Alpha Centauri: The Return (T-Space Alpha Centauri Book 3)

by Alastair Mayer

  Drake hadn’t been aboard for these ferry flights. The pilots had belonged to the integration company, although they’d all been working on contract to the warp-ship project. Drake, and the captains of the two other ships, would take command when the ships were officially turned over at the ceremony later this morning.

  And then..., Well, then there would be a few more weeks of shakedown tests and final configuration, cargo loading, and the like before he could get those ships to Alpha Centauri. Drake was happy to have gotten this far, but it had taken so long.

  Chapter 27: Old Friends

  Kennedy Space Center

  After the handover ceremony, the various participants and spectators were gathered in the Visitor’s Center for the post-ceremony reception. Drake tolerated this as best he could, but was pleasantly surprised to see an old friend he had not expected to be there. George Darwin.

  “George,” Drake said as he approached, drink in hand. “Rumor has it you turned down your crew position for the return to Alpha Centauri. I find that hard to believe.” He knew that Darwin had been consulting with Skrellan Pharmaceuticals, and a couple of the other bio-pharmaceutical companies with interests in the return mission.

  “Oh, it’s true,” Darwin said. “Let Grainger have his turn.”

  “Grainger is already going. There’s room for more than one exobiologist, you know.”

  “Then let someone else take the slot. I’m getting too old to be gallivanting around the galaxy.”

  “Too old? You? You must have forgotten that I’m older than you. Come on, what’s really bothering you?”

  “No, seriously. There’s plenty of work I can do here. Planet Able will have been thoroughly explored by the Anderson team, at least anywhere near the landing area. Let somebody new have a chance.” Darwin took a sip from his drink and stared down into it.

  “You said ‘the Anderson team’, not ‘Sawyer’s team’. It’s her, isn’t it?” As Drake spoke he watched as Darwin’s expression grew haunted.

  “All right,” he said, looking back up at Drake. “Yes. What if you get there and there are no survivors? I don’t want to step out of the lander and trip over her decaying corpse. Or anyone else’s.” He dropped his head and rubbed squeezed his brow with his hand, masking his expression.

  “There’s no reason to think that. The planet is habitable.” But Drake knew it was a real possibility. He’d had nightmares like that himself. It was one of the factors that had driven him to get this mission underway. He had authorized the landing. He had marooned them. Whatever guilt Darwin might be feeling, Drake felt he deserved twice as much, or more.

  “It’s been four years. You’d be hard pressed to survive on Earth for four years with what they had in the lander.”

  “You’re exaggerating. Plenty of people have survived for years in worse conditions. Elizabeth was an admirer of Shackleton. He kept his crew alive for two years in Antarctica, with less sophisticated gear than her team has.”

  Darwin shook his head and sighed. “You’re probably right. It’s the not knowing that hurts. I still don’t want to go back.”

  “I heard you were seeing somebody lately. Does that have something to do with it?”

  Darwin grinned at that. “Not so much as you might think. I am, but she’d be okay with me heading out for a couple of months. It’s not that kind of relationship. It wouldn’t bother Elizabeth either.”

  At least he’s talking about her in the present tense now, Drake thought.

  “But really. I got to be the first person to find life on Mars, and the first person to set foot on an extrasolar planet. Alpha Centauri’s planets have Earth-based life forms on them. From what I hear out of China, even Epsilon Eridani’s lifeforms descended from Earth. That’s interesting, but not why I wanted to be an exobiologist. Let the evolutionary biologists and paleontologists do their thing. It says nothing about how life arose in the first place.” Darwin shook his head. “No. Get back to me when you find a planet with non-terrestrial life.”

  “Wow,” Drake said. “I didn’t realize....”

  Darwin looked up at him and grinned, waving off his concern. “Ah, don’t worry about it. You caught me in a bad mood, is all. I’ll be fine, and I am looking forward to seeing what—and who—you bring back.”

  “So the ‘not coming’ is final, then?” Drake gave it one final try.

  “That part is, yes. There’s plenty here to keep me busy, in more ways than one.” Darwin looked around and spotted a woman crossing the room towards them. “Uh oh. Speaking of keeping me busy, Victoria Holmes is on her way over. I’m going to go refresh my drink. Just be sure you invite me to the bon voyage party.”

  “I’ll put you at the top of the list.” Drake watched as Darwin turned to leave. “Take care of yourself, old man.” He grinned as he said that. “I’ll see you in a few weeks. Call if you change your mind.”

  “Won’t happen, but thanks. See you then.”

  As he departed, Victoria Holmes arrived. “Commodore Drake. Where’s Darwin off to?”

  “Ms Holmes. He went to get a refill. You’re not working him too hard, I hope?”

  “He sets his own hours, and I think he likes the work. When he’s not interacting with Lodgson, that is.”

  Drake grinned. He’d heard stories. “He’s not here, is he?”

  “Gods no. He hates this kind of thing. But enough about work.” She smiled and then said, “I seem to recall you still owe me a dinner.”

  PART IV: Return to Alpha Centauri

  Chapter 28: Arrival at Alpha Centauri

  Near Alpha Centauri, aboard Endeavour, six weeks later

  “Any radio traffic?” Drake asked.

  “No sir. We’re still too far out to pick anything up from their omnis. We have the locator beacon on the IPM you left here, but no signal traffic. It seems to have stopped transmitting to Earth.”

  “It may not be pointed the right way. They would have reoriented for planetary comms some of the time.”

  “Perhaps it ran out of station-keeping fuel?”

  “It has a fusion reactor and would align via magnetic field. I don’t think so. Keep scanning at regular intervals, let me know if you pick something up.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  The Endeavour and her sister ships moved deeper into the system, reducing their warp speed and taking smaller hops. They would be revisiting Alpha Centauri B’s Kakuloa, too. That was a priority for Skrellan and the other bio-pharmaceutical companies who had financed most of this mission. But Drake and the Endeavour’s first priority was to recontact the Anderson team he had left behind four years earlier. From their radio transmissions, as of six months ago they had been doing well. But now there was no contact, nor any indication of a problem in the last transmission.

  At several million kilometers out from planet Able, around Alpha Centauri A, they completely secured from warp and shifted to continuous acceleration on the ventral plasma thrusters, giving them at least an illusion of gravity, if reduced. Drake checked the time. They’d be doing a roll maneuver in about ten hours, aiming the belly thrusters forward to slow them down before entering orbit.

  “Any communications traffic?” Drake asked, realizing as he did so that he’d asked that several times already. His crew would tell him as soon as anyone heard something.

  “No sir. We’re sending a hail at regular intervals, but nothing. We should be close enough now to pick up any omni signals.”

  “And are we picking up any?”

  “No sir.”

  Drake stared at the planet’s image on one of the forward viewscreens, and wondered what they’d find.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  In its time, the turnover maneuver was executed and the ships began to decelerate. Ten hours later, the fleet approached the planet at something above orbital velocity.

  “I wan
t an aerobraking entry to reduce speed, then establish an initial orbit at 300 kilometers. Fifty-degree inclination.”

  “Aye sir.”

  “Fifty degrees?” Vukovich asked. “The Anderson didn’t land that far north.”

  “No, they didn’t. But this way we get two looks at their latitude per orbit. And it’s unlikely, but they might have migrated.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “What’s our separation from Victoria and Vostok? We don’t want to be too crowded during aerobraking.”

  Vukovich checked his panel. “Twenty kilometers to Victoria. Vostok is on the other side at nineteen. Plenty of room.”

  “All right, we’ll form up again when we’ve all established orbit. I want a burn to adjust our entry angle in ten minutes.”

  “Ten minutes, aye sir.”

  Vukovich set to calculating the parameters and sending the details to his counterparts on the Endeavour’s sister ships. The lifting body shape meant they could fine tune their orbit angle by turning in the thin, high-altitude, atmosphere during aerobraking, but if they didn’t get it reasonably close, they’d shed too much velocity doing so. They had plenty of reserve thrust to fix that if they had to, but it would be sloppy.

  He set up the pre-programmed burn, and turned to Drake. “Burn in five minutes, sir.”

  “Copy that. What’s our entry point relative to Anderson?”

  “We’ll be well south and east of them, heading northeast. They won’t see us, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Ah, pity. I liked the drama of them looking up and seeing three meteors streaking across the sky.”

  “It will still be daylight. I’m not sure they’d notice.”

  Drake grinned at him. “Spoilsport,” he said, without rancor.

  “Coming up on the burn, sir. One minute.”

  “Thank you.” Drake keyed the deck speakers. “All hands, prepare for burn, then aerobraking. It may get a little bumpy for a while.”

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  The atmospheric entry was actually rather smooth. There was a gentle push up from the floor, still less than the artificial gravity they’d had in warp, and a slight shudder as the air grew thicker, the view outside lighting up with an orange glow as the atmosphere superheated against the oncoming ship.

  The Endeavour gently nosed up, shedding more speed, then with a combination of banking and control jets, turned its direction to a heading fifty degrees from the equator. Gently lifting the nose further, the ship’s descent shallowed, then reversed, and the Endeavour started climbing back towards space, skipping off the thicker air below.

  The glow outside faded as they left the thinning atmosphere behind, now with their velocity reduced enough to stay in the low orbit they’d been aiming for.

  “Estimate apogee at two-hundred-ninety-nine kilometers,” Vukovich announced. “Circularization burn in just over fifty minutes.” That would be half an orbit away, at the high point of their orbit. Without it, after a full orbit they’d be back scraping atmosphere again, eventually entering for good.

  “Thank you. Coordinate with Victoria and Vostok. When you’ve got that settled, I’d like to see our ground track, and when we’ll be over the Anderson landing site.”

  “Roger that.”

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Their initial ground track put them well east of the area where the USS Poul Anderson had landed four years earlier. They knew the spot, Drake had made sure the position was well fixed before the Heinlein had left orbit. But the lack of communication, or even radio chatter from their omnis, disturbed him.

  He looked at the map Vukovich had put up on his display. The orbital path wove a sinusoidal pattern north and south of the equator, representing the path over the ground of the Endeavour’s inclined orbit and the rotation of the planet beneath it.

  “Looks like we’ll overfly the landing area on our second orbit. The terminator is coming up, it will be almost dark when we pass over. That’s good.”

  “It will make them harder to see.”

  “But it will make us easier to see. And we have infrared and light amplification gear.”

  “Ah, of course.”

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  It was all Drake could do to restrain himself as they came up toward the landing site. The screens were displaying views in infrared and amplified light. Alpha Centauri A was now just below the horizon, with the more distant but still bright B nearly the same at this time of year. The moon hadn’t risen yet. It was dark down there. At least the sky below them was clear.

  “Ground radar shows something on the horizon. Could be the Anderson.”

  “That would be about right. Let’s get an optical view.”

  They couldn’t make anything out at this distance, but there was a bright spot on the infrared.

  “What’s that? Do you suppose they have a campfire?” Drake felt a release of tension. If it was, somebody was alive down there.

  “Could be. The temperature seems about right.”

  They were coming up on it quickly. They wouldn’t be directly overhead; their orbit was off to the side some.

  “Zoom in.”

  The image was still blurry, centered on the bright spot of the presumed campfire. Several rectangular outlines showed, slightly warmer than their surroundings. Structures? More importantly, there were several blobby shapes at near human body temperature.

  “Zoom out a bit, let’s see if we can spot the Anderson itself. It should be a circle.”

  The image zoomed out, showing a few other warm blobs at some distance from the fire. Animals? But no Anderson. Wait, there was a structure about the right size, but it didn’t look quite right.

  By now they were moving away from the site, the images fading in the distance.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  “We found them, and it looks like they’re doing alright. Those rectangular structures—” Drake pointed at the image on the display “—could be cabins or something. There are several people gathered around the fire. Looks like they spotted us, they started moving around as we flew past.”

  “I couldn’t get a good count. Some of the bigger ones might be two people close together.”

  “We’ll soon see.” Drake looked at the display still showing their ground track. They’d be much further west on the next orbit, but the north to south leg of that would take them near the site again.

  “Sir? Messages from the Victoria and Vostok. They confirm our sightings and are requesting permission to break off.”

  Drake knew the Victoria was eager to get to Kakuloa. Vostok was to do a full sweep of this planet in near polar orbit. Its sensors were improved over what they’d had four years ago. Drake didn’t see any harm in letting them get about their jobs. Nobody would be landing at night, and the Endeavour would handle the re-contact. Vostok would be in orbit for another couple of days, so if he did need help, it wouldn’t be long coming. Personally, if he were the captain of the Victoria he might wait to see if any of the Anderson crew who had landed on Kakuloa wanted to come along and give his team pointers, but that could be handled by radio. They had read all the reports and interviewed everyone who had returned on the Chandra or the Heinlein and had set foot on the planet.

  Drake keyed his mic to the ship-to-ship. “Victoria and Vostok, thank you and permission granted. Please check in every six hours or whenever you have something to report. We’ll copy you on the status of the Anderson crew after we land.”

  “Victoria here. Thank you, and our best regards to the Anderson crew. We’re happy to see they made it.” Well, thought Drake, at least some of them did. They’d know for sure tomorrow.

  “Roger that, thank you.”

  “Endeavour, this is Vostok. Acknowledged, and we echo Victoria sentiments. Tell Doctor Krysansky zdravstvuyte, and we will see him in few days.”

  “Roger that, will do.
Endeavour out.”

  The two ships fired their thrusters briefly to separate to a safe distance before turning and firing their main thrusters to change their orbits, the Vostok heading more southward to its new orbit, the Victoria eastward. Just before she reached local sunrise, Victoria would burn again to leave orbit and head in a curving path around Alpha Centauri A and beyond it, towards Kakuloa and Alpha Centauri B.

  Chapter 29: Send in the Drones

  Aboard Endeavour, Orbiting Planet Able

  The inclination of the Endeavour’s orbit, together with the planet’s rotation, meant it would be the better part of a day before they’d be in a good position for an entry burn to land near the Anderson. They could have burned to change that, but the crew needed the time to prepare the ship for landing, and Drake could use some rest. He wanted to pass near the site in daylight to get a better look at it anyway. They would drop a drone to check for a good spot to set the Endeavour down. Since nobody from the Anderson crew had responded to their hails, a drone would also let them know that the Endeavour had arrived. Although Drake suspected that they’d been spotted in orbit already.

  The imaging systems were running at full magnification as they passed east of the Anderson’s landing site the next local morning. They were close enough that the site was this side of their horizon, but at some distance. That’s when they got their first surprise.

  “Look at the Anderson! It’s on its side!” exclaimed Vukovich.

  Indeed, the hull of the Anderson tilted almost horizontal, but there seemed to be a structure beneath the upper part of it. There were rectangular structures arrayed some distance from it. Cabins? Further away still were larger rectangular areas, of slightly different shades of green, which might be fields.

  “Did it fall on a house? And what could knock it over?”