We Will Call Her Hope

We Will Call Her Hope

Command Deck, Exploration Cruiser Bridger, Deep Space, Star System ED-163

Mission Day 213

0230 ST (Ship Time)

A billion kilometers from a star, spacetime trembled with a flash of blue Cherenkov radiation and gravity waves radiating outward. A boxy apparition materialized—the exploration cruiser Bridger.

On the command deck, Captain Elias Rodriquez tried to regain control of his reeling senses caused by shear-jump emergence—nausea and a distinct feeling that his body didn’t belong in this universe. Using techniques taught at the Earth Space Operations Command Academy, he forced his body to adjust to reality. He looked around the conn, as the command deck was called, seeing the command crew recovering as well.

“Boards turning green,” announced the ship TacNet AI, Tyra.

“I think so are some of us, too,” muttered Detection Specialist Karla Jackson, loud enough for command crew to hear.

Someone managed to chuckle.

“Stars are in the right place and so is the system primary,” reported Astrid, the ship’s astrometric AI.

Elias relaxed a bit.The advanced probe’s jump coordinates had worked. Normally he would have jumped in to ten billion klicks out and reconfirmed those coordinates, but after seven months in space, the jump capacitors were beginning to show their age. Astrid and Laura both confirmed the probe’s calculations. Laura was the ship’s astrophysicist with a PhD from Stanford. Over those seven months he had learned to trust his astro team and earned their trust to make the right decisions. He had weighed the risks and ordered the jump.

Around him, the murmuring of the command crew confirmed things were going well.

“Stable helio orbit at 1.18 billion kilometers,” Astrid went on. “Still checking for C.”

C, short for ED-163c in the Exploration Data Catalog. The third planet of this star system and not yet named. Dead nuts in the habitable zone. But they had learned that didn’t mean much—with four Earth-sized planets in the habitable zone# of other star systems and none of them habitable. One with too weak of a magnetic field to protect life from their star’s solar wind and radiation. One with no moon to stabilize the orbital tilt and tides with seasons that ran wild and with frequent ice ages. The other two were victims of what ESOC called a chaotic star system, where early in its evolution a Jupiter-sized planet was pulled into the inner system wreaking havoc with the smaller rocky planets and their orbits. Earth’ssolar system was considered stable because Jupiter’s orbit had been restrained and stabilized by Saturn.

Elias sighed. Four worlds with such promise. And Earth needed those worlds as it tried to recover from decades of climate shocks and the aftermath of a regional nuclear war that wrecked the planetary economy. Maybe C will not tease us in the same way.

“TESS operational and scans are clear,” Karla reported.

TESS, short for TSA-12, a towed array with billions of nanosensors to gather light and other electromagnetic radiation. Analogous to the towed sonar arrays once used by maritime navies to detect enemy submarines. A clear scan indicated no ship within at least fifty thousand kilometers. Not that he had expected any. So far Humanity was alone in the universe.

Elias settled back and watched his crew, exhausted and tense as they were, professionally run through their checklists with the help of the ship’s AIs.

Mess Deck, Exploration Cruiser Bridger, Deep Space, Star System ED-163

Mission Day 213

1206 ST

Elias joined the breakfast line just like everyone else. Exploration ships were too small to allow private dining rooms for the Captain and a separate wardroom for the officers. Besides, the separation between officers and the crew was more nebulous in ESOC since the latter were mostly tech specialists, some with PhDs. The officers were those who chose the command path at the Academy, while everyone else had chosen technical specialization.

The Chef laid out a tray of sandwiches. Elias reached for it and stopped. No bread today. There was a hot tray with eggs. He grabbed some of them and potato hash and turned to walk into the mess area.

The far corner table was left empty for him—not by order, but by tradition. Sometimes he’d sit with the crew to get a feel for what they were thinking but today he opted for the solitude of his corner. After the jump, the mess was filling up fast. He shrugged off the guilt of having his own private table when the mess was so crowded.

He slid his tray on the table and collapsed in the booth seat, his back to the wall, looking outward. Only two hours of sleep since the jump. There’d be time enough to sleep when he was dead, or maybe in a rocking chair. The hum and murmurs of ship life floated around him—familiar and routine. Faint odors of whatever the Chef was cooking for dinner wafted from the kitchen. Tidbits of conversation floated across the mess..

“Those capacitors are showing their age. I really have to coddle them.”

“This is the fifth world we visited. I don’t think I can take another one. Well, maybe this one will allow us some R&R on the surface.”

He let it all fade into the background, allowing it to morph into the memory of smells of sweet plantain matzah kugel and chipotle brisket and sounds of children’s laughter—the noisy joy of a family Seder. Tonight was Passover. Not his first spent away from Earth, but never this far out with five shear-jumps between him and home.

He sighed. No one else on the ship was missing Earth quite this way today. No Seder tonight. Chef might prepare him something special. He was good about that, but in some ways that made the loneliness worse.

“This seat taken, Captain?” Dr. Erin Tayan, the ship’s chief scientist and ecologist, stood across from him, her dark braid draped over her right shoulder.

Elias fought down a grimace. He had thought he wanted to be alone, but now the presence of company appealed to him. He nodded and motioned for her to sit.

Over the seven months of their journey to four other worlds, they hadn’t spent much time one-on-one, so it might be nice to get to know her. He was of Mexican-Jewish heritage and she was Mexican-Native American. Maybe they shared the same sense of isolation and separation from their roots. Maybe they had something in common besides the ship.

“You look like you’ve lost something,” Erin said, after studying him for a second. “Maybe a best friend?”

“Tonight is the first night of Passover back on Earth. There would be a family Seder—a loud, noisy thing with children and family.” He grinned. “And an excuse to drink four cups of wine. But out here…”

She laughed with a sound resembling soft chimes. “I’ve been struggling with traditions, too, Captain. Back home we greet the morning sun, Wi. Out here? Where’s east, much less sunrise? So I look toward Sol. And after those four worlds… was that also Wi, or something else? I never got to worry about that since we didn’t get to stay long.”

“Well, when you’re on the surface, hedge your bets. Honor both suns.”

She giggled. “Very efficient, Captain.”

The rest of the meal passed in quiet conversation.

Command Deck, Exploration Cruiser Bridger, Deep Space, Star System ED-163

Mission Day 213

1506 ST

Elias settled back in his command seat. While the layout of the conn was based on the old nuclear submarines, there was one major difference. Everyone had an assigned station and a seat, a seat that protected them during acceleration and that transformed into a protective cocoon during combat.

“Captain, Hawkeye ready to deploy.”

The FTA-4 Hawkeye—an autonomous, foldable space telescope array. Unlike the TSA-12, which specialized in wideband electromagnetic sensing, the FTA-4—descended from Hubble and Webb—featured a twenty-two-meter fold-out primary mirror optimized for high-resolution optical and near-infrared imaging and spectroscopy. TESS scanned while Hawkeye focused. Hawkeye had been docked in a specially built launch tube during transit and was now being deployed—initially towed like TESS and then eventually released as a free-flying observatory.

“About time,” he muttered, and then admonished himself.

Patience. You can’t rush these things. The science in rocket science wasn’t just technology. It was getting the details right. No repair places forty light years from Earth. The crew was doing everything right, which was impressive in its own right. Seven months out here, and there could be a tendency to let things slide. But not his crew.

He allowed himself a moment of pride. He had trained them well.

“Hull and access panels unfolded,” the COB reported. “Robotic arms extending.” COB, Chief of the Boat and its pilot.

“Primary mirror unfolding.”

“Panels magnetically locked and latched.”

“Deploying sunshield.”

“Umbilicals powered.”

“Uncapping fine-steering mirror and running inertial self-checks.”

“Beginning AI module activation and independent navigation routines,” Laura added. “All systems nominal.”

Now they had to wait for thermal equilibrium. Six minutes. Forever.

“Thermal equilibrium reached. System active.”

The crew cheered raggedly, as if they had done this too many times before. In some ways routine, but in actuality critical to the mission. Not only would it give them a view of the world and its vital signs, but help map the system for microjumps inward.

“Aligning with C,” Astrid announced. “Lock achieved.”

Another cheer, this one more muted.

“Skipper, we have first glimpse.”

“Put it on the holo. Put it to crew on TacNet.”

Every eye turned to the holo in the center of the compartment. Around the ship, heads rotated toward their holo displays.

The holo flickered, clouded, then resolved line by line. It took only seconds, but to Elias it felt like years. He gulped some coffee as if the caffeine would hurry the universe along. And everyone exhaled. It was nighttime on C. A blurred atmospheric crescent, but all details lost in the dark. Cloud tops catching starlight. Maybe hints of land. Promising—more promising than those other worlds, but a text message, not a video. A longer exposure in the infrared might show them more, but they needed more than images. They needed data about this world. Atmosphere. Temperature. Oceans. Ice caps. They could accomplish much of that at night with Hawkeye’s spectrographic capabilities.

Elias put his cup down. He knew what they wanted. But he wouldn’t give it to them. Let the team take the data. “How long to morning?”

“Twenty-six hour day and the whole hemisphere is in darkness. About six hours until first light on the limb,” replied Astrid. “Twelve before we get a good look at the main hemisphere.”

“Okay no more visuals. Data, now folks. Whatever exposure time you need. We waited seven months, we can wait a few more hours for a visual. I’m ordering downtime and rest for the entire crew. We’ve all been running on fumes since the jump. Not much for us to do anyway. Let the AIs do their thing and collect photons and run the numbers. Go to sleep. This is an order.”

Captain’s Cabin, Exploration Cruiser Bridger, Deep Space, Star System ED-163

Mission Day 213

2006 ST

“Elias, five hours.”

“Go away,” Elias mumbled.

“I can’t go away. I’m in your head,” retorted Mac, the Personal Artificial Intelligence in his neural implant. PAIs helped manage their host’s affairs as well as sometimes acting as confidant and friend. “You ordered me to wake you in five hours and I’ve stopped stimulating your sleep centers.”

Elias smiled and stretched. “Sometimes you PAIs can be a real pain in the ass,” he grumbled subvocally.

A humanlike chuckle. “That’s what we’re paid to do. Keep guys like you on the straight and narrow.”

“So you and Tyra are conspiring?”

“Of course,” Mac replied, still chuckling. “As I said, that’s what we’re paid to do.”

Elias chose not to respond. He rose and subvocalized a single word. ‘Shower.”

He arrived at the command deck a half hour later after stopping for coffee and discovering just how hungry he was. The conn was deserted except for Erin and Laura in deep conversation over Laura’s holodisplay.

“Good morning,” he said as he slid into his command chair. ”What are you two up to?”

“Data, Captain. Filtering through terabytes of data. Pushing Astrid to her limit.”

“And?”

“The picture is coming together, but not conclusive yet,” replied Laura. “Erin is an ecologist and I’m an astrophysicist with a secondary in planetary science. We’re looking at the same data and reaching two different conclusions—or at least two different interpretations. One of us has to be right.”

“You both can be right, you know. Think of quantum theory. Particles and waves. Superposition.”

“The good news,” Erin added, “is C has an atmosphere. And there’s oxygen present.”

“That’s good,” Elias replied.

“It seems stable,” Erin continued. “And that’s where we disagree. Oxygen is very reactive. To have a stable level you need something to replenish it. In ecology, that’s animal life and plant life exchanging CO2 and oxygen.”

“There are planetary systems that can do that, too.” Laura countered. “Remember, ED-122 had significant oxygen but little life due to its orbit eccentricity and no moon. Oxygen isn’t proof of animals and forests. Water photolysis can leave oxygen behind if hydrogen escapes, and CO₂ photolysis can create false positives. ED-122 had oxygen for all the wrong reasons.”

“Not at this level of oxygen. And the CO2 levels fit a vegetation-animal equilibrium,” Erin countered.

“Seems to me,” Elias interjected, “we won’t know which interpretation is right until the sun comes up. Maybe the spectra will have that red edge you guys are always talking. Chlorophyll. And we can get visual confirmation if we see large green areas.”

The crew began filtering in, some chattering excitedly and some quiet, as the moment for first light approached. Tyra had posted a holo image of a countdown chronometer to daybreak. Conversations were muted, if any at all, as the chronometer crept toward daylight.

“We know a few things,” Erin announced, the ship’s com carrying throughout the ship. “C is Earth-sized with a decent moon. About three-fourths the size of Luna. Atmosphere is promising. Some oxygen present. Water vapor confirmed. Thermal range is survivable.”

“And life?” someone asked.

“We need the light of day,” Erin replied.

A few chuckles.

As the chrono hit zero, someone shouted, “Look!”

A slim sliver of light unfolded as if someone were slowly pulling back a dark blanket. Not pure white but a pale bluish-white. The crescent widened and the blues and white crystalized and slowly began to separate.

No one spoke. Some forgetting to breathe.

The black continued to fade eastward and the blue began to shimmer. The white lost some its firmness and appeared to alternate as thin willowy wisps and firmer textures like a marshmallow cream.

“Clouds,” Laura whispered.

“Oceans,” Erin added.

An almost uniform inhalation and gasps.

The darkness continued to recede, still just showing ocean and clouds. At one point the clouds tightened into a massive spiral before relaxing back into bands and wisps.

Stirrings and whispers of, “Where’s the land?”

Almost in response a shadow appeared at the eastern edge that slowly firmed into brown with spots of green.

“Land,” Elias murmured, though there was no real need for explanation. And then as the image grew north and southward as well as eastward, he added, almost in awe, “A continent.”

More and more brown and green. Laura almost shouted, “I have a red edge in the spectra. Chlorophyll. That green down there may be vegetation.”

“It is vegetation,” Erin said firmly.

Muted cheers, as if waiting for further confirmation.

“Oxygen is firming up to around 20 per cent,” Laura reported “Carbon dioxide looks to be at pre-industrial levels. So is the methane.”

No one moved for a long time as the planet continued to unfold. A world. With oceans and land and probably vegetation. Maybe not an identical twin of Earth, but perhaps a fraternal one.

Elias remembered to take a sip of his now tepid coffee. Didn’t matter that it was cold. There was a world down there for them. At last.

Knowing he was jumping the gun, he said it anyway. “A beautiful world. We’ll call her Hope.”