Standard Candles

By Rachel Lulich

Never give up. Even when there's no way home.

Stranded. Alone. With dwindling oxygen supplies and an unfinished navigation program that was a long shot at best, Derek, Jacob, and Vicky must work against the odds-and the clock-if they are to make it home.

But home doesn't hold out much hope for

• Language: English
• Publisher: Broken Top Books
• Release date: Dec 23, 2022
• ISBN: 9781734237979

Book preview

Chapter One

Major Paul Brightman fiddled with his flight cap under the table, grateful for the long tablecloth that allowed him to fidget covertly. To his right, Lieutenant Colonel Jeff Marshall fielded questions from the two dozen reporters seated in front of them. The press conference had already lasted half an hour.

No, the crew is not presumed dead, Jeff said, in answer to a question about the official status of the Pioneer, even though he’d already covered this in his briefing before inviting questions. Ground Control had lost the ad hoc communications they’d established with the Pioneer via the Entangled Particles Experiment, cutting them off from any knowledge of the crew’s well-being for nearly twenty-four hours now. Worse, they had no idea why they’d lost entanglement. Anything could have happened. And they’d never get it back.

We know, Jeff continued, still reviewing what he’d already said, that the crew still had nearly half their oxygen left when we lost contact. We are therefore operating on the assumption that they are still alive.

Paul tuned out the next question and Jeff’s answer. Nearly half their oxygen. Ground Control had estimates on how long it would last, and once the clock ticked beyond that estimate, the crew would be presumed dead. Then everyone would move on.

Paul felt a slight pressure on his elbow. Colonel Elizabeth Fischer, seated next to him, had reached over to nudge him. Paul realized he’d slumped in his seat a little and took her touch as a subtle signal to correct that. He straightened his spine slowly to avoid drawing attention to himself. He also realized he’d been frowning, so he licked his lips and twitched his nose to cover for resetting his expression to the military bearing default.

He wished they hadn’t been tasked with attending this press conference. They hadn’t said a

word—

Jeff, as one of the three Spaceflight Supervisors, was mercifully doing all the talking. But the Air Force wanted the public to see the smartly dressed astronauts when there was significant news to

release—

good or bad. In this case, it helped offset the negative news and instill confidence that everything possible was being done. That was the theory, anyway.

And to be fair, everything possible was being done. Paul just wished projecting professionalism to the public when he’d rather be troubleshooting or commiserating with his colleagues wasn’t part of that. At least they’d let the civilian crew members off the hook for this one, a concession to Liz and the Charlie Crew commander’s request to not have every astronaut absent from the decision-making process during the press conference. As a result, Bravo Crew’s James Archer and Charlie Crew’s Mark Davis were in Simulations and Ground Control, respectively. They’d keep an eye on things and ensure the astronaut perspective was taken into account in any discussions taking place. Still. Paul was itching to rejoin James in Sims.

"Does the Air Force have any concrete plans to rescue the crew of the Pioneer?"

Paul glanced at the young reporter who’d asked the question. His face was set in an odd, manufactured-looking mixture of grave and eager. Paul disliked him on the spot. But he’d asked a good question.

Jeff hesitated. Before we lost communications, he said, pausing at the end of the clause to buy his brain time to supply a good response, we were relaying procedures to the crew to help them guide their spacecraft back to the solar system.

Yes, but what about now? the young man pressed.

Jeff scratched his chin with his index

finger—

another little ploy to buy

time—

and Paul felt sorry for him having to be the one to field all these questions.

"Without communications, there is nothing more we can do directly for the crew at present, Jeff finally admitted, managing to also cage his response with the emphasis on directly. But they are capable astronauts, and we are continuing our efforts to prepare to assist them if and when they are able to get close enough for conventional communications to resume."

If and when. Paul tried not to grind his teeth. If.

Will the Air Force continue experimenting with the new propulsion technology that caused this crisis to begin with? another reporter

asked—

as if the tech was threatening lives on Earth like something out of a superhero story. Jacob would have had a good reference, Paul

thought—

probably several.

Jeff was shaking his head before the reporter even finished asking his question. "I am unable to comment on plans for the future of the military’s manned spaceflight program. Only questions about the Pioneer, please," he reminded the room at

large—

not for the first time.

A female reporter in the second row, whom Paul recognized as being with the Air Force Times, was selected to ask the next question.

"Can you tell us anything about how you are preparing to assist the Pioneer if they get close enough?"

Another excellent query. As far as Paul knew, they had no actual plans as

yet—

concrete or not.

All avenues are being considered, Jeff said, confirming Paul’s thought. And now, I’m afraid I have to wrap up this conference. Thank you all for your attention and questions.

Paul shot gratefully to his feet along with the other panelists.

Finally. Press conferences might be important to Big Air Force, but they wouldn’t help the Pioneer. Alpha Crew needed everyone working on contingency plans if they were going to make it home alive. Paul wasn’t even going to waste time walking back to his office to change into the more comfortable OCPs. Now more than ever, he felt like every moment counted.

Hey, Liz said in a low voice as soon as they were out of the conference room. Are you okay?

Yeah. Just eager to get back to work.

She raised her eyebrows. You don’t think that was work?

Paul shrugged, ignoring her small attempt at levity. Waste of our time, he said. Colonel Marshall could have handled it alone. No need to take us out of the game.

Liz slowed, studying Paul in that way she had that made him feel like she was opening the book of his mind and checking for typos. He looked away.

Should we head to Simulations or Ground Control?

Neither, Liz said, her tone clipped. Just like that, she’d switched to command mode. Text James and have him meet us in Room 105. I want to talk to the science teams.

Paul felt a smile tugging at his mouth as he pulled his phone out of his interior jacket pocket. Liz certainly wasn’t shifting gears away from the Pioneer’s mission. If anything, she was doubling down.

---

Colonel Derek Williams contemplated the Entangled Particles Experiment. It was useless to them now. There was no way to re-entangle the particles with those on Earth. So why did he feel reluctant to stow the apparatus?

He felt eyes on him and looked up to see Doctor Victoria Abrams watching from their semicircular table. She never missed a trick, he thought with equal parts amusement and consternation.

Derek went for a wry smile and she smiled back, but it was distracted. Fleeting. She turned back to her

breakfast—

and her computer. Vicky liked to multitask, and she was good at it, but Derek was beginning to worry about burnout. They still had a long way to go, and now they had to go it alone again, this time for the duration.

Derek sighed. It had barely been twenty-four hours since they’d lost communications with Ground Control. It was a blow none of them had yet recovered

from—

even Jacob, who usually found some way to joke about everything. Derek himself was due for a sleep cycle, but with no opportunity to pass and receive comms from Earth, he felt restless, like he ought to be figuring out some other way to phone home.

He was tired, though; he’d spent his shift staring at his own laptop screen, studying what they knew so far of the pulsar navigation program Ground had been sending them when they lost comms. It was an unfinished novel they’d now have to make up an ending to. Derek stretched, mentally talking himself out of the temptation to stay awake past his sleep shift to work on it; Vicky and Jacob would jump at the excuse to stop sleeping regularly, themselves. While they could all function pretty independently, this was one of those areas where the mission commander set the tone.

Derek gently swiped at the EPE, sending it into a slow spin. What should he do with it?

Abrams?

Vicky looked up again, too readily for him to believe she’d actually been focused on anything. Sir?

Can we get anything useful from the EPE computer?

Vicky shook her head. Nothing we can’t do with our laptops. Unless we need it for spare parts later, it’s pretty much garbage at this point.

Derek nodded. That was his thought as well.

I’m going to stow this in the pantry, he said. They’d eaten enough food that there would be room for the clunky cylinder. Actually, he said, stopping the tank’s spin and regarding it thoughtfully, now that you’ve said the word ‘garbage’ I can see it. Put a couple legs on this and it would look more like R2D2 than RTD2 did.

Vicky smiled at that. Don’t tell Jacob.

Never.

Vicky watched Derek glide to the kitchen, such as it was, noting which compartment he selected to stow the EPE. If they did end up needing it for parts, they’d know exactly where to find it. Unlikely, but they’d had a lot of unlikely on this mission, along with plenty of not possible. Vicky thought she’d adjusted pretty well to their new normal, all things considered, but it still bugged her sometimes that they just didn’t know very much for

certain—

including why they’d lost entanglement. It didn’t help that their loss of communication felt like a bigger setback than the fact that they’d left their solar system to begin with.

When they’d first accidentally created and traveled through a wormhole, they’d been cut off from communications with Earth, but they hadn’t known why; they’d been focused on troubleshooting the silence and figuring out what had happened. The

restoration—

to a certain

extent—

of those comms via the EPE had been a miracle, but they’d gotten used to their new system of communicating with Ground Control. They’d been linked to home almost as firmly, if not quite as usefully, as if they’d still been in the solar system.

Now, they were cut off

again—

this time with no work-arounds. The only way to communicate with Earth now was to get back to the solar system, but their best shot at doing so had been the procedures Ground was in the middle of sending them when the particles became un-entangled. Their lifeline had snapped before they re­ceived all the information.

Vicky rubbed her eyes. She’d spent her down time the day before searching all the electronic resources they had about pulsar navigation and Kalman filters to try to fill in the gaps of the instructions Ground had been sending when they were cut off. It was vital to figure out how to program the Pioneer to track the pulsar they’d

finally—

and tentatively, because of their loss of

comms—

identified as Geminga, calculate where the ship was while they were in the wormhole, then automatically turn off the Hawking Engine when they were a certain distance from that pulsar. That would hopefully prevent them from entering a new fissure in spacetime and moving farther from Earth rather than staying in the neighborhood or even getting closer.

It was a long shot, but their only other option was to just randomly jump from place to place and cross their fingers that they’d end up close enough to home to make it back before they ran out of oxygen. Still . . . they couldn’t wrestle with the programing forever, or they’d run out of oxygen before they could get close enough. It was a balancing act, and Vicky was grateful she didn’t have to make the final call about

it—

that was Derek’s responsibility as Crew Commander.

Derek drifted past her again, now clad in his space pajamas.

Good night, he said.

Good night, Sir.

He caught himself on a handhold by the bedroom. Night, Mendez! he called up the access tunnel to Captain Jacob Mendez, who was already in the Command Capsule for his shift.

Hey, wait a minute, Sir! Jacob called back.

Derek arrested his movement and Vicky paused in the middle of crinkling up her now-empty packet of oatmeal to throw away. A moment later, Jacob popped out of the access tunnel, head first.

So, I’ve been reviewing all our systems and data, he said without preamble, "and I’ve come up with two

conclusions—

though we can’t confirm either," he added with a glance to Vicky.

Is one of your conclusions about why the particles became disentangled? Derek asked.

"Yeah. It looks like our new

star—

which we still need to name, by the

way—

emitted a pretty robust solar flare. That definitely could have disrupted our entanglement. I can’t be sure, though. Jacob added, because it doesn’t seem to have affected our radio telescope array. I’m not sure why it would affect one and not the other."

Entanglement is tricky, Vicky said, her eyes unfocused with concentration. "That’s why we have the EPE in the first

place—

NASA wasn’t sure it would survive spaceflight."

True.

It survived our first solar flare, Derek pointed out, back before we left the solar system.

Vicky nodded. Maybe it can only take so much interference.

Derek raised his eyebrows. Speculating?

Vicky shrugged, looking resigned. Jacob’s a bad influence.

Derek chuckled, not least at Jacob’s pleased expression.

Go on, he said, indicating that the young captain should continue.

"Right. So, it’s possible this massive solar flare was an anomaly, but we just registered another flare a few minutes

ago—

more minor than the first, but still significant. Looks like this could be a relatively volatile star. And if major solar flares are a regularly occurring phenomenon, we might not want to stay here too long. We don’t know what it could do to our health or the Pioneer. Plus, we don’t know how many more asteroids are in the neighborhood," Jacob said, remembering the near miss they’d had when they first arrived in this solar system.

So you want to create another wormhole sooner rather than later, Vicky surmised.

That’s correct.

Derek saw an opportunity to lighten the mood and called on his training to keep a straight face. There is a danger to opening up a wormhole here.

Jacob nodded. Yeah. If we do it before we get the PulsNav system up and running, we won’t be able to track Geminga. We’ll be totally lost again.

PulsNav? Vicky asked.

"Yeah. Pulsar

Navigation—

PulsNav. It has a ring to it."

I was thinking about complications from the flares, Derek corrected, pulling their focus back.

Vicky frowned. What kind of complications?

If we enter a wormhole right when a solar flare occurs, we could get sent backward or forward in time.

Derek’s statement was met with silence. Jacob and Vicky looked at each other, then Jacob did a double take at Derek.

"Wait, was that a Stargate reference?"

You tell me.

The team gets sent back to 1969 because of a solar flare. Season three or four.

Best time travel episode of any sci-fi show ever, Derek said, finally allowing himself to smile. Or so I’ve been told.

Jacob grinned. By a reliable source, obviously. Although, ‘Window of Opportunity’ was a pretty good episode, too.

Derek shook his head. Time loops do not count as time travel.

Fair enough.

Technically, Vicky chimed in with a smirk, time loops are still time travel. They’re just traveling back in time over and over again.

Jacob pointed at her. I like the way you think.

Anyway, Derek said, feeling it was time to wrap up the rabbit trail he’d created. What’s your other conclusion, Mendez?

Oh, I think the gorgeous landmark outside is indeed the Ring Nebula.

Vick’s lips twitched. You’re giving us a second opinion to NASA’s?

Yeah. They weren’t absolutely certain, he pointed out, and they aren’t here. We have the most up-to-date, firsthand information. So I’m just saying, I’ve reviewed all the information and I think they were right. It’s the Ring Nebula.

I hope so, Derek said.

They all turned to look out the window opposite his position to gaze at the blue, orange, and yellow wheel of gasses. The nebula was bus-sized from their perspective, putting them pretty close to it, in astronomical terms. If it was the Ring Nebula, it meant their last wormhole jump had put them hundreds of light years closer to Earth than they were before, based on Ground Control and NASA’s best estimates of their previous location. While they couldn’t predict where their next jump would take them, moving back toward their starting point was a good sign.

So, Jacob said, drawing Derek’s attention back to their discussion. What do you think about jumping away from this star?

Derek sighed. I think we aren’t going anywhere until we finish the PulsNav program. So let’s make that our main focus.

Vicky nodded agreement, but Jacob hesitated.

I’m not much of a programmer, he said. "I mean, I know how to program the capsule computers according to our presets and anything Ground might feed us, but winging it on something the Pioneer’s not meant to do in the first place? That’s a totally different ballgame."

Derek nodded. Abrams and I will take care of the programming, he said. That means I may need you to pull some extra cleaning duty.

Yeah, no problem, Jacob said gamely.

Abrams?

I’m just about done reviewing the literature we have on board, she said. I’ve been marking up the texts, and I’ll write a summary for you. I’m not sure how much I can help with the programming, though.

Do what you can, Derek said. Just don’t forget to comment so I know where you started coding when I go to look at it. And we can proofread each other’s work.

Vicky nodded, thinking hers was the only work that would really need to be proofread.

Alright, Derek said. Let’s make this happen.

Jacob and Vicky responded to his tone. Jacob flashed a thumbs-up before heading back to the Command Capsule, and Vicky turned to her laptop screen once more. Derek took a moment to review his decision to stay put for the time being and came to the same conclusion: they wouldn’t jump without a functional PulsNav program unless they had no other choice. He opened the little door to their bedroom and tucked himself inside. It was a classical music night, he decided, selecting Moonlight Sonata in hopes that its familiar melody would help him relax and turn his brain off. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes as the opening notes drifted into his

ears—

and prayed for sleep. They had a long road ahead.

Chapter Two

Ultimately, they have to figure out the rest on their own.

Major Amy Ong tried to gauge the astronauts’ reaction to her summary. She’d already been through the details of what procedures had and hadn’t been passed on to the Pioneer with Ground Control. Now the Bravo and Charlie Crew astronauts had shown up, unannounced, for an update of their own. James was smiling encouragingly, but the rest of them were frowning and brow-creased. Colonel Fischer was the first to speak.

What are the odds they can get the program to a workable state?

Amy pursed her lips. The odds were low. "It’s hard to say. Colonel Williams’ computer science background and the whole crew’s extensive knowledge of astronomy and astrophysics will definitely help, but I’m not comfortable giving an estimate. There are other factors at play, such as what programming resources they have on board. And the usability of any program will be affected by whether or not they can positively identify any of the pulsars they find without help from Ground Control and

NASA—

but that would be an issue even if they’d received all the procedures from us."

It was already a long shot, agreed Mark Davis, the Charlie Crew navigator. His tone was professional and detached; if he was discouraged by her report, he wasn’t showing it.

Amy nodded. "But they could still make it

work—

if they want to try."

Paul shifted where he stood on the fringe of their impromptu semicircle around the major. They’ll try, he said.

"They won’t like jumping blindly when they know there’s a way to exert some

control—

however

little—

over where they end up, James agreed. I think they’ll finish the program.

Assuming they do, Liz spoke up, how does that affect your team’s estimate of how many times they’ll have to jump before they end up back in the solar system?

Nobody voiced the if they ever do caveat Amy knew they all must be thinking somewhere in the back of their minds.

"We think it will reduce the necessary number of jumps by a

third—

maybe as much as half, if they can ID more than one pulsar per jump."

They’ll have to reconfigure the variables for auto-shutdown each time, noted Major Kevin Thompson, Alpha Crew’s original mission specialist before a family emergency had resulted in Vicky taking his place on the Pioneer. Depending on whether they want to come out of the wormhole far away from a given pulsar or relatively close to it.

And that will take time between each jump to calculate, Liz agreed. Do they have enough consumables to make those adjustments the number of times they’ll need to? Roughly speaking?

Amy was grateful for the colonel’s qualification. They were dealing with so many unknowns, and it was already impossible to confidently predict how many times the Pioneer would need to enter and exit a wormhole before the Random Walk pattern they were in brought them back to the solar

system—

if it ever did. Amy had wondered whether the remaining astronauts would be satisfied with estimates accompanied by piles of caveats, but so far they’d been receptive and understanding. All they wanted was the best information

available—

and they didn’t want hand-holding.

Probably not, Amy answered honestly. If they hadn’t lost all that oxygen, maybe. But as it is, they’ll likely have to stop trying to control their wormhole egress at some point and switch to jumping blindly. When they’ll have to do that depends on how long it takes them to finish the base program, and of course how long it takes them to identify key pulsars to estimate their position after each jump.

The two crews nodded at her assessment, such as it was. At least their expressions were more thoughtful

now—

their creased brows had smoothed out considerably. A few seconds ticked by without anyone speaking, and Amy’s eye was drawn to the clock across the room. But Colonel Fischer spoke up before she could ask if they had any other questions.

What is your team working on now?

Liz watched as Amy hesitated. Whatever the answer was, she had a feeling she wasn’t going to like it.

They’re breaking our team up, actually.

What? James folded his arms across his chest. Why?

"The team was assembled to help the Pioneer by coming up with procedures they could execute to extend their life expectancy and control their jumps to the greatest extent possible to bring them closer to Earth. Without communications, that purpose is moot. I’ll be heading back to my duty station as soon as someone gets around to cutting orders. So will most of the others."

Liz considered the news. It was disappointing, but it made sense. Without communications, the urgency of the science team’s mission was gone. The whole thing was theoretical again; no need for an all-hands-on-deck

approach—

and its associated expense.

And in the meantime? prompted the Charlie Crew commander, Colonel Hamilton, speaking up for the first time.

Just packing up, Amy said. "We currently have no tasking. At least, those of us here on TDY don’t. I don’t know about the members of the science support teams normally stationed here. They’re heading back to their normal offices