Stephen Baxter: Last and First Contacts

The technicians stood around a hole in the ground. It was maybe a metre across and covered by a heavy metal hatch, like a submarine’s. As we walked up two heavy-set techs turned the hatch’s wheel and hauled it open. A shaft led into the ground, filled with a silvery light, and I felt an unaccountable thrill.

‘Down we go,’ Elstead said to me.

‘Now? Just like that?’

He shrugged. ‘We’re ready to go.’

‘Go where?’

‘We’ve just been waiting for you. There’s nothing to be gained by delaying. And besides, it’s air-conditioned down there. You first. Look, there are rungs inset into the wall of the shaft.’

The shaft was generously wide, plenty of room for me and my pack, and maybe three metres deep, an easy climb down. At the bottom I stood with Elstead and looked up at a circle of washed-out Mojave sky, and sweating, silhouetted faces. When the hatch closed over it was like an eclipse of the sun.

Elstead watched me. ‘I hope you’re not claustrophobic.’

‘It’s just that things are moving a little rapidly.’

‘That’s how I like it. This way.’

We were off again. He led me through a door, a big oval metal affair opened by spinning a wheel, then along another short passageway, brightly lit. The air was fresh and cool, but it smelled faintly metallic; obviously we were in a sealed system. It was like a nuclear bunker. And there were oddities: Velcro pads on the walls, bright colour schemes with floors and ceilings clearly distinguished from walls, even doors that looked as if they had been fitted sideways.

We reached a small cabin, and Elstead gave me some privacy for a few minutes. It wasn’t much more than a pod-hotel room in Tokyo, but it had a softscreen, its own tiny bathroom facilities, and even a little coffee machine. The bunk had seatbelt-like straps over it, oddly.

A single jumpsuit hung on a peg. It had a nametag stitched onto it – ORAM – and a mission patch, like an astronaut’s, which showed a kind of funnel shape like a cartoon black hole, and a slogan: SPACETIME BATHYSCAPHE I. How cheesy, I thought. I did wonder, though, what kind of bathyscaphe could be buried in the Mojave.

I used the facilities quickly, trying to wash off the grit of a transatlantic flight and to wake myself up. The jumpsuit was a perfect fit. I left my London clothes in a locker.

Elstead had waited for me outside. ‘The suit is okay? It’s smart fabric, self-cleaning, temperature control.’

It was cool and snug, and moved with me as I walked. ‘I want one.’

He laughed. ‘Keep it.’

Through another hatch in the floor we descended to a lower level, and came to a larger chamber, which Elstead called the bridge. It was a roughly cylindrical space, with its curving walls, floor and even the ceiling coated with softscreens. Right now these were full of readouts, graphical and digital. Three couches, like heavy-built airline seats with harnesses, were suspended in the centre of the room. You reached them by crossing a catwalk of white-painted metal. The couches had trays laden with more softscreens that you could pull into your lap.

The central couch was already occupied, by a thin, intent-looking man of around forty. He was busy, peering at the wall displays, working at his lap tray. When we walked in he started to get up, but Elstead waved him back. ‘That’s Teutonic manners for you, but the three of us are going to be working together for the next few days, and I don’t think we need stand on ceremony.’

The man shook my hand. ‘My name is Walter Junge.’ Vall-tair. His accent was clipped, precise; I thought he was Prussian.

Elstead clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Walter is my evil genius – my Igor. All this, the Bathyscaphe and the facility that sustains it, is his design.’

Junge nodded. ‘But your vision, Elstead.’

Elstead laughed. ‘And my money. Not the first time American money and German know-how have combined to make history, eh, Susie? So our motley crew is assembled. Sit down, Susie – your seat is the right-hand one. Strap in tight.’

The buckles were straightforward. As I strapped in Junge continued to work, and a low hum filled our spherical chamber. I sensed huge energies gathering. The proceedings had the atmosphere of a space launch; I had a fantasy of this whole facility bursting out of the ground like a Minuteman missile from its silo. The preparations for this event must have been going on for hours; it was a showman’s touch to have me landed and thrown down here at the crucial moment.

It was all as corny as hell, and I still didn’t know what was going on. But again, I couldn’t help feeling thrilled.

Elstead smiled at me. ‘Susie, a favour. Do you have a pendant? A locket, maybe …’

I had a small crucifix on a gold chain, a gift from my mother when I was five; I’d worn it ever since.

‘Would you mind taking it off, and hanging it from your monitor tray?’

I shrugged and complied. The little trinket dangled, glittering in LED light. ‘I still don’t have the faintest idea what we’re all doing here.’

‘You’ll find out in five minutes,’ Elstead said.

‘Actually a little more than three,’ Junge said. ‘The five-minute count started when you closed the door to the bridge.’

‘Three, then. I did give you a clue, Susie—’

‘ Cosmological exploration. That means nothing to me.’ I remembered old Discovery Channel shows about giant orbital telescopes peering into space. Cosmology was a matter of observing; its subject was the universe, its theories concerned the ancient past and deep future. How could you explore it?

But I had picked up other clues. ‘We’re in the Mojave. Close to Edwards Air Force Base? A good place to be if you want isolation, but with access to technicians from LA, and maybe help from the Air Force with heavy lifting.’ I thought about that circle of blockhouses, spread over kilometres. ‘Have you built a particle accelerator out here, Mr Elstead?’

‘Just Elstead, please. Good guess, Susie. But the accelerator is only a means to an end.’

‘And I don’t see why you would put a bathyscaphe in the middle of the desert.’

‘One minute,’ Junge said.

Elstead said, ‘So why do you think I asked you here?’

I shrugged. ‘With respect, your ego is everything. I’m here as, what, an unbiased witness? My job will be to write up this chapter in your hagiography.’

He laughed, evidently not offended. ‘I couldn’t have put it better. And, aside from the money, what made you come?’

‘If you succeed, fine. If you don’t, this monumental folly will make an even better story.’

‘Fair enough. Let’s hope we both get what we want.’

‘Fifteen seconds,’ Junge said. ‘Everything is nominal. Ten. Nine …’

‘I don’t think we need a count,’ Elstead said.

So we sat in silence. Elstead seemed relaxed, unbearably confident. Junge was focussed on his machinery, the born technician. Only I grew tense.

There was a kind of jolt. I felt as if I was falling; my chest pushed up against my harness. Startled, I asked, ‘What is this, some kind of elevator?’

‘Look at your pendant,’ Elstead said. ‘Old trick I learned from the Soyuz cosmonauts …’

The crucifix was floating, the chain twisted.

‘We’re in free fall,’ Elstead said.

‘Why? How? We’re buried in the dirt.’

‘Not any more,’ Junge said. ‘Elstead, the external monitors are working.’

‘Cameras on the outer hull,’ Elstead explained to me. ‘Walter, let’s see out.’

Junge tapped a control. The wall displays cleared of their read-outs, to show what was now beyond the hull of the Bathyscaphe.

Stars.