Space. Stephen Baxter
At last he had it. In his big optical telescope there was an image of Alpha Centauri A, the largest component of the multiple Alpha system. The star’s image was distorted into an annulus, a faintly orange ring of light.
He recorded as much data as he could and fired it down his laser link to Earth. The processors there would be able to deconvolve the image and turn it into an image of the multiple-star Alpha Centauri system, perhaps even of any planets hugging the two main stars.
This data alone, he thought, ought to justify the mission to its sponsors.
But he still didn’t turn up any evidence of Gaijin activity.
A new fear started to gnaw at him. For the first time he considered seriously the possibility that he might be wrong about this. What if there was nothing here, after all? If so, his life, his reputation, would be wasted.
And then his big supercooled infrared sensors picked up a powerful new signature.
The object passed within a million kilometres of him.
His telescopes returned images, tantalizingly blurred. The thing was tumbling, sending back glimmering reflections from the remote sun; the reflections helped the processors figure out its shape.
The craft was maybe fifty metres across. It was shaped something like a spider. A dodecahedral central unit sprouted arms, eight or ten of them, which articulated as it moved. It seemed to be assembling itself as it travelled.
It wasn’t possible to identify its purpose, or composition, or propulsion method, before it passed out of sight. But, he was prepared to bet, it was heading for the asteroid belt.
It was possible to work out where the drone had come from. It was a point along the sun’s focal line, further out, no more distant from the Perry than the Moon from Earth.
Malenfant turned his telescopes that way, but he couldn’t see a thing.
Still, he felt affirmed. Contact, by damn. I was right. I can’t figure out how or what, but there sure is something out here.
He powered up his fusion-pulse engine, one more time. It would take him twenty hours to get there.
It was just a hoop, some kind of metal perhaps, facing the sun. It was around thirty metres across, and it was sky blue, the colour dazzling out here in the void. It was silent, not transmitting on any frequency, barely visible at all in the light of the point-source sun.
There was no huge mother-ship emitting asteroid-factory drones. Just this enigmatic artefact.
He described all this to Sally Brind, back in Houston. He would have to wait for a reply; he was six light-days from home.
After a time, he decided he didn’t want to wait that long.
The Perry drifted beside the Gaijin hoop, with only occasional station-keeping bursts of its thrusters.
Malenfant shut himself up inside the Perry’s cramped airlock. He’d have to spend two hours in here, purging the nitrogen from his body. His antique Shuttle-class EVA Mobility Unit would contain oxygen only, at just a quarter of sea level pressure, to keep it flexible.
Malenfant pulled on his thermal underwear, and then his Cooling and Ventilation Garment, a corrugated layering of water coolant pipes. He fitted his urine collection device, a huge, unlikely condom.
He lifted up his Lower Torso Assembly; this was the bottom half of his EMU, trousers with boots built on, and he squirmed into it. He fitted a tube over his condom attachment; there was a bag sewn into his Lower Torso Assembly garment big enough to store a couple of pints of urine. The LTA unit was heavy, the layered material awkward and stiff. Maybe I’m not quite the same shape as I used to be, forty years ago.
Now it was time for the HUT, the Hard Upper Torso piece. His HUT was fixed to the wall of the airlock, like the top half of a suit of armour. He crouched underneath, reached up his arms, and wriggled upwards. Inside the HUT there was a smell of plastic and metal. He guided the metal rings at his waist to mate and click together. He fixed on his Snoopy flight helmet, and over the top of that he lifted his hard helmet with its visor, and twisted it into place against the seal at his neck.
The ritual of suit assembly was familiar, comforting. As if he was in control of the situation.
He studied himself in the mirror. The EMU was gleaming white, with the Stars and Stripes still proudly emblazoned on his sleeve. He still had his final mission patch stitched to the fabric, for STS-194. Looking pretty good for an old bastard, Malenfant.
Just before he depressurized, he tucked his snap of Emma into an inside pocket.
He opened the airlock’s outer hatch.
For twenty months he’d been confined within a chamber a few metres across; now his world opened out to infinity.
He didn’t want to look up, down or around, and certainly not at the Gaijin artefact. Not yet.
Resolutely he turned to face the Perry. The paintwork and finishing over the hull’s powder-grey meteorite blanket had pretty much worn away and yellowed; but the dim sunlight made it look as if the whole craft had been dipped in gold.
His MMU, the Manned Manoeuvring Unit, was stowed in a service station against the Perry’s outer hull, under a layer of meteorite fabric. He uncovered the MMU and backed into it; it was like fitting himself into the back and arms of a chair. Latches clasped his pressure suit. He powered up the control systems, and checked the nitrogen-filled fuel tanks in the backpack. He pulled his two hand controllers round to their flight positions, and released the service station’s captive latches.
He tried out the manoeuvring unit. The left hand controller pushed him forward, gently; the right hand enabled him to rotate, dip and roll. Every time a thruster fired a gentle tone sounded in his headset.
He moved in short straight lines around the Perry. After years in a glass case at KSC, not all of the pack’s reaction control thrusters were working. But there seemed to be enough left for him to control his flight. And the automatic gyro stabilization was locked in.
It was just like working around Shuttle, if he focused on his immediate environment. But the light was odd. He missed the huge, comforting presence of the Earth; from low Earth orbit, the daylit planet was a constant overwhelming presence, as bright as a tropical sky. Here there was only the sun, a remote point source that cast long, sharp shadows; and all around he could see the stars, the immensity which surrounded him.
Now, suddenly – and for the first time in the whole damn mission – fear flooded him. Adrenaline pumped into his system, making him feel fluttery as a bird, and his poor old heart started to pound.
Time to get with it, Malenfant.
Resolutely, he worked his right hand controller, and he turned to face the Gaijin artefact.
The artefact was a blank circle, mysterious, framing only stars. He could see nothing that he hadn’t seen through the Perry’s cameras, truthfully; it was just a ring of some shining blue material, its faces polished and barely visible in the wan light of the sun.
But that interior looked jet black, not reflecting a single photon cast by his helmet lamp.
He glared into the disc of darkness. What are you for? Why are you here?
There was, of course, no reply.
First things first. Let’s do a little science here.
He pulsed his thrusters and drifted towards the hoop itself. It was electric blue, glowing as if from within, a wafer-thin band the width of his palm. He could see no seams, no granularity.
He reached out a gloved hand, fabric encasing monkey fingers, and tried to touch the hoop. Something invisible made his hand slide away, sideways.
No matter