Bleaker

fifty people like Genesis one and two.”
Marshman shook his head. “No, we are not. We are carrying five crew and seventeen civilians.”
That answer took Tucker by surprise. “Civilians?”
“Much like the pilgrims did centuries ago. I said this is publicly funded. Money doesn’t mean much anymore, it doesn’t buy much except existence. Four families funded seventy-five percent of the mission. Each of these families gave every penny they had to survive and live on.”
Sam clarified, “Families with children.”
Tucker’s jaw dropped some. “There are children on this flight? Small children?” When he received confirmation, he shook his head with a chuckle. “I get it now. The Robinson. That’s why you named it the Robinson.”
Sam looked at him curiously.
“The Robinsons,” Tucker explained. “Lost in Space. It was a television show. One of the few they played after new network programing stopped.”
Sam shook his head.
“Lost in Space. The Robinsons were a family chosen to go live on another planet. In the remake it was because Earth was dying. Lost in Space Robinsons, Robinson Crusoe, swiss family Robinson. There’s a common element where a Robinson is stranded somewhere and has to survive. I’m looking at you and you are lost.”
“I am,” Sam said.
“I’ll explain later, however…” Tucker faced Marshman. “Do these people realize the risk? I mean if we have to turn around and come back, they’ll have nothing. We don’t even know if this planet Noah is habitable.”
“We believe we do,” Marshman said.
“How?” Tucker asked. “I mean we can speculate with pictures. But Omni-4 never returned. We don’t know.”
“Actually,” Sam said, “we do. Follow me.”
Sam turned and walked from the airfield.
The control room didn’t look much more than a small computer room, with a tracking and radar screen no bigger than four foot wide.
There was one man who sat at the control counter, facing the computer.
Maybe they were on skeleton crew until liftoff.
Tucker hoped.
Marshman introduced Tucker to Ray, the other engineer that would be seeing the flight off.
“Pull up project NAT,” Marshman told Ray.
“What is project NAT?” Tucker asked.
Marshman pointed to Sam.
“Project Needle and Thread,” Sam answered.
“Another one of yours?” Tucker questioned.
“Well, the redesign is,” Sam answered.
“NASA has their own version of Needle and Thread. But I can bet NASA doesn’t have a Sam or his changes,” Marshman said.
“Or,” Sam added, “our information.”
“You don’t share?” Tucker asked.
Marshman shook his head. “They refuse to acknowledge what we are doing as viable, so we won’t share our information.”
“Which is?”
“Everybody has put a probe through the Androski, it would be stupid not to,” Sam said. “But the probes weren’t coming back and transmitting any information. Then we attached a line to one.”
“That’s pretty brilliant,” Tucker said.
Marshman nodded. “It is and we did share that info. We were able to send the prob though and pull it back.”
“But the problem,” Sam said, “was the only data we got, which we assume NASA received as well, was that there was some sort of power loss going through.”
“So it was pretty much dead when you pulled it back?” Tucker questioned.
“Yes,” Sam answered. “Then I did the readings and redesigned it two weeks ago. It was rigged together quickly because we just didn’t have enough of a window when the wormhole would be open to build a whole new one. Basically, I did my own version of a faraday cage, and it worked.”
Tucker’s eyes widened. “It went though and collected data.”
Sam nodded. “Yes, and that data will protect us. See, NASA knows there was a power loss going through, they have to. If they know that then they know Omni probably lost power for about fourteen to fifteen seconds.”
“Not enough to kill them, but enough to knock ’em out,” Tucker said. “Not kill them.”
“We hope. Now…” Sam indicated to Ray to start the video. “This is all we have of the NAT going through.”
Tucker watched the flashes of light, then it went black. But there was only a brief second of power loss then distorted images appeared. It looked as if a camera was extremely out of focus.
“Is that the other side?” Tucker asked.
“It is,” Marshman added. “We have photos that an expert has worked on. They are a little clearer. Ray, can you pull them up.”
A blurry, yet distinguishable enough image appeared. It was of a blue planet. “That’s not the Noah,” Tucker said.
“No, it’s not, that’s a moon of sorts,” Marshman said.
“Tucker, Einstein theorized that wormholes weren’t a portal to another galaxy, but rather,” Sam said, “to another time.”
“Time travel?” Tucker chuckled. “Another time?”
Marshman said, “You commented that we didn’t know for sure that the Noah was habitable.”
“We don’t,” Tucker said.
“We do.” Marshman pointed to the screen. “It is.” Another planet appeared on the screen. “We know for sure it’s habitable. This isn’t another galaxy or universe, and that isn’t some planet we named Earth Two. It’s the future; we don’t know when or how far, but we do know that…is Earth.”
It was a lot to take in.
Tucker retreated to his quarters with copies of the images. He stared at them, analyzing them closely. Wondering if they were right, that it was Earth. They were blurry and pixelized.
He thought of his conversation with Sam right after the control room meeting.
Sam’s words burned in his mind. “Our geo guy looked at these. They look similar, but they aren’t. Each time we sent NAT through, the earth changed.”
“He can’t be sure. I mean they are still really blurry,” Tucker said.
“True. But I’m guessing he’s right.”
Sam pointed out what he had been told, the shift of the continents and oceans.
“If he is right,” Tucker said, “and you’re right, then there’s no guarantee when we’ll end up.”
“Nope. We just have to hope it’s long enough after Planet X locks into rotation that things are settled and the disasters have stopped.”
To Tucker it just seemed to be science fiction. Time travel wasn’t really possible and if it was, would they have the ability to physically hold proof of the future by way of shoddy probe images?
Do the passengers know? Tucker wondered.
Marshman told him they