The commander grabbed a black handset, pressed the button on its side, and in response, the F-sharp rang out again. As he spoke, his voice echoed through the halls. “Attention all crew and passengers. We are now preparing for final deceleration before entering the asteroid field. Find a suitable harness and strap yourself down, or you’ll be in for an unpleasant ride.”
Marcus clicked his belt, and then his eyes were filled with those asteroids. He picked through them trying to find his target, wondering if she might be visible from this distance, but it was no use. Zebra-One was still too far out to identify, if she was visible at all.
“Alright, that’s long enough. Mr. Macek, bring us about one-eighty counter vector.”
“Roger,” Macek called back. As soon as the word was out of his mouth, the ship began to spin along its axis and the view of the asteroid belt ran from Marcus’ hungry gaze. “Maneuver complete, Commander.”
The commander tapped his personal display and scratched his beard, then looked up and said, “Sixty-percent thrust for 326 seconds, on my mark.” The room was silent as a tomb while waiting for the command, and Marcus imagined the commander was stalling just for drama’s sake.
“Mark!” Faulkland barked.
Then it began. The entirety of the Shackleton was filled with a roar as its engines magnetically accelerated ions into space. The sound was shocking at first, but it was so constant and pervasive that Marcus numbed to it quickly. He was reminded of a class field-trip to a hydro-electric dam in the fifth grade. He’d been impressed enough by the massive structure itself, but the trip took on legendary proportions when he stood beside the dam’s thundering outlet. It was only then that Marcus began to understand some fraction of the billions of metric tonnes of water held on the other side, and the almost unimaginable force contained within.
Now he was in the depths of space, imagining that dam’s immense strength at his back, straining against the Shackleton’s momentum. He started to wonder how the ship’s reactor compared to the dam, but abandoned the math. Better to enjoy the ride, he thought, and so he relaxed and stared out through the thick polycarbonate panes. He was pressed into his seat with a force equal to Earth’s gravity, and with a little effort of imagination, he was lying on the ground back home, watching the glittering night sky. During an earthquake. Next to a waterfall.
The engines’ fearsome thrust lasted for just under six minutes, and then cut off as abruptly as it had begun. The sudden absence of noise left Marcus feeling hollow and reverent, like sitting in a church as the bells finished ringing.
The ship came back around and the windows were again filled with a field of charcoal black stones that stretched into the distance. They were closer now, close enough that the size of the asteroids could truly be appreciated. As Marcus stared on in amazement, he wondered how humbling that view might be to the architects of the Foundation’s cathedral.
“Not very,” he mumbled, only to realize he was talking to himself out loud.
Faulkland glanced over at him. “Come again, Doctor?”
Marcus looked a little sheepish. “Nothing, Commander. My internal monologue slipped out.”
At the start of the voyage, a comment like that would have been followed by an uncomfortable silence, but Faulkland was accustomed to the Gypsies’ eccentricities after five months together. He just nodded and said, “Understood. A view like this is liable to shake the best of us.”
The commander took another moment to admire the view, then grabbed the intercom mouthpiece and announced that it was once again safe to move about the ship.
With the very talented Mr. Macek at the controls, The Shackleton slipped into the asteroid belt like a surgeon’s scalpel, using only the lightest thrusts to carve a path to their objective. The passing asteroids grew to even more fantastic proportions as the ship progressed, many dwarfing the largest mountains on Earth.
Rao entered the bridge compartment quietly and found himself a spot next to Marcus. A glance at his face revealed a scientist in rapture, suddenly closer to the subject of his research than he’d ever thought possible. He was the first in his field to view these asteroids with the naked eye, and Marcus thought he could hear Rao’s heart thumping madly in his chest.
Faulkland indulged the eager scientist and asked, “Would you care to tell us what we’re looking at, Doctor Rao?”
“Of course.” Without skipping a beat, Rao moved closer to the windows and started pointing out features on the asteroids, the way a tour guide introduces animals in his zoo. “These are largely C-Type asteroids, composed of silicates, sulfides…”
Then, 228 days after Marcus made his presentation at the Foundation headquarters, after a half-hour of Rao’s excited lecturing on the composition of rocks, The Shackleton Expedition finally arrived at Zebra-One.
Chapter 5:
Contact
As the Shackleton Explorer approached its destination, there was nothing ahead of it but empty space. The atmosphere on the bridge had been peppered with excitement and discovery a moment before, but it was now thick with confusion.
Then the ship passed through… something. It was like a thin film or the surface of a liquid, and there was suddenly something massive out in front of them, so large that it filled the entire viewport and made all the nearby asteroids seem shrimpy by comparison. The object was long and thin like a cannon, and Marcus knew from his studies that it stretched more than thirteen kilometers from end-to-end, with a secondary structure attached to its hip that, while shorter, was still more than eight kilometers long.
Seen for the first time in person, the sheer scale of Zebra-One was confounding.
The air of discovery rushed back into the bridge, electrified with total astonishment. It was moments before anyone could muster the ability to speak.
Faulkland spoke first. He furrowed his brow, pursed his lips, and said, “Ms. Park, bring up the survey image of Zebra-One.”
She looked to Marcus questioningly, and he nodded his assent. An instant later, the image Marcus had presented to the GAF was floating above the holographic projector at the front of the bridge, right beside the viewport where the real thing could be seen. The image showed an object of the right dimensions, but with a glistening exterior that was black like obsidian, and ringed by a series of vertical ridges. The real Zebra-One was entirely different, a greenish shimmering iridescent surface half caked in a layer of sediment, and bristling with tiny spires that evoked Roman architecture and insect anatomy all at once.
Faulkland looked back and forth between the reality outside the window and the holographic fake. On his face, Marcus recognized the look of a man who had just been cheated at cards. “Doctor Donovan. You wanted to come clean about something.”
“I did, Commander.”
The beleaguered commander ran a hand through his greasy hair, past veins that were starting to throb on his forehead. “Now would be the time. What in hell am I looking at?”
Marcus unbuckled himself and floated out to the front of the bridge, taking up station beside the projection. “Park, please bring up the original.”
The image of his fictional asteroid was replaced with the final scan from Copernicus. “Commander, this is Zebra-One, an artifact of unknown origin which my team and I have been researching for the past seven years. We haven’t been able to determine what she is exactly, but I suspect she’s not from our neck of the woods.”
Rao, awkward and nervous, said, “Wait, it’s not metallic hydrogen? I must have been mistaken.” It was half-way between a weak lie and a bad joke.
A growl rumbled deep in Faulkland’s throat. “I don’t appreciate being lied to, Donovan. You’re telling me this is what? Some kind of alien craft?”
“Maybe, or maybe the alien itself. We couldn’t be sure from Earth, which is why we’re here.”
Faulkland’s arms were crossed, and he was staring straight through the massive artifact. His breathing was slow and methodical. “They never would have approved that mission,” he finally said. “The windbags would’ve destroyed your data, and you along with it. Made sure you couldn’t get a job teaching grade school science in Siberia. You’re a real son of a bitch, Donovan.”
