Voyage to Alpha Centauri: A Novel (69 page)

Yes, he was right about that. I preferred alone.

I loved my father. I loved his goodness. But I was not like him. I would climb my own staircases. I would
make
my own staircases.

“Do not forget him, Neil.”

“I won’t,
Papacito
”, I said, relenting a little. “You shouldn’t worry so much about me.”

*

Had Xue suspected that a catastrophe was looming? Or had he only exercised scientific caution? Did he foresee that something more than a nuclear accident was about to happen, that it would be a bomb, prepared deliberately far in advance for those who would one day trigger it? He had shouted “isotopes” and “fission”. But I think his frantic last-minute attempt to stop the explosion was an act that could only be impelled by certainty. He knew what would happen, and he knew he would probably die trying to prevent it.

The little reactor on top was the fission trigger for the larger cache of fuel, which became the fusion bomb. Like a hydrogen bomb, only a thousand times greater in power. What fuel did they use? Neither liquid deuterium nor solid lithium deuteride seem likely. It was probably an element unknown to us, derived from the minerals of Nova.

*

I slept again, and dreamed about a planet covered in fire with a black puncture hole in its center. I awoke in a state of terror, afraid that a chain reaction had spread throughout Nova and that it was burning below my feet.

I powered the
max
and keyed the satellite view. The planet was still there, revolving serenely on its axis, with its seas and all but one of its continents as they had been before. Over C-1, there was a thick haze, streaming westward across the ocean with the prevailing wind currents. I zoomed on the central mountain ranges, but the cloud cover was too thick to see anything—dirty brown, purple, and gray, with numerous patches of flame where the remaining forests still burned.

When I keyed to the ship’s main communications site, a media announcer appeared, speaking in midsentence: “. . . indicate that radioactivity is highest in the center of the continent but is spreading on the hurricane-force winds generated by the explosion. Three extinct volcanoes have also erupted, and earthquakes of magnitude 10 and higher on the Richter-Mercalli scale have devastated Base-main and all the mission bases. Two shuttles and their pilots have survived the disaster and are returning shortly to the
Kosmos
with the last of the survivors. One is due to enter port within the next twenty minutes; the other is preparing to lift off from the geology base on the eastern side of the mountains. The number of survivors is not yet known. We will update this report with the latest news as it happens. Stay tuned to
Kosmos Media
.”

This was followed by the Earth flag rippling in the wind and emotional background music. Then a recital of the Earth Charter by a man’s voice in tones of infinite wisdom. Then a recording of a children’s choir singing on the shore of an ocean, 4.37 light-years away. I gazed at their shining faces, wondering who they were, wondering if they had all lost brothers or sisters. If so, they were survivors too. I switched off the
max
and went out.

Within minutes, the KC elevator brought me to the lowest deck. There I waited in the shuttle concourse, among a group of people from all the departments, including cooks and cleaning people, flight officers, and a number of medical staff with a line of gurneys ready to roll. I saw no DSI uniforms, and something dark in me hoped that the department staff had all been in the valley at the time of the disaster.

The Captain and his second-in-command stepped out of an elevator and joined us.

Two of the bays were open and empty; the third was closed and silent. The fourth was beeping its pressurization signal. A shuttle had arrived.

*

Thirty-nine survivors were brought out on stretchers and gurneys, or stumbled down the ramp on their own. Few were those without the marks of the disaster upon their bodies and faces. Many were showing preliminary symptoms of radiation burn, though they surely would have been hundreds of kilometers away from the epicenter.

I felt certain I would momentarily see Jan coming out. Instead it was Vladimir, carrying one end of a stretcher, with Dariush on the other end, whispering to the form lying on it. It was Jan, groaning, his face red and blistering, his hands lifted beseechingly.

The medical staff took over and began to ferry people by elevator to the clinics on the decks above. The Captain and Vladimir accompanied them. I went up in a large elevator with Dariush. The cubicle was crowded, with two semi-conscious people on gurneys, a doctor and three nurses, and other wounded, who were stunned and weeping.

I caught Dariush’s eye.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“Yes. I was on the shuttle coming back to the
Kosmos
when the blast occurred. We turned around in mid-journey and headed to Base-main.”

The elevator came to a halt, and the doors opened. It was deck A. The medical people rolled the gurneys into the hallway and raced toward the clinic. I caught Dariush by the arm and asked, “What did you find at Base-main?”

“Among the many dead, I found the body of our friend Étienne.”

“Oh no, not Pagnol too!”

“We carried into the shuttle all the bodies we could find, and the few survivors. After that, we went around the coastal regions trying to locate people at the marine bases. The turbulence was severe. When we landed at the northern marine base, Jan’s shuttle had already landed there, a safe distance from the sea. We ran to the base and found him pulling those still alive from the buildings—there were not many. Then he saw Vladimir’s shuttle capsized in the sea not far from the shore—the new shore, for the land had collapsed. Even as we watched, the base slid into the water. Jan ran to the edge and dove in. He swam to the shuttle and pulled himself up on it. He banged on the sides, but there were no answers from within. He used his remote to open the portal. When it opened, the vessel began to fill with water, sinking very quickly. He dove in through the portal, and a minute later he brought Vladimir out.”

“But who flew this shuttle back to the
Kosmos
?”

“Vladimir. You see, he was unharmed. When his shuttle fell into the sea, the hatch had been open, though he was able to close it with his controls in the pilot’s cabin, leaving the craft partly submerged. But he was trapped in an air pocket in the cabin, and the command controls became inoperative. He could not open the cabin door. Jan used his remote to open the hatch, and then he swam inside the ship and opened the pilot’s door. A moment longer, and they would both have been pulled to the bottom and drowned.”

“Jan’s badly burned. It looks like radiation burn.”

“It must be. He never came close to the blast, not even to the secondary fires far out from it. He went around the rim of the whole continent, stopping at every base that still existed. He saved many people, though it now looks as if he and they were exposed to radiation.”

“You say you went to N-i on another shuttle.”

“Yes, I transferred to this one in order to accompany the survivors. The other shuttle went back south to the geology base, the only station Jan hadn’t checked. I hope they have got away.”

“I hear they’ll soon be lifting off, or maybe already have.”

“On the return flight, Jan collapsed, and the symptoms of burn appeared. His sufferings are only beginning, Neil. I must go to be with him.”

“Yes, of course.”

I followed Dariush as far as the medical clinic, where we met the Captain leaving.

“How bad is it?” I asked.

“Very bad”, he said quietly. “Fr. Ibrahim, I suggest you see the people in the clinic. Some are calling for you. Dr. Hoyos, you are welcome to join us on KC deck. I think Pia would appreciate your presence.”

We boarded the flight staff elevator, and in the KC lobby, we parted. Several executive officers were waiting for him there, crowding him with requests for instructions. He hurried forward to the command center, and I went in the other direction, toward Pia and Paul’s apartment.

I found Pia sitting alone on the sofa with the baby sleeping beside her, the tiny face serene, the little hands raised as if in surrender. The sleep of total trust. Only moments before, I had seen Jan in the same position, his hands reaching upward, not in surrender but beseeching relief from intolerable suffering.

Pia looked up as I entered the room.

“Dariush is alive”, I said. “He’s on board.”

I sat down in a chair opposite and told her what I knew. “Thank God”, she breathed. “Thank God.”

“Where’s Paul?”

“He’s gone forward to the command center.”

For an hour, we remained in the silence of waiting, as if we floated in a zone without orientation, neither up nor down, forward nor backward. When the insistent cry of the baby grounded us at last, Pia nursed her. I tried to make small talk, straining to find hopeful things to say. But in the end, it was she who comforted me:

“We’ll get through this, Neil. We’re going home soon, and then this nightmare will be over. We’ll have many good things to remember.”

I couldn’t keep my eyes off Katherine Theresa. Her face and miniature hands were so beautiful, so completely dependent—a world reborn in that tiny form.

Paul returned and told us the latest developments.

“The Captain just addressed the ship”, he began. “The other shuttle crashed during take-off from geology base. No one survived. Now only Vladimir is pilot, and we have one shuttle safe with us. Everything we bring to this planet is gone.”

For a moment, I felt a pang of loss for my turquoise cube. Then I thought of Kitha-ré and Pho-rion, and lamented them too. I did not think of the missing
Kosmos
staff. Perhaps their deaths were still an abstraction, as if the shock wave of the detonation had not yet passed through me.

But Pia felt it. Paul and I maintained compartmentalization, our male brains enabling us to function in the midst of catastrophe. Were we to collapse in a state of horror or grief, it would help no one, least of all the dead. We needed to remain strong, to preserve order, to ensure the survival of the expedition.

“More than four hundred are missing”, Paul continued. “Maybe more will die from the radiation, those who have returned to us. We have lost most scientists, all but two pilots, and Jan is now very ill. All military are gone, some DSI, many maintenance people on mission bases, some cook, some doctor.”

“And
Kosmos
flight staff?” I asked.

“Most are safe. Few were on ground. All navigation people are here. We will go home. Soon, when robot surveys finish record of radioactivity and damage to C-1.”

“Is there any hope for more survivors?”

“There is a little. We have receive only two distress signals. Two subs in the northern sea were underwater when the blast wave pass. When they realize what is happening, they turn and go away from C-1. They have some damage from seismic turbulence in ocean, but nothing bad. They are together near shore of C-2, five people, marine biologists. They stay inside subs because of fall-out.”

I suddenly thought about Maria Kempton. I asked if they knew where she had been when the bomb went off. Had they heard from her?

“She’s in her room”, Pia said. “She’s fine, though shaken like the rest of us.”

“Volodya goes down to C-2 now”, said Paul. “Is dangerous but he will bring biologist back.”

I could see that they needed to be alone for a while. I said goodbye and returned to my own room.

Though I wasn’t hungry, I knew I should eat. Around the usual suppertime, I wandered into the deck-B cafeteria and came upon kitchen staff sitting at the tables, talking quietly among themselves. Some sipped from cups of coffee, a few openly smoked cigarettes. Where had the tobacco come from? Had it been smuggled from Earth, or had it been grown on Nova? They glanced at me then looked away. Some were red-eyed, some looked angry; most were still stunned. One responsible cook pointed to the row of steaming containers at the food counter. I served myself, sat down alone, and forced myself to consume whatever it was.

Throughout the evening, I watched the satellite view of the planet on the panorama screen. People wandered in and out of the hall, shook their heads, covered their mouths with a hand, stifled their sobs, left for elsewhere.

The high winds generated by the blast were still raging, but I could see that a good deal of airborne debris was falling into the ocean in the west. The atmosphere above C-1 was still too dense to make out ground details. When sunset in that hemisphere darkened the continent, it was clear that countless fires still burned beneath the clouds of smoke. I wondered if all the forests would be gone by morning.

Restless, I went down to PHM to see if Vladimir’s shuttle had returned to port. It was there. A flight technician told me the pilot had brought the biologists back safely. I returned to my room and fell into an uneasy sleep.

*

The next day, I tracked down Maria Kempton and returned her Bible to her without comment. She was stressed and distracted, and I was glad she didn’t ask me if I’d read it. If she had, I might not have been able to restrain my bleak thoughts about life, providence, and the fate of the universe.

I returned to my room and flipped through Xue’s Chinese edition, examining annotations he had penned neatly in the margins, his underlined passages, and some inserted notes, all in Chinese script, as alien to me as the temple codices. It struck me how closely the letters resembled cuneiform. Had his people come from one of the sons of Noah? I closed the book and put it onto my shelf beside the deer and the slide rule, realizing they were no longer on loan. They were mine, and I didn’t know what to do with them.

*

Three days later, a message from the Captain was hand-delivered to me at my room. Maybe the courier had been chosen because he was Hispanic like me. It was the young waiter who had served our table in the Captain’s dining room, weeks ago. I had written my address on a table napkin for him, not seriously expecting that he would ever turn up at my mountain cabin.