Next Chapter ~ Return to Contents ~ The Writer’s Den

 

Chapter One

 

The Awakenings

 

 

 

Waking up was like being born.  At first there was no memory, only awareness.  It was dark.  It was cold.  Light, breaking through the darkness, expanded overhead, much like the journey from the womb.  The primal sense of sight and hearing alerted him to a simple fact: he was alive, but frightened and very cold.  Warm air now blew over him, as he was extracted.  He was, in the second stage of cognition, in a strange, unfamiliar place in which a face, which meant nothing in his present state, loomed overhead.  Like an infant, fearful of the experience, he gasped his first breath of air and screamed in terror, as he was unhooked from the life support system and monitors inside his chamber, raised up out of the chamber, shivering from the cold, and exposed to a flood of light.

“There-there, Captain Drexel,” the attendant murmured. “I’ll get you warmed up.  You’ve been asleep for seventeen years.  You’re memory will return.”

As his vision cleared, he could make out, to his horror, the features of his mid-wife: a creature with two orbs on each side of a protuberance with a vibrating slit below that uttered gibberish as it jerked him about.  Of course, in his current state of awareness, he was unfamiliar with humans.  Dragged out by his attendant, almost naked, he was hauled by his armpits across the floor limply at first, his legs too numb to move.  As he began thrashing about weakly under the attendants’ control, he was strapped onto stool.  A spray of warm water cascaded suddenly from above.  Inside this second, translucent chamber, full cognition came slowly for him as he was thawed out from the intense cold.  The comforting spray triggered his first reflection: he had been in an awful place; now he was safe.  Flashes of memory—people, places, and events, blinked off and on in his head.  The attendant poked her head in now to check on him, smiled, then shut the door.  With sudden insight, he recognized what she was.  She no longer frightened him.  He had seen such creatures before.  On the other side of this door to this room, the shadow of a second specter, similar to the first, rapped on the door.

“This is Doctor Max Rodgers,” he called cheerily, “Calm down captain; we all go through it.  It’s cold, dark, and scary at first.  Sandra and Woody, our android medics, pulled me out too, and dragged me to the other shower.  Nicole, my assistant’s in that one now.  Like you I was a blank sheet at first.  I didn’t remember a thing.  Then it all came back…”

 For the ‘newborn,’ it sounded like gibberish once more.  He was, as Doctor Rodgers explained, a blank sheet, unable to comprehend or communicate.  The English language he had grown up with was no more intelligible to him than Sanskrit or Chinese.  Cognition came sluggishly.  Without familiar reference points, for that matter, his emotions were basic and his reactions instinctual.

“His strength’s returning,” he heard the attendant say on the other side of the door. “He can’t understand you, Doctor Rodgers, but this man is strong.  He’ll come around soon.  You took a full hour.”

“You’re right, Sandra!” The doctor sighed. “I scarcely remember that ordeal.  I’m still remembering things.  It doesn’t come all at once.  We’ll let him sit it out awhile; he’ll come to.  We’ve got nine more to go.”

All of this, of course, remained gibberish to the captain.  While the doctor checked on his assistant Nicole, the android called Sandra looked in on him again.  Something stirred in him then—a primal urge all animals have.  The android, a beautiful face and shapely body stood in the doorway.  Reminiscent of a twentieth century Barbie doll, with a shapely body but devoid of facial expression, except a perfect smile, the creature known as Sandra, moving expeditiously, reached through the cascading water to check his pulse and look into his eyes, then extracted herself just as quickly from the shower.  The being, identified as Captain Abraham Drexel, still restrained on the stool, wept inexplicably.  Still to weak to attempt an escape, he continued to thrash about, then, as the warm, soothing water sprayed his body, fragments of memory, these pieces more important than the others, finally surface in his mind, coming together like pieces to a puzzle.  Moving forward, in front of his life experiences, was a fact that came passively at this stage.  The two specters had called him Captain Abraham Drexel.  After hearing him called this, he understand the words, realizing that this must be true… But captain of what?  What did this mean?  Though comprehension of words was returning to him, the name sounded alien to him, as if it belonged to someone else.  Floating around this piece to the puzzle, the other fragments fell into place, like icebergs on a dark sea …Unicorp…Triton…Captain Drexel…What did they mean?

Startled by the sudden shriek of another other ‘newborns,’ somewhere on the ship, he tugged at the restraints on his wrists and lap.  He could hear the person the doctor called Nicole crying in the next shower.  So who were those people?  He wondered.  Where was he?  Why was he placed in restraints?  Looking down, he noticed a pair of briefs covering his genitals and rear.  The name Unicorp was stenciled on the waste band.  It meant nothing to him yet.  Jogging his memory was the tattoo on his arm—a heart, which he vaguely understood now, and the name Rosalie inside.  Again, the name meant nothing, but he knew these reference points were important.  One of the voices, high pitched and awful, unnerved him greatly.  It was familiar…a woman, like Rosalie.  It wasn’t the one called Nicole.  She was quiet now.  It was someone in the next compartment.  Why was she screaming like that?  Already his primal memories—birth, fear, and confusion—were fading.  In their place, an urgency filled him, almost intuitively, based upon the training drilled into him back on Earth but also upon the few pieces to the mental puzzle already put into place.  After a while, a second screaming voice, deep and hoarse, which made it more unsettling than the first, jarred his mind further.  Like the other woman, the voice was familiar.  In a wave of cognition, triggered by his understanding so far, more pieces fell together, less haphazardly.  First came early recollections—family, childhood, high school, and a cherub-faced woman, he recognized as Rosalie.  Next, more significantly, he realized, were those most current pieces—Unicorp… Neptune… Triton … and an awareness of other crew members (whose names returned sluggishly) on the ship.  Though groggy from years of suspended animation, Captain Abraham Drexel called out loudly, “Doc.  This is Abe.  Report to the ship showers.  We have to talk.”

Soon, Doctor Max Rodgers and a second android, this one a male, Abe recognized as Woody, arrived.  Reaching in to turn off the shower, Woody apologized, unfastened his fetters, and helped him to his feet.  A robe was handed to him, which Woody helped him slip into, while the doctor checked his vital signs with a scanner.  Standing before the doctor and the android, listening to the remainder of the ship awaken fitfully from its long sleep, Captain Abraham Drexel took command of his ship.

 

******

          The puzzle was almost complete.  Captain Abraham Drexel, or Abe he preferred being called, commanded Unicorp’s Phoenix, an advanced, exploratory ship, for an internationally sponsored mission to Triton, Neptune’s largest moon.   The name Unicorp, he recalled, was an abbreviation of ‘United Nations International Mining Corporation’, minus the m, a corporate body of friendly nations, with a common interest: mining the outer reaches of the solar system.   Since the Asteroid belt’s mineral resources would be played out within a generation, and the Lunar, Martian, and Europan potential had proved to be scientifically important but commercially disappointing enterprises, Unicorp was looking ahead for a new sector of the solar to begin mining operations, with a secondary mission of scientific exploration.  From the first, because of the long range results implied, the urgency of the enterprise seemed exaggerated to Captain Drexel and his crew.  Considering the present tensions on Earth caused by the dearth in mineral resources and fuel, it might, in addition to being an exploration for minerals and fuel, be seen as a symbolic action to galvanize the friendly nations and divert public attention from the problems in the world.  This possibility was discussed by crewmembers before take off.  “Why all the secrecy?” they asked the captain, who didn’t know anymore than them.  “What was the hurry?” they asked the androids, their caretakers, as they were placed in hibernation as soon as the ship was in space. 

Abe, who was prepped for cryogenic sleep and quickly stuck into his chamber just like them, felt helpless when he couldn’t answer his crew’s questions.  None of them realized that they would have to suffer hibernation so soon.  Among thousands of candidates for the Phoenix Mission, they had felt honored to be selected—the captain most of all, but the glamour of being a stellarnaut, as they were called by the media, wore off almost completely when reality set in.  One moment, as a select crowd of dignitaries cheered them as they entered the Phoenix, they were heroes and heroines; and the next moment, inside the ship and in space they were confronted with seventeen years of forced hibernation—in the thinking of Carla Mendoza, the atmospheric scientist and meteorologist, guinea pigs, testing out the effects of hibernation in space.  Was Carla right?  Where we merely a scientific experiment? wondered the captain now.

For those moments, during his personal ordeal, he felt naïve and foolish, emotions he was certain all of them felt.  Not one of them, including himself, who, as a seasoned military man should know better, had asked enough questions.  The original tour of the vessel days before takeoff was intended to acquaint them with the main features of the Phoenix, including the spectacular window before the ship’s controls, the captain’s table, the kitchen and galley, and, in the centripetal portion of the ship’s compartments, the building materials for Triton, equipment, and living quarters of crewmembers when the ship was circling Neptune’s moon.  It had all been exciting for them.  Just think of it!  They marveled as they looked ahead to takeoff.  They were a new breed of explorers, not astronauts or rocketeers of old but stellarnauts, reaching the farthest reaches of the solar system—Triton, Neptune’s dark, mysterious moon.

Now, as Abe thought about it, he had second thoughts.  He was certain his crew did too.  It all seemed like a leap of faith.  The purpose of exploring a distant moon for resources that couldn’t be realized for a generation had been accepted without argument by the Phoenix’s crew.  They had trusted the scientists and their trainers.  No one thought it necessary to ask questions about the one compartment the flight team had glossed over: the cryogenic chambers.  It was something they just had to do.  As the crew shared their experiences of going in and then, after seventeen years, out of the hibernation chambers, they expressed the same reflections as the captain.  In the words of Hans Rucker, the German zoologist, they had walked like lambs to the slaughter.  All of them were worried about the what lie ahead: the great unknown beyond takeoff.  Now that the captain thought about it, he realized they were all too self-conscious to act like cowards.  The honor and glory had blinded them.  Everyone wanted to be brave, especially the captain, and yet the mission had been cloaked in mystery from the beginning.  The top secret nature of the enterprise should have implied another purpose for the enterprise other than merely the exploration of Triton.  The very name Phoenix, the legendary bird rising from the dead, had an ominous ring to it.  Why hadn’t the good scientists named it a more appropriate name, such as the Triton, since that was its destination or given it a traditional title in honor of previous ships such as the Vanguard II, the previous combination space ship and space station sent to Europa, Jupiter’s Earth-like moon.  All of the questions the crewmembers should have asked before they entered hibernation had vanished from their minds for seventeen years.  Now, after cognition returned, they had flooded back—all boiling down to one question: what came next?

“The android caretakers are acting strangely,” Abe noted warily. 

“Something isn’t right!” Carla Mendoza muttered aloud.

The remaining crewmembers nodded in agreement.  What they remembered now was a suspicion they shared before sleep, which ebbed back slowly as would a murky dream.  It was not just the questions they should have asked or the fear of the unknown now.  It was a feeling, Ingrid, the Canadian geologist, explained to the botanist from China, Ling Soon: that tingling at the back of the neck or chill up the spine.  Ingrid’s fear, Abe realized, mirrored his own.  All of his crew had been through a traumatic ordeal.  They reminded him of frightened children more than stellarnauts.  Trying to shake off his own fears and ignore the suspicions shared by his crew, Abe faced the current reality.  Aboard Unicorp’s Phoenix, piloted and attended by androids, as the humans had remained in hibernation (also called cryogenic sleep0, the stellarnauts destined for the outer rim of the solar system, were close to their destination.  They had slept almost the entire journey, over seventeen years, in a dreamless condition resembling a coma.  Now, Captain Drexel recalled light-headedly, they were close to the beginning of the Triton project.  Because of the state of the world, a dark undertone to mission had plagued him, but it was time to take control of the ship in both thought and deed.  Right now the he was concerned about his crew.  On board, still suffering rebirth after space travel, his shipmates, which included both scientists and his staff, had groped as he had done, as sleepwalkers in this pageant, gradually becoming aware of who they were, why they were here, and the importance of their mission for Unicorp and Earth. 

While dressing themselves with Woody or Sandy’s help after their showers, they had, when they came to, barely recalled the previous ordeal.  According to Doctor Max Rodgers, there would be no memories of the sleep, itself, and only snatches of recall from the awakening, which would disappear, as newborn’s first memories, almost entirely as the days progressed.  In his sleek, body-fitting jump suit with the Unicorp log over a pocket and matching sneakers, except for the eagle on his shoulders that indicated his rank, Captain Drexel’s attire resembled the other crewmembers assembled in the conference room.  Now that Phoenix had begun circling Triton, they had been awakened for their mission.  Woody and Sandra withdrew into the background to await service, while Skip, the android captain, and Rusty, the pilot, stood close-by, until Captain Drexel and Lieutenant Sheila Livingston, respectively, their human counterparts, were up to the task.  When the captain called them to his table, it was expected by their creators, that the other two androids, Sandra and Woody, would emerge from their pods, like proverbial vampires, as servants to the humans, but with the advanced artificial intelligence built into them, their pods were never used.   Unwittingly, the robotologists had made the androids their masters. 

Before exploration, the four caretakers understood that all twelve members of the crew would have to be mentally and physically ready.  Their only function was to preserve their human cargo and direct the mission while they were asleep, which was most of the time.  Now the humans were awake.  Captain Abraham Drexel must, from this point on, oversea all divisions of the ship—a task that struck him as overwhelming in his current state of mind.  Gandy Supra, the ship’s engineer, who would be in charge of the hyper-drive of the vessel and Mbuto Sawala, the electronics expert in charge both the computers and electronic circuitry of the Phoenix, looked around in child-like wonderment at the surrounding command center, as if they couldn’t comprehend where they were.  Second-in-command, Abe recalled, was Lieutenant Sheila Livingston, one of the shrieking voices he heard upon awakening, now sitting in a befuddled daze beside him.  The others, all scientists—Hans Rucker (the second panic-stricken voice heard) and Ling Soon—the ship’s zoologist and botanist, respectively, Ingrid Westfall—geologist, Carla Mendoza (atmospheric meteorologist), Elroy Simpson (habitat architect and project representative), and last but not lease Said Rammal, the robotologist overseeing the androids and robotic controls of the ship, were also badly hung over.  Of all the crewmembers, Sheila and Nicole were the worst of the lot.  Doctor Rodgers assistant Nicole, in fact, who sat in the shower next to Abe, had been too far-gone to help Max resuscitate the crew.  Everyone, including himself had only vague reflections of their ordeal.  In various stages of giddiness, shock, and discomfort they knew only that the long, journey from Earth to Neptune’s mysterious moon, in which they had lain in a dreadful, dreamless state, was over. 

The adventure, they understood, was about to begin.  No one wanted think about their return to Earth when they would have to repeat the state of cryogenic sleep.  Such a state, they had been warned during training but managed to sublimate when boarding the Phoenix, was not really sleep at all but rather deepest hibernation in which the entire body is frozen cryogenically in a chamber, fed and monitored intravenously throughout the ordeal, and checked constantly by attendants during the period of hibernation or suspended animation—a state resembling deepest anesthesia used in surgery—an almost comatose condition which can’t be recalled upon awakening.  A month, a year, or, the stellarnauts cases, seventeen years, seemed like a mere moment in time.  Despite the lack of recall of the experience and difficulty remembering anything until cognition set in, a feeling of great anxiety similar to infants yanked from the birth canal, which the designers could not have foreseen, now left everyone in a pitiful state.  As a result afterwards, a dulled expectation took hold of Phoenix’s men and women for what lie ahead.  The greatest emotion shared by the crewmembers was relief.  Something dreadful lay behind them—a dark period, followed by violent movements, shadows, and screams. 

Captain Drexel, with his full faculties, used an archaic form of address: “Ladies and gentleman of the Phoenix, welcome back to the Triton Project.  We’ve passed a most important milestone: 4.3 billion kilometers of interstellar space—seventeen years.  Your memories are coming back to you, some more, some less.  Nevertheless, let me remind you that you are, as the French would say, the crème de la crème—the very best in your fields and technology.  Having climbed aboard the Phoenix and placed immediately into your chambers, however, you were like babes experiencing infancy.  Doctor Rodgers explained it to me.  Now, having remembered how to talk and comprehend, your heads are filled with data—at this point rather muddled and confusing, but you’re humans again!  Be patient; your training will all come back to you.  Only the engineer, communications expert, my lieutenant, and myself are familiar with the controls and machinery of our ship, but even our minds are dulled by the sleep.  Though trained back on Earth, none of us have had practical experience in space.” “Ho-ho,” he tried making light of it, “that’s why we have the andies.  Well Skip, Rusty, Sandra, and Woody, we’re awake now.  We’re taking control.  We’ve got a job to do!

“First things first, though,” he added, seeing the discomfort of members of the group.  “Some of you have queasy tummies from all those chemicals pumped into your veins during sleep.  Most of you are anxious for your first dinner in seventeen years.  While you slept, your bodies remained in limbo.  You needed very little nourishment.  Strangely enough, you might not even be hungry, but it’s important that you eat.  You’ll also have to exercise awhile and brush up on your specialties and understanding of the ship.  The andies will guide us.  Before we go any further Woody and Sandra will serve us all with prepared dinners and drink.  I have no idea what that is.” “Sheila,” he ordered the droopy-eyed lieutenant and executive office, “go with Sandra and Woody and check the kitchen.  It should be up and running.  Make sure it goes smoothly. Let’s bring out the menus.  Not everyone’s ready for solid food.”

 Directing his voice to the scientific portion of the crew, Abe’s words failed to rouse them from their lethargy and shock: “Carla, Hans, Ling, and Ingrid when your up to snuff you can start mapping out your strategies.”

“What strategies?” muttered Hans. “Triton’s a dead world.  What are Ling and I supposed to do?”

“Come on doctor Rucker,” Abe chided him. “Even I, who flunked biology in college, know this: as research scientists, you and Ling will hunt for alien microbes suspected on Triton.  Don’t you remember?  You two specialized in this research.” 

“Elroy,” he directed his voice at the traumatized architect, “you will have the biggest job on Triton.  I assume those pre-fabricated building and the construction equipment are easily handled.  I can’t believe they didn’t send assistants along.”

“Uh huh.” Elroy grunted.

“Down there, as project leader,” Abe reminded him, “you’ll be in control.  I hope you’re up to that!”

“Yeah, yeah,” Elroy waved impatiently.

They were a sorry lot, Abe decided.  He was in no mood, himself, to stand before them, delivering welcoming and encouraging speeches. 

“Phew!” he said, plopping down into is chair, “I’m sure this was how newborns felt after arrival. “Just think, folks, we have to do it again—on the way back.  Some fun, huh?”

“It was awful,” Nicole exclaimed. “I scarcely remember it.  It’s like awakening from a nightmare and forgetting the plot—a big black hole in my mind.”

“Yes, indeed!” Mbuto nodded. “I understand why it’s called the dark sleep.  I don’t relish doing that again!” 

“It was awful.” Ingrid stared reflectively into space. “I wonder if hell is like this.  I said a prayer before Sandra stuck that needle in me, one my mother taught me in England: “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.  If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.”

“How ridiculous!” Carla sneered. “That awfulness had nothing to do with God!”

“I am thinking,” Gandy said, scratching his bristly chin, “of the time I had a tooth pulled in Bombay and woke up like this.” “No memory.” He snapped his fingers. “Poof!”

“The dark sleep is more than birth,” Said Rammal, the robotologist, reflected. “It’s like resurrection.  Being raised from the dead.”

“Now-now.” Doctor Rodgers chortled, shaking his head. “Let’s not be sacrilegious.”

“Right!” Ingrid frowned at Carla and Said. “Have some respect!”

Abe’s efforts had failed to perk up Said, Elroy, Mbuto, Gandy, and the silent, deadpan-faced scientists slouched around the table.  Ingrid, as was her nature, put a religious spin on their experience, but only the stouthearted Max Rodgers, the first crewmember awakened from sleep, was in fine spirits this hour.  Looking down at them, as Sheila shuffled in with the androids bearing their food, he thought of something else he might say, but decided against it.  What did you say to people who had gone through such an ordeal?  His speech, which seemed appropriate enough, had been a pep talk, essentially welcoming them back to consciousness and their roles as stellarnauts on the ship, but nothing could have prepared them for what they had gone through or enliven their spirits quite yet for the exploration ahead.  It was still too early.  As the captain, he had to be upbeat.  He was thankful that Max, the ship’s doctor, tried to be cheerful too.  Everyone else, however, were still in aftershock, the direct result of cryogenically induced hibernation—a feeling that wouldn’t wear off completely for several hours.  The artificial gravity of the ship, caused by the centripetal wheel circling the vessel and the paragravity on the bridge, barely half that of Earth, should have made them feel light and buoyant, but instead they felt heavy-lidded and thick tongued.  Their bodies and minds were weighted down after years of idleness.  He felt the same way himself, and it took all his energy not to plop down like a rag doll and, like the others, stare into space.  To his credit, Max was making the same effort he was too. 

In spite of their collective shock and the after-effects of the dark sleep, as Mbuto and Said had called their experience, he noted a spark of resolve appearing in many of their eyes, as if to say, “it’s over.  We’re ready.  Let’s get on with it!”  A few, Ingrid and Ling, had smiles on their faces now, as if happy just to be alive. 

With these thoughts in mind, Abe decided to say a few more words, this time about their experience in the cryogenic chambers.  “We all know why we’re here.” He looked around the table. “What we have done during our voyage to Triton and will do on its surface far surpasses all previous missions.  It’s a feat that was a great milestone for science, in general, as well as the Triton Project.  We proved that it could be done.  But this is a long range goal.  By the time we return to Earth we’ll all be senior citizens.  We are the first stellarnauts—men and women placed in cold storage chambers in what is called hibernation, suspended animation, cryogenic slumber,” “or.” he gave Mbuto a nod, “the dark sleep.  Such a comatose sleep saved our physical bodies and minds from destruction, as it will for stellarnauts in the future.  You emerged intact, but not without some psychological effects.  Some of you are feeling exhausted, as if you hadn’t slept in months.  Others are still disoriented.  All of us suffer the aftershock of that cold darkness and jolt of rebirth.  Like you, my memory’s coming back.”  “As a matter of fact,” he added with a chuckle,  “something popped into my head: the warning from our training that less than one percent of crewmembers may experience a degree of psychosis.  That seems pretty low.  The odds favor us.  But in accordance with the mission plan, our good doctor Max Rodgers, also a psychologist, will test each one of us.  It’s a simple test.  No one goes onto the surface who’s not ready.  Everyone must be fit.  This goes for everyone—both the scientific and operational crew.” 

That moment, Sheila, Sandra, and Woody returned with trays of pre-packaged meals, each package set before each crewmember, along with a packaged mug of juice.  In the compartments on the plastic plates were items Abe recognized as meat, vegetables, and a dessert.  Straws protruded from the bags of juice.  The meat could be almost anything—pork, beef, chicken, but he recognized cream corn, string beans, and a slightly overdone brownie.  In the future, he explained to his crew, the androids would prepare more elaborate meals.  What they had in front of them conformed to the light dinner required for people emerging from hibernation—nothing too excessive, exotic, or spicy.  Not knowing the long term effects of such a state, Max explained to them, their benefactors were being on the safe side.  The reaction was mixed among the crew.  Some of them were disappointed at the meager dinner, while a few, Hans and Gandy, weren’t hungry at all.  Most of the crew, however jumped right in, without complaint, just happy to be fed.

Carla Mendoza was one of the disappointed ones.  “Is this supposed to be breakfast, lunch, or supper?” she studied her meal. “In space all we have is a twenty-four clock.  According to my watch, it’s eighteen hundred or six o’clock in the evening Earth reckoning—suppertime.  I didn’t expect ribs or filet mignon, but they might at least have made it look attractive.  What is this meat anyhow?”

“I think its Salisbury steak,” Ingrid said through a mouthful of food. “It’s not so bad. Try the string beans and cream corn.”

“The veggies are good!” Nicole agreed.

“I say!” Elroy grumbled, stabbing it with a plastic fork. “This brownie’s as hard as a rock!”

“Ach.” Hans made a face. “It don’t matter to me.  After seventeen years, I should could eat horse, but I’m not hungry.”

“I’m not so hungry either.” Sheila made a face. “I’m thinking of maybe soup or Jell-O.  I don’t like the looks of this.  It looks like hospital food.”

“I agree.” Gandy nodded. “I remember my experience after I had my operation.  Ugh, no appetite, and I was unconscious then for only a couple of hours!”   

“This will pass shortly,” Max reassured them. “Our benefactors were afraid of this. You folks must try to eat.  Eat what you can.  But if you think it’s going to make you sick, by all means eat later.  Your appetites will return shortly.  At least hydrate yourselves.” “I’m encouraged that most of you still have appetites.” He looked around approvingly at the others. “Tomorrow, when you’re your old selves, we’ll begin getting you in shape—physically and mentally.  Triton can wait!”

 

******

 After making it through their first meal after intravenous feeding for seventeen years, the scientists and operational crew followed the captain on a guided tour and refresher course of the Phoenix.  The basic physical energies returned slowly to them as they scanned the ship’s structure and controls, and yet recollection came quickly to them as they listened to the captain’s voice.  Hearing the background hum of the vessel and murmur of their crewmates, their long-shuttered eyes were greeted with the computers, readout screens, and blinking lights of the flight deck, scientific lab, engine room, and docking area where the landing craft (rovers) were stored.   The Phoenix, they were reminded was both a ship and space station.  A centripetal sphere—the space station portion, which created artificial gravity—circled the ship.  Interconnecting corridors connected the sphere with the vessel, which was divided into the ship’s control center forward and the starboard and port propulsion system on each side of the ship.  In the compartments of the centripetal sphere there were sleeping quarters to be used during their work on Triton, a modest kitchen and mess hall, recreation and exercise room, medical room, science lab, and the building materials and equipment area—the largest number of compartments on the ship.  As the scientists and operating crew were re-introduced to their duty stations, which had only been shown to them during their training back on Earth, they recalled their special jobs as stellarnauts.  As they would soon discover, there was much about the Phoenix they didn’t know.  For the scientists and medical team, their education and experience also surfaced, as they fingered their equipment, stared quizzically into their monitors, and tried making sense out of their decision to cut themselves off from the human race. 

After addressing the crew, Abe asked Skip if he had notified Mission Control at Triton Project Headquarter about their successful awakenings and the satisfactory physical and mental status of the scientists, medical personnel, and operational crew.  It was a perfunctory question since he knew very well Skip had done just that.  After a short pause, Skip responded, after a few seconds of hesitation, with a simple nod.  It would, of course, Abe understood, take four hours to reach Earth and then four hours for a reply from Mission Control.  He assumed that Skip had just performed this function.  He didn’t know, of course, about the report given by Thomas Wayland, Mission Control Director.  It was obvious, however, by Skip’s hesitation, that he was holding something back.  With forced calm, Abe turned his attention to acclimatizing the men and women to their new home, chatting with each of them, as though he hadn’t a care in the world.  Despite his reassuring smile and chitchat with crewmembers, though, he thought about Skip’s delayed reaction now.  What did it mean?  he wondered, as he watched Skip return to his place on the bridge as though he was still in control.  Though he had felt certain of a reply from Earth, Abe shared his misgivings with the operational crew.  Why weren’t the androids more talkative now?  Before they left Earth, they were fountains of information about the ship, its potential, and the mission ahead.  Now they said little.  Said, whose role as robotic specialist, understood the nuances of androids best, watched everything they did at this point.  It was that feeling one had, Mbuto explained to Abe, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

The time since Abe asked Skip about the message, which was not clear to him, seemed to drag on forever.  Much could have happened during their long voyage, he confessed to Max.  Max, as both physician and psychiatrist, was his closest confidant on the ship.  Earth was seventeen years older.  Science, itself, could have changed significantly since their odyssey began.  The sacrifice they made had been heroic, but time had passed them by.  The people they had known on earth had aged seventeen years, while they, in their dark sleep hadn’t age at all.  When they finally returned, their family and friends would be, at least physically, over thirty-four years older than them, while they, thanks to cryogenic preservation, would be no less for the wear.  Far more important was a thought that all of the crew tried to suppress.  Abe knew it was on all of their minds.  When they had left the earth, the threat of military conflict was still serious.  What if the final conflict everyone feared had finally occurred?

“If it occurred,” Max replied thoughtfully, “it likely happened years ago and Skip’s afraid of the reaction it will have with the crew.  There’ll be no reply forthcoming if that’s the case.  You said he nodded and didn’t say anything.  That was an acknowledgment that he contacted Earth.  He might be hiding the truth.  I hope that’s not the case.”

“Yeah.” Abe heaved a sigh.  “I’m worried about the crew.  If he drops a bombshell on me, I don’t want them to hear it yet.  These androids are rather direct!”  

As Abe finished his re-acquaintance tour on the ship, he felt a sudden, inexplicable distrust for Skip and his co-pilot, Rusty, especially after they returned to the command console to take control.  Sheila, now her old self, having seen him crook his finger at her, rose up to join him.  When they reached the captains chair and pilots chair, respectively, facing a panoramic window of space, including the growing bluish outline of Triton below, Abe turned to Skip and Rusty, the androids on duty, who had acted as captain and pilot of the ship as he and Sheila had slept.  In spite of being the most advanced generation of androids, they retained that same expressionless demeanor of robots as the went about their business, until this moment, thought the captain.  Skip was actually frowning, concern registering faintly on his perfect face.  Abe, of course, hadn’t expected a response from earth for about eight hours.  What the captain expected to find in the database, though, was a record of their journey during the seventeen years of hibernation, which included questions from Earth and answers from Skip directly on the status of the ship and crew.  Almost immediately before moving Skip aside and taking the captain’s chair, he sensed something terribly wrong.  Noticing the frown on the captain’s face and what followed, Sheila uttered a startled gasp.  Reaching down to the seated captain, Skip gripped his wrist firmly and spoke. 

          “Captain,” he began gently, “there’s something wrong…. I couldn’t wake you and the others.  What good what it do?  While you were all sleeping, Earth stopped transmitting.”

“What do you mean stopped transmitting?” Abraham looked down at his screen.  Exhaling deeply, he ran his hand through his hair.  Skip moved Sheila politely aside, taking the pilot’s seat, tapping the keyboard a moment until finding the ship’s log.  By then, however, Abe had found the log on his own.  It was evident, he soon discovered, that entries in the log had stopped right after the three year milestone in space.  Data showing chatter during and directly after the launch and Skip’s report about the cryogenic enclosures being safely secured was continued until that point, stopping suddenly, and followed by repeated efforts by the android captain to make further contact, but there were no further replies from Earth, only line after line of the same message: Phoenix to Earth…. Phoenix to Earth…”  After these entries, as Abraham would have done himself, Skip tried to contact the Mars colony and Europa Space Station in order to solve the mystery and, to the captains dismay, they too were silent.  Though the effort was futile, Abe studied the data again frantically, hoping Skip had missed something.  For Mars and Europa, however, as was the case with Earth, Skip’s communications lead to a dead end.

By now it was all Sheila could do not to panic.

“This is all a mistake!” sputtered Abe. “It has to be.  No Transmission?  There must be a glitch.  Something’s wrong on our side; it has to be.” “Why didn’t you tell me?” He whispered accusingly, looking back at the crewmembers wandering innocently through the ship. “According to the log, transmission stopped fourteen years ago—only three years after we left!”

“I’m telling you now, sir, and there’s no mistake,” Skip said calmly. “I followed Mission Control’s instructions.  We’ve conducted tests—Rusty and I.  I’ve personally checked everything that could have caused the break in communications.  We couldn’t awaken you during cryogenic sleep.  After each four interval after sending my message, I received no response.  What good what it be to awaken you and frighten the crew?”  “I was given clear instructions by Mission Control,” he added motioning to the screen: “‘Under no circumstances awaken the crew until reaching our destination…. The fact is, for whatever reason, Earth, the colony, and the space station simply aren’t responding.”

“Dear God!” The captain groaned. “This can’t be…. It just can’t!”

“What does this mean?… What does this mean?” muttered Sheila.

“I’m sorry sir.” The android seemed to sigh. “The continual lack of transmission means we’re cut off from Earth!”

After thinking a moment, Abe replied, “It has to be a malfunction somewhere.  The fact that all three communications—Earth, Mars, and Europa—are non-responsive implies a problem on our side.  Surely one of the three should have sent us a message—.”

“Captain, listen,” Skip interrupted, patting his arm. “There’s something else I must tell you.  The problems I had with Mars and Europa preceded Earth’s last transmission.  They are all somehow connected.  Without explanation, Mission Control told me that the colonists and team on the space station were called back to Earth.  This was before the point when Earth stopped transmitting.  After three years of communicating with our people, everything went silent!”

“You didn’t hear anything else?” Abraham looked at him in disbelief. “What was the big mystery?  If the colonists and those people on Europa’s pace station were called back, something dreadful must have happened!”

Skip nodded.  Biting his lip, Abraham shuddered at the implications.

As the crewmembers wandered about, Abraham and Skip reviewed the messages from the ship and the responses from Mission Control again, this time only those on days right before the break in communications.  As he had for the preceding three years, Skip had reported in without garnishments, giving details about the twelve crewmembers in their cryogenic chambers and the integrity of the ship and four hours later Mission Control responded cordially, at times, asking the android captain to make certain tests, which he reported back in a timely matter.  There was nothing peculiar in the conversations with Mission Control.  Also checking the recorded chatter between Mars and Europa to Earth, Abe found nothing in the dialogue overheard to indicate a problem looming.  Finally, after checking the log one more time, he reached that point three years after takeoff once more when, following shortly after Mars and Europa stopped transmitting, all communication from Earth ended.

After the latest mental thunderclaps, he murmured, with great trepidation, “What about those problems back home—the looming conflict?  Was there any chatter about this from Earth?”

“Only what we heard before takeoff,” Skip answered promptly. “You heard it all for yourself then.” “I must say sir,” he added hesitantly, “…. It’s troubling.”

“Troubling?” Abraham laughed hysterically. “That’s the understatement for a lifetime, Skip.”  “You know what this probably means?” He sat staring out the window at Triton.

Skip’s voice grew faint then rose suddenly, exclaiming in a serene tone, “Yes,  I know.  I wasn’t told what happened, but, with the silence from Earth, it seemed obvious to me.  Nevertheless, I was ordered by Mission Control not to alarm the crew.  The Director of Mission Control, himself, Thomas Waverly, gave the order before we boarded the Phoenix: ‘No matter what happens,’ he said to me, ‘don’t awaken them until they reach Triton.’…. We’re on our own captain!”

Abe now considered two simple alternatives: the android was lying for some inexplicable reason or, just as inexplicably, he was telling the truth.  Nevertheless, he sensed, there was something else he wasn’t telling him.  He was hiding something.  It struck Abe as suspicious, even apocalyptic, that Thomas Waverly gave Skip such instructions, as if the director sensed or knew for certain that something was going to occur. 

Giving Skip a jaundiced look, he tried to sublimate this suspicion as he had his darkest fear, which was now an unthinkable fact.  It was enough for him to grapple with Earth’s destruction than worrying about whether Skip was telling the truth.

“Skip,” he kept his voice low, “before I break the news to the crew, lets go over the log one last time.  I can’t wrap my mind around this.  I know you had orders not to disturb our hibernation and you can’t show human emotion, but this isn’t a trifling matter.  Sheila, my second-in-command, is already half out of her wits right now.  Look at her!  I don’t know how she passed the psych exam.  That goes for some of the others.  We can’t just drop this on them, until we’re absolutely sure.”

For several hours, after Abe sent one last message to Earth, the ship’s company, still in a befuddled state, continued checking out their duty stations as children at an amusement park and chattered light-heartedly about their experience.  Abe ordered Sheila to get a hold of herself.  “Mums the word!” He wrung his finger at her. “Tell no one yet about this!”  In muted whispers, he, Skip, and Rusty went over the ship’s log, readouts, and controls—testing and re-testing the computers and equipment and searching the backup data base for signs of a electrical malfunction or some form of communication crash.  A few of the crew looked over idly a few times then but were given ambiguous reasons by Abe for what they were doing and scooted off the bridge.  When the captain was truly certain that the communications between Earth and the Phoenix had ceased three years after they began their odyssey in space, he felt a wrenching sense of helplessness, and yet, as stunned and perplexed as he was, recoiled at the thought of giving up.  If it was true, they were, as Skip had said, alone now. 

After an hour of going over everything he could think of, he knew there was no way he could hide the facts.  Already, the awakened sleepers were curious to hear and see belated message from relatives and friends back on earth, something they had been promised years ago when the time came when they were awake.  It was, Abe and Skip agreed, time to break the news.

           Several of the crewmembers stood back near the captains table, sensing something was afoot.  Sandra, the first android face Captain Drexel had seen upon awakening, was sent to gather the others still wandering around the space station.  A certain, fleeting fondness for the Barbie-like android, lingered in Abe’s mind.  Her blond hair and blue eyes reminded him of Rosalie, the girl he left back on Earth, except that Sandra was too perfect.  She didn’t even blink.  Rosalie had freckles, as did Rusty, the android pilot, whose cold, unflinching actions belied his Howdy-Doody face.  Woody, Abe noted, was aptly named, since his Pinocchio stare and shiny face, in fact, looked wooden.  Skip, of course, was Sandra’s counterpart, the Ken doll of the group: dark brown hair, dead-fish brown eyes, and, contrasting these robot-like features, the only one of the four androids who seemed able to frown and smile.

Skip returned that moment to the captains chair, as Abraham stood, arms folded behind his back, studying the Phoenix compliment of Generation Eight androids.  He wondered if the robotologists who created them had a sense of humor.  It seemed doubtful to him that any of the crewmembers had ever heard of Barbie and Ken dolls or the Howdy-Doody or Pinocchio marionettes.  Had his father not inherited a collection of twentieth century dolls and puppets from grandma Drexel, he wouldn’t have made the connections, himself.  Why hadn’t they at least made them resemble current movie stars or singers.  The features of Rusty and Woody, in particular, were slightly spooky, Woody especially, who looked the least human of them all. Why, for that matter, had they given them such silly, twentieth century names? 

Abe realized begrudgingly that the androids, though lacking human personality traits, were, as their caretakers in space, superior in almost every way.  Still bristling at the automatic gesture performed by Skip in reclaiming the captain’s chair, he gazed reflectively out at Neptune’s dark moon.  “What does this all mean?”  He muttered under his breath.  We can’t survive without the home planet!  A puzzle, sinister at first, began forming in his mind.  Piece by piece it surfaced, as he contemplated their dilemma…. The grand send-off given to the twelve stellarnauts, which ignored the chaos in the rest of the planet, the takeoff, which was far ahead of schedule as if they were escaping potential disaster, and the spaceship’s docking at the station circling the planet, followed only days later by the crewmembers installment into twelve cryogenic chambers all seemed to fit a pattern.  There was a contingency plan created by their benefactors in case global war broke out on Earth.  There had to be! Abe told himself, as he considered the facts.  The mission to Triton, which had been planned for years, was now replaced by the alternate plan. 

Abe sensed that he was on to something.  He didn’t know yet how close he was to the truth.  All he had now were suspicions, some of which were about Skip, the android captain, who had kept a secret from them.  He sensed that there were greater secrets on the Phoenix.   Skip’s action of remaining on the bridge with his co-pilot was telling in itself…. There would be no change of command now, Abe realized.  The image of Triton below him reflected a lost dream.

The panorama Neptune’s dark moon, glowing in the great window, became an ominous backdrop to Abe’s thoughts.  As if he was in command now, Skip walked down the aisle separating the passenger seats of the ship toward the conference table, as Sandra, Woody, and Rusty ushered, by polite motions, the crewmembers to take their seats.  This was, Abe realized quickly, an order he hadn’t given.  Taken back momentarily as the other men and women returned obediently to the table, Abe glanced with dismay as Skip stood at the head of the table, the symbolism again plain.  These brazen acts by members of the non-human crew to escort the crew in, at Skip’s bidding, and Skip’s recent revelation, triggered an alarm in captain’s mind…. Another piece to the puzzle it appeared, surfaced in Abe’s brain, causing him to gasp.  Was something more than a communication transmission problem afoot?

          Once more, forced to hide his emotions to avoid panic among the crew, he looked protectively around at the men and women seated trustingly at the table.  Taking note of their moods, Abe wondered if space psychosis would effect some of them.  Most of them were still suffering from cryogenic shock that registered in various degrees, depending upon the previous mental strength of the one-time sleeper, and yet all of them were in much better spirits after wandering around the ship.  This all changed when they were seated and realized that something was wrong.  As they had suspected when Abe and Skip spent so much time pouring over the ship’s database, something was afoot. 

For the military-oriented Captain Drexel, disaster was always possible—on Earth and in space.  So far, Gandy Supra, the ship’s engineer and Mbuto Suwala, the communication officer, were holding it together.  Doc Rodgers, while comforting his nervous assistant, was also trying to be calm.  Though they must have shared the apprehension of the others after being recalled to the conference table, the three men were, he recalled, veterans.  Looking expectantly at him that moment, though, Gandy and Mbuto signaled to Abe the same wide-eyed expression of the others, whispering back and forth, frowning, raising their eyebrows, and shaking their heads with alarm.  With the exception of the geologist Ingrid Westfall, who was praying quietly to herself, the scientists sat in fearful silence.  This was true for Sheila Livingston, the executive officer of the ship, who set a poor example to the others, and Said Rammal, the robotics expert on the ship, the most anxious member of the ship’s company, who, Abe surmised, was shocked like himself by the androids presumptions and the fact that they stood at the four corners of the table as if standing guard, instead of being about their tasks.  Before Skip announced the bad news in his cold indifferent way, Abe stood up and took control

          “Ladies and gentleman,” he called out, raising a hand, “something has come up.”

          “Why are Skip, Rusty, Sandra, and Woody at our meeting?” Said mumbled to himself.

          “What is it?  Tell us what?” croaked Sheila and Nicole.

          “Skip and I have been at the console, checking the data base and conducting tests,” Abe continued, trying to divulge it delicately. “There’s no easy way to tell you this…. Our log shows that transmission to Earth stopped three years after takeoff…. There have been no messages from Mission Control since then.”

          A collective gasp rose up as Abe framed his words. “…You’re all aware of the problems on Earth.  I’m hoping that there isn’t a connection.  We’ll keep on trying…. But I want you people to remember who you are.  Some of you are showing signs of hysteria.  There’s no point in falling to pieces.  We’re 2.7 billion miles from Earth!”

          A second collective gasp now arose in the room.  Nicole broke down into tears. 

          “I knew something was wrong!” cried Elroy. “It’s happened!  We’re marooned in space!”

          “Is this true captain?” Carla looked up at him. “Give it to us straight.  What happened back on Earth.  Did the Russians and Chinese let us have it?  Was it global war?”

          “I don’t know.” Abe shrugged helplessly. “I told you all I know.” 

 “Gott im Himmel!” Hans shouted in German. “Das ist das Ende!”

          “Not necessarily.” Mbuto said hopefully, wiping his brow. “It could be an electrical glitch.” “Right captain?  Tell them, Abe: this is a complicated ship.  Anything could go wrong!”

          “Well, it’s possible,” Abe sighed, glancing at Skip. “Something obviously went wrong!”

          “Really, captain?” Sheila clutched his wrist. “You don’t sound certain.  You mean something went wrong on Earth, don’t you?””

          “He’s not certain!” Said gripped his forehead. “Earth is done for.  The robots are now in control!”

“Stop it, Sheila.” Abe looked down at the lieutenant. “You men get a hold of yourselves too!” “People!” He addressed everyone in his crew. “There’s no point in panicking!  We’ll solve this together!” “This isn’t the end!” He looked around at Elroy, Hans, and Said. “No more of that kind of talk!”

“I’m sorry, captain,” Elroy’s voice trembled. “That’s simply not enough!  Is this a temporary or permanent situation, captain?  Or are we permanent castaways in space?”

“I mean what I said.” Abe said hoarsely. “We’ve lost all communication—period!  What part of the word I don’t know don’t you understand?”

          “We’re doomed!” Ling wrung her small hands. “My family on Earth is dead!”

          With no more information to give his crew, Abe played for time, hoping that in due course they would somehow rectify this problem before most of the men and women had mental breakdowns or went mad. 

“The Phoenix is still in good shape,” he reasoned thoughtfully. “There’s nothing wrong with our mission. We have a communication problem.  That’s all.  The mechanical and electrical systems are functioning perfectly. We reached our destination.  The very fact you survived hibernation in good order and we’ve gone this far proves we’re not in trouble on the ship.”

“Yeah, but there’s big problem with Earth!” spat Hans.

“We’re marooned, castaways, adrift,” Elroy muttered, rotating his head. “Without a home planet, we’re doomed!”

“Shut up!” Abe wrung his fist at them. “All of you!” He spread his arms. “Go to you quarters in the station, lie down, get some more rest while we sort this out.  No more doomsday forecasting Elroy and Hans.  We’ve had enough of that!”

Gandy stood up shakily now, his expression belying his words.  “Yes, people. Listen to our captain.  I am thinking that Mbuto is correct.  Yes, in deed, it’s a malfunction.  Don’t panic.  There could be a technical issue here, nothing more!” “Oh, Vishnu, the protector,” he mumbled to himself, “I’m too young to die!”

“Yea thou I walk through the shadow of death I shall fear no evil….” Ingrid now prayed aloud.      

As Ingrid quoted the Twenty-third Psalm, no one moved from the space ship.  For a moment, Abe felt as if a mutiny was brewing.  Max was shaking his head in dismay and patting Nicole’s wrist consolingly.  Ignoring Abe’s demand that she shape up, Sheila rocked back and forth hugging herself in despair.  While Ingrid continued to pray feverishly, Said, he noted with concern, seemed more fearful of the androids’ assertive behavior, watching their every move.  Elroy, inconsolable, gripped his head hysterically and cursed his fate, Hans pounded his head in despair, and Carla, who seemed more angry than anything else, clinched her fist and gnashed her teeth, a wild, trapped look in her eyes.  That one percent ratio of space psychosis they had read in their mission handbooks appeared to be wrong.  Right now, it occurred to Abe, almost the entire crew was going mad.

 

 

Next Chapter ~ Return to Contents ~ Writer’s Den