Saving proxima, p.1
Saving Proxima, page 1
Table of Contents
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 46
CHAPTER 47
CHAPTER 48
CHAPTER 49
CHAPTER 50
CHAPTER 51
CHAPTER 52
CHAPTER 53
CHAPTER 54
CHAPTER 55
CHAPTER 56
CHAPTER 57
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
SAVING
PROXIMA
TRAVIS S. TAYLOR
LES JOHNSON
Saving Proxima
Travis S. Taylor
Les Johnson
The year is 2072. At the lunar farside radio observatory, an old school radio broadcast is detected, similar to those broadcast on Earth in the 1940s and early 1950s, but in an unknown language, coming from an impossible source, and originating at an equally impossible location—Proxima Centauri. While the nations of Earth debate making First Contact, they learn that the Proximans are facing an extinction-level disaster, forcing a decision: Will Earth send a ship on a multiyear trip to provide aid?
Interstellar travel is not easy, and by traveling at the speeds required to arrive before disaster strikes at Proxima, humans will learn firsthand the effects of Einstein’s Special Relativity and be forced to ponder the ultimate of questions of "Are we alone in the universe?’ and "What does it mean to be human?"
BAEN BOOKS by TRAVIS S. TAYLOR & LES JOHNSON
Back to the Moon • On to the Asteroid • Saving Proxima
BAEN BOOKS by TRAVIS S. TAYLOR
THE TAU CETI AGENDA SERIES
One Day on Mars • The Tau Ceti Agenda • One Good Soldier
Trail of Evil • Kill Before Dying • Bringers of Hell
WARP SPEED SERIES
Warp Speed • The Quantum Connection
WITH JODY LYNN NYE
Moon Beam • Moon Tracks
WITH JOHN RINGO
Into the Looking Glass • Vorpal Blade
Manxome Foe • Claws That Catch
Von Neumann’s War
WITH MICHAEL Z. WILLIAMSON, TIMOTHY ZAHN, KACEY EZELL, JOSH HAYES
Battle Luna
BAEN BOOKS NONFICTION BY TRAVIS S. TAYLOR
New American Space Plan • The Science Behind The Secret
Alien Invasion: How to Defend Earth (with Bob Boan)
BAEN BOOKS by LES JOHNSON
Mission to Methone • The Spacetime War
WITH BEN BOVA
Rescue Mode
ANTHOLOGIES
Going Interstellar (edited with Jack McDevitt)
Stellaris: People of the Stars (edited with Robert E. Hampson)
For a complete listing of Baen titles by Travis S. Taylor and Les Johnson,
please go to www.baen.com.
Saving Proxima
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2021 by Travis S. Taylor & Les Johnson
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.
A Baen Books Original
Baen Publishing Enterprises
P.O. Box 1403
Riverdale, NY 10471
www.baen.com
ISBN: 978-1-9821-2550-9
eISBN: 978-1-62579-816-9
Cover art by Dave Seeley
Models used for cover art by John Douglass
Timeline graphic by Carol Russo
First printing, August 2021
Distributed by Simon & Schuster
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Taylor, Travis S., author. | Johnson, Les (Charles Les), author.
Title: Saving Proxima / Travis S. Taylor, Les Johnson.
Description: Riverdale, NY : Baen, [2021]
Identifiers: LCCN 2021021989 | ISBN 9781982125509 (hardcover)
Subjects: GSAFD: Science fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3620.A98 S28 2021 | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021021989
Electronic version by Baen Books
www.baen.com
We can figure this out.
CHAPTER 1
February 29, 2072
To Lorraine Gilster, the Lunar Farside Radio Observatory was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. From the moment she arrived, she fell in love with it. When the brilliant, unfiltered by atmosphere sun was shining, as it did every two weeks for fourteen days straight, the light reflecting from the ten-square-mile array was dazzling. The yellowish plastic-like film in which miles of antenna wires were embedded contrasted with the gray lunar soil in a way that shouted, “I’m not natural! People placed me here!” As if anyone looking at it could ever believe it was a natural construct. The three large segmented optical telescopes that stood just on the horizon added to the majesty, and sense of amazement, as only massive objects standing in stark contrast with the blackness of space that provided their backdrop could.
Lorraine, or “Rain,” as her friends and colleagues called her, stopped at the observation window on her way to the data analysis and control room as she did at the beginning of every shift. She did not think she would ever grow tired of the view and, even though her current stay at the observatory was just short of half over, she fully intended to stop and stare every chance she could. Today was no different from yesterday, or the day before. The lunar night was just three Earth days in the future and then the other majestic view would be hers to see—the dark, desolate lunar night. All fourteen days of it. It was just as majestic and beautiful as the daylight view, but completely different.
She was abruptly shaken from her reverie by the nearby communications link buzzing and demanding her attention. On each wall and in every room at the observatory there was an old-fashioned, fiber-optic, hardwired intercom. No radios or wireless communications were allowed anywhere near the precious radio-quiet zone that was home to the Farside Radio Observatory. Being away from terrestrial radio sources, artificial and natural, was why it had been placed on the lunar farside with the mass of the moon providing all the radio frequency shielding needed to make it the most radio-quiet place in the inner solar system. Allowing personnel to use wireless communications this near the extremely sensitive radio antennas and receivers would compromise the environment and potentially introduce radio noise that would drown out the very faint signals they were there to collect and study.
Rain reached for the button to activate the intercom, cursing under her breath as she did so. This was her time. She wasn’t on the clock yet and had planned her day to allow ample time to look out the window undisturbed.
“This is Rain. What’s up?” She tried not to sound terse, but she knew that whoever was calling could probably tell they had interrupted something.
“This is Stephan. I’m sorry to bother you, but I thought you’d want to know that the ICC just denied Lunar Global their constellation permit. The vote was five to four.”
Rain sighed. The vote was closer than she liked but winning was winning. One of these days, though, they were likely going to lose. Gone were the days of unanimous support for keeping the lunar farside free of radio interference. The Interplanetary Communications Commission demonstrated they were still on the observatory’s side by voting down Lunar Global Corporation’s proposal to build a constellation of lunar-orbiting, high-bandwidth communications satellites—again. But how many more votes could those who wanted to keep the radio spectrum here quiet and free from interference win? One of these days, the lunar real estate developers would win and the satellites would be launched, ruining big swaths of the radio spectrum for science. Apparently, there was only so much one could do with miles and miles of fiber directly connecting the many lunar bases and outposts to one another.
“Thanks for telling me, Stephan. That means we’re safe for another three years or so. Anything else?”
“Yeah, you owe me a dinner. When can I collect?”
“How about tonight? After my shift.”
“That would be great. Come by my room at nineteen hundred. It will be the best meal on farside,” said Stephan.
“See you then,” Rain said as she closed th
She glanced out the window one more time, catching the ghost of her reflection in the thick, multi-layered glass. With her salt-and-pepper hair cropped short, brown eyes, and high cheekbones, she knew men found her attractive and she was certainly interested, but not to the point that any man had ever been become more important to her than her career. Stephen was no exception. Maybe someday, she mused as she looked one more time at the image of herself superimposed over that of the moon and resumed her walk toward the control room. But not as long as I’ve got the moon.
The control room wasn’t nearly as spectacular as the view out the window, but it was pretty in its own way. Instead of a window showing the lunar landscape extending to a somewhat disconcertingly close horizon, the walls were covered with displays showing the engineering status of the various telescopes and spectrum analyzers scanning multiple radio frequencies from across the visible sky. Everywhere Rain looked she saw data, glorious data, and she knew that it was going to be a good day. She just didn’t know how good the day would end up being. After all, who could know such a thing? Who knew what great discoveries were yet to be made? That mystery was what had gotten Rain interested in science in the first place.
Modern radio astronomy, like just about every other aspect of modern astronomy—and science, for that matter—wasn’t “real time.” The vast amount of data collected by the radio telescope as it scanned huge swaths of the sky was collected across thousands of discrete frequencies, recorded, analyzed, cross-checked with previous similar data to look for changes or discrepancies, reanalyzed, and archived for future reference. Artificial intelligence systems, especially designed for the purpose of analyzing data, made the processing seamless and nearly transparent for its human creators and operators. Rain’s presence wasn’t required in the control room for data analysis but for troubleshooting and decision-making. AI systems were great at sorting, assessing, and presenting data, but they weren’t yet capable of the innovation and quick decision-making that humans were so good at. Rain wasn’t so certain as to when that might change, though, because the newest quantum processor-based cluster that housed over a million tiny protein-based nanoscopic processors used for pattern recognition in the signal data was getting smarter and smarter every day. There was talk of a new system coming out soon that would house a hundred million of the quantum physics-based processors. Who knew when such systems would start getting close to mimicking the human brain and make her obsolete and out of a job?
As the AI did its job, Rain busied herself looking over the data summaries generated during the last shift that would keep the teams of university scientists Earthside busy writing papers for the rest of their careers. The recent data collected ran the gamut, from new radio galaxies, quasars, and pulsars to the logging of yet another elusive Fast Radio Burst—this one from a galaxy “only” three billion light-years distant. But one bit of data caught her eye: the interference report. On and off during the last several months, a pesky UHF signal was encroaching on the gigahertz radio observations and the team from Beijing was not too happy about it. The signal was obviously artificial; the carrier wave was clearly modulated using some unregistered code. The AI had been running coincidence analysis, trying to figure out whose satellite was leaking radio signals into the array in clear violation of international treaty. Once they figured it out, there would be hell to pay for someone. Most modern spacecraft and satellites could fairly easily direct their antenna so that this kind of leakage didn’t occur. Someone was just being lazy or perhaps their system was malfunctioning. Whatever the reason, once they figured out who was responsible, they would have to fix the problem or face a heavy fine or, at the least, some political backpedaling.
Rain couldn’t figure out why it was taking the AI so long to determine the source. Every spacecraft operating in Earth orbit and throughout the inner solar system had ICC-registered transponders. Most used optical comm, which was much more efficient than radio and also highly directional. Laser comm basically had no leakage, unless the receiver wasn’t in the right place to intercept the message, in which case the signal would head off into deep space. The AI had mapped the timing of the signal being detected and compared it with the locations of all the registered spacecraft and bases and come up empty. There was no correlation. But there was regularity. The signal appeared on a regular interval that coincided with the lunar farside having unobstructed views of the same region of sky.
The same region of the sky, she thought.
And along the spiral arm. Where there are a lot of stars. And planets.
UHF was in the so-called water hole of frequencies that was the Holy Grail in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, or SETI, and had been the part of the radio spectrum studied so intensely for over a century as various groups searched the sky for evidence of alien life. Radio astronomers called it the “water hole” because of the radio signals emitted by hydrogen atoms and hydroxyl molecules that float in free space. Hydroxyl, being an oxygen and hydrogen atom combined, only needs one hydrogen atom to make water. Hence, the hydrogen and hydroxyl signals were from the “water hole” as per those clever SETI astronomers of the past. Clever or not, the answer had remained the same since the beginning: nothing. No one was broadcasting, or at least no one was broadcasting with a signal strong enough for humans to detect.
Until now. Was it possible she was listening to an extraterrestrial signal? ET?
Perhaps the UHF signal wasn’t coming from any of the registered spacecraft now crisscrossing the solar system; maybe it was coming from outside the solar system. Maybe it was artificial. Rain made the leap from worrying about placating the Beijing team studying gigahertz-emitting sources in nearby galaxies to wondering how she could determine if the signal was from an artificial extraterrestrial source. But which source? Where, specifically, was the signal coming from? To answer that question would take some analysis, but given the speed at which the AI could sift data, she was sure it wouldn’t take too long. All they had to do was fine-tune the correlation with what specific stars were visible whenever the signal was received, look at the signal’s dispersion from traveling through the interstellar medium to get an idea of how far away it originated, guess at the relative motion between that star and Earth to make any required Doppler-shift corrections to the data, and look for similar detections in other radio telescope data archives that might perhaps allow her to narrow down the region of the sky from which it came. Maybe, just maybe, she could identify its likely star or stars of origin. If it is really alien, she thought. There is no way, not after all these years, that I’m the one finding a message from ET. No way, right?
If she had found ET, then she was determined to get as much information about their location as possible before going public. It never occurred to her to try to decode whatever message was contained in the signal.
* * *
The incessant buzzing of the intercom was finally more than Rain could ignore. She’d been buried in data for the last several hours and had successfully ignored all the distractions she could, until now. Whoever was trying to reach her happened to finally have the good fortune of their attempt coinciding with her need to go the bathroom. She stopped mid-sentence in her annotations of the anomalous UHF signal and accepted the incoming call.
