Here is the first part of Chap 1 of my hard SF novel Immortelle. This is a cleaned-up version, version A consisting of a lot of info dump that, well, got dumped.
*******************************
We were four months out when they told us.
It’s funny how one remembers exactly where he was and what he was doing when really bad news arrives. I can recall it like yesterday. I had left the crew in the Wardroom and was sitting in my recliner in the Rec room eating a plate of rehydrated asparagus. Domingo and Deiter had started arguing about religion again and after telling everyone that watching cartoons was likely to be more constructive I baled out. It wasn't like I was trying to make a point as mission commander or anything. Cloe and Tessa enjoyed the debates but I just wasn't comfortable discussing the topic. After four months in a ship the size of a two storey apartment the secret of getting along with one's fellow crewmembers is to not try too hard.
I had put Wall-E up on the screen but wasn't paying much attention to it, preferring to listen to the play between Dieter's scepticism and Domingo's uncertain earnestness that filtered through the doorway from the other side of the ship.
“Good. So you say you can't prove there is a God. Ja? Then why spoil your life for something that is a maybe?”
“I'm not spoiling my life. I'm here, on the first mission to Mars. If that's a spoiled life then your life is spoiled too.”
“Ja ja ja. I mean, there is so much you can't do, né? You walk down the street, you see a pretty girl, you want to get to know her better, but...the big man up there, he says no.”
Tessa's voice butted in. “He doesn't say no. I say no. He'd better not think of looking at anyone else while I've got a ring on my finger.”
“Wouldn't dream of it, Tess, the ring cost a packet. Ow!”
“I've got him for life, so don't try to corrupt him.”
“Oh ja, another thing you can't do. Till death do you part. What a shame.”
“Don't listen to him.” That was Cloe's voice. “He doesn't mean it. I am married to him for ten years. He is—how you say it—a stick-in-the-mud husband. He will never leave me, not if I beg him.”
A brief silence, then: “Ja, right. I keep what I know is good, but you will give up something for something else that you do not even know exists.”
“I said I can't prove it, that doesn't mean I don't know...”
A musical dong dong sounded through the ship, the signal for an incoming communication from NASA. I balanced my plate on my knee and grabbed the remote to kill the movie. One by one the crew ambled into the Rec room. Domingo first, with his distinctive black shock of dishevelled hair and Latino features. He was our pilot, the man who would get us on to the surface of Mars and off it again. He had flown skylon spaceplanes on manual for years and military jets for years before that. Tessa was just behind him, her disconcertingly dark eyes belying her boyish looks. She was the ship's medic with degrees in biology and biochemistry and was responsible for the experiments that would determine whether subterranean life existed on Mars, or at least had existed some time in the past.
After her came Cloe. A small woman, pretty in the Languedoc French way, whose tight, spare frame was the perfect housing for a temperament that can best be described as professional. She was our physicist and geologist. Finally Dieter whose job was to keep the Terra Nova in working order. Both he and Cloe came from the European Space Agency where they had met and married, partly because it was common knowledge that husband and wife astronauts were more likely to get on the Mars mission shortlist, and partly because they loved each other.
Together with Domingo, of Mexican extraction though a US citizen, Tessa, a true blue Yank, and myself, British born and bred, we formed a ship's complement that was as international as possible whilst excluding the East. China and Russia's gestures of goodwill after the dangerous escalations in Poland and the South China Sea were still far too short of a genuine peace to allow the resumption of the old international co-operation in space. If they wanted to plant a flag on Mars they would have to take it there themselves.
After a few moments everyone was seated in the semicircle of recliners arrayed around the large, two-metre-wide monitor that was the focal point of the Rec room. It was the one part of the ship that was designed to be comfortable. I leaned forward with the remote to start the audiovisual message, not paying attention to the angle of my plate which slipped from my knee before I could catch it, dropping to the floor with the rehydrated asparagus. You don’t ignore anything rehydrated in a spaceship—water is precious—so I bent over with my fork to pick it up and eat it. At that moment Eugene Trinny's face appeared on the screen. That made me sit up. The Director of NASA would not communicate with us unless he had something important to say. I noticed he was not smiling. A kind of cheerful bonhomie is de rigeur in earth-space communications unless something precise and technical is going on between Mission Control and the ship. Something was wrong.
“Hello everyone. I trust everything is fine with you. Seems from our end that Terra Nova is functioning normally.” The Director paused. I knew him slightly. In his late fifties, hair still dark, he had a down-to-earth manner that went with authoritative assurance. I liked him. He ran his fingers through his hair. “What I’m going to say may be difficult for you to take in. We’re still trying to take it in here.” He gestured to someone off-screen. An image appeared, a photograph of a small chunk of rock against a black background.
“1036 Ganymed. It's the biggest of the Amor asteroids. It has an elliptical orbit with an aphelion well past Mars and a perihelion pretty close to Earth. Or it used to. We've been tracking it for the past two years since a planetesimal….next image...”—the chunk of rock was replaced by a starry sky with a red arrow pointing to a white dot near the centre—“since Deepstar IV detected a planetesimal coming into the solar system from the Kuiper Belt. It was probably hit by something else and deflected close to Neptune. Nobody paid much attention it until its orbit was calculated. It was headed straight for Ganymed. At that point the information was given classified status until we had a better idea of the effect the planetesimal would have on the asteroid. Computer simulations predicted a change of orbit, with Earth within the hypothetical radius of the new orbital path. Right, back to the first image.” The chunk of rock reappeared.
“Impact between the planetesimal and Ganymed took place about a month after you left. We tracked Ganymed with all three Deepstar satellites until we had collected enough data to be certain. Ganymed will definitely collide with Earth eleven months from now. About the time you're due back."
*******************************
We were four months out when they told us.
It’s funny how one remembers exactly where he was and what he was doing when really bad news arrives. I can recall it like yesterday. I had left the crew in the Wardroom and was sitting in my recliner in the Rec room eating a plate of rehydrated asparagus. Domingo and Deiter had started arguing about religion again and after telling everyone that watching cartoons was likely to be more constructive I baled out. It wasn't like I was trying to make a point as mission commander or anything. Cloe and Tessa enjoyed the debates but I just wasn't comfortable discussing the topic. After four months in a ship the size of a two storey apartment the secret of getting along with one's fellow crewmembers is to not try too hard.
I had put Wall-E up on the screen but wasn't paying much attention to it, preferring to listen to the play between Dieter's scepticism and Domingo's uncertain earnestness that filtered through the doorway from the other side of the ship.
“Good. So you say you can't prove there is a God. Ja? Then why spoil your life for something that is a maybe?”
“I'm not spoiling my life. I'm here, on the first mission to Mars. If that's a spoiled life then your life is spoiled too.”
“Ja ja ja. I mean, there is so much you can't do, né? You walk down the street, you see a pretty girl, you want to get to know her better, but...the big man up there, he says no.”
Tessa's voice butted in. “He doesn't say no. I say no. He'd better not think of looking at anyone else while I've got a ring on my finger.”
“Wouldn't dream of it, Tess, the ring cost a packet. Ow!”
“I've got him for life, so don't try to corrupt him.”
“Oh ja, another thing you can't do. Till death do you part. What a shame.”
“Don't listen to him.” That was Cloe's voice. “He doesn't mean it. I am married to him for ten years. He is—how you say it—a stick-in-the-mud husband. He will never leave me, not if I beg him.”
A brief silence, then: “Ja, right. I keep what I know is good, but you will give up something for something else that you do not even know exists.”
“I said I can't prove it, that doesn't mean I don't know...”
A musical dong dong sounded through the ship, the signal for an incoming communication from NASA. I balanced my plate on my knee and grabbed the remote to kill the movie. One by one the crew ambled into the Rec room. Domingo first, with his distinctive black shock of dishevelled hair and Latino features. He was our pilot, the man who would get us on to the surface of Mars and off it again. He had flown skylon spaceplanes on manual for years and military jets for years before that. Tessa was just behind him, her disconcertingly dark eyes belying her boyish looks. She was the ship's medic with degrees in biology and biochemistry and was responsible for the experiments that would determine whether subterranean life existed on Mars, or at least had existed some time in the past.
After her came Cloe. A small woman, pretty in the Languedoc French way, whose tight, spare frame was the perfect housing for a temperament that can best be described as professional. She was our physicist and geologist. Finally Dieter whose job was to keep the Terra Nova in working order. Both he and Cloe came from the European Space Agency where they had met and married, partly because it was common knowledge that husband and wife astronauts were more likely to get on the Mars mission shortlist, and partly because they loved each other.
Together with Domingo, of Mexican extraction though a US citizen, Tessa, a true blue Yank, and myself, British born and bred, we formed a ship's complement that was as international as possible whilst excluding the East. China and Russia's gestures of goodwill after the dangerous escalations in Poland and the South China Sea were still far too short of a genuine peace to allow the resumption of the old international co-operation in space. If they wanted to plant a flag on Mars they would have to take it there themselves.
After a few moments everyone was seated in the semicircle of recliners arrayed around the large, two-metre-wide monitor that was the focal point of the Rec room. It was the one part of the ship that was designed to be comfortable. I leaned forward with the remote to start the audiovisual message, not paying attention to the angle of my plate which slipped from my knee before I could catch it, dropping to the floor with the rehydrated asparagus. You don’t ignore anything rehydrated in a spaceship—water is precious—so I bent over with my fork to pick it up and eat it. At that moment Eugene Trinny's face appeared on the screen. That made me sit up. The Director of NASA would not communicate with us unless he had something important to say. I noticed he was not smiling. A kind of cheerful bonhomie is de rigeur in earth-space communications unless something precise and technical is going on between Mission Control and the ship. Something was wrong.
“Hello everyone. I trust everything is fine with you. Seems from our end that Terra Nova is functioning normally.” The Director paused. I knew him slightly. In his late fifties, hair still dark, he had a down-to-earth manner that went with authoritative assurance. I liked him. He ran his fingers through his hair. “What I’m going to say may be difficult for you to take in. We’re still trying to take it in here.” He gestured to someone off-screen. An image appeared, a photograph of a small chunk of rock against a black background.
“1036 Ganymed. It's the biggest of the Amor asteroids. It has an elliptical orbit with an aphelion well past Mars and a perihelion pretty close to Earth. Or it used to. We've been tracking it for the past two years since a planetesimal….next image...”—the chunk of rock was replaced by a starry sky with a red arrow pointing to a white dot near the centre—“since Deepstar IV detected a planetesimal coming into the solar system from the Kuiper Belt. It was probably hit by something else and deflected close to Neptune. Nobody paid much attention it until its orbit was calculated. It was headed straight for Ganymed. At that point the information was given classified status until we had a better idea of the effect the planetesimal would have on the asteroid. Computer simulations predicted a change of orbit, with Earth within the hypothetical radius of the new orbital path. Right, back to the first image.” The chunk of rock reappeared.
“Impact between the planetesimal and Ganymed took place about a month after you left. We tracked Ganymed with all three Deepstar satellites until we had collected enough data to be certain. Ganymed will definitely collide with Earth eleven months from now. About the time you're due back."
