Hope's Deep

“A can of apes is a silly basket to put all our eggs in but…here we go.” Maybe not the best quote for the history books, Wills thought, as the outer door closed.

“Cap, that was not the inspiring speech the commission wanted.” Cruz was going through the motions of the preflight checklist, as had been practiced hundreds of times.

Wills strapped in. “Welcome to the last shuttle to Hope’s Deep, fellow apes, where we’ll be leaving Earth forever. I’m your captain, and Cruz is your pilot. We hope we find somewhere fit to land…someday. Please take notice of the fasten seatbelts sign.”

Cruz groaned. “You’re not as funny as you think, Wills.”

Wills laughed. “I’m dead serious. Fourteen on this shuttle, twenty-eight waiting for us up there; we head toward TRAPPIST-1 and go into deep freeze for twenty years give or take — our time — forty-six on Earth. I hope we find somewhere to land.”

“But what was that quote to the media?”

“I started thinking about how this is our one chance, blanked, and something I read online popped up.” Wills shrugged. “Done is done. Assuming we have a place to land I can make it up to them in roughly eighty-six years, their time.”

They lifted to orbit, matched speed with Hope’s Deep, and docked strictly by the book. Once the passengers were secured in their hibernation pods, Wills met up with Cruz in the cramped cockpit where they went through a whole new preflight checklist.

Under one-half g acceleration, the long ship with its kilometer-wide scoop sucking in particles to throw out of the thrusters left the Earth behind. Wills and Cruz would be the last two into hibernation, after the two-week shakedown and course correction period.

“You ever think about the Fermi paradox?” Cruz asked on their last day awake.

“Sure. That’s what made me sign on to this suicide mission.”

“Wills….”

“Yeah, yeah. We’ll find a new home, send a message that’ll reach Earth forty years later, then fifty or so of our years later we’ll have new ships coming and we’ll live happily ever after.”

Cruz sighed. “Seriously, how does the Fermi paradox make you decide to leave Earth forever?”

“Think about all the possible solutions. Let’s start with the ones that assume we’re the only technological species out and about in the galaxy. That would be the Firstborn hypothesis, Great Filter, those kinds of arguments.

“In those cases, we’re just doing what intelligent life should do — spreading out and claiming more space to keep our species alive.”

“But what about the ‘Dark Forest’ hypothesis?” Cruz asked.

“Well, in that case, we’re doing what intelligent life shouldn’t do, but what humans have always done.

“It’s dark in that cave and bears might live in there? Let’s go find out. There’re saber-toothed cats that want to hunt us in those hills? Let’s go hunt them, instead.”

Cruz laughed. “You say that like we’re going to exterminate all the galactic threats to humanity.”

Wills frowned. “I say that like I worry we’ll do exactly that, without finding out what the wider impact might be.”

“Wider impact?”

“What happens when the predators in an environment go extinct?”

“Uh, the prey takes over.”

“Overpopulation, over-grazing, conflict over dwindling resources, the ecology collapses, and the prey is likely to go extinct as well.”

“We’re the prey?”

“Wouldn’t be the first time.”

“Thanks for the pep talk.” Cruz readied the hibernation pods. “I’ll see you in about twenty years.”

“As long as nothing goes wrong. I’d hate to be woken up early for an emergency.”

“No kidding, Cap. We know all the drills, and there’s redundancies on redundancies, but if we get woken up early, it means something is terribly wrong.”

Wills shrugged. “We can fix whatever. It’s just the thought that we can’t re-enter hibernation once we come out. If we wake up at the half-way point, I’d have to spend ten years pacing back and forth in this can.”

Cruz took a deep breath. “Good night, Wills. Pleasant dreams.”

“You too.”

Wills came out of hibernation feeling like it had been no time at all. “What happened? What broke?”

Cruz was already awake and standing near the pod. “Nothing broke. We’re entering the TRAPPIST-1 system. I’ll need your help to plot out a fly-by of all the candidate worlds.”

“Has it really been twenty years?”

“It has. We’ll enter orbit around the star in about an hour.”

Wills followed Cruz to the cockpit where hot coffee and a twenty-year-old packaged meal awaited him.

“Figured you’d be hungry, like me. There’s a water bottle near your station, too. You’ll want to hydrate.”

“Thanks.” Wills looked out at the distant planets visible from the ship’s location. “Cruz, does that one look blue to you?”

“It does. That’s TRAPPIST-1e. Looks kind of like Earth at this distance.”

Wills set the computer to figuring the paths of their flybys. With the short planetary orbits, ranging from one-and-a-half to nineteen days, the trick would be to not gain too much momentum moving from one to the next.

Having emptied the coffee, water bottle, and packaged meal, Wills stowed all the debris and strapped in just in time for engine shut-off.

“How long to survey all the habitable zone planets?” Cruz asked.

“We might as well wake everyone up.” Wills projected their path on the main screen. “It’s seventeen days to make three orbits of e, then g, then h, then f. Could do it in less time with higher-g flybys, but it would put too much stress on the cone.”

Cruz typed in the commands to begin waking everyone from hibernation. “How many doctors are we carrying?”

“Three. Orbal, Adumbwe, and Singh.”

“I meant PhDs.”

“Out of the forty-two people on board, I think you and I are the only two without a doctorate.”

“You have four Masters, that has to count for something.”

Wills chuckled. “I just hope it counts for finding a safe place for us to settle down.”