Kris stifled a laugh. “My, my, that sounded completely spontaneous.”
Nathan nodded. “Very humble, boss.”
“Posterity is lost on you jerks.” Gordon stabbed down on the button. “Fare well, Promise.”
The button sent a signal to the distant Morningstar, which in turn sent a complex activation code to the probe. Valves shifted within the reactor and superheated helium was forced into the inlet of the photon drive. The primed fields stopped the gas cold, instantly converting its internal energy into linear kinetic energy. High-energy photon thrust streamed out of the terraced steps of the drive pyramid, blasting down into the surface of the Pacific.
Clouds of steam and superheated air exploded out from the launch platform, expanding outward in a supersonic wavefront. The sea within the ring was flattened to a glassy surface, and a hollowed out cone of steam and light formed beneath the rig. The Promise hesitated for the briefest of moments and then crawled higher and higher up the gantry, building speed, power, and acceleration. As it reached the top of the launch platform, it finally began moving at a respectable rate as it clawed its way free of the Earth. The cone of steam collapsed in upon itself, no longer able to deny the pressure of the surrounding ocean, sending a solid plug of water up toward the rig. And as the probe cleared the gantry, its thrust inundated the platform, burning it away even as the sea hammered it from below.
The probe rocketed up, its star ascending toward the dome of the heavens, cast out from the planet of its birth, never to return. Waves of white noise followed in its wake, the air screaming in tortured frustration as the Promise escaped the pervasive clutch of gravity. The star climbed higher and higher, but unlike most rockets, it never tipped over to apply its awesome thrust to achieving orbit. Its destination was far beyond anything so mundane as circling the planet. The endpoint of its journey lay at the near edge of infinity.
Three minutes after Lee pushed the button, the probe left behind the nominal outer reaches of the atmosphere. The aeroshell blasted away from the main body, discarded by the Promise’s still accelerating form. Reveling in the vacuum and darkness of space, the probe performed a slow loop about its outbound vector, testing its maneuverability. Satisfied by its performance, it deployed its main dish and sent a brief message back to Earth.
Hastings and Captain Geary each yelled excitedly from the launch-tossed decks of their respective ships. Hastings turned to the VTC camera to engage the beaming, awestruck faces of Kris, Nathan, and Gordon Lee back in California. Continuous thunder rolled in the background. “It’s gone! It was here and now it’s gone! The whole launch platform is sinking and the probe is already out of the atmosphere. You should have felt the blast! It made the shuttle feel like a Roman candle!”
Geary cut in. “Congratulations, Mr. Lee. It was quite a thing to see. We’re collecting tracking data now, but it’s almost outside even our expanded radar range.”
Kristene’s smiled so widely, it must have hurt her face. “Gordon, we’re getting a transmission from the Promise. Comms, sensor telemetry, power, and maneuvering all test perfect. A flawless launch and a perfect probe—we couldn’t have made it go better if we had planned it that way!”
Nathan laughed. “What are you talking about? That’s exactly how we planned it!”
Gordon shook his head, his own grin faltering slightly. “Yeah, but we also had backups for the backups on our backups, and not one of them was tripped. It’s stupid NASA superstition, but you always expect something to go wrong. And we’ve had our fair share of failures before this. But, a perfect launch might just mean something is destined to go wrong later when the mission is beyond your reach.” He paused, doubt changing the character of his subdued smile. “And that begs all sorts of uncomfortable questions. Like, what if this is the wrong move after all, and the aliens would have been friendly had we just left them alone and not investigated them? We’re committed now, we’ve played our first hand in the big game, but what if our glitch is the mission itself?”
“Dun, dun, duuunnnn!” Kris intoned. “Cue the ominous music. Bring on the grim sense of foreboding. Come on, Gordon! Forget the doom and gloom and let’s celebrate! We just launched an interstellar probe, for God’s sake. We’ve made the first step in solving the mystery of the Deltans and we did it when the whole damn world figured we were a bunch of freakin’ crazies. It’s champagne time!” She reached out and hugged both Gordon and Nathan together, then turned and trotted off back to the kitchen.
Nathan patted Lee on the back. “Good work, boss.”
“No, no, good work to you, Nathan. None of this would have been possible without the two of you and all you’ve done.” Gordon walked past Nathan, looking back at the screens. The one showing the storm front now showed a cataract of disrupted air impinging on the smooth curl of the cloud mass. The other screen, upon which had been the aerial view of the launch platform, now showed a graphic of the projected course of the probe out of the Solar System and on through the emptiness of space, all the way to their rendezvous with the unknown, years and light-years distant. “So much that we’ve done, so much that we still have to do, and no telling if any of it’s going to do any good.”
“What next?” Nathan said, at his side.
“We finish the second probe. Then we lay the keel of our ship, yesterday, and we answer all those questions that we’ve been putting off.”
Nathan smiled. “Like how the hell to build a manned space combatant slash ambassador ship?”
Gordon laughed. “Yeah, like that.”
Kris reentered with the ringing of champagne flutes, a magnum clutched under one arm. “Well, all that crap can wait until tomorrow. Right now y’all are having a drink with me.” She handed each of the men a glass, and then passed hers to Nathan as well. With a twist, she popped the mushroomed cork from the bottle without launching it or spilling a drop. She poured a respectable amount in two of them, while carefully filling one to the top. After setting aside the magnum, she claimed one of the regular glasses, leaving Nathan with the brimming one. She dimpled. “Cheers!”
Both Nathan and Gordon looked askance at the full flute, but Nathan just shrugged and drank deep.
Lee shook his head. “This looks to be a memorable evening in a variety of ways.”
Kris nurtured a soft, contemplative smile. “Surely does. More bubbly, Nate?”
Up in nearby space, the Promise kept accelerating continuously out from Earth. Within a few hours, the dark, unreflecting probe would become the fastest manmade object in history, but it would not pause even then. The probe adjusted its thrust vector, backing down to a third of a gee of continuous acceleration and changing its course to achieve a hyperbolic escape orbit from the Solar System. It settled with its blunt, lead laminate shielded nose pointed several degrees to one side of the distant blue star of its destination, eschewing the direct meeting for an oblique, non-threatening approach.