15 July 2173 AD

Ian sat in his cabin with a blank screen on his palmtop computer. He knew he was close to the answer. But there was something troubling him.

Using his laser-pen he drew a circle on the screen.

‘No,’ he whispered to himself, ‘This isn’t good enough.’

He stood and walked over to his computer unit and removed a pair of virtual reality glasses and a data-glove from the wall-mounted rack.

Placing the glasses over his eyes and the glove on his hand, he pinched his fingers and the display became live.

He was transported to a three-dimensional menu system. He selected the menu entitled ‘Missions’.

In front of his eyes, flowed a list of every space mission ever conducted by mankind.

Ian selected ‘Voyager II Probe’ and entered a further menu, where he selected ‘VR-Trajectory’

He was shown a computer animation of the Voyager probe flying past Jupiter, Neptune and Pluto. He paused the animation at the point where the probe hit the heliopause, and transferred the interstellar co-ordinates to the buffer.

Back at the main menu, Ian raised his finger to select the trajectory of the Daedalus over time, and ran the computer animation. At the point where the spacecraft exited the heliosphere, he paused the animation and ran a correlation based on the Daedalus exit point, and the Voyager exit point stored in the buffer.

There was no relationship. The two points were millions of kilometres apart.

Ian smiled. The very lack of a correlation in the coordinates meant that he’d finally figured it out.

*

Frank could not hold back the tears this time. He had fought against it for so long. But now the situation had become too much to bear.

He was tired. He and his crew had been working almost constantly for the last twenty-four hours.

He sat on his cabin bed with his head in his hands and wept. Wiping salty tears from his reddened eyes, he considered the plight of his other self. It filled him with an unnerving sense of sadness and wonderment.

He had seen, written out on this palm computer, the descent into madness and eventual suicide of – himself.

How was someone expected to react to such a thing?

The four remaining crewmembers of the Daedalus sat in the recreation room. The atmosphere was subdued. Frank could see there was a great degree of confusion in his colleagues’ faces and he knew he had the formidable task of bringing this mission back on track, as it had undoubtedly gone quite seriously astray.

Ian however - perched on the edge of a wide bench - seemed strangely calm.

‘Okay, can I have your attention please.’ said Frank.

The talking stopped, and all eyes turned to Frank. He took a deep breath and continued.

‘Now. We’ve all had a chance to read the journal that Ian recovered from Daedalus Two. And it seems to ask more questions than it answers. And the results from the descent probe are even more perplexing. However, we need to decide how to progress this mission. I’m laying it open to you.’

James interrupted, ‘We can’t go home, can we?’

Frank raised his hand, ‘Now hang on. We don’t know that the Earth was destroyed.’

‘Was? Or will be?’ James added.

‘But going home,’ added Ian, ‘Isn’t that exactly what we do do?’

All eyes turned to him. Frank spoke, ‘What do you mean?’

He stood up and moved away from the others, folded his arms and turned to address them, ‘Well, lets think about it. We definitely don’t stay here - at Mycenae - do we?’

Frank clenched his fists behind his back. Ian seemed to have a theory for everything, ‘How come?’ he asked, feigning politeness.

Ian sighed, making his agitation known, ‘Frank, do I have to think of everything? I mean; if we stay here, then we would become the second Daedalus.’

All he got were blank stares. Nobody understood.

‘It’s all about perspective,’ he tapped his forehead, ‘Did nothing of that journal go in?’

Ian was looking around the room, clearly waiting for the penny to drop, ‘Okay, how can I explain this. We went through a wormhole, or a black hole or white hole, or asshole or a great big cosmic photocopier. Whatever you want to call it. Suddenly there were thousands of ships, just like the Voyager. But with the Daedalus, one of them got catapulted three hundred years into the future, but in the same place right?’

‘Right.’

‘Well, here we are, heading for that time, albeit much more slowly. What I’m saying is, if we stay here, Frank’s journal would have referred to a second Daedalus. Us!’ He drew his hands together and linked his fingers to illustrate, ‘we’d have to meet somewhere along the timeline. Comprende?’

‘Ah!’ said James.

‘Ah, indeed.’ Ian smiled and exaggeratedly raised his index finger, as if telling a bedtime story, ‘Except, we’d all be dead, and our Daedalus would be the floating tomb. But because there’s no reference to us in Frank’s journal, a second Daedalus – or any other Daedalus’s when you come to think of it - orbiting Mycenae, it can only mean that we obviously head off somewhere else. Probably home."

‘Ian, are you saying our decision is pre-ordained?’ asked Frank.

Ian threw his arms up into the air, ‘Oh hell I don’t know do I?’

‘But how does that explain the others? The ones on the surface?’ asked James.

‘Well that’s easy,’ Loretta quickly interjected, ‘We all know that an object will fall to the planet’s surface if it’s orbital path caused it to graze the atmosphere each time it passed. The speed would slowly be shaved off it, and eventually it would drop out of the

sky,’

‘If this wormhole really did copy us out lots of times,’ added Ian, ‘then who knows how many goddamn copies of the Daedalus there are! Throughout the course of history and the future, this scenario has been played out hundreds of times. Another Daedalus arrives at PMC, runs out of power and crashes into the planet. Then yet another Daedalus arrives at PMC, runs out of power and crashes into the planet. There are so many copies of us, strewn out through time. You see, we’re all a part of it. All the other crews of all the other Daedalus’s wake from their cryo sleep, and go about the task of getting to Mycenae, because that was what their mission specification was. We just found one of them, the most recent - so to speak. It’s exactly the same as the Voyager probes.’

‘This is too damn confusing. Are you saying that because so many copies of us have been made, we’re stuck in a loop, like an old broken record, where more and more copies of the ship run out of fuel at different points in time, over thousands of years, and just keep on crashing into the planet?’

‘Yes, and it may not just be here. Perhaps some copies even tried to make it home. Perhaps some copies appeared in places that we can never imagine! That would explain some of the strange images on the artefacts. But I think we are dealing with more than just a wormhole.’ said Ian.

‘You’re right. It would have to be a big mother of a wormhole if it was going to trap the Voyager and us! On an interstellar level, the distances are massive.’ said James.

‘Exactly, and that’s why I think that we are dealing with a spherical anomaly. One which surrounds the entire solar system in which Earth resides. It’s the heliopause, the outer reaches of the solar wind. Fly through it and you’re into a whole new area of logic.’

‘This is one hell of a theory Ian, when did you dream that one up,’ said James.

Ian raised a finger. ‘Don’t you see? The heliopausal anomaly distorts things, and then - as if to cover its tracks, or to keep us

ignorant - it filters its distortions back into the solar system, so that those of us within it can’t see what it’s done.’

‘I don’t get it,’ muttered James.

Ian smiled, ‘James, ask yourself this. Why didn’t our Earth-based telescopes see the Voyager cluster? Why didn’t the Lincoln Outpost get a clearer copy of Loretta’s transmission? We only heard the beeps. Why did we think PMC-04-A was a moon? It wasn’t until we got here that we discovered that the moon was another Daedalus. These are all important factors that would have decided our course of action back on Earth. It all amounts to one thing.’

‘Yes, of course! We served its purpose,’ added Frank.

‘Yes! You see, we had to serve its purpose, because it’s all part of a loop. Call it fate. Call it destiny. God only knows how big that loop is. It may even reach into places and times that we’ll never understand. But the key is that we are serving a higher purpose. Playing out our part in a grander scheme. And it all comes back to that elusive concept of time…’

They were silent for a moment, contemplating.

‘So what now?’ asked James.

‘Well, I think we should make another sortie into the other Daedalus to recover any bodies we might find and the artifacts.’ said Ian.

James exploded, ‘Are you kidding? Other versions of us!’

‘We’ll need to perform an analysis on them if we can. The more we can learn about this crazy situation the better. We have to maintain a scientific viewpoint, in the light of all that’s happened.’ replied Ian.

He looked at the others. Everyone remained silent. ‘Okay, so we’re agreed, yes?’ he added. ‘I’ll lead again if that’s okay.’

‘There’s one more issue which we haven’t discussed. The most important one.’ James said.

‘What?’

‘How the hell do we get home?’ said James.

Ian turned his head towards Frank and stared at him. It was a cold, inquisitive stare, and it suddenly dawned on Frank that Ian was coming up with more of the right questions and answers than he was. The meeting was running away without him.

Loretta spoke up. ‘Our original mission specification was to orbit Mycenae for three months, but we don’t have enough power to TCM for that long anymore. So the only thing we can do is catch the earlier Hohmann Transfer window out of here. If we had the power of course.’

‘When is the earlier window?’ asked Ian. It was clear he was vying for the front seat.

Loretta laughed nervously, ‘Well, theoretically, it’s a continuation of the one we arrived on. I’d need to check it, but I think it

closes out in about twelve hours.’

Frank opened his mouth to speak. Ian jumped in with another solution. ‘We’re all thinking the same thing right? We need to see if we can get any power from Daedalus Two.’

‘Surely that depends on whether they performed the photovoltaic scoop.’ said James.

‘They must have,’ replied Loretta, ‘otherwise they would never have managed orbital insertion when they got here.’

‘Maybe they blew their solar panels too,’ said Ian, ’maybe they ran out of power on arrival,

just like us.’

Frank broke into a sweat. He could see from James and Loretta’s body language that they were beginning to see Ian as the leader now. Maybe Ian had said something to them, before the meeting. Something about the journal. Perhaps they thought that Frank was too close to the problem now. Too emotionally involved.

‘Well, it’s a possibility they blew their panels,’ Loretta reasoned, ‘but it’s unlikely. According to Frank’s journal, they made a lot of TCM burns prior to deceleration at Mycenae. They were lost remember? I’m pretty sure they’ll have power.’

‘Well there’s only one way to find out for sure,’ said Ian.

‘And we can’t waste any more time discussing it,’ added Frank, determined to assert himself as the leader, ‘We have to work quickly. Loretta, can you prepare the TCM burn to get us out of here in eleven hours, assuming we can get the power.’

‘Yes sir, I’ll get onto it right away.’ Loretta stood up and left the room.

‘But what if we miss it?’ asked James, ‘What if we miss the Hohmann transfer window?’

Frank looked at James and spoke in an almost apologetic manner. ‘I think what Loretta is saying, is that if we miss this window, we can’t guarantee that the amount of electricity we can retrieve from Daedalus Two will sustain us for another three months and get us out of here when the next Hohmann window comes along. We could end up stranded. Waiting to die. And then - perhaps in a few months - we’ll run out of electricity. We’ll have plenty of xenon, but it will be completely useless to us. If we don’t have enough electricity to fuse with the xenon, we won’t be able to TCM out of here when the next window opens, so we’ll get stuck in a degenerating orbit that will ultimately end up with us crashing into the surface of the planet. We can’t afford to take the risk. Which is why we have to leave straight away.’

‘But what if there’s no home to go back to.’ James asked.

‘Then we go back to the moon. There’s certainly nothing we can do here,’ said Frank.

‘We really are in the shit here aren’t we?’

‘Yes we are, and we don’t have much time. We have to get into Daedalus Two to retrieve as many things as we can. Ian, when you get in there I want you to do a full computational download.’

‘Sir, it’ll be tight. It may take several hours depending on how much data there is to get.’

‘Well you’ll have to prioritise your transfer, starting with the most important stuff like the ISOE confirmation logs. Then if we have to leave anything behind, they will only be minor things.’

‘Now. The electricity and the xenon,’ Frank turned to James, ‘I want you to spacewalk over to the xenon unit on Daedalus Two and retrieve it.’

‘Wait, Frank. Are you sure there’s no internal access to the unit?’ asked Ian.

‘No, he’ll have to detach it from the outside. Don’t worry James. It’s a simple code-release mechanism.’

‘Do we really need the xenon?’ said Ian

‘It’s not essential, but while it’s there we may as well collect it. It won’t take up any more time. James can go down there while you’re inside.’

Ian was silent. From the look on his face Frank could see he was against the idea of retrieving the xenon.

Frank continued, ‘I’m gonna get philosophical for a second.’

‘What’s on your mind?’ said James.

‘Well, theoretically speaking,’ Frank reasoned aloud, ‘wormholes are supposed to transport matter from one point in space to another instantaneously. What we have here is the exact opposite. A ‘time-hole’, that transported matter from one point in time to another, instantaneously. But it has copied the matter as well. Almost like the time-hole acted as a prism; refracting matter instead of light.

From only one Daedalus, we have many. Also, it has reversed the perspective of time for the copied Daedalus. It’s miraculous that we are able to steal xenon and electricity from a ship that was – essentially – ours to begin with. We undocked from the NEO Rig with only a certain quantity of fuel. So where did the copied fuel come from?’

‘Perhaps it came from another universe? A parallel one?’ said Loretta, matter-of-factly, as though she had grasped the situation with ease, ‘Maybe we’re not stealing from our own time. Perhaps there’s another reality where no copies of the Daedalus exist, because the one that was there has fallen through to here.’

‘But you can’t remove matter from the universe can you?’ said Frank, ‘Perhaps it was created out of dark matter.’

‘All this damn speculation.’

‘Come on. Let’s get to work. We don’t have much time.’

Ian caught up with Frank in the corridor after the meeting.

‘Can I have a word?’ he said.

‘Yes Ian, what is it?’

‘Sir. With all due respect, I think it is unnecessary for us to retrieve the xenon. We have plenty here. It’s electricity we need. Maybe we should devote the time to replacing our damaged solar panels with working ones from Daedalus Two.’

Frank raised his hand, ‘Ian, please. We’ve decided to leave now. Which means we won’t have time to retrieve the solar panels from Daedalus Two. And besides, even if we do get the panels, we won’t be able to use them. Our outward trajectory doesn’t take us past a star that we can charge them from.’

‘But we can charge them here, the star isn’t that far away?’

‘It’s too far away. It will take too long.’

‘But if we can get the power from the other ship, surely we should stay.’

‘It’s far too risky to stay here now and leave at the next TCM window. The whole situation is far too complicated. I won’t have it.’

Ian looked accusingly at Frank. ‘So we’ve come all the way out here, only to turn back at the first hurdle.’

Shocked by Ian’s words, Frank could feel his face redden.

‘The first hurdle?’ he said, ‘How dare you say that. Do you view everything in such black-and-white terms that you cannot see the millions of shades of grey between?’

‘Frank…’

‘Have you forgotten how many people have died getting us here?’

‘Exactly, that’s why we need to stay and do more science, so that those people didn’t die in vain.’

‘But don’t you see. If we stay here then surely all of us will die. There are too many doubtful elements in the plan you propose. There are too many risks. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t intend to lose any more people on this mission. I want to get out of here as soon as possible.’

The EVA airlock on Daedalus Two hissed open again.

Ian and Loretta floated into the ship in the EVA unit.

‘Okay, the journal mentioned about thirty artifacts. We should try and find as many as we can. If we can figure out the code sequence, we might be able to work out if we’ve found them all. First, let’s check out the Cryogenics Module for bodies.’

They moved towards the Accommodation Module, and straight through the axis corridor towards the Cryogenics Module at the back of the ship.

James floated out of the airlock in his spacesuit. Tethered to the Daedalus by a lifeline that paid out as he moved away from the ship. Suspended between the two giant spacecraft, he fired the tiny pressure jets built into his backpack to alter his attitude.

Looking down he could see stars between his feet, millions of miles away. He was momentarily aware of his stomach, but then the feeling passed.

Slowly he approached the other ship. He found he was beginning to twist over to the left, and his angle of approach to Daedalus Two was becoming more horizontal than vertical. He fired another jet to counter the movement, and was soon able to bring himself back to the vertical.

The sound of his own breathing was loud in his ears. He could feel his heart, pumping hard in his chest.

He spoke into the radio.

‘Okay, Frank, can you hear me. I’m approximately fifty metres away from Daedalus Two. My pressure jets are firing. I’m moving down below the hull.’

In reply, all he heard was static crackle.

‘Frank?’ He repeated.

Still silence.

‘Can anybody hear me? I think my radio has stopped working.’

Ian climbed over to the onboard computer’s main terminal on Daedalus Two and plugged in his portable unit. Then he tapped a command into the computer, which initiated the transfer of the ISOE list across to the unit. As the data flashed across his screen, one of the ISOE entries caught his eye. He pressed a button to hold the data transfer, and then reached for his comms unit.

"Frank, are you there?’

‘What is it Ian?’ came Frank’s reply.

‘According to the ISOE on this ship, Daedalus Two is preparing for a TCM burn."

"Why would it...Shit, how long?’

‘It’s already started charging the ion chamber. They must have rigged it to fire automatically to counter the decreasing orbit.’

‘Why would they have done that?’

‘Well, to keep the signal transmitting, surely. They’ve programmed this thing to stay up here as long as possible. It was obviously long enough because here we are.’

‘But James is detaching the xenon unit now."

"Well you’d better get him out of there fast. If the pumps draw xenon out of the unit while James is detaching it, the thing could blow.’

"Can't you override the ISOE?"

"Not now the process has been initiated. For God’s sake, tell him to get away from there!"

James fired his jets again. He was coming in too fast, but he wasn’t quick enough with the counter thrust, and he slammed heavily into the hull, hitting his helmet visor against the side of the ship and missing the xenon unit by a good few metres.

His breath was knocked out of him. He took a moment to recover, before climbing back along the underside of the hull to where the unit was.

The unit was set flush into the underside of the ship, and James felt around the edges until he found the flap that exposed the code release mechanism.

‘Hello? Boys can you hear me? Well I can’t hear you so I’m going to carry on talking anyway in case you can hear me. The damn thing came up on me too fast, but I’m okay now. I’m attaching myself to the unit. I should have this thing out in a few moments.’

Hanging onto the bottom of Daedalus Two, with the vast, looming surface of Mycenae to his right, James began to tap in the code to release the unit.

‘His radio is broken.’ Frank shouted over the radio, ‘I can’t get through to him! Didn’t anyone test it before he went out?’

Of course, Frank was talking to himself, frantically searching his brain for a resolution. He was alone on the Daedalus. Loretta and Ian were on Daedalus Two, and James was floating underneath it.

Ian, Frank thought. I hope you’re not up to anything!

He knew he needed to tell James to hold off until the burn was complete. It seemed the only way was to go out after him.

Ian’s voice came over the speaker. ‘Can anyone hear me?’

‘Yes Ian, go ahead,’ replied Frank.

‘TCM burn over here in four and a half minutes.’

‘Ian, I’m going after James.’ Replied Frank.

James could hear a strange ‘chump chump’ noise through the walls of the xenon unit.

‘What the hell is that?’ he muttered to himself.

He noticed that sweat was breaking out on his forehead. Suddenly he was overwhelmed by the feeling that he shouldn’t be there.

He started to feel dizzy. Clinging onto the bottom of the ship, he began to lose his sense of spatial awareness. He struggled against the sick sensation in his stomach and continued working to free the unit, tapping in release codes and authentication keys.

He hadn’t practised this particular spacewalk in the sims on Earth, he wasn’t quite sure how to deal with it.

The ‘chump chump’ sound became louder. It unnerved him.

Eventually, the unit came free, and he reached around the back of it to detach the outflow pipes.

‘Okay boys,’ he said nervously, more to reassure himself than anything else, ‘I’m coming home now.’

Frank yanked himself out of the airlock and frantically pulled the lifeline through his hands, climbing over to where James was. He tried to tug the wire, but floating in the microgravity he was unable to brace against anything.

He continued to make his way across the huge gulf between the two ships towards James.

Ian’s voice was patched through to his suit, ‘Frank, thirty seconds to the burn. You need to get away.’

‘I can catch him!’

Frank could see James at the other end of the lifeline, almost a kilometre away. He was working at the unit, levering it out of its

compartment, and detaching the pipes at the back.

‘Frank, stop right there, you’re not going to make it!’

‘Dammit Ian, I…’

But his sentence was cut short. Daedalus Two started its TCM burn. He could hear the rumbling of the ionised particles firing out the back of the ship. Frank looked up at the huge craft. Silhouetted against the bright orange clouds of Mycenae, it began to twist in its path around the planet.

A chain reaction occurred.

Seconds later, an explosion rocked the underside of the hull. It came straight from where the half-attached xenon unit was. Cradled in James’s arms, it imploded, taking him with it. It literally blew him to pieces.

‘No!’

The lifeline in Frank’s hands went loose. It had become detached from the other ship, and began to fall away.

There was nothing left of James. Frank felt dried out and cold.

Exposed to the vacuum. The fire was extinguished soon after it had ignited. The silence was deafening. Frank closed his eyes, and gave a silent prayer to his friend and colleague.

‘Shit, is he dead? Frank I told you we didn’t need the xenon tank,’ Ian shouted over the radio channel.

‘Did you fuck with James’s radio?’ Frank said fiercely.

‘What? No. Are you saying I killed him?’

‘Did you fuck with his radio? You came to blows about the baby didn’t you, about his decision to terminate. You’ve hated him ever since. Ian, you have the motive.’

‘NO! I did no such thing Frank. How was I to know that Daedalus Two would TCM?’

‘That’s beside the point and you know it.’

‘It’s not! You’ve got your wires crossed Frank. The truth of the matter is that you’re too close to the problem. Ever since we recovered that journal, you’ve been emotionally messed up by it. It’s affected your judgement. And now James is dead. Don’t you dare blame his death on me. I tried to stop you from letting him go, remember?

‘You were bluffing, to absolve yourself, and throw me off the scent.’

‘No Frank. Your heads not screwed on properly, you’re not thinking straight. How many more people are you going to kill? My God Frank there’s only three of us left!’

Later, after the tragedy and grief over James’s death had dissolved into determination to get away from Mycenae, the final aspects of work on Daedalus Two drew to a close.

Ian was about to make his way over to the EVA unit, when Frank’s voice came over the radio, ‘Loretta, while you’re there you might as well shut off that transmitter.’

‘Yes sir.’

‘Don’t you dare touch that switch!’ shouted Ian.

‘Why not?’ replied Loretta.

‘For God’s sake, don’t you get it? I have to think of everything here.’

Loretta moved her hand away from the switch. She pondered Ian’s words for a moment. Then she realised exactly what he was talking about.

‘Shit!’ she said, then opened up the comms channel, ‘Frank, sir. We can’t switch the signal off.’

‘Why not? Isn’t there a manual override?’

‘It’s not that, sir. You see. If we switch off the signal on a Daedalus that’s travelling backwards in time, then the signal would never have reached the Lincoln Outpost back in 2048.’

Ian nodded in agreement. Loretta was right on the button.

‘What? So you’re implying that we will all – what - disappear? Because there would have been no signal? A chicken and egg situation?’

Ian spoke up, ‘It’s a grandfather paradox, sir. You don’t really want to take that kind of risk?’

‘Ian, Loretta, this is a ridiculous conversation. Just switch off the beacon. Nothing’s travelling backwards anymore. We’re here aren’t we?’

Loretta rested her hand on the switch. It made Ian nervous. He raised his hand. He didn’t want her touching it. She stared at him, clearly torn between the two opposing commands. Her breathing quickened.

‘Sir, I’m afraid you’ve missed the point,’ added Ian, ‘Our perception of time tells us that the Daedalus left the Earth sometime in the past. But if your perception of time is reversed, then the Daedalus left the Earth in the future. Events in the past trigger events in the future, regardless of perception.’

‘Ian you’re confusing the hell out of me, and I’m not going to argue with you on this. We only have thirty minutes before our first TCM burn, and it’s gonna take you half that time to get back, now hurry up and…’

‘Surely there’s no harm sir,’ Ian interrupted, ‘if we leave the beacon transmitting. Don’t you remember? One of the artifacts showed a picture of Loretta, reaching toward a switch. Doesn’t that seem like a coincidence to you sir?’

There was silence on the radio as Frank considered this. Ian and Loretta stared at each other.

Eventually Frank said, ‘Dammit Ian. Get yourselves back here. I know you’d ignore my orders anyway. And with only thirty minutes left there’s nothing I can do. Leave the beacon transmitting if that’s fits in with your grand philosophical standpoint. But I’m sure you’re

wrong.’

Ian breathed a sigh of relief, ‘Let’s hope we never get a chance to…’

His voice was cut short. There was an explosion. It came from beneath them. The whole ship bucked and trembled.

Loretta and Ian stared at each other.

‘Another TCM?’ Loretta asked.

‘Could be, but it’s not happy about the missing xenon unit.’ replied Ian, ‘We’re sitting on a time bomb. This thing could blow at any second. Anyway, we’ve searched this ship, top to bottom. There are no bodies, anywhere. Maybe they all walked out of the airlock.’

‘We have to get out.’

‘No. We can’t leave. We have to stop it from blowing. If the ship blows up then the transmission will stop. Didn’t we already discuss this Loretta? This ship transmitting the signal is the only reason we’re here. This ship hasn’t reached our past yet. Our past is Daedalus Two’s future. What happens if the signal from this ship stops transmitting?’

‘Shit! Well, how do we stop it?’

Then Ian laughed, raising his arm, he was one step ahead of them again, ‘No no no. We don’t have to do anything. Daedalus Two isn’t going to explode. The answer is right in front of you. We’re going to be okay.’

‘How can you be so sure?’

‘Well, we’re here aren’t we. That can only mean that the signal continues to transmit, regardless. It continues to transmit and we receive it at the Lincoln Outpost.’

They looked at each other. Ian knew the paradox was becoming too complicated. Loretta’s wide eyed stare said it all. Ian was even afraid to move for fear that he might upset the delicate balance of the loop. The shivers ran up and down his spine. Hair standing straight up on the back of his neck. They were playing a dangerous game with time, and were in no position to outsmart the heliopausal anomaly. It was time to throw in the cards.

‘Let’s get those batteries and get the hell out of here.’

Loretta sighed, ‘That’s the best thing you’ve said all day.’

They had seven minutes to spare. Loretta had prepared the systems as best she could but they could go nowhere until the airlock door was shut with the EVA unit housed in it’s correct parking configuration.

Once the replacement batteries had been loaded into position, Ian gave her the okay over the radio, and she prepared the first TCM burn.

‘The co-ordinates for the burn match up sir, we’re in the clear. I’m starting the initial burn to PMC-07 now.’ She said.

‘Thank God,’ whispered Frank under his breath.

‘Thank God indeed,’ said Ian from behind him, ‘It looks like we’re going home.’

‘Going home.’

Suddenly Frank’s thoughts turned to his home planet, and wondered just what it was they were going back to. He found he could not fight the rising lump in his throat.

After Loretta had climbed back into her pod for the trip back home, Frank and Ian shared a drink together. Toasting all those who died for them.

‘You know Ian. It’s easy to think that we came out here only to fulfil a pre-ordained sequence of events in the grand scheme of space-time. Like the inevitability of a comet’s orbit, destined for one place. But there’s one question that still lies unanswered.’

‘What’s that?’

‘The alien artifacts. In this so-called grand scheme, are we destined to make contact with these aliens at some point?’

‘Maybe in a couple of hundred years time. After all, that’s when they boarded Daedalus Two.’

‘But they’ve been monitoring us, making those sketches of our history and our future. They mapped out the sequence of events for us.’

‘Keeping an eye on us perhaps.’

‘Maybe they’ve mastered how to use the heliopausal anomaly.’

‘Maybe they’ve left artifacts elsewhere. Maybe the pyramids are theirs too. The Inca temples. The meanings of which we have yet to understand. Or perhaps – now consider this – perhaps we are an artifact.’

‘I doubt it.’

‘You never know?’

‘And as for Daedalus Two. It’s going to live out its days in a spiralling orbit, only to crash into Mycenae. Sometime in the past. Long before we ever received the signal at the Lincoln Outpost.’

‘It will join all the other ones down there on the surface.’

‘Are we the only one’s that broke the loop?’

‘You can never break the loop Frank. It’s an intrinsic part of our fundamental universe.’

‘And what is waiting for us when we back home? A torn and broken world? Or was it all a sick joke?’

‘I don’t think it was a joke.’

‘No, neither do I. All I know is that we belong there, regardless of what state it’s in.’

‘There is one question that’s really puzzling me, though.’ said Frank sipping the last of his juice.

‘What’s that?’

‘Well, I can’t figure out who started all this.’

Soon after, they turned out all the lights, shut down the systems, put the Daedalus into automatic and went to sleep.

For a hundred years.