A scream welled in his throat, his brain rebelling against the claustrophobia that was constricting him. Out in the vastness of empty space, he was trapped, immobile.
Images swarmed through his mind. Voices. He heard voices.
Some time had passed between when the unknown quantity impacted Macklin’s Rock, and when Alex regained consciousness. How much time?
There had been those voices. Calling to him. He had refused the summons, but not because of any conscious decision on his part; he had not been ready.
Ready for what?
He closed his eyes, even though that did not change his view, and thought hard, concentrated. There was the sense of a lightness in his memories. Lightness, or light, or… He didn’t know. The universe was laid open for him like an annotated atlas. Time-space had no meaning in that light.
No. That wasn’t right. Time had meaning; space had meaning; but past the light—yes!—past the light, time-space had no meaning. Past the light.
Past.
Future.
There were no such things. He rejected them.
No, something rejected them for him.
Because he was not ready.
Ready for what?
He was beginning to feel dizzy from lack of oxygen. The override did not produce any electricity in the TAHU, although it should under any normal circumstances. Unless whatever hit them had disconnected the solar connectors from the TAHU’s battery core.
He had to restore power, or he would die. He recalled the emergency procedures drilled into him before his parents and he undertook the journey to Macklin’s Rock. In the event of an accident, the security receptacle was supposed to have enough life support to sustain him for eighteen hours; more than enough time for rescue to arrive from the Mining Orbiter.
He didn’t know how long he had been out, but if the oxygen level was any indication, then he didn’t have much longer to go. Perhaps eight or ten hours.
There was a sudden thought-flash in his mind. The power of it overwhelmed him.
He remembered:
Sol was laid out in his mind in its entirety, like a map on a table, or the 3D hologram of the solar system in the space museum back home on CS-3.
A chorus of voices, like angels, like devils, began to sing. It was a haunting-melody, a riveting accompaniment to the images that presented themselves in his mind.
He remembered an image of Jupiter, the massive gas giant with the large red spot, coming toward him at incredible speed. It had been in his field of vision for less than a second, growing larger from a small dot to something that covered his entire field of view, and then racing past him, out of sight. The intensity of the song dimmed. Like voices buzzing in the background. The rumble of a crowded hall on Canada Station Three.
The song grew stronger, more intense.
Empty space for more than a half an hour. As the song crescendoed, he saw Saturn, its rings of gas particles forming a perfect halo around its equator. It performed the same second-long appearance as its gaseous brother, Jupiter. The music echoed like the memory of a dream dancing just past consciousness.
Another hour or so, and he had the sense that he was crossing the orbit of Uranus, though the smaller gas giant was nowhere to be seen. The song played on.
Ninety minutes later, he was certain he was in the path of the smallest of the gas giants, Neptune, and his course abruptly veered twenty degrees above the ecliptic. A little over an hour later, and more than five hours after Macklin’s Rock initially reacted, Pluto and its cousin, Charon, burst into view like a giant net, catching him between their orbits. The song took a change in timbre and tone. It was the denouement of the symphony.
Now, the images and song had disappeared, but he had the lingering impression of two small planets on either side of him.
The entire thought-flash was more like a dream than reality, but now, every time he closed his eyes, he was certain that he could see beyond the bounds of the security receptacle, beyond the TAHU, and beyond the asteroid.
For some unexplainable reason, he was over five billion kilometers away from the sun.
Panic set in, and he concentrated on keeping his eyes opened. The blink came on suddenly, and he could sense something approaching Macklin’s Rock.
It was a space ship. A different song told him so.
He must be delusional. His mind was playing tricks on him. Pluto was nowhere near where he was—which was the asteroid belt, of course. Wasn’t it? And the ship coming toward him was obviously the rescue pod, for, what ship would be out so far from Earth? The only mission Alex had heard of was the Orcus 1.
He remembered reading a podcast. There was a mission currently on Pluto.
Mentally shaking his head, since he could not do so physically, he decided he was just imaging things. Most likely, Macklin’s Rock had suffered a collision with another asteroid and the resulting impact and subsequent lack of oxygen was making Alex delusional.
A loud, echoing noise filtered through the TAHU, and after a moment, Alex identified it as a fission laser cutting through the top face of the TAHU. The rescue mission from the Orbiter.
Someone was going to save him.
Salivating, trying to moisten his dry throat, Alex called out, “I’m in here!” as soon as he heard the laser cease to cut, and the grinding sounds of polymer ripping as the rescuers opened the TAHU.
It was then that Alex realized that once all the air escaped the TAHU, sounds could not travel in the emptiness of space. The security receptacle itself served as a soundproof encasement. Without a digital septaphonic booster, the rescuers would not know where he was until they stumbled upon him.
Alex closed his eyes…
…and could see in his mind’s eye the suitshielded figures of two people drifting down through the opening of the TAHU to the floor of the main room, the soft beams of their palmlights traveling over the confines of the room, searching for survivors. The song was back in his head, dim, as if he had turned down the volume. His internal vision extended just a few dozen meters outside his security receptacle, rather than millions of kilometers.
Panicked because of the images he should not be able to see, he forced his eyes open. A blink brought him a flashing image, quickly fading, of things he should not see. It was like a radar blip. He grunted in surprise at the image. Four more blinks produced the same effect.
With repetition, he became more used to the unusual perception, even though his heart raced with the implications. He did not think he could ever get used to the song, however. It was like the babble of a hundred people speaking foreign languages, and there was an imperative message hidden behind the unearthly lyrics.
The next time he blinked, he consciously tried to expand the range of his mental perception. He found that he saw not only the figures quickly approaches personal cubicle, but the ship which had landed on the surface of Macklin’s Rock. In his periphery, he could see the images of Pluto and Charon far off on either side of the asteroid. The song peaked again, urging him, warning him, cajoling him.
Another blink and he pushed his range to the limit; he could not see, but he could sense all the other planets in the solar system, the sun, the Earth, and even the larger bodies in the asteroid belt. The song overwhelmed him, made him so dizzy he wanted to vomit, but he somehow controlled himself.
“What’s happening to me?” he said to himself. “I must be completely crazy.”
The next blink, he tried to see past the solar system, thinking he might as well enjoy the sensational perception while he could. Once he was rescued, and he got some oxygen, he was certain his normal senses would return to him, and he would discover that he had been in the asteroid belt all along.
To his mild surprise, he could not see past the outer orbit of Pluto. There was something blocking his view; some kind of electromagnetic field that imposed a limit on his perception. If he could strain his ears and pick out a few words of that song, the explanation would come to him.
He shook
his head. Then, his mind adapting quickly to the new—though obviously delusional—perception, he tried to shrink his field of vision as far as he could. Quickly, he discovered that he could consciously turn it off. A blink produced the same blankness of view as with his eyes open inside the protective foam.
No song.
A movement in the security receptacle turned his mind from his experiments. The rescuers opened the receptacle, and, with their much stronger hands, ripped the foam from him.
His first sight as the foam fell away from his eyes was the play of a light, sharp and intense. After so long in the dark, he saw spots dancing in front of him until his eyes became used to the light.
Someone pressed a suitshield helmet over his head, and the warm rush of oxygen sent him into a faint. He breathed deeply a few times and felt the dizziness fade.
Sounds filtered into him from the septaphonics.
“Alex? Alex? Are you all right? Can you hear me?” It was a woman’s voice.
Alex nodded. “Yes,” he replied, though his words came out in a squeak.
His throat was parched. Sticking his tongue out, he touched a plastic nipple inside the helmet, which extended into his mouth. He sucked an ounce of water from it, and opened his mouth to let the nipple retract.
“I’m all right,” he said. “Are you the rescue team from the Mining Orbiter?” But he knew they were not before they confirmed it.
The two figures turned to look at one another. Finally, the woman addressed him again.
“I’m sorry, Alex, but no. My name is Captain Justine Turner, from the Orcus 1. We were on a mission to Pluto when we discovered your TAHU entering the orbit of the planet.”
Alex closed his eyes again.
Blinked out.
Pluto and Charon were still there, ten thousand kilometers away on either side. The familiar theme of the dark planet pounded in his ears, a musical score a million times more intense than Gustav Holst’s masterpiece, The Planets. Holst had never written a score for Pluto, since no one had known of the dark planet’s existence until a few years after the composer’s death. But no one, however ingenious, could ever have produced a symphonic spectacular such as the one in Alex’s head when he blinked out.
It was real.
And it came to him then, the reality of his situation.
“My parents are dead,” he said out lout, but to himself.
The captain of the Orcus 1, not hearing him, reached down and helped him to his feet. “Can you come with us? The ship is just outside.”
Alex nodded, and, prompted by the second crewmember, donned a suitshield to protect him from the solar radiation that extended out even that far from the sun.
As they made their way out of the TAHU, the other figure introduced herself. “My name is Helen, Alex. I’m a Canadian, like you.”
Alex did not reply, still stunned by his parents’ deaths.
A tear slowly trailed down his cheek, hanging a moment on his chin, and then fell from him to land on the base of the helmet. A moisture sensor on the helmet’s inside surface triggered a tiny vacuum, which sucked up the tear, reclaiming the drop into the water reservoir surrounding the helmet.
Alex suppressed the extrasensory images that came whenever he closed his eyes, and wished he could do the same for the ache in his heart.
__________
SMD Event Center :
Ottawa :
Canada Corp.:
After a quick breakfast of sliced fruits and orange juice that he prepared for himself, since the cook had the day off, Michael Sanderson left his house and stepped into the awaiting auto passenger transport, and gave the navigation computer the address of the SMD Event Center.
During the twenty-three minute trip, he scanned the Globe & Mail newsvid home page on the EarthMesh, reading the headlines and downloading those stories that caught his interest. The press release he had posted on the Associated Press net did not appear anywhere. The news services splashed the latest celebrity gossip instead. People were not interested in science; they would rather read about whom was sleeping with whom, or listen to the columnists jaw about what actor was getting a divorce, or getting plastic surgery.
Michael truly cared about the truth, and he cared about the quality of life in every quarter of society. The best way to bring the standard of living up uniformly was through economics. The natural resources of the earth were taxed to the limit, and expensive to mine.
They had to find alternatives among the asteroid belt. With increased volume of precious materials, there came jobs, wealth, and opportunity for anyone who had the wherewithal to grab it. Handing an average person a couple of dollars did nothing. Like the biblical proverb went, “Give a man a fish, and he will have food for a day; teach a man to fish, and he will have food for the rest of his life.”
Flipping the auto transport’s DMR casement back to the Globe & Mail Page, he scanned it for any other articles relating to the mishap.
The deaths of Gabriel and Margaret Manez were reported; but there was no indication that the early morning summit meeting between the CEOs of USA, Inc. and Canada Corp. had been leaked. For that, Michael was thankful. They would have to handle the discovery of Element X and the recovery of Alex Manez with utmost secrecy; outside interference from fringe groups would hamper the CSE and NASA getting to the bottom of the mystery.
Although the translation of the glyphs on Dis Pater did not mean anything to Michael at the moment, he was glad there was no mention of the breakthrough. The public had enough wild information on its hands; any more, and there could be panic in the streets. The fewer people who knew humans were not alone in the universe, the better—at least for the short term until the government corporations could soften the blow.
He turned off the DMR monitor when the auto arrived at the SMD Event Center, and a chime inside the cab sounded. Michael exited the vehicle and entered the Center as his auto transport continued on to the parking garage; that set of instructions were preloaded into the auto’s default program.
Glancing at a chronometer inside the conveyor tube, Michael noted that it was nine minutes past one.
He entered the Operations room on the seventh floor to pandemonium.
“What’s going on?” he asked, eyes flicking to the monitors. Alliras saw him, and quickly strode over, Calbert following closely behind.
“He’s alive, Michael,” the Minister of EMR said, his jubilation apparent. “It’s Alex. He’s alive. They’ve found him.”
“What?” Michael asked incredulously. He had hoped for the young boy’s forbearance, but did not really believe anyone could have survived that kind of trip.
“Yes. And he is perfectly fine. They’re just transporting him over to the Orcus 1 now before they go back to the TAHU to investigate.”
Scanning the monitors, he quickly found the one slaved to the NASA transmission from Pluto. The astronauts had landed on Macklin’s Rock, peeled away the surface of the TAHU like an onion, and at that moment, were emerging from the orifice escorting a small figure Michael immediately identified as Alex Manez.
Michael could barely suppress his joy; his relief was palpable.
Alliras handed him a data fleck. “It’s the joint venture contract and a preliminary charter for Quantum Resources, Inc. That’s the official name. You had better look the contract over before we sign it. Once your concerns are addressed, I’ll pass it up the chain.”
“Great.” He turned to Calbert. “Send up a note to Alex, telling him we’re happy he’s been rescued, and that we’re doing everything we can to get him safely home. I’ll append a note letting him know that we recovered his parents’ bodies, and will broadcast their funeral on closed circuit to the Orcus 1.
“Request Captain Turner performs a complete physical and mental analysis of Alex. I want that, and everything concerning Dis Pater, Orcus 1, and Macklin’s Rock piped into my office computer. I’m going to review this contract, and everything we’ve got from Macklin’s Rock and Orcus 1 so fa
r, and try to figure out a plan of attack. Forward any suggestions to me, will you?”
Calbert nodded. “I’ve already outlined a number of items.”
“Fantastic. And, Calbert, I’d like you to consider whether you want a job in Quantum Resources with me, or if you’d rather have my recommendation for VP of SMD.”
“What?” Calbert was flabbergasted at the offer.
Alliras nodded. “If you decide to stay here, you’ll have my recommendation as well.”
“You have your choice,” Michael added. “But I could really use someone like you at the helm in the new venture.”
“I’ll—I’ll have to think on it.”
“Of course. Let me know by the end of the day.”
He turned to Alliras “Would you like a snifter of brandy?”
“You couldn’t drag me from it.”
Together, they left Operations, trusting in the competency of those inside to perform their jobs to the best of their ability without supervision.
They took the conveyor tube up to Michael’s office, and once inside, sat on the long couch.
Michael had produced two glass tumblers of vintage brandy, and they tapped their glasses together in a silent toast to events gone well.
__________
Luna Station :
Luna :
Chinese Sector:
Over two-hundred thousand kilometers from Earth, a teenager named Klaus Vogelsberg watched a pirated-link broadcast of the NASA transmission to SMD Ottawa from his computer DMR on Luna Station and knew fear.
Hands shaking, he pressed the auto-dialer on his video communicator to his superior, Chow Yin. A somber oriental face appeared in the communications casement, dark eyebrows heavy with concern and anger.
Chow Yin had the resources to do just about anything he wished inside Luna Station with impunity. One of those actions Klaus feared was to make him disappear. Klaus had no wish to become an anonymous statistic.
He had screwed up, and knew it.
Forbidden The Stars Page 9
