The simple logistics of such a task had been a headache for the mission planners, who had spent the last fifteen years meticulously calculating volumes of water, oxygen, food and even hygienic wipes.  Every ounce of mass was accounted for, agreed and triply signed-off.  In their favour, the laws of physics had given the Clarke’s designers grace when it came to putting the ship together. As far as science was concerned, it wouldn’t have mattered if the Hygiene Bay had been jutting out at right angles to the Command Module and the crew’s quarter’s connected end to end in a train eighty feet long: the vacuum of space simply didn’t care for aerodynamics.

Constructed using a modular design, the Clarke followed the same basic principles as the ISS.  When it came to putting it together, it was simply a question of choosing a layout that looked good, and the decision to go for a familiar structure had been widely approved, not least of all because it suited the public relations officers and marketing departments; a spaceship that actually looked like a spaceship, and not an upside down foil-covered colander with tripod landing gear, the likes of which littered the moon, had been most welcome and had led to a marked increase in public attention.

The modular approach had another, more serious benefit. The ship’s computer was programmed to monitor every cubic inch of the Clarke for environmental anomalies, ranging from loss of pressure to temperature irregularities.  At the slightest sign of danger, it was able to completely shut down the affected areas and minimise the impact on the rest of the ship until the problem could be addressed.  In worse-case scenarios, the faulty module could be jettisoned into space, leaving the rest of the Clarke completely unaffected.

Everyone knew that if they were in a faulty module at the time, they only had thirty seconds from the alert being raised to reach a safe part of the ship. Getting stuck on the wrong side of a sealed doorway could have fatal consequences.

To help the crew interpret these situations accurately, the ship’s lighting had been developed to change colour and pattern: in a danger area, the lights would go red, and the marker strips along doors and passageways would indicate the nearest safe route by flashing.

They had practised all possible evacuation scenarios, from the Lounge imploding to the Hygiene Bay losing pressure. During training exercises simulating everything from fires to meteorite strikes, they had not always ‘survived’.

Additional safety came in the form of the lead-lining in the Command Module. Exposure to radiation from space weather, caused by solar flares and coronal mass ejection on the surface of the Sun, could at best lead to a high probability of developing cancer. At worst, it would result in death. It was a risk that the inhabitants of the Earth’s International Space Station had been coping with for many decades, rushing to specially shielded areas whenever the warning of a major solar event came.

It was a sobering thought that such precautions were relatively recent additions to space exploration. In August 1972, between the manned Apollo 16 and Apollo 17 missions to the Moon, a solar flare blasted past Earth. Had it occurred four months earlier, or four months later, it would certainly have proven fatal to the unprotected crews.

The modular design had brought flexibility, safety and had also reduced building time and cost. This had combined to create the hundred and eighty foot long Clarke.

But the most technologically advanced feature of the Clarke was not something that could be seen.

The early twenty-first century had been marked by a massive improvement in miniaturisation. Everything from small combustion engines to computer processors was benefiting from advances in the field of nanotechnology: while with the Clarke human spaceships had grown in scale, everything else was getting smaller. Much smaller.

The Clarke was leaving a world obsessed by size. Whereas the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century had been typified by a desire to make things bigger, the brave new world of the 2040s required things that not only fitted in your pocket, but also performed better.  Gadgets were by now a necessity: everyone needed the latest telephone, because not only did it weigh less, it could also take your calls for you, set up meetings and call people back, and all while it sat silently in your coat.

As a consequence, in contrast to the ship’s vast dimensions, the Clarke’s on board computers were neatly stowed away in small recesses in the ship. But the computers’ external sensors were everywhere.  Every single module of the ship was constantly being monitored, assessed and recorded by hundreds of mobile nanostations.  Barely big enough to see with the naked eye, nanostations incorporated a camera, microphone, light sensor, smoke detector, environmental pressure sensor and thermometer.  They were each powered by a minute motor with six tiny ‘jets’ on all sides, forcing air through to allow the station to move in any direction in three dimensional space.

They were normally fully automated, but could be guided by the main computer at any time, which in turn would take its directives from Mission Control on Earth.

Each module contained a small, saucer-sized surface, on which the nanostations would occasionally sit to recharge their batteries.  They did not need to dock precisely on the surfaces, as the energy would transfer by magnetic induction directly into their power cells.

The nanostations sent all of their information back to the ship’s computers.  These were located in not one, but in all of the Clarke’s eight habitable modules. Each pod was fitted with a wafer thin rack, hidden inside a wall, which at all times was receiving input from every nanostation on board, and at any time could assume main control of the Clarke.  By default, this control was normally taken by the computer housed in the Command Module, but it would periodically shift for a few hours every day, so that over a period of seven days every computer on board had taken control for a short time at least. It was an effective way for the computers to auto-test themselves, and something the crew took completely for granted.

They expected that in the event of an emergency, they would not be jumping into a mindless module, leaving the ship’s brains to jettison themselves into the space.

Chapter 15

Sitting at his desk, Montreaux finished writing and let go of the pen, letting it float gently just above the desk.  He waited for half a minute before tearing the piece of paper from the pad and folding it twice, placing it carefully in his breast pocket and opening a drawer in his desk. He grabbed the pen and put it with the pad in the drawer before closing it carefully.

He knew that the nanostations would have been watching him.

Everything they did, and indeed wrote, on board the ship was being sent back to Earth.  At the current distance of approximately thirty eight million kilometres, it took roughly two minutes and six seconds for the data to reach Earth, network switching at both ends notwithstanding. Between each phrase in a standard conversation would therefore be a delay of over four minutes.

Anything over that could be put down to human deliberation.

It had now been barely four minutes since he had finished writing his message. He expected there to be a few more minutes waiting for a reply, at least. Suddenly and without warning, the screen on his desk lit up. It was a video feed from Mission Control, with no sound. In the middle of the picture, two hands were holding up a neatly written message.

He read the message twice before the screen went blank of its own accord.