New Enceladus – chapter 7

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En Route to Ptolemy-1

Astronomer and Geographer Charlie Andersen

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As I climbed out of my tube from cold-sleep, I saw a gorgeous blonde about to get in a tube down the row from mine. Her face was so comely and body so shapely, it was distressing to see her magnificence and know I’d never be lucky enough to win her affection. The sensation was intense enough to cause me physical pain.

I decided I should at least be friendly. I walked over and held out my hand in greeting, “Hi, I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Charlie Andersen.”

“Hi Charlie! I’ve been wanting to meet you! I’m Erica Keller! We’re in the same family!”

OHMIGAWD! This beauty was Erica! I hadn’t met her before, so I didn’t request her at family ***********ion, otherwise I surely would have!

“I’m a big fan of your work! Your paper about close-pass-induced planetary quakes on tidally-locked worlds was ground-breaking!” She was one of the ten people in the whole human race who cared about my hobby? WOW!

“You’re far too kind, Erica! Have a good sleep!”

She briefly kissed my lips and said, “Thanks! Have a good shift!” As the window started to fog over, I could see she was smiling and blushing. I’d been awake less than fifteen minutes, and it was a great day already!

I talked with my co-husband Ross, and he didn’t know who Erica was. Our three other wives didn’t know her either, none of us had picked her.

As I ate breakfast, I realized she must have picked one of us as her preferred ***********ion! Could it be me? Was she THAT interested in my work? I put my food tray in the cleaner and remembered her beautiful blonde hair, her green eyes, her slender waist and nice, round ….

The wall speaker blared; “ACK! ACK! ACK! ACK! …” … I tried to remember … OH NO! RADIATION ALARM!

I ran for my emergency station and remembered the radiation safety protocol. I moved all the items I could to the outside of the compartment, helping the other five people in the room. We sat on the floor and nervously chatted about what could be happening. We waited for the all-clear or instructions. After what seemed like a long time, the all-clear sounded.

At lunch, I learned more about the incident. The ship had passed near the beam from a gamma ray burst. The pilot tried to turn the shielded side of the ship toward the beam and move us away from it, but the thrusters wouldn’t fire.

An engineer, Oskar Schmidt, had gone outside on an EVA to repair the thruster wiring. He broke off the ice from one of the leaking water tanks and quickly finished the repair.

If the pilot waited twelve minutes to fire the thrusters, when Oskar would be safely inside the airlock, we would have passed into the beam. Everybody aboard would have received at least twenty times the lethal dose of cosmic and gamma rays. Imagine sitting on the Chernobyl reactor as the accident happened.

Oskar realized we couldn’t wait twelve minutes. He bravely said, “Tell Molly and Enka I love them! Fire the thrusters!” As the rockets ignited, they incinerated Oskar and flung his charred remains into space. He was a true hero. He gave his life to save us all.

We had a ceremony to honor him and took a day off for people to recover from the loss. There would be some confusion caused by four of the first boys born on the planet all being named “Oskar”, including my oldest son.

The incident inspired me to put more effort into my own work. I couldn’t heroically save the mission, but I was determined to make sure we would have safe landing spots, near the resources we needed.

We orbited several of the planets for a few days each and sent scout drones to investigate. I double-checked our information, before sending my initial report to the Commander.

“Star Ptolemy-1 is a blue dwarf 39 light years from Earth, with ten planets, A through K.

A is a Mercury-like world, very close to the star. It rains molten antimony, lead, and arsenic. Its ocean is molten iron and nickel, with an atmosphere of mainly lead vapor. The surface temperature about 1,900 C.

B is Venus-like, with a temperature near 500 degrees, due to a runaway greenhouse effect.

C is rocky, with no water or atmosphere, and a temperature of 200 degrees.

The three planets in the habitable zone are D, E, and F.

E and F are both rocky and cold, like Norway or Alaska on Earth.