Usurper of the Sun (8 page)
“It feels almost over. After four years of waiting, eleven more months doesn’t seem like much.”
AFTER PRELIMINARY INSPECTIONS
, the crewmembers entered the “cocoons,” their ovular private quarters. The cocoons were as small as coffins but contained everything the crew needed for day-to-day living. They could sleep, conduct meetings through the internal comm system, control the ship, and even answer the call of nature from inside their cocoons. Here was where they would spend most of their time. All information systems were operated from the cocoons using data suits and heads-up displays. They would take meals in the crew area, unless mounting tension among crewmembers (a consideration built into the very architecture of the ship) dictated otherwise, but the rest of their time would be spent within their cocoons.
Four hours later, the UNSS
Phalanx
undocked from the International Space Station on schedule. Aki was surprised that they were leaving on time after all the countless delays, but she was ecstatic to finally be taking off. As the ship left its low orbit, she felt no more movement or acceleration than she would have felt if she were riding an elevator.
“We’re on our own, just the four of us. Let’s do our best to be friendly, but not
too
friendly,” said Commander Kindersley from his cocoon. Then, clearing his throat, he added, “Mark,” half-jokingly.
AKI SPENT MOST
of her time conferring with Per over the comm system. It was their job as the science team to discuss operational plans and review research sent from Central Command.
“Hey, Aki. Did you check that article from CERN about the latest theory on energy transfer from the Ring to the Island?”
His voice bubbled with curiosity, showing no signs of bitterness over the fact that the Ring had rendered his homeland uninhabitable. He tended to view the Ring more as a mechanical device that was causing a nuisance rather than something that had obliterated most of Sweden.
“The article on how energy might be converted to anti-proton beams that pass through narrow tubes? The energy loss would be too much waste. I think it would be too unconventional, even taking into account the creativity we have seen,” Aki responded.
“With a clever conversion equation though. Didn’t the math look pretty at least? It would be more efficient than passing the energy down copper wire that wrapped halfway around the sun. I am interested in running this through the onboard database and downloading more info. When we remove a sample of ring material, let’s do a matter-antimatter annihilation response test so that we can see how much energy it really stores.”
“The omnispectrometer might come in handy. If it is using anti-protons, there must be some built-in mechanism on the Ring that is creating them. If we go on the logic that the Ring behaves like a cellular organism, each unit would contain the fundamental building blocks that provide the basis for its various functions.”
“The cell model is not always the most efficient, you know,” said Per. “One anti-proton plant per square kilometer would be enough. Anti-proton plants could have been overlooked by the probes. Assuming a homogenous structure across the Ring is just the failure mode of that sort of model.”
“Certainly a possibility. The probes saw little.”
Her discussions with Per tended to be business oriented and often ended abruptly. They were not close in the sense of being friendly, but their interaction kept Aki’s mind occupied during the long voyage.
REACHING PERIHELION, THE
UNSS
Phalanx
fired its engines full thrust in order to decelerate. Planet Earth was over a hundred million kilometers off the ship’s port side. Communications had been clear, with no interference from the sun or the gas clouds blasting up from its surface. The latest news and information was constantly uploaded onto the ship’s mirror server. Aki stayed focused on analyzing the streams of data, but it was impossible to keep from being distracted by news of the tragic and worsening conditions back home.
Every day seemed to offer new visions of heartbreak. Lately, violent uprisings were more frequent. A few weeks ago it had been hunger strikes. The governments of the Commonwealth of Independent States nations had ceased to function as their citizens fled south. They sought refuge in South Asia, northern Australia and various parts of Africa, even though all of those locations were already overflowing with refugees. With their homelands overrun by glaciers, cut off from the rest of the world that had not yet frozen over, the refugees had little choice but to flee. The problem was that very few places were left unaffected. The environmental and meteorological changes meant that the sheer volume of refugees outnumbered the options for shelter.
PROPELLANT TANKS
8 and 9 were jettisoned when the tanks ran dry. Gigantic metal balls drifted ahead of the decelerating ship, outlined majestically by the brilliance of the sun behind them as the tanks fell toward it. Shortly after the lengthy deceleration stage of the
Phalanx
’s arrival ended, the ship spent four hours freefalling toward the Ring, entering its dark shadow from the upper edge.
“Can we open the shield on the window, Commander?” Aki asked.
“I suppose so. We are going to have to do it eventually.”
Aki floated out of her cocoon into the crew area. She dimmed the lights, looked out the ship’s only window, and gasped.
An endless mountain range of translucent white flames danced in front of her eyes. Staring at the elusive object, the scientist within her tried to make sense of what she was finally getting to see up close. Gazing into it, she started crying, almost hypnotized, reliving the memories of watching her first total solar eclipse when she was nine years old. When she made that connection, she realized that she was looking at the corona of the sun—a crown of plasma burning at over a million degrees.
The lower part of her view was blocked by an object. The corona towered above, beaming rays in a radial pattern reminiscent of the Japanese military’s ensign from the late nineteenth century. Aki tried to change her angle by moving closer to the window, trying to see beyond whatever was in her way. No matter how she shifted her position, the object did not move. Was it part of the ship? Aki wondered if it was one of the propellant tanks. With a start and a shudder, she realized the visual trap she had fallen into and how she had confused herself.
The obstruction to her view was not part of the ship—it was what she had spent her life waiting to see. Aki was staring at the blackness of the Ring.
She had expected shiny silver, but the object she was looking at was as dark as space itself. Aki was mesmerized. As her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, she noticed that the surface was less jet-black that it had originally appeared. There was a modicum of light from the surrounding stars that reflected off the surface, shimmering like an afternoon breeze blowing across a grassy meadow. The flickering of the light was most likely caused by pressure fluctuations from the solar wind that deformed the surface of the ultra-thin material enough to cause the reflecting starlight to twinkle. The view was more breathtaking than Aki could have possibly imagined.
She drew a connection between the phenomenon she was observing and the aurorae seen in the polar regions when Earth’s magnetosphere acts as a funnel and causes particles carried on solar winds to converge and collide with the upper atmosphere. What she saw was caused by raw and undiluted solar wind. The particles danced on a screen as wide as twenty Earths lined up in a row. Even with such a difference, the shimmering light here appeared, oddly enough, more similar to the aurora borealis than she had expected.
Aki was pulled from her thoughts by a noise from the other side of the bundles of cables and air ducts.
Mark
, she thought. By now, she was able to tell which crewmember was coming out of his cocoon by the sound of his footsteps.
“Am I interrupting?”
“Not at all. Please come in.”
Aki pushed herself back to share the tiny twenty-centimeter wide window.
“I was afraid we took a wrong turn at Venus,” he said, staring out at the Ring. “You wanted this for your wedding band?”
“I do not think it would fit on my finger, with the flab I have gained in the last six months.”
Mark laughed heartily. He always tried to encourage witty comebacks from her. After a pause, he returned to staring out the window. She expected him to come on to her because it seemed like the perfect moment, but he did not. If it came to it, Aki was pretty sure a cocoon was large enough for two people. During the past six months, Mark had flirted with her often. Once he was even blunt enough to say, “If it’s a matter of contraception, we have some on board.”
Mark was always honest, considerate, and even able to show a sensitive side when he wanted. The line about contraception had not been his shining moment, but he did have moments that made Aki wonder about the possibilities. Physically, his face could not have been more handsome if it had been chiseled from marble. No matter how hard Aki looked, she could never find flaws in Mark, even though she wondered if he would give her the time of day if the world had been different, if the era of organic life’s dominance on Earth were not limping to a close.
Despite all that he offered, Aki had turned Mark down multiple times. She kept her sexual self so bottled up in the name of pursuing her research that she feared what might happen if she were to unleash herself on any man, especially in this environment. She wanted nothing to interfere with the long-awaited encounter with the Ring. The Ring was out there, finally right outside the window. She knew that they talked about her behind her back—man talk—saying that she was “married to the Ring.”
Neither Aki nor Mark could turn away from the window.
“Looking after nuclear subs with missiles, I was in charge of enough power to torch the world,” Mark said. “Now I’m on this ship. It’s my job to deal with these reactors, but my work always seems linked to the end of the world.”
“It hasn’t ended yet, Mark. We are not here to end the world.”
“If we destroy the Ring, humanity gets to live. Unlike any war we’ve ever faced or simulated in doomsday scenarios, this one isn’t humanity turning against itself. There has never been a war with such clear-cut objectives and there has never been a war with such perfect moral clarity. We win at all costs.” Mark attempted a comforting smile.
She knew that his last sentence could have included the phrase, “even if we end up martyrs,” but they shared that sentiment without saying it. For a second, they both looked away from the window.