Stephen Baxter: Ark

Helen, her mind blank, found her own suit, shook it out and pulled it on.

Venus and Holle approached. Holle looked tremendously sad, Venus frankly envious.

Holle said, “Wilson’s already aboard, checking over the systems. I-here.” She handed Helen a small stainless-steel sphere. It was a globe of Earth III, a product of the Ark’s machine shop. “We did the same at Earth II, I don’t know if you remember that. We put them in the kids’ packs; something for them to find. I wanted to give you yours personally.” Impulsively she hugged Helen. “I’m sorry I put you through this.”

Helen shoved her away. “You can never be sorry enough,” she said fiercely.

Holle just soaked this up, as she had soaked up all she had done for the sake of the crew, the mission, since the day she took over from Wilson. Maybe, in the end, that was Holle’s role, Helen thought, not leadership at all, just a receptacle for all the guilt at what had had to be done so the rest could survive. Nevertheless Helen felt a stab of renewed hatred.

Venus came forward and fussed over the seals on Helen’s suit. “Don’t forget, it will be damned cold down there. The next generation won’t notice, but you will. Wrap up before you crack that hatch.” She moved back, her eyes brimming. “Christ, I’ll miss you. You were the best student I ever had. Pass your learning on to the kids. You’re not to slip back to the fucking Neolithic, after coming all this way.”

“I will. What about you, Venus? What’s next?”

She glanced at Holle. “Well, we have a plan, of sorts. As soon as we pick up the beacon that says you’re safely down, we’ll send messages back by microwave laser to Earth, Earth II. Then, in a hundred years or so, anybody who’s listening will get the good news.

“Then we have this plan to go exploring the system of this M-sun.” She snapped her fingers, click, click. “Little bitty warp jumps, from planet to planet. Zane would have loved working all that out. We’ll send you back the results, surface maps, internal structures, whatever we find out. Keep that radio receiver functioning. It will be a legacy for the next generation, when they’re ready to go exploring, yeah?”

“And then?”

Venus spread her arms. “Hell, the sky is ours. We’ll just explore some more. Maybe we’ll find Earth IV and Earth V and Earth VI. We’ll laser back, we’ll tell you what we find. Or maybe we’ll come back and beat the light and tell you ourselves. Go,” she said, her voice suddenly gruff. “Go now before they close the damn hatch and leave you behind.”

Most of the kids were already aboard. Jeb glided through the hatch. There was no reason to stay. Helen swiveled in the air and dropped down herself, feet first. The pressure garment felt odd, too clean, and it rustled when she moved.

Once inside the shuttle, she looked back. Holle’s face, full of remorse and suffering, was the last she saw of the Ark. Then Venus closed the hatch.

The layout of the little craft was simple. The cramped, tubular cabin was packed with rows of seats, improvised from Ark gear and jammed in among the original design’s twenty-five couches. Two seats sat proud of the rest, up in the nose before a rudimentary instrument console and scuffed panoramic windows. Wilson was already in the left-hand seat, running over systems checks, and Helen made her way to the right-hand seat. He handed her a Snoopy comms hat, and she pulled it on.

The shuttle was an automated glider, essentially, with the characteristics of Earth III’s atmosphere and gravity profiles programmed into its onboard computer. It was smart enough to avoid such obvious obstacles as oceans and rock fields and snowbanks, and indeed was capable of flying itself all the way down to the ground. But in the design offices back in vanished Denver it had been recognized that you’d likely need human control over the first unpowered landing on an entirely alien world. A few hundred meters up was the point where Wilson would come into his own; that was the reason this despised sixty-two-year-old was aboard the shuttle, while Helen’s own children were left back aboard the Ark. Helen was the nearest thing available to a copilot. But she had never even flown as a passenger in an atmosphere before, and she prayed the rudimentary skills she had picked up in her training, and from working with Wilson in HeadSpace sims in the last month, would not be called upon.

As she buckled in she glanced back over her shoulder. The kids were packed in, their orange pressure garments bright. The few older kids, the fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds, were dotted around among the rest. The ten-year-olds looked scared, but the infants were mostly sleeping, in the shuttle’s warm humming atmosphere. Helen saw little Sapphire Murphy Baker, the youngest aboard at four years old, holding the hand of an eight-year-old. Jeb sat at the back, in theory watching over the kids and ready to intervene in case of any crisis. Seeing Helen looking, he waved. She tried to smile, but the desolation in his face was clear.

This was how they were going to colonize a new world, with a pack of children and three adults, and a hold containing a nuclear generator and seed stock and tools and a couple of blowup hab modules, and broken hearts.

“We must be insane,” Helen murmured.

“Those who sent us from Earth were insane.” Wilson glanced over at her. “You ready?”

“As I’ll ever be.”

He flipped a switch, a heavy manual toggle. “Well, that’s it. I’ve initiated the automated program. Now this baby will fly itself all the way down, all but. Here comes the first mission event. Three, two, one-”

Latches rattled, and attitude thrusters banged around the shuttle’s exterior. Helen felt a pull in her stomach. Some of the sleeping children stirred and moaned.

“We cut away from the Ark. That’s it, we’re flying solo. Better get used to that acceleration, we’ll be facing a lot of that this morning.”

“Solo now and for the rest of our lives… wow.” She felt a slight dizziness, her inner ears telling her they were spinning on their long axis.

“That’s the inspection spin. Just giving Halivah a chance to check that the heat shield tiles haven’t fallen off in the last forty years.”

Venus Jenning’s voice crackled from a speaker. “Shuttle B, Halivah. Looking good for descent, Wilson.”

“Copy that. Thank you, Venus.”

The spinning stopped. Helen looked out of the window. They were somewhere over the night side of the planet. They were flying backward, with their heads to the stars and the new world unfolding beneath them, utterly black save for a purple flaring of storms and a sullen red glow that looked like a huge volcano caldera. The idea was that they would enter the atmosphere over the night hemisphere, and their entry trajectory would bring them swooping around the world’s curve to land on the side of permanent day.

Wilson glanced over his shoulder. “Everybody OK? Next it’s the retro rocket. It will feel like a kick in the back. Nothing to worry about. Three, two, one-”

The cabin was filled with noise, a guttural crackling roar like an immense fire. It was indeed a kick in the back. Helen felt it in her lower spine and neck and legs as she was pressed into the padded couch, and the shuttle seemed to swivel until it was as if it was standing on its tail, and she lying on her back. The retro system was a rocket pack bolted to the rear end of the shuttle, designed to shed the velocity that kept the ship in orbit alongside the Ark, and let it fall into the air of Earth III. Now, after lying dormant for forty years, it had fired up for its one and only burn.

Wilson called, “Three, two, one-”

The retro died as sharply as it had opened up, and Helen was thrown forward. More of the children were awake now; with the rocket’s roar gone she could hear them crying in the sudden silence.