Valentina Kerman was going to go to Hell.
She had already turned down the offer of cybernetic enhancements, and after the last stunt by Dr. Kenneth Byrne - raising thousands of resource units in a week to build a cosmology annex to a museum dedicated to Creationist ideas, including that there would be no extraterrestrial life, AFTER the interstellar probe's report and as a response to it - any hope that any missionary might have in converting her might as well be stuck behind an event horizon. Like her comrades, she would go to Hell. The prospect did not scare her. She had faced hotter fires by now. All Hell needed was a launch ramp, and her people, the Cosmists of Baikonur, had been training for centuries to build one. In the last few decades, of course, their ambitions had become less mystical and more realistic...
Val took a deep breath and, against safety regs, turned off the suit's respirator. It was quiet enough that she could hear her own blood flow between heartbeats.
But it wasn't as quiet as it used to be. Even without atmosphere, the vibrations from the nearby construction site traveled through the ice canopy into her spiked boots. The edge-of-the-world peace of the ice canopy topside was an illusion, one that Val shattered for herself by turning around and looking at the launch complex once more. She let the respirator restart itself.
Val wasn't the sort of person who would pull rank often, but as she'd done a few times in the last week, countersigned her own worksheet after amending it with a long-range patrol instead of the supervisory work that she would ordinarily be assigned to.
There. Valentina stopped the raketasani hydrazine-powered ice skimmer, taking her time and swerving some to avoid wasting propellant on a braking burn. After months of private search, the slightest trace of a depression, and debris that she had confirmed to not be of meteoric origin or a crashed satellite. After nine centuries, micrometeorites and ultraviolet radiation had left little intact, but she could recognize an overturned camera tripod, a long-dead webcam on a frozen wood pedestal, and what she guessed was aluminum plating that had come off or was removed. The description fit.
Having confirmed that, she climbed off the small vehicle and took a few pictures with a Polaroid she bought from the gift shop at Johnson Space Museum. She would share them with family, but they'd not be published.
Then, Val crouched in front of the detritus and carefully, in slow and measured cursive, etched a message on the frozen wood with her soldering iron. The body below was, of course, long gone; the soul, maybe she would meet.
"Cendrillon Jospin, we the Cosmists remember you. Thank you for taking the risk of knowing. We know today that your hypothesis was correct." she whispered, and then left a standard ruggedized geocaching box memory card next to the cenotaph. It contained a pair of gold cosmonaut wings, an ancient photograph of this very location, and a memory card. Valentina took the astronaut wings out of the box, cut the ribbon they were on, and let them fall on top of the overturned camera tripod.
On the box's memory card were, among other things, Cordylon's announcement, barely a week old, that the FFR interstellar probe had located a simple but thriving ecosystem on one of the planets of Alpha Centauri B.
It also contained a thousand Cosmist voices that had been recorded in occasion of the most recent heavy-lift launch, the keel of the interstellar ship Reach.
"From the old world's demise,
See an empire rise,
From the Earth, reaching far
Here we are!"
Valentina Kerman, nee' Zuckermandel, sang those words to herself, saluted, and then turned around, taking in the view of the pristine ice canopy once more. The raketasani would take her back to the work site. She wanted to show the analog pictures to Jeb and Cordylon. Maybe they'd come back there with her, if there was time.
Silently, the raketasani sped back towards the canopy station, recovery gantry and greenhouses and barracks in grey-and-orange against the white-blue ice giving it the appearance of a military base built by a colorblind army. The enormous keel of the Reach was already being loaded onto the launch track.
The Creation Museum campus was magnificent: a ring-shaped building surrounded by a carefully tended lot of pine and cedar trees, encompsasing a pond in the middle of which sat a replica of Noah's Ark, the exterior of which had been designed with assistance from the patriarch himself. Director Kenneth Byrne had just finished inaugurating the newest solar system exhibit, the ribbon-cutting ceremony performed by himself and the Rector of MIT. Local notables had been rustled up for a ceremony, the opening prayer for it having just concluded.
The building section, formerly used for a pre-Flood-world exhibit that had been moved into the Ark replica itself, had been refurbished in record time following a fundraiser created as a reaction to The Outer Light's announcement about life having been detected in a nearby star system.
A reporter from a local broadcast TV station asked the two luminaries what people could expect from the attraction. Behind her camera view, a traditional banquet - steaming piles of vegetables, drenched in butter - was being prepared for the attendees.
Kenneth Byrne explained in a pleasant Atlantian accent.
"Visitors to the new exhibit will learn why there may be water on other planets, but there can't be intelligent beings because of the meaning of the gospel. You see, the Bible makes it clear that Adam's sin affected the whole universe. This means that any supposed aliens would also be affected by Adam's sin. But because the supposed beings are not Adam's descendants, they can't have salvation."
"One day, the whole universe will be judged by fire, and there will be a new heavens and a new earth. But God's Son, Jesus Christ, has stepped into history as the God-man, to be our relative, and to be the perfect sacrifice for sin—as the Savior of mankind."
"Jesus did not become the "God-Klingon" or the "God-Martian," as only descendants of Adam can be saved. God's Son remains the God-man as our Savior. To suggest that aliens could respond to the gospel is wrong."
"The gospel makes it clear that salvation through Christ is only for the Adamic race: human beings who are all descendants of Adam."
"Now, I'm not contradicting myself when I write the following, but I actually do believe in aliens! In fact, Christians were once "aliens." God's Word states,
So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God. (Ephesians 2:19)
Once people become Christians, they are no longer "aliens" or foreigners in this world—they are citizens of heaven!"
"The whole purpose of the Creation Museum is to present the truth of God's Word—and the gospel most of all—so that people will receive Jesus as their Savior and no longer be "aliens" but become a part of the family of God.""
The rector of the Massachussets Institute of Theology took over from there and began to explain technical details about the planetarium room and the various "planet jars" that showed simulated conditions on other planets, but was cut off.
"Thank you, Dr. Byrne, Dr. Whalum! And for the rebuttal, Jebediah Kerman, live from orbit with the latest telemetry from the interstellar probe. Jeb?"
"...Wait, there's a rebuttal?"
Author's note: The chronicle of The Omega Legacy and of the last 100 years of the Millennium can be found by Googling "Left Beyond Quest" and clicking on the Archive link that should show up in first position. It is an interesting piece of fiction written cooperatively over the course of about a year. You can also use the redirect URL at
http：／／www．f3．to／omega／