IGMS Issue 11 (10 page)

Twenty minutes went by as they tried their utmost to absorb what they were seeing. In the back of their minds, they may have been aware that their lives could be snuffed out at any second, but for three people who'd dreamt of exploring the galaxy for their entire lives, the concern seemed remote in the face of their silent rapture.

"I don't understand," Trevor said without removing his face from the glass. "How can we be moving so fast? Those black holes were traveling near light speed and they took hours to get across the solar system. We must be moving a thousand times faster than light right now."

"No," said Nikolai. "We're not moving faster than light, it just seems like it because time for us is flowing very slowly."

Trevor pulled his head from the window and looked at his hands, as if expecting them to move about in slow motion. Gretchen smiled and said: "Speak slowly, he's a pilot."

"Trevor," said Nikolai, "if you could somehow follow our progress from Earth . . ." Here, Nikolai stopped for a moment, then abruptly continued, "you would see us slowly inching our way across the galaxy. However, when things travel close to the speed of light, the flow of time slows down for them."

"Special relativity."

"Exactly. Since less time is elapsing for us, our velocity seems to be much higher than it would seem to a 'stationary' observer."

Trevor's interest in physics quickly waned, and he contented himself with looking out the window. That none of them were overly-upset about the destruction of their home planet was solely due to their assumption that they would soon be following suit.

At some point, they passed through the heart of a binary star system and came close enough to a planet to make out its outlines as an aqua-green disk, illuminated by its mother stars. It was the highlight of their voyage, but for Trevor it was also an unpleasant reminder that they were living on borrowed time. He found it amazing that they hadn't already been pulverized and wondered if their staggering speed was simply annihilating any debris in front of them with some sort of cosmic shock wave.

He put his arm around Gretchen's waist and pulled her to him. It surprised her at first, but she caught the look in his eye and understood. She squeezed him and put her head on his shoulder, still gazing out the window. There was no reasonable way for either of them to verbalize how upset they were that their homes and all of their loved ones were gone. It was an emotional maelstrom that threatened to drown them both, but they took comfort that their feelings were understood, and they also took comfort in knowing that soon it wouldn't matter.

All three flinched when a metallic bang sounded from the other side of the control module. Gretchen and Trevor knotted their fingers together.

"Something hit us," said Trevor. The other two were silent. "Should I check it out?"

"Why bother?" said Nikolai. "Let's just close the cupola's hatch in case the control module depressurizes. I want to enjoy this as long as possible.

They all agreed and Trevor shut the hatch. When a prolonged shriek indicated that the wreckage of the Destiny Laboratory was being ripped away, they did not flinch. Trevor and Gretchen's embrace, and their unceasing gaze out the window, was unbroken.

They didn't flinch at the rhythmic hammering that shook the hull of the ship. They didn't flinch when it sounded like titanium struts were being snapped like twigs or when it sounded like spikes were being fired into the side of the control module. However, at the unmistakable sound of the control module's aft hatchway being unlatched and opened, Gretchen's fingernails cut bloody marks into Trevor's hand. Trevor was unaware of the injury. He was aware only of the saturating sense of superstitious terror and awe that had gripped him. The three of them were seized with a hysterical paralysis that was broken only when movement became audible in the control module.

Trevor untangled himself from Gretchen and moved to the small square window in the hatchway. "There are people in there."

Trevor saw two, tall figures in tan suits with helmets and visors. The visors were tinted and he couldn't see what lay behind them. "Should I go in?"

Nikolai shrugged, trying to cope with a feeling that lay somewhere between inebriation and animal panic.

"Yes," said Gretchen quietly. She was shaking, but still managing to push Trevor in the back. "Go."

Trevor unlatched the door and pushed it open. The two figures were examining the debris as they floated through the control module. They froze like statues when Trevor opened the door. Their suits looked like plated ceramic and they fit close to the skin. Reaching their hands to the side of their helmets, the dark tinting of their visors turned clear, revealing two faces that were almost as astonished as Trevor's. One of the figures was a woman. She was unusually tall and thin but had fine, unmistakably human features. Her skin was as fair as porcelain and her golf ball-sized eyes had corneas of faded green. The other figure was a man. His skin was also pale and he looked at Trevor with something approaching reverence. "My lord," he said, "you're alive."

The woman stepped forward and spoke with an accent that was familiar and yet impossible to identify. "You are shuttle commander Trevor Kimberly," she said with the same note of awe that was so obvious in her companion's voice.

By this time, Gretchen and Nikolai had pulled themselves into the control module too. The woman continued, "Your companions are science officers Gretchen Whey and Nikolai Lokov."

"Who are you?" asked Gretchen.

"I am commander Ariana Aitelo," she said. Her last name was one new shock on top of many others, and when she indicated the nameplate over her breast it did indeed read AITELO. "I am a descendant of Hector Aitelo, the copilot of the space shuttle
Phoenix
." The crew looked at her with feelings of total disorientation.

"Descendant?" asked Trevor.

Ariana Aitelo looked at him seriously. "How long has it been for you since the impact of ISBH-147?"

Nikolai looked at his watch. "About an hour and a half."

Ariana exchanged a look with her partner before returning her gaze to the crew. "For us, it was 842 years ago."

With faces pressed to the glass, Gretchen and Trevor looked down on the surface of Mars as the rescue frigate
Chaos Utopia
decelerated into close orbit around the rusty planet. The voyage that had taken the three-person crew of Space Station Alpha an hour and a half took the
Chaos Utopia
a slightly lengthier eight days. However, the advantage of the way the Martian ship traveled was that it circumvented the time-distorting effects of relativity so that its crew could return to their families just weeks after they left, rather than a thousand years later.

Hector Aitelo had indeed survived the crash onto the Martian surface along with systems engineer Myrtle Lenard. When the
Phoenix
touched its wheels to the rocky Martian soil, it was traveling at over 600 miles per hour. In seconds, the landing gear was sheared off and the shuttle skidded on its belly for over a mile as it disintegrated into a tumbling cloud of debris. The only piece of wreckage of any substantial size was the reinforced cockpit, and from this smoking chamber, Hector and Myrtle emerged alive. The other two crew members of the
Phoenix
did not survive, but the landing still ranked as one of the legendary events in the colonization of Mars.

The Russian mission, one of China's two missions and a joint effort between France and Canada had also succeeded in sending crews to Mars giving the planet a total population of 26. For decades, these pioneers struggled on the verge of death by starvation and exposure, but once they adapted to the Martian way of life, there was no stopping them.

The original settlers soon depressurized to the Martian atmosphere, eliminating the need for pressurized structures and suits (though the reliance on manufactured oxygen was a habit they would never break). Nuclear generators powered machines that harvested CO2 from the air and converted it to methane. Massive drills pulled water from the subterranean ice sheets. Recipes for concrete and glass led to the first dwellings made from native materials. Eventually these dwellings became towns, then cities. Complexes of mammoth greenhouses stretched for miles. The dangers of inbreeding were avoided through in-vitro fertilization of eggs brought from Earth.

And, of course, with a population descended largely from astronauts and scientists, the cause of space exploration moved rapidly. Less than 200 years after the first settlers arrived, the first microchip was fabricated from Martian minerals. Less than100 years after that, a manned rocket was launched into Martian orbit. This kicked off an age of exploration that reached every corner of the solar system. Six hundred years after the end of Earth, Martian scientists entered the golden age of astrophysics. They found the keys that would unlock the door to the entire galaxy. It was only then that Hector Aitelo's dream of discovering the fate of his crewmates -- an idea passed down for over 700 years -- could be set in motion.

For the explorers of Mars, it was not rescuing the remains of Space Station Alpha that was difficult, it was finding it. It took over a hundred years to locate the hurtling speck of aluminum and titanium, but once it was found -- 842 years after the first human landed on Mars -- the rescue frigate
Chaos Utopia
was en route within weeks.

Gretchen and Trevor watched in awe as the highly populated Cydonian Valley came into view beneath them. The rear section of the frigate was being used as a pressurized quarantine zone. When the Martians entered, they had to wear suits to protect them from the pressures that seemed so natural to the Earthlings. The two astronauts were alone because Nikolai was shut into his private chamber. Upon rescue, the stoicism of the three crewmembers had evaporated and their grief at the loss of
everything
hit them like a train. Nikolai was inconsolable. He'd managed the loss of his beloved by reassuring himself that he'd shortly be joining her; but now that he was a survivor, the full weight of Ada's death seemed poised to crush him.

Gretchen and Trevor at least had each other. This caused its own pain -- an additional sense of guilt on top of the guilt of simply living -- but it helped them greatly to take comfort in one another. Also helpful was their sense of complete exhaustion. With her head on Trevor's shoulder, Gretchen said: "I'm too tired to hurt." The emotional agony was so great that sometimes it seemed remote.

She grabbed his neck and kissed him on the lips. They had not yet become lovers -- would not for quite some time -- but they had the patience of people who knew they eventually would.

An hour later, after another orbit had allowed the explorers to take in the barren splendor of their future home, the
Chaos Utopia
was tugged into a screaming glide as the sparse Martian atmosphere began to catch hold on its control surfaces. Safely suited and strapped into their seats, Gretchen, Trevor, and Nikolai held their breath as an expansive runway lifted its hand up to catch them, while the towering spires of the capitol city Cydonia loomed behind it. Then, and only then, did they fully understand that the verdant green planet they'd known all their lives had been dead for the better part of a millennia and that they would be the last beings to ever recall this homeland, not through recordings and museums, but through the uncorrupted recollections of their own misty eyes.