Chapter 600 Arrival
As the colony ships carrying the first diaspora were beginning their journey, another journey was coming to an end. The TSF Proxima was coming out of its final stretch of warp travel just a few AU outside the heliopause of Proxima Centauri.
(Ed note: AU stands for “Astronomical Unit”. It’s the average distance between Earth and the Sun at any given point, as Earth also has an aphelion (the furthest distance from the Sun) and a perihelion (the closest approach to the Sun). All of the planets orbiting the Sun are on elliptical orbits. One AU is about 149.6 million kilometers and change. For normal purposes, since I doubt any of us—Agent and myself included—are either astronomers or astrogators, it can be rounded off to 150 million kilometers.)
The inside of the Proxima was choreographed chaos as people who had chosen to spend the entire journey either in stasis or in their personal VR spaces woke and rushed to their assigned ships. The only people who had remained fully awake for the entire six-month-long journey were the crewmembers of the Proxima herself, and the crews, scientists, and marines were all traipsing along the corridors toward their assigned ships. Thankfully, the Proxima had been designed with just that situation in mind, so the million-odd people had no logjams or other holdups as they rushed to their proper places.
And every single one of them contributed to an atmosphere of vibrating anticipation; they were the first—the absolute first!—to reach their destination, which meant they would be the first to set foot on a completely alien planet. Theirs would be the pride of place in history that had previously only been claimed by a single man, Neil Armstrong, when he first-footed the Moon in 1969, or some time in 51 BE according to the imperial calendar. The quote “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind” had long entered the collective memory of all humanity and had never been topped since. Or before, for that matter.
Now, everyone on the Proxima was busily rehearsing what they would say, should they be so lucky as to be chosen by the ship’s AI in the random draw that would determine just exactly who would be the first to set foot on Proxima Centauri b. At least in their minds, anyway; it wasn’t as if they were rushing through the corridors of the cityship muttering to themselves like... like crazy people!
At least most of them, that is. There were more than a million people in motion, so of course there were a few that were muttering and giggling to themselves like loons.
That said, there were some that wouldn’t have that opportunity. The crew complement of the escort fleet ships would remain aboard their ships for the duration, accompanied by the ships’ complements of marines. The Terran Space Fleet ran crew numbers fairly close to the bone, as it were, so losing even one of them meant losing a potentially critical crewperson in case of emergency or enemy action. Even the marine contingents aboard, being mostly cargo while the ships were in transit, had duties and stations in the event of anything... untoward happening. They were the ones who were responsible for carrying out the critical task of damage control alongside the GEMbots and RES-QRs assigned to their vessels.
Another portion of the crew was also remaining calm. The scientists who had been assigned to the Proxima herself would remain aboard her until the exploration fleet finished building research stations in the system, at which point they would be assigned to those in penny packets, each specialty to their own station. They had even already begun their jobs, digging through the “old light” that the Proxima’s visual sensors were busily collecting and piecing together.
Others among them were already tracking the reconnaissance drones the Proxima had launched once the bow shock of their disappearing warp bubble dissipated. Their task was to map the Proxima Centauri system and search for signs of advanced extraterrestrial life. Surely, if it existed, there would be signs of it. Obviously artificial satellites, space debris, and so on were all things that they were clustered at their workstations looking for, despite the distance from the system’s “Goldilocks Zone”.
(Ed note: I don’t really like inserting more than one ed note per chapter, but there’s a few terms here to explain. “Old light” is based around the concept that visual signals continue propagating out at light speed until interrupted by some other celestial body. So by staying a light hour away from, say, a planet, and viewing that old light, you can see what was happening an hour ago on that planet, assuming your sensors are sensitive enough. And the “Goldilocks Zone” is the area in space around a star where the conditions are just right enough for liquid water on the surface of a planet or other celestial body.)
{Time to initial map completion: 27 hours, 13 minutes,} Proxima, the cityship’s main AI, announced.
“Fleet’s being careful. Too careful, if you ask me—it’s making me paranoid and giving me the shivers,” one of the scientists said as the screen in front of him updated pixel by pixel as the heavily stealthed recon drones continued their journey through the system.
Although he understood the reasons for the caution with which they were approaching the initial mapping and data collection, and agreed with them, he couldn’t help being impatient. His entire life, he had looked to the stars and dreamed that most wondrous of dreams, thinking to himself “What If”. And now, one of those stars he used to observe through telescopes—first the one he had received as a birthday gift when he was only nine years old, and eventually, telescopes like the Hubble—was so near he could practically reach out his hand and grab it!
“Well, we already know Proxima Centauri b is within the zone, so it might be inhabited. And if—IF, I say—it is, well... we’ll have some thinking to do about how we approach the inhabitants. After all, in that case, we would be the invaders, and we don’t know how they would react to us. We aren’t here to cause trouble, just to check out the neighborhood... so to speak,” the scientist at the screen to his left said, then turned her eyes back to her screen and studied it as it updated pixel by pixel, intent on finding anything she could to prove or disprove the existence of life in the system.
Twenty-seven hours later, they would know beyond a shadow of a doubt. But the earlier they could confirm or rule it out, the better their position would be.
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