Winter World (The Long Winter #1)(19)

There’s clear redundancy in five roles: two pilots, two aeronautics engineers, two physicians, two computer scientists, and two roboticists. But the last crewmembers of each ship seem quite different from each other, in appearance at least. The archaeologist with a linguistics background is an Australian named Charlotte Lewis. I bet she’ll be on the Pax. Her counterpart has yet to identify himself. He’s hung back, near Chandler, watching the group with steely eyes. His face is lean, muscular, and sun-damaged. It’s hard to tell how old he is; his hair is close-cropped and graying at the temples. He’s wearing a navy suit that doesn’t fit well, as if it were given to him for this occasion. My guess is he’s military.

The Asian physician-psychologist approaches him and introduces herself, her English nearly flawless.

“Hello, I’m Izumi Tanaka.”

“Dan Hampstead. Nice to meet you, ma’am.”

His accent is Southern. Texas is my guess.

“I’m a physician with a specialty in brain injury and other acute trauma. I also have a PhD in psychology. My work focuses on small group dynamics, especially high-stress situations and PTSD.”

Hampstead nods and looks away. “Good. Might come in handy on this trip.”

“And your field?”

“I’m with the United States Air Force.”

The other conversations are dwindling. Everyone is eavesdropping on this one, wondering who the standoffish twelfth crewmember is.

“You’ll be helping with helm and navigation?”

“I’ll be doing whatever needs to be done, ma’am.”

The words hang in the air, a sort of impromptu declaration.

Dr. Tanaka doesn’t miss a beat. “So will we all. Very nice to meet you, Mr. Hampstead.”

It’s clear Hampstead will be on the Fornax. He’s the pointy end of the stick.

I wonder which ship I’ll be on. I hope it’s the Pax. It will be in the lead—the ship that makes first contact. That’s my guess. It will be more dangerous there, but it’s where I want to be. I can put my skills to the best use on the Pax. I can make the biggest difference there.

Fowler enters the room, accompanied by a cadre of mission personnel and assistants who crowd around two long tables in the pit. Lunch is passed out. For me, a Waldorf salad. It’s the best thing I’ve eaten in years. It’s all I can do to remember my manners and eat slowly.

Binders arrive next. The title page reads: FIRST CONTACT - MISSION BRIEFING – CONFIDENTIAL, and below that, “James Sinclair, MD, PhD.” I throw the binder open and scan the pages as I chew my food. Full crew bios are first. Everyone has a doctorate, with two exceptions.

Lina Vogel, the computer scientist on the Pax, has little formal education, but she has two dozen patents and has created a software program I recognize, one that went viral a few years ago. I count that as a good sign. Whoever put this crew together picked people with the skills to pull off the mission—not just people with impressive pedigrees who would play well with a committee or on the news.

The other non-doctorate is Dan Hampstead. He’s a major in the US Air Force. Twenty years’ service. Six hundred combat hours spread over a hundred and eight combat missions. It doesn’t list his number of kills, only his medals: four Distinguished Flying Crosses with Valor, eight Air Medals with Valor, five Meritorious Service medals, two Purple Hearts. He grew up in a suburb of El Paso, and graduated from Texas A&M and the USAF’s Fighter Weapons School. He’s unmarried. No kids. Same for all the rest of the crew.

I hold my breath as I check the manifests. I’m pleased to find I’m on the Pax. I glance up. Chandler is staring at me from across the semicircle. He’s on the Fornax, and he’s definitely not pleased about it.

I scan the rest of the binder. There are schematics for every module of the ships. They were made at different times by different agencies and subcontractors. Some were clearly finished months ago, maybe even a year ago. Fowler told me they have been working on the plan for some time, but one thing’s clear: they’ve rushed to finish it. Some of the pages are out of order. A few sections of the binder are even blank.

Like the crew, the modules of the ships are a mish-mash from around the world, all with different specialties, thrown together in a desperate hope of saving humanity. And like the crew, they’re the best we have to send up there right now.

When I saw Fowler’s initial presentation, I had a lot of questions. I asked some of the major ones at the time, but there are still smaller questions, issues that could doom this mission. The binder has answers to a few of those questions, but not all of them. Maybe they’ll be addressed in the Q&A. And maybe there are no answers to some questions.

Still, I’ll learn as much as I can. This is humanity’s last roll of the dice, and I’m going to make sure we maximize the odds.

In the pit, Fowler activates the screen, which reads, OPERATION FIRST CONTACT.

“Hello, and welcome to the Kennedy Space Center. I’m Lawrence Fowler, director of NASA. First, be aware that this will be the last time all of you are together before launch. We have a lot to talk about, and plan for, in a short amount of time. In a few hours, most of you will be flown on ultra high-speed jets to your launch sites around the world—Russia, Guiana, Japan, and China. The four American crewmembers—Doctors Chandler and Sinclair, Mr. Watts, and Major Hampstead—will remain here.