Read The Eye With Which The Universe Beholds Itself (Apollo Quartet) for Free Online Page B
Authors: Ian Sales
Tags: Apollo Quartet
major floats beside him in the cupola. He glances down at the two officers manning the pilot and flight engineer positions, and then looks across to Elliott. I guess, he says, it’s about time you told me what your mission is.
Elliott has been ordered to brief Finley once the Goddard is en route. So he says, About three weeks ago, one of the guys at NASA figured out we should be able to see evidence of Phaeton Base on the L5 Telescope.
Right, says Finley; It’s been fifteen years.
Elliott continues, So they watched Gleise 876 for a week and scrutinised the data every which way. Nothing. They expected something, maybe just a shift in the star’s spectral lines, maybe a change in brightness—but something .
Nothing? Finley scoffs; Did they get the date right?
The date is right. How long since you were last there? Elliott asks.
Maybe three months, admits Finley. We’ve been doing these supply runs three times a year since they founded the base. Everything’s always been pretty normal. You know we had a scheduled trip in three weeks?
Yeah, but this may be urgent. Maybe something happened, it needs checking out. That, says Elliott, is why you’re taking me there now.
Finley is plainly not convinced. Why you? he asks. You’re not Space Command, you’ve not been in space for twenty years.
That’s classified, Elliott tells him.
Later, Elliott regrets the conversation. Whenever he surprises a member of the Goddard’s crew at something, their expression changes when they see him. It’s something about himself that causes their features to harden, their brows to lower and eyes narrow. He’s seen it before, back at Edwards, when they get some guy through the Test Pilot School and they can all see he’s out of his depth. Elliott knows they’re thinking he’s the only man to visit Mars, he’s some kind of astronaut celebrity, so the brass, maybe even POTUS himself, decided he’d be good for this.
He’s in the rec area at the galley table, his feet angled up towards the ceiling, trying to spoon chocolate pudding from a see-through pouch. One of the junior members of the crew, a lieutenant called Stewart, joins him.
They call it Hell, you know, Stewart tells Elliott.
He doesn’t understand. The Rock? he asks. The bubble? What?
Earth Two, Stewart replies.
Now that makes sense. Elliott has been studying Earth Two, Gliese 876 d, and it does appear infernal. It’s a red globe bathed in red light from its red sun. There are no surface features visible in orbital photographs, only vague lines which hint at mountain ranges, valleys, rifts and plains. The atmosphere hides detail. Pink clouds drift slowly across the hellish landscape, softening the view. Elliott remembers Mars and how every rift and desert and shield volcano was visible from orbit, identifiable from thousands of miles away during his approach.
Is that so, he says.
Stewart nods slyly. They got all the creature comforts there, he says, but they hate it all the same.
What are they doing there? he asks.
Stewart shrugs. Science, he says. Who knows? Science for science’s sake. One up on the Russkies, I guess.
1980
The Face was a bust. Three days he drove out to it in the MRV and explored its slopes, but he couldn’t find a way up. From some angles, the top of the mesa looks like a real face, with eye-sockets, nose, lips; other times, it just looks like a weathered hill in some pitiless desert. He does not know how old it is, this region was formed during the Amazonian age and is likely three billion years old. At 0.087 psi, a hurricane here is going to feel like a light breeze, it’s not going to do much weathering. A mesa like this could be millions of years old on Earth, but here it might be a thousand times older. He doesn’t even find any real evidence it’s artificial, and that’s why they sent him here. There are some cracks between rocks, and maybe they’re proof the mesa was put together out of blocks of stone like the Sphinx
Elliott has been ordered to brief Finley once the Goddard is en route. So he says, About three weeks ago, one of the guys at NASA figured out we should be able to see evidence of Phaeton Base on the L5 Telescope.
Right, says Finley; It’s been fifteen years.
Elliott continues, So they watched Gleise 876 for a week and scrutinised the data every which way. Nothing. They expected something, maybe just a shift in the star’s spectral lines, maybe a change in brightness—but something .
Nothing? Finley scoffs; Did they get the date right?
The date is right. How long since you were last there? Elliott asks.
Maybe three months, admits Finley. We’ve been doing these supply runs three times a year since they founded the base. Everything’s always been pretty normal. You know we had a scheduled trip in three weeks?
Yeah, but this may be urgent. Maybe something happened, it needs checking out. That, says Elliott, is why you’re taking me there now.
Finley is plainly not convinced. Why you? he asks. You’re not Space Command, you’ve not been in space for twenty years.
That’s classified, Elliott tells him.
Later, Elliott regrets the conversation. Whenever he surprises a member of the Goddard’s crew at something, their expression changes when they see him. It’s something about himself that causes their features to harden, their brows to lower and eyes narrow. He’s seen it before, back at Edwards, when they get some guy through the Test Pilot School and they can all see he’s out of his depth. Elliott knows they’re thinking he’s the only man to visit Mars, he’s some kind of astronaut celebrity, so the brass, maybe even POTUS himself, decided he’d be good for this.
He’s in the rec area at the galley table, his feet angled up towards the ceiling, trying to spoon chocolate pudding from a see-through pouch. One of the junior members of the crew, a lieutenant called Stewart, joins him.
They call it Hell, you know, Stewart tells Elliott.
He doesn’t understand. The Rock? he asks. The bubble? What?
Earth Two, Stewart replies.
Now that makes sense. Elliott has been studying Earth Two, Gliese 876 d, and it does appear infernal. It’s a red globe bathed in red light from its red sun. There are no surface features visible in orbital photographs, only vague lines which hint at mountain ranges, valleys, rifts and plains. The atmosphere hides detail. Pink clouds drift slowly across the hellish landscape, softening the view. Elliott remembers Mars and how every rift and desert and shield volcano was visible from orbit, identifiable from thousands of miles away during his approach.
Is that so, he says.
Stewart nods slyly. They got all the creature comforts there, he says, but they hate it all the same.
What are they doing there? he asks.
Stewart shrugs. Science, he says. Who knows? Science for science’s sake. One up on the Russkies, I guess.
1980
The Face was a bust. Three days he drove out to it in the MRV and explored its slopes, but he couldn’t find a way up. From some angles, the top of the mesa looks like a real face, with eye-sockets, nose, lips; other times, it just looks like a weathered hill in some pitiless desert. He does not know how old it is, this region was formed during the Amazonian age and is likely three billion years old. At 0.087 psi, a hurricane here is going to feel like a light breeze, it’s not going to do much weathering. A mesa like this could be millions of years old on Earth, but here it might be a thousand times older. He doesn’t even find any real evidence it’s artificial, and that’s why they sent him here. There are some cracks between rocks, and maybe they’re proof the mesa was put together out of blocks of stone like the Sphinx
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