One

Seventy Days

Kyan Anders drifts in a room brimming with a hundred billion stars. Radiant golds span familiar constellations, but it is what lies between the stars that captures his attention. Smudges of galaxies against ebony sky. Glowing stellar lanes dusted with rose. Objects no man can see from Earth, but here they are impossible to miss. It’s like seeing, truly seeing, for the first time. 

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” Rios says, “but I’ve just received Harmony’s morning broadcast.”

Kyan glances at his watch. “On my way.” He hooks his instep under a rung and descends into the habmod. A loose gray blanket and sock drift by. He pushes towards the port comms module, sails through the daylight rings of the transit tube, and emerges in a halo of screens. An ocean-blue baseball cap velcroed to a command chair reads Aristarchus. “Give me a quarter gee⁠ vectored along the hab axis.”

The floor falls against Kyan’s feet as he dons the cap and laces his arms through the chair’s harness. The Addison Aerospace logo fades on with the comms log. Thirty-five conversations separated by seven hundred and sixteen minutes. Kyan scrolls to the newest entry.

A young woman wears an Aristarchus cap over blond hair. Behind her, late afternoon sunlight dapples leafy greens. “Hi, Dad. So, first things first, if I know you, you’re probably all stressed out thinking something happened because my message is early.” The signal pixelates as she spreads her fingers, palms facing him. “Don’t worry, everything’s fine. There are some morning alerts for flares and I’m trying to avoid them. They’re going to get worse, and it might screw up the blackout window. So this sucks. I hope you’ve got some good music queued up.” 

An alert bubbles on the screen:

RIOS - Received 06:20 local - HELIOS reports M-class flare activity expected 08.02.80 06:48 through 08.02.80 13:21. 

Expected magnitude M2-M4. Minor communications disruptions expected with inner planet broadcasts. 

A graphic illustrates the line-of-sight between the Aristarchus and Earth. Waypoints show the Earth’s path over the next few days, a string-of-pearls slipping behind the Sun. Complex field line patterns signify radio interference. Rios updates them with the HELIOS info and the patterns swell. Earth’s comm tag changes from green to yellow and all of the pearls shift colors. Yellow, orange, red, black. Signal loss in three days.

Harmony swipes a finger over her bracelet and an ultrasound pops up. Kyan leans forward. Harmony Richardson, 18 weeks. “There’s your grandson, looking good! I think we’ve browsed a thousand names. I like traditional, but Ryce prefers trendy. You know him. We’ll figure it out. Anyway, we’re keeping the name secret until he’s born. You know, keep a little bit of a surprise.”

Kyan’s eyebrows raise and he mirrors her smile. He rests his fingers on the screen. His grandson. She’d told him the evening before his departure. Eight more mission days, then twenty-six transit days. A little more than a month until he can be back with his family.

“Oh, and not sure how much news you’re picking up,” Harmony says, “but something wild happened yesterday. You know that guy who’s always in the tech feeds with the ‘keep dreaming big’ meme? He’s been talking about this new ship that twists space, and yesterday he finally got it to work. Well, sort of. He flew to Mars in twelve minutes. Crazy, huh? Check this out.” She flicks her bracelet. Twelve Minutes to Mars. The photo shows James Hayden propped up in a hospital bed, wearing a neck brace, giving a thumbs up. “It says the tech’s at least three years out, but can you imagine? Instead of twenty-six days, you could be home in twelve hours.” A white cat springs onto her lap and she strokes its fur. “Okay, looks like Halley wants to say hi, too. Well, I miss you. I’ll check the feed for flares, and may need to bump our time tomorrow. Talk to you soon.”

Kyan smiles and tags the ultrasound. “Rios, give me a hard copy of that.” He slides the photo into the elastic board beside his chair. A dozen other photos are nestled there, pictures of him and Harmony wearing backpacks, family photos of him, Harmony, and Lake during the holidays, when Lake was still his wife, and a dog-eared postcard with azure ocean water lapping over bare feet. Getting Away from It All. 

He does a quick once over. A little silver stubble, but acceptable. “Hey, kiddo. Bummer about the flares. Rios updated comms loss to Monday. How are you feeling? Have you felt the baby move yet? I have a million questions.” He taps the interface and a new window shows orbital diagrams. Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, all on one side of the sun and the Aristarchus on the other. “Not too much to report. I’ve got my final images of Sedna. Today I’ll switch to Eris, then it’s Oort cloud cataloging and heliopause measurements for the next eight days. You know, I’m not looking forward to comms loss, but it’s awesome for sensors. I’ll be at the quietest place in the system.” Kyan glances at the family photo. “And for today’s musical selection I’ve got one that your mom and I listened to a million times when she was pregnant. Classic 50’s progressive rock.” The opening chords of Farther strum in. “Enjoy. Talk to you tomorrow. I love you.” He sends the message and stares at the Addison logo a minute before a sweet scent resets his attention. “Okay, Rios, what’s on the docket for today?”

“Breakfast. I’ve got some eggs and french toast heated for you. It’s the most important meal of the day.”

Kyan raises his eyebrows. “Going with the mom approach today?”

Rios’s voice is full of inflection. It’s hard to believe he isn’t sentient. “Addison parameters, crew health.”

“Okay, so, after breakfast?”

“Reposition the drones for Eris imaging. Review night log anomalies.” Rios pauses. “Would you like to know about the anomalies?”

Kyan leans his head on a bent arm. “Do I have to say it?”

“Three visual occultations during wide-field imaging. Would you like to review them now?”

Kyan sighs. “Just put them on the screen.”

Three circled stars appear, each turning black as an object passes before it. Infrared, ultraviolet, x-ray, and radio data accompany the images. Object one is fifty degrees kelvin with moderate reflectivity. Distance is unknown. Rios guesses it is a scattered disc object, and Kyan confirms. Object two has similar properties. Object three, though, is unexpected.

“You ran sensor diagnostics?”

“Twice. Sensors are within norm.”

No reflectivity, temperature near cosmic background radiation. As far as the sensors can tell, it is a hole in space passing in front of a star. Except it isn’t a hole. Even a black hole would have some sensor data.

“Any ideas?”

“I checked microwave and x-ray wide-field imaging, and found occultations along the same flight line. Based on parallax, it’s probably close, less than half an AU.”

Kyan scratches his cheek. “Okay, retask the drones along the flight line and configure for narrow field imaging. Let’s log it for now.”

“Logged as Unidentified Scattered Disc Object 235C. We need twenty hours of Eris imaging. It’ll add another mission day if we retask.”

He glances at the ultrasound and back to the unidentified object. Now seventy mission days. It’s tempting to just forget about it, log it as an unknown, but he’s curious, and curiosity was one of the main things that brought him out here. “Proceed. Let’s also try a radar burst and see what we can see. Can’t hurt.” He unclicks his harness and stands. One-quarter gravity is similar to the Moon, and he bounds like an Apollo-era astronaut. “I’m going to grab some breakfast while everything gets positioned.”

“We seem to have a mystery.”

“I know,” Kyan says, emerging from the transit tube. The usual weariness in his voice is absent, replaced by something different. Excitement. “Isn’t it great?”

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