…[ MATIVO ]…

“Crew. This is Mativo speaking. We have successfully dropped out of Near Light-Speed and entered Jupiter’s L1 point. We will take a forty-five-minute break before heading to our first destination in the Jupiter System, Riba at 0900 hours. Exploratory Team 001, start getting ready. Mativo out.”

Riba was a testing ground for some of our equipment. It was an inconsequential piece of rock found orbiting approximately twenty-seven million kilometers around Jupiter. It had been chosen at random really. The crew had actually wanted an iconic place for an iconic moment, Europa. But I had been adamant against that. And they hated me for it.

I slumped down on the Command seat, and waited for contact from Control Center back on Earth. We had come up with a simple test for whether the Light-speed shield had worked by having Control Center continuously send out messages towards Jupiter from just before we accelerated to cruising, to our expected arrival time. The messages were send out in five-minute increments.

“This thing is biiigg.” Mũsango claimed, staring at Jupiter. “We’re millions of kilometers away and it still appears larger than Earth did when we were at the Moon.”

“It has a cross-sectional area more than hundred times that of Earth.” Matt stated.

“Knowing is one thing, looking at it is another.” Pon too looked amazed. I groaned in my seat as they continued to gash at the turbulent gases in front of us. Cindy laughed, at me most probably. Less than five minutes after our arrival, we received the first message. Well, one of the messages.

“Robin. This is Control Centre. This is the fourth message in the series of twelve. Send at 0726 hours, twelve minutes after your departure. Out.”

Glazing at the ship’s time showed 0803 hours. The message had taken thirty-seven minutes to cover the distance at the speed of light. That meant…

“The Light-speed shield worked to within a factor of 0.0001%.”

Cheers erupted in the Bridge, and I was sure if I announced the news to the rest of the ship they would react the same. But I was worried, in the experiments back on Earth, there had been no factor whatsoever. Things like the Gravity Device and the Light-speed Core were new technologies, but the Light-speed shield was the most developed technology that I had on the ship. It should have worked to perfection. A factor like that in a million-light-year distance could yield a discrepancy of hundred years. That was unacceptable. I decided to have a meeting with the Light-speed specialists on the ship. Maybe we could figure out where the factor came from, before sending our report back to Earth. I had been planning to focus what little free time I had during the expedition to try and understand the Light-speed Core more, but it seemed I would be spending it on Light-speed shield research instead. After all, what was the point of moving fast if I was bleeding time.

“Why do you look like that wasn’t good news?” Cindy asked as the others continued jumping about the Bridge in celebration.

I needed to work on my poker face. “I am. We can now run around the Solar System without fear of going back to a 30th century Earth.” Wait, I think I answered something wrong there. “Shouldn’t you already be preparing for your exploration of Riba?” I asked her, trying to change focus.

“This isn’t a proper exploration, it’s a dummy. There is no need for…” she trailed off when she saw the look I was giving her. “Right on it.” She scurried off the Command Platform and quickly left the Bridge. The rest of the Bridge were blissfully unaware of the exchange.

“Matt, remind me again of the Orbiters, Probes, Rovers, and the like we need to be on the lookout for.” I enquired as they settled back down. Their faces were still joyful though. And I couldn’t blame them. For them, it had been huge news, an astronomical leap in terms of space technology.

“In the Jov- Jupiter System, there are twenty-two instruments of human origin. More than half of them belong to private companies, so there isn’t much known about them.”

“Even those under the Mũtinda name?”

“I assumed you already knew about those.” After I nodded at him, he continued, “Most are around or on Europa and Ganymede. We’ll have to be extra careful when we get to those two. All of them have cameras, so…”

“Anything we do will be watched and photographed. Are there any near or at our points of interests?”

“I thought we had—”

“They could have been moved to provide interference.” I reminded him.

“Okay, let me check.” He started tapping away at his console.

“The Europa Reconnaissance Rover is 8.64 kilometers from Exploratory Team 023 planned landing site. At its top cruising speed, it could be there two days before our planned landing.” Chantel said, as she forwarded what she had found to the Bridge Display.

“Well, isn’t that interesting?” I said as I carefully studied the displayed image. “Looks like 023’s backup landing site is within reach of another rover.”

“Really? Let me check.” Chantel went back to her console.

“Robin. Zoom in on 023 landing site B.” Pon said. “It looks farther out. Are you sure it can make it there before we land?”

“I don’t know. I’m not getting any information about it.” Chantel said.

“Me either.” Matt said. “It must belong to a private company.”

“Or one of those conservative countries.” Pon added.

“Well, there is nothing we can do right now, other than watch and see where they are heading. I want tabs kept on them at all times.” Their mere presence wasn’t going to make us change our journey. If they wanted, we would clash on those sites. “I want all rovers and probes in our planned destinations periodically tabbed. I hope this doesn’t become a bother.”

“Does this mean that our whole itinerary has been leaked?” Pon asked. But no answered.

As the clock read 0900 hours, Mũsango moved the ship towards Jupiter, setting us at a trailing orbit of Riba. We would spend the next six or so hours there as 001 went to accomplish their mission goals. I left for the shuttle hangar to see them off. Management book said it was good for group morale. I personally thought that if the group needed to see me for their morale to stay up, then maybe they shouldn’t have been exploring in the first place. The book said not to voice such thoughts. Humans really were needy.

I found them all suited up and ready to go. The last of their equipment were being loaded on the shuttle. Each Exploratory Team had a total, or maximum, of twelve members. The Exploratory Commander, Pilot and backup, Physician and backup, two security officers and five mission specialties. All members of the team were capable of performing any one of the duties, most of the duties, but the titles helped establish order.

I could only see ten of them outside of the shuttle, and Jacy was not one of them. Probably meant that she was already inside with her backup pilot, preparing the shuttle for liftoff.

“Come to see us off, haven’t you Commander?” Cindy asked with a mischievous grin.

“Yeah. I’ve come to say farewell. After all, you’re going to shoot and miss Riba, and go tumbling straight into Jupiter where you will be crashed int—”

“Don’t say little white dot.” Cindy was quick to stop me, but she was wrong.

“I wasn’t going to say white.” I looked her in the eyes, unabashedly. “I was going to say blue.”

She looked ready to retort but Jacy, coming out of the shuttle, beat her to it. “Did I hear someone undermine my piloting skills?”

“I would never do that!”

“Of course it’s you.”

“Huh! What’s that supposed to mean?” But she had already headed back inside the shuttle. I made to follow but Cindy stopped me.

“This shuttle is boarding 001 only. Last I checked, that didn’t include you.”

I watched as the rest of the Exploratory Team boarded the shuttle. Each with their own degree of a smile to their faces. Dave, 001 Physician, went as far as to wave at me. Or maybe he had been waving at someone directly behind me. It was hard to tell with these gestures. But I still waved back, and watched as the last of them boarded. The shuttle door was closed, and the three-minute warning to hangar door opening was issued. There was nothing wrong with being at the hangar when the doors opened. The Gravity Device kept everything within the ship. But were it to fail with the doors open, everything within the hangar would immediately be exposed to the vacuum of space. Or whatever environment the ship found itself in.

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I made my way into the observation room, which was cramped with more than fifty people inside. Maybe we should have built a bigger one. It seemed most of the crew not on essential duties had come to see off the first exploratory team.

As the doors opened, the hangar was hued yellow. Silence reigned in the observation room, as the doors slowly slid open. I knew they opened in less than ten seconds, but as I watched them then, it felt longer. Way longer. The shuttle slowly lifted off the deck floor and drifted out of the hangar gradually moving into space. Meters off the ship, it picked up speed as it took a long turn to move towards Riba ahead of the ship.

People cleared the room and went back to their duties. Or recreational activities. If everything went to plan, it would be hours before they returned. Anyone who wanted to keep up with their progress could watch it on the ship’s network.

I slowly creeped back to the Bridge, with a throbbing head from my recent activities. Maybe I needed a new book on management. The one I was currently reading was proving to be more trouble than it was worth. Its advice on how to deal with negative feedback from management was unhelpful.

When I reached the Bridge, the shuttle was still huddling towards Riba. Getting smaller and smaller. The reality of space, everything was bigger than me. As I settled back on the Command Seat, I thought, the expedition had truly begun.

…[ JACY ]…

As they approached Riba, Jacy was glad for Mativo’s antics in the hangar. The nervousness of the team had disappeared and they were easily laughing and chatting with each other. They had been cold as they prepared for the exploration.

But Jacy was worried too. Mativo was already doing too much. It was nice for the crew, but if he kept it up, he would burn out sooner rather than later. They had months ahead of them on this expedition, moderation was in order.

Jacy knew that most of the crew thought little of the exploration of 001, but landing on such a small body was a tricky affair. It was akin to balancing the ship on the edge of kitchen knife. You would think the Gravity Device of the shuttle would help but it only made things worse. Way worse. It would help the shuttle with staying on Riba after they landed. But not with the landing itself. That was why she had it turned off, and the Anti-Acceleration field too.

Riba was unremarkable. It resembled nothing that Jacy had ever seen. Just a lump of rock tumbling in space. Minding its own business. And they were there to forever alter its future. In size, it was less than a kilometer across. Before they left the ship, it had been estimated at 840 meters across. The shuttle sensors had settled on 839.63 meters. Jacy didn’t understand the discrepancy, at this close even the ship should have been able to get a reading with an accuracy to the nanometers.

They steadily made their approach, watching as Riba quickly got bigger than the shuttle. The first approach showed no desirable landing sites, forcing them to orbit around it three times before she was comfortable enough with a site.

What followed was minutes of maneuvering; slow deliberate adjustment of their alignment and approach velocity. It was a mentally exhausting task. A delicate touch was required to safely land on such a small celestial body, otherwise they could end up bouncing off into the emptiness of space. Or as Mativo said, tumble straight into Jupiter.

But that would be near impossible, she was a great pilot. If she did say so herself. She was sure that the only reason their shuttle would fly into Jupiter was if she was out of commission. Even then, there was still Hilton, the backup pilot, and the rest of the crew. Maybe Mativo’s statement had gotten to her a little.

She cleared her head of such thoughts as she concentrated on landing the shuttle. By the time of contact with Riba, the shuttle had a velocity of less than a centimeter per second. It felt like there had been a little bounce off before they settled, but she paid it no mind, quickly turning on the Gravity Device. That assured them a strong adherence to the small rock. Well, it wasn’t so small anymore.

“Okay crew, we are here. You all know and understand where we are and what we are here to do. So, five minutes before we depressurize. Check your suits and get ready for the first exploration of this trip.” Cindy spoke through the earpieces they each had. Her voice having a submerged feel to it.

As she prepared herself for the coming hours of gruesome manual labor, Jacy realized that she was already sweating. The landing had been trickier than she had anticipated or experienced. As she caught her breath, she realized her thoughts had been her minds way of stopping herself from panicking or thinking too much on what she had been doing. The added pressure of it been the first manned landing on anything past the Asteroid Belt. Too bad there were no cameras to capture it. On second thought, maybe that was a good thing.

“Check.” Cindy asked for them to report if they were ready, and all gave the Okay signal. She activated the depressurization procedure while they slowly moved towards the shuttle doors at the back. “Opening shuttle doors.

“Well. Let’s get on with it, shall we?”

The team slowly fastened their tethers to the holds near the shuttle doors as they moved outside. Jacy was the last out of the shuttle. The tethers could unravel to around five hundred meters in length. On Riba, they could easily cover the whole rock given that she had landed them on a somewhat central location.

The surface of Riba was hard. It didn’t appear like there was any dust to it. There had been no planned locations of interest, so the team dispersed in all directions with their respective equipment. A meter or so away from the shuttle and she started drifting off the rock. She quickly realigned herself bringing her to a near glide a meter off Riba’s surface. She had taken somewhat of a forty-five-degree angle to the left of the shuttle doors.

Their suits were the skin category of spacesuits. They relied on inbuilt nanotechnology to maintain pressure and temperature within to ranges recommended for humans. They were highly flexible, allowing movements normal ware couldn’t even dream about. They were in the organization’s sky blue theme color, well, it was Mativo’s theme color. Different family members had different variants of blue as their theme colour. Some even venturing as far out as to encroach on indigo.

The suits had highlights of white and black along the seams, the contours of the upper body and on the shoulder pads. Mativo’s personal emblem on the left of the chest, with the organization’s logo on the right of the shoulders and the expedition’s on the left. Preferred name of address was located below Mativo’s emblem. The suit was completed by the helmet, which displayed their vitals on the visor, un-obstructively. It had taken hundreds of trials to come up with a display model that didn’t impend on the working efficiency of the person wearing the suit. Then there was the backup display along the forearm of the left hand. It also acted as a Comms device. The last thing was the utility belt on their waists. It contained tools based on what the Exploration Team’s mission goals were. A backpack was optional.

She had a drill, a small pick-axe, and other assortment of tools that would make collecting samples from a celestial body with little to no gravity to speak of, much easier. Easier compared to if she didn’t have them. Since, the team’s goals were broad based on the exploration been a prove of concept, it was up to the crew to determine what was worth sampling.

Since walking on Riba wasn’t an option, Jacy slowly drifted along its surface, moving herself along on her gloved hands. She first started collecting samples at random, clearly describing what she was collecting and what the area around looked like. Soon, she started looking for areas that were unique or showed signs of containing highly sort out elements and resources.

She occasionally joined the background chatter the team was having. But that was limited as it required switching on the channel microphone every time she had to say something. At first, it seemed like a waste of time, but as the hours wore on it provided a welcome distraction from the monotonous work they were doing. There was communication with the ship, but those were few and far apart.

The first challenge she faced was the all-too expected dust accumulation in the area of drilling and picking. The lack of an atmosphere meant that there was nothing to wash away the dust particles as they were knocked off Riba. Then came the issues with packaging the samples and storing them in the sample pack. She had a pack on her with an internal volume of 10000 cubic centimeters, or enough to carry ten kilograms of sample with a density similar to that of water. Each sample of each location had to be stored separately in their own packets, and those packets placed within the main pack.

By the five-hour mark into the exploration, she was tired. Mentally, mostly. From the talking, the repetitive motions carried over and over again, and most of all from the gliding.

“All right crew. Start wrapping up things and head back to the shuttle.” Cindy stated over the Comms. “I feel about done with this rock.”

“Ooh! And I was starting to enjoy myself.”

“You can stay here Jacy, if it suits your fancy.”

“Say what you will, this was a pretty mild, boring if I dare say so, exploration.” Hilton commented.

“Watch it Hilton. Say those things only after we make it back to the ship in once piece.” Charvi said, one of the specialists.

“Don’t tell me you are superstitious.”

“No. But better safe than sorry.”

As the banter continued, Jacy finished packing her last sample and made her way back to the shuttle. The team was being more vocal than they had been during the hours of constant digging. She arrived to the shuttle with less than thirty minutes to their schedule departure time. Four team members had yet to make it back. She began safely securing her load on to the cargo holds and the tools were returned to the tool boxes as their instrument officer checked. The last person returned with less than ten minutes to spare. The shuttle doors were locked and depressurization began.

As everyone finally settled down, she started up the shuttle and began the trip back to the ship. Leaving Riba didn’t require as much maneuvering and skill as landing had demanded. The trip to had taken them more than five minutes. They made it back in three minutes.

“Is it safe to call the exploration a success now?” Hilton asked Charvi as they approached the hangar doors that had started to open.

“No. There is still meters to go.” Charvi replied without missing a bit.

“You’re just pulling my leg aren’t you?”

But Charvi’s response was, “Now you can,” as they landed on the shuttle bay.

..[]..

Jacy was back in her room, in what she considered pajamas for this expedition. She had three pairs, all of which had been issued together with the two sets of spacesuits and three sets of crew uniform. They were allowed personal clothing, but only for when they were not on duty. But she was preparing to go to bed hence the pajamas.

She was sitting in front of her desktop computer, having just come to the realization that they were no longer near Earth. So, any form of communication would have to be through messages, video or text, with more than an hour delay between them if the other person responded immediately.

She didn’t have any messages waiting for her. She sent short messages to her parents, letting them know she was fine and that she had completed her first exploration. Then she wrote lengthy, more personal ones to her close friends. She had few of those left, having lost touch with most of them after starting to work with Mativo.

After everything was done, she went straight to bed to get a few hours of rest. She had another exploration in less than forty-eight hours.