by Samuel Best
Jeff was alone in the three-person capsule. He kept his arms crossed over his chest, gripping the straps of his X-shaped harness as his bones rattled. He squeezed his eyes shut as the light outside the window intensified, becoming too bright to observe.
Then the intense orange light vanished, replaced in the blink of an eye with the purest white. Jeff slowly relaxed his body as the vibrations inside the capsule subsided. The reentry vehicle emerged from a solid sheet of cloud above the Atlantic.
Not long after, just as Jeff was getting used to the smooth ride, he was slammed back into his seat as the trio of parachutes in the nose of the vehicle popped free and snapped open. There was one more rough impact as the Cygnus capsule plunged into the calm ocean, followed by a gentle bobbing sensation.
“Canaveral, we have successful splashdown,” Jeff said.
“Copy that,” came the reply from Mission Control. “Glad to have you back, Jeff. We'll have you out of there in no time.”
Jeff unsnapped his safety harness and shifted in his seat in a hopeless attempt to get more comfortable. “No time” by company standards meant he should settle in for awhile.
Two hours later, he stood next to the capsule as it sat dripping on the deck of the retrieval ship. The metal glimmered in the late afternoon sunlight as workers clipped heavy cables to the exterior, securing it to the deck.
The captain stood next to Jeff, observing the action. He wore his military uniform with obvious pride, and had a difficult time concealing his annoyance with the casual attitude the crew often took with their duties. He clenched his jaw as one man paused to light a cigarette after clipping a cable to the outside of the capsule. After a quick wink at Jeff, and while ignoring the captain completely, the worker tightened the cable and went elsewhere on the deck.
Ever since Diamond Aerospace had been taking on more government contracts, more government employees showed up in their day-to-day operations. Jeff stopped asking about it months ago.
“Can you tell me about the comet?” he asked the captain.
“Not for me to say,” came the tight-lipped reply.
Jeff nodded as if he’d been expecting such an answer.
“How long until we get back to the Cape?”
The military man checked his watch. “Ten hours for us, two for you.”
Jeff's eyebrows went up. “Oh?”
“Helo inbound,” he said before walking away.
“Well, how about that?” Jeff muttered to himself as he looked at the Cygnus capsule.
He ran his finger over a black char mark that crawled up one gleaming panel, wondering about Kate. She usually called not long after he returned from the station. He had expected to hear her voice on the other end of the line when he called Mission Control after splashdown.
The concept of “usual” probably doesn’t apply given the current circumstances, he mused.
Jeff patted the hull of the capsule and went below deck to get changed.
The next several hours were full of disappointment for him.
Kate wasn't on the helicopter. She wasn't waiting inside the heavily-tinted black security car that picked him up from the helicopter pad at Canaveral Air Force Station, nor was she the first person to greet him inside of Diamond Aerospace’s operation center when Jeff stepped into the building with his duffel bag slung over one shoulder, a smile already growing on his face. The smile quickly faded when someone he hadn’t seen in months stepped forward and shook his hand.
“Colonel Brighton,” Jeff said slowly.
“You weren't expecting me,” said the Colonel in his usual gruff manner. “I'd much rather be someplace else, believe me.”
The grizzled veteran’s uniform was immaculately pressed and his shoes held a mirror shine. If it weren't for the worried look in his eyes, he could have just stepped off the set of a recruitment video.
“Where’s Kate?” Jeff asked. “Is she alright?”
“Miss Bishop is fine,” the Colonel answered. “She'll be here soon.” He paused and glanced at the two aides accompanying him. “There are some things you and I need to discuss before she arrives.”
“There's a conference room up on two.”
The Colonel nodded and cleared his throat. “Well, then, I'll let you get settled. Meet you there in ten minutes.”
He turned on his heels and quickly walked away, his aides close behind. They disappeared into the cafeteria, questions mounting in Jeff’s mind by the second.
He kept his head down as he rode the elevator up to the third floor, only offering half smiles and quick nods to those who welcomed him back to Earth. They hurried about on their own missions, seeming every bit as worried as the Colonel.
There would be plenty of time for proper socialization later, after Jeff had figured out where everything stood with the comet of blue fire he had seen fall from the torus.
His temporary quarters in the operations center consisted of a stiff cot, a writing desk, and a small two drawer dresser that was empty. Jeff dropped his duffel bag on the cot and unzipped it. He pulled out his personal cell phone and cycled through the messages, but found nothing new from Kate.
He decided to change into a fresh t-shirt before the meeting. The one he had worn on the retrieval ship now smelled of salt and diesel. He froze in front of the mirror after he peeled off his shirt, staring down at his chest.
A nasty scar had once covered half his ribcage. On his first journey to Titan, an oxygen compressor exploded right under him, pelting him with shrapnel. Yet now, ever since he mysteriously washed up on the shore of Cocoa Beach after that first ill-fated mission, the scar was gone.
Along with the rest of them, he thought. All the way back through childhood.
Indeed, every scar obtained throughout his life had vanished between his first mission to Titan and when he crawled from the ocean near Kate’s beachfront condo.
As if the torus knew right where to send me, he thought.
He pulled on a fresh shirt and made his way to the conference room on level two.
Colonel Brighton was already waiting for him inside, without his aides. He stood with his back to the door, weathered hands clasped behind his back, frowning at a picture of a rocket exploding on the launchpad.
“Never understood why Noah Bell had this framed,” he said.
“Maybe it was a reminder that sometimes you have to fail so you can be better prepared for success,” Jeff suggested.
“Hmm,” said the Colonel thoughtfully. “That's a nice thought.” Without looking Jeff in the eye, he turned around and sat in one of the padded chairs that surrounded an oval-shaped table in the middle of the conference room. “You are aware that Bell was diagnosed with a brain tumor not long before the events of your last mission to Titan, are you not?”
Jeff slipped into the chair opposite the Colonel, feeling the obvious shift toward a more official conversation.
“I am aware.”
“And what is your opinion regarding the levels of radiation you experienced while inside a torus?”
Jeff had to think about that for a minute. “If I remember my diagnostic readings correctly,” he replied, “without the extra layers of protection provided by the Constellation-class space suits, I probably would not have survived long after exposure. Even if I had survived, it would be a miracle to escape without some form of advanced-stage cancer.”
Colonel Brighton grunted with approval and nodded slightly as he stared down at the glass surface of the table.
“That is what I suspected,” he said, almost to himself.
“Colonel, I beg your pardon, but what does this have to do with the comet?”
The Colonel sighed heavily.
“Within the hour,” he said, “this building will be crawling with envoys and officials and policy makers. Much will be discussed, and much will be revealed to you and the other employees at Diamond Aerospace. Thus far, the working arrangement between your company and the government was primarily based on a certain amount of tru
st. Most of that trust, at least from my end, is a direct result of Ms. Bishop's actions leading up to the...emergence...of the creature from the ocean five years ago. In short, Mr. Dolan, I respect her.” He spread out his palms on the glass surface of the table and stared at his hands for a moment before continuing. “While there will be much new information shared during the impending conference, there will also be several gaps, if you catch my meaning.”
“You mean they're going to withhold some information,” said Jeff with a slight smile. “Nothing new there, Colonel.”
“While that is true,” said Brighton, “there are two things I think you should know before moving forward. The first is this. The United States Government, along with several other governments around the world, are about to embark on a three-tiered mission to save this planet.”
Jeff took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Is it really that serious?” he asked.
“More than you know,” replied the Colonel. “I need to ask you and Kate to step directly into harm's way on this one. You will both be part of extremely dangerous missions from which I cannot promise you will return.”
“Well, gee. How can I say no when you put it that way?”
“I’m being serious.”
“I’m sure you are,” Jeff replied, equally as somber. “I told you after I got back from Titan the last time that it really was the last time. I'm happy to be doing what I'm doing in near-Earth orbit. I don't need to go any farther than that. I made a promise to Kate.”
“We all made promises. Unfortunately, promises don’t always take world-ending comets into account.”
Jeff smiled without humor. “So I’m the bad guy if I say no.”
Brighton looked him in the eye. “We all are.”
Jeff was silent for a long time. Then he asked, “What’s the job?”
“You’re to take a ship and rendezvous with a space station in orbit around Venus. You’ll assist them with their research of the alien creature.”
“Research?”
“I want you to try to talk to it.”
Jeff laughed until his eyes watered. He shook his head in disbelief.
“Is there anyone else who can do it?”
“No one with your unique experience. I don’t know if there’s a link between the comet and the alien, but the meteor that hit South Africa came out of a torus. That’s enough of a connection for me.”
“I can’t talk to it, Colonel. The only experience I have with it is seeing it rise from the Gulf of Mexico, same as you.”
“I have to try everything I can to stop the comet,” said Brighton. “We all do.”
Jeff shook his head again, stewing. Then he held up a warning finger. “Don’t expect me to be happy about it. Kate won’t like it, either.” He sighed and rubbed his eyes. “What’s the second thing you need to tell me?”
“This is highly classified, Dolan. I’m only telling you because I think you deserve to hear it. You can’t so much as hint that I told you. If there’s a way in the future where you find out a natural way, I’ll try my hardest to make that happen.”
Jeff studied him a moment. “I can appreciate that, Colonel,” he said at last.
“You know the torus was orbiting Earth for almost a year before dropping that comet on us,” Brighton continued.
“If not longer. We still don’t have sensors that can detect them.”
The Colonel nodded. “The comet seems to have the same frustrating characteristic. Even if we had been given more warning, it wouldn't have shown up on any scans. But we'll get to that during the conference.” He paused as someone walked past the conference room. Brighton’s eyes tracked the person until they disappeared from view, then he pulled out a small tablet from his pocket. “Ever since we learned the torus was up there, we were trying to figure out its purpose. Like you, I assumed that the tori had fulfilled their purpose after bringing their alien creator back to life. And then the critter unceremoniously drifted off into the heavens without so much as a thank you.” He swiped at the tablet screen and tapped a long sequence of numbers. “But the comet wasn’t the only thing the torus spit out.”
He slid the tablet across the table. Jeff scooped it up and pushed play on the video. It was a view of deep space, with hundreds of pinpoint stars in the background.
“The stars aren't twinkling,” said Jeff. “Was this taken in orbit?”
“Watch,” said the Colonel.
The video zoomed in and settled on a seemingly empty quadrant. A moment later, the torus came into focus.
“I don’t see anything.”
Jeff held the tablet closer. The view zoomed in farther, but not on the torus itself. It zoomed in on a small figure drifting next to it.
Jeff abruptly sat up straight. “It’s a person,” he said.
As the figure spun slowly in place, light glinted off the face shield of its helmet.
A moment later, the tablet played a burst of audio static, followed by the gentle breathing of someone wearing a helmet.
“Anyone out there?” asked a familiar voice between breaths. “Sure could use a pickup.”
Jeff slowly set the tablet down on the table.
“That’s Commander Riley.”
“Hellooooo,” Riley said in the video. “Anybody home?”
5
KATE
The operations center that housed Mission Control for Diamond Aerospace was a sprawling building of offices and meeting rooms. It was two miles from the Rocketyards, near the launch pads shared with Deep Black and whomever NASA was contracted with at any given time.
Kate rarely ventured beyond Mission Control while in the building. Her company had grown so rapidly after she took over that she now had people working for her whom she’d never met. In the beginning, it was a matter of pride to know them all personally. Now, with her attention stretched between a hundred different projects in three locations on two planets, maintaining that ideal had proven impossible.
Jeff was alone in the conference room when she arrived, dozing in his chair with his feet up on the table.
Kate smiled as she quietly walked over and pinched his nose shut.
He twitched and made a guttural noise deep in his throat. Kate quickly sat down next to him and pretended to read something on her phone right before his eyes popped open.
“I wasn’t sleeping,” he said drowsily.
“Sure you weren’t.”
He looked around, bleary-eyed. “Did I miss the meeting?”
She eased from her chair and into his lap.
“Yep,” said Kate. “It was a real barn-burner. Brighton said a bunch of mean things about you.”
She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed his cheek.
Jeff frowned. “I knew he’d betray me someday.”
He turned his head and their lips met. Kate drew back, staring into his eyes as she cupped his face in her hands. “Now that was very unprofessional.”
“I’m just getting started.”
His hands found the ticklish spot behind her knees and she yelped laughter as she jumped off his lap.
Colonel Brighton and two aides stopped in their tracks just inside the door, staring.
Kate brushed a strand of hair from her face and cleared her throat.
“Colonel,” she said formally as she slid back into her chair.
Jeff reached under the table to squeeze her knee but she slapped him away, suppressing a laugh.
Brighton held up his hands, not wanting to get involved.
“Hey, it’s not my building.”
He sat on the opposite side of the conference table from Kate and Jeff, his two aides beside him. They whispered amongst themselves as they set down several stacks of thin folders on the table, preparing for the meeting.
Apparently, Diamond Aerospace wasn’t the only organization who couldn’t stop using paper, Kate mused.
She and Jeff held hands under the table while other people gradually filed into the room, taking their seats. Kat
e didn’t recognize any of them. When Brighton asked if they could use the conference room in Diamond Aerospace’s operations center, she had expected to see at least a couple of familiar faces.
“Close that door, would you, Tony?” Brighton said to the last person to enter the room. “Okay,” he addressed the room. “Let’s begin.”
His aides stood and handed out thin folders to each of the dozen people seated around the table.
Kate opened hers to see pictures of a large, smoking crater. The surrounding farmland was charred, with deep trenches gouged through the blackened soil. Glowing blue substance covered the site.
“That’s the meteor impact crater just below the Namibia border in South Africa,” said Colonel Brighton. “It’s roughly a hundred feet in diameter.”
“There isn’t a lot of damage given the size of the crater,” said a man next to Kate. He adjusted his glasses and peered closely at the pictures in his folder.
“That’s correct,” Brighton replied. “There was a core of solid mass at the heart of the meteor, but most of it seems to have been comprised of that blue substance you see in the photographs.”
“Who’s there now?” asked a man in military uniform next to Brighton.
He was roughly the Colonel’s same age, with the same buzz-cut, though his hair was black.
“Stenzik and his team are in charge of the quarantine.”
The military man next to Brighton grunted dismissively. “Then expect to hear every detail on the six o’clock news.”
“I agree,” said Brighton. “That’s why we need to move fast. Ms. Bishop and her team will be accompanying me to South Africa as soon as this meeting concludes.”
Kate shared a glance with Jeff. The Colonel hadn’t mentioned Kate would also be going. Jeff nodded at her slightly, trying to signal that it would be alright. He reached for her hand again under the table.
“Our priority on the ground is to measure any threat posed by the alien substance. A team will remain in Cape Canaveral to determine the origin of the meteor.” He gestured toward Jeff. “Jeffrey Dolan will pilot a craft to Venus Lab, where he will attempt to open a line of communication with the creature currently orbiting that planet.”
