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Previously: Joanna figures out how the crew have been genetically engineered and shares this with Lana and Aiden.
October 2056
Still, that smell of fast food. It assaulted Kevin as he walked through the door of his ops room. Owen didn’t move, he continued to stare at the screen in front of him. The other person in the room - a huge hulk of a man - was sitting sideways at the desk next to Owen, watching him. Sweat glistened on his shaved head. He stood up as Kevin entered the room.
“Evening, boss.”
“Is he behaving himself?”
“Seems to be. Hasn’t been doing much. When he has, he’s explained it to me, and it don’t seem to be anything fishy.”
“Good.”
Owen continued to ignore them.
“Mind if I grab a bite boss? I’m starving.”
“Sure, I’ll watch him for a bit.”
“Thanks.” He strode to the door in giant steps.
Kevin waited for the door to close behind him. Standing behind Owen, he quickly glanced over the screens in front of him.
“How far away from the hab are they now?”
“About 750 km,” said Owen without looking up.
“You’re going to have to stop this sulk of yours.”
“I’m not sulking.”
“Yes, you fucking are. I pay you to do a job, and that’s what you do. Only that. This set-up is not your personal technological playground. Let’s get that straight. Now drop the childish grumpiness.”
“Stop leaving your goons here to watch over me like a kid then.”
“I’m—” Kevin stopped himself, it wasn’t worth the effort.
“So they are probably as far away as they are going to get from the hab then?”
“I would say so, Kev. They are actually closer to McMurdo. But as far as I know, they have an agreement with Concordia Station to provide assistance in the case of an emergency. The weather on the coast is also pretty bad right now. The last thing McMurdo is going to want to do is head out on a rescue mission.”
Owen turned in his seat to face Kevin. “If you want to do it, I’d say now is your best opportunity.”
Kevin looked at Owen, back up to the screens, then back to Owen.
“Ok do it.”
Owen swung back around in his chair and started typing commands. In thirty seconds he was finished.
“It’s done.”
Kevin walked over to the chair vacated by the guard minutes earlier, grabbing the back of another to pull it closer as he went. He sat down and put his feet up.
“Let me know when something interesting happens.”
He took out his tablet out and began calmly scanning through his messages.
Aiden knelt down and spread the legs of the stand before placing the dish on the snow. He stood back and, a few seconds later, the dish started to move. It stopped every few seconds and held position before moving again. While it was acquiring a satellite lock, Aiden typed a few commands on the wrist comm control of his suit. The three of them stood in a circle around the small dish, about one hundred metres from the hab.
“Ok, go to comm loop thirteen,” said Aiden.
Lana and Joanna entered the channel number on the keypads on their wrists. Lana heard the soft chime of the comm loop opening.
“Got me there?” asked Aiden.
“Yep, got you,” she replied.
“Same here,” came the response from Joanna.
“Ok, this is going to go through to his personal number, so he might not answer. He won’t recognise where the call is coming from,” said Aiden.
“What happens if we can’t get through?” asked Joanna.
“We’ll have to try calling a number in Mission Control and asking to be patched through. Hopefully, we can get through this way, it’s our best chance of not being intercepted.”
Lana heard the old-fashioned touch-tones as Aiden entered the numbers on his wrist keypad. A brief pause, then the ringing tone. It seemed to go on forever. Finally, the call was picked up.
“Hello?” Larsson’s distinctive, softly accented English.
“Yes, hello,” he repeated.
She knew she had to speak now or he would hang up, but the words wouldn’t come.
Finally, “Christian,” said Lana in a broken voice.
“Lana? Is that you?”
“Yes.”
“What on earth is going on?” He sounded rattled. Something Lana had not heard before.
“We had to call you on a standby satellite link, to try and make sure we’re not being intercepted. We still can’t be sure, but it’s the best we can do.” Lana cleared her throat and her voice returned to normal. “Aiden and Joanna are with me listening in we. We needed to talk to you.”
“Make sure nobody’s listening in? What do you mean?”
“You will understand when we ask you what we are—”
The slight delay made tripping over the end of each other’s sentences inevitable.
“Our comm links are secure,” continued Larsson. “Who are you worried about listening in? You know private calls can’t be monitored, even by Mission Control.”
Lana waited to make sure he had finished speaking. She wanted to make sure she had his full attention.
“True Genesis.”
The soft, almost imperceptible hiss in her headset was all that told Lana the connection had not gone dead. She waited, imagining Larsson’s face - wherever he was - contorting into shock and disbelief. Would he be able to talk freely, or was he in public? She had no way of telling right now. She felt guilty. After all, Larsson was in his early eighties - in excellent health - even so, he was no spring chicken. How would he react to the shocking revelation of what they had figured out?
“True Genesis,” Lana repeated. “We are worried about True Genesis listening in on our conversation. Because…we believe they may be an…existential threat…to us. And the rest of the foundation.”
Again the delay.
“I see,” said Larsson. “I guess the day has come.” His voice remained composed, but a hint of suppressed emotion crept in. “I thought it might. I was hoping this could wait until you returned from Antarctica, but—”
“So it’s true?” Lana tasted the salt of a tear running into her mouth, unable to wipe it away behind the faceplate of her helmet.
“Yes, it is true,” continued Larsson. “There is no point in continuing to hide it. You and all of the students in the Foundation were genetically engineered at birth to have improved resistance to radiation. This was done to make you more suited for space exploration.”
Larsson paused for a second to let it sink in but not long enough to solicit a reply.
“I know what the next question will be, and the answer is no. Nothing else about you has been changed. Nothing to make you more intelligent or athletic or give you any other special abilities. Every other attribute you possess is down to the DNA you inherited from your parents and your own hard work and skill.”
It was impossible to gauge any reaction. All three of them stood absolutely still, their gold sun visors pulled down, making any facial expression impossible to see. It was Joanna who spoke next.
“You have put a target on our backs, on all our backs.” Her voice barely held together.
There was the faintest of sighs from the other end. Larsson spoke slowly and measured.
“I will admit, yes, I have made you somewhat of a target. But it was always and is still my intention that the Foundation would have nothing but the best security to protect you. This is something I have wrestled with every day of my life, ever since I gave the go-ahead to create the first embryo. It is a risk that I took on behalf of the unborn. I hope now that you know, you will be accepting of it and the opportunity it brings. I just wish…I just wish I could have disclosed this to you all in a more dignified way.”
It was Lana who spoke next.
“Perhaps, but we actually have a more immediate issue to deal with.”
Aiden cut in.
“It’s all well and good we know this now, but thanks to Joanna’s detective work, we think True Genesis has been onto the Foundation for a while. We think the malfunctioning battery heater was sabotage. And now we have the other rover miles from any help. How do we know they will not do the same thing now? It would take a long time for anyone to get to them.”
Before Larsson could reply, Joanna cut in.
“It’s the reason we were pulled out of college and everything moved forward, wasn’t it? You knew they were on to us. Damian Osbourne worked with Isaac Underwood at Newcastle University, and he is part of True Genesis.”
“That…I am afraid…is not something that we knew of until recently. When I recruited Isaac, I was led to believe he only had one research partner who knew the full extent of what they had been doing. Unfortunately, he kept the existence of Damian a secret.”
Aiden, who had been standing as motionless as the others, suddenly lifted his wrist so he could see the display more clearly. He said nothing. Instead, he reached into the storage pouch behind him and pulled out a tablet in a thick protective case and started swiping on the screen.
“What is it?” asked Lana.
“The battery temperature in rover 2 is elevated…and the battery heater is showing as active.”
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I hope you enjoyed the latest episode of Orphans of Apollo.
If you are reading this, you probably have a little more than a passing interest in space exploration. This week I have been listening to the new series of 13 Minutes from the BBC. This podcast series takes its name from the first season, which was a deep dive into the thirteen minutes it took the crew of Apollo 11 to descend to the lunar surface. The second season was about Apollo 13, and this new series is about the Space Shuttle.
It’s ok, but I’m a little disappointed. It’s way over dramatised for my liking, but I can cope with that. What I found the most disappointing was that it glossed over all the compromises made during the development of the vehicle, especially when NASA was forced to adopt some of the Air Force’s requirements.
If you want to understand this better, then it is definitely worth checking out the now-retired podcast Omega Tau. This was one of my favourite podcast and I was very sad to see it go. For episodes about the Shuttle, check out the following:
043 – Flying the Space Shuttle
092 – Building and Living on the ISS
132 – The Space Shuttle (Part 1: Systems)
133 – The Space Shuttle (Part 2: Operations)
195 – Flying the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft
274 – The Shuttle’s Achievements for Space Exploration
If your interests have brought you here, you will find a lot more to listen to.
Have a great week.
Thanks for reading - the future belongs to the optimists.
Alex
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