Pioneer

Robert Zimmerman

Description

The time is 2183. Fifty-six-year-old Saunders Maxwell is a stubborn old space-farer who has spent his entire life in space. He has captained the Moon-Mars shuttle and led exploration missions beyond Mars. When he came to Mars in his forties he helped discover the water source that made the first American Mars colony possible.

Later he turned to asteroid mining, captaining a small ship and crew of about a half dozen on repeated trips to the asteroid belt, bringing back minerals or even small asteroids so that the Mars colony could harvest them for the needed resources.

Having just returned from one such four year mission, he and his pilot Harry Nickerson are heading back to Mars when, as they fly over the vast slopes of the giant volcano Olympus Mons, Maxwell spots this strange glint below, a glint that is not natural and should not be there.

When they land they discover something entirely unexpected and impossible, the body of man who had disappeared on a distant asteroid almost a half century before. Sanford Addiono had been on one of the first manned missions to the asteroid belt when he and a partner had vanished. Nothing was ever heard from them again. Even more baffling, two later missions to the asteroid from which they had been lost found that it was gone as well, no longer in orbit where it was supposed to be.

Now, 46 years later, Maxwell finds Addiono's body on the surface of Mars. How Addiono had gotten to Mars from a distant now-lost asteroid orbiting beyond Mars–without a spaceship–was a riddle that almost defied an answer.

That riddle was magnified exponentially by what Addiono had brought back with him. Among his effects was a six-fingered robot hand that had clearly been made by some alien civilization, along with a recorder and memo book describing what Addiono had seen.

Here was a mystery that would rock humanity, the first alien contact. And at that moment Saunders Maxwell decides that he is going to be the person to solve that mystery, even if it takes him through hell and back.

Unfortunately, that is exactly where that journey takes him.

Not that it matters. Saunders Maxwell is a typical human, and for humanity, the journey itself is really all that matters.

So now I stand on earthside shore,
And wonder what I am.
I must go out and find my home.
The journey's what I am.

Chorus:
O Pioneer! O Pioneer!
Where do you go from here?
O Pioneer! O Pioneer!
The stars are far too near.

-A folksong of Mars and the Moon

Sujets

• Science-Fiction
• Toute la Science-Fiction
• Hard Science Fiction
• Science Fiction
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: eBookIt.com
• Date de parution: 12 septembre 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781456628963
• Langue: English

Extrait

Pioneer
 
 
by
 
Robert Zimmerman

copyright 2017 by Robert Zimmerman
 
All rights reserved. Except for the inclusion of brief excerpts for use in a review, no part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any other information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.
 
Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com
http://www.eBookIt.com
 
ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-2896-3
 
The Author:
Mr. Zimmerman is an award-winning science journalist and space historian who has written four books and numerous articles on science, engineering, and the history of space exploration and technology. His first book, Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, tells the family and political story behind the first manned mission to another world. It is now available as an ebook at all ebook vendors as well as at its publisher, Mountain Lake Press: http://behindtheblack.com/books/genesis-the-story-of-apollo-8/
 
His most recent major publication, Capitalism in Space: Private Enterprise and Competition Reshape the Global Aerospace Launch Industry , was a policy paper for the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). This paper is available for free as a pdf at either CNAS or at the author's webpage: http://behindtheblack.com
 
The author is also a cave explorer and cave cartographer, and has participated in numerous projects exploring and mapping previously unknown caves throughout the United States. It is this activity that has allowed him to actually "go where no one has gone before."
 
For more information about Mr Zimmerman's other books, see his webpage: http://behindtheblack.com
Preface
The book you are about to read was first written by me in 1982. It was never published because at the time I could not find an agent to market it to book publishers, and was then too naive and shy to attempt to do such things myself.
In viewing several recent science fiction movies, however, I was motivated to pull the final draft of Pioneer from my files, wondering if it might be marketable. I hadn't read it in decades, and had literally forgotten the story. I started reading expecting a typical first novel, somewhat incoherent and emotionally immature.
Instead I was quite surprised and enthralled. I couldn't put the book down. Moreover, I was astonished at the coherence of the story and characters. "This is a good book!" I exclaimed to my wife Diane. Nor am I bragging when I say this, since the person who wrote it is someone from many decades ago and who essentially no longer exists.
Thus, I decided it was time to get Pioneer published, especially since this is now a very easy thing to do, no longer requiring either an agent or a book publisher.
Pioneer does have some interesting flaws, however, most of which are related to technology. I tried in 1982 to guess what the technological world would be like on a future Mars colony two hundred years in the future – even as I wrote the book using my first desktop computer, a Radio Shack Model III. Not surprisingly, I got a number of things wrong.
For example, though I think I did a reasonable good job of incorporating the use of computers into everyday life, I failed to realize that as things went increasingly digital the need for hard copy printouts would go away, especially on a Mars colony. I also failed to anticipate the arrival of tiny computers that people could carry everywhere.
And like everyone else who wrote science fiction before 1990, I missed entirely the fall of the Soviet Union.
Even so, in publishing the book now, I have decided, other than doing some basic copy-editing and proofreading, to essentially leave it unchanged. I think it is more interesting to see my vision of the future, as written in 1982, then to try to rewrite it now. I am not the person that wrote this in 1982, and I'd rather leave that past person's vision intact, out of respect.
Despite its flaws, I think the tomorrow I predicted in 1982 still captures the overall future quite reasonably. As a historian my interest has always been the process by which societies are built and slowly evolve, and how that process will eventually play out in space. This book illustrates some of my first thinking along these lines, at least a decade before I began working as a historian and began to dig into the history of the American colonies and the events that made them the way they were.
Almost forty years later, I find its picture of commerce, colonies, and politics to be amazingly in line with the competitive international in-space global marketplace that now seems to be developing. 1
I also still think that those initial colonies will be harsh places, and as described in Pioneer will produce tough people with harsh exteriors. This is how it was for most past frontier settings, and I see no reason why it should be any different in space.
Establishing those first colonies will also take much longer than most people expect. I used as my model the settlement of the New World. From the first arrival of Columbus in 1492 to the Declaration of Independence in 1776, almost three hundred years passed. This is a long time, but I think it gives us a good idea about how long it will take to establish the first self-sufficient independent colonies in space. In fact, if anything I might have been a bit optimistic in predicting that it will only take two hundred years from the Apollo landings to the declaration of independence of the first lunar nation.
 
Initially I had included here a discussion of the book's literary background, describing the influence of Shakespeare and H. Rider Haggard. I have decided this is unnecessary and distracting. It is better to say less. Pioneer I think stands well on its own, a science fiction book with a set of interesting and unique human beings set in an unusual setting that I believe will resonate with the future generations who will explore and colonize the solar system.
And if not, I can at least hope that the song included here might someday become a popular anthem for those future pioneers to the stars. It more than anything else in the book speaks to why we humans do the things we do.

 
 
 
So now I stand on earthside shore,
And wonder what I am.
I must go out and find my home.
The journey's what I am.
 
Chorus
O Pioneer! O Pioneer!
Where do you go from here?
O Pioneer! O Pioneer!
The stars are far too near.
 
–folksong of Mars and United Lunar
Part I: Mars
I wonder if anyone ever knows what the goddamn motives of a person are at any one moment. I'm over sixty, and I couldn't explain my own right now if I tried.
My name is Saunders Maxwell. You may have heard of me back when the Martian colony was first settled, when me and my partner Landau more or less chose that spot in Mangala back in 2164. Since '49 I've been bumming around the outer colonies. Spent some time exploring the asteroids, the Moon, even a little on the Mars-to-Moon shuttle, but most of all, spent my time on Mars.
Mars! Empty, light pink sky and wispy clouds, I could stretch arms and breathe!
Well, can't say I was kidnapped to this dead asteroid. Sometimes all of us make decisions that lead us off crazily.
Maybe it' s a disease of the human mind, this mystery of motive. Here I am, marooned on this rock with someone I can't stand, telling this tale exactly the same way that Addiono told his (probably to be found like him as well) and I have no real understanding of why I'm here. I know that this is where I had to be, but don't ask me for an explanation of why.
At least Diana knows where I am.
 
We had just docked Dream Watcher in its port at the Landville Mars orbiting station. We had just finished our second two year swing through the asteroid belt, and now were back, lugging behind us a chunk of an asteroid one hundred meters across, weighing close to 5 million metric tons and stuffed with minerals to sell. I could already see Irving Steiner, President of Far Star Enterprises, drooling with pleasure at the possibility.
As soon as the platform lock pressurized, Harry Nickerson, my pilot, spun himself around and jumped from the bridge, flying through the hatch to the exit lock. I yelled after him, "Wait for the rest of us, Nickerson, we should leave together!"
"Right!" he called back faintly from the outer corridor.
Jane Barlow sat at her console, still studying her screens, and the electronic monitors scattered throughout the ship. Her husband, Alex, was stretched out lazily in the air above her, watching the main viewscreens. His thick black beard floated wildly about his large face.
"Well?" I growled. "What are you two going to do now?"
Jane avoided my question, looking instead at Marlene Srindow. Our so-called computer programmer was half-asleep at her console.
I scowled. "Answer my question, Barlow!"
Alex grinned, swinging himself around to land behind his wife. His voice boomed at me. "We're considering several other jobs now, Maxie. You and Marlene go ahead; they won't mind if we stay here and close up shop."
I looked at them with annoyance. "Damn," I cursed, "There's just no reason for you two to exile yourselves up here. The war ended twelve years ago."
At that moment Marlene Srindow interrupted. "Shouldn't we just let them do what they want, Max? I mean, isn't it their decision. . ."
Her voice faltered. I was looking at her coldly. How we had managed to get to the asteroids and back, and make a profit no less, with this lady as computer programmer I'll never know. "I'm leaving. If any of you want to reach me, I'll be in my old apartment in Mangala."
Nickerson was waiting for me at the exit hatch. "Where're the others?"
"They had other business. You ready to go?"
"But what about Marlene? She said–"
"You want to go with her, you go with her. I 'm going now."
At this he paused, then nodded, pulling open the hatch.
The platfo