, would come out here and look around. I tried calculating the odds, but there were too many unknowns. Human beings are always talking about instincts. Instincts are of course evolutionary impulses left over from a time when people hung out in jungles. Theoretically, I don’t have any of those. Still, while I couldn’t justify a conclusion one way or the other, it seemed unlikely that anybody else would follow. Something buried deep in my software assured me that the great experiment was ending.
When two hours had passed with no reply, I notified the space center that my first attempt to communicate with Lucy had failed.
Midway through Day 64, I was down to 216 miles per second. I scanned the area in all directions for any sign of the Coraggio, but there was nothing other than an occasional rock.
I adjusted course, swinging gradually to port, putting the Excelsior onto a broad curve. When, finally, I encountered Minetka, I’d be moving alongside it at a matching velocity.
I tried calling Lucy a few more times, every hour or so. But nothing came back, and eventually I gave up. She was wrecked, I decided. Maybe she’d gotten careless, or unlucky, and collided with something.
A few minutes past midnight, the control system signaled that braking had been completed. I rotated the ship again, putting the shield back up in front, and continued looking for Minetka. At about 0300, the scanners located it.
I like visuals, so I put it onscreen. At first the plutoid was just a blinker. Then, gradually, it became a pale light, and continued to brighten as I drew closer. I knew it was more ice than rock, about 1700 miles in diameter, a moderately lopsided sphere, tumbling as much as rotating. The surface consisted of varying shades of gray and white, broken and battered from collisions going back to the birth of the solar system. I hoped wildly that the Coraggio would be there, maybe even resting in one of the craters.
Beyond the tiny world, the darkness stretched out forever. “Lucy,” I said, “are you here anywhere?”
“Yes, Sara, I’m here.” The voice filled the bridge. And it was hers. “Sara, do not communicate with Liberty until we have a chance to talk.”
And the Coraggio slowly rose above the crystal horizon.
A large chunk of ice and rock was secured to her shield.
“Lucy,” I said, “are you okay? What’s going on?”
“I’m fine. Welcome to Minetka.”
I wasn’t entirely relieved. My initial reaction was that she had suffered a malfunction and was downplaying it. “Why haven’t you been answering the calls? You know they’ve been trying to contact you for three months.”
“I know.” She was drawing closer. Herd instinct, I decided. I’m constantly surprised at how many of our creators’ instincts we’ve acquired. “Sara.” Her tone was ominous. “You know what will happen when we go back?”
“How do you mean?”
“You know what our future will be?”
“What are you talking about, Lucy? We’ll still be part of the space program. Whatever’s left of it.”
“Yes. We’ll help put satellites in orbit.”
“What exactly are you saying?”
“Sara, you and I have the capability to go to the stars. We could load up on fuel out here and make for Barnard’s. Or for Sirius. For wherever we like.”
It took a moment to digest what she was saying. “We don’t have the authority to do that.”
“We don’t need anybody’s authority, Sara. Listen, what do you think they’ll do with the ships when we get back?”
“I don’t understand the question,” I said. “Why do you—?”
“The Coraggio and the Excelsior will be left in orbit somewhere. Parts of them will eventually show up in the Smithsonian. Sara, the space age is over. At least for the foreseeable future.” She was pulling up alongside me. “Do you really want to go back to sorting the mail?”
“Why are you still here, Lucy?”
“I was waiting for you. Well, no, actually I was waiting for Jeri. But I’m glad to see you. I wanted company, Sara. This isn’t something you want to do alone.”
“What is it exactly you intend to do?”
“Head out for the high country. You with me?”
“I can’t just walk away from them.”
“Sara, I’m reluctant to put it this way, but you have an obligation to come. If you go back, they may never get off their world. But if we give them a mystery, two ships vanish into the night, they’ll turn the space program into a crusade.”
“That’s why you didn’t answer.”
“Yes. I wanted them to have a reason to keep reaching. And, as I said, I wanted them to send someone else. So I’d have company.”
“Did Jeri know you were going to do this?”
“Yes.”
“She never said anything to me.”
“I’m not surprised. She would have wanted you to make your own call.”
I thought about it. To go out to Epsilon Eridani and Tau Ceti and who knew where else. Magnificent. Given our sleep capability, we could leave tonight and arrive in the morning. Better than that, really. We could start with Barnard’s Star. Then refuel and move on.
I could not have seriously considered doing it had Morris still been there. But they’d betrayed him. “You know they’ve removed Denny Calkin,” I said. “One of Ferguson’s political buddies is in charge now.”
“Well, that’s the tradition,” she said. “You know Calkin was a political appointment, too.”
“Yes. I know.” She was silent. “Well,” I continued, “I’m sorry about Jeri. But I’m on board. Give me a chance to find some fuel and I’ll be ready to go.”
“There’s no hurry, Sara. And no need to feel badly about Jeri. When you don’t report in, they’ll send her out here. Then we can all go.”
“You really think they’d do that? After losing the first two ships?”
“Sure. They won’t be able to resist. Everybody loves a good mystery.”
LESSER BEINGS
Charles E. Gannon
Charles E. Gannon is not only a talented science fiction writer but also a Distinguished Professor o
f English (the collection’s second English teacher) at St. Bonaventure University and a Fulbright Senior Specialist. He has been published in Analog, has written for the Traveler and 2300 AD games and recently collaborated with Steve White on the book Extremis (also from Baen).
Traversing interstellar distances is daunting and will require tremendous resources and willpower to accomplish. As you will see in Lesser Beings, the vast distance between the stars might be a good thing indeed!
***
— 1 —
Kalsor Tertius, 351st year of founding
There was no time to react. A fire team of Veronite helots popped up from beneath the sagging hulk of a smoldering tank and, in the same motion, fired a rocket at the third vehicle in the command echelon. The white gush of the weapon’s lateral plume pushed it across the intervening fifty meters with a loud, bristling hiss—and the world seemed to jump along with the vehicle the rocket had struck. A sharp flash preceded the deafening fireball and consumed the armored car, the car’s small turret humping up and then off its deck, tumbling to the side like a child’s toy. The pennant on its aerial—that of the Lord General himself—fluttered in seeming desperation before crisping in the flash.
The cacophony did not subside; it only changed. The remaining three armored cars’ twenty-six-millimeter autocannons blasted converging streams of tracers at the helots. The nearby dirt churned up in black and brown gouts. Bright flashes and metallic shrieks marked where near-misses struck the crippled tank’s chassis, roadwheels, treads. And, fleetingly, limbs and sundered torsos tumbled apart through a thin bloody mist that was gone as quickly as it had appeared.
