Chapter 2

Date and time: Unknown

Location: Unknown

A throbbing pain from somewhere behind his eyes jerked Devin awake. He sat up straight in his seat and looked around. The lights had gone out, and the console displays glared in the darkness. “Sijay? Shanna?”

“I’ve just been kicked in the head,” Sijay mumbled. She pushed herself upright and tried to focus on her primary flight display. Lurid warning symbols covered nearly all the instruments. “Looks like my systems are down, too.”

Shanna moaned and sat up. “What ... ooooh, god.” She grabbed a nausea kit from its place at her knee and vomited into the bag.

Devin’s virtual keyboard was out, so he keyed up the manual override. “Okay, everyone, report in to the command deck.”

Keith’s voice came back immediately. “Engineering is operational, although a lot of our instrumentation is out. The engines are shut down, but we still have power. Some of my people are sick, and one person is injured. A med team is on the way.”

“Let me know what damages we have as soon as you can.”

“Will do.” Keith cut the connection.

“Sijay, get a position report and course for us. That ‘whatever’ probably changed our trajectory.”

“On it, Boss.” Sijay went to work on her console.

Shanna wiped her mouth with a tissue and spat into the bag, and sealed it with a grimace. “That was fun,” she groused. She carefully stowed the bag in the trash compartment, then turned to her instruments. “Crap, everything is a mess here. Gimmie a minute.”

Devin checked his own information screens as he waited for the crew to report in. “Devin, this is Lenna,” his wife’s voice came over the comm. “We have dozens of people with motion sickness here. Most of them are just disoriented, but three of them are on life support. What happened?”

Devin activated his microphone. “We hit something.”

Lenna kept her voice level. “I haven’t heard that we’re losing air, so that’s a good sign.”

“Yes.” He grinned in spite of himself. “I’ll call when I know more.”

“Thanks.” She closed the connection.

“Um, Devin?” Shanna turned to face him.

“What is it?”

“Mars isn’t there anymore.”

He looked at her in the dim light, then down to his main screen. “Show me.”

Shanna linked the image to the others’ working displays. “See? Mars isn’t there.” She drew a rough circle in the image. “It should be - right there - and it isn’t.”

“Are we pointed in the right direction?” Sijay asked. “The nav computer has taken a powder over here. Whatever happened almost certainly changed our attitude.”

“I think so. The sun is ... oh, that’s odd.” Shanna broke off, and everyone looked as the sun came into view. It was a pale, whitish yellow orb that burned at the center of the system. “The spectrum looks wrong.”

“Okay, don’t panic,” Devin said dryly. “Check the imaging system again.”

“Right,” Shanna nodded as she started the diagnostics. Three minutes later, she had her answers. “Guys, something is seriously wrong here.”

“What is it?”

“Look at my data.”

Devin’s eyebrows rose. “Shanna, Sol is a G class star the last time I looked. The spectral analyzer isn’t working, right?”

“The analyzer is fine, and I ran the images from the other external cameras just to be sure. I still show an F class star. Go figure. I’m still working on it, though.” She tapped a key, and the star’s image shrank in the camera. “Now, let’s find Earth and the Moon, which should be right about...”

“Let’s use all the external cameras,” Devin suggested. “We can cover the sky a lot faster that way.” A nagging doubt started tugging at the back of his mind as he looked at the still image of the sun on his own display.

Shanna grinned sapiently. “I’m on it, Boss. Starting the scans now.” The large display at Shanna’s station was split into a dozen smaller images, each belonging to a different external camera.

The cameras panned across the sea of stars for a full minute, and suddenly Sijay leaned forward in her seat. Stop!” The images froze as Shanna obeyed. “Skew Camera, uh, Seven, right and down some, Shanna.” The camera moved, and Sijay hissed in shock. “What the hell are we doing so close to Earth?”

A planet hung before them; a brilliant blue marble set off against the diamond-dusted velvet of deep space. Shanna enlarged the image, and Devin’s eyes narrowed as he studied it. “That’s odd,” he muttered. “Nothing looks right.” He froze the image and rotated it, trying to make sense of the oddly shaped land masses.

At her station, Shanna activated her mapping program and loaded the planet’s image into it. She had her answer in seconds. “No way.” She ran the results twice more, with the same result. “Um, I hate to tell you this, but that isn’t Earth. It’s not even close.”

Devin nodded slowly. “You’re right, it isn’t.”

“What’s going on?” Sijay looked at her crewmates in confusion. “Where are we?”

“I don’t know,” Shanna breathed as she took in the impossible images.

Devin stared at the alien world as the doubt in the back of his mind flared into an uneasy certainty. He took a breath to steady his nerves. “Start collecting data, Shanna. Let’s find out if it’s livable. Atmosphere composition, temperatures, density and size.” He glanced at Sijay. “Run a plot to see where we are in relation to the planet.” His mind spun at the implications, but they needed to solve the immediate problems first.

The shaken pilot swallowed and nodded hesitantly. “Our nav system is... , “ she turned to her own station and immediately noticed that several of the instruments were back online, “um, coming back now.

Give me a few minutes to get things going again over here.”

Devin opened his mouth and his comm chimed. “Devin, this is Keith with a preliminary damage report.” An icon flashed on Devin’s display, and he selected it. A schematic of the Wells appeared with several sections marked in red. “Go ahead.”

“The good news is, we are still airtight, at least mostly, and I think we can still maneuver. Our fuel tanks are all intact, and we still have plenty of reaction mass in hand. The bad news is we have some fairly serious structural damage and some loose items to recover.” One red icon flashed on his display, and Devin’s blood ran cold as he read the legend. ‘Power Reactor One’. “The worst news is we had to scram Reactor One. Something went wrong in the cooling system, and we about lost it.”

“Thank you, Keith. What do we need to recover?”

“All the containers and four shuttles are unaccounted for. From what I can see, the entire ship was torqued out of alignment by whatever we hit. I have damage control parties out now, but the personnel tube has shattered in at least two places. Everyone is in full spacesuits, and we have to clear debris first.”

Devin nodded. “I will detail a recovery crew for the containers and the shuttles. I need to know soonest if we still have attitude controls and how much thrust the hull will safely handle.”

“Will do, Devin.”

Devin selected the hangar deck on his comm panel. “Devin to Manuel.”

“Go ahead, Devin.” Manuel Fuentes, the Wells’ cargo master, replied.

“All eight containers and four shuttles have broken loose. Please recover them and secure them if you can.”

“We’re on it. I have two recovery teams ready to launch. Anything else?”

“The personnel tube is damaged, and there may be other damage that we can’t see. Report anything you find to Keith.”

“Will do.”

Twenty minutes passed while the crew surveyed their stricken vessel. Devin sat quietly in his chair and watched the damage control page on his display update as new reports came in from all over the ship. Shanna tapped her control board, and a planetary map replaced the damage-reporting page on Devin’s main display.

“Okay, here’s what I was able to pull together,” Shanna began. “The star reads as an F-class, an F-seven, to be exact. I’ve got the star catalog running, but that won’t help us much since the star tracker is still out to lunch. Basically, this star is about twice as luminous as our sun, but only slightly larger. Depending on whose theory you believe, that means this star really shouldn’t have a habitable planet.” She grinned at Devin and Sijay.

“Fortunately for us lost children, that,” she pointed at her display as an image of the planet popped up, “is a habitable planet. The planet’s orbit is something close to two point two A-U. That makes its planetary year about twice as long as Earth’s. It is somewhat smaller than Earth, but it reads at about the same relative density, so the planet’s composition is probably very similar.”

“The rotation period,” she checked her data display, “is twenty-seven hours, give or take. The planet’s axis is inclined twenty-eight degrees, and the water to land percentage is about seventy-five percent on the side I can see. That percentage may change once I can map the whole planet, but the landmasses are smaller and more scattered than Earth’s. The local gravity is less than Earth’s, too, probably around point eight gee, but I won’t be able to give a number until I get better density data.”

Devin held up a hand, and Shanna nodded to him. “What about the atmosphere?”

“It’s a nitrogen-oxygen mix, but,” she held up a restraining hand as her companions grinned happily, “that doesn’t mean we can breathe it. We humans have a very selective respiratory system, and we need a certain mix to stay healthy.”

“But, we breathe all sorts of different mixtures, from pure oxygen to a helium mix for deep sea work,” Sijay protested.

Shanna nodded. “That’s right. But, we don’t do that for very long. We have to have a fairly close percentage to survive long term. However,” she lowered her hand, “there are some good signs. The planet has liquid water over most of the oceans, except at the poles. There are definitely large areas of vegetation and a fairly active weather system.”

“How does this help?” Devin asked.

“Well, again, that depends on the theory you use to postulate how we got here.” Her eyes shone. “If I can get to the surface and look at these plants, I might be able to prove something.”

“What do you mean?” Sijay twisted in her seat to look at Shanna directly.

“There are essentially two theories out there, evolutionism and creationism.” Devin and Sijay nodded in understanding; they both knew Shanna was an outspoken opponent of chance evolution. Shanna smiled. “Exactly. While it may not be absolute proof, if those plants, and animals, if they’re there, share the same or very similar DNA, the idea of chance evolution takes a big hit.”

“So we might be able to just land and set up shop, right?” Devin smiled. “This is great news!”

“Maybe,” Shanna’s tone softened, and Devin’s face smoothed. “That is a different environment, and the plants and animals may be totally different, too. The point is, the environment is stable, with liquid water and no contaminants that I can see from this far out. That fact says a whole lot by itself, because of the chemistry and climate dynamics involved. That,” she pointed to the planet, “is an absolute miracle, and the bigger miracle is, we found it.”

“Any moons?” Devin thought out loud as he gazed at what could become their new home.

“I’ve seen two small ones, so far.” Shanna’s fingers moved on her virtual keyboard and a diagram appeared. “They’re way out, and fairly small, sort of like Phobos and Diemos. I haven’t been able to get orbital data on them, either, so I just penciled them in for circular orbits.”

“How about the rest of the system?” Sijay put in. “Plus, we need to look for any other rocks that might be about to hit us.”

“Yep,” Shanna nodded. “The radar system should be back online shortly. We had to take it down about an hour ago for more repairs. I’m running the cameras for a visual survey, but that takes a while. If the object doesn’t reflect a lot of light, it can be missed against the star field. We have the distance and rate of change relative to the planet. Sijay has input that into the nav computer.”

“Any emissions from the planet?” Devin brought up his own display. “There may be someone home over there.”