Greig Beck
The Void
Dedication
For NASA — the search for stardust continues.
Epigraph
We don’t know what’s really out there –
and maybe it’s better it stays that way.
PROLOGUE
Through the endless void, tumbling and spinning, crossing distances so vast that time becomes a meaningless concept.
And then…
contact.
CHAPTER 1
Commander Mitch Granger looked at the mission clock — 36.03 more hours to go, just a day and a half more. Piece of cake. They’d been up for a week now, and he was starting to feel the drag of home pulling him back harder than ever.
Homesick, he thought. Hey, the homesick astronaut — not a bad title for a book. He had always wanted to write one; after all, everyone was doing it these days and making a fortune.
Mitch leaned back in his seat and peered out the shuttle cockpit window. The glass was magnificently clear, even though the orbiter’s portal windows were triple-paned, super-hardened optical-quality glass. He knew if he wasn’t wearing the bulky suit gloves and pressed a hand against it, it would still feel numbingly cold and fragile. There were thirty-seven windowpanes in eleven different sizes and shapes on the shuttle, and all of them acknowledged as a point of possible engineering failure.
Just a few sheets of glass between me, a vacuum, and certain death, he sighed.
He reached up to tap the glass — safe as a bank. The shuttle orbiter technology was considered rock solid these days. On the Space Hazard Risk Identification Scale, where a low score equaled low risk, it rated 6.5 out of ten. Now human beings, they were a whole different kettle of onions. We poor shaved apes rate up at 7.2 — there’s your higher risk factors right there.
He inhaled a deep breath and then let it out slowly. They were a risk, the glass was a risk; up here every goddamn thing was a risk. Like it or not, they were in a metal shell, orbiting 333 miles above earth and hurtling along in orbit at 17,500 miles per hour.
He smiled dreamily; space was so vast, and everything looked frozen in place. There was nothing but pinpricks of light showing through to a blanket of black velvet.
At least with the windows they got to see out, which was some compensation. But still, everything was primarily run on autopilot or from NASA HQ, and in space nothing ever seemed to change, so really, their biggest challenge was fighting boredom.
Flight engineer Gerry Fifield floated back to his seat, pulling himself in and throwing a belt over his shoulder to stay in place. He started to press buttons, reading data from a screen. He spoke without turning.
“Beth is nearly finished back there, skipper.”
“Thank god for that,” said Mitch. “Wearing this suit is a bitch.” He stretched, trying to get comfortable in the bright orange MACES suit, or Modified Advanced Crew Escape Suit. They were the new design and nothing like the silver or white Michelin Man suits of old. But the vacuum of space was a killer, and it needed to be kept out at all costs, and that meant wearing the modern equivalent of a suit of armor.
Mission specialist Beth Power was back in the bay area running some experiments that required the payload delivery doors to be open — and the bay doors being open meant spacesuits on everywhere in the ship.
Mitch turned. “How’s Noah’s Ark?”
Gerry smiled back. “Larry and Moe are running miles, Curly Joe is taking a nap, and Mustang Sally is just hangin’ out as always. Plus, our creepy crawlies are doing their creepin’ and crawlin’ thing.” Gerry raised his eyebrows. “All creatures great and small are all present and accounted for.”
“Never work with animals or children — who was it said that?” Mitch grinned.
“Either WC Fields or Miley Cyrus — one of the greats, anyway,” returned Gerry.
Noah’s Ark was right. They had three mice, Larry, Moe and Curly Joe; a teenage sloth named Mustang Sally that may one day hold the key to long-term hibernation; and a panoply of ants, cockroaches, mantes, other bugs as well as giant earthworms in glass cases. Plus, thrown in for good measure, some plant and fungi stock.
Bottom line was the government’s interest in space travel was waning, and to get a bird financially airborne these days, NASA needed to be a flying circus.
That and other more covert fund-raising activities. Mitch eyed one of his screens that held a small number count still increasing. Their biggest sponsor of this mission was the US military, and the screen count was of the images taken as they passed over Russia and Eastern Europe. Mitch looked away — he hadn’t asked, and didn’t want to know. It was well above his pay grade anyway.
Among the sea of lights on the console, a single one started to blink, demanding attention.
“Whoa there, Ripley just picked up something on the long-range scanner.” Gerry straightened in his seat.
“Satellite or debris?” Mitch only partially listened; there was always something on the scanners. After all, space was a veritable junkyard these days.
“Ripley’s checking now.” Gerry listened to the computerized babble via a headset until a smooth feminine voice cut through.
The Orlando had five on-board computers that handled data processing and control critical flight systems. They talked to each other and even voted to settle arguments with RIPLE — the Relational Intelligent Processor and Logic Entity — known as Ripley, who was the head processor and mother hen, having the deciding vote.
Gerry held up a finger as he listened. “Ripley’s got it now.”
In a modern shuttle orbiter, pilots like Mitch and Gerry essentially flew the computers, which in turn flew the ship for them. In front of each man was a Multifunctional Electronic Display Subsystem, or MEDS, which was a full color, eleven-panel visual system the pilots called the ‘glass cockpit’. Ripley was an upgraded AI, and probably the most advanced technology in the old shuttle design. She was the new brain in an old body, and her major task was to keep her eyes and ears on the ship and the universe, and then translate it back to the astronauts for any fine-tuning.
“What is it, and where’s it from?” Mitch asked.
Gerry shook his head, frowning. “Not from anywhere.” He turned to Mitch. “She says it’s coming out of the void.”
Mitch half turned — the void. It was a description for any area of space that was well outside of the solar system. It was deep space, uncharted and with nothing there for countless billions of miles.
“Not on any orbit?” He sat forward. “What size?”
“Not big, less than a dozen feet long.” Gerry bobbed his head. “She says it’ll pass close by us. Here, listen.” He flicked the input to audio.
Mitch stared out through the thick glass of the cockpit window. “Talk to me, Ripley: what can you tell us?”
The calm feminine voice began. “Hello, Commander Granger. The unidentified object is in a non-elliptical orbit, traveling in a straight-line trajectory, and coming out of deep space quadrant ninety-five. It is traveling at 224.22 miles per second.”
“Pretty slow.” Mitch’s eyes narrowed. “Size?”
Ripley didn’t hesitate. “124.32 inches by 47.1 inches.”