Home Planet: Apocalypse (Part 2)

HOME PLANET

PART II: APOCALYPSE

(First Edition)

by

T.J. SEDGWICK

The year we’d departed Earth was 2070. Expected mission time to the Aura system, 16.1 light years away: one-hundred-and twenty years, most of which was to be spent in stasis. What happened was something entirely different. I’d emerged from the hibernation of stasis after five-hundred-and-fourteen years and now the year was 2584. And the three-thousand-foot-long sleeper ship, The
Juno Ark
, had returned to Earth, but not the home planet it had departed all those centuries ago. It had changed. Radically. Now, it was a frozen planet.

As I sat on the sofa in the observatory’s small, glass-walled staff room I took another swig of the isotonic drink I’d found sealed in the pantry. The place was as gloomy and lifeless as ever, save for the occasional creaking of the superstructure as it expanded and contracted differentially in the radiance of the sun. The infusion of sugar felt good and the long-life chocolate bars I’d eaten would see me through for a while longer. At some point in the near future, I’d be returning to the stores in Module 7 and not just for food. It reminded me what I’d neglected to do recently with my mind still reeling from what the telescopes had told. I finished off the energy drink, crushed the can and rose to my feet, before lining up for a long-range shot. The can sailed through the air, hit the wall and landed squarely in the wastebasket. I smiled at the trivial victory that had distracted my mind for a few happy seconds. I checked Professor Heinz’s watch. It read eleven p.m. precisely, so I took out the two-way radio from my fleece and switched it on. Maybe Reichs had decided to switch on the counterpart walkie-talkie I’d left in the Module 7 stores. As the only other survivor, he’d left evidence of being there recently. Sooner or later, finding him would top of my priority list.

“This is Dan Luker, survivor on the
Juno Ark
. Does anyone read?”

Nothing but static.

I tried twice more over the next five minutes, having left a note telling him
every hour on the hour.

If he wants to be found, we’ll eventually cross paths
, I thought, clicking off the two-way and switching on my intercom badge.

The calm, eloquent female voice said, “The network is unreachable. The communications network is inactive.”

Tell me something I don’t know,
I thought, knowing that sometimes persistence pays off. In this case, not, so it seemed.

I said, “Okay ... Intercom, initiate direct badge-to-badge comms. Any node.”

“No active intercom nodes within range.”

I tapped the badge into standby, left the compact staff room, and headed toward the starboard telescope. There were some things I needed to check before heading off in search of Reichs. There was also the long-range transceiver I needed to charge or replace. I had to try to contact the surface again. Somewhere down there on the frozen planet, a guy named John and the woman who spoke to him were alive and well. I’d heard them briefly, but they hadn’t heard me. Then the battery had died.

Once inside the stiflingly hot viewing cockpit, I removed my fleece and went about re-aligning the telescope on Earth. The ship’s orbit had shifted its aim. I wanted to spy the dark side of the planet, now only a charcoal crescent accompanied by its bright white day-side. The magnification of telescope was such that only a small field of view was visible. This, in turn, meant that the visible area constantly shifted with the ship’s orbit and the planet’s rotation. I concentrated hard at the unvarying darkness of the nighttime Earth. There had been breaks in the thick cloud cover on the daytime side, so the lights of cities should betray their presence.

After some time, I stood up straight from the eyepiece, stretched my back, and flexed my neck. I checked my watch. An entire hour had passed watching the nighttime Earth. It hadn’t been a solid hour—several manual realignments had ensured that different swaths of the surface had passed under my gaze. The tedium of seeing only darkness would have sent me to sleep had I not been standing over the scope, straining my neck. I saw not a single sign of human habitation. No city lights, which once illuminated the night, defining the coastlines of major population centers. No lines of highway lit up by lines of vehicle headlights and streetlamps. And thinking back to the long-range transceiver, almost nothing in the way of radio transmissions. Nothing, save for five tenuous sentences from a man named John and a woman whose name I didn’t know. There were no search parties, no nothing. I took a seat next to the skeleton that was once Professor Heinz. A chill ran down my spine at the enormity of it all, at the implications. Nothing had prepared me for this. Nothing.

Unable to rest and thirsty for answers, I went back to the finderscope and made a series of manual wheel adjustments in search of the Moon. Maybe I’d made some mistake. The whole moon hadn’t been visible before when I’d drawn my conclusion about its identity. Perhaps it just looked similar and my brain had seen what it had wanted to see. Could it have been a psychological reaction to being so far from the home world? Maybe it was just an innate desire to believe what I wanted to believe, to feel closer to the home planet, the place I loved and been loved by people long gone.

I took a deep breath, hoping for a different outcome. Through the finderscope, I spied the gray sphere now floating alone, separated from the horizon over which it had recently passed. It hung to the top left of the frozen planet, small in comparison. The yellow star, further left still, illuminated both worlds. I craned over the main eyepiece and watched the perfectly defined craters and impact scars drift past the objective lens’s path. The view was too detailed to make a positive ID, so I went back to the finder. As before, it looked different from the side of the Moon, which continually faced Earth—the one I’d grown up with. But not
that
different. Even from my viewpoint, the unmistakable dark patches known as seas were visible. Of course, they were named long before we went there in 1969 and were really just ancient lava fields. I could still see enough of these lava fields to recognize the eyes and nose and mouth of the
Man in the Moon
; one of the eyes was called the
Sea of Serenity,
so I thought. Any illusions I’d had about the frozen world’s moon were forever dispelled. It was definitely the moon.

As the neurological pathways aligned in my brain, I suddenly remembered something else about the
Sea of Serenity.
In 2051, the American company, United Lunar Industries, had set up its first mining colony there. The colony had expanded over the years and competitors had joined it on the
Sea of Serenity
and elsewhere. The documentary I’d watched a few years back—biologically speaking—told of aluminum, titanium and magnesium extraction by largely automated processes. Something like a few hundred workers made up the total population at these outposts. Although I didn’t have the exact location, I could visualize the TV show map in my mind’s eye. I set about aligning the scope on the center of the dark patch that was the
Sea of Serenity
. The open-cast mines and the rail gun accelerator would be the most prominent features. The buildings housing the fusion reactors and ore processing facilities should stand out, too.

The search went on for half an hour before I found the straight edges of the giant open cast pit. At each of its rock faces, sat a giant bucket-wheel excavator. All four were still, as were the several ore-transporter trucks within the quarry and along the road out of it. I followed the straight road, past other pits and branch roads, which came off the thoroughfare at right angles. Eventually, my eyes reached some kind of building. Its lunar rock covered its roof or dust and only the shadows of its relief gave up its outline. As I scanned the vicinity, I saw other buildings big and small and a network of roads connecting them. Vehicles dotted the scene, but as with the heavy movers and excavators, all were stationary. And then, further east, ran the thin three-mile strip, which could only have been the rail gun. This magnetic bulk transporter worked by firing containers of processed metal toward the Earth orbit receiving station. From there, much of it went to the orbital shipyard, which built the
Juno Ark
and had been building the
Janus Ark
. Some went to the Earth’s surface—especially the titanium—by shuttle.

I continued searching. This time, further to the north, I came upon the spaceport attached to the mining colony. Half a dozen small personnel shuttles sat lifelessly in a row on the apron northwest of the short landing strip. A cargo shuttle—five times as long as the passenger craft—was alone on a separate area next to a large building. Perhaps the cargo shuttle had brought new capital equipment for installation or some new vehicles. Further north still, taxiways connected an array of four circular launch pads to the rest of the spaceport. Three of the four pads were empty; the one in the upper right corner was not. Surrounded by debris and scorch marks lay what used to be a shuttle.

Was this something to do with the death of this colony? Something to do with the
Juno
?

I hunted for more signs of violence or conflict but saw none. What was clear was that no matter where I looked, there were no signs of activity. I didn’t think they’d shut down the mine in a planned, orderly way, the company having gone bust from low ore prices or some other reason. If that had been so, they’d have sold the multi-million dollar plant to the highest bidder, not left it as it was, frozen in time. No, they’d abandoned these robotized vehicles in a hurry. Could the shuttle, destroyed on its launch pad have been something to do with it? Perhaps, but it could have also been an unlucky accident. It wouldn’t have been the first time.

I repeated the survey of the mining base but learned nothing new. After hunting for other moon bases and infrastructure, I eventually gave up having found none.

I got thinking about humanity’s other space assets—the scientific colony on Mars and other assets like the ore receiving stations and numerous satellites and space stations. Anything worth contacting on or around Mars would be well out of range—both visual and with the communications gear at my disposal. And it wouldn’t be easy to find relatively small, fast-moving Earth-orbit assets with the only a manually aligned telescope. There was one exception, though. One of those assets was enormous compared to the rest, so enormous as to be visible. At over two miles long and half a mile wide, the orbital shipyard in low Earth orbit was, in theory, observable. Against the blackness of space, it would stand out as a fast-moving white speck as I had discovered on departure from Earth. Standing at the cupola, I watched as the home world grew smaller with each passing hour. The last visible manmade object I’d seen was the shipyard—birthplace of the
Juno Ark
—at the time tending to her younger sister, the
Janus
of which I’d found no trace. I realigned the telescope to cover Earth, centering it in the finderscope. With an orbital period of around ninety minutes I’d need to bide my time. So I stood patiently, concentrating in case I missed something. My visual acuity was good and so was my patience. The orbital shipyard would be the only thing visible through the finderscope at this range and it’d be the only fast-moving object. Human eyes were adept at spotting movement, shape and change.

Two hours later, mine had spotted nothing. Frustrated, I stood up from the stress position I’d held for far too long. I guessed it was still possible I’d missed it, but somehow didn’t think I had. It was hardly surprising, though. Even if the Earth hadn’t changed beyond all recognition, it was unlikely the same orbital facility would be there five centuries later. But surely, an upgraded version would have replaced it at some point. Surely, after five hundred years, humanity would be space faring or at least have a more detectable footprint.

I felt my time in the observatory was nearing its end. The answers I’d hoped to find when I’d arrived—when it seemed I was still in the Aura
system—never really came. In their place came something more shocking than I could have ever imagined. The mystery had deepened still further. The time had come to find Reichs. The guy had been awake for longer than I had, so surely he’d come closer to the truth. And, if he evaded my search, then I would find John and Jane Doe on snowball Earth if it was the last thing I ever did.