Now:
Clere floats. Her suit keeps her warm; one scant breath away lies the vacuum of space, safely on the other side of her clear visor.
Above her is the infinite sky, cloudless and airless, of a barren ice moon by night. It holds countless stars, a spread of jewels across a profound black that is deeper than any ocean. From where she is on Saturn’s moon Enceladus, she can barely see the tip of the rings poking above the horizon, reflecting the sun she cannot see. It’s a desolate place, a surface of cratered ice, pocked and cracked from millennia of impacts.
Under other circumstances, she might stop to stare into endless space; but she’s on a mission, one that entire nations are waiting on, back on Earth. She briefly puts one hand over her chest, over the pocket on her jumpsuit that holds Sofia’s picture; then she activates her suit jets and gingerly moves away from her lander and towards her destination: the mysterious alien structure that holds all of humanity’s greatest hopes and fears.
Then:
“You’re it, Clere,” the voice said on the other side of the line. “It’s not official yet, but it will be by this afternoon. You probably have a couple of hours to get back here and shower before the press shows up.”
“Holy shit,” was all she could muster.
She’d paused her jog above the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial to take the call; her breath condensed in the cold winter air in front of her. Snow bones and puddles had made for a tricky hour of exercise as she dodged halfhearted tourists on what was left of the Mall. The city was on one of its periodic power outages, and of course most of the Mall had been underwater for quite some time; as sea levels had risen, so had the Potomac. The reflecting pool had been given raised embankments so that people could still walk along it, see the Lincoln Memorial just offshore, and see the dirty water lapping at the steps, on its decades-long climb to Lincoln’s feet.
Clere began walking slowly back across the embankment bridge in the direction of Washington Monument Island. From there she’d be able to go over the pedestrian bridge to her office at the Smithsonian.
“You heading back now?” Ismail asked. “We need to think about how to tell the story to the press.” He was the director of public relations for The Project, and what the press thought was always his top concern.
“Yes, of course,” Clere said. “You’re sure about this? They really picked me?”
“Yes,” Ismail said. “You’re it,” and hung up.
Clere broke into a jog again, then an outright run. She was going to space. She was going to Saturn’s moons. And after that, she might be going to the stars.
Now:
“It’s a door. A human-sized door. It looks like wood paneling. With a fairly ordinary handle. Which seems odd on the face of it: why would an alien species capable of interstellar travel make a door that looks so much like one from Earth? There’s even what looks suspiciously like a welcome mat.”
Clere narrates awkwardly for the record, her suit keeping a log and taking video of this extraordinary sight. A regular front door to a house, with a regular door handle. There’s even a keyhole. The mat is fibrous and clean, bolted to the icy rock. Reflexively, she wipes her feet on it, and has to grab the door handle to keep herself from floating away in Enceladus’ low gravity.
It doesn’t open, of course. “There must be an airlock on the other side, which means there’s probably a doorbell of some sort to request access,” she muses aloud.
The surface of the door is unbroken, but to one side she finds a small square touch panel with an old-fashioned doorbell, complete with brass mount. As she moves her hand closer, the touch panel glows a soft yellow. As she touches it, she hears a solid clank from within, and the door lock releases. The panel turns black. She tugs at the handle, and this time, it opens.
Inside looks much like a waiting room, softly illuminated by diffuse overhead lights. There are chairs, clearly meant for humans. They even have cushions. Behind her the door closes and for a moment she panics, alarms on her suit jumping as her heart rate climbs.
“I am inside. The door closed behind me. I… hope I’m not trapped.” Almost ninety minutes from now, Mission Control will catch its breath in fear, when the radio transmission from Enceladus gets there. “Sorry, don’t mean to scare you,” she says self-consciously. “It looks like there is another touchpad on this side.” She taps it experimentally, and the door once again makes its solid chunk sound. This time the panel turns black. She pushes on the door, and it starts to swing. She pulls it shut again, and it turns yellow once more. “It’s got a lock, I can open it whenever I want and leave. Like an airlock but with a touch panel.”
Having reassured her listeners back home, Clere surveys the room. “It kind of looks like a dentist waiting room.” A portion of the wall seems to be a screen; right now, it is showing video of a human figure in a spacesuit sitting on one of the chairs, over and over on a loop. “Looks like they want me to sit down.” There’s a door on the far end, with another touchpad. It’s currently not illuminated at all; when she taps it experimentally, nothing happens.
“I don’t understand how there can be a human in this video,” she says, watching the figure repeatedly sit down on the chair, then stand, then sit again. They look like a department store mannequin, but it’s still clearly a human. “Whoever they are, they must have been watching us for a long time.”
In fact, she can’t shake that feeling as she looks around the room: it seems very much designed to make her feel comfortable. The floor is metal, but it has been painted in a pattern much resembling a carpet. The walls are an off-gray, but a cheerful blue stripe runs along the baseboards. There are baseboards. “If they were trying to make me feel at home, it’s not working. I actually feel a little creeped out.”
To sit or not to sit? she thinks to herself. Once again she places her hand over Sofia’s picture. It’s the whole reason she’s here. Her daughter may be stuck in cryogenic sleep to save her life, but she’s still the impetus behind all the training, the endless hours of study. Come alone, the message had said. Send one person, one of your best, and come alone. And now here she is, alone and a billion kilometers away from another human soul. And she’s debating whether or not to sit down? Fuck that. Besides, there’s nothing else to do.
Clere carefully jets over to one of the seats, and ever so slowly lets the gravity of Enceladus take her down. The moment she settles into the soft cushion, the lights flicker, gravity seizes her, and the whole room shakes.
[TO BE CONTINUED…]