Chapter 6 - Touching the Final Frontier
Ithad taken them only a few minutes to walk from the building with thecanteen to a nearby launch pad where a waiting shuttle stood. Theythen boarded with little fuss and after a short delay for preflightchecks Sarah could feel the vibration of the engines build up in thefloor beneath her feet and shortly after this the shuttle started tolift into the air. Sarah could hardly feel the shuttle lifting offand she was really able to tell that they were moving by seeing thefeatures of the nearby tower move last the window. The takeoff was alot smooth than Sarah had thought when she first saw the shuttlestanding there imagining that it would require some kind ofcontrolled explosion from the engines like the old style rockets or arunway to take off from that would have been more like the twentiethand twenty-first century planes that the shuttle more resembled.
There,another half remembered image popped into her memory and was gonejust as quick. Far too quick for her to able to lock onto itproperly and bring into sharp focus like someone resolving the imagein a camera lens. Where that particular memory had come from, shedid not know, but it was just like all the others that had come toher in a flash when she least expected and were gone just as quickly. If she had time, Sarah knew with all of her being that she would beable to bring back most of her lost memories, but Marcus’earlier revelation made it clear that if she were left her she wouldnot have the time. Shame, that almost thirty years’ worth ofmemories and experience had been lost to her without her even knowingit.
Duringthe long moments when she alone in the medical center she had oftenpondered what sort life she had had, what sort of person she hadbeen. Had she been a parent or someone who was not yet ready tosettle down? Had she been a good person or had she turned tocriminality? Answers to these questions, and many more, had eludedher and now she may never know.
Hermind came back into focus on the here and now just as they passed outof the atmosphere and into the blackness of space. This chilled heras it reminded her so much of the empty blackness which was the onlyreal memory that she could cling to of before waking up in themedical center. But it was a lot more barren than the darkness ofspace, as this was at least broken up with pin pricks of light fromdistant stars and not so distant planets.
Asthey continued to climb, relative to the planet surface they had justleft of course, Sarah could see something. At first it didn’treally seem like something, more an absence of anything, if that madesense. It was as though it hid the stars behind and created a voidof nothing, but then as the shuttle continued to move and the sun’srays bounced off it she could just make out a shape. A huge solidblack shape that interrupted the light from the stars behind it andnow took form before them. The shape took form as they moved towardand when they turned to travel along the leading edge of the shape. Now it was beginning to become undeniable as to what it was, amanmade object floating here in relatively near orbit to Mars. Itwas, of course, some kind of space station, but like none Sarah hadseen before.
Anotherof those silly little thoughts entered her head at that moment;naturally it was like no space station she had seen before as itwasn’t like Sarah had seen many. Or had she? That’sthe problem with almost total amnesia, one can only be sure of thehere and now, and any feelings of being somewhere before or seeingsomething before cannot truly be trusted, or can they? Sarah pushedall these thoughts far out her mind, as this was the time to bemarveled by such a construction and not debate what she did or didnot.
Throughmost of the flight Marcus had been gibbering on about varioustechnical aspects of the structure ahead, how long it had taken toconstruct, nature of the materials used and size of the structurebeing those that had penetrated her wondering thoughts. The exactdetails of course eluded her at the present, she only marveled at theachievement of building such a structure. Itwas approximately six miles long and four deep, and was made up ofmany several many tons of whatever present day man was using inconstruction. The station was roughly oval in shape and looked fromthe outside to be one long continuous section on the outside, butinside it was divided up into six sections of about the same size. Five of these sections were being used a mini ship yards in order toconstruct the five explorer class ships, four of which would act asescort ships for the Arks and the fifth being intended to be anadvance scout, which would launch a good two months before the othervessels were ready. The sixth compartment contained administrativeand command and control areas that well able to monitor the progressof the ‘ship yards’and ensure the smooth flow of parts and other materials.
Theyeventually moved to the opposite end of the station and as theyapproached a set of double doors that Sarah thought must be theentrance to some sort of docking bay, opened and with the minimum offuss they started through the doors. When the shuttle craft hadcleared the doors Sarah could see below them a number of landing padssimilar to the ones that she had seen at the space port they had leftnot long before. Only one of these were currently occupied and theirshuttle drifted effortless to the pad they had been allocated. Oncethe craft had landed and had powered down the doors opened and Marcusand Sarah disembarked from the shuttle craft.
Theirparticular landing pad was about close to one of the side walls andat the bottom of which there was a pair of doors, through whichMarcus lead and which opened out onto a vast cavernous area. Aroundthe sides, about three quarters of the way up the wall there was acatwalk on which they were standing, that circumvented three of thefour sides of the area. In the middle, that dominated most of therest of the cavern there was an almost completed vessel, the top ofwhich just about reached the catwalk floor. To Sarah it looked quitea ship, black and sleek in a way that she assumed space shipswouldn’t be, again she wasn’t not entirely sure where this camefrom but there it was.
“She’sthe Pilgrim’sHope” Marcus said in almost whisperedawe. “And she should be ready fortesting in a matter of weeks.” As hesaid this, Marcus hoped that his voice didn’t sound too much ofwishful optimism. The construction of this vessel had already beensetback several times due to design problems, main with the newpropulsion systems.
Sarahlooked out from the catwalk where there were standing and took in thesight of the Pilgrim’sHope and she could honestly say shehadn’t seen anything like it in her life. It was black in color, almost as black as the night’s sky andsleek in design, the overall shape was roughly oblong, but what Sarahassumed was the part was rounded and almost oval in shape. What shetook for the rear of the ship as not blocky or angular, which was inline with the rest of the ships design, but was straighter than thefront and this where she rightly assumed the engines were. To hereyes it almost had a dark beauty to it, but yet retained the distinctappearance of something constructed.
“Well?What do you think?” her guide interruptedher momentarily ponderings on practical matters such as what poweredit and how fast it would travel and such practical matters as these,which was interrupted by Marcus repeating his early inquiry.
“Impressive”she said before she had time to really think of an answer,enunciating the only words that would come to mind quickly enough. “Do you know where you are heading infor? Or is it just some random quest for survival?”She said almost immediately afterwards. The words sound cynical toher ears, and again Sarah had spoken them before she had time tothink better of it.
Marcuslooked into her deeply intelligent blue eyes, almost loosing himselfin the mystery of the person behind them. He then looked at awayfrom her and stared at the ground. “No wethink we have located a suitable new world, but the journey is goingto take at least five years”. He finallysaid.
Sarahtook this in and, again, surprised herself by speaking withoutconsciously thinking about it.
“Youknow there are lot of unknown factors here?”She said and Marcus looked at her with as much surprise as she feltin speaking those words. “Well,”Sarah went to elaborate, “there arethings like solar winds, ion storms, unknown spacial and temporalanomalies to take into account, not to mention the most importantunknown of them all.” Marcus looked ather again willing her to continue, but not sure if he wanted to hearwhat she had to say. In all the time that ’ProjectAvalon’ had been running they had mostlyconcerned themselves with where they could go, and logistics oftransporting people and materials, and the most important debate hadbeen quickly overtaken by more pragmatic concerns.
“Youhave no idea whether this planet you’re going to still exists norwhether if it is habitable.” Sarahcontinued on cue. “There is also thequestion of whether it is currently invalidated and if thoseinhabitants are able or willing to share their home with you.”
Marcuspaused for a minutes to consider how he would respond these commentsas it wasn’t common knowledge that a lot of what they were doingowed a huge debt to two crashed space craft that had been unearthedon Mars many years before. And of course what they had been able toretrieve and translate form the onboard databanks. In the end hethought there wouldn’t be anything to lose in revealing this hisguest. As he did so, Sarah didn’t seem all that surprised thatthey had used the star charts aboard these craft to plot theirjourney; it even seemed to Marcus that she had expected this news.
“Soare you taking me with you or are you going to leave me here to die?”Sarah said after a long pause.
“Itwould be a mistake not too” Marcus saidbeing equally blunt. “I have no ideawhere you’ve come from Sarah, but I havethe strongest feeling that you are going to be invaluable on thisjourney.”
Thenext few weeks Sarah spent most of her time either in the classroomwith other members of escort ships crews, trying to catch up with allthat she would need to know to be a useful and productive crewmemberor going through a vigorous physical fitness regime that was designedto ensure that she would be physically up to the demands of thejourney. It surprised how much she could absorb in the short spaceof time and how tired she could feel after the fifteen or sixteenhour days. These took up so much of her time that she barely sawMarcus or had time to fully explore what would turn out to be herbrief of home. But she did begin to get caught up in the optimismand enthusiasm of those around her, so much so she barely noticed thegossiping that went on around her. Most of this was, unsurprisingly,around whom she was and where she had come from. Questions that Sarahhad no answers for. More worrying were the bitchy comments about whyshe should have a place on the ship, and so many good skilled peoplewere being left behind.
Sarahalso had to put her musing about her origins behind her for the timebeing as these were a distraction from all the preparation work beingcarried out around her. During these frantic for weeks she had basicintroductions to everything concerning space flight, fromastronavigation and spacesuit operation to faster than light driveoperation and accepted military tactic. It was emphasized that thelatter shouldn’t’t be needed, but itwas better to be safe than sorry. While she absorbed all of the newinformation introduced to her, there was a gnawing feeling at theback of her mind that she had done all this before. Like her firstastronavigation lesson when she instinctively knew how to calculatecoordinates or having an instinctive feel for maneuvering theshuttles. When she had time to think about such things, it didn’treally surprise her as it made some kind of fuzzy sense to her, afterall she had been found floating in space and this then implied thatSarah had had a life in space, but there hadn’tbeen all that many manned deep space flights.
Suchthoughts were for another time, she decided and put them to the backof her mind and concentrated on the task at hand. One thing didbother her though, no one had mentioned what role or function shewould perform during the journey ahead and she didn’t want to be aburden to those around her. Her instinctive knowledge came inflashes and there was no way for Sarah to tell if that’sall it was, instinct and not subconscious recollections performingthese task in a previous life.