The short and wiry lieutenant in charge of the shuttle was just as surprised as Henry had been when he broke the news to her, but she seemed perfectly content to let him take over.
“Name’s Kotel, sir,” she grinned. “I’ve made forty trips there and back in the last forty-eight hours. You won’t hear me complaining if someone else takes the stick for once.”
He went over the entire preflight checklist with her for lack of anything better to do, then fell asleep on one of the passenger benches in the shuttle’s rear compartment despite himself. The sounds of echoing chatter in the bay woke him roughly an hour later.
A crowd of twenty or so people, all carrying stuffed duffel bags, had assembled just beyond the end of the shuttle’s ramp. Even for people associated with the USF they were quite a motley group—an utterly random mixture of ethnicities and nationalities. Some in the crowd were obviously military, but most wore the milk white with blue trim uniforms of the civilian civil service. Taken all together they gave off a strange, almost contradictory impression of competence. The military personnel in their dark fatigues and short, tidy haircuts stood in stark contrast with the brightly colored uniforms of the civilians, most of whom wore their hair long.
Nerds and warriors. Unique group for a unique mission, I guess.
After taking a moment to look over the crowd, Henry descended the shuttle’s ramp. Zhu stepped out from the crowd to greet him, now wearing marine fatigues. He was accompanied by a tall light skinned man wearing the civil service uniform.
“We ready to go, sir?” Henry asked.
“Just about,” Zhu replied, then gestured to the man beside him. “This is Bast Studebaker, the Vanuatu’s captain.”
Studebaker seemed to be about the same age as Zhu. He was gaunt and gangly, and a decent amount of gray was present within the red of his well-kept beard and close cropped hair. He had a strong jaw, along with a prominent nose. Between his looks and abnormal height he cut quite an imposing figure. The three platinum vertical bars representing the rank of a captain in the civil service had been pinned onto the right side of his uniform’s collar. On the opposite side, Henry recognized the small red-brown circular pin representing Mars.
With a smile, Studebaker reached a hand out to Henry, who accepted it.
“Admiral Zhu was just telling me that you used to be a pilot before becoming a transmissions officer.”
“Yep, sure was.”
“Transmissions is an important job,” he said affably. “Staying in close communication with Sol is going to be key to our whole endeavor.”
“We’re short on time,” urged Zhu.
“Of course. If you’re ready, young man, then let’s start the boarding process.”
With that, Henry turned about and walked back up the ramp. The crowd quickly gathered their things and followed him.
Studebaker and Zhu took the two passenger seats closest to the pilot’s seat up front.
“Nothing crazy, flyboy,” Zhu warned as Henry settled into his seat. “Get us there in one piece.”
Henry quickly raised a thumbs up in their direction before donning the flight helmet he’d left in the pilot’s seat. He hit the switches on the panel before him to warm up the engines and start up the flight control systems. While continuing through the start-up procedure he listened absently as Studebaker and Zhu spoke to one another in low voices.
“Security’s your purview, naturally. But the speed with which we get past phase zero is what’s going to make or break us.”
“In my experience something with so many moving parts never goes according to plan. Better to be safe than sorry. Remember, historical precedent is set against us. The first European colonies in the new world all failed within a decade. Same thing happened at Europa six centuries later.”
“With respect, Leo, we’re not going to a new world. We’re going to a new solar system.”
“Forger.”
Henry looked over his shoulder. The rows of seats behind him had filled with people, all chatting casually with one another as they settled themselves in.
Zhu gave Henry an impatient look and crooked a finger towards the ceiling. With a nod, Henry turned back to the panel and hit the button to raise the ramp. Once the indicator light turned green he hailed the traffic controller.
“Midway control, this is shuttle one. Ready for departure.”
A feminine voice replied almost instantly. “Shuttle one, Midway. Field is green, the bay centrifuge is ready to halt. Launch once depressurization is complete and both bay doors are clear.”
Henry watched as the bay doors ahead of the shuttle began to open, slowly revealing the unfiltered inky blackness of space and glittering stars. The Vanuatu lay directly ahead, though at its current range it was little more than a slightly brighter star.
The doors settled into place, and soon after Henry felt gravity drop away. An excited cheer suddenly went up in the passenger compartment behind him, at which his eyes instantly rolled.
“Movement restrictions canceled, shuttle one. Have a safe journey.”
“Roger, Midway.”
Gently, Henry grasped the stick and hit the button to demagnetize the shuttle’s landing gear. Once it was free he slowly increased thrust, and in response the shuttle began to lift.
Another cheer went up after the shuttle passed beyond the bay doors. Henry’s eyes were locked onto the flight gimbal but he still managed a frown, along with a shake of his head.
“What’s wrong, Forger?” Studebaker called out. “Not having fun?”
“My version of fun involves a minimum of five more C’s of thrust than this,” he said. “Uh…sir.”
“Relax, kid,” said Zhu. “You only leave the solar system for the first time once.”
----------------------------------------
The Vanuatu looked like a white, beakless heron, frozen mid-flight with its neck extended, and wingless, as if they’d been made to disappear with magic. The forward section of the hull was bulbous and rounded where it contained the bridge and hibernation creches among other, less important compartments. Towards the aft end of the ship, where the engineering and habitation compartments were situated, the hull expanded until it met the docking bay and the ship’s two massive engines. On the Vanuatu’s belly the gravity centrifuge jutted out from the hull like a dome-shaped growth, rotating slowly and steadily.
Henry felt curious eyes on the back of his head as he brought the shuttle to a slow stop just under a thousand meters out from the docking bay. Once he’d matched the shuttle’s velocity to the Vanuatu’s he keyed the radio to their frequency.
“Vanuatu, this is shuttle one. Request docking permission.”
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A masculine voice replied this time. “Shuttle one, Vanuatu. Centrifuge is halting now.”
The centrifuge slowly spun to a halt, and the docking bay’s doors began to crawl open. Once both had completed a holographic pip appeared on the shuttle's flight gimbal representing the desired path into the bay. A hail from the Vanuatu arrived soon afterwards.
“Shuttle one, we’re ready to receive you. Maneuvering thrusters only from here.”
“Roger, Vanuatu.”
The shuttle crept forward towards the waiting docking bay. Within minutes it had crossed the remaining distance and passed the bay’s threshold.
Henry carefully brought the shuttle down and flipped the switch to extend the landing gear, bringing it into gentle contact with the deck. The moment he felt the shuttle connect he flipped the switch to magnetize the landing gear.
“We’re magnetized, Vanuatu.”
“Roger, standby.”
“Not too bad, Forger,” Zhu called out. “Though that landing felt a little shaky.”
Henry looked back and shot him an irritated frown. Zhu responded with a cheeky grin.
Studebaker looked between them. “I thought he did well.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Henry.
Gravity quickly returned to the bay. Before the pressurization process was even close to finished people began to unbuckle themselves and gather up their things.
“Shuttle one, Vanuatu. Pressurization complete. Welcome aboard.”
Henry flipped the switch to lower the shuttle’s ramp, and soon after the crowd spilled out onto the deck, filling the silent bay with excited chatter. Studebaker stepped out after them, calling out above the rising din in an attempt to organize them.
Zhu remained in his seat, waiting for Henry to finish shutting down the shuttle.
“You can leave your bags here,” he said. “I’ll have them brought to your room. Head up to the hibernation creches, now.”
“Sir?”
“We won’t need you until we’ve arrived. You’ll just be a drain on resources in the meantime. Go on.”
Shrugging, Henry extracted himself from the pilot’s seat and walked past Zhu towards the ramp. As he descended into the bay, Zhu called out to him.
“See you again, eighty years from now!”
----------------------------------------
The Vanuatu’s pearl white halls and gray unblemished floor tiles were all covered in a glossy sheen that spoke to just how new the ship was, unmarred by use and impeccably clean. In addition to the brand-new-ship look, the hallways had a generous amount of headspace and were comfortably wide, which more than anything else came as quite a surprise to Henry. Military ships were usually clean as a matter of discipline, but they almost never spared any space whatsoever for comfort. Moving through them often meant shouldering past other people or ducking beneath low-hanging obstacles.
He stopped briefly at an empty four way intersection, casting a curious look down the hallways to his left and right.
This is like being on a yacht, or something, he thought. Though I guess it makes sense. People would go nuts if they had to deal with crawling past each other every single day for the next fifteen years or so. Well, the next waking fifteen years.
There weren’t many people walking through the halls, though the few he did pass greeted him with nods and smiles. Being part of something so momentous seemed to be boosting moods all over the ship. It was hard not to feel infected by it.
He continued on to the fore end of the ship, guided by the signs posted on the walls at each intersection. Before long he reached the first rooms containing the hibernation creches. Their doors had labels on them with alphanumeric group assignments, ascending as he neared the bridge.
After climbing a small flight of stairs, Henry spotted a door on the left side of the hallway labeled: “Bridge Hibernation Room”. Directly across from it sat another door, labeled: “Bridge Relaxation Lounge”. He had to suppress an immediate and powerful urge to investigate the lounge before he grudgingly stepped towards the hibernation room. The moment he entered range the door slid open silently.
Inside, two dozen empty plexiglass tubes large enough to contain an adult human lined both walls, each one attached to a suite of monitoring computers. A complicated mess of pipes ran from the back end of each creche into the nearby wall. At the far end of the room, a fairly young, light skinned woman with shoulder length blonde hair sat behind a computer terminal, wearing the civil service uniform. A golden medical caduceus was pinned to her collar, with a Mars pin opposite. She greeted Henry the moment he walked inside.
“Hi there…Forger,” she said, squinting at his nametape. “Here for a long nap?”
“Uh…I guess you could say that?”
The polite smile she gave him suited her elfin face. She stood up, offering her hand once he’d walked into range.
“I’m Kaya. I’ll be the one putting you to sleep.”
“Okay, Kaya.”
“Are you feeling nervous at all?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Should I be?”
“Mmm, no, probably not. But it’s not everyday we return to the womb.”
“Wha—the womb?”
“Mhm. The creche is similar in many respects. How old are you?”
“Twenty-three.”
She seemed mildly surprised. “You look younger. Hibernation is essentially the same procedure as age reversal, though with less cell exchange. To oversimplify it, the telomeres in your cell’s chromosomes become shorter as they duplicate over time, causing them to gradually become less capable of repairing themselves. The amniotic fluid within the tank restarts cell division almost from scratch, one of the results being longer, healthier telomeres.”
Henry’s eyes began to glaze over.
“Hibernation is mostly the same process, just less intensive and with more nutrition to preserve muscle mass. Your cells get replaced at the precise rate you need to maintain your current level of…youth. There’s much more to it, but I can tell when a patient is getting bored. Why don’t we just say the process is safe and leave it at that.”
“Why’d you ask me if I was nervous?”
“Because an AI will be monitoring us as we sleep.”
“Oh…yeah, now that you mention it I am nervous.”
“That’s understandable,” she said solemnly, then shrugged. “But this is what we signed up for. Your creche is over here.”
She led him to the creche sitting in the far right corner, then pressed a button on one of the monitors attached to it. The top half of the plexiglass whirred pleasantly as it lifted into the air on its hinges.
“You can put your clothing in that cabinet next to the creche,” she said on the way back to her computer.
Henry was aghast. “...What? You want me to take my clothing off?”
Disgust instantly appeared on her face. “No. But if you feel like waking up in Newton Theta looking like a one hundred and three year old man then feel free to step inside with your clothing still on.”
He hesitated, casting a sheepish look at the creche.
“I was head nurse at one of the busiest hospitals in Planitia before becoming an age treatment specialist,” she said. “Trust me when I say it’s nothing I haven’t seen a million times before.”
“Could you at least look away?”
Her eyes rolled dramatically, but she complied. Henry quickly stripped out of his uniform, folding each piece of clothing neatly before packing it inside the cabinet. Once it was done, he stepped into the creche and laid back against the soft fabric mat inside.
“Pretty comfortable,” he said aloud.
She appeared above him holding what looked to be an oxygen mask.
“It’s simple on your end,” she said. “You breathe this in, and once you’re asleep I’ll get you hooked up to the nutrition and evacuation tubes. From there—”
“Evacuation tubes?!”
“Well, unless you feel like floating in a pool of your own—”
“Yeah, nevermind. What’s after that?”
“The creche will fill up with fluid. And you won’t dream. That’s it.”
“That’s it,” he said. “...Alright.”
She lowered the mask to his face and gently held it in position until it sealed itself against his skin. He began to take deep breaths.
“Just breathe normally.”
Unconsciousness came on without warning, and Henry slipped into the longest and most fateful sleep of his life.