It was dim in here now, but not dark yet. Used currently for a projection theater capable of supporting multiple screens, four smaller monitors currently displayed graphical and statistical information around a larger screen — a cockpit-like view of space, and an approaching silvery rock, irregular in shape and definitely not a moon.
“How’s the comet looking?” Caleb asked as the door eased shut behind him.
“Cessara-X1 is closing in on it,” Diana Montgomery said. She was hunched over the projection-desk/control center, operating multiple consoles and coordinating the visuals with the practiced ease of a mountain climber. “Touchdown on schedule in five minutes, twelve seconds.”
Her hair was looking more and more rusty lately, like the shade of her lover’s, Xavier Montross’…before his current switch to a less desirable host body. It came out of a pony tail that may have been fastened days ago, and there were hard lines and dark circles under her eyes.
“How long have you been down here?” Caleb asked, noting the garbage can at her feet, full of Red Bull cans, candy wrappers and McDonald’s bags.
“Uh, what day is it?”
“Thursday?”
“Is that a question?” she asked, laughing. “Or don’t you know either?”
“A bit of both. I think we’ve all been a little overworked.”
“Yeah, well…” She picked up an empty can, took a disappointed sip, then shook it at the screen. “This is kind of a big deal.”
Caleb pulled up a chair and turned his attention upwards to graphical model, scanning the trajectory graph, the line and the arrow inching closer to the immense rock, more than half in shade, with the sun several hundred million miles away. “That’s why I’m here. Wouldn’t miss this for anything short of, well, some of the other stuff we’ve had to deal with the past few years.”
“Ancient world-destroying tablets, indestructible spears, magic soccer balls?”
“Blame your boyfriend for that one. He stole it—”
“From the Smithsonian, my former employer. Yeah, don’t remind me, I’m still not even allowed in the museum gift shop.” She took a deep breath and adjusted something on the controls, zooming in the main view. “Looking good, everything’s okay so far.”
Caleb nodded, but held his breath. His shoulders were tense, heart in his throat. He didn’t want to say it, but she spoke for him.
“Still hoping there’s nothing like Phobos — what happened on the Mars mission when we got too close back in the seventies.”
That was exactly the fear Caleb had, that some defense mechanism might rear up at the last moment, a streak of light or a blur — and then the satellite feed would go dark and all communications would be lost, with no explanation ever to be received.
The map left for Phoebe and Caleb under the old Stargate facility at Mt. Shasta indicated that something artificial had been left on this thus-far uncharted rock in the Taurid stream, something perhaps safeguarded there as an ultimate refuge, a redundant storage repository of knowledge. Smaller than the five-km comet Encke, which led the pack of objects in the Taurids, kicking off dust and stirring up a trail that crossed the Earth’s orbit twice a year, resulting in beautiful meteor showers, this new element had been dubbed Icarus for want of a better name.
One-point-five km in diameter, mostly dormant, Icarus wasn’t easy to locate, outshined by Encke which took all the glory. The viewpoint from the NASA satellite expanded in stark black and white, focusing and refocusing as the image blurred. There wasn’t yet much to see.
“Coming in fast,” Diana said. “Hang on to your hat.”
“Where’s touchdown point?”
“Close as we could get,” she said. And by ‘we’ Caleb knew who she meant. Montross. The man with the deep pockets, the senator — or at least his body. To all others, he was still Mason Calderon. However, a select few, those here in the Stargate Program, knew the truth — that Calderon had tried to use an ancient power to disrupt all life on the planet, to extract himself and his followers off-world in fulfillment of an ancient prophecy, a conflict that had yet to find its end. But Caleb and his half-brother Xavier, with the help of Nina, Phoebe, Orlando and others, denied Calderon’s gambit. In the process however, Xavier Montross found himself able to switch consciousness into Calderon’s body after the senator had killed his own. Calderon’s astral essence was stranded, then destroyed as Caleb wielded the Spear of Destiny — the one weapon able to interact with both realms.
Montross, now with access to unlimited funding and significantly more political clout, had given Diana the mission she needed. Working with Caleb, she planned a touchdown on the closest and most accessible of the locations highlighted by the Custodians on their map under the Mount Shasta facility — before it had been destroyed.
Comet Icarus. It just so happened NASA had a satellite ready to go two years ago, one that was repurposed for a little side trek before its journey out to Neptune. A pit stop first to the Taurid stream after Encke passed, dragging everything — including Icarus — in its wake. Now the satellite, armed with a new mission, was set to release its cargo at the designated location.
Diana and Caleb were beyond excited. “Is this what it was like?” Diana asked, as if reading his mind.
“What?”
“When you finally got past all those traps, deciphered the codes and made it into the Pharos Chamber? When you knew you were about to access the prize hidden for so long?”
Caleb licked his lips, watching the asteroid’s rugged surface come into view, pockmarked with craters and littered with spires and icy rock formations. “Almost like that. Except this…it’s so incredible. Another world, and to think someone else has been there already!”
“Not just been there, but built something, left us something…”
“They went all Arthur C. Clarke on us.”
“Or maybe,” she said thoughtfully, “Arthur was one of you.”
“Meaning what?”
“You know what it means. That he saw the things he wrote about. Maybe mixed them up, adjusted things a bit, but the 2001 monolith? That’s too spot-on.”
“Maybe,” Caleb replied, eying the alien formations, rocky promenades shaped out of some drug-induced ice-sculptor’s twisted nightmares. “So what’s next? The payload touches down, releases the rover and the camera, and then we just hope it can see something?”
“Unfortunately, yes that’s about it. A 360-degree view is all we’ll get, and it’s not likely on that surface it can travel too far, so we’ve got to hope we chose the landing site wisely. Based on all the information we had on Icarus, its topographical layout and geological makeup, this seemed to be the only set of coordinates that might lead to a flat enough surface…the bottom of a shallow crater — something that might support an artificial structure.”
“In other words, if we were going to build a nice retirement home there, that’s the spot we’d choose?”
“Yep. Location is everything.”
“Hang on, going in now.”
“Let’s hope—”
Caleb blinked and almost missed it. Something thin and tall and completely out of place, and then it was gone, lost in a blur of icy dust and shards and gas as the payload made its not-so-gentle touchdown.
“Was that—?”
Diana was already on it, furiously replaying footage, pulling data and trying to clear the images until just one settled, one right before the image feed went dark.
“Oh, Montross is so going to owe me for this, after he bet we wouldn’t find anything.”
Caleb leaned in, until their faces were side by side, staring in awe at the scene she had frozen. The blurry action shot…