Kaiju: Deadfall, page 2
“Gate, this is Director Caruthers. I need you back here ASAP. We’ve received disturbing data on Girra from the DRS.”
He let the news soak in for several seconds before responding. “What kind of data?”
“I’d rather not discuss it over the phone. We’re moving Hubble to get an optical image.” He paused a moment before adding, “I’ve already ordered Lunar One to investigate.”
Changing the Orion spacecraft’s lunar orbit mission involved substantial risks. The Director was worried. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.” He hung up the phone before Caruthers could relay any more bad news.
He glanced longingly at the coffee maker. A jolt of caffeine would help keep him awake, but he didn’t have the time. He hoped the coffee urn at Mission Control was full.
* * * *
Thursday, August 9 3:00 a.m. (CDT) Mission Control, Houston, TX –
Security at Mission Control was tighter than Gate had ever seen it. He was forced to present his ID twice to Building 30-M security guards before being allowed in. Director Carl Caruthers stood amid a sea of shirt-sleeved technicians, an oak tree in a forest of saplings. His six-foot-two frame loomed over his subordinates, as he quickly scanned tablets and hand-scribbled notes presented him by department heads. He wore his glasses atop his balding head, squinting to sign his name to reports. When he needed to look at one of the screens on the wall, he flipped the glasses back down.
Caruthers’ haggard appearance was atypical of him. He usually dressed in a suit and tie. Now, a two-day growth of beard darkened his jaw. His rumpled shirt, with sleeves rolled up, looked slept in. Gate suffered a momentary twinge of sympathy for the director, but then remembered that Caruthers had spoiled his chance for sleep as well. Caruthers saw him enter and he walked over to greet him. He lifted his headset microphone from his mouth.
“I know I look like shit,” he said. “So do you.”
“What’s the latest on Girra?”
Caruthers pointed to one of the three main screens on the wall. The fuzzy image from Hubble was visible only by the occluded stars in the background. It took several moments for Gate to focus his sleep-deprived eyes on the hole of blackness. “As you can see, Girra is so dark as to be almost indiscernible.”
Gate walked closer to the screen for a better look at the teardrop-shaped object. It could be a seed, he thought, seeds of destruction, if Ishom was any indication. “It’s damned near invisible. No wonder no one saw Ishom.”
“It has an albedo of .009.”
“But that’s …”
“Impossible? I would have thought so, but that’s what the readings indicate.” He paused. Gate studied the director’s face and realized that he was hiding something.
“Why did you bring me back in? I submitted my report.”
Caruthers nodded. “Yeah, I read it. Good job. Typical doomsday stuff. Shades of San Francisco. I sent for you because of our new data.”
This roused Gate’s curiosity. “What new data?”
“According to the DRS, Girra is massing much less than we originally estimated. Either it’s less dense than a normal meteor that size, or it’s hollow.”
Gate was speechless for a moment, as he absorbed the Director’s almost unbelievable suggestion. His musings about the object’s composition had been just that – musings. Now the Director was putting truth to his words. He walked back across the room and took a seat at the empty Public Affairs desk, the only unoccupied console in the otherwise busy room. As yet, the public was still unaware of the doom headed their way.
“Hollow, as in an alien spacecraft?”
Caruthers shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. It still masses a hell of a lot more than a spacecraft that size would. You reported that Ishom caused less destruction than anticipated. Could this be the reason?”
Gate sighed and stood to stretch his muscles. It was going to be a long night. “Yes, it would make sense. I’ll get on those new figures right away.” He picked up his laptop and pointed to the glass enclosed observation gallery where distinguished visitors sat to watch the missions. Now, it was empty. “I’ll work in there where it’s quieter.” He glanced again at the screens. One showed an interior view of Lunar One. Though they had just been ordered to abandon the mission for which they had trained for over a year, the crew was acting as if nothing world shattering was happening. He envied their poise, and then wondered if it was for the camera. No, he thought, those astronauts are trained for emergencies. They’re confident.
He wished he had a little of their confidence. He could use it.
3
Thursday, August 9, 12:45 a.m. (CDT) Lunar One, Lunar orbit –
Commander Erwin Langston extended his finger over the keypad that would fire the thrusters moving the Orion spacecraft out of the lunar orbit they had maintained for four days and into a slingshot rendezvous with Girra. There had been no time to run comprehensive simulations on the new program. He would have to trust FiDO and the superfast computer aboard the Lunar One to do the job. They wouldn’t see the object until they completed their orbital pass around the moon. By then, Girra would be close enough to be visible. If all went as planned, they would emerge a mere four hundred meters from the object designated Girra.
His fellow astronauts, Todd Ingersall, Deborah Crenshaw, and Page Mahall, watched his finger descend slowly until it hovered just above the enter key. They all knew the importance of their newly assigned mission. They had seen images of the destruction in San Francisco. Now, two more potential threats had materialized. Langston took a deep breath and touched the keypad. The engine roared into life, pressing him back in his seat, the first gravity any of them had felt for nine days.
“Trajectory in the green,” he announced. He watched the fuel gauge numbers drop. They were using up precious fuel they would need for an Earth re-insertion orbit. “Engine shutdown in three seconds.” He began counting backwards. “3, 2, 1 …”
The engine quieted after firing only for fifty-one seconds, but it had imparted sufficient thrust to kick them out of orbit. The unaccustomed weight left him.
“Exploratory Mission One is now aborted,” he announced with undisguised bitterness in his voice. He had trained two years for the lunar mission. “We are commencing EM-2, exploration of Girra.”
“What are the chances of Girra being a natural object?”
The question came from Ingersoll, the ship’s medical officer. At twenty-four, the medium-height, blond, Hawaiian ex-surfer was the youngest member of the crew. Lunar One was his first mission into space. Langston, a veteran of eight flights, including the initial testing of the Orion Multi-Purpose Crewed Exploratory Vehicle, understood his concern.
“FiDO couldn’t have programmed a better trajectory for this thing. What do you think the odds are of three objects being so evenly spaced?”
By Ingersoll’s downcast expression, he had already made the calculations.
Mahall was more upbeat. Ringlets of red hair escaped the helmet liner she wore to keep her long red hair from escaping. They danced above her forehead as if alive. Her blue jumpsuit bore the photo of her three-year-old daughter. “This could be man’s first encounter with an alien species.”
As the communication’s officer, she had made numerous attempts at contact on every frequency Lunar One was capable of utilizing with zero results. Langston was of the opinion that if the objects contained aliens, they didn’t want to communicate.
“If ET has come calling, he isn’t interested in ringing the doorbell first,” he reminded her. “The first one caused massive destruction when it hit. A few seconds earlier and it would have hit smack dab in the center of San Francisco. That’s no way to make friends.”
“Is it an attack?” Ingersoll asked. His question was being repeated all over the Earth by world leaders and people in the street.
“I don’t know what else you would call it,” Crenshaw interjected. Unlike Mahall, she advocated destroying Girra, even if they had to ram it with the Orion. “They’re lobbing missiles at us.”
“Who is?” Ingersoll demanded. “Where are they from?”
Crenshaw, a petite, fiery, raven-haired Australian geologist, frowned and pointed out the window past the extended portside solar panel and the blackness beyond. The gallium and arsenide semiconductors across the twin panels’ nineteen-foot surfaces provided 12,000 watts of power for the ship’s systems. “Out yonder somewhere. They’re watching and waiting to see how we respond. Then they’ll step up their attack.”
Crenshaw’s prediction sat icy cold in the pit of Langston’s stomach. “Speculation gets us nowhere. We’ll know more in a few hours.” He glanced at the countdown clock. “One hour and forty-one minutes to be exact.”
He watched the gray, craggy surface of the moon recede through the command capsule window. He had watched it for four days, making thousands of photos, gravimetric readings, spectrometer readings, and seismic readings, all the while wishing that his would be the first boots to touch the surface since Gene Cernan of Apollo 17 left his in the dust on December 13, 1972. It didn’t look like it was going to happen. It was even more disappointing that the lunar lander that would eventually touchdown on the moon’s surface after forty-six years was in the service module. NASA had wanted a full mission run through, a trial run for the real landing scheduled for 2019. The lander was so close; he could feel it pulling at him like a small moon. He turned his attention back to his crew.
“Let’s have lunch,” he suggested. “We might be too busy later.” He didn’t know if he could eat, but he had to keep them busy somehow. The Flight Surgeon in Houston would call him to task if they missed a meal.
“My turn to cook,” Crenshaw said, as she released her safety harness and floated from her seat. She pushed off and sailed flawlessly across the sixteen-foot diameter cabin to the food locker, deftly grabbing a wall with one hand to stop her forward motion. She removed four entrees and loaded them into the convection oven. She added water to a foil pouch of tea and placed it in the oven with the entrees. Next, she attached a tray to each of their seats. While the food was warming, she brought silverware, juice pouches, desserts, crackers, and flour tortillas and placed them on the trays. Except for the fact that any stray crumbs or droplets of liquid could drift away, they dined as they would on Earth with proper utensils, except for the pair of scissors necessary to snip open their pouches of food.
While the food heated, Langston took the opportunity to moon gaze. As a child, he sat on the patio and stared up at the golden orb overhead that had seemed close enough to reach out and touch, but so distant as to be a magical land. He knew his destiny lay with the moon when he learned that his birth date, September 13, 1959, had been the day the Russians had landed their unmanned Lunar 2 probe on the moon’s surface. At ten-years-old, he sat beside his father on July 20, 1969, and watched Neil Armstrong take his famous first step, followed by Buzz Aldrin. It had been the most glorious evening in his life, a magical moment.
He had watched all six NASA lunar landings with gleeful interest, imagining himself as one of the crew. He geared his entire scholastic endeavor toward becoming a pilot and then joining NASA. With hard work, determination, and too many sacrifices, he achieved his goal. He was circling the moon. He often wondered how Michael Collins felt, alone in orbit above the moon while his companions Armstrong and Aldrin cavorted on the surface. Now, he knew.
Twenty minutes later, a chime announced that their meals were ready. The freeze-dried, pre-packaged meals were varied, if a little bland. Ingersall especially, who enjoyed spicy food, protested that the curried chicken was designed for old people, making Langston, who thought the curry just spicy enough, feel older than his fifty-nine years. He snipped the tip of the plastic nipple from his apple juice pouch and inserted a straw. The cool juice whetted his appetite. He devoured his beef stroganoff in spite of his trepidation about the unscheduled mission changes. He used a flour tortilla to soak up the excess sauce, and then ended his NASA repast with a package of crackers and Gouda cheese for dessert. During the meal and the conversation, the rendezvous with Girra was still on his mind.
They would close with the object from behind, match speeds, and follow it back to Earth. His orders were clear. At no time were they to veer from their trajectory. Their job was to observe and report. He wasn’t sure what they might add to the data provided by the satellites and orbiting telescopes, but he intended to make the rendezvous.
In one aspect, he was like the ebullient Aussie, Crenshaw. If he thought ramming any one of the objects would save a single human life on the planet, he would do it, but NASA and the Joint Chiefs had made his orders abundantly clear. He would do nothing to deter the objects or to alter their flight path. They were not yet convinced the objects were a deliberate attack. They held that any show of aggression might provoke a hostile response. He held no such doubt. Like Crenshaw, he was certain the objects were an attack.
The Orion spacecraft’s approach from the far side of the moon was perfect. His worries about encountering a smaller debris field vanished when he saw the massive object. Girra’s ebony exterior rendered it almost invisible against the black backdrop of space. No wonder no one saw the first one, he thought. It was barely visible on radar. Only through the telescope could he get an idea of its true size. Even then, it was almost invisible.
“My God,” Ingersall groaned. “It’s enormous.”
“Three-hundred-seventy-five meters in length by two-hundred meters in diameter,” Crenshaw called out from the telescope image. “That’s as long as an aircraft carrier. It’s almost a perfect teardrop.”
“God’s tears,” Mahall said. Her emerald green eyes almost sparkled with admiration of the objects’ symmetry.
“I doubt God is responsible for this,” Crenshaw retorted, “Unless he is tired of humanity’s bullshit.”
“We have abandoned him,” Mahall began. “If we …”
“Save the theological discussions for Sunday,” Langston said. “We’ve got a job to do.”
He didn’t know if there was a God, a creator of the universe, but having experienced the wonder and beauty of space close up and personal, he didn’t immediately dismiss the possibility. To him, the object looked like a seed floating in space, and it gave him cause to wonder. He had studied the Theory of Panspermia, which was the possibility that life exists throughout the universe, spread from world to world by one of three methods. The first was Lithopanspermia, where rock from meteoric impacts spreads biological matter from one solar system to another. The second, Ballistic Panspermia, was the spread of biological matter between worlds of the same solar system by the same method. The last was Directed Panspermia, the intentional spreading of the seeds of life throughout the galaxy by an advanced civilization. He was certain that Mahall would substitute God for advanced civilization, but staring at Girra floating outside the ship’s porthole, he shuddered. He didn’t think God was behind the objects.
The Lunar One module matched speed with Girra at a distance of 389 meters. Langston wanted to move closer, but his orders were explicit. Through the telescope, the object was plainly visible. Its composition was too regular to be anything other than artificial. Girra traveled with the narrow end of the teardrop, or seed, pointed toward Earth. It had no fins, wings, or other guidance systems that he could detect.
“The exterior appears crystalline, like obsidian or black glass,” he observed.
The surface absorbed light. He couldn’t discern much detail, but he observed no joints or seams, no door or windows. It appeared solid. If Girra were a man-made object, its construction far surpassed anything humans could achieve.
“I have a second object on the radar,” Mahall called out, breaking Langston’s concentration. “The image comes and goes. It could be a ghost image.”
Langston tore his eyes from the telescope. They couldn’t take a chance that it was only a radar reflection of Girra. “Where is it?”
“It’s just floating there in space eight hundred kilometers from the surface. It appears to be orbiting the Earth at the same speed as the moon.” She glanced at Langston with fear in her face. “Our present course takes us right into its path.”
“How big is it?” he asked.
“It’s just over fifty meters in diameter. I can’t determine its mass. It’s identical in shape to Girra, just smaller.”
“How long before impact?” He could move the ship, but spending more fuel would jeopardize their homeward journey. Any course change would have to be exact.
“Eight minutes.”
“Jesus!” Crenshaw snorted. “We’ll never get out of its way in time. They’re trying to kill us.”
“No,” Mahall replied. “It’s just there. It’s not doing anything.”
“Whatever it is or whatever it’s doing,” Langston said, stopping their argument, “it places us in a bad position.”
Langston quickly ran the numbers through the navigation computer. The answer brought back that familiar cold feeling. He could fire the thrusters for six seconds only. Any longer and they wouldn’t have sufficient fuel to insert the craft into Earth orbit. They would follow Girra into the atmosphere and become a glowing light in the night sky; a falling star upon which someone’s wish would never come true. The short burn limited their course of action. He didn’t have time to consult CAPCOM at Houston. There was only one direction they could go.
