摩拉之門第二部 羅塞塔彗星（1）The Comet

共分五卷，1，Clam（蛤蜊）；2，Rosetta（羅塞塔彗星）；3，The Lost Jupiter（丟失的火星），4，Strands（線），5，Scorching World（煉獄）。每卷一兩萬字上下，目前已完成前四卷。

卷二：Rosetta（羅塞塔彗星）

故事簡介：It’s supposed to be a mundane trip when NASA astronaut Devin lands on Comet 195F, a midget that has eluded the public’s attention. But soon he starts seeing connections, between the alive and the dead, the past and the future. And how does this relate to a biotech company that sponsors their project, and a woman he’s only met once? The answer may not lie in outer space. The answer may well be buried under your house.

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Chapter 1   The Comet

 

“Rose, I need to talk to you.” Leo appeared at the door with an open folder.

“I’m leaving for the day.” Rose logged out the computer and briefly organized her desk. It was related to the donation, she knew.

“About the Rosetta project …” Leo looked down at his folder and frowned. He had a sophisticated look when he frowned—she admitted—with neatly parted and moussed hair, well-kept figure, and the slick sport jacket that must have cost him a fortune. Yet whenever she saw him, the name of a four-limb reptile would pop up in her head, lizard.

“We’ve given them seventy-five million over the past few years. Seventy-five million! My lady. And I just saw you added more last week. Why, why do we have to do this?”

“You asked the wrong person.” Rose checked her handbag one more time to make sure the envelope was still there before she left her desk. She was a tall woman with springy curls and dark blue eyes—eyes in which men had claimed to see moons and stars, while she enjoyed staring back at them from the same level. “It’s from our Nebular Budget. Part of Nick’s will.”

“Nick, my dear Nick. Yeah, I know it’s for science, but we are a profit company, and …” He paused as an ambiguous smile crept up his face. “I’ve heard rumors …”

“Whatever rumor you’ve heard, I can tell you it’s true.” Having been a widow for five years, Rose had learned that the most effective way to stop gossip was to acknowledge it immediately.

Though, this time the rumor was true, indeed.

She made no stop when she walked past him. It was five thirty, but through the frosted glass door ahead she could still make out people’s moving silhouettes in the hallway. Most of her employees would not leave before she did.

“Come on, Rose!” Leo followed her. “They’ll be there tonight. It’ll be over soon—thank God! We don’t have to do this anymore, do we?”

“Speaking of rumors …” Rose turned back abruptly, her eyes narrowing. “Are you the one who’s been proposing to spend some of the money on a movie instead? A movie that’s been rated NC-17?”

He looked away. “I thought it might be worth …”

“I don’t want my company to be known that way. What’s that woman’s name? The so-called plastic queen?”

“All right, all right.” Leo retreated with his hands up. “Fine, Rose. It’s your company, your money, your call!”

She resumed walking, not wanting to be with that guy—lizard!—for another second. Were he not Nick’s cousin she would have gotten rid of him long ago.

Before she opened the door to the hallway, her secretary caught her up.

“Ms. Melandroinno, Mr. Perez is wondering if you would like to have dinner with him tonight.”

“I’m going to the Dipper. You knew that.”

November twelfth. That was the day she had to be there.

“Yes, but Mr. Perez said he would be truly disappointed if you turn down his invitation.”

“Then wish him better luck next time.”

* * *

“That’s it!” Matt exclaimed. “Right there! Look at its coma. It’s so pretty!”

Devin smiled, resting in his chair and watching the first-timer pacing in front of a window in the bridge of Rosetta. Whenever he saw Matt, he was reminded of his honeymoon in Italy twenty-seven years ago. All those young men full of passion, with their neck-length dark hair, polished manners, and an aura of readiness to break into a dragon-guarded castle at any minute for the rescue of his captive princess.

It’s good to be young—Devin continued his thought—when you have all the potentials to discover new worlds and have your name printed in textbooks. Devin was no longer young, despite the agility of his mind and the sturdiness of his body. It had more to do with the heart.

“I’ll go get dressed!” Matt vanished from Devin’s view while his words were still wafting in the air.

Devin walked over to where Matt had been standing and peered outside. Right now they were halfway in between Earth’s and Mars’s orbits. Since the ship and Comet 195F were flying toward each other, the distance was quickly diminishing. The plan was to skirt to the back of the comet and approach it from behind.

And then what? Devin sighed, rubbing his short straight hair and subconsciously wondering when it would all turn gray. Or fall out. Since his last fruitless mission to Planet Mullos 17b five years ago, there was no question that he had begun fading out from NASA’s hot missions, like those projects related to the exploitation of extraterritorial resources. And from the public’s eyes. This wasn’t the first time for mankind to step onto a comet, and they’d just had the famous Colossus last year and the Fireball four years ago. Devin and his colleagues were sent here mainly because Comet 195F had a period of twenty-five hundred years, and people didn’t want to “miss anything”.  With a longitudinal dimension of only 2.2 km, Comet 195F had nothing exciting and did not even deserve a name.

But that was okay. Devin left the bridge and headed to his cabin. Now that the girls were gone for college, he didn’t mind spending more time at home with Tracy.

* * *

An hour later he and Matt were waiting at the front hatch of the ship, fully dressed in their spacesuits. In between them stood the lander, which more or less resembled a large metal suitcase with extra handles here and there. Devin bent over and checked the tethers connecting their spacesuits to the lander.

“Do we have to be chained all the time?” Matt said through the intercom, pointing at the maneuvering units attached to their backs. Once they landed they had been advised not to detach the tethers over the entire duration of the mission, because of the comet’s low escape velocity.

“Even if we escape,” Matt continued, “we shall be able to fly back.”

“I think it’s better to stick to the rules,” Devin replied. During his thirty years’ career as an astronomer, he had learned enough lessons from colleagues who had failed to take proper caution.

After the inner hatch had been lifted, they rolled the lander over to the exit. Connor checked with them briefly through the intercom to make sure that everything was all right. Then the inner hatch was resealed at their back before the outer hatch slid to the side.

“Now I’m going to turn off the gravity,” said Connor. “Are you guys ready?”

“Yes,” Devin and Matt said, each holding one side of the lander.

As soon as the artificial gravity disappeared, Devin pushed a button on the handle, and the lander began running forward at a preset speed. The comet was right ahead of them, rotating slowly as it headed in the direction of the sun. It wasn’t Devin’s first time to travel in outer space this way, but after a while, he began feeling disoriented. He almost suggested to Matt that they went back to the ship and took a break. Maybe drinking some water would help. But sensing how anxious the young man was to proceed and trying not to appear weak in front of a junior colleague, he decided to press on. Fortunately the condition quickly went away.

As they drew near, Devin knew they had also started orbiting the comet, based on the way the star-field background was shifting, even though he could hardly recognize his body movement. In the absence of gravity, humans’ perception of motion was strange and unreliable, to say the least.

It’ll be over soon, he said to himself, wishing that the earlier disorientation was not a sign of age.

* * *

“Hmm, it’s more regular than I had expected.” Matt said as they were carried along by the lander. “Almost symmetrical.”

Staring at the comet nucleus ahead, Devin agreed. He hadn’t been to one before, but he’d seen pictures. They may resemble gigantic rocks on Earth, but their surfaces were usually rougher because of the lack of weathering and erosion in outer space, except for the solar wind they had to put up with every time they came close to the sun. The surface of the comet in front of them, however, was quite smooth. Overall, it looked like a filled basin attached with a long handle. And as an astronomer, Devin couldn’t help thinking of …

“I’d like to name it Dipper,” said Matt.

Exactly! It reminded Devin of the Big Dipper.

As they got closer to the comet, Devin sensed a readjustment of their speed and direction. With a sensor embedded in its front, the lander constantly modified its motion according to the current surface image and its location relative to the comet. Eventually it would “lock” to the exact spot they had chosen for landing and gradually pull up the distance.

For a while, the two had nothing to do but hold on to the handles of the lander. Then without warning, the dizziness struck Devin back, and the blood in his legs seemed to have been drained off. To distract himself from fretting about his physical condition, Devin tried to start a conversation.

“So why did you choose this project, Matt? I heard they initially asked you to join the Phoebe No. 6.”

In fact, if Devin had met him earlier, he would have talked him into taking the mining project. As a beginner, one was always advised to get in the most promising line of missions.

 “I came here because of you,” Matt said, turning slightly to look at Devin. “You’re my role model, Devin. I’ve always wanted to learn from you.”

Really? Devin made no reply. He wondered if he deserved the young man’s worship. Nevertheless, Matt’s words seemed to have abated his sickness.

“Ur, Devin, do you mind if I ask …” Matt suddenly sounded hesitant. “About that rumor, is … is it true?”

It took Devin a while to figure out what he was talking about. “Of course not.”

People were hopeless, Devin reflected, or maybe they were just jealous. Soon after the project had taken off, they began receiving donations from a biotech company. And he remembered going out to dinner with the donor once—normally Kenton was the one who dealt with those kinds of things, but he had a family emergency that night. Anyway, Devin couldn’t even recall what she looked like. Rose McLand … Melandroinno. She was a tall woman; that was all he remembered. Over the years that company had been quite generous to their project. Almost loyal. That was indeed a little offbeat, considering the obscurity of this mission. But that was it. Nothing like what his colleagues had speculated.

“Devin,” Connor’s voice sounded in the intercom. “You’ll be landing in about five minutes.”

Devin pushed another button on the handle. An “umbrella” stuck out of the front of the lander and expanded into four legs. Two minutes later, they were only a dozen yards away from the surface. A harpoon shot out from the lander and plunged into the surface. As the cable connecting the harpoon and the lander shortened, Devil felt as if he were a kite being gradually pulled back to the ground. Soon he and Matt were resting on the surface of the comet, while the lander beside them wasted no time drilling and sampling.

“Can you imagine we are sitting on something that hasn’t been touched for billions of years?” Matt’s voice quivered.

Devin smiled. He remembered being as excited as Matt was when he first stepped onto an extraterritorial land. After all, how many humans had the opportunity to do that? Space tourism was getting popular, but still not affordable to most people. As he aged, however, he had started appreciating his daily life more than his job. Yes, we may not see that comet again for the rest of our life, but so may not with the friend to whom we said farewell on an ordinary day.

“We have the surface temperature,” he heard Matt saying. The lander had a touch panel to display the results as soon as they became available.  “Seventy-nine Fahrenheit.”

They were on the dark side of the comet. Devin reckoned the temperature must have exceeded a hundred Fahrenheit on the sunlit side.

He rose up and wandered on the surface, unable to go too far due to the restraint of the tether. He walked past a few rocky areas and arrived at a soil-like spot. Stooping, he fumbled inside a pocket on his pants and fetched out a portable drill. The lander must be doing a better job than he was, but he’d like to get a feel of it. That was why they sent humans here, wasn’t it?

At first, the drill bored into the soil easily. Then he sensed some abnormal vibrations and switched it off. Slowly, he pulled out the drill and examined it. Something was coiling around the drill bit. He turned on his headlight and carefully unraveled it. The cord-like thing had a textured skin. Pliable, but sturdy. Kind of like a tree root …

“We got the soil composition!” Matt’s announcement almost startled him.

Devin tucked the thing in another pocket and turned to the direction of Matt, who was bending over the lander and reading the panel.

“Silicates, carbonates, water, metal sulfides …” Matt stopped abruptly, his posture freezing.

Devin swallowed hard. He wasn’t sure about the exact items on the rest of the list, but he had a feeling that Matt’s assertion about them visiting a place that hadn’t been touched for billions of years was incorrect.

“Amino acids and proteins.”