Cameron stood at the lookout deck long after they had all disappeared up the inclined gangway to the boarding hatch. Finally, the booster engines flared, and Cameron stepped back a little reflexively, even though the glass barrier fully protected him. From his position, he could see the massive coil apparatus of the remodeled, depowered electromagnetic coil gun launcher previously used to send cargo into space. The depowered coil gun had been integrated with the Pioneer's own booster engines to launch the vessel into the lower atmosphere, where atmospheric oxygen would be burned as fuel to achieve escape velocity.
As the great vessel tilted and shot skyward through the overhead hatch of the external hanger, billows of steam swirled around, shadowing her ascension for a few moments. Cameron watched the diminishing vessel and prayed that those on board made it home safely.
* * * * *
"I—I’m afraid you may wish to sit down." Dr. Bredesen said timidly as he appeared in the waiting room. He was about forty, tall, broad, with thinning white-blond hair. He did not smile. Bredesen hated having to break bad news.
Sasha jumped up despite his warning.
For the past five hours, Bredesen had been treating Erin Mathieson with the third and last alternative available to fight the unique form of leukemia he and his staff had diagnosed nearly three weeks before. Already he had tried two simple surgical procedures, injecting bone marrow into the tissue and a cancer fighting antibody into her bloodstream, as well as two forms of medication. But just this morning the parents brought her in after Erin experienced a mild seizure.
Erin's condition had deteriorated in only days. Her medical history showed that she had been ill her first year at the UESRC more often than average children, that she had been susceptible to certain nearly eradicated childhood diseases, that she often recovered before any proper diagnosis could be given.
Bredesen had his own hypothesis that Erin's first mother must have died in the wilderness for lack of proper medical care. Conditions during The Crisis Years had given rise to new chronic illnesses that still existed in parts out in the wild regions of the sealed rural zones; if Erin had contracted one of these, it may have lowered her immune system's proper efficiency.
"I'm afraid the operation has not abrogated the abnormal cells.” Bredesen said. “A recent blood scan revealed traces of large and apparently unprecedentedly virulent cancer cells throughout your daughter's body that we failed to detect the last time. Unfortunately, the cancer-eating cells she received three hours ago had completely disappeared when we checked her a moment ago."
"I see. So, what else can you do?" Mathieson asked.
"I honestly don’t know,” Bredesen admitted. “Anything else we could try might harm Erin more than help her in her weakened condition. Under the circumstances I think it best if you just continue to give her the medications I prescribed her, at least until she recovers some more strength for our next procedure.
“Isn’t there something else you could try?” Sasha wondered.
“I have developed a new drug that may succeed where the surgery failed.” Bredesen said carefully. “But I wouldn’t get my hopes too high. I've given the pharmacist an order for some pain-reducers that will curb the fever."
"So, essentially what you're saying is that there isn't any hope?" Richard asked, feeling the words grate over his throat.
Sasha stared at the doctor, glassy-eyed.
"It's hard to say." Bredesen shook his head. "Over 96% of our cancer patients have survived to lead full lives, and in most cases the cancer is eradicated if not in the first then in the second operation. But in we aren't making progress on your daughter. We—I mean, my staff and I—honestly haven't any idea what to do next. This is a new kind of illness, and we simply have no precedent to follow regarding treatment.
"As far as I can tell, only a few cells in the bloodstream, about one in a thousand, are abnormal cells.”
“What does that mean?” Richard asked.
“This is an extremely rare condition—in fact, our very first case. Your daughter’s condition appears to be chronic. That means that she's had it since birth, though the abnormal cells have remained dormant until fairly recently. Now that they are beginning to make their presence known, the change is significant enough that it has caused her a great deal of pain.
“Why didn’t anyone detect this earlier?” Sasha asked.
“I don’t know. The only consolation I can give you is that the cancer isn't multiplying very fast at all—in fact, I'd venture to say that it's stabilized. And unlike the abnormal cells in her bloodstream, the cancer-like ones which we discovered in her body tissues seem to have remained completely dormant.”
“Dormant?” Sasha echoed. “So it may get worse later?”
“Dormant as in their potential activity is uncertain.” Bredesen replied. “For now they aren't attacking the ordinary functioning cells, and they aren't dividing by cellular mitosis at all.
"That’s strange, isn’t it?” Richard asked.
“Quite,” Bredesen replied quietly. It should be impossible...
“But is it good news?” Sasha persisted.
“I am not going to give you any false hopes,” Bredesen said, “but it is possible that the cancer will ever progress to Erin's vital organs, and in that case she may lead a normal life. Doctor Cepheras would like me to keep an eye on Erin in case we observe further cases, and he asked if you would consider bringing her in as a case study. He recommended some genetics specialists at the hospital for future consultations. I sent a plasmid culture to him yesterday." He added as an afterthought, as if explaining how Cepheras had gotten involved.
"Do you really think they can give us another prognosis?" Richard asked.
Bredesen shook his head. "To be blunt, I doubt it. But when I talked to him this morning, Dr. Cepheras seemed particularly interested in studying Erin's genetic pattern for what caused the disease.
"In all my years as a medical doctor, I've never seen a case such as this. There is a possibility that Erin's cancer may be an entirely new type of disease altogether. She could be the key to a new branch of study." Bredesen concluded.
"We'd rather just take her home, Dr. Bredesen," Richard said firmly.
Chapter Thirteen
Jupiter is more beautiful than I ever imagined.
The horizontal cyclonic and anticyclonic winds swirled about the surface of the living planet in strips of white frozen ammonia clouds segmented by red and brown layers of ammonium hydrosulfide, methane, hydrogen, and helium. And there, larger than even his imagination had pictured it, the Great Red Spot, an enormous rotating storm in the southern hemisphere, appeared over the horizon as the planet completed another quick rotation.
The information he had learned in his physics classes in the old days at the UESRC did little to prepare him for the actual sight of the planet that swallowed up the view in the forward observation deck. And now they were passing by Io, the small moon closest to Jupiter. Fiery red owing to the active volcanoes induced by Jupiter's gravity, the moon passed across the face of Jupiter, visible only as a small pea-sized asteroid against the great master of all the planets.
"You should be here, Sheila. What a view... " he thought aloud.
At last, Lieutenant John Snyder, a thirty-year old man who had dreamed of going into space his entire life long, enjoyed a quiet moment as the Pioneer completed its third orbital rotation around the fifth planet; in a moment, he had to head back to the bridge to check up on the navigational computer. The computer should have finished with the calculations necessary for gravity assist, a technique that used Jupiter's gravitational field as a slingshot device, sending them to Pluto without using fuel but faster than they could on engine power alone.
He knew the timed moment approached, but he was still sorry to be saying good-bye to the vibrant quasi-star, when the dark, dormant, and icy
dwarf planetoid of Pluto awaited them. And lurking somewhere on the fringes of the solar system—he swallowed. They were out there.
A bright flash of light like a distant star appeared in the viewport while he watched the silent scene. It grew larger and brighter, but still he watched fascinated.
"What is that?" he wondered aloud. A second later, the warning sirens sounded a red alert. The English Lieutenant Bambury's voice rang strong and loud above the noise of the alarm.
"Attention, all hands, report to your stations. A high-energy missile from the Pluto orbit is now approaching us. We will take evasive actions. Please, hurry to your posts."
Lieutenant Snyder stood rooted to his feet. There was no use in leaving. The light was upon them.
Sheila...
* * * * *
The sky was so blue above; only a few thready cirrus clouds lined the distant sky on the horizon, where the edge of Central City met the rural zone to the north. And yet Dr. Cameron cried.
He did not see the intense, powdery blue of the sky. He did not see the starlings flying to the tall, majestic sycamore trees of the botanical gardens that enshrouded the new military base. As if part of a dream, the ghostly faces of the Pioneer crew haunted him, dancing about his tired, itching eyes whether closed or open, smiling absurdly as he constructed them from his memory.
All those brave men and women, the finest on Earth, and he had been the one that sent them out to die.
He cursed himself again, buried his face in his hands, but he could not drive the images away.
Who could have guessed that the enemy had been watching them, had probably only allowed the Pioneer to get close enough to seal its own destruction?
Another vessel would have to be built; the order was probably in the works already. But he could not do it again. But who would oversee the construction of another spacecraft? Well, there were other capable, younger, unwearied scientists and teams of engineers still to be found, some at the UESRC and on other bases.
As he stood on the spot where he had been on the morning of the Pioneer's departure, he knew he was done with battles now.
* * * * *
The alarm siren interrupted Sasha mid-sentence, halfway through her physics lesson.
“I’m sorry, class, I have to go,” she said, dropping her book before rushing from the B5 floor on the Dakota East Wing to the upper level fighter bay where her plane waited, already fueled and ready to go. She paused to collect her old Pegasus flight helmet from the hook on the wall where she had stowed it only yesterday.
Make that today, she reflected, remembering how late it had been when the Desert Coyotes Squadron finally returned.
Ever since the destruction of the Pioneer about two months before, the UESRC squadrons had been on patrol off and on, trying to ward off the sudden attacks that the aliens had launched in retaliation to the presence of the Earth cruiser in Jupiter's airspace. Already twelve major cities lay in ruins, including coastline cities such as New Yokohama, Ruhestadt, and Bay City, which had been destroyed only two days after the UESF released the news concerning the destruction of the Pioneer.
After two months of constant patrolling and skirmishes, many of the planet wide squadron units had diminished, and even large bases such as the Ural Base suffered. Only four of the initial fifteen squadrons there remained large enough to compose a full unit, and the remainder had been reallocated to comprise another five units.
Then unexpectedly, as if their intentions had only been to destroy the city, the aliens retreated despite their overwhelming advantage. Already the major minds of the Earth Security Force had come up with a few hypotheses to explain this unusual behavior. “Why did the aliens keep attacking the cities, and then retreating before they were entirely destroyed?” It was almost as though—they were only looking for something…
The pattern the Earth scientists observed showed that the enemy carefully selected only a few coastal cities at a time, at least four thousand kilometers apart from one other. Furthermore, the aliens retreated from each city just short of complete destruction, but without eradicating all possibility for reconstruction.
The Vice Chief of the Security Force Council, Kathryn Hines-Gallo, suggested at a Security Force Council meeting that perhaps their efforts were signs of a kind of gradual hostility designed to wear down resistance with the passage of time and by augmenting humanity's desperation and sense of hopelessness. Thus when the Earth finally surrendered, she would no longer care to resist further.
Though the debates as to the nature of the alien's tactics continued unremittingly, the Security Force showed no hesitation in deciding how best to utilize the few advantages that had been so fortuitously dealt them. While the aliens took their time systematically razing apparently random cities, production began on a new line of Earth cruisers and Falcon space fighters headed by Zhdanov, Knightwood, and Cheung in Central City. Once completed, some of the cruiser parts would be sent to Space Station Gabriel for assembly; though launches from Gabriel were more advantageous in cutting launch fuel costs, the bulk of the ships were planned for safer terrestrial launches.
The engineers had now designed the new prototype vessels for swift long-distance space travel that would one day lead them to Pluto, this time without taking a direct and dangerous course—or the obvious one, employing the economically preferable method of gravity assist, using the gravitational force of a planet as a substitute for fuel. Taking the obvious course had led to the disastrous loss of the Pioneer.
Sasha for one looked forward to the day when the project would be finished, but the last she had heard concerning the estimated completion time had been news that the next launch had been pushed back from the following month to three or four months more.
* * * * *
Dr. Cheung Ho-Win was just finishing tidying his cluttered office when he realized that in his search for order, he had forgotten the time. Above a vase of purple orchids, a small round clock on the wall read 13:47, and so he was more than twenty minutes late to the meeting by the time he reached the operations council room at the other end of the Ural Base.
“Sorry for being late,” he apologized briefly to the assembled company as he entered, then found the seat reserved for him and settled down to listen to the debate that was going on.
Knightwood offered him a welcoming smile; only ten or so people sat gathered at the enormous table. To his right and left were Knightwood and Zhdanov, and by their uniforms, he identified half a dozen UESF council members. At the opposite side of the table, he immediately recognized the man in a black officer's uniform from the picture Zhdanov had shown him.
“Yes, I understand the situation fully…” Captain Kansier was saying. He was a tall, wiry man in his late thirties, notorious for his uncompromising nature and known for a keen intelligence. He ran his fingers through his short chestnut hair in masked agitation. Leaning back in his chair, he coughed to clear his throat. Cheung remembered vaguely that this man was reportedly some kind of a tactical genius.
“I give it two weeks before they attack again. That gives us two valuable weeks to prepare,” Kansier was saying now.
Arthur Kansier had once been a student at the UESRC, but had transferred to the Greenwich Physics, Biological, and Geophysical Maritime University on the old European continent in order to specialize in a combined degree of nautical physics and geophysics. After attaining his professorship qualification, he had obtained a position at the Okinawa Physics Academy while attending the Okinawa Institute for a degree in spacecraft engineering.
Since then, he had transferred twice to the Oslo Science Academy and then to the Bay City Geophysical Institute before taking his final position at the Ural Base. When the Earth Security Force was formed, they sent Kansier a new assignment as a cadet trainer and future space cruiser captain. Kansier was one of the few worldwide specialists trained to handle situations even remotely military in nature
. At the Greenwich University, he had studied naval history and had learned to pilot not only recon planes but larger sea craft.
The most remarkable things said of Kansier, and they were repeated widely and far abroad, was that the man never went back on his word.
Kansier demanded a lot from his cadets, but he respected their potential as future equals and tried to develop that potential wherever it was strongest. Considered one of the world’s better emerging leaders, Kansier believed that attaining the good for the many mattered more than seeking his own personal glory.
“The Stargazer isn’t ready for flight yet, though, and won’t be for some time,” Zhdanov updated, interrupting the discussion. Now that Cheung, Knightwood, and Zhdanov had finished work on the newest vessel, the Stargazer, Cheung couldn't help but wonder if the council had finally decided who would command the ship on her maiden flight to Charon. Zhdanov had suggested Captain Kansier, whom he had met years ago while working at the Ural Base. Cheung himself had not yet met the Captain despite living at the Ural Base for the past two months, mostly because his time had been divided between production work and what little sleep he'd been getting since the birth of the new Earth fleet.
However, the Captain's presence at this meeting promised that something significant had been decided.
Cheung's ears perked up when the Council Head turned to address Captain Kansier again.
"Captain, Doctors Zhdanov and Knightwood, among many others, have informed us that you are best qualified to take command of the Stargazer. Accordingly, the Security Council Secretary-President extends to you, Captain Kansier, the position of Ship Captain. Do you find this assignment acceptable?"
"Certainly." Kansier said.
"The Stargazer will be taking its maiden flight seriously—I should say there will be no maiden voyage as you know it. We simply haven't any time for drills or an extensive test flight. Rather, we have planned a defensive stance around Neptune. I'm sure you've read the reports we sent you?" At a nod from the Captain, the council representative continued. "Does anyone have any questions about the nuclear missile project?"