PART ONE:

THE PRIZE

1

Quiet and darkness marked an artificial night on the Novara.

The crewmates were fairly certain that the days and nights were attuned to the time-zone they had set off from, but who could be certain anymore? Would any of them have noticed if the computer had glitched and bounced ahead a few minutes day by day, and they now unknowingly slept during the days and woke during the nights? It didn’t matter out here, with the Novara perched weightlessly in the inky, infinite blackness of outer space far, far away from planet Earth.

Most of them just marched to their own beats anyway, especially while on one of these long ventures from place to place, and interacted with each other somewhat minimally when they weren’t working. With the exciting job just ahead, however, most of them had gone to bed this night at around the same time and now slept soundly in their bunks.

The grayish-blue ship was bulky and boxy, little resembling the old rockets that paved the way for the exploration being commonly done now. Less like a needle-like dart and more of a wide and angular box, it was close to 175 feet wide, twice that much in length, and about ninety feet high. The bow of the ship pinched inward sharply to a thinner head, where a glass window overlaid the main Bridge. Across the port side of the ship was printed in thick white letters the word “NOVARA”, and underneath that in smaller, darker letters, “Foundation for Astronautical and Extraterrestrial Research”. The boxy ship had a V-shaped underside with sturdy, folded-up landing gear close to the bow. The V-shape extended out along the bottom near to the stern but cut off where it touched the overhanging body of the stern-ward section of the ship. The stern’s main body was flanked by two large engines with cylindrical rocket thrusters blazing brightly with bluish-white fire in the blackness. Although not the most massive ship in the world, it was a thick, impressive piece of machinery.

The ship wasn’t built to be roomy for its passengers, however; most of that extra space was reserved for mining tools and especially the loads and loads of minerals they would uncover and store for the trip homeward. That was to maximize the profits, which benefited all parties in the end, though there were certain desires for comfort that the crewmates had to sacrifice. But soon that wouldn’t be a concern any longer; they had only one more stop on their route before they would begin the long journey homeward to deliver their haul and refuel.

That stop was a planetoid called 730-X Zacuali.

Sensors had indicated that by this afternoon, they would approach the unclassified minor planet as the first humans to set foot upon it or even get a good look at it. It was an exciting time.

Here in the sleeping quarters, very economical in size, seven cozy crewmates lay in their bunks, three women in one room and four men in the other. Each slept with soundness, prepared for what the day ahead of them would bring.

Like many of the Novara’s rooms, there were no windows in these, just whitish walls and economically-designed essentials like shelves, drawers, and bathrooms with two sinks all built into the frame of the ship itself and made from the highest quality plastic and metal. Digital clocks above the doors in either room each read “5:59”. Before long they switched to “6:00” and the ceiling lights came softly on, gradually illuminating the rooms in white light. Following the light, both rooms slowly came alive as the crew members sat up, stretched, and headed off to start their days.

“Today is the day, boys and girls,” one of the engineers, Mitchell, said with a stifled yawn, sitting up in his top bunk.

“Mmmph,” Al, another engineer, mumbled as he rubbed his face with two burly hands. There was genuine excitement there, buried underneath exhaustion.

“Today we reach nirvana,” said Randy as he jumped down from his top bunk.

“Actually, we passed nirvana yesterday. Today’s stop is the ninth circle of Hell,” chimed in the flight engineer, Sam, reaching for his toes with a smile on his tired face. The other guys laughed.

With a smile Randy said, “As long as there’s minerals to mine, I’m giddy.”

The lively chatter continued. On the opposite side of the wall of the men’s bedroom, closer to the bow of the ship, Rosalyn took a deep breath and sat up in bed, hers being the top of the set of two bunks. Dr. Terri Jones, a thicker woman with dark skin, braided hair, and a frown on her face had stepped into the bathroom to use the showers, leaving Rosalyn and Shauna at their bunks sitting up and stretching.

“Swear there’s something wrong with the time on this ship. Feels like four in the morning,” Terri grumbled exhaustedly. But almost immediately after stepping into the warm shower, she brightened up and could be heard sighing or humming pleasantly.

It was cold here. But not the kind of cold one could feel on earth; here was something different. No matter what Rosalyn wore, she always felt that powerful cold here in the deep of space. It was an unnatural and unavoidable sensation, somewhat as if they had gone deep underground on the earth searching for things no one dared search for, where they could technically survive, but without feeling the ubiquitous warmth of sunlight or fresh air. Astronauts all got used to that in a strange way after being in space for so long, and yet Rosalyn could always tell something didn’t feel quite right. Maybe she was the only one who felt that way, but it seemed to her that missing the warmth of the Earth and its atmosphere and sunshine took an unseen toll on the human body. But at any rate it didn’t matter—the payment of space travel, both in money and excitement factor, was more than worth the price to her.

Rosalyn looked at the bedroom door opposite the swinging bathroom door. Outside was a small hallway connecting with one of the ship’s main hallways as well as the door to the men’s quarters. There within, Sam was brushing his teeth and Randy, Al, and Mitchell were heading to the common room to exercise. Rosalyn glanced back to see Shauna still sitting up in her bunk. Shauna’s bleached-blonde hair was extremely short, cropped almost to the head on all sides. She was younger and her figure larger than Rosalyn’s, her skin a tanner shade and her eyes blue. She opened up a smart device and seemed to be browsing through some images. She had a face that wasn’t unattractive, but wasn’t cared for to look attractive either. Rosalyn had never asked her, but evidently she felt there wasn’t much point to prettying up while digging for space rocks. By her own actions, Terri seemed to disagree, while Rosalyn had no real opinion on the matter.

Feeling more energized than she had upon first awakening, she stepped down from her bunk, put on her glasses, and engaged in her own personal workout regimen. Pushups and sit-ups on the floor, and pull ups on the frame of the bunk bed. By the time that was done, she was gasping for air and ready for a shower. She stepped inside the booth to a warm cascade, breathing in the familiar, sterile scent that seemed to be ever-present on every spaceship she had ever been on.

It had been a decently peaceful, quiet night. Only a relative quiet could ever really be reached on the ship, she noticed. Always there was some humming going on, some sound of the billion-dollar equipment doing its job to get them places and do it in safety more so than in comfort. It was especially prevalent when all four of the showers were running at once, as they were now.

Regular as clockwork, she heard a pinging noise somewhere in the walls that always went off in the mornings for about ten or fifteen seconds. Was it getting louder? She stopped and thought, imagining unconsciously the ship’s support systems all failing suddenly. The Novara was kaput and the cold of space suddenly crushed upon them, their bodies being assaulted by unearthly forces of nature science barely understood. A feeling that they weren’t supposed to be here: that they weren’t fully equipped for this journey.

There was always that small but anxious part of her, fearing that the ship’s systems, the things she was partly responsible for as command pilot, would spontaneously fail. A fear she didn’t take too seriously, but couldn’t deny was there, always there, somewhere.

She felt a wave of peace settle upon her as she focused on the warmth of the water on her body.

Dressed in their individualized reddish-tan uniform shirts, crew members with damp, drying hair gradually filed through the hallway and into the dining area, where a large, hexagonal table with attached, plastic-and-metal seats centered the room. Warm yellow lights lit the area from all across the ceiling, and the smell of eggs and sausage filled the place. Posters listing safety procedures or of maps of the Novara or advertising FAER’s exciting and bold space initiatives were posted about the walls. A closed-off hallway leading to the Bridge was at the back of the room. Rosalyn and others sat down and ate their packaged, re-hydrated eggs and similarly unnaturally-cooked sausage set in beige plastic trays. Some had already finished with their breakfast and merely waited for their ship captain, Shauna, to be ready to brief them on the day’s procedures. Shauna herself was finishing up breakfast, a look of contemplation on her face as she ran through the daily itinerary on her smart device. Rosalyn kept her heavy brown coat on while she ate, always trying to keep warm, her slightly-damp hair tied back in a practical ponytail. She wore FAER’s black uniform pants, unlike a few of the others who wore their own, and humble blue and white sneakers on her feet.

Randy White, a heftier man in his late thirties with a thin beard on his chin, slim glasses on his nose, and reddish-brown hair on his head spiked up a bit in the front, led the conversation with an energetic demeanor. Wearing an older-edition reddish-orange FAER uniform—a polo style—Randy looked (and sounded) like a classic FAER employee.

“I don’t think it really matters so much what we find there,” Randy said, leaning back in his chair, “we’re going to make headlines just by reaching a new minor planet this far out.” He was a pilot, but considered himself a jack-of-all-trades when it came to space travel.

“Yeah, I’d still prefer a good load of rare minerals,” Al said frankly, a subtle smirk on his square face.

Sam heckled Randy next. “Hey, maybe we’ll be the first people anywhere to find absolutely nothing there.”

“Ooh, doin’ it NASA style,” joked Mitchell.

Sam smiled and laughed with his whole upper body, tossing back his black hair and his loose-fitting jacket in the gesture.

Randy scoffed, and his glasses slid down his nose about halfway. “No seriously, I was thinking we should dump out all the minerals to lighten the ship’s load and get us even farther. C’mon! Obviously we want to find something. All I’m saying is this is already a big win for us no matter what. Which is pretty rare. It’s nice to know whatever happens, it won’t be a waste of time, you know?” He pushed the rims back up.

A white cat jumped up onto Mitchell’s lap, and he had to set down his fork, mouth full, and grab him and set him down.

“I’ll feed you later, Brady,” he whispered. Scraggly brown hair adorned Mitchell’s head, and he had a general look on his face of being lost in his own thoughts.

His feline purred and raced off, white coat blending into the well-lit walls.

“Glad to hear we’re feeling optimistic. Let’s use that to work hard and make our bosses happy,” Shauna said with neutral expression. Seemed like she wasn’t listening to the conversation, but she was. She wore a slick-looking, jet-black coat with her name and title stitched upon the breast pocket: “CAPT. BEELE”, a belt, blue jeans, and burnished brown boots. It all served to make her look like someone with rugged authority, but who was down-to-earth also, all in spite of her being the youngest of the crew members.

Rosalyn appreciated her, and felt a kinship in their attitudes about their mission. The wonder of space travel was something she appreciated greatly, but did not necessarily revel in the glory of like a couple of the men seemed to. She considered herself one capable of keeping things running smoothly and obligated to do her small part in the continuation of the space age. What more could someone want? Whatever happened, she did her best to be one of the good ones.

She wanted to get what they came for and make it back home safely.

“When FAER actually notices us again, can we complain to them about this dehydrated crap they send us with?” Mitchell said, suddenly speaking up. He had a tendency to disappear and reappear, so to speak, in conversations. He was the largest of the crew members, in spite of regular efforts to get fit in the exercise room when he wasn’t bonding with Brady. He wore a slightly-dirty uniform of reddish-tan, and a short-sleeved shirt and black pants; he looked around with big, blue eyes, and had nicely-trimmed but uncombed brown hair on his head. “They’ve been toying with the idea of getting real stuff on board these ships for years. Sounds like they might need a reminder from the guys who actually have to eat it.”

Al looked up, square-looking face lined and clean-shaven. “Yeah, I’m with Mitchell. I ate better at the old diner I worked at when I was fifteen and making minimum wage.”

Sam smiled again, his narrow eyes exuding an attitude of levity. “Hey, just think of it like being a pioneer out on the western prairies in the nineteenth century, exploring the unknown, scraping by with whatever you can find. That’s what we’re doing, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, except instead of hunting buffalo, we eat re-hydrated eggs and dig space rocks,” Mitchell responded as he stared blankly at his tray, half annoyed and half amused.

Sam slumped back in his chair wearing his trademark, thin blue jacket over his uniform, only zipped up part of the way. “Eh, what we’re really missing on this ship is alcohol.”

Laying comfortably back in her chair, Terri eyed him accusingly. “And whose fault is that? You’re probably still peeing that stuff out.”

A round of laughter came, and Al spit out a few drops of orange juice he’d happened to sip at that moment. Even Shauna smiled, in spite of not losing her concentration on her smart device screen. Even outed as a heavy drinker, Sam just kept grinning.

Shauna spared a moment to look at him and joke, “I’ll put in a word with them to let you bring your own next time.”

Rosalyn gestured to the orange juice spill in front of Al, corners of her lips curled. “There’s plenty of orange juice.”

Shauna continued to stare at her smart device screen, running through some information she kept there. She suddenly spoke to nobody in particular. “SNTNL, what’s our ETA?”

A voice came over the intercom: “SNTNL”, the ship’s guidance system and all-around crew support A.I., their collective “sentinel”. It had a male voice that sounded fairly smooth and human-like, reflecting the latest technology. “We will arrive at our destination in approximately one hour, Captain Beele. The temperature on 730-X Zacuali is currently negative fifty-nine degrees Celsius with average winds of roughly one hundred and twenty-one kilometers per hour.”

About half the crew chuckled. Rosalyn turned to Randy as she adjusted the tie on her ponytail. “That’s a lot warmer than most planets out here. Tell FAER they can market this place as the prime vacation destination.” He laughed.

“You’ve got a point. They must be pampering us, sending us to such lavish locales,” Terri said, sipping her drink.

“Sorry to keep you waiting, but I need a few more minutes, everyone,” said Shauna, standing up.

She stepped through a door just to the right of the hallway leading to the Bridge. Through that door was the computer room, where she often went to pore over the data from the probe that had inspected their latest destination. While she was gone, the crew finished breakfast, put the trays and silverware in a dishwasher to be cleaned, and relaxed while awaiting the briefing. Before long, Randy broke out his deck of cards for a friendly game of poker. Rosalyn was standing and going through some reports from the ship on a screen attached to the nearby wall while he started handing out the shuffled cards.

“Hey, Rosalyn! You playing?” he said.

Mitchell grinned, scratching his scraggly hair, and said to the rest of them, “You sure about that? I kind of wanted a chance to win.”

“What’cha doing there, Roz? You aren’t too good to play with us, are you?” He grinned broadly.

Rosalyn didn’t respond, preoccupied with the screen, hiding her reciprocal grin.

Al looked at her with discerning eyes in his square, stone-like face and joked, “You should have seen her equation for the world series. She’s like Biff Tannen.”

Sam playfully added, “Ah, so that’s how she bought her seat on this ship from Traynor.”

“Actually, I don’t watch baseball,” she said with a smirk, facing them, “and I haven’t talked to John in years. But I’ll play.”

She sat back down in her spot between Mitchell and Terri, crossing her legs and picking up the deck.

“Ehh, there’s gotta be some way you got on this program without training for more than, what, a year?” said Randy. “If that.”

She took her deck and sized it up. “I trained for thirteen months. After I got my Ph.D.”

“I got a Ph.D. too, but I don’t see y’all fawning over my intellect,” Terri pointed out sharply yet playfully.

Randy smirked. “Oh, we fawn over you too, Terri. Just not your head.”

The guys laughed. She just shook her head, playing down her smile.

“Let’s play some poker already,” said Al, his steady eyes fixed on his hand. He relished whatever entertainment they got. Rosalyn had found out on one of their movie nights that Al had already watched nearly every single movie and TV show he’d brought with him on this trip alone. He didn’t sleep much.

The game went fairly well. Sam folded, then Terri, and the others gave moderately confident bets, though nothing rose extremely high. Rosalyn was pretty sure she was going to win, but before the game ended, Shauna returned from the computer room and stood before them. It was just as well—all of their savings accounts had traded places many a time in the months they’d been blasting through space at unfathomable speeds.

Shauna surveyed her crew, her bleached hair gleaming under the ceiling lights. “Alright folks, sorry to break up a good, clean, bankroll-crippling game of poker early, but I need to brief you on something before we prepare for landing.” Shauna Beele had an amusing talent for telling jokes without giving any tonal hints about them. She wasn’t even concerned about whether anyone would find it funny or not; she just kept on talking as if nothing unusual had been said. “You’ll remember that FAER’s old probe data showed us an area of the planetoid with a large cavernous underground with a decent chance of containing lots of rare minerals. Well, up until our updated probe data that just came in, we didn’t realize just how big this cavern actually is.”

Everyone grew quiet, fixed on her and her crystal blue eyes.

“This isn’t the kind of small, barren cave or two that we’ve been dealing with. There’s an entire network going on in this place’s underground. And it’s filled with stuff.”

Al had a look on his face like he was pretty sure, but not completely, that that was a good thing. “Stuff?” he said.

“It’s experiencing a sort of radar overload so we really can’t get any better data than we’ve already got, at least without getting the ship down there first, but we do know that what we have here is not your average cavern. There’s…well, take it to mean what you will, but there are signs of movement.”

She leaned forward and gripped the back of her chair. The already deep silence deepened further, and many a pair of eyes bulged.

She kept speaking. “Just to play devil’s advocate, this tech isn’t really meant to detect movement, and I’m not saying I think it’s alien life. Considering the planet’s atmosphere it’s unlikely anything would survive here; it’s all rock and ice. If there is alien life, we can assume it isn’t intelligent considering we’ve gotten no responses from signals we’ve sent out, as per usual. All we know is there’s definitely some kind of small amount of activity happening—maybe volcanic, maybe tectonic, or maybe something else. The point is, our mining prospects are looking extremely good. We can’t know for sure until we actually touch down and check it out, but I’m very optimistic. Only problem is what looks like a pretty narrow passage into these caves, so let’s hope our mining rover can fit through there without having to drill or blast.”

“Considering this new development, how long are we gonna be staying?” asked Al. “We’ve got enough fuel to justify staying at least a week, right?”

“Yeah, but if we find what we’re searching for we’ll probably reach our weight capacity fairly quickly,” Shauna explained. “Unless it proves pretty tough to dig out something we find, I don’t anticipate us staying for longer than three or four days. Enough to do all the testing we need to do and pick up some useful stuff. Any other questions?”

The perked-up crew seemed satisfied. “Seems like a good haul ahead,” Terri said with eyes wide, content.

“I think you’re right. But even better than that, this could very well be the kind of mining station that FAER is looking for. We can’t be one hundred percent sure, but there’s a good chance they’ll be getting us everything we request after this.” She smiled proudly and got excited laughs from everyone. Then she turned and started for the Bridge. “Alright, crew, let’s do what we do.”

Shauna turned and went to the large hexagonal-shaped door covering the hallway to the Bridge. It opened before her automatically and she walked down it alone. The rest of the crew cleaned up after themselves and chatted about the excitement of an entire labyrinth to potentially explore. The words “alien life” and “big bonus” were thrown around more than once, and for once Rosalyn didn’t think those things were out of the question. Well, more so the latter than the former, but who knew for sure? Whatever happened, this place was looking to be very unique.

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