The E Utopia Project (24 page)

Cruz was delirious when he received
a message from Eureka Station notifying him of the arrival of a messenger drone
from E Utopia. He ordered the station to return the drone with a message
telling the pioneers to come back.

Only one Transgalactic and
one Astrocarrier returned, manned by Hitchcook and Bolton respectively. When
they entered the Solar System, Eureka Station sent them more crew to help them
safely land at Bolivia Spaceport.

“Hitchcook! Bolton!” Cruz
spluttered. “You look great.”

“I feel great,” Bolton said.
“I found a sexy alien girl who keeps me happy.”

Hitchcook laughed. “She’s a
local girl, Bolton. You’re the alien.”

“What’s this talk about
aliens?” Cruz demanded.

“Just a joke, Mr. Cruz,”
Hitchcook said

“How is everyone?” Cruz
asked.

“Everyone is fine.”

“Do they still have
supplies?”

“They’ve enough food to last
them two hundred E Utopian days,” Hitchcook said.

“What about oxygen?”

“Our oxygen supply hasn’t
diminished since we’re using breathing machines.”

“And fuel?”

“We only spent just over half
of our fuel supplies.”

“How long are E Utopian days
compared to Earth days?”

“EU days are equal to twenty-one
Earth hours and thirteen minutes and twenty-nine seconds,” Bolton replied.

“So that means our men there
have supplies that can last them at least four Earth months. Congratulations, gentlemen.
You made history.” Cruz’s voice hardened. “I don’t want a word of this to
anyone. If anyone asks you where you were, tell them you were at the space
station doing research.”

“Don’t worry, we won’t breathe
a word about E Utopia,” Bolton said.

“If the politicians get wind
of E Utopia, they will declare the planet open to everyone, citing the Outer
Space Treaty, which states that nobody can claim ownership of a planet.” Cruz
said. “Then they will bring hordes of fortune-seeking polluters to our planet.
Fuck their space treaty. E Utopia is ours and ours alone.”

“We will never let the
polluters take our planet,” Hitchcook swore.

“What is the weather like on
EU?”

“Fine,” Bolton replied. “I
think the climate on the part of E Utopia that we inhabited would be described
as temperate or subtropical here on Earth.”

“Did you find any signs of
life?”

The two scientists shook
their heads.

“Not even a bacteria or a
virus?”

“No signs of life at all,”
Hitchcook replied, with suppressed exasperation. He was tired and he felt
disoriented by the change in gravity. All he wanted right now was a long,
peaceful sleep.

“Even in the water?”

“Not even in water,” Bolton
replied.

“Do we have a moon there?”

“The planet has two moons,
sir,” Hitchcook said.

“Two moons!” Cruz exclaimed
with wonder. “Are they big moons or just small asteroids like Earth’s second
moon?”

“The moons are not
asteroids,” Bolton entered. “They’re both round, suggesting that they’ve
sufficient mass for their self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces. The
larger of the moons appears bigger than Earth’s moon.”

“Two planet-sized moons! E
Utopia is a super planet. If we had oxygen, we could beat Earth in many ways. Does
either of the moons have an atmosphere?”

“We sent surveillance robots
to the moons. For all practical purposes, they have no atmospheres. Like
Earth’s moon, both of E Utopia’s moons have very thin atmospheres which contain
less than a million molecules per cubic centimeter.”

“What gases are found in the
atmospheres of the moons?”

Cruz spent more than an hour
asking the two scientists questions. He gave them a two-week leave before he
called them to work to build the tankers that would carry supplies to E Utopia.
Now he was finally going to set foot on his planet.

When Cruz got out of the
Transgalactic’s airlock and stepped on E Utopian ground for the first time, he
felt as if he had flown to heaven. He quickly took off his spacesuit, longing to
feel the air of E Utopia on his body. He wasn’t disappointed. A cool breeze
tingled his body. The scenic beauty of the landscape was enchanting to the eyes.
In the distance he could see hills and mountains. The only thing missing from
the view was vegetation. E Utopia looked like a clean-shaven version of Earth.
The sky even had clouds.

He felt much heavier under E
Utopia’s gravity than he felt in space when he was wearing a gravity belt. He
was too delighted to mind the dizziness caused by the change in gravity.

Rudolf extended a breathing
machine to Cruz. “Put on this, sir. We don’t want you to suffocate on your
first day on E Utopia.”

Cruz put on the breathing
machine and paced around. E Utopia’s gravity was slightly more than Earth’s
gravity, but coming from the weightlessness of space, he felt many times
heavier than he felt on Earth. He felt the need to sit down or lie down but he
was too excited to do so. “There must be ways to increase oxygen in E Utopian
atmosphere.”

“We thought about
electrolyzing sea water to make oxygen and dump the hydrogen waste into space,”
Rudolf said.

“But Hitchcook told me that
unlike Earth, E Utopia has more land than sea?”

“Yes, Mr. Cruz.”

“Then I don’t think we should
reduce the amount of the water that we’ve got on the planet,” Cruz said with
finality. “We’ve got to get the oxygen from somewhere.”

“We will find a way, Mr.
Cruz,” Hitchcook assured.

“The sun shines so bright yet
the weather is cool,” Cruz remarked after he had finished greeting the other
five pioneers.

“That star, Mr. Cruz, isn’t the
Sun,” Rudolf said. “It is orange whereas the Sun is yellow and we suspect that
it is slightly bigger than the Sun. Do you know what we call it?”

“What do you call it?”

“We used to refer to the star
as the E Utopian Sun. I reckoned it was best to name the star Luz Cruz. I asked
the other guys what they thought and they all agreed that Luz Cruz is a fitting
name for our star.”

“Rudolf, I don’t know what to
say,” Cruz said. He loved nature and to have a star named after him filled him
with an overwhelming sense of
accomplishment
.
This was not just any refulgent orb. It was the star around which E Utopia
revolved.

“The star gives us light and
warmth and your funds and your vision made it possible for us to see the star
and bask in its rays,” Rudolf said. “So Luz Cruz is a fitting name to the star.”

“I don’t know what to say. Thank
you for such an honor, guys.” Cruz looked at the sky. “How’s the rain like?”

“It’s just like on Earth but
here there are more hail storms,” replied Rudolf.

“Did you have a chance to study
the sea water?”

“Yes,” Bolton said. “We flew
to the nearest sea by helicopter. The sea water contains a good amount of
chloride but it has almost three times the amount of calcium and potassium
found in Earth’s sea water. The magnesium is fifty percent higher than that of
Earth’s sea water.”

“Will sea animals adapt to
the high calcium levels?” Cruz asked.

“I’m sure they’ll adapt to
the calcium level,” Hitchcook said. “Besides, the calcium level will decrease
when sea animals assimilate calcium into their bones and sea plants incorporate
calcium into their middle lamellas.”

“Yes,” Rudolf chipped in.
“The same applies to nitrates. There are relatively high levels of nitrates in
the sea water but they’ll decrease when sea algae and sea weeds grow.”

“Hey guys, look what I’ve
just found!” shouted Tiago Alonso, the group’s structural and mechanical
engineer.

“What have you got?” Rudolf
asked.

He waved a tablet. “This.”

Cruz snorted. “Did your
girlfriend send you a photo?”

“I was going through the
pictures taken by the drone that we jumped three days ago,” Alonso chirped. “I
don’t know how we missed this clip.”

“You jumped a drone three
days ago?” Hitchcook rasped. “Rudolf, did I not tell you not to use fuel before
more supplies come from Earth?”

“Calm down, Hitchcook, we
just used a little fuel,” Rudolf said.

“What’s in the video clip?”
Cruz asked.

“Images of a planet,” Alonso
said.

They all huddled around
Alonso for a look at the picture on his tablet.

“We managed to take the drone
close to that planet!” exclaimed Akpobori, the group’s medical doctor and
biologist. “Another planet ready for the taking. At this rate we’ll soon find a
planet full of diamonds.”

“Did you know about the
planet before you launched the drone?” Cruz asked.

“Yes,” Rudolf replied. “I
discovered the planet through a telescope and we decided to attempt to jump a
drone to the planet,” Rudolf said, glad his defiance of Hitchcook’s order had
yielded good pictures of the newly discovered planet. Hitchcook had become very
arrogant since his invention of the jump drive and the discovery of the planet in
his absence had quashed the notion that the pioneer team was useless without
him. “My decision to jump the drone wasn’t so bad after all, was it,
Hitchcook?”

“It looks a lot like
Jupiter,” Cruz said in a fit of excitement.

“You’re right, sir,” Bolton
said. “It doesn’t look like a rocky planet. It must be a gas giant.”

“If you discovered it through
a telescope, it means it must be in this star system,” Cruz said.

“Yes,” Rudolf said. “I reckon
it is as far away from here as Neptune is from Earth.”

“But how did you jump the
drone to the vicinity of the planet?” Hitchcook asked. “The jump drive jumps
the drone over a much longer distance than that. The jump would have taken the
drone past the planet or would have taken it right next to the planet’s
atmosphere, but from the video clip, it’s obvious the drone was only a few hundreds
of kilometers away.”

Rudolf cleared his throat. He
had been waiting for Hitchcook to ask that question. “Simple. We modified the
jump drive a little.”

“Modified it how?”

“You designed the jump drive
to make a fixed length of jump and we modified it to allow for an adjustment of
the length of the jump,” Rudolf said, glad to see Hitchcook not looking
omniscient for once.

“How did you do it?” Cruz
asked with effusive admiration.

“Hitchcook forgot to put a mechanism
to control the ultra-dense deuterium fuel in the jump drive’s reaction chamber.
The amount of UDD fuel in the reaction chamber determines the length of the
jump, so we put a simple mechanism to control the amount of UDD fuel in the
drive’s reaction chamber.”

“You mean we can now control
the jump drive’s fuel like we control the fuel of a petrol car with a gas
pedal?” Cruz asked.

Rudolf shook his head. “No.
Once the jump drive is activated, there is no way to increase or decrease the
fuel. You can only control the amount of the drive’s fuel before the jump.”
Rudolf almost laughed when he looked at Hitchcook’s worried countenance. “We
started with a small amount of fuel and programmed the drone to put the same
amount of fuel in the chamber for the return jump. Then we jumped it in the
direction of the planet. We gradually increased the fuel in a series of jumps,
hoping to jump the drone close enough to take good pictures of the planet. We
thought we had failed in our last attempt and we planned to jump the drone
again today.”

Cruz patted Rudolf on the
shoulder. “That was very clever of you, Rudolf. So you say it’s a gas giant?”

“It is no doubt a gas giant,”
Rudolf said, looking at Hitchcook with the corner of his eyes. “If we’re lucky
it might contain oxygen to bring here or heavy hydrogen to use as fuel.”

“How did we miss this clip?” Alonso
asked, his eyes fixed on his tablet.

“The camera took only a
passing glimpse of the planet,” Rudolf said. “I think it captured the picture
of the planet when the drone was making the U-turn.”

“Do we have the coordinates and
direction of the jump that brought the drone within sight of the planet?” Cruz
asked.

“Yes, sir,” said Jean-Pierre
Jacquet, the group’s IT, communications and electronics expert. “We also have a
record of the amount of fuel that jumped the drone to that location.”

“We must jump the drone as
soon as possible to increase the chances of getting pictures of the planet
using the same direction of the jump,” Rudolf said, more to annoy Hitchcook
than to impress Cruz. “Although E Utopia and the gas giant orbit the Luz Cruz in
the same direction, they have different orbital periods. Their orbits have
different shapes and might not be in the same plane. The longer we take, the
more the two planets move away from each other.” He looked at his chronometer.
“We jumped the drone at this time of the day. Right now we’re on the same side
of the Luz Cruz as we were when we jumped the drone. If we jump the drone now we
stand a big chance of getting good pictures of the gas giant using the same
jump direction.”