Second generation, p.8
Second Generation, page 8
“This is the impact site for the third shard over central Europe,” said Leo, rotating the 3D model of Earth back on its axis. “And this is where the first shard struck, over South Korea and the Sea of Japan. I understand the second shard skimmed but didn’t hit.”
“It did just as much damage,” said Sam. “It burned through the atmosphere and started the fires that raged around the arctic circle, spreading south into each continent.”
“What’s that?” asked Trish, pointing to the screen.
“That’s the co-ordinates given in the signal,” said Leo, pointing at a flashing red dot. “It looks as if it might be at the edge of a large lake. What used to be the Bering Sea, between Alaska and Eastern Russia.”
Trish stared at the flashing dot, as if willing it to reveal its secrets. “Have you shown this to the Earth crew yet?”
Leo continued to stare at the dot, glowing on the screen. He was wondering why it should be in water, not land.
“Leo?”
“Mm? Oh, no, not yet. They have a lot of other things to think about now. Like how they’re going to get there.”
Space Elevator base, Pavonis Mons, Mars – Demetria Philippou
Demetria leaned back as far as she could without falling over. She was trying and failing to see the fine threads of nano-carbon cables as they trailed up through the atmosphere, into space. Doing anything in an EVA suit was hard work. Looking upwards was hard. Seeing where to put your foot was hard. Avoiding bumping into other people was hard.
The technicians who maintained the space elevator were delighted. They hardly ever had visitors, let alone people who wanted to use the elevator. They kept throwing incomprehensible numbers at the crew to explain how long the elevator cables were and how thin they were. Demetria understood the theory. One end was tied to the Armstrong spaceship in orbit around Mars. The other was tied to the top of this extinct volcano, Pavonis Mons. Pavonis was almost on the equator, so the spaceship kept going in an orbit over the same spot. An elevator car travelled up and down the cable to take people and equipment to the ship, using a fraction of the power that a rocket would, and far safer.
The crew were about to take their first training trip to the Armstrong, alongside a small army of maintenance technicians, to familiarise themselves with the ship and zero gravity. The Armstrong was one of two ships that had travelled between Earth and Mars, ferrying supplies and people for the colony, twenty Martian years ago. Its sister ship, the Aldrin, had been hit by a shower of meteorites that preceded the arrival of Goliath. Tragically it was knocked out of orbit and smashed across the base of Pavonis, almost, but not quite, hitting the first new habitation dome. This had been the event that provoked Verena to take half the colonists to Tithonium, in the Valles Marineras, to start a new dome. The event which forced the colony to split.
Demetria and her crew mates were shown into the elevator car and strapped into their seats. “Why are we being strapped in?” asked Demetria. “The car just goes up and down.”
The technician smiled, “Halfway up you become weightless. Then you start getting heavier again, as you move towards the other end of the cable, which is being swung around the planet. Up will become down and down will be up.” She grinned as she checked Demetria’s belt and watched her reaction. Demetria’s mouth was a round ‘O’.
The elevator car started gently enough. A hum of electric motors which gripped the cable and pulled them above the mouth of the dead caldera. Below Demetria could see the whole mouth of the extinct volcano and the gently sloping sides lit by the low sun. Shadows skimmed and danced across the landscape in an orange glow. Further up she felt the car swaying in the Martian breeze. Demetria started to feel nauseous from the motion and gripped Georgia’s hand.
“It’ll get rougher than this, kid,” said a tall, thin elder woman with long white hair pulled back in a ponytail. She handed Demetria a sick bag.
“Thanks Captain,” she said.
“Stef. I don’t want anyone calling me Captain,” said Stefanie van Rhoon with a wry smile.
Demetria remembered the stories her nanna told her. About how Stef stood beside Verena when they challenged Captain Hal Bulman’s authority. Verena said it was the first and only time Stef had used her rank. Everyone had been taken aback, even Bulman. She should have realised the newly elected Captain of the Earth Mission would rather be called Stef. No titles.
“You’ll need the bag for further up the cable, when you become weightless,” advised Stef. “Puked my guts up first time in zero G. Loved every minute of it after that.”
Demetria studied the white-haired woman beside her. Verena said Stef had been very beautiful and she still looked striking now. There was something in her manner which radiated a defiant confidence. Demetria could indeed imagine Stef standing up to Captain Bulman. Standing beside Verena, the two of them must have been intimidating. Though by all accounts, Hal Bulman had not been capable of feeling intimidation. His reputation had been harsh, tempered only by the understanding of the task he had been given, to face down Goliath. Stef would soon lead them back to Earth, to see what Goliath had done to the home of humanity.
The car lifted ever higher above Mars. Demetria was exhilarated by the god-like perspective looking down on all the Tharsis volcanoes and the vast canyons of Valles Marineras. She wondered if she caught a sparkle off the domes of Tithonium. She could clearly see where the number of craters on the southern hemisphere trailed off towards the north. The Great Dichotomy.
“Pretty stark difference isn’t it?” said Stef, following Demetria’s gaze.
Demetria nodded, mesmerised.
“There are many theories about the Dichotomy,” continued Stef. “Most people’s favourite is that the whole northern hemisphere is a crater, marking the impact of a celestial body that may have been as big as Earth’s moon. Perhaps larger.”
Demetria’s eyes widened. “That would have been even greater than Goliath’s impact with Earth.”
“Mm. During the formation of the solar system, billions of years ago, there would have been planetoids bouncing off each other like billiards. Astronomers before Sam and Leo observed that most other solar systems have a much larger single planet orbiting their sun at the distance Earth is. They suggested that those collisions may have caused both Earth and Mars to be much smaller than they would have been. Earth managed to hold onto enough mass to keep its magnetic field going. Mars didn’t.”
“Collisions with what?”
“Like I said, probably other planetoids which ended up scattering into the asteroid belt. But some think it may have been Saturn, wandering towards and away from the sun in some cosmic dance. That would have bludgeoned a few other planets out the way.”
“Wow! Do you have to learn astronomy and cosmology to become a spaceship pilot?”
“No. But I take an interest in where I am.”
Somewhere in the northern wilderness below was a train of cars taking explorers to join Hal Meier at the North Pole. Among them was Demetria’s friend, Bimpe. Her mum’s biology protégé.
“I wonder how Bimpe’s getting on,” Demetria mused.
“Bored of dust and flat plains, I imagine,” said Georgia, joining her gaze across the northern hemisphere. “Hope she’s not being hassled for guesses about the shells at the pole.”
“Dad was screening requests for information, keeping people off the explorers’ backs. He’s been much more engaged and organised recently.”
“Hm. Still tetchy though.”
“The two of you were talking okay in the Tech Dome.”
“About the mission. Except when I challenged his interpretation of the data. Then he went back to being Leo.”
Demetria looked at her mum who was avoiding her eye, staring out at the dry oceans of red dust below. She could tell it frustrated and hurt her in equal measure and yet she put on a show of nonchalance. She followed Georgia’s gaze across the curve of the horizon, an arc of orange with a bright edge that blurred against the harsh empty backdrop of black space.
As Demetria watched she felt herself becoming lighter. As if she had only just become aware of someone pushing down on her shoulders because they now eased away. Eventually she lost all sense of her own weight.
“Hey!” Demetria called, “This is fun,” and started to unbuckle her belt.
“Don’t,” said Stef, kindly but firmly putting her hand over Demetria’s. “You’ll have a chance when we arrive at the Armstrong. More room to move. Less chance of bouncing off someone’s head and…”
Nausea overcame Demetria again. Suddenly. She doubled over and vomited into the bag Stef had given her.
“…and puking over them,” finished Stef. “Hm. Better out than in.”
Demetria took some comfort in seeing she wasn’t the only one. A sense of weight returned as they neared the end of the cable, and the ship came into view. At first, she thought it looked like a shiny beetle. A segmented body with solar sails like crystalline wings. As they closed in, she understood the scale of the engineering involved. One of those wings was as long as a dome full of fields was wide. The front segment was peppered with tiny circular windows that caught the sun, reflecting its red fire. It looked large enough to hold five times as many as their small crew and there were still four more segments behind it.
The Armstrong was over twice Demetria’s age, a behemoth from the final golden age of Earth engineering. One day soon it would become her temporary home and take her to a strange alien planet called Earth.
7
Building a Ship to Earth
The Armstrong, Mars Orbit – Demetria Philippou
Demetria put her hands in front of her face to take the impact, then rebounded off the ceiling. Georgia stretched out an arm but missed her. Although the Armstrong had some simulation of gravity from its spin around Mars, the crew chamber counter rotated to allow free fall practise. She was about to ricochet off the wall when Stef intercepted, expertly enfolding Demetria in her arms while hooking her foot around a grab-bar.
“Thanks!” said Demetria, relieved she wouldn’t carry on bouncing around the cavernous interior of the Armstrong’s exercise chamber like a rubber ball all day.
“Gently,” said Stef, patiently. “Look where you’re headed, then push off gently. That way you stand some chance of controlling your arrival. Just like the Armstrong itself.”
Just as Stef had predicted, Demetria had started to enjoy zero gravity after throwing up. Mastering it would take a while longer. She was not the only one, most of the crew were blundering around like toddlers in a paddling pool. Even the other pilot, Katya.
“I thought you’d be good at this,” said Demetria.
Katya pulled her head back, rigid and shook it, “Only my second time up here. All my flights were simulated.”
There was a lurch in Demetria’s stomach which was nothing to do with zero G. “Are you saying Stef is the only human alive on Mars who has any real space flight experience?”
“Mm… The Armstrong is our only spaceship and it’s tethered to Mars by the space elevator. It’s kind of a big deal to take up the cable and re-connect it. The last time took twenty people and four days. More hassle than a training session is worth.”
“But we have other people who know what they’re doing, right?”
“In theory.”
“In theory,” echoed Demetria, flat.
“I guess you knew what you were doing in theory, first time you carried out a medical procedure,” said Katya, defensively.
“Yeah, but I didn’t tell the patient that.”
“How did it go?”
“He lived.”
“I expect we will too.”
“…”
Demetria now understood why Stef was their Captain. She found it difficult to place her trust in Katya. Not because of her inexperience as a pilot, but because of her temperament. While her father, Bim den Arend, was so laid back you could set fire to him and he’d only blink, Katya was nervy and taut. Not good qualities for a pilot guessed Demetria. Understudies had been selected and were up on the bridge with the maintenance technicians, familiarising themselves with the layout. But they were way behind Katya in training. Demetria took Stef aside and asked why there weren’t more trained pilots.
“Until now, where were we going to go?” Stef returned.
Demetria was now understanding just how huge this mission was. The population of Mars had been busy surviving and exploring their planet. This would be the Martians very first step in space exploration. Demetria hoped it wouldn’t be their last.
Tech Dome, Tithonium City, Mars – Leo Meier
The shuttle’s heat shield glowed, throwing a plume of smoke behind it, laced with flames. Katya den Arend struggled with the joystick, trying to hold it level. It was jolting in her hands like a convulsed creature. She pulled at the flaps to slow their descent, but they only seemed to point the nose of the craft further downwards. The blanket of grey cloud suddenly parted to show the edge of a wide lagoon. Katya flinched and heaved at the joystick, but it was too late. The controls went limp in her hands. A siren wailed and the screen blanked.
“Shit!” she cursed. “Not again.”
“I keep telling you, the shuttle will need mods before we can use it,” said Pawel, irritably, sitting at the edge of the simulator. He had been selected for the crew because, as Chen said, he was an excellent engineer with practical ability to apply that knowledge. A condition had been made that he wear bionics throughout the mission, to compensate for his withered arm. Leo noticed Pawel had propped the powered prosthetic up against a stack of processors, behind his chair.
“Mods need time, and we’ll only have a limited supply of resources with us,” scowled Katya.
“Hey, relax Katya,” calmed Feng. “Pawel’s right. The shuttles are designed for the old atmospheric pressure on Earth. We’ll have to re-tune one for the new lower pressure.”
“You’re only guessing what that’ll be,” argued Katya, casting an accusing stare at Leo.
Leo opened his mouth to say it was the only guess anyone had, but his friend Feng stepped in again.
“Chill. We can only train for the info we have. Let Pawel reset the simulator for the proposed mods and try again.”
Katya got up and stalked off in search of a cup of tea. Perhaps something stronger.
Pawel sat into her chair, rubbed the residual fingers on his withered hand, then started uploading files. Both hands were a blur as he interacted with the virtual projection field. Leo could see why Pawel didn’t bother with his prosthetic. You could hardly call it a disability when he was so adept. The new files would replicate the modifications Pawel had proposed for the shuttle, using expanded flaps with additional motors to push them into place. A pair of extra tail fins for stability.
“I hope I’m right about the thinner atmosphere,” worried Leo.
“Pawel and I have gone through all your numbers,” said Feng. “They check out.”
“What if I’m wrong?”
“I say you’ll be right or close enough so’s it won’t make a difference.”
“We’re only assuming the shuttles are still at the space station and none were wrecked or knocked adrift by Goliath.”
“We’ve got to make some assumptions or we’re not going anywhere, dude.”
Leo smiled and shook his head. His friend Feng was an eternal optimist. Clever. Careful in his work, but always positive about the chances of success. He had been the ideal choice for head engineer on the Earth Mission crew. Leo had his reservations about Pawel. Not because of his technical skills which were unquestionably excellent. About his deadpan manner and emotional distance from everyone, including his crewmates. However, seeing how Katya aggravated him he felt some measure of sympathy for Pawel.
“Anyway,” continued Feng, “we’re working on our Plan B. Always cool to have a Plan B. Look at this,” he flipped up his tablet to project another simulation on the desk.
Leo peered at the projection, watching as a torpedo-shaped craft was released from the mid segment of the Armstrong. It pierced the upper atmosphere, punching through it like a bullet with the head aflame. Then a pair of wings unfolded like a beetle taking flight, immediately slowing the descent. As it neared a stretch of water, a pair of long elliptical balloons inflated and threw up a spray of imaginary water, bringing it to a halt, afloat.
Leo grinned and slapped Feng on the back. “Nice! A swing-wing glider with floats. How does it get back up to the Armstrong?”
Feng put his hand to his mouth, “Oh!”
Leo frowned.
Feng slipped into a wide grin then laughed, “Ha hah! Watch this.”
Another inflatable deployed over the top of the craft, much larger than the floats. Presumably it was full of a lighter than air gas like Helium because it lifted the craft into the sky. It kept rising, serene, floating higher and higher until a small, powerful ram-jet engine was engaged and the balloon swiftly deflated and retracted.
“Only got a little fuel so let’s use it after the balloon has done most of the work. Armstrong is orbiting as low as it can, ready to scoop the little guy up and do the final pushing to escape gravity.”
“Impressive Feng! How many people can it take?”
“Er… two.” This time Feng looked genuinely crest fallen. “Anything bigger would take too much energy, need too big a balloon.”
“But it will get two of us down there,” said Leo, trying to save his friend’s dignity. “Even if all the shuttles are kaput.”
“Yeah. Like I say, it’s Plan B.”
Leo hoped they wouldn’t need a Plan B. But he couldn’t help thinking that he himself was part of Earth’s Plan B. “Guess I can relate to that,” he said, voice flat.
