The Commonwealth Saga 2-Book Bundle
Read The Commonwealth Saga 2-Book Bundle Online
Authors: Peter F. Hamilton
Pandora’s Star
and
Judas Unchained
are works of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
A Del Rey eBook Edition
Pandora’s Star
copyright © 2004 by Peter F. Hamilton
Judas Unchained
copyright © 2006 by Peter F. Hamilton
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Del Rey, an imprint of Random House, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.
D
EL
R
EY
and the H
OUSE
colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.
The novels contained in this omnibus were each published separately by Del Rey, an imprint of Random House, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York, in 2004 and 2006.
eBook ISBN 9780804180658
v3.1
A Del Rey
®
Book
Published by The Random House Publishing Group
Copyright © 2004 by Peter F. Hamilton
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Del Rey is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hamilton, Peter F.
Pandora’s star / Peter F. Hamilton.
p. cm.
1. Interplanetary voyages—Fiction. 2. Mars (Planet)—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6058.A5536P36 2004
813′.54—dc22
2003068753
eISBN: 978-0-345-47219-9
v3.0_r2
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
Mars dominated space outside the
Ulysses
, a bloated dirty-ginger crescent of a planet that never quite made it as a world. Small, frigid, barren, airless, it was simply the solar system’s colder version of hell. Yet its glowing presence in the sky had dominated most of human history; first as a god to inspire generations of warriors, then as a goal to countless dreamers.
Now, for NASA Captain-Pilot Wilson Kime, it had become solid land. Two hundred kilometers beyond the landing craft’s narrow, curving windshield he could pick out the dark gash that was the Valles Marineris. As a boy he’d accessed the technofantasies of the Aries Underground group, entranced by how one day in an unspecified future, foaming water would once again race down that vast gully as raw human ingenuity unlocked the frozen ice trapped beneath the rusting landscape. Today, he would be the first to walk through those dusty craters he’d studied in a thousand satellite photos, trickle the legendary thin red sand through his gloved fingers. Today was glorious history in the making.
Wilson automatically started a deep feedback breathing exercise, calming his heart before the reality of what was about to happen could affect his metabolism. No way was he giving those goddamn desk medics back in Houston a chance to question
his
fitness to pilot the landing craft. Eight years he’d spent in the USAF, including two combat duties based in Japan for Operation Deliver Peace, followed by another nine years with NASA. All that buildup and anticipation: the sacrifices, his first wife and totally alienated kid; the eternal VR training at Houston, the press conferences, the mind-rotting PR tours of factories; he’d endured it all because it led to this one moment in this most sacred place.
Mars. At last!
“Initiating VKT ranging, cross match RL acquisition data,” he told the landing craft’s autopilot. The colored lines of the windshield’s holographic display began to change their geometrical patterns. He kept one eye on the timer: eight minutes. “Purging BGA system and vehicle interlink tunnel.” His left hand flicked the switches on the console, and tiny LEDs came on to confirm the switch cycle. Some actions NASA would never entrust to voice activation software. “Commencing BGA nonpropulsive vent. Awaiting prime ship sep sequence confirmation.”
“Roger that,
Eagle II
,” Nancy Kressmire’s voice said in his headset. “Telemetry analysis has you as fully functional. Prime ship power systems ready for disengagement.”
“Acknowledged,” he told the
Ulysses
’s captain. Turquoise and emerald spiderwebs within the windshield fluttered elegantly, reporting the lander’s internal power status. Their sharp primary colors appeared somehow alien across the dull pallor of the wintry Martian landscape outside. “Switching to full internal power cells. I have seven greens for umbilical sep. Retracting inter-vehicle access tunnel.”
Alarmingly loud metallic clunks rang through the little cabin as the spaceplane’s airlock tunnel sank back into the fuselage. Even Wilson flinched at the intrusive sounds, and he knew the spaceplane’s mechanical layout better than its designers.
“Sir?” he asked. According to the NASA manual, once the lander’s airlock had retracted from the prime ship they were technically a fully independent vehicle; and Wilson wasn’t the ranking officer.
“The
Eagle II
is yours, Captain,” Commander Dylan Lewis said. “Take us down when you’re ready.”
Very conscious of the camera at the back of the cabin, Wilson said, “Thank you, sir. We are on-line for completed undocking in seven minutes.” He could sense the buzz in the five passengers riding behind him. All of them were the straightest of straight arrows; they had so much right stuff between them it could be bottled. Yet now the actual moment was here they were no more controlled than a bunch of school kids heading for their first beach party.
The autopilot ran through the remaining preflight prep sequence, with Wilson ordering and controlling the list; adhering faithfully to the man-in-the-loop tradition that dated all the way back to the Mercury Seven and their epic struggle for astronauts to be more than just spam in a can. Right on the seven-minute mark, the locking pins withdrew. He fired the RCS thrusters, pushing
Eagle II
gently away from the
Ulysses
. This time there was nothing he could do to stop his heart racing.
As they drew away,
Ulysses
became fully visible through the windshield. Wilson grinned happily at the sight of it. The interplanetary craft was the first of its kind: an ungainly collection of cylindrical modules, tanks, and girders arranged in a circular grid shape two hundred meters across. Its perimeter sprouted long jet-black solar power panels like plastic petals, all of them tracking the sun. Several of the crew habitation sections were painted in the stars and stripes, implausibly gaudy against the plain silver-white thermal foam that coated every centimeter of the superstructure. Right in the center of the vehicle, surrounded by a wide corrugated fan of silver thermal radiator panels, was the hexagonal chamber that housed the fusion generator that had made the ten-week flight time possible, constantly supplying power to the plasma rockets. It was the smallest fusion system ever built: a genuine made-in-America, cutting-edge chunk of technology. Europe was still building its first pair of commercial fusion reactors on the ground, while the USA had already commissioned five such units, with another fifteen being built. And the Europeans certainly hadn’t got anything equivalent to the sophisticated
Ulysses
generator.
Damnit, we can still get some things right,
Wilson thought proudly as the shining conglomeration of space hardware diminished into the eternal night. It would be another decade until the FESA could mount a Mars mission, by which time NASA planned on having a self-sustaining base on the icy sands of Arabia Terra. Hopefully, by then, the agency would also be flying asteroid-capture missions and even a Jovian expedition as well.
I’m not too old to be a part of those, they’ll need experienced commanders.
His mind underwent just the tiniest tweak of envy at the prospect of what would come in the midterm future, events and miracles whose timetable and budget allocations meant they might just elude him.
The Europeans can afford to wait, though.
While thanks to the dominant influence of the Religious Right over the last few administrations, the U.S. had halted all genetic work centered around stem cells, the Federal government in Brussels had poured money into biogenic research, with spectacular results. Now that the early bugs had been ironed out of the hugely expensive procedure, they’d begun to rejuvenate people. The first man to receive the treatment, Jeff Baker, had died in a climax of global publicity; but in the following seven years there had been eighteen successes.
Space and Life. Those separate interests spoke volumes about the way the cultures of Earth’s two major Western power groups had diverged over the past three decades.
Now Wilson’s fellow Americans were beginning to reevaluate their attitude to genetic engineering. Already there were urban myths of Caribbean and Asian clinics offering the rejuvenation service to multibillionaires. And Federal Europe was once again attempting to narrow the American lead in space, desperate to prove to the world that it excelled in every field. Given the fractious political state currently afflicting the planet, Wilson rather welcomed the idea of the two blocs drawing closer together once more—that was, after Americans had landed on Mars.
“First de-orbit burn in three minutes,” the
Eagle II
’s autopilot said.
“Standing by,” Wilson told it. He automatically checked the fuel tank pressures, and followed that up with main engine ignition procedures.
Three hypergolic fuel rockets at the back of the little spaceplane fired for a hundred seconds, pushing their orbit into an atmosphere-intercept trajectory. The subsequent airbrake maneuver lasted for over ninety minutes, with the scant Martian atmosphere pushing against the craft’s swept delta wings, killing its velocity. For the final fifteen minutes, Wilson could see the faintest of pink glows coming from the
Eagle II
’s blunt nose. It was the only evidence of the violence being done to the fuselage by high-velocity gas molecule impacts. The ride was incredibly smooth, with gravity slowly building as they sank toward the crater-rumpled landscape of Arabia Terra.
At six kilometers altitude, Wilson activated their profile dynamic wings. They began to expand, spreading out wide to generate as much lift as possible from the thin, frigid air. At full stretch they measured a hundred meters from tip to tip, enough to allow
Eagle II
to glide if necessary. Then their turbine fired up, gently thrusting them forward, keeping speed constant at two hundred fifty kilometers an hour. The westernmost edge of the massive Schiaparelli Crater slid into sight away in the distance, rolling walls rising up out of the rumpled ground like a weatherworn mountain range.
“Visual acquisition of landing site,” Wilson reported. His systems schematics were tracing green and blue sine waves across the view. Ground radar began to overlay a three-dimensional grid of spikes and gullies that almost matched what he could see.
“
Eagle II,
midpoint systems review confirms you are go for landing,” said Mission Control. “Good luck, guys. You’ve got quite an audience back here.”
“Thank you, Mission Control,” Commander Lewis said formally. “We are eager for the touchdown. Hoping Wilson can give us a smooth one.” It would be another four minutes before anyone back on Earth heard his words. By then they should be down.
“Contact with cargo landers beacon,” Wilson reported. “Range thirty-eight kilometers.” He squinted through the windshield as the autopilot printed up a red line-of-sight bracket within the glass. The crater rim grew steadily larger. “Ah, I’ve got them.” Two dusty gray specks sitting on a broad patch of flat landscape.
For the last stage,
Eagle II
flew a slow circle around the pair of robot cargo landers. They were simple squat cones that the
Ulysses
had sent down two days earlier, loaded with tons of equipment, including a small prefab ground base. Getting them unloaded and the projected exploration campus up and running was the principal task awaiting the crew of the
Eagle II
.
“Groundscan confirms area one viability,” Wilson said. He was almost disappointed at the radar picture. When Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were landing on the moon, they had to hurriedly take manual control of their Lunar Module and fly it to safety when the designated landing site turned out to be strewn with boulders. This time, eighty-one years later, satellite imagery and orbital radar mapping had eliminated such uncertainty from the flight profile.
He brought the
Eagle II
around on its preplotted approach path, engaging the autopilot. “Landing gear extended and locked. VM engines pressurized and ready. Profile dynamic wings in reshape mode. Ground speed approaching one hundred kilometers per hour. Descent rate nominal. We’re on the wire, people.”
“Good work, Wilson,” Commander Lewis said. “Let’s bump struts, here, huh?”
“You got it, sir.”
The landing rockets fired, and
Eagle II
began to sink smoothly out of the light pink sky. A hundred meters up, and Wilson couldn’t stand it. His fingers flicked four switches, taking the autopilot off-line. Red LEDs glared accusingly at him from the console. He ignored them, bringing the little spaceplane down manually. Easier than any simulation. Dust swirled outside the windshield, thick and cloying as the rocket jets scoured the surface of Mars. Radar gave him the final approach vectors, there was nothing to see visually. They settled without a wobble. The sound of the rockets died away. External light began to brighten as the agitated dust flurries dissipated.
“Houston, the
Eagle II
has landed,” Wilson said. The words had to be forced out, his throat was so tensed up with pride and exhilaration. He could hear that beautiful phrase echo along history, past and future.
And I made it happen, not some goddamn machine.
A wave of jubilant shouts and cheering broke out in the cabin behind him. He wiped an errant drop of moisture from his eye with the back of one hand. Then he was suddenly involved with systems supervision, reengaging the autopilot. External instrumentation confirmed they were down and stable. The spaceplane had to be put into surface standby mode, supplying power and environmental services to the cabin, keeping the rocket engines warm so that takeoff wouldn’t be a problem, monitoring the fuel tank status. A long, boring list of procedures that he worked through with flawless diligence.
Only then did the six of them begin to suit up. Given the cabin’s chronic lack of space, it was a cramped, difficult process, with everyone jostling each other. When Wilson was almost ready, Dylan Lewis handed him his helmet.
“Thanks.”
The Commander didn’t say anything, just gave Wilson a look. As reprimands went, it didn’t get much worse than that.
To hell with you,
Wilson retorted silently.
We’re the important thing, people coming to Mars is what matters, not the machines we come in. I couldn’t allow a software program to land us.
Wilson stood in line as the Commander went into the small airlock at the back of the cabin.
Third, I get to be third.
Back on Earth they’d only ever remember that Dylan Lewis was first. Wilson didn’t care.
Third.
The tiny display grid inside Wilson’s helmet relayed an image from the external camera set just above the airlock door. It showed a slim aluminum ladder stretching down to the Martian sand. Commander Lewis backed out of the open airlock, his foot moving slowly and carefully onto the top rung. Wilson wanted to shout:
For God’s sake get a move on!
The suit’s medical telemetry told him his skin was flushed and perspiring. He tried to do his deep feedback breathing exercise thing, but it didn’t seem to work.