Genre: SF
Author: Ken Lizzi
Website: http://www.kenlizzi.net
Publisher:
Twilight Times Books
Purchase link: http://www.twilighttimesbooks.com/UnderStrangeSuns_ch1.html
About the Book:
In the tradition of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John
Carter of Mars, Under Strange Suns
brings the sword-and-planet novel to the twenty-first century. War is a
constant, and marooned on a distant world, former Special Forces soldier Aidan
Carson learns there is nothing new Under
Strange Suns.
About the Author:
Ken Lizzi is an attorney and the
author of an assortment of published short stories. When not traveling – and
he'd rather be traveling – he lives in Portland, Oregon with his lovely wife
Isa and their daughter, Victoria Valentina. He enjoys reading, homebrewing, and
visiting new places. He loathes writing about himself in the third person.
Under Strange Suns
Ken Lizzi
Prologue
This was
going to change the world.
The realization was stunning, almost blinding. Doctor
Brennan Yuschenkov stared vacantly at his vanity wall. He did not register the BS
from Stanford, or the Master’s and PhD from M.I.T. The award certificates and
the grip-and-grin photographs of his smiling mug matching the formulaic toothy
expression of whatever politician or astronaut or CEO he was posing with were
so much static. He didn’t realize it, but the grin now stretching his leonine
features out-classed every framed example he was failing to notice.
When he
snapped out of his fugue he finger-stabbed a speed dial button on his desktop
telephone. “Azziz, got a minute? If not, make one. Bring your notebook, this is
big.”
Yuschenkov
rose from his chair, surprised at how stiff his body was. He paced his office,
waiting for his graduate assistant, Mehmet Azziz, to reach the faculty offices.
Yuschenkov had to share this, and immediately. He could feel a creeping fear
that he’d forget a piece of the puzzle. Or that he was wrong about some aspect.
And who better to ask than Azziz, the man with the best grasp of particle
physics on campus? Next to his own, of course. Yuschenkov muttered to himself,
gesticulating, pausing on occasion to allow the Cheshire Cat grin to reoccupy
his face as the beauty of the idea reasserted itself over the fear.
“Doctor
Yuschenkov?” Azziz said, having stood unnoticed in Yuschenkov’s office for
several seconds.
“Azziz,
didn’t hear you there. Damn, you’re a sneaky one.” Yuschenkov wrapped his
research assistant in a bear hug, his face pressed against the narrow chest of
Azziz’s lanky frame, the young man’s beard bushing atop the physicist’s head.
They broke apart, Azziz stepping back with evident discomfort. “Sit, sit.” He
dropped back into his desk chair while Azziz took one of the guest chairs.
“I won’t
say it turned out to be surprisingly simple, because it’s not,” Yuschenkov
said. “It’s complex, very complex, as you’d expect. But I think it will be
surprisingly inexpensive. And that...well, that is going to make a difference.”
“Yes, sir,”
Azziz said. “If you don’t mind my asking, Doctor Yuschenkov, what is very
complex, surprisingly inexpensive, and going to make a difference?”
“What? Oh,
of course. FTL, Azziz. FTL. Faster. Than. Light. A propulsion system. A
spaceship drive. FT-fucking-L.”
“Sir? Is
this another prank? It took me a week to get my car disassembled and out of my
apartment last time.”
“No joke,
Azziz. I’ve cracked it. Now take down some notes. I don’t want to lose this.
See, we weren’t considering quantum entanglement as it pertains to
gravitons...”
Azziz wrote
as Doctor Yuschenkov spilled out the pieces of his theory in a disjointed, haphazard
fashion: the controlled entanglement of gravitons, the directed acceleration of
one half of the pair, the attraction/feedback reaction shifting phase to the
tachyonic at just faster than light, the pulsing incremental increases beyond.
Theoretical upper limits. Imaginary mass. Relativistic effects. The impressive
size of the quantum-field bubble the drive was likely to generate. Azziz took
it all down, assembling the jumbled pieces into a coherent picture as he did
so, his handwriting growing sketchier as increasing comprehension burgeoned
into excitement.
Later,
notebook pages scattered across Yuschenkov’s desk, the whiteboard opposite the
vanity wall inked near black with scrawled calculations, the two men slumped
again in their respective chairs.
“This will
change everything,” Azziz said.
“Bet your
ass it will. How things will change, that’s the question. I mean, this would be
big even if building a drive was so monstrously expensive and difficult that it
would require the combined gross national product of half the First World. But
it’s going to be cheap. Relatively. Corporation level cheap, and not only
multi-nationals. Think about that.”
“Yes, sir.
The prospect raises any number of possibilities.”
Azziz’s words held a positive ring, but a frown briefly
marred Azziz’s forehead. He considered Azziz, wondering if this was the man to
assist in the birth of this brave new wonder. The man was acquiescent to a
fault. Always “yes sir” and “glad to help sir.” He wasn’t precisely obsequious,
not an ass-kisser, but nonetheless quick to comply. Very much the opposite of
Yuschenkov’s demeanor back during his own sentence as a graduate assistant –
“Hotheaded” he discarded as hyperbole, but “willful” perhaps captured it.
Funny, so much of his work was solitary. Lonely contemplation. The “eureka”
moment a completely individual achievement. Yet to proceed beyond that was
going to require interaction with others, each step of development creating a
widening circle of involvement. So if he wanted his work to expand beyond the
confines of his own skull he’d have to start making allowances for individual
differences.
The FTL was important, more so than he could comprehend at
the moment. Shouldn’t he ensure a smooth working relationship with his
assistant? Still, the nagging doubt lingered. Would he jeopardize the
theoretical and developmental work by yoking himself to such a diametrically
opposite personality? On the other hand, maybe that is precisely what he needed
to do. Yin and yang and all that.
“What sort of possibilities hit you first, Azziz?” he asked,
reclining his chair and interlocking his fingers behind his head.
“Well,
broadly: mining, exploration. Colonization.”
“Colonization?
That assumes exploration locates a habitable rock. Can you imagine that? ‘Homestead
Planet X, new headquarters of the Nabisco Corporation.’”
“Yes, sir,
though I presume state actors would be preeminent. Perhaps easing population
pressure might ease geopolitical tensions?”
“What,
convince North Korea to emigrate en masse,
settle Planet North Korea? Or a moon. People always seem to ignore the
habitable possibilities of satellites. The twin Marxist-Maoist Moons of Mu
Cephei?”
“Planet
Kim, Worker’s Paradise, Antares Local 501.”
Yuschenkov
laughed. Azziz essaying a joke was so unexpected that the surprise elicited
laughter even though the joke hardly deserved it. “Well, why not. I think the
drive is going to be cheap enough for even a starving gangster regime to slap
together a ship. And the Norks do have basic heavy lift capabilities. Even if
they didn’t, the rest of the world would probably be happy to chip in, buy ‘em
a one-way ticket. But I don’t know. Geopolitical tension, as you put it, is
chronic. You can’t just alleviate a symptom. Reduce the population by half, the
remainder are still going to be at each other’s throats.”
Azziz didn’t
reply. Yuschenkov eyed him, momentarily considering letting the subject drop,
but tact as a virtue adhered only lightly to him. “And what about your – what’s
the polite way to phrase it now – co-religionists? The misconstruers of the
Religion of Peace as the doctrine is properly understood by wiser heads such as
yours. Will they be founding New Mecca, facing east five times a day – toward
Betelgeuse?”
Azziz
flushed, seeming to shrink within his buttoned-up Oxford shirt and ill-fitting
blue blazer. “Did you miss the sensitivity seminar again this year, Doctor
Yuschenkov?” He cleared his throat. “I cannot speak for every member of a vast,
scattered, and divided community, sir. Still, I would hazard a guess that those
more violently zealous in their beliefs would be unlikely to leave.”
“Sorry,
Azziz. Wrong of me to put you on the spot like that. I don’t always weigh my
words before I let them drop. Right. Shall we pick this up in the morning, or
shall we start sketching in how to mount the drive to a spaceship?”
“I’ll order
some pizza, sir. No pepperoni, sorry.”
* * *
“It’s
astonishing. How can it be cheaper and easier to construct a revolutionary FTL
drive from scratch than it is to build a spaceship using proven technology and
existing components?” Yuschenkov didn’t bother hiding his disgust, even
allowing a trace of bitterness to season his words.
His office
looked largely the same, though the vanity wall had gathered a few more
photographs during the year that had elapsed since his discovery. Azziz sat in
the same chair, looking uncomfortable even though he was not the target of
Yuschenkov’s ire. Next to Azziz, in the second guest chair, lounged a trim,
middle-aged figure in a smart suit. Fredrick Lincoln, the Thomas Coutts
University treasurer, was smooth, oozing competence, and always ready with an
answer. A computer tablet on his lap held several open files which he viewed
frequently during the conversation.
“I
understand your frustration, Doctor Yuschenkov, and I and the Board of Regents
share it. Constructing this test vessel and proving your theory will be the
gaudiest, largest feather in Thomas Coutts’ cap. But reality is reality.”
Lincoln consulted one of his files. “And the FTL is not, as you suggest, an
insignificant expense. The amount of rare-earth minerals required alone is
staggeringly expensive.”
“Why?
Hardly that rare. I consulted with the geology department and they assured me
the minerals are relatively plentiful.”
“Plentiful
in the ground, maybe. But scarce in usable, for-sale, quantities. The Chinese
imposed an embargo on export of rare-earth minerals to the U.S. two years ago.
And domestic supplies are locked down. Do you have any idea how difficult it is
to get twenty federal agencies and fifteen state and local agencies to sign off
on any mining venture? And even when that miracle occurs there’s still five
years of litigation with every environmental organization in the book. If you’d
just agree to cut the Feds in...”
“No. True,
we’re proceeding slowly now, but let the government take control – and make no
mistake, you let that camel’s nose under the tent, that’s what’ll happen – and
we’ll have a working ship about a day before they shovel dirt over my grave.
You’re a miracle worker, Lincoln. I’ve got faith in you. There must be some
stockpiles of the stuff already scooped out. I don’t need much of it. I’ll need
a fair amount of scandium and at least a kilo of yttrium. I’m not trying to
corner the market. While you’re at it, a bit more palladium would actually be
welcome while we’re still in the testing phase.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. It’s
not critical, but on rare occasions – say once every twenty to one hundred test
runs – there is a wave surge in the graviton splitter that renders the drive
inoperable. Azziz discovered that a bath in a weak solution of palladium and
acid resets the splitter. Just one of those anomalous lab results. Anyway, we
require more than just the raw materials for fabricating our own FTL drive
mount and linkage. What about the airframe – or spaceframe, I guess. What about
existing components? Can we get that off the shelf? Russian hardware? Private
industry?”
“We’re
looking at acquiring obsolete equipment. If we want new, our supplier is going
to want to be our ‘partner’ and demand we share the technology. I realize you
aren’t quite ready to relinquish control yet. So far the university is backing
you, but the pressure from Washington is increasing. Say the word and we can
partner with NASA.”
“Not until
we have enough momentum to steamroller a bureaucracy. Stick with the obsolete
hardware. At least we know it works. Do we have any leads?”
Lincoln
consulted his tablet. “We have a line on a mothballed Dragon capsule. Perhaps
you would like to inspect it with me, help me with an idea of its condition and
value.” When Yuschenkov nodded, Lincoln continued, “I’ve also put out a request
for bids for launch vehicles. The Russians and three private, heavy-lift
companies have indicated interest. So it’s not all bad news. But – and I hate
to harp on this – I don’t know how long I’ll be able to stonewall the
government. The rumors are growing that we’re sitting on something very big,
hence the pressure. Our patent lawyers are filing applications as piecemeal as
possible, but eventually someone is going to put this all together and then...”
“Look, I’m
not trying to hide anything. This is very big, yes, and I want to share it.
But, and I repeat, not until we’re past the point where a dozen agencies and
meddling congressional subcommittees can strangle this baby in the cradle.”
“Be careful
what you want to share, Professor. The University fully intends to capitalize
on its half of the patent licensing.”
Yuschenkov
laughed. “Of course. By the time the patents expire, Thomas Coutts will have an
endowment to rival Harvard. But more immediately, nice work tracking down
hardware, Lincoln. Keep me informed. And get an extra ticket for Azziz; he’s
more current on aerospace than I am. Been brushing up during thesis writing
breaks. Slacker.”
* * *
New Mexico’s
Spaceport America hadn’t hosted such a crowd in years. Spaceport authorities
had opened shuttered warehouses and hangers to accommodate the assembled
journalists, politicians, celebrities, and the just plain curious.
A young
girl holding her mother’s hand stood in an advantageous location with assorted
VIPs. She had an unobstructed view to a gantry supporting a Falcon Heavy
rocket, atop which perched a gumdrop-shaped capsule. It was quite some distance
away but using her pink binoculars, adorned with her favorite cartoon space
pony, she could just make out a bulky-suited figure crossing a catwalk from
gantry to capsule.
“Is that
Uncle Brennan?” she asked her mother.
“Yes,
Brooklynn, that’s my impetuous brother. Can’t leave the test flight to a test
pilot.” Brooklynn’s mother, Colleen Vance, emitted a resigned sigh.
“What is ‘impetuous?’”
Brooklynn asked.
“It is
another word for ‘impulsive.’ It means he sometimes acts before he considers
all the consequences.”
“Oh. Hey,
look, Mom. There is Azziz.” She pointed with her free hand toward the left end
of the VIP gallery where Azziz stood in the company of several men who
Brooklynn thought looked a lot like Azziz: bearded, skin a few shades darker
than hers, which she knew would have started to redden by now if her mother
hadn’t liberally slathered her with sunscreen. She waved, then nudged her
mother until she started waving as well, the motion sufficient to draw Azziz’s
attention. He waved back, but it seemed hesitant and it seemed to bring
disapproval from his friends. She saw some of them gesturing and white teeth
gleaming through their beards as they spoke. Azziz dropped his hand.
“Should we
go say hello?”
“No,
Brooklynn. I think Azziz has a lot on his mind today, and it doesn’t look as if
his guests would approve of us visiting.”
A countdown
broadcast from loudspeakers mounted throughout the spaceport terminated further
conversation. Fire burst from beneath the rocket, curling and breaking like a
heavy sea hitting a rocky shore. The rocket seemed to gather itself, then
lifted sedately into the sky. Brooklynn felt her mother’s hand squeezing hers
almost painfully.
The
countdown voice broke out from the loudspeakers again. “And we have liftoff of
the Eureka for the first test of the
Yuschenkov Graviton Faster-than-Light Drive.”
After the
rocket disappeared from sight, Brooklynn followed her mother into a VIP lounge
where television monitors displayed telemetry and a computer simulation of what
was happening aboard the FTL test flight. Brooklynn sipped a cup of a mango and
orange juice blend as the capsule separated from the last stage of the rocket.
A quiet, uninflected voice provided one side of a conversation and occasional
commentary, describing the checklist Uncle Brennan and his co-pilot, a Colonel
Memphis Brown Jr., were running through prior to testing the drive. By this
point, the calm voice was abbreviating the title of the Yuschenkov Graviton FTL
drive as the “Y-Drive.”
Brooklynn
was sucking on ice cubes and her mother was on a second glass of chardonnay
when the capsule’s attitude adjusters fired, pointing the nose of the Eureka at a spot a couple hundred miles
east of the moon.
“Roger, Eureka,” the quiet voice announced, “you
are a go to engage the Y-Drive.” The voice added, “Good luck.”
The
telemetry spasmed and the computer simulation froze. The voice said, “Y-Drive
engaged, single pulse. Y-Drive bubble intact. Eureka beyond the light cone. Reacquiring.” There was a pause,
then, as the numbers and charts on the telemetry screens resumed accustomed
patterns, “Eureka reacquired, reverse
thrusters engaged.” The computer simulation showed a curving edge of the moon,
and beyond it a flaring, receding dot.
“Where are
they going?” Brooklynn asked.
“Nowhere,
sweetheart. They are trying to slow down. I don’t really understand it, but
Uncle Brennan told me that once the – the Y-Drive was disengaged the Eureka would drop to below light speed.
But it would have a lot of momentum, it would keep going in a straight line
very fast, so they have to put on the brakes.”
“Can’t he
just turn around and use the Y-Drive again?”
“I don’t
know. Maybe he wouldn’t be able to stop before hitting the Earth. Or maybe it
can be done, sort of canceling out the momentum. You’ll have to ask him. Besides,
this is the test flight. He’s only supposed to turn on the Y-Drive once.”
“Eureka, telemetry indicates an attitude
shift. Please check angle of yaw,” the quiet voice spoke. Brooklynn looked at
the screens again, noticing the numbers on one of the charts steadily
increasing. She watched for several seconds before the voice spoke again.
“Negative Eureka, you are not cleared
to engage the Y-Drive. Ground control is aware that braking maneuvers and the
return trip will consume some time, but ground control would like to emphasize
that it does not care if you are bored.”
Brooklynn’s
mother sighed. “Ground control is wasting his breath,” she said just before the
telemetry spasmed again.
* * *
When
Brooklynn saw Uncle Brennan trot down the ladder from the Eureka, she broke into a run. She heard her mother call her name
and begin to sprint after her, but with her mother in high heels, Brooklynn
felt comfortable outracing her.
People in
uniform, firemen, people in white lab coats, people in business suits with
cameras, all joined in the race. She couldn’t keep up and got caught up in the
crowd. But then she heard her Uncle’s voice say, “One side, make a hole.
Pioneer coming through.” And there he was, dropping to his knees in front of
her, arms open to embrace her.
“You did
it, Uncle Brennan,” she said into his chest.
“Damn
right, I did, little Brooklyn.”
* * *
“Damn it,
Azziz, I know Alpha Centauri is the closest. But it hardly makes a difference
for the first interstellar test. If something goes wrong, it really doesn’t
matter if we’re going five light-years away or fifty. We’re hosed either way.
We can’t stop at the nearest service station for repairs. It’s either going to
work, or it isn’t.”
Doctor
Yuschenkov’s ebullient glow had ebbed over the year that had elapsed since his
historic test flight. He wanted to push on, stretch the envelope, move from a
walk to a run. But success, instead of opening the path, seemed to have erected
barriers. More scientists, more engineers, more organizations accreted to the
program and each successive test became less of a stride than a baby step of
decreasing length. To Yuschenkov, every advance was frustratingly glacial. Even
the impending – at long last – flight to Alpha Centauri, the first manned
interstellar voyage, seemed paltry and unimaginative, not the bold leap it
should have been.
“But there
is a planet, sir. And it’s hardly larger than Earth.” Azziz said. He looked
harried, as well he should, nearing the appointed time to submit his doctoral
thesis and yet still spending the lion’s share of his working hours on the
Y-Drive project.
“Not in the
habitable zone, Azziz. It’s a rock. No, they’re all so goddamned cautious. No
progress is unattended by risk. And I’m the one taking it. Well, I and the rest
of the crew. Sure you don’t want to come along? I can swing it for you. I’ve
still got a little pull on this project. We’re talking making history here. You
can get another chance to argue your thesis. The first trip to another star,
well that’s unique.”
“No, sir. I’ll
keep my feet on this planet, thank you.” Azziz patted the grass next to the
concrete bench where the two of them were sitting in the quad, eating
sandwiches in the creeping afternoon shade cast by the towering brick edifice
of the library.
“It is a nice
planet, Azziz, I’ll give you that. I do intend on coming back, you know.” It
was a nice planet, and Thomas Coutts a nice campus. Across from the two men the
gables and chimneys rose and fell along the roofline of the administration
building. Students crossed between the classical facade of the music hall to
the left and the Victorian plinths fronting the natural history exhibition to
the right, while others sat on the lawn in the center; eating, studying,
chatting up, sleeping. “The
thing is, I want to get off this rock immediately every time I hear ‘we still
need to test the cosmic ray warning sensors’ or ‘we need to determine
acceptable redundancy of shielding within the redoubt’ or ‘we haven’t
determined optimal nutritional requirements to compensate for bone loss.’
Something out there might kill me, but if we wait until we’ve perfected every
precaution, I’ll already be dead by the time we launch.”
* * *
Doctor
Yuschenkov was, however, very much alive on the bright, clear desert morning in
early March when he craned back, looking up the gantry at the capsule that was
to deliver him to Eureka II, waiting
in orbit for him and the rest of the crew.
Brooklynn
Vance gazed up at him. Her uncle appeared heroic, framed against the rocket,
staring up at the heavens. Her mother was there, as were Azziz and the Eureka II crew, but at that moment only
Uncle Brennan existed.
He brought
his regard earthward, down to her, and she thought she saw the entire universe
shining for a moment in his eyes. He squatted to eye-level, which was only a
couple of pencil marks on the kitchen wall taller than last time he had gone
into space. “Big day, right Brooklynn? Wish I could bring back a present for
you, but I don’t think I’m going to find a mall out there.”
“I can come
help you look. I wouldn’t take up much room.” Her voice held the same teasing
tone his did, but there was an earnest appeal in her widened eyes and lifted
brow.
“You’ll be
up there soon. We’re going to open the stars for business. You might open the
first toy store on another planet. Or a moon; people always forget the
satellites. Someday a traveler like me
might buy a teddy bear from you for his niece in your shop on the moon of a
gas giant 50 light-years from Earth.”
She giggled
at his sing-song vision even while he hugged her. Then she watched him hug her
mom, shake hands with Azziz, and walk away with the rest of the crew to a
building at the base of the gantry.
She watched
the launch again from the VIP section, though it wasn’t as full this time; the
real action wouldn’t happen until after the capsule dropped off its passengers
at the Eureka II. But it was still
exciting to watch the rocket lift itself skyward on its tail of fire.
She watched
television in the hotel the next day, lying on the bed next to her mother and
eating pizza from the box. A camera mounted on the capsule that had delivered
the Eureka II crew was beaming
Earthward the image of the first starship as it squirted attitude jets,
adjusting itself to point in the direction of Alpha Centauri. The starship
looked like a flattened tube of girders with a blockish engine cluster at one
end and a slowly spinning ring at the other. A voice was explaining the mission
while scrolling text along the bottom of the screen provided essentially the same
information.
“Doctor
Yuschenkov and the other three crew members of the Eureka II – Colonel Brown, Doctor Abrams, and Doctor Chandra – have
completed the final checks for initiating humanity’s historic first
interstellar voyage. Ground Control reports that attitude corrections are
complete and final countdown is underway for initiating the Y-Drive, as Doctor
Yuschenkov’s Graviton Drive has come to be called. Plans call for a four-week
outward trip to what some have begun calling Planet Best Bet, orbiting Alpha
Centauri. The crew will remain in orbit for a month of study, then will return
to Earth, arrival scheduled for approximately three months from today.”
Another
voice replaced the first, sounding distant. It was counting down. When it
reached zero Brooklynn saw the central portion of the engine cluster strobe
red. The Eureka II disappeared and
the blackness where it had been appeared to ripple momentarily, then subside.
* * *
Three
months later Brooklynn was again eating pizza with her mother and watching
television, this time at home. Reporters in various locations consumed airtime,
repeating variations of the same basic message: “We expect them anytime.”
“Don’t get
anxious, Brooklynn,” her mother said for the third, or maybe fourth, time.
“They aren’t coming on a train. There is no timetable. Today is just the
earliest they are expected. Remember, Uncle Brennan is in charge. He might have
decided to stay a day or two longer to look around.”
Brooklynn
spent the rest of the day flipping through the news channels, waiting. Her
mother let her stay up an extra half-hour before putting her to bed.
It took
Brooklynn a week before her excitement turned to worry. And it took three
months for her mother to sit her down and say, “I’m sorry, baby. I don’t think
he’s coming back.”
Thank you, Kay! Shared on Twitter. Happy holidays!
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