The Urania Project: Hard Science Fiction, page 1
THE URANIA PROJECT
Hard Science Fiction
BRANDON Q. MORRIS
RYAN ROCKWELL
Contents
The Comet
Casio
Chandra
Faxes
The Object
Eva
An Anomaly
Uhuru
Obstacles
Death
Pari
Awakening
The Signal
Rz+uT
The Noise
Drip
Memories
Awefome
Setback
Six Years
Unexpected Help
X-Ray
Software Archeology
The Offer
Uplink
The Urania Project
Around the campfire
Also by Brandon Q. Morris
The Comet
OCTOBER 18, 2032, CAMBRIDGE, SMITHSONIAN ASTROPHYSICAL OBSERVATORY
Rachel wasn't normally someone who felt sorry for herself. Except today. Rain hammered on the taxi as if someone were dumping a container full of gravel on top of it. Since yesterday evening, a broad band of clouds had been passing through, bringing heavy rain and causing flooded underpasses around Boston, and high water levels in the Charles River.
And even though Rachel didn't believe in something as irrational as fate, the smoke coming from the engine compartment of her '93 Ford Taurus seemed to be the result of some kind of divine intervention. Maybe after thirty-nine years, the car was simply worn out, and the acrid smoke was its way of raising the white flag.
As the taxi turned into the parking lot of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Institute, Rachel wondered why her car hadn't broken down on any other day. Not a single raindrop had fallen from the sky in the last two weeks.
The taxi driver drove around the small island of the traffic circle at the main entrance and stopped at the stairs of Building D. Rachel noticed that the driver, a woman with short gray hair, was at least twenty years older than she was. Would she still be working at that age? With a sigh, Rachel fumbled for her cell phone, paid for the taxi ride, and lamented not having an umbrella with her.
With her backpack in hand, she got out and hurried up the steps to the entrance. She hadn't even closed the door behind her when the taxi drove off. Rachel felt a few drops of rain trickling down from her scalp. They found their way over her temple, cheekbone, and the tip of her nose, giving her unpleasant goose bumps. The light blue of her jeans had turned dark, her gray cloth coat was heavy with moisture, and the climate inside her sneakers was like that of the tropics. How was Rachel supposed to get through the day in this state?
“Oh, has the director finally landed?” she heard.
It was Jonathan. With his usual exaggerated cheerfulness, he stood in front of her, a notebook in hand, and looked her over.
“Oh,” he said. “I guess your vacation wasn't so great, huh?”
“Good morning.” Rachel brushed wet strands of hair from her face and sniffed. “No, the vacation was fine. It's just the first day back at work. Sometimes things don't go smoothly.”
“Tell me more when you get a chance. Susan has been looking for you for almost an hour.”
“Yes, I know. I messaged her that I...”
Rachel took her cell phone out of her coat pocket. The display was wet and smudged, and she could just make out that it was almost ten o'clock.
She said, “I’ll chat when I get a chance, Jonathan. I have to go now.”
“Sure. See you later.”
The way to her department led through a veritable maze of corridors. If the weather hadn't been so lousy, Rachel would have walked around the outside of the complex and used the other entrance opposite the sports field. From Building D, Rachel walked through Building C to Building B.
From the outside, the structure from the early 1960s didn't look like much, but the rooms here were much better laid out than in D and C, which were both a few years older. No sooner had she arrived on the first floor than Susan rushed up to her.
“I know what you want to say,” Rachel interrupted her. “But now is a really bad time. It usually takes me fifteen minutes to get here from Medford. But the last hour has been a crazy odyssey in the rain, and if you don't mind, I'd like to settle in first.”
Susan ignored her request. “Don't you read your email?”
“Not when I’m on vacation.”
“You should have. Then you wouldn't be so...”
“Clueless?” Rachel finished. “It was definitely a nice two weeks, Susan. Snuggled up on the sofa with a few good books and plenty of tea and chocolate.”
Susan crossed her arms in front of her chest. Damn it, Rachel hated it when her assistant had that contrite look on her face. It meant trouble.
Rachel asked, “Why should I read email on vacation when I have a substitute? You know, I don't take time off for nothing. If you had my workload...”
“It's fine.” Susan exhaled, her natural red bob swinging moodily from side to side. In fact, she looked even more exhausted than Rachel. Susan gave a quick shake of her head, turned around, and strode down the corridor. Rachel had no choice but to follow her if she wanted to find out what was going on.
Without turning around, Susan said, “It's about the open observation slot.”
“Don't tell me you haven't filled it!”
“We have, very spontaneously. But the project is a bit strange. The guy who's supervising it has been sitting in your office for the last forty-five minutes.”
They passed the break area with the water dispenser and the vending machine. The two new doctoral students—Rachel was always forgetting their names—were lounging on the sofa with their laptops and interrupted their animated conversation to greet them politely.
“Why are they sending someone here especially for this project?” Rachel asked.
“I left the project description on your desk.”
They stopped in front of the door to her office. Susan put a hand on Rachel's shoulder. “You look like Snow White just out of the shower.”
“Well, if that isn't a compliment...” Rachel said, smiling. “I'll take a look at it. Give me an hour, and I'll be up to date.”
“I'll give you half an hour. Our status meeting, you know.”
“Sure.”
When Rachel entered the office, she was overcome by a feeling she had experienced during her studies. Back then, she had studied less than she should have for the exam in “Fundamentals of Astrophysics,” so she had no choice but to improvise the project presentation. It was called “PowerPoint Karaoke.”
A man was waiting in the office. With his hands folded and his back to her, he sat in the chair in front of Rachel's ebony desk. He turned to face her, and his dark, clean-shaven face wore an expectant expression.
“Sorry I'm late.”
“That's all right,” said the man. “I heard you had car troubles.”
“And a shower.” Rachel took off her coat and hung it on the hook by the door. “Dr. Rachel Adams. I'm the director of the CXC.”
The man stood up. He must be much younger than his clothes made him appear, probably only in his early forties. He was wearing brown corduroy pants, a light blue shirt, and a gray tweed jacket.
“Dr. Shawn Whitfield,” the man introduced himself. “Astrophysics at Indiana University in Bloomington.”
“That’s a long trip,” Rachel noted.
She shook Whitfield's hand, then woke the computer from sleep mode by nudging the mouse. Strangely, the pile of papers, reference books, and printouts on the desk had not disappeared during her vacation. She feverishly searched the top layers for the current project description.
“You managed to get one of the coveted slots at Chandra, congratulations,” Rachel said, trying to buy some time.
Whitfield sat back down, and when Rachel looked up briefly, she saw a broad grin on his face.
“Yes, it's really exciting,” he said. “I'm so grateful that it's working out. And then fifty kiloseconds for the observation!”
Rachel found a stack of stapled papers. If Susan hadn't adorned the bright yellow note with one of her typical smileys and written “MEGA IMPORTANT!” on it in her heavily slanted left-handed handwriting, Rachel would have definitely overlooked the project description. She fished the document out of the stack, knowing that it was now time for PowerPoint karaoke.
“So your project deals with a specific analysis in the X-ray spectrum,” she began. “As far as I can tell, the phenomenon is limited to a fixed location.”
“Yes, exactly,” Whitfield responded to her improvisation. “Basically, it's about an anomaly that three teenagers from the neighboring county found in two-year-old Chandra data. They asked our department for advice. Since we only have a twelve-inch optical lens telescope at our in-house observatory, we applied for a slot at Chandra.”
“And to what circumstance do we owe the fact that you are accompanying the observation on site, Dr. Whitfield?”
Shawn Whitfield smiled sheepishly and wrung his hands in his lap. “Well, how often do you get the chance to see the venerable halls of the Chandra X-Ray Center?”
“I have to agree with you there,” said Rachel. “And I assume you're the scientific director of the astrophysics department in Bloomington?”
“Oh, no. I'm a postdoc and my primary focus is aster
Rachel furrowed her brow. “You know that comets can be detected with X-rays. When solar wind particles collide with the dust and gas of the comet's coma, a charge exchange occurs that generates X-rays.”
“I'm aware of that, Dr. Adams,” Whitfield said. “The documents refer to two images. The position of the object in each image is different. But for a comet, it's moving too slowly.”
“Are you sure?”
“No, which is why I'm glad we have the opportunity to investigate this phenomenon more closely.”
Shawn Whitfield's eyes lit up. Rachel sat down. She sighed inwardly, because this project didn't sound like it was going to make for a particularly exciting week.
Students who claimed to have found an anomaly in X-ray data...
She leafed through the pages and pretended to refresh her memory. At the same time, she tried to pick up as much information as possible. The attached black-and-white printouts of the digital X-ray images showed a section of starry sky. A circle had been drawn around a small bright spot using a graphics program, and next to it was written in Comic Sans:
Not a comet!!! Deep space anomaly???
Rachel put the document aside and looked at Shawn Whitfield. She felt a little sorry for him. The man must have traveled to Cambridge with high expectations, only to find the director of the Chandra Observatory completely soaked and suffering from a mixture of aimlessness and post-vacation blues. On top of that, the weather outside couldn't have been more miserable. However, none of this seemed to dampen Whitfield's enthusiasm in the slightest.
Slowly, Rachel's agitation about the bad start faded into the background. She felt herself gradually calming down and her structured side gaining the upper hand.
“All right, Dr. Whitfield,” Rachel said. “If you don't mind, we can skip the formalities. I'm Rachel.”
The corners of the astrophysicist's mouth twitched nervously upward. “Call me Shawn... Just Shawn.”
“Okay, Shawn. The schedule for your project is as follows: Today we'll finish up an observation from last week, configure Chandra, and starting tomorrow we'll run the first ten kilo-seconds. That doesn't sound like much at first. But as you'll see, that's almost three hours of observation time. If you like, we can talk briefly at lunchtime, and I can take you over to the control room tomorrow.”
“Awesome!” Shawn was excited. “Your assistant, I mean, Dr. Reilly, already hinted that this might be possible. So sure, I'd love to! Man, that means I'll get to see Chandra's control room. That's super cool!”
Shortly before half past ten, Shawn Whitfield had left the office again and Rachel was standing at the coffee machine, with boiling water flowing into her cup. The scent of bergamot made Rachel look forward to her Earl Grey.
“You're reasonably dry again.” Susan was standing behind her, an empty cup in her hand. “Need to recharge. My caffeine levels have reached alarming proportions.”
Only now did Rachel notice the deep circles under Susan's eyes. The machine gurgled, and Rachel took the cup from the small tray.
“You look a little worn out, if I may say so.”
Susan passed her cup close to Rachel and set it under the machine. She energetically selected a large cup of coffee, whereupon the rattling of the grinder drowned out all other sounds.
“Oh,” said Susan. “It's just because of Chris... He moved out on Saturday. And I haven’t decided yet whether that's good or bad.”
The grinder stopped and the pump pushed freshly brewed coffee through the outlet nozzle. Rachel placed her ice-cold hand on her cup. It felt like touching a hot stove. “Take it from a woman who got divorced fifteen years ago: everything will be fine.”
Susan didn't seem convinced. “Really? I mean, you were in your late thirties when you and Sebastian split up. I'll be forty-seven in November.”
“It was hard for me at first,” Rachel admitted. “After all, a part of me was missing. But eventually I learned to deal with it.”
“You mean throwing yourself into work.”
Rachel had to smile; Susan seemed to have something like X-ray vision. She made things visible that Rachel sometimes couldn't see herself. Or did she just not want to see them?
Susan's coffee was ready. With her steaming cup in hand, she said, “Let's go. Off to the status meeting. How was your visitor, by the way?”
“Oh, not your type. Too young.” Susan rolled her eyes. “No, he's an astrophysicist from Bloomington, Indiana. I think he's okay. I just hope the project isn't as boring as it sounds.”
“Investigating a request from students to find out if there's a comet flying around somewhere?” Susan asked. “I skimmed through the material. It might actually be more exciting than it sounds. Who knows? Maybe you'll make a groundbreaking discovery after all.”
Susan giggled, and Rachel was glad to have her as an assistant. However, Rachel didn't believe her assumption would prove correct. She had been working here far too long for that.
Casio
MAY 17, 1978, SOLAR SYSTEM
The sound was like the crunch of metal bones rubbing against each other. Richard felt a shiver run down his spine. He immediately pulled the red lever for the emergency shutdown. The one that, in countless hours of training, he had always been told never to activate under any circumstances.
The cabin went dark. A deep blackness filled the ship, the likes of which Richard had never experienced before. Added to this was absolute silence. He hadn't known that the emergency shutdown also controlled the life support system. But they wouldn't suffocate that quickly. The five-by-seven-meter cylinder of the cabin contained enough air for the three of them.
George, the co-pilot and ship's doctor, cleared his throat. Richard couldn't even remember what throat-clearing sounded like. In the roar of the ship's systems, such a delicate sound was lost like a herring among sharks.
“Hopefully the systems will come back up,” said Juan. He was the ship's engineer. Richard would have liked a more optimistic assessment from him.
“Was it wrong to activate the emergency shutdown...?” Richard listened intently in the darkness. Something hissed somewhere. Perhaps it wasn't a good idea for the entire Urania to drift through space without power any longer.
“No, I would have done the same thing,” said Juan. “That noise didn't sound good at all. You probably prevented irreparable damage. A piston seizure.”
George cleared his throat again. “If you want my opinion, the sound didn’t sit well with me either.” Something lit up on his wrist.
Richard was almost blinded. “What…?”
“My Casio.” George pulled his sleeve back over the watch. The red LEDs had burned into Richard's retinas and took a while to disappear completely.
“Restart checklist?” he asked.
There was a rustling sound. “I've got it,” said Juan. There was a crack, and a soft green light activated above his lap. A chemical emergency light; you had to bend it in the middle to activate it. Richard reached into the pocket of his seat and found one there too. It felt satisfying to bend it and make it glow with a soft crack. His was blue. The atmospheric light changed the mood in the cabin in a strange way. They had light again. All was not lost. The NASA psychologists had probably thought of that.
“Here.” Juan handed him a copy of the checklist.
“Emergency checklist, part 1. Pilot: Richard Kendall. Engineer: Juan Diaz. Exact onboard time unknown. Start of checklist approximately three minutes after emergency shutdown by captain.”
Richard nodded. The voice recorder was probably also out of power, but it was still important to follow protocol. The three minutes seemed too short to him, but of the three of them, Juan had the best sense of time.
“Health status,” said Juan. He wasn't referring to the crew, but to the spacecraft.
“No obvious damage,” said Richard. “Cabin intact. I hear a faint hissing sound.”
“Check. I hear the hissing too.” Juan paused, and they all listened to the sound. It sounded like a bottle of sparkling water had been half opened.
