Chapter 6

"What? But that's not possible!" exclaimed Maddox.

"I'm afraid it's true. Hasslein's theory is sound. The problem is, your craft would have broken up in flight had you attempted it." said Bergman.

Major George Brent rubbed his eyes. He had spent the last several hours in Victor's lab working on a way to get him and his fellow crew members back to the 20th century. And now this.

"Chief Garforth, if you would." prompted Bergman.

Chief Engineer Pete Garforth got up from his workbench with a tube of white metal about eighteen inches long and an inch in diameter. "I took this length of support from the starboard wing assembly. This would be critical for the slingshot maneuver around the sun. According to the specs, its high tensile vanadium steel coated with a complex polycarbonate for heat dispersion."

"What about it?" asked Maddox.

"This about it." Garforth then broke the piece of 'steel' in half with his bare hands.

All three astronauts let loose with a stream of horrible profanity.

"All the strutwork like this?" asked Brent, taking the snapped pieces from Garforth and examining them with awe.

"Yes. Very clever, actually. By replacing the steel with a cheap grade of aluminum, no one is the wiser unless they x-ray it for a stress test. And since this portion of the craft is only critical for your return maneuver, it makes you guys disappear without a trace and with no known cause. Erased from history as you fall into the sun." explained Garforth.

"Sabotage! I just can't believe it." said Maddox.

"So that's it. We're stuck here." said Brent morosely.

"Maybe not," said Garforth. "Have a look at this." he waved them over to a computer console and began running a simulation. "Your ship is capable of making this maneuver, wings struts notwithstanding. Now with all our personnel either down on Base Main or assigned to other duties, there is no way we can manufacture a whole set of new struts for you. But what we could do is have an eagle do the job for you." He clicked on the screen to show a simulation of an eagle mated to Icarus. Both fired their engines and proceeded at high speed towards the sun, slingshotting around it.

"With the newly acquired shield technology we've installed, we can compensate for the structural integrity you'll need. Once you're back in the 20th century, you can detach and the eagle will pilot itself into the sun."

Maddox was impressed, both with the plan itself and the willingness of the Alphans to commit such a resource to the project.

"I think it could work," he said. "Will Commander Koenig approve the plan?"

"Are you one hundred percent certain an auto destruct order in the eagle's computer will work?" asked Koenig later.

"Well, one hundred percent, no. But this is the best option we have." said Bergman.

"Is there no other way of getting them back?"

"None that we can see. While Hasslein's theory accounted for the extreme stresses that a slingshot maneuver would cause, the Icarus was not constructed to withstand them."

Koenig only needed a minute to gather the implications of that. "Are you saying that someone on Earth deliberately turned the Icarus II expedition into a one way trip?"

"It's the only explanation that makes sense, John. All the other possible explanations are even more far-fetched."

"But why?" asked Koenig.

Bergman threw his hands up at this.

"Does the crew know?" asked Koenig.

"Yes, I told them myself."

"Victor, I don't like the idea of potentially giving that kind of advanced technology to the past, especially to an organization as ethically challenged as the one that is behind the Icarus expedition. I want you to take whatever measures are necessary to make sure that doesn't happen. Understood?" A look passed between them that few people would have noticed. They both understood. "And go over that ship with a fine tooth comb. It could be that there were other contingencies put in place to make sure they never made it home, in case the first one failed."

Koenig sat down at his desk after Victor left. He closed his eyes, and gritted his teeth against the sudden spasm of pain. It had started shortly before the last spacewarp that had brought them to Earth. Antacids didn't help much anymore, but he had popped a few anyway on the way to the Command Center. He sat in his chair reviewing the progress of Operation Exodus. He couldn't help but feel proud of his crew. Base Main was up and running, fully three quarters of the personnel were now on Earth, and the rotation schedule for initial set up was working perfectly. Victor and his team would have the Icarus crew ready for their flight in about a week. But there were more worries. The apes and Taylor's tribe; the mystery of the Sursum Corda settlement; how many more of his crew would abandon Alpha to live with them, or go off exploring on Earth? And of course the Dorcons. That threat was hanging over his head like the sword of Damocles. All of these worries pressed down on him. He had worked himself and his crew hard. He was too proud to admit that he had pushed himself hardest of all. Too hard. Another spasm of pain hit him at his desk in Command Center, this one even worse. He barely made it to the head in time. Another minute and he would have thrown up all over the Command Center! The red lighting in the men's room did not let him see the blood. He rinsed the foul taste out of his mouth, splashed some water on his face and ignored the sudden chill from blood loss as he went out to resume his station. Damn. I thought barfing was supposed to make you feel better. He would have to see Helena about this, once the crisis had passed. Whenever that might be.

"Skipper, are you sure about this?" asked Franklin. All three of them were seated in the interior of Icarus, ostensibly to begin a thorough inspection. It also gave them a measure of privacy.

"Am I sure that Hasslein's theory, if put into practice as written, would tear Icarus apart? Of course I am! You saw the simulations Bergman ran. You know the specs of this lady. What we don't know is the why." said Maddox.

"That means if we do end up making it back in one piece, we are going to make somebody or somebodies, very upset," said Brent.

"I gathered that. Commander Koenig was of the opinion that the whole Icarus program was designed just to gain knowledge about the future. Now this revelation that we never could have gotten back on our own anyway, it just muddies the water. Was this design flaw a sin of commission or omission?" asked Maddox.

"I'm with Bergman. There are mistakes and then there are mistakes. This has got to be on purpose." said Brent.

"No doubt about it." said Franklin.

"I guess that's it then. But if we're going to go back, we have to be ready," said Brent.

"My thoughts exactly," said Maddox with a smile.

Dave Reilly was out of his element. The classroom or the office had never been his forte'. He had alway been a field man. Going to far flung places looking for the needful minerals that kept the modern world, or Moonbase Alpha, going was his life. He had never seen himself as a teacher, but as he was just finishing up his lecture on fossil fuels at the Ape Science Institute, their history and uses, he looked out the audience composed mainly of chimpanzees, with a few gorillas and orangutans mixed in, and saw what every teacher sees: boredom, awe, fascination, eager interest, disbelief. The feeling he got from all those eyes boring in on him was odd, and strangely exhilarating. Maybe teaching has its good points, he thought idly.

"So to sum it all up, ah, (he almost said 'ladies and gentlemen') my ape colleagues, is that geology can be a most fascinating and rewarding sphere. With the equipment and skills you have at hand, you can draw from the earth new sources of fuel that will make your current staples of firewood and dried dung obsolete. Thank you for your kind attention."

As he walked out of the university into the city, Dave Reilly's thoughts turned back to his first encounter with these intelligent apes. He knew it was his rash action in exposing himself and the landing party that had culminated in a violent encounter that had caused the death of another Alphan. He knew why he had reacted as he did, that the sight of helpless human beings getting cut down had brought back a memory from his childhood, of some of his mates from school who thought it would be funny to paint some potatoes to look like hand grenades and throw them at a British patrol. But the soldiers did not run for cover like some of the RUC men did. No, they opened fire without hesitation, and two of his friends were killed in front of his eyes that day. It all flashed back in a moment: the sound of the automatic weapons; the young private coming by afterwards to render first aid, but the grizzled sergeant waving him off, lifting the head of his friend Brian Doherty, his feeling of utter shock seeing Brian's dead eyes, the blood dripping from his mouth as the British sergeant felt his neck for a pulse, then the dull thud as he dropped Brian's head to the pavement. "Don't bother. He's had it."

He had not thought much about these events since Breakaway. He had been caught off guard, and how forcefully it all had come back to him! PTSD? Probably. He'd had his stun gun out before he knew what he was doing. That day in Belfast he had no weapon. It occurred to him for the first time, if he had been carrying a weapon that day, his life would have been cut brutally short by British bullets. "And if I never see another day of combat in my life, it will be too soon," he said out loud to no one in particular.

His walk took him past a large statue of the Lawgiver, near a government center. For no reason at all, he stopped and took a good long look at it. There was something eerily familiar about the face of the Lawgiver. He could not quite place it. Without taking his eyes off the statue, he reached for his commlock, and used it to take a few pictures of the statue. Maybe someone else on Moonbase Alpha would recognize something.

Dr. Jen Lancaster was in a blue study as she headed towards the medical building at Base Main, located in the former Canadian province of British Columbia. She had spent a week at Ape City studying the progress of ape medicine. She carried in her satchel a plethora of data on medicinal herbs and ape physiology. She barely acknowledged the nods and smiles of other Alphans she passed, and although the new Alphan settlement was buzzing with energy and activity, she did not seem to notice. She needed to run more tests on the tissue samples she had taken, and also the data she had gathered on height, weight, limb proportions, etc.

She had examined and treated enough chimpanzees and orangutans to be sure of one thing: these apes were not the same kind of apes she had known in twentieth century Earth. Sure, it had been almost two thousand years, but in terms of evolutionary biology, that was just the wink of an eye. Could a species change so radically in so short an amount of time? Could mutations account for the changes? The odds of that were pretty long. Almost all mutations were harmful. The odds of a beneficial mutation affecting three different species at the exact same time were so fantastically slim as to be non-existent. It was a mystery, but since she had nothing better to do at the moment, she would pursue it. (Dr. Mathias was currently on a mission to Ape City, something about an outbreak in one of the outlying settlements.) Work kept her from thinking too much about her home in western Oregon, or for that matter the whole United States. Gone. According to the satellite scans there was nothing left of human civilization anywhere in North America. She shoved that thought aside and got to work.

She carefully removed the slides with twelve different blood samples and placed them on the worktable. She looked through a couple of white storage tubs to find what she needed. First, a microscope. That was easy. She reached for her commlock, and keyed the Medical Center. Dr. Vincent was still on the moon.

"Ben, what's the best stain for viewing chromosomes?" asked Lancaster without preamble.

"Giemsa. There should be some down there." replied Vincent. After a minute, he gave her the exact lot number. "Thanks Ben." she hurriedly replaced her commlock on her belt. She was breathing faster now, as she was looking through the lab equipment. She located the box quickly, and rifled through its contents without regard for the fussy neatness that someone had lavished on this particular storage container. Inside she found a small bottle filled with purple fluid. She carefully applied the stain to each glass slide and dropped the cover slips into place. The wait for the microscope to warm up was interminable. For the first time in years, she longed for a cigarette.