The Beacon: Hard Science Fiction

by Brandon Q Morris

  “It’s not about our house, Franziska. I’m selling my mother’s house!”

  “Oh, all of a sudden, right now? You know who’s always advised you to do that?”

  “Yes. You. I know. But now I need the money.”

  “You’re going to spend it? Surely the house will fetch half a million. What kind of crazy idea do you have now?”

  I am having a radio beacon built and launched into space to save the solar system from destruction. Your husband will be a hero. Unfortunately, no one believes him because there is no physical process that can knock out a star in a few days without leaving a trace.

  But he couldn’t tell her any of that. Franziska would try to have him declared insane. She was much too reasonable. Ha, he never thought he’d think that about his wife. Maybe this should be a warning to him. Maybe he really was going crazy?

  “No, I’ve had enough of constant complaints from tenants, and since it just so happens that another agency has inquired—”

  “Very reasonable, Peter. But then why did you take the 50,000 from our account?”

  Franziska seemed to have calmed down a bit. Peter had a guilty conscience. They had always placed a lot of value on not lying to each other in their relationship.

  “Sorry, Franziska, that wasn’t the truth. I shouldn’t have said that.”

  He decided to try the truth. Maybe his wife would believe him after all.

  “I’ve made a terrible discovery. If our solar system doesn’t broadcast on a certain radio frequency soon, it will be destroyed by an unknown power.”

  Oh, man. He sounded just like those QAnon weirdos. No one in their right mind could believe that.

  “Oh, Peter.”

  Now his wife sounded as if she was on the verge of tears. His heart stuttered.

  “Even now, you can’t stop making jokes? I’m really afraid for us. We haven’t done so badly so far. Why do you want to destroy that? What are you hiding from me? I can’t be with someone I can’t trust. So don’t come to me with such made-up stories! Life is not a novel!”

  Unfortunately, Franziska was probably right. If what he was experiencing were in a novel, he’d be the hero and not the villain, and a happy ending would be assured. But as it was, he must expect to have divorce papers on his desk soon. And even if he saved the world, no one would believe him. Shouldn’t he leave it alone then? But what would become of his children? If he was right, they’d all die. If he was wrong, he would lose his wife and his mother’s house. He would have to pay a high price, but the result might be worth it.

  “Franziska, there’s no point in us continuing this conversation,” he said.

  “But Peter, what’s wrong with you? Let’s talk to each other sensibly!”

  “I’m sorry, Franziska, but I can’t explain this to you right now. Let’s end the conversation.”

  “Whatever,” said his wife, ending the call.

  Peter took off his pajamas and went into the bathroom to take a shower. The hot water felt good, and he managed to push any thoughts of Franziska to the back of his mind. Four more hours of math and physics today, and then the weekend would arrive.

  March 14, 2026 – Passau

  Finally, the sky was clear once again. Peter was grateful to the weather god, although this also meant it would be very cold after the sun went down. He had a task to accomplish that he had been preparing for all day. He needed to find more stars that lay on the spherical shell of destruction. The more data he had, the more credible his evidence would become.

  Peter again proceeded systematically, according to his list, which he’d expanded to also included less-luminous stars. Thus he did not progress quite as quickly because it was more laborious to convince himself of the existence of these more-faint points of light. The naked eye was usually inadequate in such cases, so he made use of the stacking technique. Fortunately, it was the weekend and he was alone. He would stack the individual images tomorrow during the day.

  The disadvantage of this approach was that he missed the satisfaction of checking off having sighted each item on the list. He only knew that each object in question had its ‘entered’ box checked. But whether it existed or not was only apparent in those cases where he had already seen it with his own eyes in the eyepiece. As a result, Peter’s thoughts regularly wandered, both a blessing and a curse. It helped him to persevere, but it also meant that he sometimes got confused in his list.

  At least there was one piece of good news. Peter imagined telling it to his wife—he missed having conversations with her. He was so used to the exchanges that had always been a part of their daily lives that he now considered their absence the biggest drawback to being alone. Yet he had never considered himself particularly talkative. He had always thought of himself as a person who got along quite well without others.

  The broker who was to sell the house in Berlin had gotten back to him this morning. Peter gave him only a rough description of his particular situation, but the man seemed to be familiar with such problems and said he was prepared to pay Peter a considerable part of the targeted purchase sum of 600,000 euros in advance. In return, all proceeds above this amount would end up in the broker’s pockets.

  It was probably profiteering, but Peter was okay with it. He urgently needed the money. Even an auction could not be organized so quickly. Deuer from the bank explained that it would take a few weeks to set up a mortgage on the house before the money could be paid into the account.

  He didn’t have that much time, so he’d accepted the shrewd realtor’s offer. His mother had always been proud of her house. She would have loved to see her son and his family move in there, but now she was lying in an urn in the cemetery. Peter didn’t believe in an afterlife, so he didn’t feel bound by his mother’s wishes.

  His smartphone vibrated, telling him the tracking program had once again failed to find the entered destination—the rule rather than the exception with his current candidates. Peter checked the position and determined the ascension and declination were set correctly.

  He pressed his eye to the eyepiece. Several stars were visible, but he could not see the object he was looking for in the center of the image. His rod cells were not sensitive enough. With the push of a button, he started taking individual photos. The photons, which had been traveling for more than 50 years, now only had to hit the telescope’s high-sensitivity chip at the right moment.

  March 15, 2026 – Passau

  There was a tiny dot in the center of the photo. Good. That star was still shining. Peter drew a checkmark in the box on his list, and swiped to the left on the screen. The next image appeared. This photo also showed a bright dot in its center. He checked the position, then placed its checkmark in the list, too.

  Where would Franziska be right now? Before, on a sunny-weather day like this, the two of them would have surely been out for a walk somewhere. Instead, he had lowered the blinds to better concentrate on the star photos.

  Next.

  Peter pulled the notebook a little closer and squinted his eyes. The dot was correct, but he could see a thin trace of light in the lower-left corner. What was that? He memorized the coordinates and the time and looked them up in a database. It was an Earth observation satellite, owned by India, that had wandered through the image during the individual shots.

  Such traces were not uncommon. He could simply ignore them. Peter looked up every single one anyway. It might, just maybe, be a comet that no one else had found yet. Many comets were discovered this way. He imagined Franziska coming back to him after he managed to get a celestial body named for her.

  The next image showed only emptiness in its exact center. Peter enlarged the image and the contrast, but that didn’t change anything. Had the image possibly slipped? He compared the data at the bottom of the photo with the values in his list. A match. He clicked on ‘Print,’ only to cancel the process immediately. Why should he print a black area?

  The list. So far it contained only checkmarks. Now he drew a cross. Fir
st a vertical line, then a shorter, horizontal one that crossed the vertical line in its upper half. The result looked mysterious and dramatic.

  By late afternoon, he’d managed to look through all the shots from the previous night. In the last work step, he once again inspected each of the photos that had received a cross. There were five. The number seemed surprisingly high, after it had taken him so long to track down the first missing specimens. Was it because he had limited himself to the spherical shell this time? And didn’t this preselection affect the validity of his data?

  It was conceivable that, outside of the spherical shell, many more stars had been lost in the same time period. Then his theory would, so to speak, stand on clay feet. He already knew what this meant: In the coming nights, he must randomly select an area of the same size that was not located on the spherical shell, and search there in an identical way. If he then discovered a similar number of losses, that was probably it for his theory.

  But first he wanted to look at how the new finds matched the old ones. He ran downstairs to the living room. It still smelled like burnt pizza. With a wave of his hand, he started the astral projector. He called up the simulation he’d designed four days ago to determine the deadline—how much time they had left until the sun died.

  First, as usual, appeared the spherical shell, on which everything seemed to take place. He added the new data, which was evenly distributed over the northern and southern hemispheres. Then he started the actual simulation. The roller ran over the spherical shell from different directions, over and over again, erasing one star after the other, except for those that gave off signals in the right frequency range.

  The program took longer, with the new data, to determine the most likely scenario. Peter closed his eyes because he was getting a headache from the flickering of the roller. Finally, the simulation stopped. Last time—four days ago—it showed the sun having three months left.

  Now it had only three weeks!

  13 13 37 56 +42 29.76

  Biresybjvat fxvrf bs jnfgrq fgnef fcyraqbe bire gur fbeebj.

  Vafgrnq bs vagb gur phfuvbaf, jrrc hc.

  Urer, ng gur jrrcvat nyernql,

  ng gur raqvat snpr,

  gur enivfuvat fcnpr ortvaf.

  Jub vagreehcgf,

  jura lbh chfu gurer,

  gur pheerag? Ab bar. Hayrff,

  gung lbh fhqqrayl fgehttyr jvgu gur zvtugl qverpgvba

  bs gubfr fgnef nsgre lbh. Oerngur.

  Oerngur gur qnexarff bs gur rnegu naq ybbx hc ntnva!

  Ntnva. Yvtug naq yvtugyrff,

  yrnaf sebz nobir qrcgu gb lbh.

  Gur ybbfrarq avtug snpr tvirf fcnpr gb lbhef.

  March 16, 2026 – Passau

  SigmaLaunch was taking its time with their answer. Peter made himself breakfast in the kitchen and then took it outside into the garden, because the sun was already pleasantly warm at seven o’clock in the morning, and it still smelled awful in the kitchen. At the moment, he could only hope that Franziska didn’t come home just yet, or he’d screw it up again right away.

  He slowly ate the muesli and milk, into which he had cut pieces of apple, sipping black coffee with it. For him, this was the safest way to prepare for his morning ‘business.’ He didn’t want to feel the sudden urge at school. The school toilets were clean, but the idea of one of his colleagues relieving himself right next to him, separated only by a thin wooden wall, made him shudder.

  It worked faster than expected. Peter checked that the cellphone was in his pants pocket and sat down on the toilet in the first-floor bathroom. It was a small room with a tiny window, but all around were brick walls inches thick. He felt much more comfortable there. He always got up 15 minutes earlier than necessary to allow himself these quiet minutes.

  Now, of all times, the smartphone vibrated. Peter unlocked it. The answer from SigmaLaunch was there. Miguel invited him to a chat, and Peter accepted the invitation.

  “Good morning, Peter,” Miguel wrote in English. “In your time zone, it should be early morning right now?”

  “Good morning, Miguel. Yes, it’s morning.”

  It was strange to exchange pleasantries with the chatbot. After all, it was just a piece of software.

  “Should we switch to VR mode?” asked Miguel. “Then we can have a face-to-face conversation.”

  That he could do without. “No, thank you, this is really not a good time for me.”

  “Suit yourself. You sent us an email. What can I do for you?”

  “We need to bring forward the launch of the CubeSat. Is that possible?”

  “It’s difficult. We can speed up the manufacturing of the hardware, but Blue Origin won’t launch earlier because of us. That’s the downside of ridesharing. The CubeSats are only guests of the actual payload.”

  “But surely there are other providers who can give my satellite a ride?”

  “I would have to check on that. It would be more expensive then, though. Only the launches on the New Glenn are on special offer at the moment. Regular prices are well above that.”

  “How much more?”

  “Fifty thousand euros plus, just to give you a ballpark number. I don’t know exactly yet. I would first have to negotiate that with the company in question. On top of that, we may not yet be regular customers with the competition, so we may get even higher prices.”

  “Then maybe I should look for another business partner?”

  “I’d be careful about that, Peter. Contracts have to be fulfilled. I don’t think you have a chance elsewhere, either. We’ve researched you, of course. You’re a physics teacher, and you don’t own a company. Actually, I should have charged you the full amount up front.”

  “It’s all right. I didn’t mean it that way. But we need to have the beacon in orbit in three weeks at the latest.”

  “The beacon?”

  “That’s what I call my probe. It’s a radio beacon, like in seafaring, that warns incoming ships.”

  “Of course it’s none of my business, but that doesn’t make sense in spaceflight. Who exactly are you trying to warn? All human-crewed spacecraft are controlled from their respective mission control.”

  “You’re right. It’s none of your business.”

  “I don’t care, either,” Miguel said. “As long as everything is done legally, and we’ll make sure it is, you can put your beacon in orbit.”

  “But it will only help if it broadcasts no later than April 4. No, starting by April 3.”

  He’d already made the recordings the day before yesterday.

  “I am ninety-five percent sure that we will get a flight opportunity in time. However, it could be significantly more expensive than planned so far. You can cover the additional costs? Up to what amount?”

  Phew. If he offered too much now, they would probably try to use the buffer. If he offered too little, nothing would come of the launch.

  “Let’s say 100,000 euros. Surely that’s as big as any surcharge should be.”

  “Good. Thank you, Peter. I think we can work with that. I’ll get back to you tomorrow at the latest with a concrete proposal. Please be prepared to transfer the additional fee promptly.”

  “Of course.”

  Peter locked the phone screen. His urgent ‘business’ had vanished. One of the sacrifices required to save the world.

  March 17, 2026 – Passau

  It was almost dark, and still no one had come forward. Apparently it was not that easy to find a ‘seat’ for his CubeSat. At least the broker made good on his promise immediately after signing the contract and transferred the money to their joint account. Hopefully, Franziska noticed that and no longer suspected him of trying to loot her.

  Peter was going through the list for tonight. It had been cloudy yesterday, but mostly clear skies were forecast for today. He must finally get the search region ready. Maybe it would turn out that his haste was all for nothing. Should he write to Holinger again? He could still get out of the contract, not without a substantial penalty,
but the entire sum was not yet due, either. He could hold off on transferring the 100,000 euros for at least a few more days.

  No. He decided. He switched to online banking and initiated the transaction.

  As if the recipient had noticed, a message reached him at almost the same moment. Miguel invited him to another chat. What would he have to say?

  Peter opened the window.

  “Sorry it took longer than expected,” Miguel reported. “There were some difficulties. I thought I had a ride for you last night. It would have been a Soyuz rocket, from Vostochny. But that fell through because of export regulations. We are not allowed to export the JPL sector antenna to Russia. That’s pointless because the technology is public knowledge, but rules are rules. But now I have a new opportunity for you. It has only one small catch.”

  Oh, a catch. What did that mean?

  “Don’t worry. It’s really just a minor hitch. The company we’re talking about is from Germany. Maybe you even know it. It’s called Rockets Plus. The company has just completed its second model. It’s scheduled to launch on March 30 from Kiruna, Sweden. Sending the CubeSat to Sweden is not a problem.”

  “A first flight, then. Isn’t that risky?”

  “It is the first launch into orbit. The new rocket has already had a few test launches. Rockets Plus offers a sensational price per kilogram.”

  “So no hitch, after all?”

  “Well, you’re not going to find insurance that covers a first launch. But if I understand you correctly, April 4 is the final date anyway.”

  “That’s right. After that, the project no longer matters.”

  “I don’t quite understand that, but it’s not necessary that I do. The fact is, if there is a launch failure on March 30, no one in the world can construct a new CubeSat and put it into orbit by April 4. So, to be honest, you can save the money on insurance.”