Red Giant - Chapter 1

Chapter One
I See Red

Rocking back in his chair, staring into perfect blackness, Jenkins got to thinking about how things had changed these last two years, his job, his life and even his (wilfully slender) grip on reality had been left in doubt. Although he didn’t mind saying that the latter was “part of being a scientist!”
The meteorite had struck in late 2035, three days after his fortieth birthday, ploughing into Jupiter at incredible speeds, and, like Schumacher Levi 9 nearly forty years previous, had brought about a violent reaction from the sleeping red giant. Quite what had caused the reaction remained a mystery, since whilst Schumacher Levi 9 had caused great gouts of Jupiter’s surface to explode upward, the gas giant had carried on much as before, the scale of the collision dwarfed by the planet. This had been different.

Closing his eyes, Jenkins could see the scene unfolding again, Jupiter bracing for the collision, the meteorite speeding for the surface at ten times the speed of a bullet, breath collectively held throughout observatories all over the world and then…. Nothing. No explosion, no pillar of fire rising from the wound in Jupiter’s side, outwardly, no reaction at all. Scientists had been baffled, he remembered the senior astronomer at the Paranal Observatory in Chile saying to him, “It's not possible! The blast should be visible with a child’s telescope; we can barely see a thing!”
It took a few minutes before they began to see what had happened, for a few moments the whole of the southern hemisphere of Jupiter pulsed, and then died away.

That had changed things.

The shuttle Herodotus was on course to the Timmerman orbital platform around Ganymede, although you wouldn’t know to look at it, Steven Jenkins had been making space flights for more than three years now, and had seen his fair share of shuttles, and one of the things that troubled him was that, once the slingshot manoeuvre had been executed, there was no gauge of speed.
He remembered fondly the television of his youth, where stars flew past the viewscreen like so many snowflakes on a dark night. No, space travel was not so rosy in reality, this journey for instance, his longest, had taken the better part of three months and was not without its risks. Swinging his chair round, he gazed into the blackness through the clear screen below, stars frozen in position indicated neither speed nor vector and suddenly Jenkins felt very small. Between that, and the rotation of the ship, he could be flying backwards for all he knew.
Herodotus was one of the new line of Polaris class vessels, specially designed for the Earth-Mars run, shielded against solar radiation, sleek contours and large enough for twelve passengers. Jenkins had always thought it bore a striking resemblance to a spinning top; a slowly curving prow formed a perfect hemisphere, whilst the back of the ship tailed off to a point, a beautiful design indeed.

The distinct hiss of the door behind him broke his focus, and half spinning his chair round there stood the captain of the vessel Allesandro Lupoli, a tall man with brown hair and an easy going demeanour. Lupoli cocked his head to one side, as if trying to meet Jenkins’s gaze, which was somewhere out there in the darkness.
“What do you see out there anyway?” he asked, without really expecting an answer, “I ought to let you know, were a few hours out from Ganymede, is there anything you need?”
Jenkins was still light years away, lost in the possibilities of space, Lupoli laughed, breaking into a smile.
“I see”, he mused. “If there’s anything you need, just shout”
Turning to leave, Jenkins stood up, “I’d like to watch the approach… if its all right with you of course,” he ventured, already walking to the ladder. Lupoli had gotten to know him better these past months than to try to stop him. Jenkins lived for these moments and in truth, the sight still warmed Lupoli’s heart as well.

The compartment Jenkins had been sitting in was ill positioned for observation of the approach. Its windows facing to the side, and quite apart from anything else, the rear section of the ship maintaining a slow rotation (to simulate gravity) would have made any spectacle a nauseating proposition.
Apart from the very back of the ship, where the main thrusters were, only the cockpit was without rotation, as necessitated by the job of manoeuvring.
Climbing the ladder to the spine of the ship was an odd feeling, one that had aroused concern in the testing of the Polaris class since, as the floor from which the ladder protrudes was spinning, as one got off the ladder one would come instantly into contact with weightlessness.
At this point, one could see the length of the entire ship, from stem to stern, and glide between the two with effortless grace.
The centre tunnel, referred to by the crew as ‘the shaft’ was about fifteen feet wide, circular, and ran three hundred feet, the length of the ship, Lupoli was ahead on the ladder, and opening the hatch to the shaft, he climbed inside.
Jenkins loved this part of the ship, and it was used as much for recreation as for transportation. The three month voyages were a test on everyone’s nerves, especially with a crew of four. One could get sick of the sight of the same people again and again. Hauling himself up, off the ladder and onto the ‘floor’ of the tunnel he steadied himself and breathed in deep, he stopped for a moment to ponder the inaccuracy of the description…. ‘Floor’ he thought, implies the presence of a roof.
This clearly was not the case as, directly above him, and staring down, was a completely inverted Lupoli, grinning from ear to ear. One could, if one wished, comfortably walk through three hundred and sixty degrees, creating a deeply confusing image for one unprepared.  
Jenkins however, preferred to use ‘the express’ as he called it, grabbing hold of a pole that ran the three hundred feet of the ship, directly down its spine, he pulled up, and feeling the grip of centrifugal force let go, propelled himself along the pole.
This pole was the only part of the tunnel that didn’t spin, although to the naked eye, it seemed to be spinning whilst everything else stayed still, and by pulling himself along he glided gracefully towards the cockpit.
Jenkins had been on space flights for a long time, and was no stranger to weightlessness, but it still made him feel young, and more than that, inexplicably happy. Glancing behind him he saw Lupoli gliding along with the same effervescence and child like exuberance that he had done until they arrived at the cockpit.
Floating out of the white and stark environment of the shaft, they were greeted with a sight that was unparalleled in majesty and presence.

There it was. Red giant of the Solar System.

Jupiter.

They sat, strapped into their chairs for at least twenty minutes, completely speechless, as Jupiter got larger and larger in front of them. Lupoli had to shake himself loose of his wonder and concentrate on his job, “Shows over, folks” he said, as a large metal shield slid over the canopy and he flicked on the external cameras.
“At this distance, radiation from Jupiter starts to get a little hazardous” he offered, by way of an explanation, “but don’t worry Steve” he quipped, “We’ve got widescreen”
Pressing a few buttons, Lupoli called down a large monitor with several camera feeds displayed. Touching the front camera feed, the shot enlarged to cover the whole monitor. Jenkins was impressed. Somehow it wasn’t quite the same though, he thought, as actually ‘seeing’ the second largest object in our Solar System, up close and personal. Over the next hour they got closer, until there was a giant orange mass taking up the viewer, and dwarfed by the sheer scale of it Jenkins was almost hypnotized until Sophie Eastmann, the ships computer tech hit the radio pad.

“Timmerman this is Herodotus, you folks still awake?” she ventured, and a full thirty second later came the hurried reply…
“Herodotus this is Timmerman, we thought you guys weren’t gonna make it tonight, what kept you?”