Project Sail (35 page)

On this flight, he did not intend to land even though visiting the moon had become routine.

That first surface visit to the archipelago had come on day thirteen, followed on day fifteen with a return trip to the same site by Stein, Coffman, and Soto. On day sixteen, Carlson piloted Dr. Kost and Sheila Black to the shoreline of a continent in a temperate zone.

Yesterday—day seventeen—saw two landings at the same time, both by capsule, the first being Hawthorne, Wren, and Thomas making planetfall at a river delta, the other Stein flying Coffman and Soto to the northern pole.

Coffman directed all scientific research on the mission, and he wanted quick, hit-and-run landings to gather specimens and collect general data. He planned to invest in longer visits once the moon’s outer surface bathed in the full force of Gliese’s red rays, which would occur in a few days.

They would then establish one primary base on the surface for intensive research. Nonetheless, what they had found thus far filled the ship with such excitement the crew nearly forgot that their Captain had been deposed by armed mutiny and remained confined to his cabin.

The weather was the first reason for exhilaration. The atmosphere was active and lessened the temperature swings with strong circulation. The outer face’s night side was not as cold as it would be otherwise, although temperatures varied based on latitude. So far, they had not measured anything below forty degrees near the equator, although the poles had already sunk under zero degrees Fahrenheit.

Geothermal heating also helped and meant that G-Moon was geologically active. Carlson spent hours at a time scanning the surface in search of volcanoes.

On the other hand, King and Soto spent their time examining the ecosystem. Plants, insects and worms did not sound exciting, but these were the first forms of life larger than bacteria discovered anywhere other than humanity’s home planet.

Two missions saw creatures resembling marmots. While not large enough to feed Stein’s fear of gigantic predators, their existence was further evidence of a vibrant and thriving environment.

Yet there was something familiar about this place. Despite differences in appearance, the trees, plants, insects, and animals played roles identical with the ones their distant cousins played on Earth, although adapted to survive in the moon’s climate.

The fundamentals of photosynthesis differed and from what Soto could detect, the vegetation had developed complex energy conservation systems to deal with the day and night cycle. Overall, the result was resilient flora that could thrive in environments that would kill their Earthly relatives.

Meantime, as Hawthorne steered the plane toward the southern pole, he called through the open cockpit door to Lieutenant Thomas: “Take shots of this region; as tight as you can with both normal and infrared.”

Kelly sat at a workstation using the ship’s imaging module to capture pictures. Kost leaned over her shoulder and helped Kelly work the equipment, although they spent their time talking about vertical farms and what Kelly would do when she left the military.

Across the short aisle, Dr. King alternated her attention from the window to a data stream coming from drones sent to collect samples from the upper atmosphere.

Hawthorne banked to port and gained altitude. While not as enthusiastic a pilot as Stein, he welcomed the chance to fly, despite worrying that when he returned he would find Charles released from his confinement and waiting for him with a posse.

He tried to take his mind off that by making small talk.

“So how did you get drafted for this mission, Tommy?”

“Commander, just so you know, I like Captain Charles and I do not believe he is some sort of spy. He has always been good to me.”

Apparently, the excitement had not caused Starr to forget the mutiny.

Hawthorne felt his heart beat fast but found the voice to reply, “Okay, fine, but I have my orders.”

“Sorry, Commander, that is a cowardly way out. We are twenty-two light-years from home and orders given by a corporate suit do not mean much out here. We are supposed to have one another, but I guess that went to hell.”

Truth was, Hawthorne agreed with Starr. Considering the resulting mistrust among the crew, they would have been better off rooting out the spy before the mission and taking their chances on a European man-of-war arriving at 581g.

Nonetheless, Starr needed a dose of reality.

“Look, I understand but if Charles is a spy and if I did not follow my orders and his buddies showed up, they would have killed us all to claim G-Moon.”

Starr could not argue that point. They flew above the most important resource in the universe: a habitable biosphere.

The navigator answered the original question.

“I was part of the
Niobe’s
standby crew and was a week from joining them on Ganymede when the Chinese attacked.”

“You have been with UVI your entire career?”

“I received a scholarship to corporate flight school after working dome maintenance on Mars. Now
that
was a shit job.”

Hawthorne glanced at the Martian and felt, again, as if he walked the edge of the uncanny valley. Thin and long described every feature of Starr’s body including face, fingers, and arms. While clearly a human being, Marvin seemed…different.

“Commander?”

Hawthorne realized he stared and turned his eyes forward.

Professor Coffman’s voice broadcast over the radio: “Jonathan, can you hear me? Are you there?”

“Yes, professor, I hear you, go ahead.”

“The probe’s QE connection has become active again. We are receiving a message!”

“What, whoa, hold on a second. What are you talking about?”

“Probe 581’s pincushion, I brought it onboard before we launched. It went dormant during the initial survey mission but it’s receiving a signal again! I believe it landed on the moon!”

“Professor, what exactly is it broadcasting?”

“Coordinates.”

---

Hawthorne guided the shuttle down through the clouds, along the way suffering turbulence that, with the artificial gravity off, was bone rattling. Once below the cloud cover, he steered the craft over a nearly black landscape of rolling hills just south of the equator on G-Moon’s largest continent.

Starr helped guide them to the coordinates the probe broadcast, and the brilliant glow of another descending ship’s rockets—Coffman’s capsule--helped illuminate the landing zone.

On his navigator’s signal, Hawthorne activated the landing cycle, starting with forward braking rockets followed by landing struts and then vertical descent thrusters. They touched down on grass-covered earth three hundred yards from the capsule that had returned Coffman, Wren, and Stein to the surface.

The crews spent the next thirty minutes decontaminating their outerwear and unpacking robotic helpers before moving toward the rendezvous. On Coffman’s advice, Tommy Starr remained with the heavy lifter and Bill Stein stayed aboard the capsule.

Wearing pumpkins suits, Hawthorne led Kost, King, and Thomas from the plane to the northeast, joined by a trio of six-foot walking light posts and one rolling rover carting gear.

Lights from the robots and the top of the astronaut’s egg-shaped helmets lit the grassy ground. Wrist-mounted environmental monitors measured the temperature at forty-two degrees Fahrenheit and low humidity.

After a minute of walking, they rendezvoused with Coffman, Wren, and two more walking lampposts at a big white ship that was Probe 581.

“Professor, was this meant to land?” Hawthorne asked by proximity radio, although the acoustics on G-Moon were almost identical with Earth. If not for their helmets, they could carry on a normal conversation, assuming nothing in the air managed killed them first.

Coffman craned his neck to spy the top of the fifty-foot tall spacecraft constructed of barrel and ball-shaped body parts supported on three big struts.

“The ability to land was incorporated into the probe’s design but Project Manager Fenner never sent instructions to do so. We first lost control of the probe, and then we lost contact.”

Wren said, “So you lost control of the first ever interstellar probe? I bet that went over like a swimming pool on Mars with the brass.”

Coffman was too interested in the find to let his attention wander but when Kost innocently asked a simple question, it did stir his curiosity.

“Professor, why did it land here?”

Wren brushed aside her question saying, “Just random luck. For Christ’s sake, not everything has to have, like, ulterior motives.”

Hawthorne figured Wren referred not only to the probe’s choice of landing spots, but also to his choice of words at the Captain’s table weeks ago when the mission began. Since that day, the relationship between Wren and Kost had chilled.

Anyway, the question was valid and, after a moment, they found the reason.

The walking spotlight tripods reacted to their human hosts, focusing their illumination on the probe at first. But as the landing party turned their attention to the surrounding darkness, so did the lights, one following Ira King as she found something of interest.

“Professor, look.”

More spotlights joined the first, revealing a hole in a hillside fifty yards ahead.

For ten seconds, no one said a word, although Hawthorne heard the rate of respiration increase among the landing party, particularly his own.

Horizontal in shape, the cave opening measured eight feet high and twenty feet across, and while he blamed his imagination, Hawthorne swore he felt an ice-cold breeze sweep out from the interior and gust among the group.

Kelly Thomas pressed against him and said, “I should have brought my boys.”

As a soldier, her natural impulse was to assume hostile intent and that ominous black hole gaping at them like the mouth of a monster—perhaps one of Stein’s feared predators—did make him quiver beneath his space suit.

Coffman’s instincts were of a different nature. This new mystery demanded discovery, and he was already halfway to the opening before anyone realized he had moved.

“Professor, are you sure that is a good idea?” Hawthorne called.

Two of the robotic tripods escorted Coffman. After a moment, the entire landing party followed, with the remaining walking searchlights on their flanks.

Over the radio, Bill Stein’s voice asked, “Say, what are you guys up to?”

Hawthorne replied, “Looks like we found the opening to a cave.”

“Natural?”

“I don’t know.”

Signs pointed to a series of rock and mudslides causing the hillside to give way. But at the same time, the open section had an artificial feel to it. Roots and jagged ridges of earth surrounded the hole, but straight lines marked its borders, resembling the opening to an ancient bunker or garage.

Coffman reached the entrance first, his lights reflecting off dirt and rock.

The professor said, “Do you feel it?”

“Feel what?” King asked.

Wren spoke as he studied the forearm computer built into his suit, “Holy shit, my EF meter is pegging.”

“What does that mean?” Thomas asked.

Kost told her, “There’s a powerful electromagnetic field nearby.”

Hawthorne felt his stomach lurch but he had to ask, “Naturally occurring?”

“Most likely, yes,” Kost answered, but she did not sound convincing.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,” Wren mumbled as his eyes alternated between his arm-mounted scanner and the path ahead.

Coffman drifted forward with a tripod a step behind. Hawthorne hurried to catch him, but worried the ceiling—the lion’s mouth—might slam shut like a Venus flytrap made from dirt and stone.

“Frederick, hey, slow down…”

Hawthorne went silent when he saw what lay ahead.

The cave narrowed to a shaft, supported by rusty-red beams built from what might have been metal or a solidified gel. The walls resembled rock, but Hawthorne suspected they might have been warped by time to take on a jagged, cracked look that hid their true nature.

That shaft ran six feet and opened into another large chamber, this one circular with smooth walls made from stone but supported, again, by those rusty-red gel-like beams.

Before the team could fully grasp that they had found building materials of a nonhuman origin, they discovered the source of the electromagnetic field, and it was not natural

Every light, from the walking tripods to the lights atop each helmet, shined on the center of the room where a cylinder stood, six feet tall and a third of that in radius with ruddy metal skin.

Except, it did not actually stand but hovered, detached from both the floor and the ceiling, seemingly anchored in space on invisible tethers. Hawthorne had the feeling that a nuclear warhead could explode inside the chamber and that cylinder would still not move.

King recited a prayer in a voice short of breath: “In the name of God I go on this journey. May God the Father be with me, God the Son protect me, and God the Holy Ghost be by my side.”

Using his own form of prayer, Wren reacted, “Holy fucking shit.”

Coffman shouted, “Amazing!”

Kost stumbled and fell on her ass. Thomas also replaced words with action, stepping in front of Jonathan, shielding him from this potential threat.

As for the Commander, in the face of humanity’s most important discovery, he wished he were someplace else, twenty-two light-years away captaining his cruise ship worried only about women, booze, and celebrity egos.

What am I doing here? Why me?

While Hawthorne felt as if he might fall apart, Dr. King was already a step ahead. She struggled to speak through a trembling voice.

“That…that is an abomination. Can you feel it? It’s so…so cold.”

The air inside the cavern was cold, but unless her suit malfunctioned, any drop in temperature came from her imagination and Hawthorne knew it, but he was too busy battling his own misgivings.

Coffman ignored the others, his eyes alternating focus from the cylinder to data streams projected on the interior of his helmet controlled by his thinker chip.

“Yes, now this is interesting, not only a strong magnetic field but my sensors indicate a gravity field inside the confines of the, well, object.”