Proxima Trilogy: Part 1-3: Hard Science Fiction

by Brandon Q Morris

  “Adam, Eve,” he hears Gronolf’s voice via helmet radio. “Ready?”

  Adam looks around. Gronolf has put the helium pipe back inside the hatch and now stands behind him. The balloon has already started to rise. Due to the cables that the balloon pulled upward, Gronolf and Eve look like a puppeteer’s dolls.

  “Ready,” Adam and Eve say almost simultaneously. Now the strings tug at him. His back is pulled up with surprising force. Adam wiggles his arms and legs until he realizes how useless that is.

  “Yay!” he hears Eve shout.

  “Good start?” It is Marchenko’s voice.

  “Yes, it is great,” Eve replies.

  “So,” is all Gronolf says.

  Adam does not know what to say. His stomach protests against the upward acceleration. He has the feeling his stomach has sunk to his knees. He hopes he won’t have to vomit. The idea of having that yucky stuff inside his helmet for the next eight hours disgusts him. He will have to think of something else, and quickly.

  Proxima b solves that problem for him. They are slowly rising out of the darkness. In front of him, far away, a light blue oval shines in the blackness. Adam turns around his axis. The oval is the horizon, a circle, he can now see. They started at the North Pole, but they are slowly drifting away, it seems. With every passing minute the horizon brightens a bit. He won’t see the sun from this balloon, because it shines on the other side of Proxima b, forever and ever.

  The air is turbulent. Now and then something rips at his back and the straps dig into his flesh. In the helmet radio he hears Eve singing a children’s song. It warms his heart. He would like to say something to her, but he can’t think of anything. His eyes close at some point.

  Marchenko’s voice in the helmet radio wakes him. “You are drifting southward very quickly. The jet stream probably gave you a strong push.”

  “Is that a problem?” Eve asks.

  “No, quite the opposite. It makes it easier for me to pick you up. I cannot reduce the velocity of Messenger at will. The faster you are moving, the better.”

  Marchenko is right. What they are attempting is no easy maneuver. Adam is glad he did not think too much about it earlier. It is good that Marchenko controls Messenger, as he has lightning-fast reflexes.

  “How much longer?” asks Adam.

  “About two hours,” Marchenko says.

  Adam feels pressure in his bladder. He won’t be able to hold it for two hours, so he just relaxes and relieves himself. The diaper absorbs the liquid well. He looks around. The horizon is no longer a circle. They must be at least ten degrees of latitude from the North Pole. In one direction he sees only darkness. That’s where they came from. In the other one a blue arc is visible, which is widest in the middle. Somewhere in that direction must be the forest they lived in, and even further south stands the lander module that brought them to this planet.

  The day after tomorrow will make it five months ago. Five terrible months full of hardship and most of all full of mistakes. It seemed to him like five years. Of course he would do everything differently now if he had the chance. Yet he would not want to miss this adventure.

  “Adam?”

  “Yes, Eve?”

  “In the end, we managed quite well.”

  “True.”

  Eve does not say anything else. Adam hears her softly humming another children’s song. He tries to identify the tune, but he can’t.

  Marchenko’s voice sounds worried. “Watch out down there.”

  “What’s going on?” Adam asks.

  “You are approaching the upper reaches of a cyclone.”

  “At this altitude?”

  “Don’t forget the greater gravity. The atmosphere is structured differently from that of Earth.”

  “Can we evade it?”

  “Not a chance. Just stay calm, though, as the storm shouldn’t be dangerous.”

  Adam quickly notices the air movement. He is spinning around to his left, as if sitting on a swing carousel like he remembers from a video. The harness straps holding him to the balloon would be the chains.

  “Are you also rotating?” Eve asks.

  “So,” Gronolf says in affirmation.

  “I am trying to enjoy it,” Adam says. “I’m pretending I’m riding a swing carousel. I only know about that idea from books and videos.”

  “I don’t like to rotate,” Eve replies.

  She doesn’t like to lose control, Adam thinks. Typical for her. But then he notices his own motion is getting faster and faster.

  “Is the storm increasing?” he asks.

  “No,” Marchenko replies.

  “So why am I turning faster and faster?”

  Nobody answers. Adam looks around, but cannot see anything.

  “Oh, your straps have become entangled,” Eve finally says.

  Yes, that makes them shorter and he spins faster, like a figure skater pulling his arms against his body. “It is getting rather unpleasant,” Adam observes.

  “Just a moment,” Gronolf says.

  What is he up to? Adam shines his headlamp at him. The alien is unbuckling one of his own harness straps, and then another and another. “What are you doing? You will fall without the harness!”

  “I know,” Gronolf says. He is hanging from the balloon by a single strap. Now it becomes clear why he is doing this. He pulls himself up on this strap to reach the spot where Adam’s straps have become entangled. The other straps would have hindered him. He undoes one strap after another on Adam’s harness, untangles them, and then reattaches them.

  “So,” he finally says.

  The rotation has stopped. “Thank you, Gronolf.” Adam is shivering.

  “You are lucky,” Marchenko reports from Messenger. “You have traversed the storm cloud.”

  “This is Marchenko. It’s time.”

  Adam looks for Eve and Gronolf. The alien will blast off the balloon at the decisive moment. Then they will fly in free fall.

  “I am starting the countdown for Gronolf,” Marchenko says. He starts counting down.

  “Three, two, one, go.” Adam sees a flash in his field of vision. At the same time something jerks his harness. They are still connected to each other, but the balloon escapes upward. Adam looks after it, but ten seconds later the balloon has disappeared.

  “Are we already falling?” Eve asks.

  “Free fall,” Marchenko confirms.

  So they are falling. If Adam didn’t know it, he would not notice. If Marchenko leaves them in the lurch now they will burn up like meteorites. They have no parachutes to slow them down.

  “Intercept maneuver in 15,” Marchenko says calmly. He starts counting down again. When he reaches zero, Adam feels a strong tug on his left side. That must be the net.

  “Are we inside?”

  “Yes, Adam, it worked. I am now accelerating you.”

  “Congratulations!” shouts Eve.

  Messenger chose its orbit so it would be as slow as possible during this encounter. Yet that is not nearly slow enough for them to simply step on board. Therefore Marchenko placed an extremely sturdy net of carbon nanotubes behind them, which he now slowly accelerates, together with his catch.

  The acceleration, which must be almost twice Earth’s gravity, pushes Adam strongly against the net. He knows that Marchenko has calculated and simulated every detail. The net is supposed to be sturdy enough to hold him. But what if it isn’t? He cannot completely suppress this thought. If he slips through the mesh, the others will see him burn up like a meteorite. He is breathing faster.

  “Adam, are you alright?” Eve must have noticed something.

  “Yes, I am fine.”

  “I am also scared of the net breaking. The threads are so thin. You remember that spider in the forest?”

  Adam realizes Eve wants to distract him. And it is already working. He remembers how he fell into that pit, out of sheer stupidity. Eve had actually warned him. He laughs. “I was pretty stupid then.”

  “Sometime
s,” Eve says.

  “Adam, Eve,” Gronolf says.

  Adam turns around. The sun is rising in the South. It moves very slowly above the horizon. Its light spreads dramatically across the entire hemisphere, as if somebody were rapidly lighting one candle after the other. They are leaving the dark side.

  “There, I can see it,” Eve shouts, full of excitement.

  Adam is just as glad. Messenger has successfully pulled in her catch.

  Adam yawns. He has had enough for today. Someone is pulling on his harness. The outer hatch is opening. Gronolf wants Eve to go first, but she refuses. Adam also insists on Gronolf entering Messenger first. The chamber is too small for all three of them. They would have never made it this far without Gronolf.

  Ten minutes later the two humans have also boarded Messenger. They greet Marchenko’s body with a hug. It feels strange for Adam, because he knows that Marchenko is inside the ship computer again. Previously, they only called the robot body ‘J.’ Perhaps they should switch to that again.

  “Make yourself comfortable,” Marchenko says through the loudspeaker. “We have a long journey ahead of us.”

  May 19, 19, Eve

  Eve is lying on her comfortable couch, which Marchenko designed according to the pattern of Messenger’s pilot seats. The Majestic Draght has been on course out of the Proxima Centauri system for several hours. The ship is accelerating with approximately 1.3 g. Eve doesn’t really mind, because she is used to it from Proxima b. The Majestic Draght seems strange to her, not at all like a spaceship, even though she is zooming through the infinite reaches of space in it. It will reach speeds that would be unthinkable for human spaceships. The dark matter drive allows for this. Marchenko estimates that researchers on Earth will need at least 20 years to understand completely how it functions.

  She misses windows, portholes, a view. Of course there can’t be a view, because they are somewhere inside the ship, in one of the countless sectors. She can only watch on her screen how the Majestic Draght moves away from the ecliptic plane in which Proxima b orbits its sun. It will be a long journey, as Marchenko has announced several times. They will hardly see him, because he will try to repair the Omniscience. He himself would not use that term, as he sees himself more as a psychotherapist for the alien AI. No matter what one calls it, if Gronolf’s species wants to travel with the Majestic Draght in the future, the ship will need a functional Omniscience. After all, Marchenko can’t stay on board forever, can he?

  How will she make it through the coming months? Eve should be used to long voyages. After all, she grew up during one. Yet she still worries. At some point they will have explored the whole ship, in spite of its size. And it is boring to spend all day learning the aliens’ language. Eve shakes her head. She could finally start drafting the novel that has been going through her mind for a long time.

  Brightnight 7, 3878

  “Welcome!”

  By tradition the leadership speaks the first word. The first Grosnop delegation came on board 10 minutes ago. They had been flying toward them in a small ship. What an honor!

  “I thank you,” Gronolf says. The voice that greeted him seems familiar. It belongs to a female, which already represents a revolution.

  “I thank you,” she says, and Gronolf starts to tremble, because a channel of his memory has opened. He desperately tries to suppress the memory, but he fails.

  ‘Thank you for your companionship.’ Those had been Murnaka’s last words, an incredibly long time ago. And now she is standing in front of him. She has grown older by a few cycles. Biologically speaking she now might even be older than he is. Yet the voice is unchanged. He does not know what to say, so he remains silent. He really must get hold of himself.

  Somehow he survived the ceremony. They had awarded him a medal and promoted him to general. Now he is finally alone in his cabin again. After such a long time in space, the presence of other Grosnops seems stressful. He sits on the sleeping beam and takes the case out of the locker. He had always carried it with him in his exterior stomach pouch. A small bump formed on his skin where he used to hide it. Gronolf is not angry about it, quite the opposite—now he only needs to place a hand on the stomach pouch to feel Murnaka’s presence.

  There is a knock on his cabin door. The noise is so loud a human can’t have made it.

  April 15, 21, Adam

  “You can unbuckle your safety belts now.”

  Thanks, Marchenko, for stating the obvious. Even from afar—Marchenko still remains on the Majestic Draght—the AI can’t help giving such advice. Adam unbuckles his belt. The shuttle, they were told, would land in a recreational area near the capital city. He hears the clicking of Eve’s belt alongside him.

  Until now they had only seen Dual Sun, the planet of the Grosnops, from orbit. It must be a fertile planet, with billowy seas and green continents. There seem to be no high mountains. The very best aspect, they say, is that it has two suns. Right now it is brightnight, the season when both suns are visible in the sky. This should be the best time to recover in the recreational area, which carries the promising name Slime Swamps. There would also be a big surprise for them, the Grosnops had explained in perfect English.

  Even Marchenko was surprised how quickly the locals had been able to learn this human language. Had Gronolf sent data via radio to his home planet?

  Suddenly there is a blinding light. Somebody opened the door of the shuttle from outside. Together with the light, the scent of the planet enters the ship. It is a sweet smell, slightly reminiscent of decay. And of fish, but Adam already suspected this, because during the long journey Gronolf had raved about the extensive ichthyofauna of his planet.

  He gets up and walks toward the exit. Eve follows him. The pilot is nowhere to be seen. They had been told he speaks no English.

  Somebody placed a gangway against the exit. Adam can see broad-bodied Grosnops walking away, presumably the ones who had put it there. They probably don’t speak English either.

  Adam looks around at Eve. She nods. ‘Okay,’ she signals. He steps out of the shuttle. The first thing he notices is the humid heat. He starts to sweat immediately. In front of him is an area which looks like a neatly trimmed meadow sporting a bilious green color. Adam is careful about not jumping to conclusions. What looks like grass might be something completely different here. At a distance of about 50 meters, some plants as tall as a man are visible, a kind of forest. Their leaves display a different, more yellowish-green compared to the meadow. A swath has been cut through the forest, ending at a body of water.

  His eyes turn upward. The sky is verdant green. It is amazing, because it looks so inviting. He would like to be a bird and rise into the air. Perhaps this was why the Grosnops built spaceships before they invented other technologies.

  Adam searches for the suns. They are not far from each other. One, called Mother Sun, is yellowish, the other, Father Sun, burns hotter and white, but it is farther away and therefore appears much smaller in the sky.

  Eve taps on his shoulder. “Could that be the ocean?” She points at the swath through the forest.

  “No, it is an inland lake.” The answer comes from the left. It is spoken in perfect English. It is a man’s voice. A biped walks around the ship. That is no Grosnop.

  Adam takes on a defensive stance.

  “I am sorry,” the voice says. “I did not want to frighten you.”

  “Adam?”

  Adam turns to Eve, but she has not addressed him, but the other one. Now he realizes it. The human looks just like him. He is meeting his identical twin, even though it does not feel that way at all. Shouldn’t the other man seem to him like an old acquaintance, or even his mirror image?

  “Yes, that’s what Marchenko called me.”

  This is a nightmare. Now the story of Marchenko 2 is starting all over again. Adam feels a shiver run down his spine.

  “Your... father... is also named Marchenko?” Eve asks.

  Doesn’t she realize what is going on here?
Somehow Marchenko 2 has managed to arrive before them.

  “Eve, watch what you are saying,” he whispers to his sister.

  She looks at him dumbfounded. “What’s wrong with you?” Eve places a hand on his shoulder. “The Creator obviously sent a Messenger spaceship to Alpha Centauri as well,” she says cheerfully, “with another Marchenko and two clones of us on board.”

  “That’s exactly it,” he hears Eve’s voice say, but it comes from the wrong direction. “Funny that your ship is also called Messenger.”

  Now the woman appears from behind the other Adam. She bears an amazing resemblance to his Eve, but her hair is longer and her clothes are totally different.

  “How... how long have you been here?” Adam still can’t believe Marchenko 2 has nothing to do with this.

  “We landed ten months ago. The locals helped us a lot from the very beginning, even though there were some misunderstandings.”

  Adam calculates back. The impostor from Proxima b could not have arrived here so quickly. That is, if the date is correct, and he is going to find that out.

  “Well, then the coming years won’t be quite so boring,” his Eve says.

  “We are so glad,” the other woman says. “May we invite you to our house? We are curious to hear your story, and our Marchenko is also looking forward to seeing you. Barnar, our local adviser, told us you come from the neighboring star, Single Sun. That would be Proxima Centauri, right?”

  June 16, 21, Marchenko

  He finds Adam in the classroom. Adam greets him a bit gruffly. He knows he should have rather called in the afternoon, but by then he might once again lack the strength. It took Marchenko a long time to gather the strength to make it through today’s conversation.