Stephen Baxter - Last and First Contacts

‘Black!’ said Bead, his face boyish with wonder. ‘Black as the inside of a skull.’

I hid a smile. But he was right: the comet nucleus tumbled through the solar system’s depths like a bit of charred bone, its perihelion glory a memory.

And our two-man ship was only metres away from it.

‘We’ve made it, Bead,’ I said. ‘The first men to the cometary halo.’

‘And maybe the first to see the birth of the solar system. Yeah…’

We were that close –

– when the ghost rippled through us.

My console lights flared; my sensors screamed.

Bead’s face emptied. ‘What…’

‘The processors have overloaded.’ I slammed in manual overrides. ‘Remember your training, damn it! Help me get her under control—’

We hit the comet ice, hard. I heard metal peel back like orange skin. Stars slewed across the viewscreen, overlaid by whirling sparks. There was a distant grind.

We came to rest.

Bead’s voice shivered. ‘Slater, don’t do these things to me! Thank God that’s over.’

I watched the sparks – half our water disappearing into interstellar space.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It’s all over.’

He looked at me strangely.

‘Come on,’ I said briskly. ‘We’ll suit up and check the damage.’

We drifted like bubbles in the comet’s micro-gravity.

The ship had dug itself a pit about three metres deep. The slushy methane ice of the comet hadn’t done the drive tubes any damage.

‘Maybe your lousy piloting’s done me a favour,’ said Bead. His voice was high and quick; he took clownish bounds over the carbon-coated landscape. ‘I mean, the deeper I can take my cores for the Berry interferometer the older the material will be. I might even find some stuff from before the sun lit up. ‘Imagine that, Slater. We’ll get images of the sun’s birth – or even of the primordial nova that seeded it—’

I shivered.

There were stars all around us, cold and distant. I felt like a child in a huge bedroom…

I wondered if there were ghosts out here.

‘Listen to me, Bead.’

Reluctantly he settled to the surface.

I searched for words. ‘You know what happened. Right at the moment of landing the sensors picked up a ghost – a veil of nothing a thousand miles long. ‘There was a high-energy pulse – probably a trace from some old disaster, a nova maybe. The processors overloaded…’

‘Tell me about the damage,’ he said quietly.

‘Yeah. Bead – we can’t both get home. We’ve lost too many consumables. There’s enough for one of us.’ I searched his face in the starlight. ‘Do you understand?’

He half-smiled, his face slack.

‘Well, we haven’t got to face it yet.’ Or each other, I thought. ‘We’ve work to do – report to Earth, get the Berry cores done. And we could both use some sleep. Come on.’

I turned to the ship and away from the situation.

We set up the Berry core device. Like a bizarre insect it plunged its cylindrical tongue into the heart of the comet.

Bead broke open trial cores on the surface. He nodded. ‘These are good. And very old.’

I poked the ancient stuff with a toe. ‘Well, it’s your baby. Looks like slush to me.’

‘Yah.’

An awkward silence stretched; without the distraction of words, the tension between us became tangible.

‘Listen,’ I said hastily, ‘I’ve never understood how this interferometer of yours works anyway.’

He got to his feet clumsily. ‘Every particle of matter has a sort of memory,’ he said. ‘Each quantum mechanical wave function has something called a Berry phase – does that make any sense to you?’

‘Not a lot.’

He waved his hands vaguely. ‘The Berry phase is like a record of the past history of the particle – what velocities it’s attained, what fields it’s been subject to. The interferometer can take this information from a collection of particles and, uh, decode it to give pictures.’

‘Recordings of the past?’

He nodded – then his mouth twitched. ‘Ironic, isn’t it?’

‘What?’

‘Well, it was traces of some past disaster that stranded us here.’

‘There’s got to be a catch with this Berry device,’ I said quickly. ‘It sounds too easy.’

‘Yah. The interferometer needs particles that have remained clean. Stayed buried somewhere since the event we’re interested in.’

‘So the images don’t get obscured by later ones.’

‘That’s the idea. And that’s why we’re here. The stuff inside this comet must have remained undisturbed since the birth of the sun – and maybe before.’ His voice cracked. ‘And we’ve now spent three days in this damn place avoiding the subject.’

I recoiled from his sudden violence. ‘What subject?’ I asked weakly.

‘You know what subject. How do we choose, Slater? Who’s going home – and who isn’t?’ He took a lumbering pace towards me. His hands were clenched into small fists. ‘You tell me. You’re twice my age. You tell me.’

I spread my hands. ‘Be fair, Bead. I’ve no experience of situations like this… But I have got a wife and a kid.’

He flinched.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said gently. ‘I guess neither of us wants to die.’

‘So what do we do?’ He scuffed at the ice. ‘Draw lots? Have a snowball fight?’

I gathered up the equipment. ‘Take it easy, will you?’

‘I know what you’re thinking. That I’m no pilot. That you’re the only one who could make it home.’

‘I’m thinking you’d need coaching,’ I said. ‘But you could do it, Bead. Look – we’ve got time yet. We’ll work it out.’

I stalked off towards another sampling site.

‘How do I know you’d help me? That you wouldn’t trick me? How?’

His accusing voice filled my head. You’re walking away again, I told myself. Go back and face him; finish it now. Coward –

I walked on.

Bead worked with his feet up. Here in his lab at the centre of the ship he looked like part of the equipment.

I handed him a coffee. ‘How’s it going?’

He turned from a large viewscreen. His eyes were bleary but full of wonder. ‘Astonishing,’ he said. He sipped his coffee. ‘I’m digging deeper than anyone’s dug before. Look.’

He pointed at the viewscreen. It bore a hazy image of a young star, wreathed in amniotic gas. ‘The sun. Less than a million years old.’

‘You’re kidding.’

He shook his head smugly. ‘A billion years earlier than the previous record. After only four days’ work… And the core that’s in the Berry interferometer at the moment is the deepest yet; who knows how far back we’ll go.’

I stared at the machinery. Somewhere in there ferocious laser beams were ripping the heart out of a fragment of comet slush.

A ‘ready’ message beeped from a terminal. ‘Watch this, Slater. You can see some live results.’ He worked a keypad expertly. In this environment he was fast and capable. Vital. His death was unthinkable.

I concentrated on the viewscreen. A harsh blur, blue-white. Bead focussed the image. The star was enormous, a sack of brooding anger. Planets circled it cautiously.

Bead frowned. ‘What the hell—’

‘Well, it’s a star,’ I said, ‘but it’s certainly not the sun. Now or in the past.’

‘This is the oldest sample I’ve taken. What are we seeing?’ His face lit up. ‘Slater…’ he breathed.

I smiled. ‘Tell me.’

‘This has got to be the primordial – the ancient star that went supernova, sending out shock waves that led to the birth of our sun. We’ve found a fragment from the primordial – or one of its planets. I don’t believe this.’