Home Planet: Awakening (Part 1) (14 page)

Aided by the suit thruster pack, I tracked around the sunlit side of the ship toward Astronomy & Astrophysics. The observatory—situated at the bottom of Module 3 took up level one through four as one great, cavernous space. With any luck, it had escaped the damage I’d seen in the stairwell below Level 9 earlier. The staircase had been missing below that level, evidently destroyed by a blast. And there also remained the security droid hazard at the top on Level 20. It all meant one thing—I needed to find an airlock as close to Astronomy as possible. The observatory was easy to find for a spacewalker like me—three fifteen-foot cupolas marked the location—one on the port and starboard sides and another at the very bottom of the module. Supplementing the lack of full-sky view, they’d stowed the space telescope in the shuttle bay, ready for deployment on arrival in the Aura system. I didn’t know if it remained on board, or if it had been launched. It was probably academic, as few of the computer systems I’d seen had worked.

A minute later, the large viewing dome—the port cupola—slid into view. I passed over it and slowed down to look. Although dirty, I could see that emergency lighting lit the inside of the high-ceilinged observatory. Concentrating on the blurred shapes inside didn’t reveal any floating objects or ones at strange orientations, so I concluded gravity was still in effect. I accelerated and reached the lower cupola and the airlock hatch thirty feet away at the very bottom of the module. Further along marked the large round outline of the emergency lifepod—a potential means of escape, which hadn’t been used. Note to self: check how many of the lifepods and shuttles were missing from other modules. This may yield some clue about the number of survivors on Aura-c.

After checking that life support was on, I removed the spacesuit, untied the boots tethered to it and then put them on. I opened the door to a short corridor and climbed the metal stairwell from Level 0 to Level 1, emerging into the cavernous observatory. It measured around sixty feet and one-fifty from fore to aft, taking up the entire width of the module. The large, white cover dome of the central telescope occupied the middle of the floor. This was the downward-pointing telescope above the lower cupola. To my left and right were the port and starboard dome installations built into the sides of the observatory. The three giant scopes had two modes of operation—remote and manual. Remote operation sealed the internal dome, allowing the cupola to open to space, giving a clearer view outside. Manual operation allowed observers to enter the internal dome and use the telescope directly with the cupola closed. Other than the three domes, I could see a row of offices or labs built into the far wall. The open area in front of them hosted clusters of workstations and the near wall on my right had what looked like a glass-walled conference room. Just Beyond it, if I recalled correctly, were the large, white desks where the old professor had out his star charts and planetary maps.

I went right, past the darkened conference room and toward the three large desktops. Although the dusty surfaces were devoid of paper maps, there sat a gray metal cabinet by the wall of the kind I’d seen before—wide metal drawers, each a few inches high—perfect for storing large plots. Of the eight drawers, only the top four bore labels. I opened the second drawer down reading,
Aura-c
and pulled out two A0-sized maps marked
Western Hemisphere
and
Eastern Hemisphere.
I laid each on a separate table—western on the left, eastern on the right—and leaned over the western map studying its detail. It showed the seas, continents, and extent of the polar ice caps of Aura-c. Color-mapped grid squares corresponding to a legend covered the entire map, save for a few areas reading
No Data
. I could also see contour lines of elevation, which were approximate, according to the small print. The legend explained the Earth-equivalent terrain types from tundra to forest to desert. There must’ve been a deal of interpretation, given the resolution was only to ten square miles. Impressively, this was all from near-Earth observations. Some more prominent markings caught my eye—the yellow circles marking potential colony locations. I read
Octavia-A, Felix-A, Felix-B
on the large island, which dominated the northern part of the western hemisphere. There were others too:
Aubyn-A
and
Carrington-A
and
C
and a handful more. But no
Hyland-A
—supposedly the primary location. I shifted to the other table and the eastern hemisphere map. Scanning the dozen or so location markers, I found
Hyland-A,
nestled on the southern coast of a large island in the northern hemisphere about ten degrees above the equator. According to the map, forest surrounded the would-be colony site on a large river by the coast. The forested grid squares along the coast gave way to mountains perhaps a sixty miles north. I tried to imagine what this pristine wilderness would be like.

Naturally, I’d seen best-estimate impressions of Aura-c during training. Being Earthlike, they all looked, well, like Earth with a few notable exceptions like a slightly darker blue sky and potentially purple sunsets. But no one knew for sure, as neither probe nor people had visited at the time. Now I knew neither was true and imagined the two people I’d heard via the long-range transceiver—John on his simple fishing vessel somewhere in the ocean south of the colony, the woman sitting in a capsule seated on a white sand beach fringed with the green of alien trees and plants. So far, I’d not seen much of the planet—just the thin crescent of white with the naked eye. Once the ship’s orbit allowed viewing of the dayside of the planet, I’d be able to make out some of the landmasses. On comparing them to the maps, I’d know which side of Aura-c
it was. Eventually I’d use my observations to decide where to land, hopefully in cooperation with the survivors I’d heard on the transceiver.

I rolled up the eastern hemisphere map and made for the starboard telescope enclosure. As I walked across the great observatory in half-light, I looked around me. Last time, I strolled through with the thirty or so other colonists I was part of the induction tour. The place was brightly lit and brilliant white with a polished floor, scientists working quietly at terminals in the glass-sided offices and conference room. The old professor, bald with a gray mustache, came over from his map table and said a few words—something about how the telescopes worked as a small array or something like that. Then he scuttled off toward his office. Now, the white wall panels were a murky off-white and the glass room sides dull and mold-ravaged.

The flickering red standby light on a terminal caught my eye and I jogged over to investigate. A few double taps followed, but it was as dead as the other terminals with no such standby light. After trying a few more nearby, I gave up and continued to the starboard telescope dome. On reaching it, I saw the dome had an internal hatch, which opened to reveal a narrow airlock with space for just one person. I closed the internal hatch, opened the external one, and saw the small, dark cockpit, which reminded me of a flight simulator. On climbing in, it felt like I’d walked into an oven—it must’ve been well over a hundred degrees in there. I placed my hand under the air vent baffle on the low ceiling and found part of the reason. The other reason was that with Aura beating down through the greenhouse-like cupola, the heat had nowhere to go. At least it meant I had the correct side, the telescope facing Aura and its rocky disciple. I removed my fleece, laying it down. There were two seats either side of the large-bore telescope, which protruded through the front wall at an angle of forty-five degrees, the viewing lens stopping about five feet above the floor. But it was what—or should I say who—sat on the left chair that made me stop in my tracks.

I stepped around and looked down at the skeletal remains dressed in the remnants of what was once a pair of mixed fiber slacks and reddish short-sleeved shirt. The cotton components of his clothes had rotted away, leaving the thin tatters of synthetic fiber to adorn his bones. Only three things retained full integrity: his black shoes, the pair of grimy smart-glasses that had fallen onto his chest, and his watch. I recognized the watch from the induction tour—only months ago in my mind—as belonging to the old professor. It was an unusual model. In some ways old-school, in others cutting edge. I respectfully removed the watch and wiped the back clean. It bore an engraving reminding me of his name,
G.J. Heinz.
Under the name was inscribed,
A & A, Juno Ark, 2070.
Perhaps it had been a team souvenir and
A & A
meant ‘Astronomy & Astrophysics’. It made sense. Around the lower rim of the back cover were the manufacturer’s name and the model:
Eternity Perpetual, Thermochemical
and a few other details
.
This type of watch was not a smartwatch, it just told the time, date and year. An old-school watch for an old-school professor. It had tiny electronic date and year panel on the face and the three hands of an analog watch. After wiping the glass clean, I could read the face clearly. And when I did, I stood staring wide-eyed, my mouth open, unable to comprehend what my eyes saw. The second hand was sweeping around just as sure as a planet goes around its star. This thing really was perpetual, using ambient heat to generate electricity, which kept the watch going. Although essentially meaningless, it read 10:44 a.m. What was anything
but
meaningless was the year: 2584. The
Juno Ark
had departed Earth in 2070. I shook my head, my lips pursed.
How could it be?
A quick calculation in my head blew me away: five-hundred and fourteen years since launch. After rubbing my eyes, I checked again. Still July 15, 2584. There had to be some mistake.

I pocketed the watch in my fleece, picked it up and left the sauna-like cockpit for the cool of the observatory proper. Jogging with purpose, I made for the offices on the right and searched them for other bodies. There were none, but I continued surveying every square inch of surface, every drawer, and every closet until I got what I needed. Another souvenir watch, which had drawn the heat from the air for years, powering its movement. The second hand no longer swept the face and the minute and hour hands were static too. Something in the mechanism must’ve failed. But the electronic display
did
still work and it read July 15. 2584, just like the professor’s watch. The first could’ve been a malfunction, but now the second watch corroborated it there was no way. I sank to the floor staring at the two watches side-by-side.

How could it be?
Five
centuries … not one. As in half a millennium...

To understand the sense of timescale I thought back five centuries of history from when we left Earth—back to the mid-fifteen hundreds. They’d not yet invented the telescope and Galileo was unborn. They were still burning people at the stake and it’d be half a century before Jamestown was established, two more decades until the Pilgrim Fathers reached America on the
Mayflower
.

I pictured the remains I’d seen in the stasis pods. Designed for twice the anticipated mission length of a hundred and twenty years, I imagined them failing progressively over the years until mine was the last one standing. Only a tiny minority had kept going, leaving only Reichs, John, the woman and yours truly. Was my cop friend, Mike Lawrence, another one of the lucky few? And then to my mind came the face of Kate Alves—not the one of a beautiful young woman, full of life, but the dying, contorted Kate that so very nearly made it after five hundred years of stasis. That she’d nearly survived made her death all the more painful. I pushed thoughts of my friends from my mind and considered the implications. Tiro had definitely logged Reichs as being alive when he reset the network. And I was definitely still sane enough to know that I’d heard the long-range transmissions from the planet below. Although the insane didn’t know they were insane, I hadn’t been alone long enough to start hearing things. I hoped that was true, anyway. So that meant the survivors on the planet could’ve been there for generations, even centuries.

If that were true, why weren’t they in communication with the
Juno
? Why weren’t there shuttles going back and forth and other signs of an established colony, an established
civilization?
There could’ve been all kinds of reasons. They could’ve abandoned the ship long ago and not yet developed the industry to become spacefaring once again. Then I thought of the
Janus
—the sister ship of
Juno Ark
. She should’ve arrived centuries ago, too, and with the pace of development on Earth, others
must
have been sent—faster ships, capable of much more than an
average
thirteen-percent light speed. None of this made sense and, rather than bring answers, Module 3 had brought more questions. However, I’d long believed that any complex problem could be simplified to something comprehendible. What mattered were my next moves. In a way, nothing had changed. I still needed to get to the planetary surface, contact John and Jane Doe and find Reichs.

Looking at Professor Heinz’s watch and it read two-minutes past eleven, so I pocketed it, then got out the two-way radio and switched it on.

“Hello, this is Dan Luker. Do you read me Reichs?”

Just static, no reply.

“Repeat, this is Dan Luker, survivor on board the
Juno Ark
; do you read me Arnold Reichs?”