Across the Void Page 14

  “I have not yet identified all casualties,” May said, her voice shaking, “but I will do so and send bio codes as soon as possible. As I’ve looked all over the rest of the vessel, I’ve been assuming the worst. Please send me interment protocols, as I’ve never had to follow them until now. And I want to make sure I do it right. Lights off.”

  The landing lights extinguished, and the scene switched back to May on the bridge. She looked a little better than before, as if she’d taken some time to recover from being in the landing vehicle hangar. Stephen knew she would want to convey the impression that she was in control, remaining as objective as possible, and fully competent. He felt for her, just as he had felt for Raj. Fingers were born to point, and some people lived for this kind of scenario.

  “You should also have video and data from the engine room and reactor deck. I hope I’ve provided enough detail for my pal Glenn and our excellent engineers to confirm their repair and rescue plan. If not, please don’t hesitate to request additional footage.”

  She paused again, forcing herself to remain unemotional, professional.

  “I want to tell all of you how . . . sorry I am that this happened during my command. I wish I had been in a position to stop it, but I wasn’t. The sorrow I’m feeling for my crew, Stephen’s team, and all their families is . . . It can’t be put into words. But it hasn’t affected my resolve. I’m going to do everything in my power to get them home for a proper burial, and to return this vessel, along with all that we acquired on Europa, to honor their memories. They were all so committed to this project, and I know they would want their work to live on. I will guard it, and them, with my life. And please don’t worry about me. I feel a lot better than I look, and I’m getting stronger every day. I miss all of you and look forward to seeing you very soon. Thank you.”

  28

  Stephen was in his private office at Johnson Space Center at 5:00 a.m. He was rounding out a solid eighteen hours of poring over every line of data his research team had sent back in the last few days of the return voyage, just prior to the blackout. None of it was directly related to the ship operations, the area of the most critical data loss. But the researchers Stephen tended to hire were more thorough than most. They often over-observed environments as potential factors of influence. Maybe they had caught something? It was worth a shot, in lieu of having anything else to go on.

  “This is a complex problem,” he said to Raj, “that requires a strong hypothesis to solve. Would you agree?”

  “Yes, but what is your hypothesis?”

  “That’s your job. I don’t have the expertise to even begin to come up with one. But you do. You designed the ship; you’re the creator. The other engineers might understand your baby, but never like her real dad.”

  “I like the sound of that. I wish they felt the same way.”

  “Don’t worry about that. It’s probably better you’re not with them, letting them limit your thinking. You know as much as they do. Do you have all the ship ops data from just prior to the blackout?”

  “Hell, yeah. It wasn’t easy to get, but I got it.”

  Stephen paused. “Did you say something to piss Robert off? Aside from the obvious things?”

  “You know how they get. Like some school clique. I don’t have some bullshit line in my title, so I’m not a rescue mission expert. You say tomato, man.”

  “At least they’re not treating you like the red-headed stepchild,” Stephen complained, “when it’s your wife up there.”

  “True,” Raj said, thinking. “Here’s what I’m going to do,” he said, checking his watch. “I’m going to play golf.”

  “Ha ha,” Stephen said.

  “What’s funny?”

  “Raj, I’m busting my ass here, man. I really need your help. May needs your help. Better yet, your goddamned precious ship—”

  “Who said I wasn’t helping?”

  “Golf?”

  “You think your way,” he said, scowling at Stephen’s mess, “and I’ll think mine. I’ll be back tonight. I’ll bring the beer.”

  Raj left, and Stephen spent the next several hours scrolling through hours of video footage his team had shot on the voyage, in the labs, gathering samples during the Europa expedition, processing those, and operating Stephen’s NanoSphere tech. He hadn’t seen that last bit of footage since they streamed it, and not at such a high resolution.

  After deploying the base stations on the ice shelf, they had powered them up with special battery packs that used similar solar absorption to recharge themselves. The base stations then deployed their swarms of nanomachines, creating a shimmering, bluish-silver cloud around 1,600 feet high and 660 feet across. They had positioned it on the planet to align deployment with sun exposure. Europa orbited Jupiter every three and a half Earth days, and the same hemisphere always faced the gas giant, so they had timed the whole mission to land on the sunny side of Europa when its orbital path made for the shortest journey. Having constant sun exposure made it easier for Stephen’s team, as testing conditions remained the same.

  When they fired up the system, it was a beautiful sight to behold. The nanomachines moved perfectly in sync, positioning themselves in a billowing cloud-like shape that arranged itself to maximize solar radiation on its outer surface. Within a few hours, it had stored a massive amount of heat, and the engineers focused it, like focusing sunlight through a huge magnifying glass, on a thirty-foot area on the ice shelf. It was a part of the ice that had been measured to be thinner due to tectonic movement.

  The concentrated heat was so intense that the massive steam plumes it created made the whole team nervous. Previous ice samples had never shown large concentrations of explosive chemicals, but one didn’t know with such a large surface. After getting through the top layer, things settled down. Finally, with less than twenty hours left in the seven-day expedition, the heat penetrated the breadth of the ice. A three-foot opening the size of a manhole cover gave them their first view of Europa’s ocean. Life, Stephen had thought immediately. Pure and simple, we have discovered a new source of life.

  “Life,” he said, echoing himself in the video. “What sort of life?”

  He watched the triumphant research teams drawing water from the ocean, gathering gallons upon gallons of samples. Then he called Raj.

  “How’s the golf?”

  “I suck. What’s up?”

  “When I reviewed the daily lab reports, I never found any quarantine breaches. Do you remember seeing anything like that from Flight or Engineering?”

  “No. In fact, your people were commended for being incredibly anal about all that, if memory serves.”

  “It does. That’s what I remember too. I’ll recheck my reports, but I think we would both have flagged something that important.”

  “Uh, yeah,” Raj said. “Ocean water. I don’t even swim in the gulf if I have a friggin’ hangnail anymore. Too many bacteria, viruses, parasites.”

  “Viruses,” Stephen said. “I think I might have a hypothesis about May’s illness.”

  “But quarantine was tight.”

  “Of course. But we’re dealing with human beings here. All we would need is the smallest error, the most insignificant mistake. If there are viruses under that ice, lying dormant in those conditions for a hundred million years . . .”

  “An alien virus . . . The first sign of extraterrestrial life and it’s some kind of super-flu. Not very comic book, is it?”

  “That’s what I was going to say. Go back to your golf. I need you to think about the possibility of a viral outbreak on board. How would it go down? Who would be privy to it? Would the information be shared or not? What are the protocols? What are—”

  “Fine. It’s my turn to shoot, and these old dudes are pissed.” Raj hung up.

  Stephen figured NASA was already chasing down this theory, as much as it might pertain to the rescue mission. He thought about how he was being gently pushed out. More important, he thought about that happening to Raj. This
wasn’t the NASA Stephen knew. They were an all-hands type of organization. This was more a Robert Warren thing. His vanity ruled everything, including information. If he found something “unfavorable,” something that could embarrass him in the press, he would suppress it. No doubt about it. Most of his dealings with Stephen had been that way, with Robert as the gatekeeper. And if he was ever left out of the loop, God help you. Heads rolled for less.

  The notion that the virus could have traveled from Earth crossed Stephen’s mind, but what known pathogen could have such a devastating effect? And then there were the dead people in the landing vehicle hangar. He called Raj again.

  “What? Are you calling about the dead people?”

  “How did you know?”

  “How can either of us be thinking about anything else?” Raj asked. “The answer is no. They couldn’t have gotten anywhere with those vehicles. They were orbital landers, not even as long-range as some of the moon shuttles.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yeah, I know, man. That one is baking the hell out of my head. I’m nine-putting every hole, so leave me alone.” He hung up again, and Stephen pounded it out on his recorder.

  “Data blackout occurs around the time a potential virus breakout might have occurred. Going by Earth standards, thirty-six hours is a conservative incubation time. After the first infection, others follow due to latent presentation; then you have a crisis. On top of that, you’re dealing with an unknown pathogen. How long to figure out its behavior? Too long, in an enclosed germ factory. More infections, including the commander. Lots of civilian researchers. More panic, maybe even chaos. The virus spreads. But there’s no data showing any of that. Is it possible there was a malfunction that caused that just before the problem with the virus? Not likely, but that’s one for Raj. Is it possible someone could have suppressed the data after the fact? Of course. No data is ever safe. Ever. Who would want to do that? Who the hell knows? Could AI be involved? AI would probably have to be involved. Jesus.”

  The hypothesis was coming together, and the more Stephen shredded through the deductions, the more things pointed to a virus from an ocean sample—ice samples never made anyone sick before—jumping quarantine somehow, ravaging the ship somehow, maybe causing mass panic. Then you had a worst-case scenario occurring in the most dangerous environment known to humanity. Should he run this by Robert? Not yet. Robert was too volatile, and it might backfire.

  “Dr. Knox, I have Director Warren on the sat com,” the AI said.

  Stephen nearly fell out of his chair.

  “Dr. Knox?” the AI repeated.

  “Put him through please.”

  Robert Warren appeared on Stephen’s screen. “Hello, Stephen.”

  “Robert.”

  “I wanted to let you know that May sent another transmission right after the one we just reviewed,” Robert began. “She asked that only you watch it, saying it was about your divorce filing. I respect your privacy and the laws protecting it, but considering the nature of this situation, I trust you will let me know if there is anything in the content of that message that could affect this mission.”

  “Absolutely, Robert. May would never withhold information from the team, though. You know that.”

  Robert shook his head impatiently. “I do not have the luxury of assuming anything or standing on ceremony. Obviously, this situation is being closely scrutinized, and great pressure is being put on me to bring it to a swift resolution. Now, more than ever, we need to work tightly as a team.”

  “I understand and totally agree.”

  “Thank you. I’m sending you the message now.”

  Robert signed off. Obviously, this situation is being closely scrutinized, and great pressure is being put on me . . . Assuming Stephen’s theory had weight, Robert had just reminded him that a potential PR nightmare was actually a fate worse than death. Add to that the constant, and growing, fear that privatized space exploration was poised to make NASA obsolete. Stephen had come within a whisper of giving the tech to Ian Albright and his company. That had run in the press cycle for weeks. And put the cherry on top: the ultraconservative half of Congress that had opposed the mission in the first place losing their minds when NASA took it on and financed it all with taxpayer money. Committees were formed. Lobbyists worked the Hill while protesters doled out organized hate propaganda at Stephen’s lectures. When Robert talked about pressure and swift resolutions, was he talking about anything specific? What if he already knew what Stephen was theorizing? Paranoia washed over him. He’d been dictating in his office. The timing of Robert’s call was . . . odd.

  “Breathe,” Stephen said. “You’re losing your objectivity. You want to help May; you’re feeling desperate. You’ve never trusted Robert, but he’s not a monster. He’s just freaking out too. You’ve got to breathe.”

  Stephen’s hubris had always been impatience. His research professors never stopped haranguing him about it. He was going to practice it here: own the data, build evidence, make it defensible, and then bring it to Robert and the team. On the other hand, there was no reason to trust him anyway. That had gotten him in trouble before. He was going to help May whether anyone liked it or not, and the science would be the tip of that spear. He owed her that much.

  29

  “Hi, Stephen,” May began. “I hope they’re allowing you to see this alone. I felt like I needed to get a few things off my chest, just in case one of the eight million things that can kill me out here gets the upper hand.”

  After receiving the personal video, Stephen had gone home to watch it. He had gotten his paranoid thoughts under control, but there was no reason to take unnecessary risks. Robert and his staff would be totally within their legal rights to have any of the mission offices under some form of electronic surveillance, and it had been May’s wish for Stephen to view it alone. High clouds had rolled in and brought the gray, so seeing May’s face on screen was a ray of light.

  “I hope you’re well. I’m doing all right; feeling better. Well, except for the constant fatigue, the terrible mood swings, and my newfound picky eating habits. You’d think that, as skinny as I am, I’d be shoveling everything down my gullet, but a lot of the food just makes me want to barf. Probably has to do with my brain issues. I was reading that memory pretty much controls everything about us, including our senses. Weird, right? Retrograde amnesia. Don’t you think the word amnesia just makes this whole thing sound like a shitty movie? Or like an old soap opera? Will Sylvia remember that Victor is the man who tried to murder her when she’s cured of her amnesia?” May said in her best soap-opera announcer voice, laughing.

  Stephen laughed as well. He loved seeing her spirits up for a change.

  “The good news is that my condition is improving. My AI, whom I’ve named Eve—after Mom, because you wouldn’t believe how alike they are—has been helping me with some therapeutic treatments, using cues and repetition and whatnot. It’s such a weird thing. It makes more sense that you would have a hard time remembering things in the distant past, right? Would have been nice to knock out the old awful childhood, right? Unfortunately, this is just the opposite. The worst part is the most recent, when I got sick. I can’t remember fuck all, except for some scraps. It gets better going back in time, but not great. In fact—and Eve confirmed this—the last three to four months can be affected, sometimes pretty badly.”

  She smiled nervously.

  “I think you can see where I’m going with this.”

  Stephen paused the recording. She doesn’t remember, he thought. The past three to four months of their relationship had been horrible, culminating in their divorce and May’s departing for Europa with them no longer on speaking terms. He recalled again the look on May’s face when the Hawking II pulled out of dock. Surrounded by celebration, she had been as stoic as if she were waiting in the doctor’s office. And he had taken off his ring. He felt his finger reflexively, knowing the ring was no longer there, but remembering now that it was still in his desk drawer
on Wright Station. He shook his head. What a mess. But she doesn’t remember.

  “Remember that comedian we saw who made that joke? He said that if he went to see his wife in the hospital and she said she had amnesia and couldn’t remember him, he would say, ‘Sorry, ma’am, wrong room’ or something like that. I thought of that joke recently. It’s lucky we saw him more than six months ago! Funny, right?”

  She was really struggling, fidgeting self-consciously, lowering her eyes.

  “As I said, you can see where this is going. I, uh . . . the AI, Eve, told me recently that we’re getting divorced,” she said, trying to smile about it. “And I have to be honest, I was absolutely shocked, to say the very least. But it makes sense. She said we filed just before I left, which I don’t recall. And I’m assuming that whatever brought us to that point happened within that black hole of time that I see only in incredibly annoying, completely nonsensical fragments. There’s this one, it’s so weird: I’m standing in grass—dressed nicely, I might add—and it’s raining, but I don’t have an umbrella. I’m getting soaked. On purpose! Any idea what that could be? It might be a dream. I have a lot of those. I never had many before. Eve told me to write them all down. Sometimes the brain, when it’s relaxed in sleep, will give up a tidbit or two, in its little way. Does any of this make sense to you?”

  Stephen laughed, feeling a little envious of her. Prior to the time May was referring to, their relationship had been occasionally rocky but offset by some incredible high points. Maybe this was a blessing in disguise? He wasn’t going to get his hopes up, but he had to admit it was a relief that she was not struggling with the same things he was.

  “I hope so, because I’m not sure any of it makes sense to me. I’ll tell you what I do know, and what I’m feeling right now, for what it’s worth. The divorce thing—that doesn’t feel right at all. From what I remember of us, we were the last people in the world I’d have ever thought would give up. Second, I have nothing to base this on, but the feeling in my gut is telling me I did something to bring our split about. That’s also based on knowing what an awful pain I can be, stubborn and willful as Mom used to say. I know it takes two to tango, but I can’t shake the childish pang of anxiety that I started it. It’s easy for me to see myself taking my proverbial ball and going home, but not you. You were never like that.”