Project Sail (32 page)

“We cannot run this ship with more people confined in their quarters and returning home is not an option. Besides, we only have an illusion of choice; Commander Hawthorne is the only one with command access, isn’t that right?”

Fisk answered, “Yes, you are right, so get into line. He can override any computer instructions.”

At this point, Jonathan realized he had contributed nothing to the conversation, no proposed resolution, no calming of fears. Yes, the computer gave him control but it was no different from holding a gun to the crew’s collective heads; blackmail, not command.

Then he understood what he must do.

“I will give Professor Coffman full access to command controls.”

“You cannot do that!” Fisk protested.

Hawthorne told the gathered, “That is the best I can offer.”

The professor waved his hand dismissively.

“That is not my point.”

Bill Stein said, “I can’t think of a better idea.”

Muted enthusiasm came from Black and Soto while Wren chuckled again and Warner nodded.

Hawthorne said, “Sounds like the crew is drafting you, professor.”

“I do not want this,” Coffman protested, to which Hawthorne replied, “welcome to my world.”

---

Captain Charles sat at the end of his cot because he had tired from pacing. While it only took four steps to walk from the locked hallway door to the toilet built in the opposite wall, he had made that trip a thousand times in the four hours since his imprisonment.

With each sortie from wall-to-wall, he pondered his plight and concluded that without help from the crew escape did not seem likely. He had no means of opening the door and, in a moment of self-candor, Charles accepted that fighting was not his strength, either hand-to-hand or even with a weapon. He had not fired a gun since his last trip to the range five years ago.

Still, he did have one card to play.

A raised voice and the sound of scuffling feet gave him momentary hope the crew came to free him. But when the cabin door slid open, he saw Hawthorne standing there with Lieutenant Thomas a step behind brandishing a side arm.

Charles stood and spoke first, “Last chance, Commander. End this craziness and we do not have to say a word to anyone back home.”

“The people back home wanted me to kill you.”

Charles thought about issuing another threat but reconsidered, thinking that instead of intimidating Hawthorne such threats might lead to him carrying out his order of summary execution. As bruised as his ego may be, Donovan Charles did not want to die.

Dr. King pushed between the two visitors and stepped into his cabin.

“Captain, I am sorry about this.”

“Unless you act to free me, you are a co-conspirator, and the punishment for mutiny is death.”

Hawthorne said, “Listen to her; she is trying to make this easier.”

“Captain, I have convinced the Commander to allow supervised exercise breaks to the cargo bay and some meals in the common room, but we are still talking about weeks of confinement.”

“I suppose I should be thankful considering Jonathan could have murdered me instead.”

King winced at the mention of murder, as if the word caused pain, but she recovered and offered a proposal

“I could put you to sleep for the duration of our mission. Instead of staying in here for weeks, you would close your eyes and wake up back in our solar system.”

“I want no part of that and if you try to force me, I will fight you.”

“Relax,” Hawthorne called from behind, “Dr. King already told me that forcing you would be unethical. Look, I don’t like this so we will leave it as is, unless you give me any trouble. Then I will personally stick the needle in you.”

“Or shoot me dead?”

Hawthorne did not reply.

As they turned to leave, Charles said, “Okay, I am locked up in here, so tell me, what is the big mystery?”

Dr. King smiled and told him, “Gliese 581g has a moon, Captain, and it is habitable.”

“And that’s as much information as you need,” Hawthorne said. “Your intercom still works and your computer link is rigged for access to the ship’s entertainment programs.”

“If you change your mind,” Dr. King offered, “just let me know.”

He nodded and they withdrew. Charles then slid across his bed to the antique mantel clock that, according to the engraving, had been gifted to him from the navy.

This phony gift had one purpose, and thanks to Dr. King, he knew the time had come to use it.

Charles opened the glass cover and turned the clock hands to midnight. An electrical charge went through the device, manipulating a tiny cache of electrons. While the pincushion on the bridge was large and full of particles to send complicated codes by quantum entanglement, the mechanism inside his clock was small, needing only to send one message.

Charles sent that message now and it crossed twenty-two light-years instantly thanks to the mysterious spooky action of quantum entanglement. By changing the rotation of one electron, he sent a signal that translated into one word.

“Execute.”

35. Discovery

Tidally locked to its star, Gliese 581g continually baked on one side and froze on the other. At the terminator circling the planet, the sun hung on the horizon for eternity, like a photograph of dawn.

SE 185
orbited the planet, spending half the time in the crimson glow of the red dwarf and the other half in darkness.

Each of the four corners on the ship’s underbelly sported large circular hatches. One opened and a capsule-sized pod fell out, dropping from orbit. Quick bursts from maneuvering thrusters and retro-rockets fought the planet’s strong gravity and adjusted course until landing on a rocky shelf barely a kilometer into the dark side where the gaseous atmosphere froze away.

Compartments on the pod popped open and a team of robotic explorers invaded Gliese 581g.

A meter-long centipede crawled over rocks taking surface samples and finding patches of hardened hydrocarbons mixed among fields of feldspar. A four-wheeled drill bore into the ground and extracted bits of magnesium and aluminum. Bipedal metallic midgets erected environmental monitoring stations and seismic sensors.

The machines and the equipment transmitted data to Matthew Carlson’s project room aboard
SE 185
, where Commander Hawthorne peered over his shoulder.

“The ground station is operational,” Carlson reported as he used his implants to interface with the main console in the small room. “But I could use a bird in orbit to map the surface.”

“Look, Matthew, our mission priority has changed; the best we can do right now is launch an observation drone to circle the planet. Don’t worry; I’m certain your robotic pals will find some interesting rocks and the drone can start mapping terrain.”

Carlson nearly pouted as he pointed out, “I will need to go down there eventually.”

“Not a problem. The moon is only two hundred thousand miles away, close enough for you to take a capsule. But for now, the moon with the air and oceans is a bigger priority than the ball of rock.”

---

Hawthorne felt strange sitting in the Captain’s chair, a feeling multiplied exponentially each time a crewman looked in his direction, eyeing him with suspicion and contempt. As had been the case on the
John Riley,
he found himself with an unwanted command.

“We are settling into orbit at an altitude of three hundred miles,” Stein announced from the helm as
SE 185
started around the moon.

“Okay, so what have we got?”

Professor Coffman had left engineering in the hands of Black and Phipps and sat at the XO’s station.

“G-Moon has a circumference at the equator of thirty-eight million kilometers and a surface area of four-hundred eighty-five million kilometers. We can also detect a thick ozone layer, a strong magnetosphere, a nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere, twelve distinct major landmasses, one large ocean, hundreds of smaller lakes, and rivers. Visual scans and the first temperature readings suggest various climate zones between two polar caps. Temperature ranges from minus fifty to seventy-three degrees.”

“Sounds familiar,” Stein said. “I was born in Minnesota.”

Coffman continued, “I calculate surface gravity at .987 gs. Now, as you can see, G-Moon is tidally locked to the planet giving it outer and inner faces. The outer face has the most diverse day-night cycle, receiving maximum sunshine from the Gliese star when between the planet and its sun. The moon completes an orbit of 581g in eight hundred and forty hours.”

Stein said, “A moon tidally-locked to its mother planet that is tidally-locked to its parent star. Everyone in this solar system is staring at each other.”

Ignoring Stein, Tommy Starr said, “So half that time the outer face is getting sun, the other half it faces deep space?”

“Exactly, and that should make for some extreme temperature variations. G-Moon is on an ecliptic plane with 581g, meaning a lunar eclipse for roughly fifty hours during each orbit.” Coffman considered and added, “That must be a breathtaking sight.”

Starr asked, “So the inner face is significantly colder?”

“It receives less direct sun which would suggest a lower average temperature, but atmospheric circulation and the ocean will likely mitigate the difference.”

Fisk stood at the back of the bridge and asked Coffman, “How long until we have all the details on this moon?”

“Depends on what you mean. After thousands of years of living on our home planet, we still do not know everything about Earth. This moon is a puzzle that will take a long, long time to solve.”

Hawthorne approached Warner’s station. She slid over in her seat, as if squirming away from something gross. He chose to ignore the attitude. After all, if the roles reversed he would not feel comfortable, either.

“Okay, Air Boss, time to do your thing.”

Leanne Warner used a combination of focused thoughts through her implant and pointing with her fingertips to work her station. Activity broke out around the ship.

Another hatch opened on
SE 185’s
underbelly and a cylinder came spiraling out. Once it cleared the ship, boosters pushed it into a higher orbit where struts unfolded revealing antenna and powerful photographic equipment.

Warner reported, “Mapper in orbit and beginning its run. Expect rudimentary GPS capabilities over select regions in two hundred hours. The LiDAR module is online already with Light Detection and Radar imaging. Stand by for the second bird.”

Another hatch opened, another satellite fell from the ship and then rocketed to an orbit over five hundred miles above the moon.

“M101 now assuming polar orbit for weather data collection.”

Hawthorne asked, “What’s the next package?”

“Loading Radarsat into launch tube four. Stand by…and launch.”

Coffman told the Commander, “Radarsat has a new generation of Synthetic Aperture Radar and infrared imaging capabilities.”

Three satellites went into orbit around G-Moon, the first steps in what would be a long process of exploration and discovery.

Hawthorne said, “We need to send a message to Oberon and let them know what we have found.”

“When do we go down?” Fisk asked.

Coffman explained to their corporate liaison, “We have to let the satellites and our sensors do their job first. We are not going to the surface for at least a week, and only if the readings we receive support moving to the next stage.”

“You said the atmosphere looks good, we can see landmasses and other surface features, so would it not be easier to conduct most of this research from the moon itself?”

Coffman answered, “Regardless of what we think we can see from up here, Mr. Fisk, if any nasty surprises await us, I would like to spot them from a safe distance.”

---

Victor Henderson sat at his desk and, for the tenth time, re-read the message that had come from
SE 185
two hours ago.

MOON ORBITING GLIESE 581G…POTENTIALLY HABITABLE …CAPTAIN CONFINED TO QUARTERS…SURVEY STAGE ONE IMPLEMENTED.

He had ordered Charles terminated; Hawthorne plainly lost his nerve.

Still, he supposed it did not matter. They had replaced the translation computer that navy intelligence identified as the leak through which Charles signaled his allies, and the Captain’s last message had indicated a barren planet. Admiral Duncan felt the EA would now turn its attention to Sirius.

Most important, 581g’s moon might be the greatest discovery in human history, as found by Universal Visions Incorporated.

He dreamed of skyrocketing stock values when they released this news to the public, not to mention the resources that 581g would yield. He hoped Hawthorne remembered to assign some assets to mineral and chemical surveys on the main planet.

Henderson stood, scratched his dog Galen between the ears, and paced around his office wearing a big smile. As great a day as this was for UVI, today was also the beginning of a new age for humanity, and Victor Henderson had played a central role.

Outside his window flickered a field of stars, so vast and filled with potential. The journey to Gliese 581g was just the first step in Project Sail.

One particularly bright star caught his eye. No, not a star, a flash.

He squinted to focus on the light, but he need not bother; the light was coming to him.

Klaxons sounded around the station and red warning sirens spun.

That point of light grew and widened into a sparkling wave rumbling toward the station in a gigantic wall of energy.

A panicked announcement from the control room warned, “Brace for impact!”

Henderson used his thinker chip to activate the intercom and demanded the control room answer, “What is it?”

“Mr. Henderson, incoming wash from an A-H drive!”

Before he could digest that information, the wave hit, tossing Henderson across the office. Circuits overloaded, lights went dark, and he felt a burning sensation around his brain implant.

Then it passed, leaving the station wobbling in orbit with only pockets of power and a multitude of holes.

Henderson surveyed his surroundings in the red glow of emergency lights. Alarms still rang and screams came over the intercom between automated messages warning of “Hull Breach” and “Dangerous Radiation Levels Detected.”