Voyage to Alpha Centauri: A Novel
“It looks like someone left the door open for us”, said one of the pilots.
“Waiting for us”, said the other.
With small bursts from its jets, the shuttle maneuvered close, so close in fact that there was a shudder as the two vessels touched, like the hulls of wooden boats bumping into each other without doing damage. The pilot in charge swiftly withdrew, and brought the shuttle level with the open bay. Carefully, he slid it toward the entrance. As he did so, the bay’s interior was suddenly illuminated by a bright light. When the craft was entirely inside, one more small burst brought it to the floor. The moment it touched the surface, the bay door began to lower from a recess in the wall above, and a red light began flashing.
Alarmed at first, the pilots did not know what to do. They simply sat there and watched it all, waiting to see what would happen. When the outer door was completely closed, the pilots realized that they now felt their bodies’ weight. The ship had internal gravity. Then they listened to a minute or so of roaring-hissing that steadily grew in volume until it abruptly ceased. The red light stopped flashing, and a loud voice that seemed to come from nowhere, or everywhere, announced in several languages: “Pressurization complete”.
The pilots remained where they were and waited. And waited. At this point, they should have obeyed their orders and taken the necessary steps to depart from the ship and return to Regnum-base. But they were unsure of how to reopen the door and were also overwhelmed by curiosity. They affixed their helmets to their pressure suits and locked them in place. Taking a few deep breaths, wondering if these would be their last, they agreed to make an experiment. The pilot in charge opened the shuttle’s portal, half-expecting to feel its atmosphere rush outward into a vacuum. Instead, the external atmosphere flowed into the shuttle. Now they had confirmation that the bay was indeed pressurized—though with what they did not know. The oxygen monitor for the shuttle’s internal air supply showed that some change in the atmosphere had occurred, and that it now contained slightly less oxygen, but the instrument could not indicate what other elements might be present, such as lethal gases or unknown factors detrimental to human health.
Rashly, the copilot opened his helmet, preparing to shut it at the first sensation of distress. He inhaled. Then he smiled.
“A bit stuffy”, he laughed. “But good enough for guys like us.”
Both men then exited their craft and walked about the bay. On the wall opposite the ship’s external wall, they located a large, closed doorway leading deeper into the interior. They had brought Vladimir Kirilov’s codes with them, and now they tried punching the numbers into a console beside the doorway. Finally, one of the numbers prompted the loud voice to say: “Access verified.” An overhead green light began flashing as the door slid slowly upward. When the entrance was fully open, the light stayed solid green.
The men now found themselves staring into a cavernous hallway or concourse, far longer than it was wide. They could not see either end of it, though here too the chamber was illuminated by overhead lights. The ceiling appeared to be sixty to eighty feet high.
“We shouldn’t be doing this”, murmured the pilot.
“Yes, you’re right”, said the copilot.
“If we die, the shuttle stays here—years of work gone in one stroke.”
“And no second chance.”
“Let’s go.”
Retracing their steps, they closed the doors to the interior. The copilot pointed out that there was a numerical console beside the huge door that accessed outer space, and he offered to try opening it using one of the codes. The pilot replied that this was a risk: if the door began opening too soon, whoever entered the code might be sucked out with the atmosphere, followed by a painful death, suit or no suit. Alternatively, the code command might have a delay response, giving him enough time to get back into the shuttle and pressurize it. But there was no way of knowing what the timing, if any, was.
Both men reentered the shuttle and sealed it. Then they sat there for a time, thinking.
“It may be automated”, said the pilot at last. He lightly touched the anti-gravity button and the vessel lifted from the floor. Immediately, the red light commenced its flashing, and the loud voice announced: “Prepare for depressurization.”
A minute later, the atmosphere hissed as it was pumped from the bay, and a bell rang continuously until there was no more air for soundwaves. The red light flashed on and on as the bay door began to rise, then turned green when it was completely open.
“Thank God”, both men exhaled simultaneously.
The pilot brought the shuttle out through the wide-open portal and headed for home.
The boarding And now, my personal account begins:
On the morning of 15 July 258, the new shuttle lifted off from the field base at the science center near Foundation City. We rose straight up into a clear blue sky, ascending very slowly. The first four hours of ascent would be through the troposphere and stratosphere, the next hour and a half through the mesosphere and ionosphere, and finally, when we had escaped the planet’s protective layers, came the short half-hour propulsion flight to the ship.
The party was comprised of fourteen people: seven scientists, including an electrical engineer, a chemist, a mathematician, an astronomer, a biologist, a physician, and a person who specializes in the new theoretical field of computer analysis. The non-scientists were our two pilots and a navigator, a representative of the Commonwealth Congress, who is also chief archivist of the continental library, and three historians, one of whom was myself in my combined capacity as historian, priest, and representative of the synod of bishops.
During the first hours of the journey, I felt an increasing sense of awe and love for this work of art that God had made and given to us: an entire world, a world so beautiful, so inexhaustibly rich in wonders. I had until then only imagined what it must look like as a whole. Though the newly rediscovered science of photography has given us marvels of image-making, it cannot convey the colors of reality and has never obtained images of the planet seen from above—seen as a whole. My first sight of it reduced me to tears, and I think my companions felt very much as I did, for we all grew motionless and silent as we gazed out the windows, and there was no speaking among us until later, when we boarded the great ship.
As we left the ionosphere behind, propulsion was ignited, and its thrust caused me to feel the return of a portion of my body’s weight. So many marvels all at once! Through the windows, we saw the massive form of the great ship swiftly approaching. Reducing thrust and maneuvering carefully, the pilots brought us in close and then, with small bursts from navigation vents, we entered the bay. The shuttle settled gently onto the floor, a red light began flashing, and the outer bay door descended, enclosing us within.
It is impossible to adequately convey our first impressions. These were various and conflicting, at times psychologically disorienting due to the sheer number of astonishing experiences and discoveries we would come upon within a very short period of time. In a word, we were overwhelmed, sometimes with awe, sometimes by fear, and occasionally by profound respect for those who had remained as passengers on the ship two hundred and fifty years before our time.
As the pilots led the team through the bay into the ship proper, we felt as if we were entering a city. During the following two weeks, the truth that it was a city floating in the heavens was never far from our thoughts. Our life’s experience had imprinted in us the subconscious conviction that heavy things up in the air must always fall down, and this was a very heavy thing indeed. At certain other moments, we felt as if we were wandering within the complexities of a colossal machine.
We had brought with us diagrams of the ship left to us by the pioneers. We had all read their memoirs, short and long, which had been published and republished over the centuries. We knew that we were now on the bottom level called PHM, which was divided into three main sections, titled Propulsion (at the rear of the vessel), Holds (the largest secti
on, in the middle) and Maintenance (the smallest, in the forward area). The shuttle bays were on the port side of the ship, in a separate region that ran the length of Maintenance and Holds, with access mainly into the latter. The Holds was divided equally into two separate subsections: food storage and samples storage, where zoological, botanical, and mineral samples brought to the ship by shuttles had been stored for return to Earth.
The committee at Regnum-base had decided beforehand on a program of exploration that would bypass this bottom level and take the team straight up through the four intermediate residential concourses to the ship’s command center on KC. It would be the most likely place to find a hub of information.
The possibility that people were still alive on board was remote in the extreme. For two hundred years, the vessel had displayed not a flicker of life, at least none that we could detect. Regardless of the possibility that the first generation of voyageurs might have had children, grandchildren, and so forth, there was simply the problem of food. Pioneers had estimated that there would have been no more than a century’s supply at best, even as the number of the ship’s company declined. We did not yet know with certainty that this was the Kosmos, but it was generally believed to be the original ship. There were, after all, no other shuttles: there were three empty bays beside our own, which fit with what we knew about the condition of the ship at the time of the catastrophe.
Following the plan, we now moved as a body along the shuttle concourse until we reached a set of three doors in the left-hand, or inner, concourse wall. One stood open. Engraved in the wall above the doors was the word “elevator” in several languages. Apparently, the original inhabitants had used these very small room-like mechanisms to raise and lower themselves from level to level. This had played an important role in their lives. Regrettably, the numerical key consoles beside each door did not respond to touch. Within the single open elevator, we found another console with five command buttons, on which was inscribed their destination floors, reading from bottom to top: PHM, D, C, B, A, KC. None of them responded to touch, and throughout our remaining time on the ship we were unable to locate any elevator that still functioned. Why this should be so, we could not guess and did not try to discover, since we had far more important questions before us. A long walk from one end of the shuttle concourse to the other showed us that there were a dozen “emergency staircases” ranged along the route. Only the one closest to our arrival bay had an open door; the others were locked.
Inside its entrance foyer, or stairwell, we found painted on the wall facing us the following words, in the French language, with an English translation:
Ascendez, s’il vous plait. Les habitants de la Kosmos sont ici. Nous vivons à l‘étage supérieur. (Please go up. The people of the Kosmos are here. We live on the top floor.)
This was our first confirmation that the ship was the original exploration vessel that had brought mankind to Regnum Pacis. As we climbed upward through successive staircases, floor after floor, we learned that the ship’s primary energy source still functioned on every level. We kept our oxygen apparatus by our sides, but the atmosphere continued to be consistently breathable air. We also had gravity, light, and warmth. We did not try the closed doors at any of the landings and proceeded directly toward KC.
Pausing on a landing, which we estimated to be at the halfway mark, none of us were as short of breath as we had expected to be. One of the scientists pointed out that Earth’s gravity had been less than ours, and the ship had maintained what was normal on its home planet. We were now, he said, experiencing the benefits of a good diet or fast, with no loss of muscle strength. The comment occasioned smiles all around. I also felt grateful for the years during my youth when I had been an avid mountain climber, before I entered the monastery. Despite my advancing age, I now felt more invigorated than strained. I was also wearing my lightest habit, which I use for summer labors in the garden, and I was carrying little baggage, just my backpack, containing my portable Mass kit, notebooks, and a few changes of underclothing.
With nods to each other, we resumed the ascent. Finally, arriving at the topmost platform where the staircase ended, we found an open doorway awaiting us. Passing through it, we were now in a wide concourse. Pausing for a moment to orient ourselves, we looked left and right down an avenue that resembled a street of unbroken smoothness, as if made of polished limestone, shining with reflected light from overhead sources. Immediately in front of us stood a small wooden table upon which sat a vase of flowers.
I went down on my knees to inspect it and saw that the flowers were not organic but had been made with art and great diligence from tiny pieces of fabric. Handwritten on a piece of cardboard beside the vase was the following, again in French, but lacking any translation (the added translation is mine):
Bienvenue, chers frères.
Nous sommes très heureux que vous ayez enfin venu. Trois d’entre nous restent. Nous vivons dans l’infirmerie, au bout du couloir à votre droite. N’ayez pas peur. Il n’ya pas de maladie. Nous sommes simplement vieux. Je suis bien et je m’occupe des deux autres.
Avec l’amour,
Marie
[Welcome, dear brothers.
We are very happy that you have come at last. Three of us remain. We live in the infirmary, down the hall to your right. Have no fear. There is no sickness. We are merely old. I am well, and I look after the other two.
With love,
Marie]
I translated for the team members, and without discussion, we turned right and walked toward the end of the hall. Passing through a set of double doors, we entered a section that looked less official, as the “avenue” now suddenly changed to a pavement of soft carpet. Many of the open doorways we passed revealed inner rooms with furniture of unusual design. We peeked inside two or three such chambers along the way and saw beds, chairs, tables, and the most extraordinary lifelike images on the walls—photographic, I think, though they were rich in colors. Mainly, these were scenes of forests and seas, and one an unknown city of immense size. Another was a landscape with red mountains rising above a golden plain where nothing appeared to grow.
Finally, we came to a second set of double doorways, on which was printed the word Infirmary in several languages. Obscuring half of them was a clumsily painted red cross that was clearly a later addition. We pushed the doors open and stepped inside.
The room was a spacious one, with two rows of beds, still covered by neatly arranged white cloths. One bed, the first on the right side, closest to the door, contained a body. Only a head capped by long white hair was visible, turned away from us. The form beneath the mauve blanket lay in the semi-fetal position, as if the person had just fallen asleep.
The team’s physician stepped forward and drew back the blanket and sheet, which began to fragment as they were moved. Beneath these covers was a skeleton. The bones were clean, the flesh long decayed; there was no smell of decomposition in the room. The covering fabrics and those beneath the body were stained, though dry and odorless.
“It is Marie, perhaps”, I ventured, and none of my companions replied.
The others stood for a while in silence, gazing down at the sad little form on the bed. Then one by one, they turned away and walked about the room, looking curiously at a variety of instruments on countertops, and into cupboards and closets. I blessed and anointed the body’s remains.
There were several items on the bedside table, all coated with a layer of dust: an empty carafe and drinking cup, a few books, a pen, a basket, full of pieces of colored fabric, and a half-completed cloth flower. There was also a small crucifix, carved from wood with not very great skill. It lay upon a few sheets of paper, which I now took up and read quietly to myself.
Her name was Marie Louise Durocher, and she had worked aboard the Kosmos as a kitchen assistant and, after the catastrophe, as a cook. She was twenty-one years old at the time of departure from Earth. Ten years later, when the pioneers chose to take the shuttle back to Regnu
m Pacis, she had been torn between going with them and staying on the ship, but in the end decided to return to Earth because she missed her mother and father very much, and she was their only child. After the near-collision with her home planet, when the ship had begun its long return to “AC-A-7”, she had suffered an emotional breakdown for a while, but people had been very kind to her and helped her through it. She had grown strong, she wrote, by serving others. She had known the ensign Manuel, before his death, before he saved the world and its people. They were friends. Later, when she was ill in her mind, she saw him in a dream, and he told her to pray and to trust. It was he who taught her from heaven how to serve, to find healing in this, and joy.
Who was Manuel? I wondered.
Marie had written a good deal more on these few sheets of paper, but the document was short on details and long on reflections about suffering, hope, love, and her faith in Christ. I strained for descriptions, but there were few, only the portrait of a soul and, even this, a sketch.
She had been eighty-four E-years old when the Kosmos returned to orbit around Regnum Pacis in Year 36 (RP-y). By then, there were only seven people left alive, all of them very old. Two years later, there were only three people left, all women. During the following year, wrote Marie, “My beloved sisters have passed away into the arms of infinite Love.” She had interred the bodies of her last two friends in the “la mortuaire”, and then waited.
The document clearly had been written during her final days of life, when she knew she had not much longer to live. She wrote that she now understood the pioneers would not come to the ship and rescue her. They might find her body some day, and if they did, she wished to bless them “from beyond the gates of death”. She prayed the visitors were in good health and good spirits. She hoped that some among them had come to know “le bon Dieu”. If by a miracle everyone had come to know Him down there on the beautiful planet beneath her feet, the world she would never see again, then this was very good, and she was content to offer her “petite sacrifice” toward that end.