Solar Express (45 page)

If we all survived it, the survivors might remember … except human memories are so short … and everyone thinks they're different, even when they repeat the mistakes of the past.

Mother rallied briefly the other day. She remembered you couldn't get home. She said it was better that way. That you wouldn't remember her at her worst. She apologized for making us take care of her. Today, she thought you were still piloting fusionjets from the Earth to the Moon. Dad doesn't talk much. He hates wearing a mask and gloves even to hold Mother's hand.

Tavoian swallowed and looked away from the screen for several minutes before continuing.

I've been granted familial leave, with full pay, and I have more time banked than I'll ever use. One benefit of being a work addict. It's not as though much work is getting done anyway. The Department of the Environment's half furloughed because the Senate still hasn't passed the environmental appropriations. That idiot Castenada keeps offering amendments to transfer funds for useless remediation in and around New York. It's not the Venice of the western hemisphere there. It's the replacement for the worst of what was Florida and Louisiana …

When he finished Kit's message, Tavoian found a spare tissue and blew his nose. He was careful to stuff it into his pocket. He didn't need tissues floating around. Then he ate several soft rye crackers. He also had to be careful with those. Crumbs and weightlessness weren't a good combination. Finally, he started Alayna's message.

Chris—

You're always so encouraging about my work with the multi-fractals, and I definitely need that encouragement. I feel that they're something more than random creation as the by-product of Gaussian-distributed mechanistic convection of solar granulations, like the man upon the stair who wasn't there. (That's an allusion to an old poem; I guess it was a song as well.) But whatever it is, I haven't yet been able to find out what that something might be. I also haven't found anything that would rule it out, except for mechanistic nuclear-generated convection. It could just be that I don't want to admit that the most basic processes in the universe don't lead to more, and that could be a fatal failing on my part, at least occupationally.

Don't we all want some meaning in the universe? Meaning that transcends mechanics?
Tavoian snorted. He doubted that the universe had meaning. Structure, but not meaning. People had to create meaning.
Whether it's there or not.
Which continued to be the problem with true believers of every kind.

With a faint and ironic smile, he continued reading.

COFAR's calculations show that the artifact's speed is continuing to increase faster than it should, based on all possible variables of which we're aware. That means I'm missing something, and the likelihood is whatever I'm missing is something to do with the artifact. I could be wrong. I've been wrong before. But the AI at COFAR usually doesn't make that kind of mistake. I worry about you, and even the Sinese around the artifact, but mostly about you. As of last night—22 November—at 2030 UTC, we calculated the inbound speed of the artifact at fifty kilometers per second. If the observed rate of increase continues, by the time you reach the “averaged” orbit of Mercury (fifty-eight million kilometers from the sun) on November 30th, possibly late on the 29th, the artifact should be traveling more than sixty-five kps. It might be even faster.

Tavoian frowned. His initial briefing had used the figure of fifty kps. At least, he thought it had been fifty kps.

By the time it reaches perihelion on December 4th, which we may not be able to see, unless it's very early, because Farside will be leaving lunar day, it will be traveling in excess of 200 kps. How much faster is problematical because we're extrapolating, and those extrapolations are based on the past history of an unknown factor. We're calculating future additional speed by assuming that the artifact is accelerating at a constant rate. Assuming an enormous mass would give the same acceleration, but that amount of mass would have other more obvious effects—such as gravitational attraction and weight if you were standing on the artifact.

All assumptions are dangerous. Those made on the basis of observing something that is not understood are so much more. I don't know what's involved in what you're engaged in, or even exactly what you are doing, but I would strongly suggest that you give yourself an exceedingly generous margin of safety.

She's worried about you.
And it was more than clear she thought staying around the artifact too long and too close to the sun was not a good idea.

Because I've been too lax in skipping past quotes, I thought this one might be particularly appropriate:

Scientists are so often considered cold and calculating. A good scientist is calmly, but fiercely heated and calculating. Coldness too often means that you don't care, and above all, a scientist should care … Especially about being methodical and precise.

That calculation doesn't apply absolutely to people, not for me, although a touch of caution isn't misplaced.

Tavoian thought about Alayna's message, and the last lines, for a time, and about her, how long he wasn't certain, but was diverted from those thoughts by the ship's AI.

THREE SPY-EYES HAVE RETURNED TO THE ISV. THE FOURTH HAS NOT.

“Wait ten minutes.”

The errant spy-eye did not return, and Tavoian recalled the ISV to Recon three.

As the ISV headed back toward Recon three, Tavoian thought about accessing the feeds remotely, then decided to wait until the ISV was securely docked. While he waited, he called up the Space Command daily news summary and began to read. Almost immediately, he wished he hadn't.

The Indian Defense Minister had issued a warning that if the Sinese attacked any Indian installation or territory whatsoever, India would retaliate with “unstoppable force” and that not even the deepest bunkers nor the most distant outposts would be secure from that force. Tavoian shook his head after he read that President Yates had requested both parties to exercise restraint. From what Tavoian had read, the Indians had exercised restraint, and it had only provoked the Sinese. The Sinese seemed to believe that until the last few days everyone would stand aside while protesting. The Israelis, the African Union, and the Iranians all were backing India.

Tavoian set aside the news summary and considered where else he might send his various remotes that might have some slight chance of discovering something new about the artifact. He hadn't fully investigated all of the passages off the central shaft, not that he'd ever have time to do that, but he had searched and studied the entire circumference of the artifact. After a time, he cleared his throat.

“Plot out on an image of the dark side of the artifact all the areas we've investigated. Highlight those areas less explored and any areas that appear to have any possibility of being different.”

The ship's AI actually took almost a minute to reply.
PLOT IS READY AND DISPLAYED. ISV HAS RETURNED AND IS DOCKED.

Tavoian was still studying the plot and considering options when he realized that he hadn't studied the feeds from the three spy-eyes that had returned. He accessed the first one immediately.

As with so many of the images Tavoian had seen over the past weeks, the initial image was that of dark green bulkheads, decks, and overheads, as the first ISV threaded its way through the junctions of the passageways surrounding the hexagonal chambers and then through a narrow hexagonal opening into a passageway that appeared to be parallel to the hull. Although Tavoian watched closely, and froze the image a number of times, he could find no trace of an entry along the outboard side of the passage. He even had the AI study the images to see if it could discern any fractional difference in wall coloration or texture, to no avail.

The spy-eye continued past where Tavoian had hoped there might be another ship launching bay and, some fifty meters later, came to an abrupt inboard turn in the passageway. After the turn, the passage continued some ten meters before ending in a blank bulkhead. Again there were no indications of a “door frame” or any means to proceed. On the return, the spy-eye passed two of the other spy-eyes, but did not show an image of the third.

Tavoian watched the feeds from the next two spy-eyes. Both recorded other spy-eyes passing, but neither indicated what might have happened to the missing remote.

Another minor mystery. Mechanical/programming failure … or some effect of the artifact?
Tavoian doubted that he'd ever discover if either possibility was correct. There were so many interconnecting passageways that it was unlikely he'd recover even one of the malfunctioning units.

He'd been correct about there being a passageway leading to the drive chambers, but any access from the other side of the artifact was blocked. There was no indication of a ship launching bay, even though the passageway seemed to resemble the one on the other side of the artifact.
But with the apparent past plasticity of the material, how can you tell?

Tavoian went back to the plot of possible areas to explore, trying not to think about the last lines in Alayna's message or what he could say in return to Kit.

 

61

D
AEDALUS
B
ASE

25 N
OVEMBER
2114

Saturday night Alayna didn't sleep well, and she woke up on Sunday early and tired. She hadn't been able to put aside her worries about Chris. She'd tried, and she had even gotten up and tweaked the analytics for her next set of solar observations, but all that hadn't helped, and after fitfully trying to sleep, she'd gotten up before 0530 UTC and fixed coffee, and thought as she sipped it.

First of all, his observation about the change in hull reflectivity had bothered her. To begin with, she couldn't imagine diffraction gratings fine enough to convey a mirror finish to an entire hull while remaining untouched and unscarred for thousands of years. Then to shift reflectivity? She'd managed a brief spectrographic analysis of the artifact, and his report was absolutely correct. That didn't tell her how or why it had happened, but she was fairly certain that the change was linked to the intensity of solar radiation reaching the hull. Abrupt changes in spectral absorption and reflection didn't just happen without cause. To her, that was another indication of either high technology operating while partly destroyed and after at least ten thousand years. And that was scary.

The second problem was the hull “circles,” effectively the only circles found anywhere on the artifact. They'd either been changed by whatever the columns that lay behind the hull or designed that way to reflect all visible light wavelengths, except 379 and 380 nanometers. Why did the circle parts of the hull reflect all visible light, except a two-nanometer gap? And why was reflectivity just there one and a half percent lower than the rest of the hull?

The greatest problem, from her personal viewpoint, was where Chris was headed. It wasn't just that he could end up inside the orbit of Mercury sooner than he realized. The problem was the combination of position and the speed at which he'd been carried along with the alien artifact. She didn't know all the details about fusionjets and how they operated, but she did know that most operated best at a one-gee acceleration, and that they were limited to about two hours of continuous acceleration, and needed almost as much “rest” time as acceleration time. If the alien artifact was traveling at sixty-five kilometers per second when it crossed the averaged orbit of Mercury, and it might be closer to seventy … She swallowed.

If it's traveling at seventy kps, he can't escape on a direct course, and if a fusionjet doesn't have good shielding, he'll have to take a tangential course outside Mercury's orbit or not too far inside …
And fusionjets weren't designed for long periods of habitation. He'd already been on his ship for close to a month. If he had to take an elliptical or other indirect return to Earth, which was the closest haven, it might take another month. Even sending someone after him might be difficult.

She needed to get off a message to him. But it needed to be worded carefully, very carefully, just in case. After a time, she began …

Dear Chris,

Even though I'm the one who's spent much of her life studying the sun, you'll shortly be far closer than I will ever be. I'd like to know what you feel seeing the sun swell in the sky and knowing that you're traveling at such incredible speed. Scores of astronomers will be watching. They, too, will envy you, and many will want to talk to you, especially since you're on a solo mission, all by yourself.

 

It wouldn't hurt to take some images of the sun just before you reach the orbit of Mercury.

The last person to travel that close was Icarus, but that was mythology …

How much more do you dare to say?

 … and you have far better “wings” than he did (I know spacecraft don't have wings, but I couldn't resist finishing the comparison), and far better engineers behind you, but it's the only mythological parallel I can think of, and I think it's still valid.

So far as my own work goes, I'm about to try a multi-latitude correlation, or perhaps a multi-latitude negative correlation. We'll just have to see how it goes. We're supposed to be in a solar minimum at present, but over the past month the number of sunspots and other convective activity seems to be increasing, although it's not anywhere near past solar maximums. But then, even in minimum times, the solar photosphere is an awesome place.

I didn't mention it before, but I'm glad your sister enjoyed the quote about the fractal nature of coastlines. Because I'm squeezing this in between observations, and because I wanted to get it off, Icarus will have to do for a quote.