Звезда Пандоры

Oscar could remember the first stellar exploration he’d worked on, decades ago back on Augusta; as one of the junior prep crew he’d stood in the observation gallery for nine hours after his shift ended at handover. Nine hours that passed in no time the excitement he felt was so strong. It was the day he knew he’d made the right choice; that in some obscure way this was how he could make amends for what he’d done. This way he could bring the hope of a fresh start to other people’s lives as well as his own.

“Confirming location of wormhole exit,” short-range astronomy said. “Distance to AFR98-2B is seventeen-point-three million klicks out from the projected coordinate.”

Oscar allowed himself to relax a little, seeing the smiles springing up around the ground crew. That wasn’t a bad margin of error for a newly recommissioned gateway, well within acceptable limits. “Well done, Astrogration; load in the new figures please. Sensors, let’s get the planetary survey scope out there.”

While the new, bulkier telescope mechanism was deployed out through the confinement chamber, Oscar went around the control center loop again, verifying that everything was holding steady. Then it was an hour-long wait while short-range astronomy analyzed the images from the planetary survey scope. The procedure was simple enough: they scanned the plane of the ecliptic for any light source above first magnitude. When it found one, the telescope observed it for movement. If it was a planet, then its orbital motion should become apparent almost straightaway.

The results flashed up on the screens above the window. Short-range astronomy located five planets. Two were gas giants, Saturn-sized, orbiting eleven and fifteen AUs out from the star. The inner three were solids. The first and smallest, a lunar-sized rock one hundred million kilometers out from the star, had a high-viscosity plastic lava mantle moving in sluggish ripples generated by the star’s massive tidal pull. Second was a large solid, seventeen thousand eight hundred kilometers in diameter, and orbiting a hundred twelve million kilometers out. With its high gravity, Venusian-style atmosphere, and close proximity to the sun, it didn’t come anywhere near qualifying as H-congruous. But the third was a hundred ninety-nine million kilometers distant from the star, and measured fourteen thousand three hundred kilometers in diameter. Cheers and a patter of applause went around gateway control as the data slowly built up. Spectrographic results showed a standard oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere, with a high water vapor content. Given its distance from the star, it was somewhat cool, with the equator having the same temperature as Earth’s temperate zones in autumn or spring. But the information was sufficient for Oscar to award it a preliminary H-congruous status, which brought another round of applause. First time out with a recommissioned gateway, and they’d struck gold already. A good omen.

“Sensors, let’s get the dish out there,” Oscar said. “Check for emissions.”

Another electromuscle arm snaked out from its ceiling recess, carrying a furled dish. It went through the gateway beside the planetary survey scope, and extended its metal mesh.

“No radio signals detected,” sensors reported.

“All right, bring both the arms back in,” Oscar said. “Astrogration, move the wormhole exit to geosynchronous height above the third planet’s daylight terminator.”

When the arms were back in their recesses, the starfield winked out. A moment later, the gateway opened again, revealing the crescent of a planet directly ahead. Its radiance washed across the confinement chamber and in through the windows. Oscar smiled in welcome as the soft light fell across his console. The cloud cover was above average, cloaking a good seventy percent of the hemisphere. But he could see the blue of oceans, and the grubby red-brown of land, even the crisp white of polar caps was visible in that first glimpse.

“All right, people, let’s concentrate on the job,” Oscar said as excited conversation buzzed through the loop. “We’ve all seen this before. Sensors, I want a full electromagnetic sweep. Launch seven geophysics satellites, get me some global coverage. Planetary Science, you’re on; preliminary survey results in three hours, please. Alien encounter office, start hunting. Emergency Defense, you’re on stand-by alert, and now have full wormhole shutdown authority; acknowledge that, please.”

“Acknowledged, sir.”