Mission: Tomorrow - eARC (4 page)

What would the space race be without the Russians, our age-old nemesis? In truth, the loss of funding for NASA has found us relying on them in ways we once never imagined. In this next story, Soviet-born Alex Shvartsman imagines his fellow countrymen’s efforts to send the first man to reach a new target in . . .

THE RACE FOR ARCADIA

by Alex Shvartsman

“There’s nothing new under the sun,” said Anatoly, his voice carried via skip broadcast across millions of kilometers of space from the command center at Baikonur.

Aboard the
Yuri Gagarin
, Nikolai concentrated on the exposed panel in the inner wall of the ship. He winced at the sight of the cheap Ecuadorian circuitry as he used the multimeter to hunt for the faulty transistor. Damn contractors couldn’t resist cutting corners. He sighed and looked up. Anatoly’s face filled the screen. Nikolai didn’t mind the banter. It broke the routine. He pointed at the opposite screen, which displayed the live feed from outside of the ship, a vast blackness punctured by tiny pinpricks of light. “Which sun?”

“Our sun. Any sun.” Anatoly shrugged. “You’re a cranky pedant, aren’t you?”

“Matter of opinion,” said Nikolai, his gaze returning to the uncooperative panel.

“As I was saying, there’s nothing new under the sun,” Anatoly said. “We won the original space race, when we launched
Sputnik
a hundred years ago, and we’re going to win this one, too.”

Nikolai cursed under his breath as the multimeter slipped out of his hand and slowly floated upward. He caught the wayward tool. “The space race hasn’t gone so well since. Americans beat us to the moon, and the Chinese beat us to Mars.”

“Those are just a pair of lifeless rocks in our backyard,” said Anatoly. “In the grand scheme of things, they won’t matter much. Not once you land on Arcadia.”

Nikolai continued to hunt for the faulty transistor. “You’re assuming this heap of junk won’t fall apart around me first.”

“
Gagarin
isn’t luxurious, but it will get the job done,” said Anatoly.

“I sure hope you’re right,” said Nikolai. “I’d hate having to get out and push.”

Anatoly grinned. “You’d push all the way to Arcadia if you had to. Russian people make do with what we’ve got. Back in the 1960s, American astronauts discovered that ball-point pens didn’t work right in a vacuum. So NASA spent all this time and money to design the space pen. You know what our cosmonauts did? They used a pencil.”

“That story is bullshit on several levels,” said Nikolai. “Americans used pencils, too. But the shavings were a hazard in zero gravity—they could float up one’s nose, or even short an electrical device and start a fire. That’s why the space pen was needed, and it was developed by a private company who then sold a handful to NASA at a reasonable price.” He wiped a bead of sweat off his forehead. “You of all people should know better.”

“Okay, you got me, it’s a tall tale,” said Anatoly. “But my version makes for a much better story to tell at parties.”

“Next time I’m at a party, I’ll be sure to try it,” said Nikolai.

Anatoly frowned, the wind gone out of his sails. Nikolai knew he had scored another point, but this time by hitting below the belt. His handler must’ve felt guilty about the one-way trip, even if he tried his best to hide it.

Nikolai eased off. He let Anatoly fill him in on the gossip from home—the latest politics and entertainment news that felt so irrelevant, so far away.

It took him another thirty minutes to find the defective transistor. He grunted with satisfaction and reached for the soldering gun.

Three months prior, Nikolai Petrovich Gorolenko sat brooding at his desk in a cozy but windowless office of the St. Petersburg State University math department.

There was so much to do. He needed to type a resignation notice, to contact an attorney about a will, and worst of all, to figure out a way to break the news to his family. There was a knock on the door.

Nikolai didn’t feel like speaking to anyone, but he needed a way to break out of his despondency.

“Come in.”

A stranger walked into the room. This middle-aged man was perfectly coiffed and dressed in a smart business suit. His sharp eyes seemed to take in everything without missing a single detail, and yet he had a nondescript look about him that could only be perfected in one line of work. Nikolai pegged him for an FSB operative.

“My condolences, Professor Gorolenko,” said the stranger.

Somehow, he knew. Nikolai hadn’t told anyone, and yet he knew.

Nikolai did his best to keep calm. “Who are you, and what are you talking about?”

The man waved an ID card in a fluid, practiced motion. “Vladimir Ivanovich Popov. I’m with the government.” He put the card away. “I’m here about your test results from this morning. The brain tumor is malignant. You’ve got three, four months. Half a year if you’re lucky.”

Nikolai bristled at being told this for the second time that day. At least the first time it was his doctor, who had sounded genuinely sympathetic. This stranger merely stated facts, politely but without compassion.

Popov pointed at the chair. “May I?”

“What do you want?” Nikolai ignored his request. A dying man has little use for being polite and little fear of authority, he thought.

Popov sat anyway. “I hear this is a bad way to go. Very painful, in the end. I’d like to offer you an alternative.”

Nikolai tilted his head. “An alternative to dying?”

“An alternative to dying badly,” said Popov. “Let’s call it a stay of execution.”

“I see,” said Nikolai. “I suppose you’ll want my soul in return?”

Popov smiled. “You aren’t so far from the truth, Professor.”

Exasperated, Nikolai leaned forward. “Why don’t you tell me what you’re offering in plain terms?”

“Our experts have examined your brain scans and the biopsy sample,” said Popov, “and determined that you’re a perfect fit for an experimental nanite treatment developed by the Antey Corporation. It won’t cure you, but it will slow down the tumor and contain the metastasis. It can buy you two more years.”

Nikolai chewed his lip. Two years was such a short time, but for a drowning man it wasn’t unseemly to grasp at straws. “You’ve got my attention.”

“There is a catch,” said Popov.

“Of course there is. Neither the Antey Corporation nor our government are known for their altruism,” said Nikolai. “What do you need from me?”

“What do you know about Arcadia?” asked Popov.

“Huh? You mean the planet?”

Popov nodded.

“It’s been all over the news. Admittedly, I’ve been . . . preoccupied. But I do know it’s the first Earth-like planet ever confirmed—breathable atmosphere and everything.”

“That’s right,” said Popov. “The Americans discovered it in 2015. They called it Kepler-452b back then and it was the first Earth-like exo planet ever found. Fitting that it will become the first world humans set foot on outside of the Solar System.” He shifted in his chair. “There’s enormous propaganda value in getting there first. The Americans are dispatching a twelve-person exploration team. India already launched a colony ship, with sixty-odd people in suspended animation.”

“So quickly? They only confirmed Arcadia as habitable last month.”

“The world’s superpowers have been preparing for this moment ever since the eggheads figured out the workaround for the speed of light problem, and sent out skip drones every which way.”

“I see. So the Russian Federation is in this race, too?”

“That’s right, Professor. Our plan is to send you.”

Nikolai stared at the government apparatchik across his desk. “Why me?”

“I’m not a scientist, so I can’t explain the reasoning thoroughly,” said Popov. “In layman’s terms, they’ve been going over the brain scan data from terminal patients across the country, and they liked your brain best.”

Nikolai scratched his chin. Like most children, he dreamed of going up into space once, but that was a lifetime ago.

“Forgive me,” Nikolai said, “this is a lot to process.”

“There’s more,” said Popov. “I don’t want to sugarcoat this for you. It would be a one-way trip. If we succeed and you land on Arcadia, and even if the atmosphere is breathable and the water is drinkable, your odds of survival are astronomically low. If the local microbes don’t get you, hunger likely will. If you’re lucky you might last long enough for the Americans to get there. We’re trying to time the launch just right to give you that chance. Even then, the tumor might finish you before they return to Earth.”

Nikolai thought about it. “Why can’t you send enough food and water for the crew to survive?”

“You don’t get it. You are the crew. Just you. The ship’s ability to accelerate to a skip velocity is inversely proportional to its mass. The India ship is en route but it’s huge and therefore slow. Americans have a much faster ship, and they might launch before we do. In order to beat them to the punch, we must send a very light vessel. Every milligram counts. So it’s you, and just enough oxygen, water, and food to get you to the finish line.”

Nikolai frowned. “You weren’t kidding about the stay of execution, then. And it explains why your people are looking to recruit from among the terminally ill. Leaving the heroic explorer to die on Arcadia would be terrible PR otherwise.”

“You’re grasping the basics quickly,” said Popov. “No wonder they picked your brain.”

“I’m not sure how a few extra months of life on a spaceship followed by death alone on an alien world is better than spending my last days with my wife and daughter,” said Nikolai.

“Well, there’s having your name live on forever in history along the likes of Magellan and Bering,” said Popov. “And then there’s the obscene amount of money you’ll be paid for doing this.”

Nikolai hadn’t saved much money on a college professor’s salary. There would be medical bills, his father’s retirement, his daughter’s college tuition . . . “When do you need my answer by?”

“Tomorrow morning, at the latest,” said Popov. “Though, given your circumstances, I’m a little surprised you have to think about it much.”

“I don’t, not really,” said Nikolai. “But I do owe it to my wife to let her weigh in.”

At times, Nikolai felt like his ship was falling apart around him.

He didn’t understand how the skip technology worked—only a few dozen theoretical physicists on Earth could legitimately claim such wisdom—but he knew that an object had to reach a certain velocity before it could puncture a momentary hole in space-time and reemerge elsewhere.

Yuri Gagarin
would accelerate continuously for six months until it reached the skip point located somewhere in the Kuiper Belt, wink out of existence only to reappear fourteen hundred light years away, then spend a similar amount of time decelerating toward Arcadia.

As a mathematician, Nikolai couldn’t help but marvel at the amazing speed his vessel would achieve after half a year of constant acceleration. By now he had already traveled farther than any other human in history, but he didn’t feel special. He felt tired and anxious, and somewhat claustrophobic in the cramped cabin that smelled like rubber and sweat.

The ship’s memory bank was loaded with a nearly infinite selection of music, books, and films to break the monotony of the journey. Nikolai was stuck drinking recycled water and eating disgusting nutrient-enriched slop in the name of conserving mass, but the electrons needed for data storage had no significant weight, and the ship’s designers could afford him this luxury. But he had little time to partake of the digital library. Instead, he put all of his hastily learned engineering knowledge to use and performed maintenance.

Much of his time at Baikonur had been spent learning how to service the systems inside the ship. There had been no spacesuit, but then there was little that could go wrong on the outer hull. The engineers’ real fear was that the internal systems might malfunction. The culture of graft was so deeply ingrained in the Russian industrial complex that even a high-profile project like this was afflicted.

It wouldn’t do to deliver a corpse to Arcadia. Pre-flight, they spent nearly ten hours a day teaching Nikolai how to repair the recycling systems, solder the circuit boards, and improvise solutions to an array of worst-case scenarios with the materials available on board. One of the American-educated engineers kept referring to these techniques as “MacGyvering,” but Nikolai didn’t know the reference.

En route, Nikolai was forced to deal with cheap circuit boards, subpar, off-brand equipment, and software subroutines that were at least two generations behind the times. He had one thing going for him—the ability to remain in contact with Baikonur. The broadcast signal had no mass and was able to skip almost immediately. Mission Control was only a few seconds’ delay away, able to offer advice and support.

While all the fires he had to put out so far were figurative, Nikolai eyed the tiny Bulgarian-made extinguisher with suspicion.

Nikolai waited until their four-year-old daughter was asleep. Pretending that everything was normal, that it was just another weeknight, was incredibly difficult. He was emotionally and physically exhausted, and his wife Tamara could sense that something was wrong, but she too kept up the pretense of normality until their little Olga was tucked into bed.

As the sun set over St. Petersburg, coloring the skyline in bronze hues, Nikolai told his wife about his diagnosis and everything that had happened since.

Tamara listened without interrupting, even as she clutched a couch pillow, a mascara-tinged tear rolling down her cheek. When he finally unburdened, having told her the facts and having run out of assurances and platitudes, the two of them stared out the window and shared what was left of the sunset in silence.

It was only after the sun had disappeared completely in the west that she finally spoke.

“Why you?”

Something was very wrong.

At first it was just a feeling, a sensation in the back of Nikolai’s mind. It seemed that his subconscious had figured out something important, but wasn’t prepared to communicate what it was.

Nikolai chalked it up to paranoia. Anyone stuck on a one-way trip out of the Solar System in a tin can could be forgiven for having uneasy thoughts. But the feeling persisted, almost bubbling up to the surface until eventually the concern bled from his lizard brain and into the conscious mind.