The Sails of Tau Ceti (3 page)

The dome was home to University Park, a complex of pathways, flowerbeds, and terrestrial shrubbery grown tall in Mars’s gravitational field. During the day, the park was crowded with students hurrying between classes. It was no less crowded at night, though less obviously so. After sundown, the surface dome was lit in soft multicolored hues and suffused with herbal fragrance. That made it a favored place for couples to seek solitude together. At the park’s center bubbled one of the few water fountains on Mars. The low gravity produced a spectacular display while providing the growing plants with the humidity they required.

As Tory reached the stairwell leading down into the astrophysics department, she inhaled the fragrant air one last time. Classes had ended hours earlier, leaving the corridors below deserted. Her Phobos boots made lonely clicking sounds on the fused rock floor as she walked. The clicks echoed the length of the empty halls. Turning into a side corridor, she noted light spilling through a translucent office door at the far end.

“Tory, thank God!” Pierce said when she knocked on his door. He was a balding man with intense eyes and a manner to match. In his early fifties, the astrophysicist was still a vibrant man. His enthusiasm was contagious, especially where the Starhopper Project was concerned.

The office was as she remembered it. Printouts and record cubes were stacked everywhere. One wall was filled with holograms showing Pierce and various companions posed in front of well-known Earth landmarks. These were souvenirs of his long hunt for money to fund the project.

“What’s going on, Dard?”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t give me that innocent look. You would not have interrupted software validation for anything less than a first rate emergency. You especially wouldn’t have interrupted the work at Hunsacker’s request unless you knew what was going on.”

“Guilty as charged,” he said. “You’re here to give a progress report.”

“We file daily progress reports, weekly progress reports, and monthly overviews! Would the board like hourly reports too?”

“They’re more interested in your personal perspective on the project. In your position, you have a better feel for how things are going than anyone.”

“Can’t you even give me a hint?” As she asked the question, Tory was struck by Pierce’s expression. It was hard to imagine bad news coming from anyone with that gleam in his eye. It was the same look a child wears on Christmas morning.

“Nope. Just so I won’t be unpleasantly surprised, how
are
preparations going?”

“You’ve read the reports.”

“Humor me.”

“All right.” Tory gave him a quick rundown on what they had accomplished in the last week or so. Most of the work involved software checkout, which could not be hurried.

“Sounds like you’re about to get back on schedule.”

“I would if I weren’t interrupted so often. Give me another month and I’ll deliver you a ship ready for space.”

Pierce did not respond immediately. Instead, she noted the same look of anticipation he had worn a few minutes earlier. When he finally did speak, it was to suggest that they go to the conference room.

#

Conference Room 100 was large enough for a dozen participants to gather round an oval table. The room was crowded as the two of them arrived, with the project governing board and staff standing around in small groups chatting with one another. The scene resembled a faculty tea.

“Tory, I’d like to introduce Boris Hunsacker, project coordinator on Earth,” Pierce said after steering her to one of the groups. “Boris, this is Tory Bronson, of whom you’ve heard so much.”

“Good to meet you at last, Boris.” Hunsacker was smaller than Tory had imagined from Pierce’s stories. She reached out and shook his hand.

“The same, Tory,” he said as he converted the handshake to a kiss on her hand. “I must confess that I envy you. The rest of us are politicians and bean counters. You actually work on humankind’s first interstellar probe.”

Tory laughed. “You sound like an engineer, Boris.”

She received a smile in return. “I’m afraid that I haven’t been a practicing engineer for too many years. I still haven’t lost the urge to stroke the hardware, I’m afraid.”

“I’d be pleased to show you around if you make it up to Phobos this trip.”

“Is that a general invitation?” a familiar voice asked from behind her. Simultaneously, her implant came alive.
“How you doing, frump!”

Tory turned around and gasped. Ben Tallen stood directly behind her with a grin on his face.

“Ben! What are you doing here?
And why didn’t you tell me you were coming, skinker?”

“The subminister brought me. I am his assistant.
Perhaps we can go out for a drink after this is over?
”

“
I’d like that.
When did that happen? I thought you worked for Tramton Industries.”

“Not for the past year or so. I find the legislative arena a lot more interesting.”

“I take it you two know each other,” Pierce said as he watched the two.

“We’re old friends, Professor,” Tallen replied. As he spoke, he caught the gesture from a small dark man across the room. “You’ll have to excuse me. The boss wants something. Would you like to meet him, Tory?”

“Certainly.”

The two of them threaded their way to the opposite end of the room. “Tory, may I present my boss, Praesert Sadibayan, Underminister for Science. Sir, Miss Victoria Bronson. I think I may have mentioned her on occasion.”

“Oh, just a hundred times or so,” Sadibayan replied with a grin. “You broke this young man’s heart, Miss Bronson.”

“I doubt that, Mr. Subminister.”

“It’s true! He did nothing on the trip out but worry whether he would have time to see you.”

She turned to Ben. “Really?”

He nodded. “If you hadn’t been here tonight, I was going to hop the first Phobos shuttle.”

“I’m flattered.”

Sadibayan turned to face his assistant. “See how easy it is if you’re honest with women, Ben?”

“I only wish I had your skill, sir,” Tallen replied with mock humility.

The buzz of conversation around them was interrupted by the chime that announced the start of a new class period. Dard asked everyone to take his or her seats. He gestured for her to take the chair next to his own.

Pierce began by introducing everyone. Besides Boris Hunsacker and the two terrestrial government representatives, Tory was surprised to learn of the presence of a representative of the Martian parliament.

Pierce said, “Your show, Boris.”

“Thank you, Professor Pierce,” the project’s terrestrial representative said. He nervously shuffled a series of printouts before continuing. “I’m sure all of you are wondering what the hell this is all about, so I won’t keep you in suspense any longer than I must. However, I need to give you some background information, so please bear with me. Lights off, cube on!”

This last was addressed to the room monitor, which dutifully dimmed the lights and activated the holocube perched at the center of the table. The cube showed an old fashioned two-dimensional photograph. It was a picture of a starfield, with a yellow point of light at the center. There were a few other stars scattered across the field of view.

“This, gentlemen and ladies, is a photograph of Tau Ceti taken late in the Twentieth Century. In those days, Tau Ceti was a type K0 yellow-orange dwarf star, quite unremarkable save for its proximity to the sun. It is just twelve light years from here, practically next door.”

The scene changed. Again, the view in the cube was two-dimensional. It was obviously the same starfield since the scattering of stars was largely the same. Only the central point of light had changed. It was now a brilliant burst of white.

“This was taken on August 25, 2001. That was the day that Tau Ceti went nova. The event created quite a stir among astronomers. Like the sun, Tau Ceti was still on the main sequence when it exploded, and main sequence stars are not supposed to do that sort of thing. Even today, we have no theory that explains how a star like Tau Ceti could possibly have exploded. The fact that it did, however, suggests that our theories on the subject need some revision.”

“Wasn’t there another anomaly associated with the nova?” Roger Aaron asked. Aaron was a member of the faculty of the University of Olympus, and the governing board’s recording secretary.

“There was. Initial recordings of the nova suggested a deficiency of a few percent in the nova’s light output. Those readings may have been in error, however, since later observations showed the light curve to be well within tolerance for a Type II nova.”

“All very interesting, Boris,” one of the board members said. “But what has all of this to do with us?”

Hunsacker’s response was to touch the cube control. The nova burst faded from the screen, to be replaced by a modern holographic image. Again, the view was centered on the same starfield. Tau Ceti was no longer a brilliant flame. The central star had returned to the yellow spark that had preceded the nova. That spark was surrounded by a milk-white ring of light. The ring marked the outermost expansion of the gas cloud that had been ejected by the explosion two centuries past. There was a new point of light in the hologram. Another yellow spark had appeared just beyond the gas shell.

“What’s that?” Sharon Milos asked, pointing to the point.

“
That
,” Hunsacker replied in triumph, “is the reason for this meeting. This holo was taken two weeks ago by the observatory on Luna. The spectrum is that of Sol, with a slight Doppler shift toward the blue end of the spectrum.” Hunsacker paused to let the import of what he had just said sink in. All around the table, there were looks of perplexity that slowly turned to looks of wonder.

“A light sail!” Tory exclaimed, remembering the glint of sunlight she had seen out the port of the Phobos ferry.

“A light sail,” Hunsacker agreed. “We’ve managed to triangulate it using the telescope on Europa. It is two light months out, and moving in at five percent of the speed of light. Its origin is almost certainly the Tau Ceti nova.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, it would see that we are about to receive our first visitor from another star!”

#

There was a stunned silence in the conference room for nearly a minute before anyone spoke. When someone did, it was Carse Groschenko, the project comptroller and a retired astronomer.

“None of this has been on the news!”

“That is the doing of my boss,” Sadibayan replied. “Minister De Pasqual has requested that the Lunarians not announce their discovery until after I spoke with you people.”

“And they listened to him?”

Sadibayan shrugged. “A considerable portion of Luna Observatory’s operating budget is handled through my department. That made them amenable to the idea. I must impress on each of you that this is a Lunarian discovery, and that it is only right that they have the honor of announcing. What you learn here must not go beyond this room. Agreed?”

A mutter of assent ran around the table. There was a tradition in science that those who make great discoveries control the timing and method by which their findings are made public. It was a tradition that had grown out of some notable public relations disasters in the past.

“You’re saying we are about to have
alien visitors
?” Tory asked.

Sadibayan shook his head. “Not precisely. The vehicle will not be manned, except possibly by corpses, not after 250 years in space. It may be a derelict cargo pod blown away from Tau Ceti by the nova, or a message from the sentient species that died in the nova!”

“The urge to be remembered must be a powerful one,” Pierce muttered.

The revelations were coming too quickly. First, the shock of learning that humanity was not alone in the universe, followed immediately by the realization that the beings that built the light sail were dead. Tory had a sudden vision of doomed sapients working desperately to get their ark away before Tau Ceti exploded. The vision was so vivid that she almost missed Boris Sadibayan’s next remark.

“How quickly can
Starhopper
be made ready for launch?”

Tory stared at him, not comprehending for long seconds. Then, suddenly, the reason for this emergency meeting of the governing board made perfect sense.

“You’re planning to send
Starhopper
out to meet the alien?”

“Of course.”

“But you can’t!”

“Why not?”

“
Starhopper
is the only interstellar probe we’ve got. We can’t waste it. No telling when we will be able to scrape together the resources to build another. Send another ship to look over the light sail. Leave
Starhopper
for the job it was designed to do.”

“I’m afraid that is impossible,” Hunsacker said. He touched the cube control. The starfield vanished, to be replaced by a graph in which two brightly colored lines were suspended in a three dimensional gridwork. One line sloped sharply upward, while a second followed a curve with much gentler slope.

“The red line plots the increase in the observed strength of the Tau Ceti nova over the first two weeks after the explosion. Five days after the initial explosion, Tau Ceti’s output had increased by 100,000 times. The blue line shows the calculated velocity of a hypothetical light sail caught in such an explosion.”

“Proving what?” Tory asked as she eyed the holocube.

“That the light sail’s velocity is the result of its having been ejected by the nova. Had it launched while Tau Ceti was a normal star, its velocity would be less than one percent that of light. What that means is that the light pressure from the sun is insufficient to slow it much. It will arrive in the inner system in 40 months time, zip from one side of the system within a few days, and then head back out into interstellar space. If we are to have any opportunity of examining it, we must meet it as far out as possible.
Starhopper
is the only vessel in the system with the delta velocity capability to make rendezvous.”

Tory thought about it for a moment and was forced to concede his point. A spacecraft’s performance is measured by its ability to change velocity, its
delta V
capability. The alien light sail was falling toward the sun at 15,000 kilometers per second. In theory, a vessel able to accelerate to that speed could rendezvous with it. In practice, things were not nearly that simple.