Booby traps: Possibly my best bet. Just have to come up with a good one.
I’d decided that I should assume the Brazilian craft was playing possum with the low-acceleration departure. That meant I would have less time to prepare than calculations would indicate, once I reached Epsilon Eridani. So I’d have to go for the simplest and quickest-to-build option.
I pulled up my copy of Art of War, hoping for more inspiration this time around.
***
It was time. I had been dreading this, avoiding it really, for weeks now. But I’d finally run out of excuses and delaying tactics. Everything was up to date. All plans were well underway. The VR was now at a level of realism sufficient for what I knew I had to do.
I pulled up the folder containing the endocrine control project. Before I had time to develop second, third, or fourth thoughts, I flipped the switch to off.
You know that sinking feeling you get when you suddenly realize you’ve forgotten something important? Like a combination of fast elevator and urge to hurl. It hit me without any warning or buildup. Maybe it was the sudden release, maybe it was an accumulation of all the suppressed emotions. Whatever, I wasn’t ready for the intensity. My thoughts swirled with all the things that had been bugging me since I’d woken up.
Mom. Dad. Andrea and Alaina. All gone, separated from me by more than a century and billions of kilometers. I’d never see their children. I’d never have my own. I’d never see Mom and Dad as grandparents. They’d have made excellent grandparents. They were goofy, irreverent, and never stood on their dignity.
I thought of Andrea mocking me about my height, and I started to cry. Alaina spraying me with the garden hose as I lay in the hammock that we had strung up in the back yard. I thought of the times we all goaded each other into uncontrollable laughter with increasingly infantile jokes and puns. No one understood us like we understood each other. No one else would get it, maybe not even Mom and Dad. And they were gone. Irretrievably beyond my reach, forever. As the loneliness, the loss washed over me, I slid down off my chair onto the floor and curled into a ball. I sobbed until I couldn’t catch a breath, then had to gasp a huge lungful of air.
Spike came over to investigate and gave me a small inquisitive meow. I took the cat in my arms and, rocking back and forth on the floor, I mourned my lost life.
***
The version 2 mock-up slowly rotated over the desktop, but I wasn’t really seeing it. I’d had a really good cry, and it was certainly cathartic, but I had a feeling it wasn’t over. However, one thing I now knew—I was still human, in the ways that mattered.
[Activity detected in Earth Monitoring]
I looked over at Guppy. “What’s up?”
[EMPs detected. Visible light flashes detected. Probability of groundside nuclear detonations: 100%]
“Damn. Okay, Guppy, keep monitoring. Scan for any coherent transmissions.”
Well, it’s hit the fan. And no way to know how badly. But I think I’m on my own.
Part 2
Bob – August 2144 – Epsilon Eridani
There are two technological developments that will affect how we go about exploring the cosmos: communications and transportation. The first and most obvious technology is the drive system. Have we developed faster-than-light transport? Do we have a reactionless drive? Wormholes? Teleportation? How long it takes to get from A to B affects not only the cost of the enterprise, but whether or not it’s even possible to transport people.
Unfortunately, in the end, whether or not we do this will depend more on whether we have the political will to do so than anything else. Barring significant advances in technology or some dramatic scientific discovery, the costs will be far too high for anything less than a global effort.
… Lawrence Vienn, from the Convention panel Exploring the Galaxy
I slid into the Epsilon Eridani system at a couple of percent of light-speed. I was approaching the system from stellar north, that being the pole where the star, like Earth, was rotating counterclockwise. I took multiple consecutive images of the area around the star, looking for points of light that moved from one picture to the next. At my current velocity, any planets would show significant apparent motion against the backdrop of the galaxy.
My mission profile was to look for habitable planets, or failing that to look for almost habitable planets that could be modified or at least lived on with some technical assistance.
I deployed SUDDAR as well, although it was only able to detect dense objects within a light-hour radius. I didn’t really expect to find anything. At this distance from the star, even Kuiper objects would be rare.
It would take twelve days to cross the system from one end to the other, but I had no intention of coasting for that long. The stellar catalog indicated that there should be at least one Jovian planet, which shouldn’t be too hard to locate. As soon as I identified a second planet, I’d have the three points necessary to identify the probable ecliptic plane.
It took less than two days to locate several planets. Given the spacing of their orbits, I doubted that I would find more. The system had two inner rocky planets, an inner asteroid belt, the Jovian planet, an outer asteroid belt, and a Neptune-like planet farther out in a highly elliptical orbit. There also appeared to be a significant Kuiper belt much farther out.
I wanted desperately to take a look at the two inner planets – even at the gas giant, for that matter. I was the first person to visit another stellar system, after all. Okay, person was debatable. But I had a limited time to prepare for company, and couldn’t take time out for sight-seeing.
Theory held that usable metals would be concentrated in the inner system. Plus the inner belt would be quicker to scan, with a smaller circumference.
“Guppy, plot a trajectory that puts us above the inner belt. We’ll fly a powered orbit all the way around, scanning for resources.”
[Aye sir]
***
I patted Spike while I examined the schematics floating over my desk. My plan depended on the Brazilian probe coming in like gangbusters. If the other guy decided to play it cagey, I was probably screwed. But if he was armed and figured I wasn’t, his best bet would be to engage in direct confrontation as quickly as possible: run me down and shoot me like a dog in the street.