The Solar Sea (13 page)

"Just great,” said LaRue. “I had to track down a dodgy relay that was causing the port aft thruster to act up and you know somethin', I had to do it all myself. Unlike some people who have people lining up to help them out."

On Earth, at Martin-Intelsoft, Jefferson would have dismissed the incident entirely, assuming LaRue was just having a bad day.

"Is everything okay?” asked Jefferson, sitting next to LaRue.

"I've had better days,” said the Tech System's Manager, a little irritably.

"We're a long way from home,” said Jefferson.

"And getting further every minute."

"Any reason to take it out on Mr. MacDonald?"

LaRue waved dismissively. “He's been working in the Quinn Corp cafeteria on the Moon for years. I'm sure he's used to people griping and complaining."

"Maybe.... “Jefferson ran his fingers through his hair. “Maybe in a factory complex with hundreds of people and lots of space, it's easier to turn a deaf ear to complaints. We're stuck together in this little can for the next four years or so. Who knows? Maybe getting a card game together every now and then would help break the ice. Maybe MacDonald would volunteer to help you once and a while?"

"The cook help with a technical problem?” He snorted.

Jefferson glared at him and he held up his hands in mock surrender as he stood and left. As he finished his own meal, Jefferson thought back to the
Ares
mission. There had been disagreements and even arguments, but rarely did people resort to sarcasm and they all saw each other as equals.

Jefferson's worries about morale were slight compared to his concerns about training and experience. One day as he, Pilot, and Natalie were gathered around the worktable on the bridge discussing the ship's trajectory, she pointed to the chart. “How bad will the passage through the asteroid belt be?"

Pilot sat back and scratched the wiry hair on his head. “I don't understand."

Again, Jefferson noted something just a little pedantic and condescending in Pilot's tone, but he filed it away as he listened to Freeman's question.

"The ship's over ten miles wide,” she said. “It's been a long time since I studied astronomy. Just how close together are the asteroids? I'm picturing us trying to steer this ship through a field of rocks."

"Ah,” said Pilot, comprehension dawning. “You've been watching too many bad science fiction films. Our solar system's asteroid belt is pretty sparsely populated, only about one large rock every two million miles or so. I think a ten-mile-wide spaceship might just squeak through."

Natalie scowled at him.

"Of course, we will want to keep extra careful watch on the sensors,” said Pilot. “The large rocks are well-plotted, even from Earth. It's some of the smaller debris we'll have to watch out for. Still, we've been sending unmanned probes this way for years. We shouldn't have any problem."

Jefferson nodded. He realized Pilot was correct in his assessment and Natalie was right to bring up a concern. However, he couldn't help but think that in the days when he was an astronaut, this was a point that would have been raised while they were in training, months before leaving Earth, not weeks into the mission.

Two months into the voyage, Natalie Freeman sat at the command console. She discovered that shipboard computers had access to Quinn Corp's internal network. Even though transmission time was making the network sluggish, a brief search led Natalie to some general information files about Thomas Alonzo.

There was nothing confidential and nothing there she didn't already know. The files mentioned he was twenty-four years old, he'd interned with Quinn Corp for two years before graduation from MIT. Upon graduation, he went to work for Quinn Corp full time. There was a brief notation he was taking graduate classes. That had led President Van der Wald to speculate that Alonzo may be working on a thesis. There was even a recent photo. Also in the files was a listing of the Quinn facilities where Alonzo had worked. Again, this was information that she had seen. However, what was different was that the listings were linked to the sites for those facilities. She clicked the link to Alonzo's last work site: Quinn Corp's San Antonio facility.

Once there, she followed a link to a personnel listing. There was a chance Alonzo would already be deleted from the list. The list had not been updated, though, and she quickly found another link that sent her to the facility's file for Thomas Alonzo. When she clicked that, she gasped. There was a photo, but it was not what she expected.

She sent an email to the personnel office in San Antonio.

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Thomas Alonzo

Pilot spent more and more of his duty shifts in the ship's hub. He enjoyed floating in null gravity and watching the stars through the big windows on either side of the ship. Looking forward, Mars was plainly visible.
Aristarchus
was still far enough away that it looked like a bright star, but to Pilot it was like a beacon.

The master pilot's console in C-and-C was duplicated in the hub. As Pilot had explained to Captain Jefferson, there was very little need for him to actually spend time in the ship's nerve center. Pilot even spent many nights asleep in the null gravity hub, just floating in the middle of the room illuminated by the soft glow of a thousand stars and one planet.

One of Pilot's duties was to stand watch in command and control when neither Captain Freeman nor Captain Jefferson was able to be on duty. However, both captains were so used to their military regimens, that they simply traded out watches, eight hours on duty, eight hours off, for several days in a row without complaint.

Jefferson arrived at C-and-C to relieve Freeman the day she had perused the Quinn Corp files. “I've discovered something about Thomas Alonzo,” she said. “It's something I think you need to know."

Jefferson looked around the deck. “I think it would be better if we find a time when we're both off duty to discuss this."

"When?"

"Next time Pilot comes down, whichever of us is on duty will have him take over for a while. We could use the break."

Natalie frowned.

"Is it an emergency?” The captain's brow furrowed as he grew concerned about her silence.

Natalie thought some more and then shook her head. “No, just a puzzle."

Four hours after Natalie's next duty shift began, Daryl LaRue asked Pilot to come down to check something on his console. “I'm having some problems with some of the indicators,” explained the Technical System's Manager. “It's probably something stupid and simple, but I can't quite figure it out. I'd like you to take a look and see what you think."

Reluctantly, Pilot agreed and about ten minutes later, he crawled down the ladder from the ship's core and stepped over to the thruster control station. Pilot looked it over, retrieved a pair of tweezers from his coveralls and removed a couple of buttons from the console, then replaced the miniature light bulbs behind them and returned the buttons to the console. Just as Pilot was about to ascend the ladder again, Freeman called him over.

"Would you mind taking over for about half an hour while I go get a cup of coffee and stretch my legs?” she asked.

He looked down at the deck, as though trying to find an excuse for not staying. After a moment, he looked up, blushing. “I guess I have been spending quite a bit of time off deck. Take as long as you need."

Freeman stood, patted Pilot on the shoulder, then went to Jefferson's quarters and knocked on the door. “Come in,” he said.

Inside, she found him sitting in a chair, his feet propped up, watching a movie. He slid a bowl of popcorn across the table toward her. “What can I do for you?” he asked.

She took the wireless keyboard and set it on her lap. “I wanted to show you what I learned about Thomas Alonzo. It'll only take a moment.” She paused the movie, then accessed her files on the ship's computer. She pulled up a copy of the photo she'd found a few hours earlier. It showed a man who looked nothing like Pilot. Underneath was the caption “Thomas Alonzo."

Jefferson pursed his lips while reaching out for a handful of popcorn. “That's not our Pilot,” he said at last.

"No, it's not. What do you think it means?"

He shrugged. “Maybe the San Antonio facility posted the wrong photo. That kind of mistake does happen."

Freeman shook her head. “I thought of that. I wrote to the personnel office in San Antonio. The manager there was a recent transfer and didn't remember Alonzo, but she confirmed that the electronic file matched their hard copy. If it's a mistake, it was propagated through the system."

"Well, if it's not the wrong photo, how do you explain it?"

Freeman stood up and paced. “One explanation is that our Thomas Alonzo is not the same man who worked at Quinn Corp for the past five years. Somehow he's been substituted for the real Alonzo."

Jefferson shook his head and folded his arms. “I don't buy that. ‘Our’ Alonzo knows too much about this craft. He's brash and arrogant, inexperienced at some things, but he's not stupid. Why would there be a substitution anyway?"

She stopped pacing and shook her head. “I keep wanting to say ‘corporate spy’ or ‘saboteur.’ That's why I came to you with this even though I know both of those sound completely whacky. I know the safety of the ship is your first priority and this is just something that doesn't add up.” She dropped back into the chair, defeated.

"I'll keep my eyes open.” Jefferson looked over at Freeman. “I'm guessing it's just a mistake, though. San Antonio got the wrong photo and propagated it through their system. I've poked through the Quinn Corp files, too. I've seen photos that are clearly our Pilot."

She ran her tongue over her teeth and studied the photo on the screen for a moment. “You're probably right."

Jefferson looked at his watch. “I suspect your break's about over. You should get back to C-and-C."

She nodded and took another handful of popcorn before she left.

Neb O'Connell sat in his quarters, keyboard in his lap, looking at a schematic of a spaceship. There was a knock at the door. “Come in,” he said.

Lisa Henry peered around the corner. “Whatcha’ doin'?"

"Playing ‘Starship Creator.’ Wanna give it a try?"

"Sure.” She sat on the edge of the bed while Neb cleared the display. He handed her the keyboard and then explained the rules.

"Basically, the objective of the game is to create a ship that will make it to Alpha Centauri and back,” he said.

"And this is what you do in your off time?” She winked at him. Neb shrugged and she turned her attention to the game. She chose a deck layout, attached the most powerful engine she could, and chose an aluminum skin for the ship—same as the shell of the Apollo capsules. “Okay, I think I'm ready to try the ship,” she said.

Neb smirked. “Are you absolutely sure?"

She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “What? Don't you think my ship will do the trick? It's lightweight, and it's got a big engine. It should make the round trip in about twenty years."

"Let's give it a try.” Neb took the keyboard back and typed in some commands. On the screen, they watched as Lisa's ship moved toward Alpha Centauri. Everything went well until the ship was five years from Earth. At that point, Lisa's crew started dropping dead from cancer.

"That doesn't make sense.” Lisa studied the stats on the screen, trying to understand what happened.

"You didn't provide any cosmic ray shielding,” explained Neb. “In five years, your crew got the equivalent of eighty chest X-rays worth of radiation."

Lisa looked around at the walls of the ship. “Isn't
Aristarchus
made of aluminum?” She poked her finger into Neb's chest. “There's something you're not telling me."

Neb held up his hands in surrender. “The game's got it right, honest!” He brought up Lisa's ship design. “Look what happens if we line the ship's hull with polyethylene and restart the simulation."

"Isn't polyethylene the plastic they make garbage bags out of?” she asked as her simulated ship made its way to Alpha Centauri.

Neb nodded. This time, the crew survived for fifteen years. “They would have been fine,” he said. “The problem now is the increased radiation from Alpha Centauri's sun. The plastic didn't quite absorb enough of the radiation."

"You mean all I needed to do to keep my crew alive was line the ship with garbage bags?” Lisa inclined her head. “Would a thicker layer do the trick?"

"That's about the size of it.” Neb beamed at her. “That's how they kept Captain Jefferson alive on the trip to Mars—only it was polyethylene tiles, not garbage bags."

Lisa's gaze roved to the walls again. “What about us?"

Neb stood and patted the wall. “Quinitite,” he said. “The same stuff that the sails are made out of. It actually deflects cosmic rays, just like it disperses electric charge."

"You really should get out more.” Lisa cracked a grin.

"And go where?"

On Earth, Henry Quinn stepped tentatively into his father's office. “Dad, something strange is going on."

Jerome was working on his computer. Without looking up, he grunted acknowledgement and motioned for Henry to take a seat in front of the desk. Henry sat down and picked up a paperweight. It was a plastic cube with four coins embedded inside. After a moment, Jerome looked up. “Well?"

"Ever since Tom left for college, I've been emailing him—keeping in touch, asking him for help with my homework, that sort of thing.” He returned the paperweight to the desk. “I think we may be closer now than when he lived here."

Jerome nodded at his son and prompted him to continue.

"It's just that this semester, his emails have become erratic. It's like he's really preoccupied. I know he's busy at MIT, so I wasn't all that concerned until today. I wanted to talk to him about Massachusetts since I'm thinking about applying to Babson. I realized he never sent me his new phone number, so I called the MIT switchboard.” Henry licked his lips. His mouth was suddenly dry. “Dad, they say he left last semester. There's no Thomas Quinn registered this year."