Майкл Бишоп - The Final Frontier - Stories of Exploring Space, Colonizing the Universe, and First Contact

(They won’t be able to stay here very long. They have to pick somewhere to go where they stand a chance.)

Sometimes one of the stars has a drop in luminosity, the intensity of their light suddenly dimming. This happens sometimes when one is dying, or a flare ends, or when debris comes between the telescope and the far-off star.

But Konstantinova has a knack, and she can watch the numbers sinking and know she has a transit even before the alarm sounds.

Every time it comes she flips the switch to record, replays it in slow motion, marks the points of contact: click, click, click, click.

Every time, she thinks, Let this be home .

(By now the numbers are practically shapes; she can look at a column of numerals and see the corona of a star.)

During a planetary transit, there are four points of contact, moments where the circumference of the planet touches the edge of the star in only one place.

1. Just before the transit begins, when the outermost edges meet for the first time.

2. As the planet moves closer to the center, when the trailing edge of the planet has just come within the circle of the star.

3. As the planet passes the center of the transit, its leading curve touches the far edge of the star.

4. At the end of transit, the trailing curve of the planet moves closer and closer to freedom; then there is a single point of contact with the edge of the star; then the transit is over and they are parting.

(This has no real scope if you are close to the event; schoolchildren gather with shoeboxes to peer into the eclipse, that’s all.

This has no meaning until you are watching your new home become a black pearl against a far-off disc of light.)

Gliese 581 is a red dwarf star, warm and small, twenty light-years from the Earth. It hangs in Libra, if you’re watching from the ground. It has four planets ringing it. One of them transits at the right speed; it’s close enough to Gliese for light, far enough for water.

(The classification is Gliese 581-d; when people begin to pin hopes on it, it shrinks to “Gliese Dee”; to “Dee.” Marika calls it Gliese 581, never mentions Dee at all.)

There is a chance Dee is an ocean planet.

In the ops bay, there is construction on a small-scale human transport. There are calculations being made.

It is a very slight chance, but these are desperate days, and people must put a lot of faith, sometimes, in very slight chances.

Sometimes when they were still running from place to place, it was a comfort for Marika to watch the sky and see there was no balance there, either. The stars you knew would roll beyond your sight and be replaced by strangers, and there was nothing you could do.

After a while she couldn’t breathe in cities, wanted only to be in the wild, watching a war she couldn’t win.

(The sky is a battle; stars are always falling.)

Seeing can be mitigated on cold, clear nights. From a refuge on top of a mountain, the seeing is so clear that, if you didn’t know better, it might not occur to you that the star is even moving.

(You know better now; you can’t trust your eyes.)

Sometimes there’s no such luck, and even the Moon wavers like a coin submerged in shallow water. When seeing is at its worst, the Aristarchus crater on the Oceanus Procellarum can suffer so much distortion that it’s only intermittently visible. If you know what you’re looking for, and you know your numbers, you can calculate the seeing from that.

Marika doesn’t learn this until it’s too late. For her, Aristarchus is always just a pale dot in a black sea, washing in and out of sight; a star on dark water, or a drowning man.

Maybe the old man held out a hand as he toppled—a reflex, second thoughts—but Marika never remembers. Maybe he called for help, or tried to pull himself up before the water took him, but it might be a lie.

This moment always blurs when she tries to recall it; it wavers like the Moon, sneaks sidelong into her imagination when she’s running checklists on the three-seat ship that will carry them to Gliese 581.

(She doesn’t think she was terrified watching the old man drop into the water, but she must have been; whenever he appears in her thoughts she freezes, fumbles for something to hold on to.)

When she’s drunk enough and dreaming, sometimes he holds out his arm and the star-wake catches him, pulls him smoothly across the water until he disappears into the sky.

But it was only Jupiter, she thinks, not a star; you know that now.

She wakes up grieving, doesn’t know why.

Marika calls it Gliese 581 because she doesn’t ever want to pin her hopes on a planet by mistake.

Their spacesuits are molded in the Orlan model—a thick skin they can pull on and clamp shut—and Konstantinova thinks it’s remarkably like wearing an elephant.

Apparently it’s not as bad as it used to be. The gloves are more articulated, the legs less bulky. There’s still no joint at the neck; the chest is stiff to support the oxygen and coolant strapped to the back.

Before Alkonost I, she and Zeke and Marika run drills until they can all get in, attach the water-coolant hoses, and seal up in five minutes; in four; in three.

Konstantinova always hears an exhale over the mike when Marika’s fastened in. For a long time she thinks it’s relief. Exertion, maybe. Panic, maybe. (Marika is a liability; why they’re sending her up is anyone’s guess.)

But once, Konstantinova sees Marika’s face as Zeke seals her in: Marika frowns, brushes at the helmet’s gold-coated visor like she’s cleaning a dirty glass.

(The sound is a sigh. It hurts.)

Konstantinova’s life-support system whirrs awake.

“Clear,” she says, turns her mind to important things.

“The life-support system isn’t active in the pods,” says Zeke. “Shit. Mission Control, are you reading me?”

An acknowledgement comes back over the static; then a plan. Marika and Zeke fish around in the toolbox and do as they’re told. Konstantinova takes comm, passing along a series of orders that become wild guesses.

No one panics until they realize the ambient heat from the launch melted a circuit in the outer hull that can’t be set right again.

Mission Control goes quiet for a long time.

Marika and Zeke wait, holding the handrails to keep from floating away; at the comm, Konstantinova is bent over like someone punched her in the stomach.

Then the Director says, “At full speed, it’s forty years to Dee. Operations calculates that it’s possible to make it, without suspension, on the existing life support.” A pause. “There’s not enough for a return.”

He doesn’t say, We might not have this chance again, if this ship comes down in pieces. He doesn’t say, You might as well take your chances, things aren’t any better on the ground.

Konstantinova’s visor trembles against the net of stars.

“You’ll have some life support after landing,” comes over the line. “A day, maybe, maybe a week. Depends how much oxygen you use on the trip. But even a day is long enough to find out if Dee is really habitable.”

The Director clears his throat. “This isn’t a call we’re going to make, Alkonost. It’s up to you.”

After a long time, Konstantinova says, “No.”

Zeke says, “And I’m a No. That’s majority—we’re no-go, Control. We’re inputting a new trajectory. Confirm.”

Konstantinova curses under her breath, until the roar of the atmosphere swallows the words.

After it’s over, Konstantinova pulls Marika out of the hatch.

“My hand hurts,” Marika says, absently.

Konstantinova says, “We broke your fingers.”