ALVAREZ STEPPED ONTO the helm. At the communications console, he saw a vid-feed on screen. “Brennen, I’m going to nail your hide to the wall when we get back to Novos.”
Brennen, his back partially turned, was busy working on something. “John,” he said without looking up, “we don’t have time for this right now. I know what happened to the probe tech, and I think I know what happened to the probe.”
“Is he alive?”
“Do you think I’d be the only one talking right now if he was?” Brennen said. “What’s important is that I got systems back online.”
A twinge struck Alvarez’s abdomen. Brennen wasn’t on the shuttle, he realized. He was on the probe. “Michael, why don’t you have your space suit on?”
“Relax. I took care of it. The robotic unit hit the probe with so much broad-spectrum radiation and antiviral/antibacterial gas, nothing could live through that. If I don’t glow in the dark from all this radiation, I’ll be fine.”
Alvarez wasn’t convinced. “What about life-support? How much air do you have?”
“John, this is silly. I took two weeks of supplies with me: oxygen tanks, food and water. I’m spending the rest of my time here working on the probe. I’ll head back with you after the mission’s over.
If you’re done mothering me, can we please get back to business?”
Alvarez clinched his teeth. “Fine. What did you find?”
“The onboard computer has the uncorrupted files from the data burst sent to Novos.”
“The missing video?”
“The video and the sensory data. But it wasn’t easy to find. I had to wade through over a hundred useless log entries. This guy fancied himself a singer-songwriter. How many terrible songs about flying-solo or love-by-starlight can one man write? There wasn’t one tune that I-”
“Michael.”
“Right. I’m just saying I should get paid more for the abuse I suffered.”
“What can you tell so far?”
“For one, the probe tech didn’t die from the life-support failing. The computer shows that it came back online shortly after we lost the vid-feed.”
“So what killed him?”
“He was outside the ship, John—dead in his space-suit.”
Alvarez tried not to look shocked. “Was he trying to make repairs or something?”
“All he did was disengage the primary power, right outside the main access hatch. I don’t know why he’d even do that. If he was going to try to reboot systems manually, he would have turned primary power back on.”
“I don’t get it.”
“John, I’m convinced he thought something or someone was on the ship with him.”
“But you found nothing to support that?”
“Right. Power of the mind, perhaps. You know how crazy people get on these solo missions. He already saw himself as a starving artist. Those types are always looking for an excuse to fail, some reason why it’s not their fault their art or music is worthless.
As soon as he ran into trouble, I think he accepted his fate so strongly that he couldn’t shake it, even after the real danger was gone.”
“You’re saying he was scared to death?”
“He was so scared he took all of the oxygen tanks out with him, and when they were used up he chose to asphyxiate in space rather than go back into the probe.”
Alvarez looked down for a second. “What happened to the probe? Why did life-support go down in the first place?”
“I know what happened,” Brennen said. “But I don’t know why or even how. It’s most likely the same reason the star has been getting younger and gaining mass. The probe detected some sort of object, perhaps a moon, orbiting the star. The tech positioned the probe between the star and this object.”
Brennen paused. “John, this anomaly—moon, object, whatever—it’s unusual to say the least. Whatever it’s transmitting or emitting, it’s doing so at regular intervals.”
“Regular like a definite frequency, a wavelength?”
“No, I mean it’s emitting this burst every one hour and thirty-seven minutes. John, I’m sending you the coordinates now. It’s closer to the probe than to the Constance, but it should still be within visual.”
Thomson, overhearing the conversation, received the coordinates and searched for the object. “There it is, sir,” he said.
Alvarez saw a small gray dot, dimly reflecting starlight. “Increase magnification,” he said. The object filled his screen. It was smaller than most moons, but too spherical and uniformly proportioned to be an asteroid. “Michael, when’s the next burst? When’s it going off again?”
“I should know the answer momentarily,” Brennen said. “The computer’s clock went down with the rest of the systems. So, the time-stamp’s unreliable. I’m using the star charts and the probe’s navigational records to calculate how much time
passed while systems were offline.”
Brennen’s cool, sarcastic demeanor faded. For the first time in the conversation, he looked directly into the camera. “John, the object is going to transmit in less than six minutes.”