3
This is Mission Control.
After three years of intense preparations, we are at L-minus two days and counting until the Magellan II crew departs Earth for their expedition to Jupiter and the outer solar system.
Astronauts Roy and Noelle Hoover, Jack Templeton, and Traci Keene have spent the last week in prelaunch quarantine at Kennedy Space Center and are now conducting their final integrated simulation with the flight control team here in Houston. Once their spacecraft Magellan is under constant acceleration from its advanced pulsed-fusion engines, within days they will have traveled well beyond any timely communication with Earth due to the signal delays over such great distances.
After they have crossed the orbit of Mars and traversed the asteroid belt, they will make a close flyby of Jupiter for one of the most critical events of the mission. As they enter Jupiter’s influence, they will intercept the Cygnus cargo ship which is already racing toward its own encounter with the gas giant. The following day, the crew will launch a series of probes into the planet’s turbulent atmosphere and across its icy moon Europa before performing a gravity-assist maneuver to increase their velocity and shift the plane of their trajectory for Phase Two: the mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt.
Their flyby of the gas giant promises to be a momentous time for the astronauts of the Magellan II expedition and America’s Human Outer Planet Exploration program. Today is the crew’s final opportunity to test themselves before they must perform this for real at Jupiter.
✦ ✦ ✦
The simulated Magellan control deck, from its overhead lighting to its touchscreen instrument panels, was awash in red. The lighting the crew had dialed in to preserve their night vision blended accented the simulated planetshine of Jupiter, filling the small cabin with a carnival glow. The high definition screens outside their windows presented towering cloud formations in swirling pastel streams of orange and purple, their digital tops sheared away by simulated supersonic winds. When time came for the actual flyby in a few more weeks, the real view promised to be spectacular and completely ignored. That so many mission-critical events would coincide with their sideswipe of one of the solar system’s most remarkable sights was one of many cruel realities of spaceflight.
Mission pilot Traci Keene almost hoped for a primary control failure during the actual supply intercept next year, as it would give them an opportunity to hand-fly the ship if they were forced to revert to the backup plan. “Cygnus’s docking target just pinged us. LIDAR is locked on. Relative velocity four meters per second.”
“Rog.” Roy Hoover showed no such desire to look outside. His zen-like discipline might have come effortlessly in the sims but it was a no less vital trait for a mission commander. While he might have been indifferent to computer-generated visuals, his crew also knew he was that much of a stoic.
“He means, ‘Yes, I acknowledge your report and concur we are on target for rendezvous,’” came a soothing voice from behind her. Noelle Hoover was accustomed to filling in her husband’s unfinished thoughts; her crewmates were convinced it was the main reason they’d been assigned to the mission together. Without her, two years in deep space would be agonizing with a boss who conserved words like water in the desert.
“We appreciate the translation. They’re gonna miss you at Capcom, especially the Europeans. They won’t have anybody left to gossip with in their own language.” If the big shots in the Astronaut Office had wanted another crewman who was the commander’s polar opposite, they could scarcely have done better than Jack Templeton.
“Perhaps I’m the one who will need them back here to gossip about you.”
“That’d be a mistake,” Traci said. “Jack’s been listening to French language lessons in his sleep.”
“And how is it you know this?” Noelle quipped.
“Focus, people,” Roy growled over Jack’s snickering while Traci searched in vain for a good comeback. “SIMSUP’s throwing us a nice softball right across home plate. Screw this up and we’ll get to spend our last night on Earth practicing intercepts.” It was the most consecutive syllables he had uttered all day.
“The oracle speaks.”
“I’m serious, Templeton.” His tone carried a warning.
“So am I, boss. I’d rather be sitting at the beach house with a cold beer. It’s the girls cutting up this time,” Jack protested. “And by the way, relative velocity’s down to three m-p-s. We’re standing by with the claw.” One of Jack’s duties as Magellan’s flight engineer was to grab the resupply vehicle with their remote manipulator arm in case the two pilots somehow lost primary control.
“Can you behave, Mrs. Hoover?”
“Yes, love,” she groaned, and turned off her intercom to lean in toward Jack. “You think he’s cranky now, wait until we’ve been living off of freeze-dried food for a year.”
“He’ll be even crankier if we blow this sim,” Jack said, “and he’s right. It’s kind of a tradition for the trainers to take it easy on our last run, so we need to lock down the grab-ass. You ready?”
“I am.” Jack always found her Mediterranean French accent to be soothing. It hadn’t been the least bit surprising when she and Roy had announced their engagement not long after a joint tour on the Space Station—she’d probably lulled him into hypnosis.
Putting a married couple on the agency’s longest-duration mission had been the obvious choice. As for Jack’s and Traci’s assignments, he hadn’t been so sure. Maybe it was the center director’s idea of social engineering. Two years’ worth of training alongside each other in close quarters had offered as many opportunities to learn each other’s quirks as marriage would for anyone else.
“Visual on the care package at two o’clock,” Traci said. “I’ve got her centered in window one right.”
Jack spotted the computer-generated stack of gleaming aluminum cylinders in the porthole by his flight station behind Traci. “Tally ho. I have visual on Cygnus in window two right.”
“I have positive control with the remote,” Traci said. “RCS check.” She tapped a control stick and the animated supply vehicle pitched and rolled in response as pixelated reaction jets puffed along its length. If all went as planned, the stack of logistics modules and propellant tanks would dock itself with the portals nested inside Magellan’s open support truss. Failing that, Traci could remotely fly it in. If the whole system went belly-up, Roy would bring them in close enough for Jack to grab Cygnus with the manipulator arm. If that failed and they missed their resupply rendezvous, they’d be forced to turn tail-forward and slow down enough for Jupiter to sling them back toward Earth while looking forward to twelve more weeks of basic rations during the flight home.
That was a whole different level of simulation which Jack was certain the others were just as sick of as he was. After two years of near-continuous rehearsals of every critical event and conceivable failure, it was nice to have everything working as planned for once.
“Twenty meters, closing at point five,” Traci said in her coolest, nothing-but-a-thing pilot voice. “Cargo ship’s still responsive. Switching back to auto.”
“Arm is secure,” Noelle said, just as cool for different reasons. “Docking nodes are clear.” Are we sure we can’t stay at Jupiter for a while? she left unsaid.
“Ten meters,” Roy said. “Hang on.”
The simulator rocked gently as their virtual cargo hit its imaginary target. There was a series of dull thuds as their displays told them the craft had seated itself against Magellan’s spine.
“Hard dock,” Jack said. “All latches are barber-poled. Stand by for propellant transfer check . . . okay, there we go. Positive pressure in the manifolds. That’s all, folks.”
“Roger that,” Roy said. “Waiting for acknowledgment from Houston.”
“Can we hit the ‘time warp’ button for that one?” Traci chimed in. “Because I really have to pee.”
A new voice sounded over their radio net. “Not necessary. SIMSUP is closing this session. Congratulations, guys.”
There were whoops from the technicians out in the sim bay as they began shutting down the platform. Jack blew out a relieved sigh and sank into his flight couch. No words were spoken as they celebrated with a round of silent fist bumps. Traci tossed off her headset and fluffed her hair. “How about that beer, partner?”
✦ ✦ ✦
Launch day breakfast had been a tradition since Al Shepard’s first fifteen-minute hop above the atmosphere. It would be their last face-to-face human contact without being surrounded by technicians before leaving the planet for two years, so today was especially significant. While grand sendoffs threatened to become melodramatic clichés as spaceflight became more routine, today’s gathering had been kept more private than usual. Perhaps because they were about to leave for the outer edges of the solar system, the mood at the astronaut beach house was subdued.
As they shuffled into the dining room, Jack was struck by how few people were here. His launch to the International Space Station a few years earlier had hosted more people. Today there were only three guests: Grady Morrell, head of the astronaut office; Owen Harriman, their mission manager; and one rumpled old guy he’d never laid eyes on before. Jack stole a glance in Roy’s direction; their mission commander’s pursed lips signaled that he was just as surprised.
Other than their surprise guest, everything else was normal: pitchers of juice and coffee, a plateful of fruit, platters of scrambled eggs and breakfast steaks all laid out on a buffet behind them. A single sealed envelope sat at the center of the dining table.
They each took coffee and sat without a sound, eyes locked on their hosts. Owen, to his credit, didn’t waste time. “I’m sorry to spring this surprise on you but it was unavoidable,” he said as he pushed the envelope across the table at Roy. “This is going to be a bit of a working breakfast.”
Roy’s gaze remained fixed on Grady and Owen as he turned the envelope over, cocked an eyebrow and tore open the candy-striped “Eyes Only” security tape.
Owen narrated while Roy began pulling out briefing papers. “Inside you’ll find mission-critical information that we’ve been forced to withhold until the very last minute. We apologize for the secrecy, but once you’ve had a chance to digest it I think you’ll understand.”
“That remains to be seen,” Roy grumbled.
Jack peeked over Roy’s shoulder and saw that most of the contents were in Russian. He looked back across the table. “Who’s our guest?”
Owen laid a hand on the old man’s shoulder. “Dr. Anatoly Rhyzov, formerly of the Aviation and Space Agency of the old Soviet Union.” He paused as the crew did a double-take and Traci almost spit her coffee.
“Dr. Rhyzov was enjoying his retirement in Moscow until I found him and screwed it all up.” The thin smile that crossed the old man’s face suggested he hadn’t been all that bothered by it. “The state department agreed to give him a worker’s visa, and he’s been our guest in Houston for the past three years.” Almost the same amount of time they’d been in near-total immersion training for the Magellan II mission.
Noelle spoke up. “Should we assume the doctor has some particular relevant expertise?”
Jack reached over to lift a stack of the Russian-language papers from Roy. “A good astronaut never questions the pretzel logic of crew assignments,” he said, staring over the files at Grady. “But at this point I suppose it’s worth the risk.” He waved the papers for effect. “I’m assuming this has something to do with my spot on the crew?”
“Of course it does, genius,” Grady drawled. “You used to be a Russian cryptologic linguist. That put you at the head of the line.”
Jack scanned the cover sheet and flipped through the first few pages at random. “Nothing coded,” he said laconically, “but lots of ‘Top Secret’ banners in Russian. It’s about a project called ‘Arkangel.’”
Owen leaned forward to speak before the Russian laid a wrinkled hand across his arm. “I ran Arkangel, very long time ago. Any questions you have, I will answer.”
Jack began to spread the papers out across the table and stopped with a foldout diagram of what appeared to be a space station with a Soyuz crew capsule mounted on its forward node. The rest became less familiar the more he looked. “This looks like an old DOS-7 core module,” Jack said. “Same thing you guys used to build the Mir and Almaz stations, right?” He traced a finger farther along the diagram. “Docking node’s at the top of the stack, not centered in the core. Everything’s linear, along a single axis . . .” His voice trailed off as he stopped at an enormous disk at the base of the complex, mounted to the spacecraft by a brawny cluster of pistons. “Is that what I think it is?”
Roy took the foldout, impatient to see for himself. “Good Lord. You guys actually built a nuclear pulse drive?”
The Russian beamed like a proud grandfather patiently watching the children connect the dots. “Da. Other than shock accumulators, most difficult part was strengthening the docking node against torque.”
“Thus the linear arrangement,” Jack said. “Everything’s stacked along the axis of thrust to handle all that power. Same way we had to build Magellan.”
“Correct,” Rhyzov said. “But mass tradeoffs were still difficult. There was no point in building Arkangel if we could not also carry a lander and laboratory module.”
Jack continued studying the layout. There was the lander, on the opposite end of the forward node: an old LK of the type first built for their defunct Moon program. So not all of them had ended up as museum items. He pointed at a squat cylinder covered with antennas. “And this lab module, on the opposite side of the docking node. Is that what I think it is?”
“Was Kremlin’s idea.” There was sorrow in Rhyzov’s eyes.
Roy leaned over for a better look. “You guys couldn’t build so much as a fishing boat without turning it into an intel trawler, huh?”
“Not in those days,” Rhyzov agreed. “Is much the same now. Too much same.”
“Got that right,” Roy muttered. He turned to Owen. “How’d you get him here to begin with?”
“It wasn’t easy,” Owen said with a glance at Rhyzov, “especially given their Middle East mischief. In the end, it all comes down to the fact that they need our help. Mother Russia wants her sons back, plus whatever stuff they found out there.”
“How far out is ‘out there’?” Noelle asked, thinking she already knew the answer. If that thing was still parked at Jupiter, could their second-phase mission out to the Kuiper Belt have all been an elaborate ruse?
Owen coughed. “Pluto.”
It was a testament to the crew’s discipline that they didn’t explode with disbelief. Instead, they each leaned back against their chairs and looked to Roy in a show of unity that carried more weight than words.
Roy drummed his fingers against the table. He took a sip of coffee, glaring at Owen over the rim. “Interesting how that’s our final destination,” he finally said. “I always wondered why that ‘Phase Two’ option was added, considering the risks and
departure-window constraints. What I’d like to know is why the hell are we finding this out right before launch?”
“It was a condition of funding the mission,” Grady Morrell said. The chief astronaut had been silent through this whole exchange. “A big chunk of it came out of the Pentagon’s little black book. I owe the Air Force the next two dozen seats.” At the glacially slow rate NASA was adding to the astronaut corps, that would leave them on the hook for a very long time.
Owen pushed another envelope across the table. “These were taken by the New Horizons probe during its Pluto flyby in 2015. The operators trained its cameras on this region because of some unexpected radiation signatures they picked up during approach phase three. I’m not sure what anyone expected to find, but it wasn’t this.”
They each took a photo of the metallic green dragonfly orbiting Pluto.
“So it was still generating heat?” Noelle asked. “After how much time?”
“At that point? About twenty-five years.”
Jack almost choked on his coffee. “This thing’s been out there since, what . . . the eighties?”
“Almost,” Owen said. “Since most of us were kids. The age of big hair and parachute pants.”
Jack turned to Rhyzov. “So, when you talked about doing this back in the old days . . .”
“Was not joking,” Rhyzov said. “Arkangel was first proposed to Brezhnev in seventies after they learned of your Air Force’s research. Was finally approved by Andropov. Gorbachev didn’t even know about it until the radioactive propellant was ready to launch.”
“Let me guess,” Roy said. “Launching a few thousand warheads at once needed the chairman’s personal approval.”
“Sending a payload of nuclear weapons into orbit was major treaty violation,” Rhyzov explained. “To his credit, Gorbachev was more reluctant than his predecessors about it.”
“A bomb is a bomb, even if they were built to propel a spacecraft,” Owen said. “It took multiple launches; one Energia booster for each propellant magazine. If there’d been a failure, all those warheads would’ve come crashing down along a straight line from China to Oregon. Gorbachev put all his trust in Dr. Rhyzov’s team to not accidentally start World War Three.”
“It figures the USSR would be the only ones crazy enough to build one of these things,” Jack said. “So what was the mission? What did they want with a pulse drive, besides a nifty way to disguise a weapons platform?”
“Final mission was grand tour of outer solar system and demonstration of maximum sustained acceleration. Original mission was less scientific,” Rhyzov chuckled. “Kremlin would spend anything on intelligence gathering, especially under Andropov. Remember he was KGB.”
Jack scratched his head. “What intel value does this have? It doesn’t do anything that a good recon bird couldn’t.”
The old Russian gave them an impish smile. “Unless your leaders think it can intercept signals from the future. Alters calculation considerably.”
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever . . .” Jack began. His mouth hung open for a beat until he began laughing. “Oh man. They couldn’t be—have been—that ignorant.”
It was ludicrous enough to get a rise out of Roy. “That’s not just stupid,” he said, “that’s weapons-grade stupid.”
“Never underestimate nomenklatura’s ability to overestimate themselves. Politburo was convinced Arkangel could accelerate to a high fraction of light speed out of the solar system, collect radio and television signals from future Earth, then bring them back to use that information for unimaginable advantage.”
“Unimaginable is right,” Jack said. “Nobody explained that relativity doesn’t work like that? Someone must have pointed out that time dilation only goes in one direction.”
Rhyzov’s features seemed to darken. “Of course someone did. My predecessor in the advanced propulsion directorate. After they took him to Lubyanka, I never saw him again. That is how I became project leader.”
Just as the Nazis had refused to accept general relativity because it wasn’t “German” science, the Soviets had also twisted science to serve their own political ends: Lysenkoism had led to the starvation of millions since everything ultimately ran headlong into the ineluctable laws of nature. It was a matter of time, which would have offered scant consolation to a man rotting away in the notorious KGB dungeon.
Rhyzov continued. “We kept building. Constructing ship wasn’t problem. Let cosmonaut crew or bureau director explain failures to party chairman afterward.” He then stabbed at the air for emphasis. “It wasn’t going to fail because our ship didn’t work.”
“All those resources,” Traci wondered. “Everyone thought it was our military buildup that ground the Soviet Union into the dirt. There was more to the story.”
“Ah,” he said with a dismissive wave, “there is always more, but you could also say this was part of our reaction. KGB and GRU elements were in charge by then. They were desperate for any advantage.”
“But that’s laughable,” Traci said. “To think no one was able to talk sense to Andropov . . .”
“You did not know Andropov. Whole world thought Saddam had biological weapons, too.”
“Good point.”
“Exactly!” Rhyzov wagged a bony finger at them. “You thought he did because he thought he did. And Saddam believed he did because anyone who could tell him truth was afraid to.” He drew the same finger across his neck to finish his point.
“Feet first into an industrial shredder,” Jack said. “They had a nasty way of dealing with naysayers.”
“As you Americans say, ‘military intelligence’ is an oxymoron. Fortunate for us, we still had a ship which was only limited by the mass we could launch to it. Once it was fully equipped, we could send it anywhere. Gorbachev approved final mission because he was desperate for his own standing.”
“At least you no longer had to be so afraid of failure?” Traci said, ever the optimist.
The old man’s countenance darkened. “One is never too far removed from fear in such a system. Differences are in severity of consequences,” he explained. “In this case, consequences fell upon crew.”
“They’re still out there. What happened?”
“We do not know,” he sighed. “Though some suspect it is because of what they found.”
That’s not creepy at all, Jack thought. He shrugged off the chill working its way up his back. “What did they find?”
“Once again, unknown. Spacecraft ‘went dark,’ as you say, in 1991. For such an ambitious project, there was much we could not learn. In the end, we know the mission commander survived an apparent crew mutiny.” Rhyzov took a long pull from a cup of tea as he studied Jack. “They tell me you are fluent. Viy izuchayu Roosski yiziyk?”
Jack shot a glance at Owen and Grady. “Two years of total immersion at the defense language institute.” It had been followed by six more years of sitting in an Air Force van listening to intercepted signals along the Russian frontier. “Long before all this astronaut stuff.”
Rhyzov considered him for a moment. “Your man will do fine,” he finally said to Grady, who even at this late hour still needed convincing. “The commander, Colonel Vaschenko, was diligent about sending his personal observations with encrypted mission updates. Over time his transmissions became erratic. Eventually they stopped. Those who knew him best believed he kept private journal aboard spacecraft. He almost dared us to come find them.”
“Which brings us back to the original question,” Jack said. “Why didn’t they come back?”
The old man became lost in his thoughts. “We do not know,” he said after a time. “Isolation can do frightening things to the mind. Whatever it was, it drove our most trusted cosmonauts completely mad.”
The normally convivial prelaunch breakfast became subdued. The crew ate in silence, each savoring their last fresh-cooked meal for the next two years while contemplating what they’d just learned, and what lay ahead. The excitement they’d begun the day with was now tempered by the harsh reality of the knowledge that they would no longer be, and in truth never had been, first.
Even more galling was that they would have to maintain the public facade until whenever Public Affairs might decide to let the secret out. For at the farthest reaches of the solar system, they were going to encounter the last thing they could have imagined: another crew of explorers over forty years dead.
Roy’s frustration, while not quite boiling over, bubbled out from under the tight lid of his cool temper during the van ride out to 39A. As they trudged down the walkway, sealed up in their spacesuits and waving to the crowd with beaming faces that might as well have been prosthetic makeup, it had been impossible to ignore the throng of protestors lining the sidewalks.
“‘No Nukes in Space’?” Roy groused. “Don’t they know space is full of even worse stuff all by itself?”
“I seriously doubt anything those goobers think they know,” Traci said. “The stuff they’re screeching about is already in orbit. It’s not coming back here.”
“If they had even half a clue about what we were going out there to find,” Roy chuckled. “A spacecraft powered by nuclear bombs. I swear, don’t any of these people have jobs?”
“Read the news lately? Not enough of them,” Jack said, not ready to join in the hippie-bashing just yet. His mother and sister might have been out there among them if he wasn’t riding out to the launch pad.
“You’re such a buzzkill,” Traci said with a shot from her elbow. “Still can’t get your head out of the real world, can you?”
“Just enough to make me glad we’re leaving it for a while.”