Dying Under a Red Dwarf Sun (A sci-fi novella)

© September 2016 

This futuristic story, which begins in the year 2037, is dedicated to my seven-year-old granddaughter, Olivia. In it, she is a major character at age twenty-five.

I hope to inspire her, for as long as I live, to ponder the future, to peer upward, to gaze beyond the moon, beyond the sun, and to learn, and to know, and to wonder….

By Jerry A. Boggs

23,227 words: 75min.

They fled a disaster only to find themselves facing another. Then they stumbled onto something that shocked them to the core.

I 

As if the booming noise trying to shatter his eardrums weren’t enough, a brutal vibration thrashed his weak, bare arms against a hard surface, again and again.

Where the hell was he? In a box? Or, for God’s sake, in a coffin? Was he hurtling over the world’s worst road in the world’s loudest truck?

Thirty merciless seconds dragged by before he gained the strength to jam his hands under his thighs and pin his arms against his sides. He might have been juddered senseless if not for the padding underneath him and the restraints across his forehead, chest, and ankles. Did his captor have a kind streak?

“Captain Jason Pearce.”

The metallic female voice jolted him. It thundered even over the stentorian booming. It blared from above, reverberating in all directions as if he were in the middle of a cathedral.

“Are you fully awake and comprehending, Captain?”

He realized he hadn’t opened his eyes. Couldn’t open them. Yet he knew he was in total darkness -– no light seeped through his eyelids. He worked his jaw, moiled to cough a slimy substance out of his throat.

“Who…the hell…are you?”

His garbled voice, a stranger’s to him, quaked and broke in the vibration. His stomach convulsed, an angry cauldron threatening to eject its contents. Deep breaths!

“Where am I? Let me out of–! Wait. I’m…Jason–?”

His body bucked against the restraints. The memories exploded in his head like grenades. He was aboard Hope, the craft that was to deliver him and 104 others to a new home!

Thirty-eight-year-old Captain Jason Pearce stifled the tears welling up in his stinging eyes. As the leader of this new home, he’d have to struggle hard to help everyone get through the hazards awaiting them in a foreign place that was going to be like no other anyone had ever seen before. 

“Yes,” the voice said. “Atmosphere is reestablished. Nutrients were supplied. Avionics and lighting up. Your preservation gel has been almost fully purged from your lungs and other organs and will soon be completely siphoned from your cylinder. Your brain and heart are functioning normally. The Restoration Handbook states that all personnel must remain on board for three hours to allow their gel residue to be fully purged by the ship’s oxygen.”

The gel. He remembered. It filled the cylinders of the 105 passengers. It had done triple duty: Besides preventing atrophy and protecting against radiation throughout the journey, it had preserved the passengers’ bodies for the duration. The gel had been drained from his cylinder a few minutes ago, but the pine-green substance still thinly coated him from head to toe, inside as well as outside. Its not-unpleasant smell hinted of an odd mix of charcoal and cinnamon. He forced a hand up and cleared his eyelids and ears, fighting against the vibration that he now realized would have been even more ruthless had their cylinders not been fitted with motion dampeners. His gummy eyes at last opened, and he saw in the dim red light the translucent canopy of his cylinder less than ten inches from his nose.

The rattling, like bombs going off in rapid succession, had joggled awake the ship’s AI–in the way that a joggled mouse activates a sleeping computer–whose female voice spoke to him. The AI in turn had processed him from his preserved state – had “reinvigorated” him, as the scientists would’ve put it.

He was taking a thrashing, but at least he was alive. Thanks to the gel.

The final instructions regarding the gel and other matters had come via his meeting with NASA employee and Hope’s Project Survival manager, sixty-one-year-old, scruffy Victor Arnold:

“Bad news about the gel experts. Supposed to be in on this meeting, you know. I wanted them to go over some technical details concerning the gel, to make sure you know what you no doubt already know. Guess what? The bastards scattered like cockroaches, like most of the other damn project workers.”

Arnold stared at him–or glared. “But fret not. Though you’ll have the Restoration Handbook, you won’t have any need for it. Direct your questions about the gel and almost everything else to the AI. As you’re aware, it’ll handle the whole shebang — your first pilot, flight engineer, and adviser, all rolled into one. You’re the backup pilot you were trained to be if the AI fails. I’m aware you’ve had little experience with artificial intelligence, but you can trust it as long as it functions norm–”

“Even Stephen Hawking distrusted–“

“The only area where the AI can’t help you–“

“You always ignore people?”

“A little late for that convo,” Arnold said. “The only area where the AI can’t help you, and you can thank the corner-and-cost-cutters for that, is medical. It has no physician program to assist your on-board doctor in cases of injury or illness.

“What the AI does have is a huge database to help you once you set down on the planet: wilderness survival manuals, farming techniques, architectural blueprints, civilization-building, rules of law, weapon-making – those sorts of things. Preserve the AI at all costs.”

The AI, the most advanced to date, was called DORIS, the acronym for Destiny Organization’s Restoration and Invigoration System. DORIS’ data and computational/analysis capability had been rated by Destiny’s engineers as ninety-nine percent reliable and one percent error-prone.

“Velocity was reduced eighty-five percent prior to approach,” DORIS said. “To terminate the roughness of atmospheric entry and mitigate restoration and invigoration, I am taking Hope back into space and into orbit.”

The roar and bone-buffeting vibration soon subsided. Pearce heard only the distant, low droning of the ship’s engine.

His nerves, though, failed to settle down with the ship. Too many questions fired at him like a nail gun. Would the air really work for them on the surface? Would they find water? Food sources? Would ravenous beasts body-slam them before they ventured fifty feet from the ship? In such a hostile environment, would he be able to lead well enough to hold everything together beyond just the first forty-eight hours?

Wait! One stomach-churning worry at a time! First, they had to land on the planet in one piece.

“Prior to restoring you,” DORIS said, “I restored and invigorated Dr. Martha Wakefield. She will be able to begin making rounds shortly. I am proceeding with Commander Breanne Sullivan, Lieutenant Tom Ross, Ensign Olivia Appleton, then the civilians–”

“DORIS, were you trying to kill us in our cylinders? Why the hell did we stay in the atmosphere for more than a few seconds? If anybody’s restraints failed, they might be hurt. Or dead.”

“The atmosphere extends higher than my data show. Hence, the ship penetrated too deeply. Hope was programmed to enter and remain in the exosphere for ten seconds to power me up. I was programmed to initiate your and Dr. Wakefield’s restoration immediately after the ten seconds. However, because of the higher atmosphere, I had to do recalculations, causing the ship to remain in the atmosphere three minutes and forty-two seconds longer than it should have. I don’t detect any brain malfunctions among the passengers. Dr. Wakefield will need to verify that.”

Was all that true? Or could ninety-nine-percent reliable DORIS have already slipped into her one-percent unreliable territory and screwed up? Even if her reliability were one hundred percent, how could he put full faith in her after reading so much negative press on artificial intelligence over the years?

A coldness scuttled up his spine like an icy tarantula. Would her “errors” always be unintentional? Did she have enough “consciousness” to sense she’d be better off without humans pestering her with incessant demands?

But he’d also read quite a bit pro-AI. And Victor Arnold had advised him DORIS was not a concern.

Still, doubt about whether DORIS would get them safely to the planet’s surface chewed harder at his gut. After all, no matter how Arnold viewed the AI, Pearce couldn’t put a lot of trust in him, either, especially considering his history and the way he terminated their wrap-up meeting. It seemed like only a few days ago….

Arnold had been ordered by the U.S. president to stay on and complete the mission. Two Marines had been dispatched to make sure he did that. They were prepared, as Arnold had said with a smirk, to “hang me upside down and skin me alive if I refuse to do my job.” The soldiers, pistols on their hips, stood on the other side of Arnold’s closed double office doors, no doubt listening.

The unshaven, bleary-eyed project manager peered at the captain across a desk littered with plastic water bottles, food wrappers, crumbs, papers, and an over-flowing ashtray. Behind him loomed a vast array of large monitors whose bright, constantly dancing blue, green, and red data columns distracted and annoyed Pearce.

The captain focused on Arnold. He blinked at the stench of stale cigarette butts and Arnold’s long self-neglect. Please make this a short meeting!

“The finals,” Arnold said in a mocking voice loud enough for the soldiers to hear. “Completed without the usual certifications. Not enough time or personnel. But you’ll be pleased to know four evenings ago I went up and personally performed diagnostics on DORIS and all the cylinders, the last of which were installed and equipped two weeks ago. All in working order. Next I did a visual check throughout.” He scowled. “In those god-awful mag-boots, I must’ve been a real hoot to my ‘guardian angels’.” He flung a thumb in the direction of the door.

His voice took on an edge. “And to those idiot union workers still up there doing structural checks. Or doing little as possible’s more like it.”

He sank back into his chair and shook his head. “The smaller more-advanced ship — goddamn it, it’ll go to waste! Mars will never be son-of-a-bitching colonized! I – we were so close! All we needed was four lousy more months and everything would’ve been in place for a go.”

Pearce exhaled, shifted in his chair. “I know all this–”

“But hell no, Orion 10 had to malfunction and wander off into oblivion. Those worthless union people! Irresponsible whack jobs! And screw those greedy-ass nations that left everything up to us!”

He sat up and swept a mess of papers onto the floor, a few scattering at Pearce’s feet. The captain, glancing back at the double doors, wondered if the troops might barge in after this outburst.

Arnold sat motionless, perhaps wondering the same thing. At length, he patted his armrest. “By the way, if you think the Pilgrims had to rejigger their lifestyle…. Assuming, of course, you get there and survive past the first day or two in a place brimming over with hazards.”

Pearce’s breathing quickened. Arnold hadn’t needed to state the obvious. Had he deliberately tried to torment him?

A heavy click blasted Pearce’s ears, bull-dozing away his thoughts about Victor Arnold. The canopy rotated open and mewled on its way underneath his cylinder.

His bruised hands and wrists smarting, he unbuckled his mesh restraints. He steered himself in the weightlessness to a sitting position. Mooring his frame to the cylinder with one hand, he wiped and blotted off the gel residue with the other, using the towel from a foot locker that contained his personal effects. He pulled on his undergarments and suited up in his green captain’s jumpsuit, then his mag-boots.

He viewed the length of the ship. Hope’s primary compartment, containing all 105 cylinders, sprawled long and wide under a low, arched ceiling. The curved, evenly spaced support beams reminded him of the enormous ribs of a blue whale.

On the other side of the primary compartment’s bulkhead wall were the computer mainframe niche and other smaller compartments holding supplies that included the exo-skeleton Pearce had insisted on.

He realized he was holding his breath. The sight before him was one he prayed he hadn’t seen for a length of time dizzying to comprehend.

The seven columns making up the one hundred civilians’ preservation cylinders resembled giant larvae gleaming in the wall and ceiling lights’ dusky red glow. The columns ended ten feet from the passenger seats nestled near the far bulkhead wall. The cylinders’ occupants would soon emerge in their tan jumpsuits, not wholly unlike butterflies emerging from their chrysalises. Except for the children, each person possessed dual skills in such fields as carpentry, metallurgy, architecture, farming, dentistry, community organization, and law and order. Though thousands of people had been allowed to volunteer and submit their qualifications, only this group had been selected by a review panel that used selection criteria Pearce was unaware of. 

The other cylinders in Pearce’s row had yawned opened. Commander Breanne Sullivan had donned a jumpsuit identical to his except for her commander’s insignia. She was the thirty-five-year-old First Officer whom Pearce had admired for some time and called “Sull” from the get-go. For a few years before signing up with the Navy, she’d been a civil engineer, her useful other skill. 

She turned toward Pearce. “If this worked,” she said in a hoarse whisper, “I’m a dog-headed pig monster.”

Her exploded skeins of brown hair, in Hope’s weightlessness, wafted about her head and face like sea grasses in gentle currents. In a few seconds a bungee would bind her hair in a floating ponytail.

Her gaunt, blanched face gave him a start.

She rocked her head, her smile thin and bleak. “Sorry but I regret to inform you you look as much like tree bark as I do. Wouldn’t worry, though. You’ll get your rugged handsomeness back in no time.”

He let air out of his lungs, relaxing more. She sounded okay, her voice nominally raspy, and looked as good as one could expect.

And she’d soon get her terrific looks back as well.

“At least we’re not DOA, wherever we are,” Pearce said with a forced cheeriness meant to nudge up his own spirits as much as hers.

He glanced off, a catch in his throat. Despite his pre-flight psych counseling, he was sucker-punched by how much he already missed his parents, his friends, his neighbors….

He even missed his daily routine. He’d rise early in his Florida coastal bungalow and check the sky from his kitchen window. Before heading to the base to simulation-fly the Mars-bound craft The Raven – later renamed Hope by the president – he’d settle down for an hour or so with his laptop to pore over his writing project, “What ET May Really Look Like: Not So Different.” His thesis drew from the convergent-evolution theory that distantly related organisms in similar roles in a similar environment tend to evolve toward a similar form.

He’d taken a refresher research-writing course ahead of starting the project. “Before laying down one single word,” the brusque instructor had said, “do the tedious work of amassing all available facts and examining each carefully, without preconception. See where they lead.” That was the lesson drilled into his head over and over for the next six weeks.

Something in his chest squeezed hard. The haunting image of his wife Amy crowbarred its way into his mind. During the heart-breaking eight months he’d spent taking care of her, he’d used his writing project and his job as distractions. All the while, he clung to hope like a life preserver. But hope slowly bled away, until she, a colorless, skeletal ghost, was claimed by melanoma in a hospital bed six months before Hope left.

All this was gone. Maybe unthinkably long gone. But memories of Amy blazed fresh and painful, and again his heart was gripped in a tight fist. He’d somehow have to keep thoughts of her at bay if he intended to fulfill his role as the ship’s captain and the leader of this small, desperate group.

That last meeting with Victor Arnold bubbled back up into his mind….

Arnold leaned back in his chair and gave Pearce a long look. “Tell me, Mr. Captain Man, do you think we humans deserve to live on?”

“Sorry–?”

“We’re a failure. We’re violent, full of hate. And the good things wars haven’t destroyed, unions have. Way I see it, getting killed off is our just desserts. Even if not, you do realize 99.9 percent of all species that have ever existed have been obliterated from the face of the Earth. Why should it be any different for the human species – the only creatures that have never deserved to survive?”

Pearce rubbed just above his brow. His face warmed. “What you’re missing–“

“As you know,” Arnold said, sitting up and glowering at the double doors, his voice raised in a matter-of-factly tone, “all equipment and supplies have been loaded. The shuttles depart in three days. Ready your people and their personal effects.”

He retrieved a document from a drawer and slapped it down on his desk. His wide, flattened hand shoved it toward Pearce, tipping an empty Styrofoam cup and teetering the ashtray.

“Signed by the prez, the vice-prez, the speaker of the house, etcetera, etcetera. It transfers all U.S. government powers and authority to you effective launch date. The guards’ll ask to see it. A signed, original copy is being delivered to each of the passengers going with you.”

Arnold slumped back. His gaze slid away into in a thousand-mile stare. It was as if everything – energy, hope, life – had drained out of him.

“That’s it,” he said, his voice flat and distant. “You’re humankind’s Hail Mary. My last words to you?” He flipped his hand backward at Pearce, his eyes still averting the captain’s. “Get the hell out.”

Outside the office, the captain paused inches from the closed doors. The soldiers saw the paper in his hand and nodded. They stepped briskly to the side, in deference to either his military rank or his pending status as the next president.

“Bastard,” he said low as he walked between the soldiers, not caring if they heard him, since they likely agreed.

Arnold, with a personality that possessed all the qualities of sandpaper, had never trafficked in warmth, and Pearce recalled the gift of a broken cheek bone that a year earlier Arnold had bestowed on a union leader who’d refused to call off a strike. But this was the first time he’d given Pearce the genuine scum-bag treatment.

He sighed. He understood Arnold’s bitterness. The man had been forced to give up on his decades-in-the making Mars mission, the mission he’d been banking on to secure him a page in the history books. Arnold learned later that his psychological profile – “not-so-latent hostile tendencies” – had classified him as “Unsuitable” for the journey. In a rebuttal, he’d complained that the “hostility and unsuitability” were the results of his tremendous job stress.

There would be no fulfilling his dream of history celebrating him as the hero who’d put people on Mars. There would be no basking in the glow of endless admirers, interviews, award ceremonies…. Instead, all was lost for him — including his life.

A figure approached — Lieutenant Commander Martha Wakefield. She was “on the wrong side of fifty,” as she’d put it. She’d spent the first twenty-two years of her life in Britain and had enough accent and UK idioms to leave Pearce shaking his head on occasion. As Hope’s Flight Surgeon and Psychologist, she preferred the tag “Doc” to “Lt. Commander.” In the weeks prior to Hope’s launch, she’d worn her psychologist hat and held sessions with everyone to discuss ways to cope with shock, loss, and what lay ahead – though right away she’d admitted that what lay ahead wasn’t something she herself could even come close to imagining.

Her sickly granite-white face told of less energy than she evidenced. She seemed to have already come to terms with their potentially staggering achievement to this point, and showed no signs of damage wrought by the ship’s bone-rattling plunge into the planet’s atmosphere.

One hand smoothed out her white smock, fluffed out in the zero gravity. Peace reasoned she wore it to remain attached to the past, an incredibly distant past if they were lucky. Her other hand clasped the scanner she frowned at. She’d taken both the scanner and the smock from one of the wall storage units containing small items of direct need.

“Ahhh!” she said, mostly, it seemed, to herself. “No wearable scans. Am I expected to do great things with this retro piece of crap? Bloody forget it!”

She expelled air and studied the captain over the top of her rectangular glasses.

“Have to ask,” she said in a hushed voice, her British accent lucid, “and don’t go getting all stoic on me. I need the truth about the captain. How are you coping with the, you know, the de–“

“Weight considerations, natch.” He lifted his chin toward her scanner. “Must have beat out the latest version by at least a milli–”

“Ah, avoidance and deflection.” She kept her voice low, leaning in to him. “Your philtrum — it sometimes quivers when you’re uncomfortable.” The corners of her mouth drew down. “We’ll talk. All right, how about the body? I have to know if anything’s come loose.”

  He waved off her offer to scan his vitals. “Ehh, been beaten up worse than a ketch in a hurricane, just like you and everybody else. DORIS green-lighted me on the majors — though I really can’t trust her a whole hell of a lot with her limited med capability. Damn near feel fine, now that I’ve stopped marinating in my misery.”

“Probably lying through your choppers, but you’re the boss on this little caper. In fact, congrats are in order. You’re our new pres–”

“Need you to get moving to see if DORIS mangled anybody in the Civ-Div.”

Her brow knitted. “Whot? DORIS?”

 “I don’t trust her. Try to keep everybody calm. Tell them we’re in orbit and we’ll know soon if we’re in orbit around our destination. Then have them secured in the rear seats to wait for my instructions from the cockpit.”

Her eyes darted about his face, as if seeking assurance he was up to the job. She nodded a “got it,” whip-lashing her gray-streaked ponytail, and headed toward the civilian passengers. If trying to be graceful in her mag-boots, she failed.

“Just remember,” she said without a look-back, “my prehistoric med gear and no physician program in DORIS mean we’ll run into trouble if there’s an emergency — contagion or such.”

She halted and, like a kid new to roller skates, came about to face him again. “Oh, DORIS says it’s above ninety degrees Fahrenheit in most of the desirable landing sites, which are in the northern hemisphere — hope it’s summer there and not winter! Ninety-degree winter days? We wouldn’t survive the first summer! By the way, glad you scratched me off your away-team. Otherwise, you would’ve never made old bones. My heat intolerance, you recall.”

Pearce remembered her condition. Something to do with her thyroid, was it? If the landing site turned out to be a hot house, she’d stay inside for the remaining days of the ship’s cooler interior, venturing out on short stints only as necessary. Why force her to suffer before she had to?

“You know,” she said, her British accent thicker than a bulkhead wall, “you could think of me as having a hot bod.” She scrunched her cheeks into a smile of sorts, said, “Cheerio,” wriggled her fingers at him, and moved on. “Anybody got a cigarette around here?” 

He levered himself off the pad and let his mag-boots engage. The lights had brightened. The stirring civilians became easier to see. The majority were flexing their limbs, talking, and examining themselves and each other. Several high-fived – a positive sign. But a dozen or so, leaning against their cylinders, sobbed uncontrollably. Wakefield would have to don her psych hat again.

Evidently doing fine was twenty-seven-year-old Lieutenant Tom Ross, uniformed in his cobalt-blue jumpsuit and flexing his joints near his cylinder on the other side of Commander Sullivan’s. His hickory-brown hair billowed atop his rangy, six-foot-three frame. His shoulders were a bit higher, his long muscular arms not tugging on them in the zero gravity. 

When penciled in for Project Survival, Ross had served for nearly a year as a combat flight instructor at Naval Air Station Key West. Before the Navy, he’d trained in emergency medical care. To stay proficient as a medic, he’d often volunteered at the NAS Key West hospital.

He quit flexing and planted his eyes on twenty-five-year-old Ensign Olivia Appleton standing on the other side of the cylinder next to his.

Four months prior to launch, Appleton had been transferred from Radiation Safety Training to NAS Key West as one of Ross’s combat-flight students. She soon found herself romantically entangled with the lieutenant.

“‘Morning, Livvy,” Ross said with a wry grin. “Sleep well? Say, just wondering – you jonesing for me again yet? Or still working that same old attack-doggy stuff of – we hope – oh-so-long ago?”

She gave him a dark look, then gave her cobalt-blue jumpsuit a yank at the hips and the knees.

“Problem with your onesie?” Ross said. “Hm. A size or two too small, probably.”

“Right there. Why you’re my favorite emetic. Don’t crank me so soon, Tommy-boy. I attack only he who’s got it coming. Go stick your Roman nose in somebody else’s business. Yeah, that nose with the little black warty thing on your columella.”

She showed him her back, swirling her russet hair, shoulder-length in gravity, into a floating mess about her head. Banding it at the back, she said, “By the way, did you have to watch me dress?”

Ross’s face contorted. “Still flying on angry. Got some deep scar tissue, y’know that, Appleworm? Oh, a by-the-way for you: Nothing I haven’t seen already.”

Pearce’s jaw dropped. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Both of them, without  acknowledging anyone else around them, and despite the nightmare they’d all experienced thus far and the potential hellish nightmares still awaiting them, were picking up right where they’d left off on the day Hope launched. Did they think they were in some kind of joke, had been played as fools, the gel hadn’t worked, and maybe they’d been asleep for just a few days?

If they did believe all that, the distressing truth was, no one at the present moment could say they were wrong.

He’d heard the back-story on the couple, how their marriage plans had been whacked a few weeks before departure….

Early one morning Appleton had wanted to surprise Ross with a carry-out breakfast that she’d picked up at a restaurant on the Navy base where the two of them and the rest of Hope’s passengers were sequestered and being prepped for their epochal journey.

Approaching Ross’s small condo in her car, she spotted him outside in his driveway standing at the driver’s window of a white SUV. A long-haired blonde was behind the wheel. Ross bent and kissed the woman, then stood waving as she drove off.

Ross explained that she was a close cousin he’d grown up with. She’d obtained permission to drop by and congratulate him on his engagement and see him one last time before leaving to be with her husband and children.

Appleton sneered. “And if I talked to her, I’d hear a lie you two concocted just in case.”

She’d suffered through a string of bad relationships, including a brief marriage that had left her often unable to crawl out of bed. She’d been convinced she’d plunged into a relationship with Ross as a sort of solace for the horrors in store for her and everyone else. She’d given back – thrown back – the ring Ross supposedly still carried in a zipped pocket.

Pearce had heard the story from Doc, who’d violated confidentiality rules with the captain in the name of “insuring greater efficiency.” He’d begun to worry the couple might be a problem, but by that time it was too late to find and prepare replacements.

He gestured for Appleton, Ross, and Sullivan to follow him to the cockpit less than thirty feet away. 

“DORIS, open the cockpit door.”

They entered the low-lit compartment, Ross and Appleton bickering at each other. The instrument panel brightened and the computers, beeping and chittering, seemed to vie for their attention. But all eyes riveted on the scene dominating a side-viewing window: the huge, bright, atmosphere-arc of the planet’s night side against the star-dotted blackness of space. The quips and finger-pointing from the carping couple evaporated faster than a spoonful of water on the sun-side of Mercury.

Pearce stared, unable to speak, his heart pounding. Was this real? Was he dreaming? Would life never cease stupefying him? His head rotated toward Sullivan like a rusty old gate. Her face gleamed in the soft, light-blue light of the planet’s atmosphere flooding the cockpit. Her mouth slack, she shook her head as if trying to dislodge something. 

Pearce motioned and the two of them fumbled their way into the forward seats at the curved instrument panel. Ross and Appleton fell into the two rear seats. They were, at least for the time, silenced.

Pearce swung open the door of the safe and extracted the captain’s log. He penned his update, his trembling hand a hindrance.

“Hard time processing this,” Sullivan said. She took a fast breath. “DORIS, you did a scan of the planet for Doc. Do another for a suitable landing site that accommodates our humanly needs. Include in your search evidence of metal deposits – in case we survive long enough to recreate the Bronze Age.”

She gave Pearce a quick-fading smile and keyed on the chronometer.

“No need to remind anybody,” Appleton said, her voice low, “but our departure date was August 11, 2037.”

Pearce glanced back and saw Ross swing his head toward the ensign and say, “Then why remind–?”

“My birthday, August 11.”

“Brace yourself.” Sullivan threw a switch.

Ross snorted. “Cruel joke’s all I’m bracing for.”

Red lights sputtered in a read-out panel. Numbers that were being calculated from a shielded radioactive-decay-based “clock” raced incomprehensibly fast.

A distressing nine seconds later, the numbers stopped. The cockpit’s occupants sat dumb-founded.

“DORIS, cockpit only,” Pearce said, laying aside his log without taking his eyes off the numbers. “From your own internal system, can you independently confirm the date we see?” His chest stilled as he waited for what seemed an eternity.

“The current Earth time and date,” DORIS replied without the reverberation normally heard throughout the ship, “are as follows: 13:24, Wednesday, December 9, 139,023.”

Pearce felt his cheek twitch. He looked at the commander. She looked at him. Neither spoke.

He knew the AI wasn’t 100 percent error free. “DORIS, scrub your date and time data, recalculate, and give us just the Earth year.”

Five seconds later: “The Earth year, Captain Pearce, is 139,023.”

Ross’s whistle was soft. “One mind-melting long time to be mothballed.”

The captain pressed. “DORIS, state the distance traveled, and ID this planet.”

“Distance traveled: 20.517 light years. Planet: Gliese 581g.”

“DORIS, I assume your ID is based on the atmospheric signature and the planet’s location in the GNS.”

“That is correct, Captain. To be brief, Hope’s position-shift relative to the locations of The Twenty Pulsars in the Galactic Navigation System’s Sub-Region Two corresponds to the exact distance and direction from Earth to this star.”

“That was brief?” Appleton said. Nerves speaking? “I love her name, but boy….”

A small, appreciative smile on her face, Sullivan turned her head back toward Appleton and Ross. “Nice to see you two paying attention to something besides each other. Beneficial to our survival.”

“If anyone wants to let the tears flow,” Pearce said, his own nerves on fire, “or if you want to upchuck, go ahead. We can forget we’re suck-it-up military for a moment.”

“Only a moment,” Ross said.

“I have located a suitable landing site,” DORIS said, “in an otherwise hilly terrain near an ocean. It satisfies all of your parameters, including what appears to be an underground mass of ore .”

Sullivan clasped her hands. “Oh thank God! An ocean!” After composing herself, she said, “DORIS, what’s the atmospheric composition relative to Earth’s?” To herself in a low, through-the-teeth voice: “‘Course, it’s a tad late to fret about such things.”

“The atmosphere contains 0.5 percent less nitrogen and nearly six percent less oxygen than Earth’s. The oxygen is nine percent less than Hope’s. You will be able to adapt with modest side effects that will cease in a short time.”

Pearce pulled in air, held it, exhaled. One crisis down? Maybe.

“DORIS,” he said, “forgive me, but you and I are on our first date. Wish I knew you better. I do worry about your one-percent unreliability.”

DORIS paused. Was she searching her database for an appropriate reply? “Captain, I–”

“Forget it, DORIS,” Sullivan said. “He’s delirious with happiness.” She cocked her head at Pearce, an impish grin playing across her lips. “Tell me, why on Earth would you want to date DORIS instead of me?”

“Because we’re not on Earth?”

“Commander,” DORIS said, “you do not have the authority to countermand or interfere in anything between the captain and me.”

It was Pearce’s turn to grin. “Did humorless DORIS put you in your place, or what?”

If only for a while, everyone’s morale seemed to be boosted by their good fortune thus far in a place where good fortune would likely come in severely short supply.

He switched on the all-personnel mic. “Doc, what’s up back there? Any injuries?”

He thought again of Sullivan’s date remark. Had she joked, or revealed by way of a joke a feeling she hadn’t intended to reveal? Or maybe had intended to?

The depressing image of his dying wife swam in front of his eyes. It crushed his buoyancy and shattered his musings about Sullivan like glass.

The Doc’s voice cracked on. “Everyone’s settled down. Finally. All seem to be coming to grips. No serious injuries. Arm bruises only. Some capsized stomachs, headaches – things of that nature I’d expect from our jolly good bumpy ride, and the preservation and restoration, and high-level stress–”

“Good. Good. Attention, everyone,” Pearce said. He looked at Sullivan, who nodded. “Commander Sullivan and I have just verified that our long, long journey…” – he hesitated for effect – “…is a success! We have reached Gliese 581g!”

After a full five seconds of silence, the cockpit speaker exploded with the cheering and screaming of one-hundred people.

Pearce checked the time. The three hours everyone needed to allow their gel residue to be fully purged from their bodies had elapsed. He and his three officers could disembark on an exploratory mission immediately after landing.

“All personnel!” His voice shook more than he liked. “Buckle up! DORIS, take us down!”

The last thing Pearce heard before Hope again smashed into the planet’s atmosphere with a deafening roar and a violent shuddering was more whoops and applause. His hand, though, as a sickening knot laid woe to his belly, never retreated more than an inch from the recessed autopilot-kill switch.

II

    In a vertical descent, Hope was lowered in a horizontal position without incident to a level field adjacent to a gently sloping hill. The ship’s huge bulk rocked twice on its massive shock-absorber legs.

Pearce gripped his armrests until his fingers hurt. Up until now the dangers had pretty much been known. Now they weren’t.

He wiped sweat off his face with his sleeve and, fingers shaking, scribbled the date and time of the landing in the captain’s log.

Appleton said, “How nice to feel the tug of gravity again!”

“It does give your face a more mature look,” Ross said.

Sullivan turned to face him. “Not subtle and not necessary.”

Pearce alerted everyone on the ship to hit the switches on their boots to turn off the magnets. He signaled his three officers to come with him. Together they hurried aft to the compartment where the civilians and Lt. Commander Martha Wakefield were seated. Standing in front of them, Pearce made a brief, earnest statement regarding their historic journey. He then reminded them that they each received the letter stating he would be president of the new world as soon as they touched down.

“Wasn’t my idea, I want you to know.” He smiled as they laughed. “So. To you, I guess I’ll be your president. To my team behind me, I’ll still be their captain, for a while at least, functioning within a military structure because it’s what I know best. Later our constitutional and law experts will create a fair and democratic society.”

He added that no one could leave the ship until he and his away-team returned from their mission to explore the ocean coast and determine the area’s security level, weapons at the ready.

“Captain Pearce,” DORIS said, her voice ringing plangent throughout the ship, “you need not worry about security. The planet is at a stage roughly comparable to Earths’ Cambrian Period in the Paleozoic Era of 570 million to 500 million years ago. Only marine invertebrates likely exist.”

Pearce poked his tongue into his cheek. A machine telling him what not to concern himself with! “May be, DORIS, but I don’t find comfort in your hedge words ‘roughly’ and ‘likely.’ This is an alien world. Unlike Earth’s Cambrian, it has soil and plants, so it might also have a velociraptor or two. Please don’t share your recommendations that might get us killed.”

Wakefield was sitting up front eight feet from Pearce. Her fingers fidgeted. “DORIS, reconfirm the exterior temperature.”

“Ninety-four point three degrees Fahrenheit.”

“Ouch. Wouldn’t do me well at all.”

“I’ll take a copious supply of drinking water,” Lieutenant Ross said. “Gotta stay hydrated.” He stood with Sullivan and Appleton just behind and to the side of Pearce.

Ensign Appleton gave Ross a look that made Pearce think she considered him no more than a pile of frass. “Gonna drag along a Johnny-On-The-Spot?”

Chuckles rippled across the sea of haggard, ashen faces, then once again, nervous-born, it seemed.

The captain continued: “While my team and I are away – no more than 24 hours – Dr. Martha Wakefield will mind the helm. If we don’t come back…. Well, you’ll be in capable hands.”

He paused, swept his eyes over the anxious faces. “There’ll be plenty of time later for all of your questions. But, okay, I will take one right now. Just one.”

A hand shot up. It belonged to fourteen-year-old Rachel Duncan, the youngest child and the daughter of Ainsley Duncan, the big brown-bearded forty-year-old Scot sitting next to her. Ainsley Duncan, who later would don the exo-skeleton for heavy lifting, had trained as a cyber-security cop at the National Security Agency. He could, Pearce recalled, run diagnostics on DORIS if she became too unreliable or turned “spooky,” which Pearce interpreted as showing rogue tendencies.

“Mr. President, sir,” Rachel said with a polite smile, “do you think anyone on Earth survived the impact?”

That question no doubt burned like a hot coal in everyone’s mind. It was the one Pearce dreaded most.

“You’re a brave young girl to ask that.” He lifted his chin toward her dad, who nodded. He sucked in air, collecting his thoughts. Might as well get it all out and over with.

“Consider first the immediate monster earthquakes and shock wave tearing through Earth’s crust. Maybe a billion were killed in an instant. Of course, lots of people survived that, but fires, hundreds of millions of them, were sparked worldwide when the white-hot impact ejecta that was shot high into the atmosphere rained down. That dramatically increased Earth’s temperature – global warming on steroids. It poisoned all the oceans.”

Not a soul moved.

“In the following months, a winter holocaust developed, created by the shroud of ash and toxic chemicals that spread globally, blocking sunlight, ending photosynthesis, and putting Earth into deep-freeze. Remember, this asteroid was 20 miles wide, more than three times larger than the one that annihilated the dinosaurs 65-million years ago. The consensus was that it had too much speed and mass for our nukes or laser cannons to have an effect. So to answer your question, no – no one could’ve survived for long, no matter how deep underground.”

He lowered his head, scratched a brow. “I’ve probably said too much already, but I’ll add one more thing, something I figure most of you have realized and accepted.” He pinched the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes shut for a second. Stifling a sob, he forced the words out. “Earth as we know it — knew it — is gone.”

Rachel Duncan’s polite smile had not left her face, but it had left her eyes.

III

Captain Jason Pearce and his team of three, each with a backpack, advanced down Hope’s ramp. In the planet’s slightly lower gravity, Pearce noticed his steps had more bounce. Their upcoming heavy work would take less of a toll. Another win. 

In the utter absence of sounds, except for the soft thumps of their boots on the metal, Pearce’s muscles tensed. Were the eyes of silent beasts watching from behind the hill’s sporadic trees that resembled the witgats he’d seen in South Africa? Or watching from nearby, concealed in the tall lime-green grass blanketing the field Hope had set down on? Had their scent already been detected by a hunger-crazed, velociraptor-like carnivore brandishing ten-inch teeth? Would this brute any second now come galloping over the top of the hill, smashing down every tree in its path to get to them?

But the quietness could instead mean the ship’s roaring retros had scattered away every critter within ten kilometers. Regardless, Pearce eased his hand up to his weapon.

A warm, easterly breeze lapped against the side of his sweaty face. He thought he caught the salty whiff of ocean water. The familiar smell, along with the possibility that one of their mission goals was achievable, notched his stomach-churning down a bit.

The planet’s early-morning red-dwarf sun peeked over the horizon between distant silhouetted mountains forming claws and sharks’ teeth. Its peach-orange radiance shot long, black shadow-fingers across the landscape.

Overhead, shards of mauve and pink clouds stretched across the pink and blue sky. Opposite the sun, barely clearing the hill-top, hung the tiny pair of faint, milky-silver disks that were the planet’s moons.

The heel of his hand still rested on his weapon. Raking his gaze from side to side, he led his team seventy-five yards out to the base of the hill.

He took two deep breaths, as much to vent his tension as to gauge how his lungs would cope with the air. “Well?”

The other three took stock of their surroundings for another moment, then glanced at each other. They shrugged and nodded. Appleton said, “What difference does it make?”

“Olivia,” Pearce said, “your clunky old Geiger’s acting civil. Another win.”

The yellow, black-trimmed Geiger counter with a detection tube had come from Ross, who’d found it in a cluttered, musty backroom of the base antique store. It was in perfect working order. After Ross had cleaned it to a shine, he’d handed it to Appleton, figuring she’d love it. She did. “It’s older than I am,” she’d said, giving Ross a hug. “I’ll keep it forever.”

So far she’d kept it for 137,000 years.

With her free hand, she plucked her weapon from its holster and directed it toward the hill. A red line hissed. A foot-deep hole smoldered on the hillside.

“A double-tap of that’ll give our velociraptors something to ponder,” she said.

Ross’s huge grin suggested he was beside himself with joy. “What a sharp-shooter! Hit the broad side of a mountain standing right next to it.”

Pearce hailed Martha Wakefield on his radio. “Doc, so far the air’s good to go. Hopefully long-term. No threatening teeth seen – yet.”

“…Big relief,” her voice sizzled. “Don’t die out there. I don’t want your job.”

“Heading out. Give me 100 percent antenna. Have a rescue team on standby. And start unstrapping and moving essentials to the off-load deck.”

“Copy all, Cap. Good hunting. Buzz me if you find anything interesting. Ha! What a berk I am. As if there might not be anything interesting on the first exoplanet humans set down on.”

Pearce took his palm computer out of the side of his backpack, studied an aerial scan downloaded by DORIS. He pointed toward the top of the hill.

“The ocean’s that way, about three klicks. Half that distance up the coast is a feeder river — hopefully with decent water. One problem on the other side of this hill, standing between us and the ocean: a pretty dense forest containing who knows what.”

The three seemed to reflect on that with minimal angst. “Better than the alternative” may have been their thought.

“One bit of good news,” Pearce said. “Ground-imaging’s a little grainier than I like – guess I can’t expect perfectly intact electronics throughout the ship after over a hundred-thousand years – but it looks like we’ll pass near that possible metal-ore deposit DORIS detected. If we find it, maybe we can chisel out a few chunks for analysis. Bronze Age, here we come. Again.”

Ross jostled his backpack higher on his shoulders and nodded toward the hill. “Need a lift, Apple Of My Eye?”

Her snicker erupted in a way that told Pearce she was more nervous than she was letting on. As probably all of them were.

“I’d rather rip my eyeballs out with a pair of pilers. Surprised you think I need you for anything.”

Commander Sullivan’s narrowed eyes slued from Appleton to Ross, then back to Appleton. “Can you two not just…not? Try keeping your eyeballs on the surroundings, not on each–“

“Yes. A into G,” Pearce said, flipping a thumb. 

The three other officers fell in line behind him up the hill. Pearce, his face warming to the tangerine sun and the 90-plus-degree temp, wove past bramble-like shrubs and hip-high, green-gray ferns of a sort. On the spine of the hill, Pearce squinted at the dark, foreboding forest sprawling out from the hill’s bottom. The forest stretched for maybe a mile, rising midway at another, smaller hill they’d have to traverse. In a gap in the treetops, a silver curve of ocean water glistened in the low-hanging sun like thousands of tiny glass fragments.

What word, Pearce wondered, would describe a state of joy mixed with intense unease?

He jammed into a side pocket the small field glasses he’d been using. Though he’d spotted nothing curious within his 180-degree sweep, there were too many areas hidden from view.

Where fun goes to die. Turning to the others, he put a finger to his lips. “Let’s keep it down and toddle forward with all due caution.”

“Yup,” Appleton said in a low voice. “Not good to peal the dino dinner bell, especially when skylined.”

They descended to the wall of towering broad-leaf flora bordering the forest.

“Leave a trail,” Pearce said. “Our butts might need saving. Knives out. Weapons in the other hand. Heads on a swivel, side to side, up and down. Ears tuned to any rustling anywhere.”

Pearce took a gulp of air. They stepped forward and were swallowed by the Cimmerian forest.

For the next hour, they weaved through multi-colored under-brush and chopped lower limbs off the trees. They hacked with reservation, as if a swing too hard might bring a herd of ravenous creatures down on top of them. On occasion they paused to inspect and smell various odd-looking vegetation, an alert eye on the broader environment and weapons in firm grips.

Although the sun had climbed, the light penetrating to the forest floor was still less than optimal.

“Wasn’t a mountain I hit,” Appleton said. “As you well know.”

Continuing to step forward, Ross turned his head in her direction and glared. “What?” He turned his head back to the front. “For crying out–” To Ross, it must have seemed a tree limb appeared out of nowhere. Its encounter with his face was audible. “Uhhhh!” He clasped a hand over his nose.

“Hope you didn’t smush that warty thing,” Appleton said. 

“The down side for me?” Pearce said. “You’ll survive. Damn it, Tom, pay attention like the commander said.”

Forty-five minutes later and tiring in the heat, they entered a tennis-court-sized clearing of carob-brown soil, green grassy patches, and a loamy scent. It paralleled the base of a treed slope whose dimensions were concealed by the dense trees.

Pearce fingered sweat from his brow. “We’re all breathing heavy. Let’s take a beat and eat. Afterwards, I want to spend a little time scouting for the metal ore. Supposed to be right around here somewhere. Our metallurgist would want to know.”

Ross swilled from a canteen, the third time in the last half hour. Pearce wondered if he’d considered slowing down.

Weapons were holstered and backpacks lowered. Commander Sullivan, hands on her hips, surveyed the forest up the slope and surrounding the clearing.

“Not a single little critter scurrying around anywhere. Maybe 99-percent-accurate DORIS is right.”

Appleton sat down next to her backpack. Her lips did a borderline-rude raspberry burst. “Pretty sure her faulty one percent was dominant on that. My money says the little critters would be hunted by the big critters during the day, so they dig in till night.”

“Makes sense,” Sullivan said, “except where are the big–”

“Doc,” Pearce said after hitting his radio, “no threats to report. Negatron on air issues. No worse than the Mile-High City. I’m belaying my order for everyone to remain on board until my team and I return. Why not go ahead and start off-loading – after you harden up around the ship: establish a perimeter, post guards, sensor fence, bells on a string, anything.”

“How wonderful to copy that,” Wakefield said back.

“Remember, always close the airlock behind you, coming and going.”

“Really think you have to tell me that?” Her sarcasm, administered as usual with a heavy laying-on of her British accent, knifed through unadorned and lucid.

Appleton took her weapon back in hand and eyed Sullivan. “There. See? The Cap feels the same way. Doesn’t want a five-ton meat-eating thingy wandering on board looking for a quick snack. That make sense too?”

Ross apparently couldn’t repress himself. “Meat-eating thingy? Tell me, when you were a kid – not terribly long ago, factoring out our little trip across the void – did your nightmares turn you into a bed-wetter?”

She compressed her lips, her face taking on a painful look. “Uh, umm…odd thing to say.”

“Had a potty break on my mind, that’s why.” He about-faced and headed up the slope.

“Not surprised, water-holic,” Sullivan said. “Watch your step. And stay mindful of meat-eating…thingies.”

Ross’s fist pumped. “Not to worry. No thingies on this planet!”

“Famous last words,” Appleton said to Sullivan. To Ross, a soft yell: “Should the Cap go with you? Hold your hand and talk encouragement?”

As Ross continued to climb, his fist reappeared and sprouted a middle finger. He boomed, “Very funny, little hemorrhoid.” Three seconds later, he vanished up into the forest.

Pearce sighed. “Well, if the thingies didn’t know about us before….”

Commander Sullivan frowned at Appleton. “You know, I worry about dangerous animals, too. But honestly, if a T-Rex came stomping through here, I don’t think either you or Tom would notice.”

Captain Pearce eyed one of them for a second, then the other. “Chow time.”

He and the commander plopped down near Ensign Appleton and plucked water and MREs from their backpacks.

“What delicious, synthesized entrees do we have for our first meal in more than a thousand centuries?” Appleton asked. She wriggled into an alert face-out guard position and leaned against her backpack, MRE in her lap and weapon on the ground by her hip.

“Chicken and roast beef,” Sullivan said. “But word is they taste the same.”

Appleton clucked her tongue. “So one could say we have…chicken and chicken?”

“Or roast beef and roast beef.” Sullivan put up a finger. “No, wait, I’m going with a mélange of roasted marten.”

Eyes rolling, Pearce tuned them out and mashed his tasteless “beef/chicken” with his back teeth. He pushed himself to his feet and roamed over to where the clearing ended. He scanned a broad range of the treed hill, then took out his palm computer. He referred back and forth to the woods and to the small screen’s LIDAR map. Would he be able to detect the metal ore’s location – if in fact metal ore was what DORIS’s scan showed?

He tapped the screen twice to enlarge it. Pointless. Probably degradation in DORIS’s circuits, causing insufficient detail and distorted topography, both producing indiscernible reference points.

But was circuit degradation really the culprit? Or was it DORIS’s one-percent unreliability? Something gnawed at his insides. He was unable to hold back his next thought: Or was it DORIS’s conscious, deliberate effort to sabotage them? 

He strode back to his spot and lowered himself to the ground, his lips pressed tight. He and his crew would never find the ore on this twenty-four-hour mission, and so shouldn’t waste valuable time searching for it.

Appleton half-turned his way, smiling around a mouthful of MRE. She swallowed and said, “Not gonna write us up in your captain’s Log for being unofficerly, are you, sir?”

She glanced off Pearce to the sky, her smile collapsing. Pewter clouds had scudded in, plunging the clearing into shadow. The treetops soughed in a puff of wind. With a little shudder, she refocused on the surrounding forest.

Sullivan did a slow peer-around, saying to Pearce, “Acting silly – it’s a relief valve, Jason. The Doc would say, ‘If you can’t do anything about fear and stress, apply liberal amounts of humor.’ I guess that’s how–”

“Hey,” Appleton said. “I just realized – the smell of this crappy chow could attract–“

A rapid crunching sound froze her. Her hand arced to her weapon.

“Relax,” Pearce said. “Tom’s finished killing vegetation.”

Appleton screwed her mouth to the side. “Knew that. Was just gonna graze his ear for practice. Have to be sharp when a velociraptor wants us for an appetizer.”

Ross trotted down into full view twenty-five feet upslope. “Tell ’em, Apple. You missed me. You always miss me. Always will, right?”

She wagged her weapon. “Only when you zig-zag.”

“C’mon, admit it,” he said, “you still got a few embers burning for– Whoa!”

His foot whipped out from under him. He spilled onto his side like a sack of potatoes. He rolled down the slope into the clearing, ending up less than three feet from Appleton.

“Nice pirouette, dude. But bummer, you’re still alive — saved by the reduced gravity” was the Ensign’s dry offering after she’d given Ross a quick once-over and lifted her head again toward the cloud cover.

He scrambled to his feet. “Sorry to disappoint you, Ensign.” Dusting himself off and narrowing his eyes, he sought out the uphill spot where he’d tripped.

“Wait,” Appleton said, “I’m actually opposed to the idea of you dying on us so soon. You got lots more people to annoy, and I wanna watch.”

“And another reptilian upchucking from Livvy the Lizard.”

Sullivan exhaled. “Tom, do we need to wrap you in packing foam? What’s the matter with you? Your second mishap in, what, two hours? This is not you. Your last commander rated you superior for vigilance and agility, and your combat trainer called you the Tip of the Spear. If you and Olivia weren’t always at each other’s throat, you would’ve had a better eye on where you were stepping. You could’ve hurt yourself, gotten yourself med-dropped. You would’ve jeopardized our mission.”

“Duly noted, ma’am.” He gave her a self-deprecating frown and hustled back up the incline past the three or four low thickets he’d rolled over. He dropped to his knees near something black jutting out of the downward side of a mound of forest-floor debris. He nudged away the small sticks and leathery, mixed-colored leaves covering the object.

“Whiskey tango fox! Take a gander at this. Chunk of metal sticking out of the ground, looks like.”

Sullivan leaped to her feet. “Maybe part of the metal deposit DORIS picked up.”

Pearce hurried up the slope. “Just when I’d given up.” He had an urge to tell Ross, “I guess carelessness sometimes pays off,” but kept it to himself.

“Maybe a meteor,” Sullivan said as she and Appleton, with her Geiger, joined them.

“Meteorite’s the word you want, ma’am,” Appleton said. “FYI.”

Ross gave Appleton a sour look. “She does that. Corrects people. FYI.”

“Nuh-huh,” Appleton murmured for all to hear. “Another unforced error.”

“Unclench, you two,” Sullivan said. “Enough of the insult-fest.”

After the commander let them absorb that, she attached the tiniest smile to her gaze. “Sidebar comment: I do believe you two are still in love and trying like the devil to hide the fact.”

Ross erupted with “Like hell we are” in unison with Olivia’s “That’s crazy as bat crap.” 

Pearce and Sullivan looked at each other. The color had returned to her cheeks, brightening her face. She looked beautiful – frazzled but beautiful.

A warmth flared in his cheeks. Was he hiding something, not only from her but from himself as well? Did he have budding feelings for her? Had he begun making a transfer from a love no longer possible, his wife, to one that was? Was Sullivan hiding the same kind of feelings about him, a possibility that her banter about dating had, at least in his mind, cracked open?

Her lips parted as if she wanted to say something. Instead, she broke off their gaze. Guilt and embarrassment clamped down on him, macerating his thoughts.

“Mates,” he said, “focus.” His index finger pecked toward the object.

Its oblong, rounded, 12-inch-thick tip extended eight inches or so down-slope at an angle parallel to level ground.

“Too smooth for a meteorite,” Appleton said, throwing what might have been a conciliatory glance at Sullivan. Having knelt on the side opposite Ross, she back-handed the remaining soil off the slate-gray surface. She held her Geiger’s tube against the object. “It’s not radioactive–if anybody’s about to ask. My Geiger’s quiet, like I wish Tom would always be.”

Ross ignored her. Suddenly trying to be an officer and a gentleman?

“See if you can jog it loose,” Pearce said.

Ross grasped the object with both hands and pulled with increasing exertion, until his face was blotchy red and his neck veins stood out like cords. Zero movement.

Appleton peeled off from the group and four minutes later bounced back up carrying an armload of small collapsible shovels taken from their packs. “Let’s dig. Gotta see what this is!”

Dirt was heaved in all directions. The sharp odor of damp soil and semi-rotted leaves hung in the air – the smell of primordial Earth right here on an alien world. Twenty minutes later, four times as much of the metal was exposed.

“Shaping up to be right-triangular,” Pearce said.

Ross scowled. “Where does this thing end?”

The more they dug, the farther they had to excavate up into the slope, in width as well as depth. 

On his knees and sweating, Pearce took a hard look. Seven or so feet of the object lay exposed. True enough, it was smooth, polished, and shaped like a right triangle, with one side going straight into the hill, the opposite side entering at an angle. With his next thought, the hairs on the back of his neck bristled.

He pushed to his feet. Inhaling with care, he regarded the other three.

“This thing – pretty obvious it’s an artificial structure, an artifact of civilized beings here.”

Sullivan scrunched up her face. “Are you saying an entire city, a civilization, might be buried here?”

Pearce tossed his shovel aside, half-stumbled backwards down the slope a few feet.

“Let me revise. It was made by extraterrestrials who may have come here thousands of years ago. In fact, if I’m right, this thing is how they got here. This,” he said, arcing his arm, “I’ll bet is part of an ancient alien spacecraft.”

Appleton’s jaw slackened. “A first encounter….”

Ross blinked. His fingers sliced through his hair. “Wha…? You mean we have ourselves a real Area 51, only 21 light-years east of the phony one?”

“Sull?” Pearce said. “Look like the tip of a wing or tail fin to you?”

Sullivan had dropped into a sitting position on the ground, her face blank and motionless. With the back of a dirtied hand she nudged away strands of hair stuck to her forehead and nose. Her voice came shaky. “Aye aye. Was afraid to say.”

Pearce keyed his radio.

“Go ahead, Jason,” Dr. Wakefield said after a few long seconds.

He kept his voice steady. “How about a progress report.”

“Everyone except yours truly is outside. All doing well. Sensor fence up. Off-loaded some priority items: dome homes, food, water. Ainsley Duncan is doing the heavy lifting in his exo-skel–”

“Good. Good. You said buzz you if we found something interesting.” He described their discovery, gave her his idea of what it was, and paused. He heard nothing back. “Doc?”

“…Here!”

“I know. Incredible. But I need you to keep a lid on this for now. Don’t want an uproar. This would rattle the hell out of more than a few. They need to stay focused on their tasks.”

Was she trying to catch her breath? “Uh, agree. This bloody well does numb the neocortex.”

“I want to get inside this thing,” he said, “assuming there’s more to it than meets the eye.”

He studied the structure. It had better be a forward or rear wing. If it was a tail fin instead, the craft was on its side and possibly destroyed in a crash landing. If it hadn’t crashed, the craft may have withstood the slow accumulation of geological pressure because the ground that during the millennia built up around the craft served as a brace that may have roughly equaled the force of the ground that built up on the top — two static forces.

“I’m hoping we can make use of the technology, extricate parts and useful equipment, etcetera – if everything isn’t too degraded and we can work around the alien language–“

“Ah, yes, little things like that.”

“Doc, listen, we need help. Deploy a crew of four or five, equipped with all the excavating tools available. And explosives, C4, whatever. Need four head lamps, oxygen tanks, masks. And a water tester. Include Duncan in your crew. We need his exo to remove trees. A couple of the crew members should be armed to protect the group. Still don’t know what might be out here. The crew’ll see our path on the other side of the hill. I’m sure rumors will be flying. Tell them anything but the real reason I need them. Out.”

IV

THE crew of five that Wakefield had assembled hiked into the clearing two hours later. A fifteen-foot length of the object lay visible inside the ever-widening cavity in the hill. The cavity’s uppermost wall of brown and black soil rose seven feet above the object’s surface.

Wakefield’s crew stopped in their tracks, their faces frozen. Finally, they spurted:

“Can you believe this?” “Can’t be possible!” “What the hell is it?”

They ceased talking and stared again.

Ainsley Duncan, in his exoskeleton, carried the box containing the items Pearce had asked for. He lumbered over to Pearce and set the box on the ground. He stood next to Pearce, whose insides twitched a bit at the sight of this tall, intimidating figure with cable-operated arms and legs powered by a solar panel on the upper back and a fuel cell on the lower back. The outfit rendered Duncan, at six-foot-five and seemingly capable of wrestling a polar bear to the ground on his own without need of an exo-skeleton, seventy times stronger.

Pearce greeted the man, who gave a nod and fixated again on the sight before them.

“No need to explain,” Duncan said, waving a mechanical hand. “I’ve processed it. Wasn’t easy.”

“I’d like you to first try to dislodge it. Maybe a wing or fin’s all there is, at least in this area.” His eyes took in Duncan and the other seven as he raised his voice. “From here on I want us all to be optimistic and refer to the object–which is either a wing or a fin–as a wing. That’s where I’m leaning.” 

“Hey Ainsley!” Lieutenant Tom Ross said, standing on the wing. “For warm-up why not toss Olivia over the trees into the ocean.” His crooked grin said he savored his little joke. Being an officer and a gentleman seemed to be passé again.

Appleton, on the slope not more than ten feet from Ross, twirled a finger. “Bzzzt. Amygdala malfunction? No question, you’re the anchor trying to hold my ship back.”

Duncan looked at Pearce and chuckled. “Olivia’s long-winded Navyspeak for ‘You’re a drag’? If you brought these two along for entertainment and distraction, not a bad idea. Heard them right out of the box, so to speak. Genuine tension breaker for a lot of us.”

Pearce sifted that point. He had to admit the couple’s quibbling sometimes amused as much as annoyed, and so on occasion it did allow him to de-stress a bit. Maybe it did the same for Ross and Appleton as well. Maybe trying to escape from their nightmarish reality was the unconscious reason they acted like kids, as Sullivan had pointed out.

And how ironic. The very people he’d pegged to needle everyone’s nerves might in fact be doing just the opposite: helping everyone realize they could carry on in a somewhat normal fashion as they engaged this frightening new world that sooner or later could doom them all.

The big burly Ainsley Duncan had recognized this about the two before he had.

“They never tire of throwing shade on each other,” Pearce said. “When I found out they were neurotics, it was too late to dump them back into the sewer.” He flashed a faux grin.

Duncan grunted in sympathy.

Pearce dispatched a member of Duncan’s group to check out the other side of the slope. Perhaps a wing or another craft part protruded there.

“Ainsley, as I said, I’d like to see if you can dislodge it. That might help us determine whether it’s still attached to the ship. While you’re lifting, keep an eye out for any damage you may be causing.”

Duncan stomped off toward the huge slab of gray metal with surprising fluidity. His exoskeleton’s cables and pulleys chirked and murmured as the titanium-carbon Frankenstein thudded across the forest floor. He paused at the metal slab’s tip that hours earlier had sent Ross rolling like a log down the slope. He crouched, extended his left mechanical hand underneath and flattened it up against the metal. He tapped a red, nickel-sized button on his chest-plate. This activated for 60 seconds the powerful magnet in the left hand to prevent slippage. He reached under with his free hand and clasped it over the other.

His arms strained upward. The exoskeleton’s “muscles” whined. A jerky counter-force jack-hammered Duncan up and down on his heels. Three more frustrating attempts, and he erected himself, his feet driven five inches into the ground. He blew out air.

“That would’ve flipped a bull elephant. With maybe a full-grown hippo on its back.”

“Glad you failed,” Pearce said. “Need a rest?”

“Why? I didn’t do anything. Exo did it all.”

“Got another task for you — for exo, your alter ego?”

An hour later, Duncan had cleared trees from the slope to some 40 feet above the cavity. An immediate benefit: more golden light filtering down in the waning day.

The crewmember returned from checking out the other side of the slope. As soon as he spotted Pearce, he extended his arm and gave a thumbs-down.

Pearce summoned the explosives duo and instructed them to insert small, low-power C4 packs with their blasting caps into the soil several feet above the structure. He hurried off, shooing everyone away. Ten seconds passed. Then: three loud, rapid bangs. Dirt, stones, and root pieces by the hundreds flew into the air, rained down and clattered and thrummed on the metal surface.

“Jason!”

Pearce did a little jump. Wakefield had barked into his ear.

“Talk to me, Doc.”

“Got an ill civilian. Not one of those who were sick after restoration. Nothing serious – I don’t think. Mild nausea. Low-grade temp. Weakness.”

Pearce hesitated. “The lower outside oxygen?”

“One of the young teens. Hard to say. No way to test–”

“What about psychological after-effects? PTS?”

 “Maybe he needs a hug? Leave the guess-work to me, please. I’m not overly concerned at the moment. Will continue to monitor. Will try immunity enhancers and antibiotics, but I’ll have to go sparingly. Just wanted to give you a heads-up.”

He hurried back up the slope. He asked the reconvened shovelers, including Ross and Appleton, to clear the debris pile-up off the wing. He then told the explosives duo to set up more C4.

Commander Sullivan appeared at his side, plucking debris from her hair and jumpsuit. Pearce told her about the ill teen. He then asked her to give the water tester to the two armed members of Duncan’s group and pack them off to the coast to find the ingress river to test its water.

An hour and a half later, a fifty-foot length of the wing lay like a beached whale in the huge dugout, which was thirty feet wide where the wing disappeared into the slope.

Standing on the wing and facing the dirt wall, Duncan gripped a shovel in one hand. The wall rose two feet above his tall figure and oozed tendrils of smoke from the explosions. He rammed the shovel blade into the soil at waist level, a powerful blow that might have brought down an adult mammoth. A blunted clank rang out.

Everyone froze, eyes on the shovel, whose blade was buried some twelve inches into the dirt wall. Had Duncan struck rock? Or metal? He did several more thrusts along a near-even line. Each time, the same unvarying clank. Definitely a metal-on-metal clank.

Duncan sported a wide grin as he pivoted and pumped the shovel overhead a couple of times.

“By my beard, we have it!” He marched toward the structure’s tapered tip as if on stage and loving the victorious moment.

“Good work!” Pearce said. He looked at the wing, mumbling his thoughts. A scalene right triangle, like Hope’s. So far, the craft indicated the aliens’ knowledge of aerodynamics and propulsion similar to humans’.

After Duncan dismounted the wing, the explosives duo packed another series of their small C4 bricks into the bank six feet above the expanse of metal. But Pearce signaled them to hold on. The teen boy’s illness had returned to mind, and a thought chilled him: What if any alien remains inside harbored pathogens they had no immunity against? Was he going to open Pandora’s box?

Commander Sullivan came up from behind. Her brown eyes measured him. “Afraid your curiosity will assassinate the cat.”

It was not a question.

He stared at her for five seconds, biting his lower lip at the thought of telling her of his decision. “Should I be throwing the dice with the few human lives left after we’ve gone through all this and been given a second chance?”

He swung his eyes from her to the buried craft. “We can’t go inside that thing. We won’t do it. It could be rigged with–“

Her hand appeared on his arm. It had been there often, helping to assuage his despair in the months before and after his wife died. He remembered how comforting the gesture had always been, and felt grateful for Sullivan’s kindness. Was it her way of showing she cared for him as more than a friend? Or was it merely her style of communicating? Like her date joke in the cockpit may have been?

A realization rendered him speechless. For the first time, wondering about her in this way did not light a fire of guilt inside him.

“It’s calling us, Jason,” she said. “You know sooner or later we have to get in there to haul out any needed materiel, anything and everything our mechanical engineer can reconfigure for use.”

Her touch changed to a slight squeeze, electric on his arm. “So it might as well be now while everything’s in place and a minimum of us are exposed. We’ll take precaution, hang back for a while after we come back out. If something goes wrong, there are still nearly 100 others–”

A sizzle on his communicator interrupted.

“Go, Doc. What’s the good news?”

“Get that from somebody else,” Wakefield‘s tinny voice said at his ear. “The teen has worsened. And five more have become ill. Same symptoms. Now I’m concerned. About a bloody contagion.”

Pearce felt a sickening knot rising in his stomach, a feeling he hadn’t experienced since the hospital doctors informed him his wife would not beat the cancer. Weren’t half of the Pilgrims eradiated early on by disease, as well as by starvation? Was a similar or worse scenario awaiting this tiny group of Earth’s survivors?

“As I already told you,” Wakefield said, “my quiver is practically empty. I can make use of very few biomarkers. Can’t do a proper diagnosis, not even comparative blood tests or a panel for toxicology. And not even a single simple oximeter on this ship to measure blood oxygen. No way to test for hypoxia to rule out the lower-oxygen factor, though I don’t see any symptoms of that yet. Am I supposed to be a miracle-worker? Ha. I feel like a 19th-century quack.”

The sound of her sigh heaved into Pearce’s ear. “I fed all the known facts to DORIS,” she said, “knowing full well she doesn’t have a physician program. She was just a little more helpful than my mag-boots. Tells me only if a brain and heart are ‘Normal’ or ‘Not Normal,’ or tells me ‘No access to data,’ which I don’t exactly under–”

“Altitude sickness?”

“Close but no Havana–”

“Could we have brought a flu bug with us?”

“Oh, do keep guessing. Actually, some of the symptoms do mimic influenza–fever, weakness, fainting. But remember, prior to launch Hope was scrubbed down and all of us were found to be free of anything more than a cold. There’s a chance–and this is a wild guess–it’s anaphylaxis. But I–“

“English, Doc, the American kind, with as little accent as possible. I’m too–”

“Try letting me finish. They might be having a serious allergic reaction. But from what? Could be bites from insects we can’t see or feel. And, it goes without saying, no epinephrine.”

Pearce heard her take a breath. Her stress must have been sky-high. “I may give antibiotics to one or two more of them to see if I get a difference in–”

“What about radioactivity in the soil, though Olivia hasn’t detected any yet?”

“I’ll give it a think. Hmm…. Nugatory. The symptoms would be very different. But it’s an alien world–we checked anyway, two-hundred yards out in every direction. About 150 samples taken with the soil tester we thankfully have. Naturally I don’t have any dosimeters. I can test the soil better than I can my patients! The sick didn’t go anywhere the others didn’t go. Didn’t do anything out of the ordinary.”

“This does not inspire confidence. Want us to come back?”

“And do what? Get sick so I can quarantine you, too? Put on your masks and venture forth. Maybe we can use some of their med equipment – if we can decipher the language enough to tell the difference between the craft’s food synthesizer and their poop-and-pee recycler. Gotta go.”

Pearce called Ross and Appleton over and briefed them and Sullivan on Wakefield‘s reports on the mysterious disease. Once they’d recovered somewhat from the blow, he waved a go-ahead at the explosives team.

Half a minute later, light dirt and debris showered down. Pearce, having crouched behind a tree, rose, took one step forward and halted. His mouth opened but no words came out. Exposed was a large curved wall of slate-gray metal that dispelled all doubt about whether here on this planet was a long-buried alien craft.

In the fading daylight, something grabbed his attention: the indistinct outline of a door! His heart pounded. Access to the interior.

The door’s size suggested a maintenance and/or escape hatch. Both the size and the door’s location convinced Pearce the structure they had exposed directly below the door was a tail wing, a horizontal stabilizer for traversing planets’ atmospheres. Pearce’s entire body shook. He recalled the times when as a small child he stood in his living room on Christmas mornings facing the tree and the piles of presents — those times didn’t excite him nearly as much.

As everyone else gawked, exchanged glances, and murmured among themselves as if revering what their eyes took in–or if loud noises might somehow make it all disappear–he returned to the wing, mounted it, and jogged to the hull, his face sweaty, his heart pummeling his sternum. He whisked away the dirt along the door’s edges with the flat of his hands. He faced outward and yelled at the explosives team, “How about a dabble of C4 on both sides of this door?”

He dusted his hands off on his uniform and lowered himself off the wing.

“The escaping air might be noxious,” he said to all, “so keep a distance of at least seventy-five feet until I give the all-clear.”

A few minutes later, the C4 banged, warping the door but leaving it attached and unopened. Along its edges were irregular separations large enough to let Duncan wrench the door off.

Twenty-five minutes later, Pearce could stand it no longer. He nodded at Olivia Appleton. She strapped on her O2 tank and mask and carried her Geiger counter to within five yards of the hull, waving the Müller tube from side to side. The Geiger chattered like a metallic cricket–the sound Pearce dreaded most. This was more disappointing than his worst childhood Christmas. 

“Harmless!” Appleton said in a loud, muffled voice that jarred him.

“Harmless?” he said. “You mean we can go inside?”

“Sure. Only nine microsieverts. On Earth, average natural background yields two. You get four to 88 with a dental X-ray. Source is probably a well-shielded nuclear eng–.”

“The green light,” Sullivan said at Pearce’s side.

“Yes!” He flipped a hand at Duncan. “Grip and rip!” A light-headedness rocked him a half-step back. The moment of truth.

On the wing again, Duncan wedged the rivet-jointed fingers of the exo into a gap on each side of the fifty-inch-wide door. He tugged. Metal groaned and screeched. The sounds ruptured through the forest like the keening cries of strange beasts. The door snapped free of its internal hinges and what may have been anti-blast moorings. Duncan carried it to the side of the wing and dropped it onto the slope.

In the dimness of dusk, Pearce saw a vertical rectangle of ominous black. His spine tingled. This was it, human beings’ first encounter with extraterrestrials, dead though they were. At the very least, it was a first encounter with alien technology. A pretty decent second best.

Appleton, her mask doffed and Ross tagging along behind her, rejoined Pearce and Sullivan.

“All four of us are going in,” the captain said. “Olivia, I obviously need you, to continue rad-checking. I need Tom’s medic background in case somebody gets hurt – most likely himself. Anyway, four sets of eyes beat one or two. All right, tool up. Tom, grab your med-pack. Everybody, masks, tanks, head lamps. Side arms we have but shouldn’t need.”

Wakefield‘s voice sputtered in his ear: “–there, Cap?”

“Doc!” he said, ”’Fraid to talk to you!”

“You wanted good news. Got some, but it’s qualified. My sick-bay numbers are still growing – eight more have acquired the symptoms. The good news, three of the first ones appear to have stabilized.”

“The ones that received antibiotics?”

“They were the last ones brought in. They’ve deteriorated somewhat. But antibiotics sometimes have a delayed effect.”

“Hmm. Part good news, part bad. Is that what you meant by ‘qualified’?”

“Neg. Over the years, I’ve seen a lot of people stabilize like this and even improve – only to relapse and die.”

Pearce’s muscles tightened. He did a halting half-nod. “Right, right. Shouldn’t get too optimistic. All we can do is play wait-and-see, I suppose. We do have an uplifter here. We got us a tail wing and it’s attached to a hull that looks to be in excellent shape. A door’s already open.”

“It’ll be hard to keep this to myself.”

“Mum’s still the word, Doc. We’ll be going in pronto and we’ll be out of contact until we come back out, in about an hour. We hope.”

“Tell me — is it a crashed ship?”

“No way to tell yet,” he said. “If it is, that could mean aliens aboard, though they’re probably just clumps of alien dust. And they may be hard to get to, depending on how mangled the interior might be. If it’s not a crash, we may have something even more interesting to figure out. Oh, another piece of great news on my end: The team we sent out to find the ingress river just returned. They say the water is safe and tastes sweet as honey!”

“That may be the best news since Adam and Eve! Or since I found out I have a hot bod.”

“Wish us more luck on humanity’s first close encounter.” He paused, a heaviness gathering in his chest. “Which reminds me. If things go sideways in there, humanity’s in your hands. Stay frosty.”

“You know I intend to, for as long as I can.”

Pearce turned to Ensign Appleton. “Lucky you, you get to take point on this. The second that ticker beeps trouble, you back us out of there.”

“This ought to be above my pay grade.” Was that a pout on her face? She seemed careful to avoid eye contact with Ross, as if she knew she’d opened herself up to more of the usual from him.

She had.

“Great T-shirt idea,” Ross said. “‘Sacrifice Ensigns First’. Oh – fun fact about your pay grade: nobody gets paid anymore.”

Pearce told Duncan to return to Hope if they weren’t back in sixty-five minutes and to talk only with Dr. Wakefield in private.

“It’s her job to tell the others. She’ll know what to do.”

He faced his three officers. “Check your time. One hour of O2.”

V

The team of four strapped on their oxygen masks and head lamps and lined up. At the door’s blackness, Olivia Appleton switched on her green-back-lit Geiger counter and aimed its detector tube at the interior. 

From the end and behind Sullivan, Ross said in a mask-dampened voice, “Sweat not, Appleworm. Got your six.”

“A real howler, Tom. Somehow that worries me more than not having my 12 covered.” She mumbled something else that sounded to Pearce very much like “Only sixty more soul-crushing years with him around.”

Over Appleton’s head, Pearce saw an airlock, maybe ten feet long and ablaze with their lights. Luckily, the interior door at the far end was ajar. Appleton entered the airlock, the other three following. She swung open the inner door and stepped through. Pearce was as skittish as a gazelle drinking at the edge of a croc-infested river. After passing through the inner door, they emerged onto a narrow catwalk that ran about thirty feet to a ladder descending into darkness.

“Still harmless rads,” Appleton said with a half turn of her head.

“Excellent. Soldier on, Ensign.”

After negotiating the ladder to the bottom, they found themselves standing between two bulkhead walls in a passageway that appeared to be about seventy-five feet long and may have spanned the greater part of the craft’s full width. The permeating cold chilled Pearce to the bone.

Lieutenant Tom Ross did a scrutiny, directing his lamp light from side to side, up and down. 

“Not one alien scribble or symbol anywhere, including the airlock, I just remembered. Embedded, I’m guessing. Nothing shows up till she’s powered up. Same as with Hope. The catwalk and ladder are similar in size to ours.”

“Not surprised,” Pearce said. “The aliens – assuming they aren’t robots and the ship itself isn’t one – probably aren’t a lot different from us. I believe the evolution of intelligent beings favors a physicality like ours. Factoring in the influence of varying gravity, etc. etc, intelligent ETs probably range in size from primordial dwarfs to the tallest basketball players. That’s what I learned when researching for my — ha — never-published article ‘What ET May Really Look Like.’ If we find a preserved alien, or at least some clothing, I think it’ll support that.”

“Why wasn’t the ship crushed?” Appleton said.

“It’s under a hill. Static forces at work. The ship’s structure might be at least as strong as Hope’s. Pretty sure Hope could survive the same slow piling-on of weight over a long period. If it were under a mountain, different story.”

“Want to spec on the ship’s origin?” Commander Sullivan asked.

“Been wondering. A likely candidate is 118 Libra c. Just 15 light years from here, directly opposite Earth. It’s in its sun’s goldilocks zone, and spectral analysis showed its atmosphere could support organic life.”

“Why didn’t Earth receive signals, if the planet has an advanced civilization?” Sullivan asked. “Non-cable television. Radio. Heat signatures.”

“Their civilization — their technological development — may lag Earth’s. Let’s say it took the aliens one-hundred thousand years to get here in this ship, which so far looks no more sophisticated than ours. Add, say, another ten thousand for geological processes to bury the ship. These numbers aren’t hard-and-fast, of course, but one hundred and ten thousand years ago, Earth had already been gone for twenty-seven thousand years. And twenty-seven thousand years before these aliens left their planet, their ancestors probably hadn’t even learned how to send smoke signals to each other.”

“If you say so, Captain Einstein,” Appleton said.

Was she overly tired and stressed? He hadn’t said a thing that any of the three couldn’t have figured out on their own in five seconds. 

Sullivan shined her light just below Pearce’s face.  I wonder if their planet–“

“Was threatened and might be gone, too,” Ross said.

“Life…it’s so much more fragile than I ever imagined,” Appleton said softly. Her eyes searched the captain’s face, her forehead ridged. “Not going to make it, are we, Cap?”

Pearce forced himself to smile. “Olivia, we didn’t come all this far just to die as soon as we got here. Somebody once said, ‘There’s no education like adversity.’ What say we plan on becoming very educated.”

“If we fail to prepare, prepare to fail,” Sullivan said. “Ben Franklin, I think.”

“In for a penny, in for a pound,” Ross said. “Somebody around Ben’s time?”

Pearce approached a closed door he’d lit up seconds earlier. It would lead them the way they wanted to go.

He threw the recessed lever and slid the door open, its sigh the only sound in the alien craft’s tomb-like quiet. The colder, eons-old air from the ship’s deeper interior drenched them like a wave from the sea. Appleton shivered at the freezer-locker effect.

In his cone of light, a vast, empty compartment sprawled in front of them. Rows of evenly spaced bull-ring retractable tie-downs dotted the deck. Long scrape marks intertwined toward a huge side door that interrupted a line of wall carabiners from some of which hung lanyards. The door likely opened out and down to serve as an off-loading ramp.

“No indication so far the ship crashed,” Sullivan said.

“So what the hell happened?” Ross asked. “Looks like they off-loaded provisions.”

“Olivia,” Pearce said, “I don’t hear Ms. Geiger talking to you.”

She sidled closer to him, and in his light, her forehead glistened despite the chill.

He palmed her shoulder. “We’re going to be just fine.” Did his words sound as hollow to them as to himself?

They hurried across the compartment to a corridor roughly 40-feet long. Head-high on one wall was a row of hooks. For hanging apparel? At the end of the corridor, from what Pearce could discern in his light, was an open area. He felt as though he were on the verge of fainting. What in this great universe were they about to find?

Appleton slipped past him and trudged ahead along the corridor. She paused on occasion, perhaps to steady her nerves. Her elbow brushed along the wall as if that offered protection or kept her anchored to sanity. 

Pearce and the others took up behind her. At the opening, Appleton froze. Pearce heard her thick inhaling and exhaling.

She took two more steps, hesitated, and turned out of view.

“Olivia, wait!” Pearce said, five feet from the opening. His head throbbed. Was he about to lay eyes on alien remains and confirm his theory that extraterrestrials resembled humans? Would they find technology to reverse engineer or at least disassemble into parts for future use in various machines?

Appleton reappeared and almost bumped into Pearce, startling him. Her light blinded him for a moment. Above her mask, her wide-opened eyes flitted.

“I– This…can’t be!” she said.

The other three hair-pin pivoted into the opening. Their shaky lamps lit up what appeared to be the ship’s computer main-frame.

Pearce’s mouth opened but emitted no sounds. He staggered backward, reaching for a wall and trying to comprehend what he was seeing.

Ross gripped the top of his head and spun half-way around. “You’re kidding me. You’re kidding me. You’re kidding me.”

Sullivan slumped against the wall near Pearce. “How is this — possible?”

Pearce squeezed his eyes shut, then stared again at the inscription along the upper edge of the mainframe:

DESTINY ORGANIZATION’S 

RESTORATION AND INVIGORATION SYSTEM

“DORIS.” Appleton’s voice rasped just above a whisper.

Pearce ripped his mask off and flung it over his shoulder, letting it dangle. A cough burst from his lungs. He sucked in the stale air that was slowly being replaced by outside air. He bent, his hands clasping his knees. Regaining his strength, he shoved the back of a hand and wrist across his forehead. He straightened.

“This,” he said, “is the smaller ship assembled in orbit alongside ours. It was to be used either to rescue Hope if Hope had launched for Mars and run into trouble, or to transmit more supplies and settlers. In my meeting with Victor Arnold, I remember his fury over this ship going to waste.”

Appleton struggled for a second to tear away her mask. She shook her head. “Wait, what?”

Pearce took a moment. “To know anything for sure, to answer all the questions flying around in our skulls, we have to find the captain’s Log. Let’s pray it’s a hard copy like mine and preserved.”

The other two removed their masks. Ross swore, his known manner of expressing almost everything. Commander Sullivan, still leaning against the bulkhead, nodded, the circle of her lamplight dancing up and down on the opposite wall.

“It obviously left Earth months after us,” she said after gaining control of her breathing. “Had to be reconfigured, a crew trained and prepared–”

“It’s smaller,” Pearce said. “Same engine as Hope’s. Capable of greater speed. That’s how it arrived here apparently thousands of years earlier.”

“What in God’s name happened?” Sullivan said, leaning forward off the wall. “On Earth and here?”

Pearce removed his O2 tank and trained his light on a door leading fore. “Let’s hurry. Want to do this quick and clean.”

“Do what clean and…quick and…?” Appleton asked.

“On me, Ensign.” Had she not fully recovered from her shock?

They laid their O2 tanks and masks on the deck to be collected later. Pearce angled toward the door.

Sullivan thrust her hand out in front of him. “Wait. The asteroid – it must have missed.”

“Or did less damage than projected. Which seems impossible.”

“So if civilization survived, why is this ship here?”

“We need the log,” he said.

“The ship’s passengers. Did they die off soon after arriving? I mean, in all that time wouldn’t they have reproduced exponentially, built whole cities, states, nations?”

A chill snaked up his spine. “Die off? Or were killed off, by an error DORIS made? Or maybe not an error.”

“Tom…,” Appleton said. “Feeling funny…hot….”

Her Geiger counter and tube slipped from her fingers. They clanged and bounced on the deck sounding like a ball hammer rapidly tapping an anvil. Commander Sullivan scooped them up, pressed the tube into its anchor on the back of the Geiger, and secured the counter to loops at the waist of her jumpsuit.

Appleton’s knees buckled.

“Livvy!” Ross said. He caught her and laid her down on the cold metal deck. He put a hand under her neck, tilting her head to keep her light out of his eyes. “Look at me!”

Her brows knitted as her eyes tried to focus on his face.

“Talk to me!” Ross said, his voice rising.

“Tom–? My wing man… You – really did always have my six. My…bad. Go on…without me. Will wait….”

“No way I’m leaving you,” Ross said. “You’re not thinking clearly.”

“Embers burn – burning for you.”

“Now I know you’re delusional.”

She tried to put her eyes on Sullivan. “Commander, please don’t lose my – Geiger.” To Ross again: “Is she…really your cousin?”

“Wha–? Christ. Yes, was my cousin. Look, the most dangerous thing anyone in the universe could ever do is get between Tom Ross and Olivia Appleton.”

“If she’s in shock from all this,” Sullivan said, “it’s understandable.”

“I think she has what Doc says the others have,” Pearce said. His muscles tightened and sweat formed on his upper lip even as a coldness washed through him like ice water.

Ross twisted, fixed his headlamp on Pearce and Sullivan. “She’s running a temp. You two go on. I can haul her up the ladder. Ainsley will help me take her to the doc.”

“Don’t speak to anyone but Wakefield about this ship,” Pearce said. “And remind Ainsley and his crew to keep quiet. Some civilians will ask about Sull and me. We’re still exploring and will return shortly. I don’t want rumors flying all over the place. And panic. Sull and I will explain everything to them when we get back, hopefully with some clues about this mysterious disease–”

“And the story on Earth,” Sullivan said. She seemed to be fighting back tears.

Ross hoisted Appleton to her feet and heaved her limp body up over his shoulders in a fireman’s carry. As light fell across the lieutenant’s face, Pearce glimpsed skin bunching around his red, glistening eyes.

“Hasta la vista,” Ross said, his voice cracking.

Pearce whirled to Sullivan. “Flank speed.”

VI

Captain Pearce and Commander Sullivan dashed into a long, wide compartment — and halted in their tracks. Their lights illuminated row after row of preservation cylinders, all open and empty.

At least DORIS hadn’t murdered them – purposely or not – in their sleep.

He tapped Sullivan’s elbow with a knuckle. They bolted past the cylinders toward the cockpit. The pounding of their boots echoed off the bulkhead walls, his heart thumping in his ears nearly as loudly.

He kept his light aimed ahead with a minimum of shaking.

“The cockpit! It’s open!” He didn’t need the C4 he’d brought along. They bridged the distance in under ten seconds.

Inside the cockpit, he sat down in the captain’s seat and found the safe sitting in the same spot as Hope’s. He wrenched the handle and pulled, the hinges screeching a soft cry. “A log identical to mine! Good old ink-pen technology.”

He stood and unbuckled the book-sized chronicle on a pull-out shelf. He flipped through pages until he reached the last entry. Sullivan leaned in at his elbow.

“Holy Christ,” he said. “Look. Last entry dated 17 November 124,583 Earth Years. More than 14,000 years ago!”

A soft gasp escaped from Sullivan’s mouth. He returned to the first page. His shaky finger traced down the lines.

“Essential personnel data. Crew names, ranks. Passenger list. Fifty total. Ship’s captain … Norma Binson. The ship was renamed Hope II. Decent of them. Here. Departure date 24 May 2039. Two friggin’ years after we left!”

“So what in holy hell happened?”

“Binson must’ve made notes. Captains are -– were — instructed to maintain detailed records-– Wait, bingo.”

He read aloud from a section Binson had dated 14 May 2039, ten days before Hope II left Earth. Binson had dubbed the section “Pre-Launch”:

“Immediately after the grav-tug rocket malfunctioned and veered away from the asteroid, people everywhere in the Global Media began demanding that nukes and the orbital laser cannons be used to deflect the monstrous rock, despite scientists’ warning that even if both the cannons and the nukes were used together, they would be useless to deter an object of this mass and momentum.

“Several countries – Russia, China, and France, as well as the U.S. and others – coordinated a simultaneous launch of hundreds of missiles programmed to detonate together as laser cannons fired. This effort did destroy most of the asteroid, but left a 2-klick-wide chunk that slammed into the caldera at Yellowstone National Park.”

Pearce recoiled. How in unholy hell did such incredibly bad luck happen! Had Victor Arnold been right about humans not deserving to live on? Pearce shook the crazy thought out of his head. His stomach roiling, he gave a look at Sullivan’s pallid face and quivering lips. He steeled himself and pressed on.

“The impact in the caldera and the subsequent bouncing of the Earth’s crust set off a series of immense earthquakes that instantly killed hundreds of thousands. It also created such a perturbation in the caldera that volcanologists predicted an extinction-class eruption to occur sometime in early June 2040.”

Sullivan’s puff made him realize he was holding his own breath. “Extinction-class! Oh my God!”

The massive caldera — everyone knew about it. The seventy-kilometer-wide volcano beneath it erupted on average every 600,000 years, the last eruption occurring 640,000 years ago. An eruption could end life as efficiently as the asteroid.

In the oppressive darkness and silence of the buried Hope II, a numbness quieted him. If you shook a can of pop, and snapped off the tab – boom. That was what the asteroid’s gigantic core had set up to happen to the pressurized magma and poisonous gases trapped below the caldera.

He put the edge of his light on Commander Sullivan’s face just enough to see the shimmering gleam of her moist eyes.

“Jason…we’re the last of the human race.”

Had she just now realized that? Or had she until now, like him, clung to the hope that life on Earth somehow hadn’t perished and would go on? No sane person would not harbor and nourish that hope.

He returned to the log. “Binson says here that none of the gel experts could be found. She and her crew relied solely on the advice about the gel from Project Manager Victor Arnold: just do what the AI says. According to her, he inspected and tested the cylinders, etcetera etcetera. Oh, the day before Hope II launched, Arnold committed suicide. His psych profile probably barred him from this trip, too. Bet millions of people took that route — go out on their own terms, in a controlled, less gruesome manner.”

He shoved that last thought out of his mind and skipped to the final pages of the log in Captain Binson’s “Post-Arrival” section.

His finger raced over the writing and stopped. “Hmm, believe I have something:

“Date 7 Nov. 124,583, 13:46: Johnson and Tarasov became ill this a.m., and later Dr. Sato. Sato described her symptoms as flu-like but ruled out a virus. She will do more tests with the minimal equipment she has. But her energy is fading.

“Date 8 Nov., 09:15: Four more are ill. Sato has quarantined herself and the others in a dome home on the fringe of the camp. She’s communicating via radio, though her voice is weakening. She said her air and soil tests revealed no toxins.”

The captain shot a look at Sullivan. “This–!”

“The same thing affecting us! The planet must be uninhabitable after all.”

His dizziness tilted the cockpit.

Binson’s handwriting was no longer an easy read:

“Date 10 Nov., 21:36: Five more sick. Dr. Sato is barely able to work. Earlier today she said she initially had wondered if DORIS had erred in her analysis of the atmosphere. So she scrapped DORIS’s analysis result and had her do another from scratch. The exact same analysis was reached. The doctor then reviewed the data on the effects of 581g’s atmosphere. A table in a pamphlet displayed a range of extremes of atmospheric compositions and where in that range humans could endure. Sato confirmed that 581g’s atmosphere fell well within that endurance range. She admitted to being perplexed. She said she will continue thinking about it, but her physical state is deteriorating rapidly.

“Date 11 Nov., 10:19: Sato dead. We without a doctor. Johnson and Tarasov also dead. Another 5 ill. Converted 2 more dome homes into quarantines, though I think this is of little value, since don’t believe we have contagion. Something else on this planet is killing us.”

That last sentence, which Binson had underscored twice with heavy, uneven lines, jabbed an icy finger into his heart.

Her handwriting and mental acuity had become that of a first-grader’s.

“Date 15 Nov., 18:27: Hopeless. 44 dead. Filled a total of 5 dome homes. I, too, ill. Difficult to write & think. A disease ‘that cannot be a disease’ throughout this tiny group of brave souls. Now certain we not achieve objective of starting a civilization to await Hope.

“Date 17 Nov., 07:33: Final entry. Only 3 left. Rachel and Phillipe still have a little strength, will turn on transponder, tho will last only few years. They will open or unlock all interior doors. Then we exit Hope II for last time, sealing it up behind. No Thanksgiving for us.”

“To: Captain Jason Pearce of Hope: If by miracle u find this, know it saddens me, what awaits u. I pray that somehow u escape this ‘disease’ that has killed us. May God be with u.”

Pearce slammed the log shut and pinned it under his arm. He took in Sullivan’s grim, taut face. “If we don’t hurry up and figure this out….” He mimed a gun at his head, pulled the trigger.

VII

“If we don’t survive, we’ve made the last journey humankind will ever make,” Doc Wakefield said softly. If she expected a response, none was given.

She stood inside the closed cockpit with Captain Pearce, Commander Sullivan, and Lieutenant Ross. None of them took much notice of the outside activity visible in a side viewing window: supplies being toted into dome homes, a rectangle of land being prepped for their synthetic seeds, three of the children, including Ainsley Duncan’s daughter Rachel, trying to scale a baobab-like tree.

Like Ross, Wakefield had mostly recovered from the devastating news about Earth and Hope II’s crew. Her head down, she rubbed her upper arm as if this heat-intolerant woman had caught a chill. She lifted her eyes to Pearce.

“Ten more are sick. No disease, no radioactivity, no toxins to be found. What? It’s bloody well kicking our arses.” Stress always thickened her accent.

Exhausted, Pearce dragged the palm of his hand down over his face. Utter helplessness expressed by the ship’s doctor was not the cheeriest news he’d wanted to hear. He regarded her again.

“You said Appleton, too, has stabilized since you put her in quarantine with the others–“

“Very happy to hear that,” Ross said.

“All of our sick have stabilized,” Pearce said. “Binson didn’t mention that any of hers had – though ‘stabilized’ doesn’t mean our sick are out of the woods, as you pointed out when you said patients can relapse. All of Binson’s people died. They had virtually the same symptoms. The only difference between our sick and their sick is that ours were quarantined inside and, per Binson, theirs outside. Because we kept the airlock closed behind us for safety, the Earth-level O2 is richer inside the ship. But that shouldn’t matter since 581g’s lower O2, which hasn’t changed since Binson’s time, isn’t harmful.”

A nausea tore through him. They were a listing ship with a safe port nowhere in sight, doom gathering over the horizon like a black cloud of vampires. Why not just accept it? The bastard Victor Arnold was right: Humans are just another species slated for the slaughter house.

No! Light a candle rather than curse the darkness! Wasn’t “Options never include giving up” his impassioned credo throughout his Naval command? What kind of leader would he be if he couldn’t lead when leading was most needed?

The usual nightmarish thoughts about DORIS again dogged him like a festering wound that refused to heal. Despite having shown herself to be error-free since landing, had she somehow committed mass murder after all, via either horrible error or, God forbid, roguish intent? Skimming Binson’s log, he had seen no references to suspicions or speculations pertaining to the AI, but that didn’t necessarily mean a DORIS connection to Hope II’s deaths didn’t exist.

Putting that possibility aside for now, he recalled an old habit developed from a research-writing lesson: If you don’t know which way to go, put your assumptions and opinions away in a drawer, gather all the available facts, and see where they lead. What did he have to lose with this approach to a possible solution? Only valuable time!

“We have to comb through everything,” he said to Wakefield. “Grab up all your records: atmospheric data printouts, test results acquired on Earth, anything and everything. I don’t know what to look for, but maybe something will stand out.”

He sighed, sweeping his eyes over the three of them. “My very best bad plan.”

As Wakefield accelerated from the cockpit, he looked askance at Sullivan and Ross. “I have to confess I have no idea where to start.”

“You know what they always say,” Ross said, leaning against the bulkhead, arms folded high across his chest.

Pearce gave him an acknowledging grimace. “‘Cept I don’t actually know where the beginning is.”

“Start with what you’re thinking about right now,” Sullivan said.

He gazed upward at no particular spot as he often did when hailing the ship’s AI.

“DORIS, I hope you can help us instead of make things worse. Play back everything you said after Hope reduced speed, arrived at the planet, and made its initial entry into the atmosphere.”

DORIS said, “Beginning playback:

“Captain Jason Pearce. Are you fully awake and comprehending, Captain? Yes. Atmosphere is reestablished. Nutrients were supplied. Avionics and lighting up. Your preservation gel has been almost fully purged from your lungs and other organs and will soon be completely siphoned from your cylinder. Your brain and heart are functioning normally. The Restoration Handbook states that all personnel must remain on board for three hours to allow their gel residue to be fully purged by the ship’s oxy–”

“DORIS, stop.”

Wakefield had come back loaded with binders and stapled documents. She piled them onto a shelf Pearce had jerked out of a bulkhead niche.

“Bear with me,” Pearce told the Doc. “You did verify our air quality, O2 level?”

She gave him a slow eye blink. “What do you think?”

“Bear. With. Me. Excluding me, what about everyone’s heart and brain function?”

“Took a few hours, but I checked everyone to the extent I could with my limited equipment. I found nothing and DORIS confirmed my findings, to the extent she could.”

“Okay, a ‘maybe’ we can revisit later if necessary. And the gel residue? Fully purged from everyone after three hours?”

“You know I don’t have nano probes or even a microscope. Couldn’t examine anything on a cellular level. Anyway, DORIS said–”

“I know. Three hours and the gel’s gone.”

Pearce, wishing he could escape all this, nudged moisture from his upper lip with a cold, shaky finger. He was already thinking he had stumbled into a dark, dead-end alley.

“But as someone said many millennia ago, ‘Trust but verify.’ That certainly applies when it comes to a machine without one-hundred percent reliability–“

“It especially applies,” Sullivan said, “when you realize that what’s left of humanity is at stake.”

Pearce nodded. To the Doc, he said, “You’ve personally verified everything, to the extent you could. Everything except the gel purge. So that’s an unknown as for as I’m concerned. It’s probably a pointless trail since DORIS lately has been reliable on simple things. But pull out the Restoration Handbook – which Victor Arnold told me I’d never need! Find the section on the gel.”

Tense moments later she rotated the handbook toward him. Her finger tapped. “Here.”

“Have you read it yourself yet?” Commander Sullivan said.

“I’ve had my hands full,” the Doc said. “Plus, saw no reason to.”

Pearce skimmed. Sullivan, brushing against his shoulder and distracting him for a second, bent toward the handbook. He read aloud from a mid-page paragraph:

“‘In a variety of atmospheric compositions, the gel, which permeates and preserves’ … so forth and so on … ‘was found to be completely purged after three hours…’.”

“Well, I guess there’s nothing here – Wait!” Pearce thought his head would explode. “I–I can’t believe this! It says ‘completely purged after three hours in indris, rhesus macaques, and other small mammals!‘ In goddamn animals! In humans, it says ‘the minimum time for a complete and safe purging is three days‘!”

Sullivan drew back, her sharp intake of air audible. “DORIS…she made a critical error. Or went rogue. Substituted–”

“Hours for days.” The Doc, her gaze unfocused, seemed to be mumbling to herself.   

With his fist, Ross backward-slugged the bulkhead he was leaning against. “Well, that just mucks things up real good.” 

The heel of Doc’s hand was pressed against her forehead. “Maybe I can explain. When we’re outside with the gel residue still in us, the planet’s four percent less oxygen can’t fully purge it, can’t burn it off. My wild guess–and I do mean wild–is that the gel is likely trapped at or below the microtubule level long enough to interfere with normal cell growth and function, blocking adenosine triphosphate from supplying the energy for powering cells. Upshot? No cell replenishment and slow, certain death.”

A dam burst loose in Pearce. “Doc….you — you’re our savior! What you did – you brought the sick inside. The ship’s oxygen–”

“Is rich enough to break down the gel and burn it out of our bodies.”

Sullivan spun to Ross. “Quick. Get everybody inside and lock down.”

Ross pushed off from the bulkhead and punched the air. “You, fine doctor, saved Olivia’s life!” He hurtled away, shouting, “And everybody else’s!”

After falling quiet for a long moment, the Doc laid an uncharacteristically warm gaze on Pearce. Was sarcasm as a way of life and maybe a coping mechanism yielding to a kinder, gentler persona chiseled by one crisis after another?

“And to think I had started feeling selfish for keeping them inside the ship because of my heat intolerance. I seriously thought about moving them all outside right after I told you I was concerned about a contagion. Figured the fresh air might help. None of you would have argued with me. Glad I told myself, ‘Quackery! What’s fresh air got to do with it? Might as well be selfish since it makes no difference. They’ll be more comfortable and so will I.’”

Sullivan shook her head, chuckling. “Who would’ve ever guessed selfishness would one day save the only intelligent life we know of from circling down the drain.”

“Thank our lucky galaxies,” Doc said, “we still have a five-day supply of O2.”

VIII

It was almost midnight. Captain Jason Pearce, along with Commander Breanne Sullivan and Lieutenant Tom Ross, had grouped up in the computer-mainframe niche while the Doc tended to her patients in sick bay. They stood slightly behind and to the side of Ainsley Duncan, their eyes unwavering from the former cyber cop’s engagement with DORIS.

A hulking presence even without his exo, Duncan had lit up DORIS’ holographic diagnostic monitors. Both of his hands gesticulated in the air, his fingers spreading, pinching, and twirling, engaging a large hologram that half-encircled him. These motions magnified, paused, and backgrounded one layer after another of a complex, hierarchical computer-code schematic.

“Scanned her neural networks and controller, cognitive and adaptive data-learning algorithms – associative memories, all twelve billion or so of her main and sub-routines, ARA – abstractions, problem reformulations, and approximations. Thought vectors…no glitches. APIs, feedback loops…in order. Nanophotonic quantum phase switching unaltered. Heuristic analysis finally shows….no viruses–”

“So what’s the plain-English version here?” Ross said, irritation in his voice.

“Keep your blouse on, Lieuy,” Duncan said, giving Ross glancing attention. “Don’t want to fall through a trap door DORIS may have set if she somehow went rogue. We can’t lose her. Her database is too important to our survival–”

“Our battery banks should keep her powered until we rig up a way to recharge them,” Pearce said.

Duncan nodded and set his sights on Ross again. “Look, we’ve all been driven nutty as fruitcakes over this three-hours business. Let’s try to keep a grip, eh?” He went back to work. “Checking updates, most recent programming activity. Hold on. Rounding third base…. Okay, got something. A footprint. Yeah…about that, the three-hours thing?”

He twisted at the waist and eyed them.

“Can’t blame it on AI roguishness or DORIS’s alleged one-percent unreliability. Nor did DORIS retrieve the wrong word by way of, say, a referencing failure due to her aged circuitry. Nope, ‘hours’ showed up in place of ‘days’ solely as a result of human intervention.”

The three officers gasped. Sullivan’s hand flew to her throat. 

Duncan’s finger tapped twice at a line of green code in a narrow data column at the hologram’s edge.

“Right here. Time-stamped. The system recorded the deletion and substitution at 22:36, August 4, 2037. A week before we left.”

He gazed straight ahead, as if unable to face them. “No other way to put it. Sabotage.”

Sullivan and Ross looked at each other, then stared speechless at Duncan.

Something heavy and repulsive slammed Peace’s gut. It quickly gave way to a fierce hotness in his face. He’d never in his life felt overwhelmed by a murderous rage — until now. 

Ross’s lower lip curled. “What knuckle-shit bastard would do something like this?”

“On both ships!” Sullivan said.

Duncan waved a hand. “There’s more. Here.” He had scrolled farther down into the data column. “Another quick deletion a minute later at 22:37 – the portal to DORIS’s physician program.”

“What…?” Sullivan said, her face rust-red and contorted. “We didn’t even know DORIS had a physician program. Binson might have been able to save her people.”

“The deletion,” Duncan said, fingers still in brisk animation, “was access, not the physician program itself. Bringing it back online…now. Ah, this will really rock the Doc. Wait’ll she finds out there’s a holographic microscope and other wonderful tools.” He faced the captain. “That seems to be all. Any ideas?”

Pearce stayed with his disturbing thoughts for a few more seconds. He sensed Sullivan’s eyes on him, reading him as they had done many times before.

“Jason? Yes. You know who, don’t–?”

“A lot of the people working on the project were enraged over not being picked for the journey,” he said. “But the only person who had everything needed to pull off something like this was Victor Arnold. Only he was authorized to access DORIS. He not only had AI knowledge about DORIS, he was somewhat of an expert on the preservation gel. The only people peering over his shoulder were the union workers and the troops following him around to make sure he stayed on the job. None of them could’ve known what he was doing. He must have had the opportunity to make the change during his walk-through of the ship four nights before his final meeting with me.”

A momentary unsteadiness rocked him. Arnold had already laid the seeds for their destruction even as he sat briefing Pearce. He’d reached out across the millennia and trillions of miles in an attempt to kill them all — because in his crazed way of thinking, the human race didn’t deserve to live on.

Ross stared at Pearce. “But why not do any one of many other things more efficient at killing us? Why not program DORIS to stay in sleep mode when we entered the atmosphere? We would’ve crashed and all been killed instant–”

“I’ll take a stab,” Sullivan said. “That kind of reprogramming would’ve required a fair amount of time, enough to attract inquisitive eyes.”

Duncan nodded. “Same with deleting the physician program. It consists of thousands of independent components. After deleting each, he would’ve been prompted by ‘Are You Sure You Want to Delete?’”

“The union workers would’ve been curious, to say the least,” Pearce said. “He was known to hate them, and they hated him right back. They would’ve loved to find something that got him into trouble with his two baby-sitter Marines. Maybe that’s why he didn’t simply steal the gel handbook he wasn’t seen going up with.”

Duncan expelled air. “Well, that’s that. I declare DORIS ninety-nine point nine percent reliable.” He half-shrugged, flashing a modest grin. “Best I can do.”

Dr. Martha Wakefield approached from the quarantined area wearing the vestige of a smile despite appearing frazzled.

Pearce gave her first the bad news about Victor Arnold, then the good news about DORIS’s physician program. In an instant, the latter cut her grief and anger short and put her half-smile back on her face.

“I feel like I’ve been whip-lashed,” she said. “Now I understand why DORIS responded to my medical questions with ‘No access to data.’ I shrugged it off, but in retrospect I should’ve gone to Ainsley to find out exactly what that meant. And it’s now obvious why the mission planners didn’t give us the medical equipment I needed to find the culprit causing the sickness we were threatened by.”

Her glance bounced from one to the next. “More from the good-news department. All of my patients are recovering, and I don’t anticipate relapses–”

“How’s this for recovery, Doc?”

Everyone pivoted to see Ensign Olivia Appleton, her hair in a bun on the back of her head, shuffling at the pace of a injured snail into the mainframe niche from the sick bay. Though pale and rheumy-eyed, she wore a thin smile that seemed to say she was grateful to be on her feet.

Ross’s face lit up. The lieutenant, too, was no doubt grateful she was on her feet.

“Most of the others are vertical and milling around,” Appleton said. Her gaze swept back and forth across the group, finally landed on Ross. “I imagine they’ll be coming out soon.”

The Doc nodded at Pearce. “We can go ahead and bring her up to speed.”

A few minutes after hearing the shocking Arnold sabotage story, Appleton was composed again. She shook her head. “I feel so terrible for Captain Binson and her people.”

“They didn’t die in vain,” Sullivan said. “If it hadn’t been for them, and the Doc here….”

“Right right, but let’s not forget Tom’s big contribution.” To raised eyebrows, Appleton gave Ross a pleasant look. A sign she was softening?

Ross stiffened a bit and returned a questioning, semi-hard stare. “Say again?”

Pearce figured Ross had to be asking himself: Now that she’s back to normal, is she back to normal?

“Just think,” Appleton said, “If Tom hadn’t had a bladder issue out there – and hadn’t been such a clumsy oaf–”

“I’m stupefied,” Sullivan said, looking from Appleton to Ross, then at the Doc. “Seems your selfishness and these two lovebirds’ refusal to belay their fussin’ and fightin’ saved humankind.”

“Hmm,” Pearce said, poking his tongue into his cheek, “I’ll be sure to annotate the captain’s log with a comment about the life-saving characteristics of animosity and selfishness.“

Everyone laughed. Appleton edged over to the lieutenant as if approaching something emitting deadly gamma-rays. Her eyes searched his as her arms encircled his waist.

“People are too important, life is too precious. You and I have to stop being so petty and mean to each other. I remember what I said to you in my delirium. That was the real me. Can we reboot? Tom and Olivia 2.0?”

Pearce fought off thinking of his dead wife, as well as the billions of lives lost on Earth. Yes, people were far, far too important. His gaze meandered to Sullivan. She was far too important — to him. And she didn’t even know it. Was he important to her, in the same way?

Ross still hadn’t returned Appleton’s embrace. “Knock me over with a hummingbird feather. A hug from you? What Twilight Zone have I strayed into?”

Appleton leaned back a bit and seemed to study the middle of his face.

“By the way,” she said with a full-fledged grin, “the little warty thing on your columella is kinda cute. Glad you didn’t get it removed. Still have my ring? You can throw it back at me, if you’re still want of a wife.”

Ross’s shoulders seemed to relax. Had all cautious skepticism drained away? He slapped a side leg pocket. “Right where it’s been for…the longest.” His arms took her in. Even at this point, did he feel as though he might be hugging a pint-sized grizzly?

She rested the side of her head against his chest, her eyes directed at Sullivan.

“My Geiger in a safe place?” After Sullivan signaled A-OK, Appleton said to Ross, “Why didn’t you let me go?”

“You never let me go.”

“Beg your par–“

“You just said it. Your Geiger. You couldn’t let it go – it was a gift from me. I caught you occasionally stroking the thing like it was your pet rock. And remember when that tree walked into my face? And when I took a spill down the slope? You micro-winced both times. Reflexive. I knew you still cared deep down.”

Her cheekbones brandished a pink-red tinge. “You were right.” She patted his chest once. “Gee, you almost came close to sounding wise.”

She half-turned to Pearce. “Since you’re president and all, I do believe you can authorize yourself to hitch us up.”

Pearce chuckled. “True enough.” He noticed Sullivan was staring at the deck, apparently lost in thought. “Suuull, what’s up?”

She glimpsed over, then back to the deck. “Oh, nothing…. Well, just wondering.” Her gaze lifted to Pearce in two stages. Pearce saw in her moist eyes a softening and warmth he’d never seen before. “Jason, do you think you…and I… we could ever–?” She bit her lip.

“Commander, what are you trying to–“

“No no no. I was just, you know, thinking hypothetically–” She flapped her arms against her legs. “Forget it.”

“Forget what, Sull? Sull?”

She adjusted her uniform which didn’t need adjusting. She lowered her head, gazing at the deck again but did she see it? “Okay, cards on the table, and I don’t give a crap who hears. Remember when I told you I divorced my ex-husband because he changed his mind about wanting kids? Well, that was only part of it. The other part — the other part….”

“She needs help,” Appleton said. “Every woman can tell when another woman is afflicted. I’ve watched you, Commander. Watched your eyes. Cap, you’re her beau. Am I on target, Commander?”

Sullivan’s head did a shaky nod. “The other part is…I divorced him mainly because I fell in love with you…have loved you practically from the day we met.”

Something seized Pearce’s throat. Did he hear her right? All along, she had cared for him, loved him, even while he was still in love with his dying wife?

Sullivan worked an uncomfortable-looking smile. “There. Thought I’d go for broke. Let’s face it, we might not make it past the next ten days.”

Pearce cleared his throat twice, tried to quell his nerves. “If you think for one second I feel the same way about you–” He paused, aimed a look at the others, then back at her. “If that’s what you think — yeah, cards on the table — you’re dead right. I’ll do you one better. How about a double ceremony? I’ll authorize the Doc to do the duty.”

Sullivan hopped over to Peace, took his hand, and squeezed it, her eyes still watery.

The Doc said, “The more marrying, the better. We’re going to need lots of babies around here to jump-start this little colony, this new civilization.” She threw a sly smile Appleton’s way. “Right, Livvy?”

Appleton beamed up at Ross. “The first one’s on the way. She told me I’m two months along.”

Ross blinked twice. He had the puzzled look of someone who realizes he has just been stabbed in the stomach but doesn’t yet feel the pain. “Uh! You — you’re gonna be– We’re gonna be a daddy!”

Appleton poked him in the upper arm with a finger. “Slow down. You. You’re going to be a daddy. Care to take a guess at what I’m going to be?”

The others laughed.

Still smiling, the Doc turned to Pearce. “I was so happy when the gel manufacturers told me in my early meetings with them that the gel also protects fetuses. Now we’ll soon have a jolly sweet baby we need. I wish more of the women were expecting.”

Ross twisted his head in the Doc’s direction. He still did not seem to be entirely himself. “I can help out with that…if need be.”

Everyone laughed again–everyone except Appleton, who finger-rammed him again, harder. 

“By the way, Doc,” she said, “you’re another one that’s only 99 percent reliable. I’m not two months along. It’s more like 137,000 years.”

More laughter. Pearce and Sullivan, still holding hands, turned and started a slow walk toward the cockpit. Pearce heard some of the young couple’s conversation before they were out of earshot.

“You know,” Ross said, “you never told me your maiden name.”

“Grisby.”

“Frisbee?”

“Funny.”

“You never told me your middle name, either.”

“Doris.”

“Ha. So that’s why you said you like DORIS’s name.”

“My Grandma Karen’s middle name. Speaking of my grandparents, something else I never told you. At a wedding reception when I was six years old, my Grandpa Jerry and I walked around together exploring the building, as he said we always did at receptions, funerals, and such things. He stopped walking, bent down, and took my face in his hands. ‘Sweetheart,’ he said, ‘when you grow up, you’re gonna marry someone who’ll love you with all his heart and soul. Maybe even as much as I love you.’”

At that, Pearce glanced back and saw Appleton smile, her eyes drinking in Ross’s face. “You know what?” she said. “It sure looks like my grandpa’s prediction was right.”

Pearce strained to hear her. “One thing I know for sure,” she said, “Grandpa Jerry really, really loved me. He asked me a million times, ‘Who does Grandpa love?’ I always answered, ‘Me!'” She paused. “Grandpa lost most of his hearing in his late years. He said the most depressing thing in his life was that seventy percent of the time, he couldn’t understand me even with his hearing aids. It broke his heart. His hearing didn’t matter to me. I loved him anyway. We had so many good times together.”

Inside the dimly lit cockpit, Pearce and Sullivan stood at the side viewing window. They peered up at the two small moons, maybe three hand-widths apart in the star-strewn sky. Moments later their attention shifted to the Milky Way Galaxy nudging into view. The white and gold jewel-brilliance erupted through the hill’s treetops. A soft, pinkish hue hung over everything in the cockpit. The Milky Way had captivated Pearce countless times in his life. As he took it in with Sullivan by his side, he had the comforting sensation of being not on a strange alien world but right at home on the old one.

“Under my authority as President,” Pearce said, “I give this planet the name of…New Earth.”

“Oh, that’s perfect, Jason,” Sullivan said, gently leaning against him. She squeezed his arm in the way she’d always squeezed it. “It’s a perfect world. Fertile ground, drinkable water…. We’re going to make it. We’re not going to die off before our time under this red dwarf sun.”

Pearce turned to the woman soon to be his new wife. Victor Arnold, the vindictive, murderous maniac, could not have been more wrong. “We do deserve to make it. We proved it. We never gave up,” he heard himself mumble.

To her quizzical look, he said, “A full report later. Right now you and I have something a lot more important to attend to. DORIS – and you’d better be 100-percent reliable on this – close and lock the cockpit door.”

Sullivan put her arms around his waist and grinned. “You have to call me Breanne now.”

________________________

EPILOG

Captain’s Log, Sunday, 13:45, May 23, 139,024

This morning at 0700 hours, the Doc graced my dome with her presence. Some members of our small colony, including the Doc, insisted my residence should be called the White House. Never mind that there was no longer much white left to it. It was almost fully capped by a fast-growing, beautiful red-and-lavender-flowered vine that had been planted by a team two months ago at First Lady Breanne’s request. The vine resembled the bougainvillea I’d seen adorning many homes and fences in Florida.  

Breanne was still getting some well-deserved rest in our added-on bedroom. Ten hours a day for the past several weeks, she’d been working hard. She, Duncan, and Akio Shimoto, the mechanical engineer, had made several trips to the buried Hope II, removing and hauling back items that included piping, insulation, wiring, and the pads from the cylinders. She’d plied her civil-engineering skills to construct not only a system for waste disposal and treatment, but also one for water purification and delivery from the five wells dug by Duncan and fed by the ingress river curving nearby them on its way to the ocean.

The Doc sat down at my small table, and I poured two cups of New Earth’s first tea. I had heated the tea on a wood-burning stove built by Shimoto, who also had made small lamps that burned fuel from recently discovered tar pits–a little smoky and smelly but not bad with our dome’s ventilating windows. The tea had been confected from several herbs gathered from the field. Our cups, the table, and the chairs, like so many other items, had been carpentered from the nearby baobab-like trees yet to be named by our biologist.

I set her tea in front of her. “Here. Something that vaguely looks like tea but–“

“But which has the faint essence of bloody weasel innards?” the Doc said with a straight face, her British accent heaped on thick.

“Don’t pick on my tea. It’s too weak to fight back.”

I sat down across from her and asked how she was holding up in the heat.

She shrugged. “This grimalkin constantly reminds herself her low tolerance was a blessing.”

She shifted in her seat, then told me something she’d been meaning to tell me since they arrived on the planet.

“Before we launched,” she said, “I as a psychologist was on the panel for recommending the best of the qualified candidates for the journey. The pool of people was huge, and I had to do an awful lot of background checks. I worked for weeks, some days around the clock. I found common threads, connections you may’ve noticed for a while now.”

She brought the tea to her lips as if a scorpion lurked inside. “Butters!” She sipped and smack her lips. “No, wait. Not bad.”

“Many things are possible with low expectations.” 

She leveled her gaze at him. “In the end, I saw I’d be able to base my recommendations on an attribute I believe is as important to survival as the candidates’ healthy bodies, stable minds, and dual skills. Maybe more so. It’s the one factor that best strengthens one’s resolve to carry on against the worst odds. The panel eventually all agreed.”

I gave her a steady look. “All right….”

“You really have been busy.”

“We presidents have a lot on our plates. Now that we have plates.”

“Why do you think I recommended Tom and Olivia?”

“Comic relief?”

She smiled. “This is where I could say, ‘By all means, do keep guessing.’ As you know, they’d planned to marry before launch but their relationship fizzled a few weeks after I selected them. Too late to scratch them. Glad it was. Look at them now. As I thought would happen, they’re two blazing hot suns in a tight orbit around each other. And wait till that baby comes! What about Ainsley Duncan? He has his daughter, as you know. None of the selected children could be separated from a parent or caring adult relative, of course. You also know your explosives team, Paul and Janet, are husband and wife. And all of the other passengers? Each is closely connected to at least one other passenger.”

“And Breanne and I.”

“Was saving you two for last. But I’ll ask now: What would happen if the commander was at risk or got hurt? You’d bust your butt to get to her and help her. She’d do the same for you.”

“I’d help anyone who’s hurt,” I said.

“A given. But if the person hurt was Breanne, you know bloody well you’d react faster and try harder to help. So would she in the reverse.”

It took me only a couple of seconds to nod. I poured us more tea. “Because we love and value each other.”

“Having someone to love also motivates us to care more about everyone else. That’s because we know that caring about the group as a whole helps insure the survival of each individual member of the group – including the one you love.”

“Basketball coach Phil Jackson said, ‘The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.’ You recommended individuals who loved one of your other recommendations.” He gave her a two-fingered salute. “Even better.”

“Or who at least cared for one of them. I could see that budding in your and Breanne’s case.”

She stared off to the side of him. “Sad to say, your depression over the death of your wife had me worried it would suck the wind out of you at exactly the wrong times.”

She leaned away, a smile forming at the edges of her lips.

“But the panel was rock-solid sold on your record and leadership abilities. They also reminded me that besides your alternate who didn’t have your command capability, you were the only other person trained to pilot Hope. Captain Jason Pearce would not be scratched no matter what. I then searched for a qualified person who cared about you and who you might care about. She was right under my nose — and right under yours. Snooping into your background, I found out a number of people in your circles thought Breanne’s heart beat only for you for some time, and you were the only one who’d failed to notice because of your despair over losing your wife.

“What I’d hoped would happen is Breanne would snap you out of your depression in due time after we arrived here, where there is no Navy to prohibit your relationship. The panel and I agreed you and Breanne would likely be a good paired pick. Turns out we were right as rain.”

My grin felt sheepish. “And you. You have your nephew, of course. Tony.”

“Gee, thanks for noticing.” The grin that had split across her face dissolved. “He’s the only child ever in my life and I love him like a son. While my brother and his wife were in the hospital with fatal injuries from a car accident, I promised them I’d take good care of him.”

I slid my cup aside. “You know, I can’t wait for Olivia to have her baby. What a morale booster that’ll be. We’ll have to have a celebration to welcome and memorialize the birth of the first native New Earther. They want a boy or a girl?”

“Our physician program allowed me to test her. It’s a boy. Tom didn’t care. Just a healthy baby. Olivia wanted a boy. She said his middle name will be Paul, after her dad and her Grandpa Paul. The first name will be Jerry, after her Grandpa Jerry -– her non-bio grandpa! Figure that. He encouraged her toward science and the military. She credits him for putting her on the path that led her to here. He saved her life, she said. She must have really loved him.”

“And vice-versa.”

“While we’re on the subject of babies: to maximize how many healthy ones our colony produces, the panel selected only adults who aren’t blood-related to any other adult in our group.” 

“Genetic diversity. Of course. Extremely important. I’m ashamed to admit I hadn’t thought of it until now. You and the panel left no stone overturned.” I looked down at my hands flattened on the table. “About the physician program, by the way, I have to eat crow regarding DORIS. I mean, if she’d had nefarious intent, why not just crash the ship without waking us–or doing any other of a number of things to kill us? She performed magnificently.”

She scooted her chair back and stood up, inhaling deeply. “I believe it was Thornton Wilder who said, ‘There is a land of the living and a land of the dead, and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.’ Love, Mr. President. That will make this new world go around for us. In our new home, love is the foundation and love is the roof.”

I stood up, too, giving her a praising look. “So. Underneath that crusty exterior is a soft chewy inside.”

“By ‘crusty exterior,’ you mean my healthy skepticism?”

I phiffed, stifling a chuckle. “Underneath that ‘healthy skepticism,’ the doctor-psychologist is a warm, caring fuzz-ball. I salute you. You not only saved us from being killed off, you’ve made sure we have a much better chance of staying alive. What say I bestow on you the title of MVP?”

“Oh how nice. We’re back to sports talk. That’s Most Valuable Player? If only I had a pearl necklace to–”

“Well, yeah, you’re that, too. But in this particular case, MVP stands for My Vice President.”

*****

TECH NOTES:

Gliese 581g, a real planet, was discovered on September 29, 2010. See info at Universetoday.com.

118 Libra is not a real star; hence 118 Libra c is not a real planet.

Images: ImageFX

Related reading:

NATIONAL NEAR-EARTH OBJECT PREPAREDNESS STRATEGY

 at WhiteHouse.gov

Archived at https://archive.ph/3U6D2