THE SCREEN DIMMED, and the lights in McKinley’s office came back on. There was an awkward silence. Alvarez didn’t know what to make of it all. His mind was still processing, spitting out random inconclusive thoughts. He looked around the table. Parker had a faraway look in his eyes. Even McKinley and Brennen, who must have seen the video before, were reverently quiet.
McKinley broke the silence. “Any questions?”
“Only a million,” Parker whispered.
“What was that nonsense at the end?” Alvarez asked.
“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner,” Brennen said.
Alvarez said, “That’s very nice, Michael, but…”
“He's interpreting the Jesus prayer,” McKinley said. “It's the Russian Orthodox version of the Catholic last rite.” Again, everyone was silent.
Finally, McKinley said, “We've got to go to the probe.”
“Sir, that's over a week away by interstellar travel,” Alvarez said. “There's no way that man would still be alive when we got there.”
“We don't know that,” McKinley said. “He may have life support back online.”
“He would have contacted us,” Parker said.
“Not necessarily,” Brennen retorted.
“He may have life support but be unable to get comms back.”
“Regardless,” McKinley continued, “we have to go. This is the first time anything like this has ever happened to a Novos probe. This could be really damaging to our recruitment program, not to mention the loss of assets in space.”
“I feel bad for this tech, but I’m not concerned about Novos recruitment” Alvarez said.
“You better care, John,” McKinley said. “Unless you've divested all of your wealth, your investments, your certs into non-Novos denominated assets…If the markets get a whiff of this, it could bring us all down.”
“You assume he has investments,” Brennen added.
McKinley ignored him. “I don't think I need to remind you of the non-disclosure agreement you’ve signed.”
“I didn't sign anything,” Alvarez said.
“It’s in your reactivation rider,” McKinley said. “Moving on—we need to recover the probe, figure out what happened, and try to vanquish the political damage this will cause back home. The probe should still be in orbit. Right, Dr. Brennen?”
“I’m just a biologist.”
Parker spoke up, “It should be there for months if nothing was altered.”
“How do we know what happened to him won't happen to us?” Alvarez said.
“Do you plan on breaking any vials?” Brennen asked. “We’ll bring enough radiation to kill anything known to man.”
“What about something unknown to man?” mouthed Parker.
“What was that Parker?” Brennen said.
Alvarez interjected, “We don't know what we're dealing with. What about the rest of the data? You obviously were able to recover more of the vid-feed than I could.”
“The feed was all we could salvage,” Brennen said. “The rest was either missing or so corrupted we couldn't
reconstitute it.”
“What about the technician. How many hours did he have in his space suit?” Alvarez asked.
Brennen shrugged. Parker said, “If it was a standard, fully-charged Novos tank, he had over six hours of air left. He could and should have other tanks on board to extend the time.”
“And he probably has life support back online,” McKinley added optimistically. Everyone seemed to have a hard time swallowing this notion.
“But if he didn't,” Alvarez continued, “what are his chances?”
“No chance,” Parker said. “He would need two dozen tanks to wait out a week-long rescue journey.”
“Twenty-eight tanks,” Brennen corrected.
“So, we're flying in blind. We have no clue what this stuff is the tech found?” Alvarez said.
“You fly your little ship,” Brennen said, “and leave the science to me.”
McKinley interrupted, “That’s enough, men. We are to assume the probe tech has everything but communications back online and is waiting for us to come get him. Alvarez, I've reactivated your contract. You're getting paid at the agreed upon rate. You said you wanted enough certs for you and Nadia to start over. Well, here you are. Brennen, you asked to be here. You know what to do.”
Brennen said, “Of course.”
Everyone's eyes slowly turned to David Parker. He spoke up sheepishly, “So why exactly am I here?”
“We need the Constance,” McKinley said.
“She's not ready,” he blurted out. “I just took her out for her first run, and she's got a lot of bugs left.”
“You can keep her flying,” McKinley said confidently.
“Why don't you just take an Atlas-class ship or another Falcon-class ship?”
“None of the Atlas-class ships are fast enough, and none of the other Falcon-class ships have the versatility of the Constance. She’s the fastest ship we have that can carry enough crew, equipment, and research capabilities to deal with this problem. Like John mentioned, we don’t know what we’re facing here. We can’t afford to send anything less than our best craft and crew. The board of directors—and I agree with them—says sending the Constance is our best bet.”
“It won't do us any good,” Parker said, “if there's a breakdown along the way. What if we have an electrical fire or we burn out the core? You're placing far too much confidence in an untested design.”
“That's why you should go. Look, you’ve got the material support of the entire corporate settlement. Make a list of all the parts you are afraid will fail, and we'll store them onboard. Easy as that. And you can request any crew you'd like. Look, Parker, the board has decided; the Constance is
going. Your decision is whether you want to increase her chances of success by going too.”
“I want Terra York.” Parker said impatiently. He blushed. “She's the best—actually the only—chief mechanic I know of that will make my job any easier.”
“It's settled then,” said McKinley. He stood up from the table, and the three men instinctively did the same. “Pack your bags. The Constance leaves at 08:00.”