In which discovery leads to adventure. Adventure is when something goes wrong.
Chapter 1 Anomalous Object
The world was to me a secret which I desired to devine.”
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein.
On Board SS James Cook,
Star System Hipparcos 139543
Mission Day 80
SS James Cook drifted along her predetermined orbit with her sensors working at full stretch. This Contract was bread and butter, reasonably honest work which didn’t require them to run full tilt against a deadline to disaster. This Contract hadn’t even been given the usual nickname. It was just Survey Contract #3.
The Contract was to build a database of the asteroid belt around the star they had taken to referring to as Hip-13. Such Contracts took two or three months, depending on how much clutter there was in a system and how much detail the Contracting Entity wanted. This one was on the low side of clutter and the high side of time, which Ashley was fine with. Their first two Contracts had been for small M dwarf stars. Such systems were whirling dervishes, tight and crowded. The inhabitants of the Hip-13 system had the good taste to have a star which could be Sol’s slightly larger twin brother. Its asteroid belt was a comfortable distance from its star.
The locals were one of the surprisingly large minority of races who didn’t do astronomy. All they had was some local space infrastructure. Ashley Hanson considered such an attitude to be really, really alien, but then she was a human astronomer.
The CEO and Entity of Galactic Surveys was quite willing to let aliens be as alien as they wanted. Their alienness meant they were willing to Contract out such things and pay Galactic credit for them.
SS James Cook belonged to Galactic Surveys, Inc. Like a lot of other companies, it resided under the umbrella of the corporate empire of tech billionaire Elroy Risk. So did its CEO, one Ashley Hanson, the Entity of Galactic Surveys.
The PAR allowed a reduction in Portal fees for Entities who posted the survey information on their star systems. A Contract charging a fee equal to a dozen or so Star Periods of such a reduction was a win-win, and an easy sell. Ashley did occasionally wonder why Galactic Surveys had no competition for these Contracts, but it was a small and specialized niche market when all was said and done.
In addition, quite a few races preferred to Contract out asteroid mining for the raw materials needed to keep a civilization going rather than do it themselves. Master Blasters didn’t even think about competing with the big players who had the killer advantage of economy of scale. Galactic Surveys made their credit in an associated niche market.
When negotiating a Contract with one of those big players, there was no such thing as too much information. Contracting with an independent operator not connected with any of said big players was generally a point in their favour. There could be no suspicion of any sweetheart deals behind the scenes. Such, at least, was the consensus of the Contract Analysts of Master Blasters. Speculating on the motives of aliens from a whole different evolution was a chancy business at best.
Cheap was a point everyone could agree on. Someday, maybe, Master Blasters would become one of those lordly big players. Someday was a long way away. Right now, they had their niche markets they could work for an honest credit, markets too small for the big players to bother with. James Cook was small, and so were her transit fees and running costs.
All of which put SS James Cook out in the deep space of a star system 3000 light years away from Earth, collecting astronomical data. What was interesting and exciting to her was ditch-water dull for the rest of the crew. They had work to do, watches to stand and video to watch. Boredom was a good thing to the Contract veterans and ex-submariners in her crew.
She made the time to watch the occasional video and exchange emails with her boyfriend Jamie Cartwell, who was just off another job out-system. At the moment, she was watching the performance and checking the work of Keigo Mohri, Ph.D. Astronomy, who would, if all went well, be the Principal Investigator on the next voyage of the James Cook. Ashley would have been just as happy to stay on as Principal Investigator, but being both PI and CEO of Galactic Surveys was cutting into luxuries like sleeping. Rightly speaking, she was playing hooky from her corporate workload by reading a scientific paper while she waited for the next data crunch to finish.
Evidence For A Derelict Spacecraft On Sanctuary was more of a page turner than most. According to the authors, there was the shattered wreckage of a very large spacecraft buried a half kilometre or so below the surface of Sanctuary. The authors’ wistful hopes of better quality data to answer the many questions about its age, structure and purpose were not going to be fulfilled this century, if ever. Mórrígan, Sanctuary’s star, was throwing one of its periodic 70-year tantrums, and the entire system would remain a death trap until it was over.
She was a little surprised the speculation had made it past peer review. Postulating an interstellar war on the evidence of one wrecked ship was sewing a vest on a button, though it was a cool idea.
Keigo was frowning as he looked down at his display. “Miss Hanson, there are several anomalies concerning this object.”
“Let’s have a look.” I’m mentoring my replacement. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.
The object on the screen had been imaged in multiple spectra. It was unusually long and symmetrical for an asteroid, a flattened oval ten times longer than its width. The scale next to it made it about one and a half kilometres long. The reflection spectrum was right for nickel iron, of unusually high purity. The surface was smoother than normal for an asteroid.
“Shape is a little unusual, but not too much. Perhaps it was formed in a high gravity gradient.” Ashley said.
“Possibly. The rotation is anomalous, however.” Keigo set the video to play on a loop.
Ashley raised her eyebrows in surprise. “Very unusual.”
The object’s spin was precisely along its long axis, which was pointed right toward the star. It was spinning like a rifle bullet, not the three-dimensional tumble of a natural object.
Nothing about this is definitely artificial, but it’s pretty darned improbable to be natural. “What’s the orbit?” Ashley asked.
“Hyperbolic.” Keigo added a schematic of the star system with a line showing its projected orbit. It came in from interstellar space, skimming through the gravity field passed very close to the system’s gas giant, and headed back out to the deeps between the stars. Again, not impossible but not very probable, either. Still, space was just big, with a lot of room for improbable events.
They were just emerging from Hip-13’s asteroid belt, and their orbit took them quite close, by astronomical standards, to the anomalously shaped object.
Guesstimating roughly from the size on the distance scale and shape, it ought to mass around 75 million metric tons. There was a lot of value in such an asteroid. They were rich in rare earths and other valuable elements. Catching it to realize the value would be a rather tougher problem. Ashley shrugged mentally. We collect the data and sell it. They can do their own number crunching.
“Mass?” she asked.
“28 million metric tonnes, plus or minus five percent.” Keigo replied.
Ashley did a mental estimate, modelling it as an ellipsoid, then fished out her phone to check on the calculator app to make sure she hadn’t dropped a decimal point. “Are you sure? It’s only 10% of what it ought to be if it’s solid.”
Keigo looked dogmatic, and a little prickly. He got that way when anyone questioned his conclusions. “Precisely. It is sufficiently close to the star for the Yarkovsky Effect to give a large enough deflection for a mass estimate. The value is correct to ±5%.”
“You’re saying it’s hollow. 80% of the interior is void space, or low density materials.” She pursued.
He looked cautious. “It is a logical conclusion from the data. There is a known object in the Solar System with a similar ratio.”
Ashley prepared to enjoy herself. Definitely worth playing hooky for. “Officially odd. Hypotheses?”
He was still looking cautious. “It might have formed in a high gravity gradient close to a hot star, which then ejected it from its star system.”
“How do you account for the void space?” She asked.
“Out-gassing, perhaps, from silicate materials or ices during the formation?” He sounded tentative.
Ashley frowned, looking at the screen. “No data to support it, or rule it out, either. Could it be an artifact?”
He looked apprehensive. “There are no data to support such a hypothesis. It is cooled to equilibrium with interstellar space.”
Ashley knew the look. He didn’t want to bet his academic reputation on a wild-sounding cocktail party theory. Keigo wasn’t her favourite dance partner for this kind of conversation. He lacked creativity. Creativity wasn’t a top level requirement for this job. Astronomy needed careful precise data collectors, too.
This wasn’t academia, and the stakes were higher out here, which was why he was under training. Out here beyond the Portal was a whole new and much wider universe.
She smiled cheerfully. “We do have a great lack of data, Keigo. I think we need more.”
She hit the key on the intercom. “Captain, Principal Investigator. Please come up to Observation, if you would. We have something interesting here.”
Jonas Stone arrived a couple of minutes later. No one in James Cook had very far to go to get anywhere. In total, they had 50 cubic metres of space each. The twin Bigelow inflatable habs could spin for a half gee, which was enough to keep your bones from turning to mush, mostly, if one worked out religiously.
“What do we have, Ashley?” He said.
“An anomaly, Captain.” Ashley used his title as she and everyone else did. James Cook ran on a first name basis. His first name was Captain. His command style had been shaped by the very demanding requirements of the US Navy’s nuclear submarine fleet. She recapped the discussion she had just had with Keigo.
“Possible artifact. What are the odds it is one?” he said.
“Unknown. Not enough data. I want to do a course change and get more data. Feasible?” Ashley was still getting used to the working arrangement between her and Jonas Stone. In different ways they were each other’s boss. As CEO and Entity of Galactic Surveys, Ashley was Owner Aboard. She decided where she wanted Cook to go and what she wanted her and her people to do when they got there.
As Captain of James Cook Jonas Stone was responsible to get Cook to those places, and get done what she wanted done, as efficiently and safely as possible. To that end, his word was law within Cook‘s hull, and he could veto places and activities he considered unreasonably risky.
Stone’s face remained as still as the name of its owner. “We are out here to collect data. Velocity match would take most of our fuel reserve. Will a fly-by do it?”
Probably not an artifact, no matter how cool it would be if it was. “It should. We’ll need to know the parameters to plan the data collection.”
Stone nodded. “I’ll keep you looped in on the orbit change, so you can build your observation plan.”
On Board SS James Cook,
Star System Hipparchus 139543
Mission Day 86
The Closest Point of Approach, CPA for short, was six days later. Luckily they and AO-1, for Anomalous Object One, were orbiting the star in roughly the same direction. Ashley thought it deserved something cooler, but Keigo was the discoverer, so he got to name it.
A close fly by was doable with a reasonable expenditure of reserve fuel and a velocity match was actually possible, though it would run the reserve far lower than was comfortable. The expenditure was still noticeable and concerning. Lithium deuterium fuel elements weren’t a corner store item.
They had already collected a lot of data. Visual observations and imaging radar had its size, shape, colour and exterior composition to a fare-thee-well. They knew its temperature and its radiation profile, which was pretty much at normal background. Now they were going to find out more about its interior.
Small pellets would be fired to impact the asteroid, sending shock waves rippling through the interior. A sensitive laser array would measure those vibrations at many points just like a seismograph network on a planet. Cook’scomputer software would crunch the data into a picture of the asteroid’s interior by density. The Captain had ordered her systems shut down to the bare minimum to let the array work accurately, with every possible source of vibration eliminated. One of the ex-submariners had put up signs saying “Think Quiet”.
Pass completed on schedule and according to plan, Ashley and Keigo plunged into the work of reducing the raw data to useful form. Six hours later, Ashley and Keigo watched as the seismic image started to appear on the one hundred-inch LED screen. They stared in silence as it built, filling in detail little by little.
After a long silence, Ashley hit a switch and said, “Captain to Observation.”
Stone was there thirty seconds later. Ashley’s voice was eerily calm in her own ears. “We’re going to need the velocity match, Captain. That’s no asteroid. It’s a space station.”
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