“DIXON! DIXON, WHERE ARE you?”
Sam looked up from her desk at the Ames Research Center, where she was analyzing the latest research on habitable planets as part of NASA’s Kepler mission. “Right here, Doctor. And I was hoping I could—”
“Where? I can’t see you.” Her supervisor, Dr. Thomas Donati, spun toward her, still wearing the mirror goggles he’d forgotten to remove upon finishing the latest view provided by the spectron holographic microscope. “Someone’s turned off the lights again.”
She moved to him and eased the specially formulated goggles up to his forehead, where they pinned the hairs that had escaped his gray ponytail in place.
“Yes, there we go. Much better, much better indeed. Extraordinary day, truly extraordinary. You know why, Dixon?”
“I know you’re going to tell me.”
“Because we’re alive. Life is the greatest miracle of all, as well as the least appreciated. But not here; here we’ve learned to appreciate the sanctity and singular rarity of life, have we not?”
Samantha started to answer, but Donati rolled right over her words.
“I’d say ‘intelligent’ life but I realized a long time ago that there’s not enough of that to uncover even here on our planet. You know why?”
Again he resumed before she had a chance to answer.
“Because man chooses to think small, more than satisfied with what the five percent of his brain shows him about the world around him. We, on the other hand, are explorers—are we not, Dixon? Without ever leaving this center we explore new worlds and new possibilities. Breakthroughs, Dixon, every day a breakthrough no matter how small it might be. Because like life itself there is no such thing as a small breakthrough. What are you working on?”
“The Kepler research.”
“Put it aside, put it aside. There’s something I must show you, something you must see. Follow, Dixon, and do your best to keep up. Don’t lag.”
Sam rose from her chair. “If there’s time, Doctor, I’d like to—”
“You’re lagging, Dixon. Focus, hear me? Focus!”
Sam fell into step behind him.
The Ames Research Center, one of ten field centers operated by NASA, offered one of the most competitive internship programs in the country. Science geeks from miles and states around applied for admission, and Sam couldn’t believe her luck when she got the e-mail informing her that she’d been accepted.
And she was assigned to her first choice: the Astrobiology Institute, which specialized in advancing the technologies for long-term manned space flights to make them friendlier on the body. Under her assigned mentor, Dr. Thomas Donati, she’d actually been working more in another area she’d found even more fascinating. Ames had assumed the leading role in the fledgling field of synthetic biology. The new NASA Synthetic Biology (SynBio) initiative at Ames harnessed biology in reliable, robust, engineered systems to support NASA’s exploration and science missions. Dr. Donati’s specific role was to develop technologies aimed at manufacturing regolith-based composites to be used as bio-based building materials in space. His department was developing SynBio technologies to enable environmental closed-loop life support systems to create novel solutions for the purification of air and water and the production of methane from waste carbon dioxide.
Donati’s team, of which Samantha was a part three afternoons a week and Saturdays, was also investigating the utility of SynBio for 3D printing to produce bio-based products, biomining to obtain minerals from planetary surfaces or recover valuable elements from spent electronics, as well as the production and purification of pharmaceuticals that might be necessary to maintain crew health on long-duration spaceflights. A science geek’s dream.
And Samantha’s work under Donati had been so stellar that he had recently recommended she be included in a team devoted to the conceptual study of astrobiology and exobiology that covered all issues pertaining to Earth’s place in a universe that almost surely contained other life forms. Much of the real work at Ames was top secret, taking place in a combination lab and think tank to which her security clearance didn’t yet permit access.