Orb (8 page)

No untimely thought, this. Evocation of a collective work of Middle Eastern folklore needs no apology. Not in an age where science rules and the precious few storytellers are bereft an audience.

As I stood at the viewport self-absorbed in (admittedly) unstructured thoughts, Kelly quietly entered the room. Approaching from behind, she wrapped her arms around my waist and pressed herself tightly to my back. Resting her chin on my shoulder, we looked at the planet together. Softly, she whispered in my ear.

“Thinking of a name?”

“Beautiful, isn’t she? Hard to believe that a few months ago she was encased in ice. I will find a name befitting such a world, but she will have to settle for second best. I will never find a name as sweet sounding to me as yours.”

“Hmmm. You’ll have
me
melt.”

“Can you stay with me tonight?” I abruptly asked.

“I’d like nothing better. You seem lonely.”

“I’m very often lonely.”

“Sorry. Why?”

“Sometimes, I guess, my inner thoughts isolate me.”

My response was cryptic. It didn’t really explain anything. Nevertheless, Kelly accepted it gracefully; even giving me an easy way out if I chose to take it.

“Maybe,” she said, “you’ll someday share those thoughts with me.”

I said nothing, letting her wish disappear into the emptiness of space.

As we walked to my cabin I silently criticized myself for having missed another opportunity.

Not only for what I said, but for what I somehow couldn’t say.

EARLY THE FOLLOWING morning (for the first time in a hundred days the word took on real meaning, for we eagerly awaited the advent of sunrise)
Desio
, in the capable hands of Commander Thompson, sliced a path through the planet’s atmosphere.

Safely transported to within one hundred meters of P5’s surface, we became the first humans privileged to behold the moving, living ocean in liquid form. Our elevated perspective revealed to us a strangely placid expanse of widely interspersed, low rolling swells remarkably unmarred by wavelets, sea foam or disturbance of any kind. Highlighting and bisecting this elemental scene was the endless unbroken line of glare cast upon the water by the planet’s slowly rising blue sun.

I found myself mesmerized by the overwhelming serenity of the ocean and my mind began wandering into uncommon imaginings and fanciful abstractions: The water … shiny-smooth, metallic-colored, fluid-moving … transforming itself into a boundless, polished sheet of cobalt blue steel slowly undulating solely through the will of a fundamental and unknowable authority.

I don’t believe I was alone in my daydreaming, for there was an undeniable calming feel to this tableau, a quality possessed and imparted by the muted blues and grays, the simplicity of shapes and lines, the grandness of scale, the timelessness. There was also something just beyond my comprehension here, something intangible at play. We were not original to this picture; we knew it, we felt it, and we were humbled into silence by it.

And in that silence,
Desio’s
instruments performed the vital process of sampling the planet’s atmosphere, the resulting tests ruling out the presence of chemical or pathogenic threats and bolstering our shared hope to experience what had for so long been denied: To walk on solid ground; to breathe fresh, unrecycled air; to see another sunrise, and later, to see it set. In short, if only in part, a return to the natural cyclical order of life.

We traveled onward as the sun—twice the size of Earth’s—continued its slow rise, growing dominant in appearance, completely emerging from the ocean as a distorted disc hovering on the horizon. Then, with the young planet dutifully spinning one new day, the last vestiges of dawn began to recede. The disc began brightening. Fully rounding. Accomplished both in manner and in form that had been repeated nine hundred billion times before.

And so, in awe, we venerated the start of the new day.

Thompson, taking pleasure in ignoring automated piloting, decreased
Desio’s
forward velocity to two hundred kilometers per hour and brought us to within a ship’s width of the water surface. The regained experience of motion was exhilarating—despite the fact we were traveling at a mere one ten-thousandth the velocity of the last three months.

A group decision had been made to select a landing site based on satisfaction of three criteria: A relatively flat landing surface, geological significance, and (Melhaus would deny it) natural beauty. The first land mass encountered was a tiny island no larger than five kilometers square. A collection of sharp rock slabs rising dramatically from the ocean, it was unanimously deemed unacceptable. A neighboring island, twice the size, was a bit more interesting—but not sufficiently enticing for Thompson, despite our protestations, to put down.

A few moments later
Desio’s
control panel displayed yet another isolated island, out of eyesight, over the horizon. This became our new destination, only minutes away. We had become increasingly impatient to land, and so, despite Thompson’s obvious best efforts at finding a suitable location, Kelly felt obliged to make him the object of some divertissement.

“Diana,” she said, “I was wondering if you, like me, agree with this basic and universal premise: That most men are too stubborn to ask for navigational assistance.”

“Well, Kelly,” Diana responded, “I’m not so sure I can agree.”

I could see by the looks exchanged between the two conspirators that they were going to work this theme … and work it good. Paul and I exchanged our own glances and leaned back to enjoy.

“And why is that, Diana? Why don’t you agree? Do you think I’m being a bit sexist?”

“Why no, Kelly, not exactly. You see, I’m having a little trouble with the word ‘most.’”

“Perhaps that is a bit extreme, Diana. Perhaps I should have said ‘many’, or ‘a lot’, or perhaps ‘a high percentage’”.

“No, Kelly, that won’t do. That won’t do at all. No, I was thinking more in the line of words such as ‘all’, or ‘every’ or ‘a staggeringly high percent.’”

“And I,” interrupted Thompson, “am thinking of words such as “stifle”, “muzzle”, and ‘gag.’”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Kelly, feigning surprise, “you don’t think we were referring to you, do you?”

“What could give me that crazy idea?” Thompson responded. “But if either of you would like to assume the flight controls….”

“Oh, no!” Diana said in shock, “We would never think of such a thing, would we, Kelly?”

“Never.”

“Personally,” Paul said, “I’d give the man a break. Being ten kilometers off out of seven-hundred-trillion isn’t too shabby.”

And so the little comic scene played out, the actors knowing full well that Melhaus was the only other crew member rated to pilot the ship. Moreover, Thompson would never relinquish control.

A minute later he pointed out a land mass lifting itself from the horizon.

“I see it!” shouted Diana.

As we approached and obtained our first close-up view of the island, Thompson, an excited edge to his voice, asked, “Have any of you been to Moscow?”

“No,” Diana said, confused. “And I’m not likely to get there any time soon.”

“That’s what you think,” Thompson replied, further reducing our forward speed. “Make preparations. We’ll be landing on Red Square in two minutes.”

There, lofting into the sky in front of us, were crudely sculpted replicas of the spires, towers and twisted turrets of St. Basil’s and Kazan’s Cathedrals—two of the iconic buildings bordering Red Square. Stone testaments resisting time and the elements, the towering pillars, six score or more, varied in height from fifty meters to those soaring two hundred meters; all were bathed in muted tones of yellows, browns and golds with striking darker veins of like color spiraling throughout.

In front of these impressive natural formations—and requiring us to use a bit more imagination—was the Square itself: Not nearly as level as its Russian counterpart, but dwarfing it in size. Here, an immense plateau of flat rock had fissured and cracked, forming steps and accessible shallow inclines that spanned the distance between the base of the spires, which formed an imposing backdrop, to the water’s edge and beyond. The clarity of the ocean water allowed for an unimpeded view of the stone slabs as their random size and structure formed inviting pools and shallows beyond the shoreline, and outward further still, where they descended steeply into the abyss and disappeared from view.

“Incredible,” said Kelly.

Even Melhaus, who had characteristically shown little emotion, shifted in his seat to get a better look.

“How weathering alone could produce such unusual formations,” Paul said, “I am presently unable to venture a guess. Do you believe you can come up with a purely geological explanation, Bruce?”

The casual remark, viewed as a challenge by Thompson, was more than sufficient to clinch the island as the preferred landing site. There was, however, one task that required tending to first and it was arguably the most important task of the entire mission.

Thompson purposefully headed
Desio
away
from the island to locate deeper water. With the assistance of Doctor Melhaus,
Ixodes
was forcibly detached and sent plunging headlong into the ocean, where it became fully operational, as planned and without mishap.

Moments later, on 11 June 2233, after six months of training and three months of travel, at a place we were now calling Red Square, the crew of
Desio
gently touched the ocean planet.

“We have arrived,” said Thompson, and with these simple words he activated the external hatchway, six steps thudding mechanically into place.

“Captain, sir,” said Diana, inflating her deference to Thompson by providing him a military rank he did not have. “May I have your permission to be the first to leave the ship?”

The request was unusual, a departure from long-established protocol: Being first on the planet was the prerogative of the expedition leader. Thompson, who had little use for formality, could not deny her.

“We’ll be right behind you,” he said. The look on his face said more. He knew Diana well enough to expect she had an ulterior motive hiding behind her request. He wasn’t disappointed.

As she set foot on the surface of P5, with Thompson and the rest of us close behind and an onboard camera recording for all posterity, she exclaimed in a clear, steady, voice, “That’s one small step for woman, one giant leap for womankind.”

Thompson, unperturbed, raised an eyebrow at her and said, “Working on the male-female theme today?”

Diana gave him an unabashed look. “What can I say? Waited two-hundred-fifty plus years to rectify that.”

The prior expedition had been comprised of five males. Diana was not only the first female on P5 but, remarkably, the first female on a planet outside of our own solar system. There was no reason to be anything but amused at what she said. Only for some reason, maybe nervous tension concerning what we were expected to accomplish, Melhaus wasn’t at all entertained.

“What I…” he began, then corrected himself, “…what
we
are about to accomplish here doesn’t deserve to be trivialized by you, or anyone else, in some ill-conceived attempt to right some perceived wrong.”

The remark did not go over well. This time Thompson, Paul, and Kelly all seemed intent on wading into the pending fray. Diana abruptly preempted them.

“Why, Larry,” she shot back, “I see your ego, perhaps like your reputation,
exceeds
you.”

“I have no time to waste participating in a juvenile insulting match,” Melhaus countered, his voice tight with restrained anger.

That was more than enough for Thompson.

“
And I
,” he said, emphasizing each word while staring hard at Diana, and harder at Melhaus, “expect my crew to bind and gag their personality demons or I’ll do it for them.”

Yet another awkward silence ensued. They were getting to be routine. Fortunately, what transpired next provided a welcome distraction.

I had forgotten about Angie, but she certainly hadn’t forgotten there was a planet to explore. Somehow she had managed—not an easy trick—to extricate herself from her custom-made flight harness. I became aware of this feat only in time to see her poised at the top edge of the landing stairs, sniffing her own expert evaluation of the planet’s atmosphere. She apparently liked what she detected, for in the next instant she had bounded completely down and out of
Desio
and proceeded with amazing speed and agility to run back and forth across the expanse of Red Square, all the while barking excitedly.

“Let it be known,” I said, mostly for Diana’s benefit, “that’s one small step for a dog, one giant leap for canine.” I was happy to elicit a small laugh, but it was Angie’s unbridled happiness that was contagious.

“Looks like Angie is the second bitch to set foot on this planet,” Thompson added, earning him a swift hard punch in the shoulder from Diana.

“I don’t think I have ever seen her so animated,” said Kelly, “but don’t you feel it, too, Kyle?”

Taking a few strides, I wondered why I had not noticed sooner.

“Of course! I had forgotten! Angie, like us, weighs ten percent less here!”

“Diana insisted I should shed a few kilograms,” Paul said. “Now I have. Mission accomplished.”

Work began in earnest. Thompson, who wisely allowed us a few minutes to acclimate to our new surroundings, was employing a hand-held scanning spectrometer to examine a walnut-sized rock; Paul was carefully erecting a laser Doppler anemometer; Diana began calibrating on an ion-buffered off-gas analyzer. Thankfully, these—and other scientific instruments that I was unloading from
Desio
—often, but not always, had identifying labels. A label that gave me an erudite air of familiarity with the devices that I often did not have.

Thompson picked up on my ignorance when he requested, and I failed to retrieve, an unlabeled protonic nano-introscope.

“Wasn’t sure if you wanted the red one or green on,” I said.