Diamond Moon Read online

  Copyright © 2020 by B K Gallagher.

  All rights reserved. This book is protected by copyright. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including as photocopies or scanned-in or other electronic copies, or utilized by any information storage and retrieval system without written permission from the copyright owner.

  This book is a work of fiction by the author. Any similarities to people, persons, places, events, real or not, is purely coincidental. Any references to real locations, events, or agencies are used in a purely fictitious manner.

  Printed in the United States of America.

  Cover Design by 100Covers.com

  Interior Design by FormattedBooks.com

  Author’s Rating: PG-13 - This book contains some mild to moderate adult language, very mild sexual situations, and scenes depicting violence and/or death.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I would like to sincerely thank my wife for her patience as I wrote this book, and for the time I spent isolated from society to complete it. However, I would also like to remind my wife that she attempted nearly every night to dissuade me from writing in favor of binge watching streaming t.v. programs with her. This book is for her and our three children.

  CONTENTS

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue: The Gallery

  SECTION 1

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  SECTION 2

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  SECTION 3

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  PROLOGUE

  The Gallery

  As visitors enter the George Collinson Institute for Neurological and Regenerative Studies, they pass a small gallery located just off the main lobby. It is a room created as a tribute to the NASA Copernicus mission — the mission responsible for the creation of the institute. The gallery is a darkened space, quietly isolated and purposefully set away from the bright windows and reflective floors and busy footsteps in the lobby, and it guards its valuable contents behind thick concrete walls.

  Guests who enter the room are directed through a narrow vestibule, single file, with security guards at either side. They move past precast walls and wood moldings that conceal metal detectors and cameras, past heavy vault doors that disappear into the building above and below them, and past motion detectors and pressure sensors and other discreet security measures.

  They move in a steady single-file line, keeping a scripted path within velvet-lined ropes. They are led past images hung along the walls in a sequence. The large picture frames surround black and white photos of the mission responsible for the institute and the gallery. Each of the frames has a small placard below explaining what they are.

  One image shows a monstrously tall mining rig; a spidery metal framework decorated with points of light across its frame. It towers in the foreground before a deep black sky. Another image is from inside the rig. A drilling apparatus is suspended from a crane, and watery piles of slush form a ring in the floor. In yet another image, a shiny torpedo-shaped object is suspended directly over the ring, its nose pointed into the black hole at the center like a missile.

  The men and women in the pictures wear bio-suits and hover around the opening as they work on the equipment. Some of them seem to know their images will be captured and displayed for history. They look like time-travelers from another generation.

  The velvet ropes lead the visitors past the images and around a corner to the center of the room. A delicate wooden pedestal stands with a display case fixed atop. Security glass and a stainless-steel frame protect the contents of the display. Two more guards stand aside the pedestal, alert and vigilant in an otherwise reflective and contemplative space.

  Upon the pedestal lies a glass container, and inside that an object the size of a man’s fist. It has sharp reflective edges that catch the light and throw it across the dimly lit room. Miniature rainbows stride across the corners of the object as the subdued lighting is splintered into its constituent wavelengths. An iridescent sheen changes colors as the visitors walk by it, playing with the light and teasing their eyes. It is a mesmerizing object that transfixes the room. A heavy bronze plaque is suspended behind the case, and an engraved message reads in bold lettering:

  “On March 25th, 2087, four members of the NASA Copernicus mission landed upon the surface of Europa, a small moon orbiting Jupiter. With the support of a mining crew they risked their lives to uncover the most precious material ever discovered in the history of mankind.”

  “This small sample was collected at a depth of over seven kilometers beneath the surface of the moon. It is made of a material since named “bio-digitized diamond” and contains the chemical and genetic instructions that resulted in the cures to hundreds of diseases — and founded the creation of this institute.”

  “It is estimated this small section of material contains the coded information for billions of combinations of genetic instructions and took approximately twenty-five centuries to construct by indigenous life-forms. Its value has no practical equivalency in today’s currencies. We honor the sacrifices of the women and men of the Copernicus mission who made these discoveries — and the life that flourishes by them — possible.”

  Thank you,

  Mjr. Benjamin Stenner, Mission Commander

  Dr. Luis Alvarez, Phd., Astronomy

  Dr. Aman Rajanpour, M.D., M Psychology

  Dr. Julian Dugan, Phd., Geology, Volcanology

  Dr. Mara Parrish, Phd., Marine-Biology

  Spec. Reese Fielding, Mission Tech.

  SECTION 1

  CHAPTER 1

  March 25th, 2087

  Sol 1; Mission time - 11:32 - Touchdown

  Mara gripped the armrests tightly as the landing team entered the de-orbiting phase of the mission. She heard her crewmates calling out the flight parameters with smooth, detached voices. Direction, altitude, and systems reports filled the space inside her helmet just as they had in training. She trembled along with the craft, aware that she was not as calm as her crewmates. A bead of sweat had dropped across her brow, frustrated that she could not wipe it away. She closed her eyes and resisted the urge to vomit.

  A penetrating roar slowed the capsule as rocket engines fired beneath her, shaking it intensely. She braced against the unknown, and her body became rigid and tense. Every motion within her felt suppressed as the lander maneuvered itself. Invisible forces held her in place and then tossed her aside as they enacted upon her from the outside.

  The astronaut’s heads bobbed in tandem as the descent continued, and rapid deceleration forced them into their seats. Boots were pinned rigidly to the floor. Belts and straps held them in place as their course was corrected several times.

  Mara heard a loud bang and the cabin shook violently as the landers hit solid ice for the first time. She felt herself in freefall, and they bounced off the icy landscape for a brief minute. Within moments they would be stationary on the surface.

  The sound of her anxious breath filled her ears. It was the only sound she
was aware of. The capsule spun slightly, and she could see the landscape turning outside the window. The nausea returned. She reached out her hand and looked at the chain and ring she had taken along with her. Still there. It was wrapped several times around the palm of her hand. It gave her comfort to know it was secure. She started to feel better.

  Mara heard the crew frantically calling her name, and she worked hard to regain her focus. In short bursts her training came back to her. She wondered how long the voices had been calling.

  There were protocols, checklists, and routines… She was behind in the tightly scripted procedures. She worked frantically to catch up. Buckles and belts were unsnapped and tossed aside, and they gathered at the door. She would be the first out of the craft.

  Mara stood near the doorway and looked through the portal window. She heard the voices calling her name, but she didn’t answer them. Her focus was on getting outside. Someone stepped beside her and operated the controls to the door, and it swung open in front of her.

  As she looked outward, she watched tenuous tendrils of white vapor ejecting from the cabin into a pitch-black sky. She stepped onto the threshold of the new world and she studied her temporary home.

  Somehow, she knew this place… There was a familiarity she could not explain. She realized it was more of a feeling — or an emotion she had grown accustomed to.

  A feeble sun was wasting its gift of light upon a vast emptiness, an expanse so large it curved away from itself at its own distant horizons. The black sky was separated by a thin hazy line from white ices below. That line on the horizon was the only thing Mara could see to orient herself — the line between certain death above and the promise of life below.

  She knew that hazy line, and she knew the blacks and the whites on either side of it. They had been a part of her life since the diagnosis had ripped her world in two. She knew it as the difference between promise and hope, resignation and despair. She had been treading upon that line, and now, looking upon it here, materialized before her, she knew instantly the bond she had with this place… It had been the visits to the hospital, the discouraging test results, and the drowning feelings of loss. She had come to know this desolate place as the grief and hopelessness had overtaken her.

  She sighed a deep and disenchanted breath. There was nothing but remote emptiness on this world. Nothing promising or uplifting — nothing encouraging. It was an empty, blank, meaningless void. Perfectly raw, and completely lacking in color or emotion, this world was superb austerity and sublime indifference.

  Mara understood then why she was familiar with this place… She had been living with it. She looked down and stepped across the threshold onto the surface, and when she did, she went with a knowledge the others did not. She already knew this place well — and it had already made itself a part of her.

  Sol 7; Mission time 05:55

  Dr. Mara Parrish awoke to the chirping of an alarm in her bunk room. She struggled to open her tired and reddened eyes in the darkness and then pushed her heavy legs over the edge of the bed. The alarm wasn’t going to stop until she was out of the bunk and on her feet. As she stood, she pressed her feet hard into the floor as if making a point. It stopped immediately.

  These daily routines were taxing what little aspirations she had for the mission. Another shift, another round of samples, another round of tests, and an evening full of reports and debriefings. It had been over a week now of the same thing.

  She stretched her back, cocked her head to the side to help with the blood flow, and reached for her standard-issue jumpsuit. A quick look in the mirror revealed reddened and puffy eyes that were bulging from her narrow face. Her long wavy brown hair was matted to her head, and her thin shoulders sagged forward. She needed coffee.

  She walked into the mess hall with a sullen appearance. The small room was barely adequate for the four members of the landing team. A tiny table sat to one side of the room next to a small window, while the utility side contained the storage, sink, refuse, refrigerator, microwave, and a small stove. It was just enough to live by.

  She ignored the prim doctor already sitting at the table, sipping his morning tea, and reading the previous sol’s reports. Dr. Aman had been bothering her about her poor attitude nearly the entire mission. She hoped to avoid him. She went straight for the coffee and pulled the last cup from the cabinet.

  “Good morning, Mara,” he said.

  She filled her cup, refusing to acknowledge him, and sat across the table. She took a quick sip of coffee to test the quality. Her expression was not kind.

  “It has only been one week, Mara,” the doctor told her. “Give it a bit longer.”

  “Am I that bad, Aman?”

  He smacked his lips after taking a careful sip. “Bad? Yes. Yes, you are. Your attitude is bringing us all down,” he said. The doctor either winced or smiled, Mara couldn’t tell.

  She returned a disinterested smile. “Seems all we’re doing is drilling a giant hole in the ice and infecting anything that might be alive down there,” she said.

  “You know it will get better,” he replied. “You are here for a reason. There is a reason we did not send a robot or a probe to do this job.” He tipped his cup to his mouth and smacked his lips again. “We will find something. It will be any day now. How close are we anyway… to seeing what is down there?”

  “Could be any sol,” she said.

  “We will pray it is today for everybody’s sake,” the doctor said with a more effective smile.

  Mara squinted her eyes at him. She would need to be suited up and at the drill chamber in half an hour. The chamber was where they were drilling beneath the surface ice. The operation was running three shifts per sol, nearly continuously. Her absence was always noticed by the men doing the brunt of the work, and reports and questions would mount for her once she returned.

  The momentarily silent truce at the table was interrupted by specialist Reese Fielding. She was the youngest of the crew members. Just as disheveled in appearance as Mara, and still in her pajama bottoms and mismatched socks, she wore a rock t-shirt from nearly a century prior. Nobody on the crew had ever heard of the band. Her hair was messy and plastered to the side just like Mara’s.

  She gave the two a quick nod and reached for the mugs. “Who was on dish duty last night?” she asked.

  Mara and Dr. Aman were silent.

  “Do I have to check the schedule myself?” Reese glanced up at the dry board next to the sink. “Mara, you know there are no clean mugs?”

  Mara made no gesture toward her. Reese grabbed a dirty mug from the sink, rinsed it, and poured it full of coffee, sighing extra loud. She sat down and added her standard amount of sweetener, turning the coffee into a sugary snack.

  “At least you get to do something here, Mara,” she said, somehow continuing the conversation. Reese tested the coffee, which resulted in another disapproving look. “It can’t be that bad for you. I literally have nothing to do. Patches, tests, and more patches… I could do that from Earth. You know why I volunteered for this? Check this out…”

  Reese moved aside slightly and pointed out the portal window to a very large pink and brown-striped planet on the horizon. “Look at that view,” she said. “First manned mission to Jupiter… Can’t you just enjoy it?” She leaned back and took another sip of the terrible coffee, which seemed to hasten her momentary sense of positivity.

  “I know you didn’t come here for the view,” Mara replied. “Like you had anything better to do,” she said with a sarcastic smile.

  “That’s by choice… I’m martyring myself for science,” Reese explained with a wry smile.

  Mara did envy Reese for her ability to look on the brighter side of things, although she would have never admitted that to herself. She was content in her misery. She had even begun to feel it her role on the mission to keep expectations down, although Dr. Aman had voiced his disagr
eement with her on that point in multiple sessions already.

  Reese interrupted the silence again. “You about ready to go over?” she asked. “Running a little late aren’t ya?”

  Mara took her time with another sip. “After this,” she said. She picked up and read some of Dr. Aman’s reports he had scattered on the table and did her best to avoid further conversation, stretching the time before the day’s duties.

  When Mara took her last sip of coffee, she tossed her cup into the sink and watched it arc slowly in the low gravity. She still wasn’t used to seeing that. She enjoyed watching the plastic cup bounce randomly in slow motion as it settled into the bottom. She grabbed a protein bar out of the pantry.

  “Mara, you are not going over without something more to eat, are you?” Dr. Aman asked.

  “I’m not that hungry.”

  “We will talk,” the doctor said, sensing her defiance.

  Mara rolled her eyes as she turned toward the airlock to suit up. She took a bite of the protein bar as Reese helped her into the bio-suit.

  “I’m starting to think this is the only reason I am here,” Reese complained. “Suiting you up is the most important part of my day, you know.”

  Mara mustered a half-witted smile.

  The airlock where they stood was a clean and simple arrangement. Each of their bio-suits hung in order on the wall, and they featured a boring and sterile design with safety striping in all places manageable, as only NASA could do. The exterior world —

  the barren icy landscape outside — lay just beyond two sets of double doors.

  “You’re checked out,” Reese told Mara. “All go.”

  “Thanks. Radiation report?”

  Reese tapped the suit on her shoulder just to test the material. “Luis says it’s on the low end. Have a good trip over,” she said. “Hey, I hope you find something today.”

  “Yeah, then you can start coming with me.”

  She straightened one more tube on Mara’s suit before taking a step back. “C’mon, I know you love having the mining crew all to yourself,” she laughed.