Colonization

by Scott McElhaney

  Five minutes later, we returned to our shuttle with Commander McEwen and his wife. They joined us on the floor, more than curious to find out what it was that had alarmed us enough to call them over. We quickly replayed the conversation we just had, this time with our Geologist Nancy Cartwright offering some further theories of her own.

  “We discussed it while you were gone and we’re fairly certain that the Hawke Jump ship was made using the body of an old Mars freighter. Master Chief remembered seeing an image of it and thought it was odd that it was such a large ship for only a two-man crew,” Nancy said, “If something that size had come speeding down like a meteor, it would most likely give us what we see today.”

  “I do remember the Hawke Jump test because it was brushed under the rug so quickly,” the commander added, “It lit up the sky like a supernova for only a second or two and then there was nothing. Everyone just accepted that it was a failed attempt at a new technology.”

  “So, is it possible?” Sarai asked him.

  “Well, I’m not familiar with the science or the technology of such an engine, but if it was supposed to be a form of instantaneous travel, and if it instantly arrived here a little too ‘on-target’, then yes, it would explain everything,” he said, “I always thought it was a little too ironic that our future home was suddenly struck with an ice-age right at the time we decided to visit.”

  “Is this something we could confirm with certainty if we located the crater?” Sarai asked.

  “There would be nothing left of the culprit, whether it was a meteor, a comet, or a space freighter,” Nancy said, “The crater would be identical in either case and it would have expended the same energy on impact as a multitude of our most deadly Cold War nuclear weapons.”

  “So, then nothing changes because of this revelation?” Renata asked, “It’s just that we are pretty certain who was responsible for ruining KMA?”

  “It’s not ruined,” the commander’s wife turned to her, “It’s just temporarily not ideal. The dust will definitely settle and everything will return to normal.”

  “And if you want my opinion, I’d say that we need to remain cautious when it comes to ever contacting Earth,” the commander added, “For now, they only know three things for certain and these are all negative things. They know that KMA is uninhabitable according to their last message from the robotic lander. They know that the Hawke Jump was a failure, assuming they truly believe it disintegrated in the solar system as they reported. And last but not least, they know that we never returned even though we should have by now. With luck, all these failures will lure them elsewhere in their travels and ventures. We don’t want any more Hawke Jumps coming our way.”

  “Can I ask a favor though?” Leah asked, raising her hand like a student in a classroom.

  “What’s that?” Sarai replied.

  “When we’re a little more settled, would I be able to take the better of the two shuttles to locate the impact site,” she said, “I’d like to perform some scans and especially check for radiation levels.”

  “I’m not so sure that would be a good idea,” the commander stated, “But I’ll leave that for the Captain to decide.”

  “I’d like to go inspect the crater as well,” Nancy added, “If it’s alright, of course.”

  “It wouldn’t be worth risking one of our two homes over some basic curiosity,” Sarai said.

  “I have a scientific reason for wanting to do it, Captain,” Leah stated, “When the Hawke Jump supposedly exploded or disintegrated, it did so with an enormous blast of gamma radiation. I’d like to make sure that we’re not at risk of any radiation exposure now or in the long run.”

  “I’d be willing to go as well if you needed any further assistance,” I added.

  Sarai and the Darius McEwen seemed to ponder this for a moment rather than immediately arguing in favor of their original answer.

  “Let’s get settled, get the structures built and the reactor going, and then we’ll revisit it after that,” she said.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The next morning greeted us with a light snowfall. I woke before anyone else in the shuttle and a quick glance out the pilot’s window told me that Tau Ceti was most likely rising on an orange horizon. The snowflakes were few and they were coming down in slow motion, giving something of a Christmas feel to the scene before me. I quietly got dressed and headed out toward the greenhouses.

  I still wasn’t accustomed to the smell of our world and wondered for a moment if I would ever get used to it. My hopes were high yesterday when I didn’t seem to notice by the end of the day, but apparently my sinuses had cleared overnight and I was back to square one. When I got past the land rovers, I noticed the biologist David Cox and his wife Angela were already up and working on the framing of the chicken barn. I waved to them as I walked past. The snow continued, but wasn’t really sticking to the ground.

  I returned to my pile of partially constructed window-framing and dragged some of the pieces with me back to the greenhouse. I then eyeballed the support beam I’d run from a corner anchor of the greenhouse to the doorframe I set up yesterday. I tried to envision where the bottom window frames would attach and whether I wanted to start attaching those or if I wanted to continue around with the main support beams first. I finally settled on the idea of adding some of the window-framing so it would start looking like a greenhouse as I worked my way up.

  My mind kept returning to thoughts of the Hawke Jump that I learned about last night. With my welder’s hood down and my focus limited to that of my torch, it was easy for my mind to wander. I was beginning to feel bitter towards the people of Earth, mostly to the US Navy assuming that they were the ones responsible. I blamed them for more than just the snow, the smell, and the hazy sky. I blamed them for the deaths of all those in the two shuttles. Those shuttles lost their heat shielding because of the debris around the moon. And the debris wouldn’t have been there had the Navy targeted empty interstellar space rather than an actual moon on their first attempt to test an experimental Jump engine.

  And once the Master Chief mentioned it last night, I did suddenly recall the talk back then about a gamma burst that hit the Earth’s atmosphere like a solar flare, knocking out a few satellites in the process. What if we were receiving fatal doses of radiation right now? I imagine the shuttle’s alarms would have warned us, but then what if it was in such low doses that while still deadly, it wasn’t enough to trigger alarms?

  “You know that your wife doesn’t understand the importance of such a discovery,” I heard the Master Chief’s voice behind me.

  I shut the torch off and lifted my visor. She knelt down beside me, her eyes on the smoking weld I had just finished.

  “Let’s say the site’s still radioactive… what then?” I asked, “We can’t leave. We can’t go home.”

  “I’m not as concerned about radioactivity as I had let on,” she turned to me.

  She had her hair in a bun today, making her appear more grandmotherly than usual. While others probably saw her as the salty Navy Master Chief due to her age and stern posture, I viewed her as the most experienced person in the colony as well as a parent-figure in many ways. And as I mentioned already to Sarai, she also reminded me of a scary principal at times.

  “What are you thinking? That the ship survived somehow?” I asked, lowering the torch to the dirt.

  “No, of course not. Nancy was right that there’d be nothing left to identify the culprit,” she said, pausing as she looked me in the eyes, “What do you know about the concept of quantum gravitational flux enhancement studies?”

  I laughed, “Uh… nothing at all, Master Chief.”

  “Stop with the ‘Master Chief’. You want me to start calling you ‘Petty Officer’? I think not. For all intents and purposes, we aren’t even part of the US Navy anymore. As a colony, we need to think more like a community, a city, or a state. You wife is that state’s governor – not the captain of a ship anymore,” she said, “Call m
e Leah, Miss Paulus, or Lee like my sister always did. But no more Master Chief.”

  “Okay, Leah. I know nothing about that quantum something-or-other you mentioned,” I replied.

  “Grav-flux is the shorter term and much easier to remember. You might have at least heard that term before. Anyway, I keep up with a lot of the modern research in my spare time. As a nuclear engineer, I have a lot of time on my hands while standing watch over the reactors and besides, I’m a geek,” she said, “There was some research going on that suggested we could enhance the effects of gravity on a subatomic level, and not in the same way we had always done it to create the artificial gravity in our ships. This new method suggested we could for all intents and purposes falsify the mass of the subatomic particles to the extreme, ultimately creating something of a quantum black hole that could theoretically be contained. I was impressed with how far they’d gotten in their research just in the last decade before we left,”

  “It was said that researchers at JPL had already used one of the quantum black holes to fold space on a very small scale. They caused a pebble to instantly go from one building to another, with no ill effects or radiation.”

  “So the Hawke Jump engine was something like that?” I asked, “It carried a ‘portable’ black hole inside the ship?”

  “I’d bet money on it and Nancy agrees,” she said, “And while the impact event would have obliterated the ship completely, it would have had no effect whatsoever on the black hole. As a matter of fact, we all got front row seats to that particular explosion over thirty-two years ago on Earth.”

  “What do you mean a front row seat?” I asked.

  She raised her eyebrows. I didn’t know if she was waiting for me to come up with the answer on my own or not, but nevertheless, it wasn’t happening. I’d been confused now for the past five minutes and everything she explained was completely new to me.

  “That temporary supernova Darius mentioned as well as the burst of radiation? What we saw in the sky for less than two seconds was a direct wormhole to KMA. We got to witness firsthand the explosion of the ship crashing into KMA for only a short moment before that miniature wormhole closed up completely.”

  “No way,” I said, “That’s the stuff of science fiction.”

  “You’d think so, wouldn’t you? Yet we have irrefutable evidence that the Hawke Jump ship did instantly travel across twelve light years and there’s no way to explain that without incorporating grav-flux. We need to find that black hole and if it hasn’t grown too much, we need to contain it.”

  “Contain it… and how is that accomplished?” I groaned, feeling like I knew less and less.

  “I could use the reactor core, but that’s assuming we didn’t bring the reactor online. Once the reactor’s online, it’ll be too late and I can’t do anything to undo it.”

  “Dear Lord,” I sighed.

  “You know what I’m asking, don’t you?” she said.

  “I’m afraid I do,” I said, “When?”

  “Soon. Once everyone is awake and off to work. We need to take the shuttle we’re sleeping in because the windshield isn’t damaged,” she said, “We’ve got enough fuel to circle the globe several times, so it doesn’t matter how far we’ve got to go to find it.”

  I removed my welding helmet and dropped it to the ground in front of me. I looked at her for a moment longer while she stared back expectantly. I’d never be forgiven for this, but ultimately I nodded my wordless agreement.

  Chapter Fifteen

  It wasn’t easy betraying the trust of my wife and the rest of the colony, but as Leah would explain to me later, people thought of the Master Chief as a doomsayer and an eccentric. No one would have willingly given up our only reactor to potentially save our world from a subatomic black hole. Most would rather wait until it was significantly larger and the damage was much more noticeable before reacting. By then, it would be too late.

  Nancy joined us, meaning that we would be a crew of three lifting off in the early morning hours. We had secured everything inside the shuttle as best as we could in such a limited time. Then we closed the side door and the back hatch. Afterward, we all squeezed into the pilot’s cabin while Leah expertly maneuvered us high above the colony and then accelerated the shuttle forward. Thirty seconds later, we were met with more than a dozen expletives from Commander McEwen.

  “We’ll explain it all when we return,” Leah said calmly into the communicator.

  “You’ll return that shuttle now! This is mutiny! Treason!” he shouted.

  “Is my husband inside that shuttle with you?” Sarai’s voice came on in a much more pleasant tone than I’d expected.

  “I’m here.” I replied, not sure what else to say.

  I’d let her down and I was certain it was utterly unforgivable.

  “What was the hurry, Zane? Why go off to see a crater when we don’t even have a greenhouse, a power source, or a chicken farm?” she asked, again sounding surprisingly calm.

  “Leah believes… we all believe that it poses more of a threat to us than just a little bit of radiation poisoning. This could destroy all of KMA,” I said.

  “Whatever it is, it could have waited. That crater has already been there for more than thirty-two years,” she replied.

  Leah took the communicator and proceeded to explain everything she’d told me earlier at the greenhouse. As she was speaking, a gentle hand was placed on my back. I turned to discover much to my dismay that Renata had stowed away on the shuttle and she was now rubbing my shoulder inappropriately. This wasn’t going to help our case when they discovered that we brought Renata along with us.

  I got up and led Renata out of the pilot’s cabin, “What are you doing here?”

  “I saw the three of you sneaking into the shuttle and I wanted to see what was going on,” she said, “I wanted to be a part of this sneaky mutiny. I support you, Zane.”

  “Listen, Renata,” I said, making sure she looked up at me, “This isn’t a mutiny and I still support my wife as the leader of our colony. And beyond that, I’m a married man. A happily married man. I think you’re a wonderful woman and I’m glad that you’ve allowed me to be your friend. But see… that’s all we are. We’re friends and nothing more.”

  “I know… I just… I’m here for you as a friend and I like spending time with you,” she stammered, “But no one can say how things will be a year or two from now.”

  “I’ve been married for six years and I’m planning to be married to Sarai for the rest of my life. I love her,” I argued.

  She just stared at me for a moment and then shrugged. I couldn’t tell if she understood or if she simply didn’t care.

  She finally nodded, “I understand, but can we still be friends?”

  “Of course we can,” I stated, “But I do wish you would have stayed back with the colony. I have a feeling that a lot of people are mad at us right about now and that ‘us’ includes you.”

  When I returned to the pilot cabin, Leah’s fingers were dancing rapidly on the command terminal keys. Nancy was seated in the other chair, watching something on the co-pilot’s monitor. There seemed to be no further communication with the colony.

  “Are they mad?” I asked.

  “Very,” Leah replied, “And still closed-minded enough to believe we should have waited a while.”

  “How will you know if you found what you’re looking for?” I asked, leaning against the doorframe, “I mean, can you see a subatomic black hole?”

  “No, but there are a variety of ways you can detect one. The easiest way is the same way we detect the massive ones in space,” she replied, “They emit x-ray radiation. Since we don’t know where the crater is and since this moon is so huge, I switched the sensors to look for any x-rays or gamma radiation. This wouldn’t have been easy on Earth with all the technology out there to confuse the sensors. But here on KMA, that black hole should shine like a light in a dark room.”

  “Speaking of that light, we’ve got something
about nine hundred miles to the northwest,” Nancy just reported, “Take a heading of 324 and keep that bearing for nine hundred and twenty-two miles.”

  I felt the shuttle suddenly bank to the left as Leah took hold of the yoke and changed course. Nancy started keying something into another terminal between their two seats. I was beginning to feel useless as I just stood there watching.

  “Now my next question… do we have the reactor aboard?” I asked.

  “No, I wanted to confirm its existence before I brought that along,” Leah stated, “For all we know, if it exists, we may not be able to reach it without some heavy labor. As you can imagine, this sort of black hole hunting is all new to me.”

  The world beneath us was getting whiter and whiter as we raced toward our destination. There were still some areas of dirty snow, but anywhere that there’d been a recent snowfall, the ground was more of a pure white like anything seen on Earth.

  “We’re now five hundred miles and closing,” Nancy said.

  I was happy to see that we were moving along at a good clip. The longer we were gone, the longer Sarai would have to think of ways to kill me. And when we returned with nothing more than “we verified it exists” or “we were wrong” but had no evidence, we would all certainly be beheaded for treason. There would be no forgiveness and my dread grew with each passing moment.

  “Two hundred miles and closing.”

  Renata tucked her arm around my waist as we stood there watching. I silently groaned and closed my eyes. I worried that she would never understand and I’d be forced to say something mean that would hurt her. We had three single men in the colony, two of which were closer to her in age. I was pretty certain any man would say yes to her. Any single man, of course.

  “I’m slowing it down and turning on the ground radar,” Leah said, “As snowy as the terrain is down there, I believe we’re seeing some glacial ice that’s at least a hundred feet thick. We’d never be able to see a crater from up here.”

  It did truly look like Antarctica out there and had been for the past few minutes. I couldn’t imagine how we’d locate anything of interest out there.