Judgment Day (31 page)

CHAPTER 59 RESIDUE

E = mc
²

—ALBERT EINSTEIN

B
ob, can you see it?" Mark asked.

"Stand by. I'm inching forward."

"He should see it," Ira complained, tapping on the monitor.

Mark studied the image broadcast from Bob's lifting sphere as he approached the main drive of the
Genesis
. They were orbiting Pluto, the icy world at the farthest edge of the solar system, but instead of recording images of Pluto, they were inspecting the ship—at Ira's insistence. Ira had spotted something nestled against the bulbous main drive. It was nothing but a shadow to the others.

"I can see it now," Bob said from the
Lamb of God
.

The camera showed a black streak running along the joint between the drive sphere and the three cylinders it was attached to. Closing slowly, Bob extended the grapplers on the sphere and then inched forward until he could touch the black material with a probe. He scratched a line and the substance parted, showing the white paint of the
Genesis's
hull below.

"It appears powdery," Bob said.

"It looks like soot," Micah said.

"It's granular," Ira corrected. "Collect a sample, Bob."

Bob scribed another couple of lines through the material, then delicately scraped the surface, pushing a sample into a container held in the other grappler.

"I've got some," Bob said. "Is that enough?"

"Yes," Ira said. "Now probe nearer the engine. I want to see the depth."

With great care Bob moved toward the engine and then scraped the material in two or three places.

"It's just a thin coat," Bob said.

"Drop the sample in the lock and then get back in here," Ira ordered.

Bob flew the
Lamb of God
to the cargo bay and dropped the sample inside, then backed out to dock the sphere. Ira hurried into the hold as soon as the pressure equalized, retrieving the container and hurrying off.

With Ira occupied, they set out to film the ninth planet. Bob reboarded the
Lamb of God and
Alex Montgomery took the
Rising Savior
. Micah, Mark, and Wally Martin—the quietist man on the ship—took the
God's Love. Mark
took the copilot's seat with Wally monitoring the engineering station. Micah piloted the ship away from the
Genesis
, rotating around to face the blue ball of ice below. Charon, the only moon and nearly half the size of tiny Pluto, was on the far side.

The spheres led the way down, cameras recording the encounter. Wally monitored the images broadcast from the spheres as well as those from the cameras mounted on the
God's Love
. The spheres would make the close passes while the
God's Love
filmed from a distance, catching the spheres in spectacular shots as they crossed below. Two miles above the surface the crafts entered Pluto's atmosphere, a thin mix of methane and neon. Built to negotiate the thick oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere of Earth, the crafts felt little resistance.

"The surface is ice but it's no skating rink," Bob said from the
Lamb of God
. "It's as rugged as the moon down here."

Mark studied the video feed from Bob's sphere. There were some plains of deep blue ice, but most of the surface was made up of jagged spears and broken towers of blue and green crystal jutting into the black sky.

"There's some kind of haze below me," Alex said from the
Rising Savior
.

Mark
saw a green mist in the valley below. "It's probably methane,"

Mark said.

"I wouldn't think the sun could generate enough heat to melt that ice at this distance," Micah said.

"I'm dropping down to get a better shot," Bob said.

Alex followed in the
Rising Savior
, keeping his sphere on a parallel course but staying above, his cameras focused on the
Lamb of God
. Micah brought the
God's Love
over the two smaller craft, recording the silvery spheres against the milky blues and greens of the frozen surface.

"There's virtually no gravity here," Micah said. "It takes only a touch to maneuver."

To Mark, Pluto didn't seem much bigger than the asteroid Vesta, although the tiny planet had an unearthly beauty no asteroid could ever approach. As they circled the planet, Charon rose ahead of them, looming much larger and brighter in the black sky than Earth's moon. Now spiraling south they cut across Pluto's equator. The muted blues and greens changed, deepening in hue, the surface now mottled. Bob in the
Lamb of God
veered to the right, then called over the speaker.

"Hey, it's red over here. I'm going down to get a better shot."

Micah rolled the
God's Love
into a bank, although there was little atmosphere to push against. The banks and turns of the craft were programmed to mimic that of travel in an airplane. Now Mark could see the red streak running along the surface like a rust river, tributaries joining it along its length.

"What causes the red?" Micah asked. "Iron oxides?"

"Seems unlikely in a planet of this type," Mark said.

Mark was as curious as Micah about the distinct red sash wrapping the planet, but neither suggested taking a sample. They weren't explorers, they were missionaries. Someday scientists would come to the planet, the mysteries still here, untouched by the Fellowship.

"I don't believe it!" Alex exclaimed. "You've got to take a look at this."

Micah checked the radar displaying the position of both spheres, then banked the
God's Love. Mark
saw the
Lamb of God
race by below them in the same direction. Soon Bob was shouting too.

"I see it, Alex. It can't be. It's incredible."

Eyes glued to the monitors, they watched for the
Lamb of God's cameras
to broadcast what the men in the spheres were seeing.

"Get your cameras on it, Alex," Micah said impatiently.

Then it came into view on the monitor. As if carved from a ridge of methane ice, a giant hand was lying flat on the surface.

"Here it comes," Micah said.

Looking up through the front port Mark could see the spheres hovering ahead. Micah tilted the nose of the
God's Love
so they could see the surface

feature. The tiny image on the monitor couldn't do justice to the spectacle below them. Lying in the middle of a flat green plain was a blue hand, three of the fingers curled under, the thumb flat against the extended index finger.

"It can't be natural, can it?" Alex asked.

"It's got to be a sign from God," Bob said.

The others babbled excitedly, but Mark kept silent, unsure of what to think.

"God's Love
to
Genesis,"
Mark called. "Ira, are you watching this?"

"I see it, Mark," Ira said.

"What do you make of it?"

"It looks like a hand," Ira said simply.

Ira was holding back.

"I know that, Ira. Is that all you have to say?"

After a long pause Ira added, "It's pointing."

Ira was right. The extended finger was pointing across the plain into the void.

"It's a natural phenomenon, Mark," Micah said.

"What makes you say so?"

"Look closely at it. The fingernails are just a different color of ice."

Micah had them lower now and Mark could see that Micah was right.

"The knuckles look like a broken ridge. I bet there's debris on the other side. I'll bring us around."

Maneuvering the craft to the other side until they could see beneath the knuckles, Mark spotted rubble below in the shadow of the hand. From this angle there was no resemblance to a hand. The features weren't perfect, the edges rough, the detail incomplete. If they had approached the feature from the surface they would have passed by unimpressed.

"Remember the face on Mars?" Micah said. "One of the Mariner satellites photographed it. The tabloids claimed that the photo proved there was life on Mars. In the right light that region does look like a face, but from different angles it's nothing but ridges and boulders."

Micah was persuasive but still Mark was captivated by the hand. Calling Ira again Mark asked, "What do you think, Ira?"

"I think Micah's right. It's just an unusual formation."

Mark agreed and was ready to let it go when Ira chimed in again.

"But just in case, make sure you know which way that finger is pointing."

Ira was waiting when they climbed down from the
God's Love
into the
Genesis
.

"Look at this," he said, holding up a small bottle. "It's the sample Bob scraped from the exterior."

Mark took the bottle and shook the sample. The granular material was flat black and swirled like sand.

"It looks like graphite," Mark said.

"It's that and more. There are a dozen elements in that mix, perhaps more, all in proportion to those found in the universe."

Failing to understand the significance, Mark looked perplexed, Micah just as silent. Red-faced from excitement, Ira dribbled out his discovery.

"What we have here are the building blocks of the universe—only in trace amounts—but if we collected enough of this I think we would find all known elements and perhaps more."

"Is it some kind of residue from overheating," Mark asked. "Something we didn't shield for?"

"No. There was no overheating," Ira insisted.

Mark waited for Ira to explain.

"Remember, it was theoretically impossible to exceed light speed, since as you approach the speed of light you acquire mass," Ira explained.

"But we did exceed the speed of light and we didn't acquire mass." Then holding the sample to the light he said, "Instead of adding mass, we created mass. That's what this is. We probably left a trail of it in our wake. The lighter elements would disperse easily—we probably left a hydrogen trail that stretches halfway back to the asteroid belt."

"You're saying we created matter from nothing by traveling faster than light?" Mark asked, incredulous.

"It's the secret of creation," Ira said reverently. "Imagine the beginning, God moving through the void, traveling faster than light, creating matter as He passes."

Now Micah took the sample from Ira, swirling the contents around in the jar.

"So this is the stuff of creation," Micah said. "But this time we are the creators."

CHAPTER 60 GRANDMA JONES

Only the elite travel to space now, the astronaut core a handful of highly trained professionals. The mark of a permanent presence in space will be when ordinary men and women leave the planet.

—
ALTERNATE PATHWAYS TO SPACE
, EDWARD NORTON

T
hey were dealing drugs in the courtyard again. Huddled in a corner, four teens exchanged money for small plastic bags of crack. They dealt in daylight, knowing there was little danger. The police never came into the projects. The mailman only made half of his rounds and the UPS man was mugged the last two times he tried to deliver.

The drug deal was over and the boys split up, scurrying to dark recesses to get high and dream away the rest of the daylight. Tomorrow they would hunt their own kind again, stealing what little money their neighbors had to buy themselves two hours of oblivion.

Life had aged Selma Jones well beyond her years. The gray in her hair and the bags under her eyes came from a lifetime of worry and grief. Barely forty, nevertheless everyone called her "Grandma." She didn't mind, as long as she was treated with respect. She made sure of that. She was a strong woman and more than one purse snatcher had been run off with a bloody nose or broken teeth.

Now Grandma Jones looked for the brown stain her oldest boy left on the courtyard tile. He died four floors below her when a drug deal went bad. Dealing to a junky short of cash, her boy was murdered when he refused to cut his price—shot dead for forty dollars of crack cocaine. She was past her hate for the boy who killed Sal—it was her son who got his killer hooked in the first place. In the good book God warned that sin can come back and bite you, and people got bit every day here. A dozen years of Sunday school should have taught Sal about sin, but instead he bled to death on the courtyard tile. Witnesses said he died whispering Jesus' name.

Now her granddaughter and two friends skipped into the courtyard. They stretched out two ropes and Jasmine's friends began twirling. Jasmine timed a run into the blur of ropes. Then she was in, her legs pumping up and down in perfect synchrony. Her friends twirled expertly, while Jasmine danced, changing styles, spinning, and mouthing a chant Selma couldn't hear. Jasmine was gifted and if she hadn't been born poor and black she might be training to be an Olympic gymnast instead of jumping ropes m Chicago.

Too young to understand all that was denied to her, Jasmine played and giggled with her friends contentedly, blissfully ignorant of the squalor surrounding her. Like her mother, Francine—Fancy to her friends and family—Jasmine would soon come to understand her position in the world and that knowledge would destroy her self-esteem, so that even if a chance for a better life came to her, she wouldn't have the courage to take it. Selma had seen three generations lost that way.

It wasn't that Jasmine's mother hadn't tried to make a better life for herself. Fancy was one of the few who finished high school but was pregnant at graduation. Selma never knew for sure who Jasmine's father was, but there were two likely possibilities, one now in prison and the other dead from a drive-by shooting. Watching pretty little Jasmine dance among the twirling ropes, Selma despaired. Neither she nor her children had been able to break the cycle of poverty and now Jasmine would be the third generation of the Jones family to live and die in the projects. Already Selma had outlived her boy, and her daughter Fancy was nearly at the end of that same road. There was still hope for Jasmine, but precious little. In this world, nine-year-olds were at the end of childhood. There was a fifty-fifty chance she would be pregnant by age fifteen.

Settling back into her rocker, Grandma picked up her Bible looking for comfort. Deeply religious, she was the backbone of the choir at Christ the King Baptist Church. Not that church had done her children much good. They'd been regulars, she'd seen to that, and earned attendance awards, but still the wickedness of the streets called them and they answered. Why hadn't her prayers for them been answered? What sin was God punishing her for?

Angry at God she set the Bible aside—it wasn't good to delve into God's word when your heart was dark. Turning on the TV she flipped channels until Mark Shepherd's face caught her attention. He was broadcasting from the spaceship
Genesis
, which had picked up the astronauts who had been living on Mars. Selma had little interest in space, her problems were all outside her door and it angered her that the government wasted good money flying off into space. Worse, was the money Reverend Shepherd was spending doing the same thing when there were poor who could use it. Just a drop of the money they spent flying into space would get her and Fancy to the suburbs where there were good jobs and good schools.

Another man came on, the commander of the astronauts who had lived on Mars. Commander Grady talked of life there—living on Mars sounded worse than living in a desert—but Commander Grady was excited and talked of the possibility of building a colony on Mars. Life would be difficult for colonists, like life on the frontier. Everyone living in a colony would have to work together and depend on one another. The more she listened, the more she came to understand how hard such a life would be—hard and busy. If you lived on Mars there wouldn't be pushers and pimps on every corner, no drive-by shootings—no cars. Every minute of the day would be filled with chores just to stay alive. People would work hard, go to bed early, and get up with the dawn. It was the kind of life where people were too exhausted to get into trouble. It was the kind of life that could save Jasmine.

For a brief moment Grandma Jones dreamed Fancy and Jasmine could go to Mars and start a new life, but it was just a dream. Only the best and the brightest were astronauts—only the select few would ever go to Mars to live. Certainly poor black people would never be part of such a project—NASA wasn't a welfare program.

Then Mark Shepherd's face was on the screen. He was asked about a colony on Mars. "The Fellowship would be willing to contract with NASA to transport equipment and people to Mars for a colony," he said. But when asked whether his church would start their own colony he said, "The Light in the Darkness Fellowship has no plans to colonize Mars." Maybe Shepherd's church didn't want to move to Mars, Selma thought, but he had the power to take people there, even poor black people. She knew Shepherd's church was all white, but he claimed to love the baby Jesus. Maybe God would take his heart in His hands and make him see her need—Jasmine's need.

Selma raised her face to heaven and prayed to God to touch Mark Shepherd's heart. As she prayed hope swelled in her, then great joy. Knowing God helps those who help themselves, she set her mind to the problem of getting Shepherd to take them to Mars. He wouldn't take one raggedy black family to Mars and leave them. It would take a community to survive there, believers willing to work hard.

Grandma Jones left her apartment, crossing the hall to her friend Teresa's. Standing in front of the door she steeled herself for what was to come. Teresa would think she had lost her mind—everyone would—but every temple is built one stone at a time. Whispering one last prayer she knocked on the door, still unsure of how to tell her best friend that they were moving to Mars.