Gravity
Another jiggle-the-handle request, he thought wearily. Many of the orbital experiments were controlled by commands from scientists on the ground. Data was recorded within the various lab racks, using video or automatic sampling devices, and the results downlinked directly to researchers on earth. With all the sophisticated equipment aboard ISS, there were bound to be occasional glitches. That’s the real reason humans were needed up here—to troubleshoot the temperamental electronics.
He called up the file for CCU#23 on the payloads computer and reviewed the protocol. The cells in the culture were Archaeons, bacterialike marine organisms collected from deep-sea thermal vents. They were harmless to humans.
He floated across the lab to the cell culture unit and slipped his stockinged feet into the holding stirrups to maintain his position. The unit was a box-shaped device with its own fluid-handling and delivery system to continuously perfuse two dozen cell cultures and tissue specimens. Most of the experiments were completely self-contained and without need of human intervention. In his four weeks aboard ISS, Bill had only once laid eyes on the tube #23.
He pulled open the cell specimen chamber tray. Inside were twenty-four culture tubes arrayed around the periphery of the unit. He identified #23 and removed it from the tray.
At once he was alarmed. The cap appeared to be bulging out, as though under pressure. Instead of a slightly turbid liquid, which was what he’d expected to see, the contents was a vivid blue-green. He tipped the tube upside down, and the culture did not shift. It was no longer liquid, but thickly viscous.
He calibrated the micro mass measurement device and slipped the tube into the specimen slot. A moment later, the data appeared on the screen.
Something is very wrong, he thought. There has been some sort of contamination. Either the original sample of cells was not pure, or another organism has found its way into the tube and has destroyed the primary culture.
He typed out his response to Dr Koenig:
…Your downlinked data confirmed. Culture appears drastically altered. It is no longer liquid, but seems to be a gelatinous mass, bright, almost neon blue-green. Must consider the possibility of contamination…
He paused. There was another possibility: the effect of microgravity. On earth, tissue cultures tended to grow in flat sheets, expanding in only two dimensions across the surface of their containers. In the weightlessness of space, freed from the effects of gravity, those same cultures behaved differently. They grew in three dimensions, taking on shapes they never could on earth.
What if #23 was not contaminated? What if this was simply how Archaeons behaved without gravity to keep them in check?
Almost immediately he discarded that notion. These changes were too drastic. Weightlessness alone could not have turned a single-celled organism into this startling green mass.
He typed:
…Will return a sample of culture #23 to you on next shuttle flight. Please advise if you have further instructions—
The sudden clang of a drawer startled him. He turned and saw Kenichi Hirai working at his own research rack. How long had he been there? The man had drifted so quietly into the lab Bill had not even known he’d entered. In a world where there is no up or down, where the sound of footsteps is never heard, a verbal greeting is sometimes the only way to alert others to your presence.
Noticing Bill’s glance, Kenichi merely nodded in greeting and continued with his work. The man’s silence irritated Bill. Kenichi was like the station’s resident ghost, creeping around without a word, startling everyone. Bill knew it was because Kenichi was insecure about his English and, to avoid humiliation, chose to converse little if at all. Still, the man could at least call out a ‘hello’ when he entered a module to avoid rattling the nerves of his five colleagues.
Bill turned his attention back to tube #23. What would this gelatinous mass look like under the microscope?
He slid tube #23 into the Plexiglas glove box, closed the hatch, and inserted his hands in the attached gloves. If there was any spillage, it would be confined to the box. Loose fluids floating around in microgravity could wreak havoc on the station’s electrical wiring. Gently he loosened the tube seal. He knew the contents were under pressure; he could see the cap was bulging. Even so, he was shocked when the top suddenly exploded off like a champagne cork.
He jerked back as a blue-green glob splatted against the inside of the glove box. It clung there for a moment, quivering as though alive. It was alive; a mass of microorganisms, joined in a gelatinous matrix.
‘Bill, we need to talk.’
The voice startled him. Quickly he recapped the culture tube and turned to face Michael Griggs, who had just entered the module. Floating right behind Griggs was Diana. The beautiful people, Bill thought. Both of them looked sleek and athletic in their navy blue NASA shirts and cobalt shorts.
‘Diana tells me you’re having problems,’ said Griggs. ‘We just spoke to Houston, and they think it might help if you considered some medication. Just to get you through the next few days.’
‘You’ve got Houston worried now, have you?’
‘They’re concerned about you. We all are.’
‘Look, my crack about the CRV was purely sarcastic.’
‘But it makes us all nervous.’
‘I don’t need any Valium. Just leave me alone.’ He removed the tube from the glove box and returned it to its slot in the cell culture unit. He was too angry to work on it now.
‘We have to be able to trust you, Bill. We have to depend on each other up here.’
In fury, Bill turned to face him. ‘Do you see a raving lunatic in front of you? Is that it?’
‘Your wife is on your mind now. I understand that. And—’
‘You wouldn’t understand. I doubt you give your wife much thought these days.’ He shot a knowing glance at Diana, then launched himself down the length of the module and into the connecting node. He started to enter the hab module, but stopped when he saw Luther was there, setting up the midday meal.
There’s nowhere to hide. Nowhere to be alone.
Suddenly in tears, he backed out of the hatchway and retreated into the cupola.
Turning his back to the others, he stared through the windows at the earth. Already, the Pacific coast was rotating into view. Another sunrise, another sunset.
Another eternity of waiting.
Kenichi watched Griggs and Diana float out of the lab module, each propelled by a well-gauged push-off. They moved with such grace, like fairhaired gods. He often studied them when they weren’t watching; in particular, he enjoyed looking at Diana Estes, a woman so blond and pale she seemed translucent.
Their departure left him alone in the lab, and he was able to relax. So much conflict on this station. It unsettled his nerves and affected his concentration. He was tranquil by nature, a man content to work in solitude. Though he could understand English well enough, it was an effort for him to speak it, and he found conversation exhausting. He was far more comfortable working alone, and in silence, with only the lab animals as company.
He peered through the viewing window at the mice in the animal habitat, and he smiled. On one side of the screened divider were twelve males; on the other were twelve females. As a boy growing up in Japan, he had raised rabbits and had enjoyed cuddling them in his lap. These mice, however, were not pets, and they were isolated from human contact, their air filtered and conditioned before being allowed to mix with the space station’s environment. Any handling of the animals was done in the adjoining glove box, where all biological specimens, from bacteria to lab rats, could be manipulated without fear of contaminating the station’s air.
Today was blood-sampling day. Not a task he enjoyed, because it involved pricking the skin of the mice with a needle. He murmured an apology in Japanese as he inserted his hands in the gloves and transferred the first mouse into the sealed work area. It struggled to escape his grasp. He released it, allowing it to float free as he prepared the needle. It was a pitiful sight to watch, the mouse frantically thrashing its limbs, attempting to propel itself forward. With nothing to push off against, it drifted helplessly in midair.
The needle now ready, he reached up with his gloved hand to recapture the mouse. Only then did he notice the blue-green globule floating beside the mouse. So close to it, in fact, that with one dart of a pink tongue, the mouse gave it an experimental lick. Kenichi laughed out loud. Drinking floating globules was something the astronauts did for fun, and that’s what the mouse appeared to be doing now, playing with its newfound toy.
Then the thought occurred to him: Where had the blue-green substance come from? Bill had been using the glove box. Was whatever he’d spilled toxic?
Kenichi floated to the computer workstation and looked at the experimental protocol Bill had last called up. It was CCU#23, a cell culture. The protocol reassured him that the globule contained nothing dangerous. Archaeons were harmless single-celled marine organisms, without infectious properties.
Satisfied, he returned to the glove box and inserted his hands. He reached for the needle.
5
July 16
We have no downlink.
Jack stared up at the plume of exhaust streaking into the azure sky, and terror knifed deep into his soul. The sun was beating down on his face, but his sweat had chilled to ice. He scanned the heavens. Where was the shuttle? Only seconds before, he had watched it arc into a cloudless sky, had felt the ground shake from the thunder of liftoff. As it had climbed, he’d felt his heart soar with it, borne aloft by the roar of rockets, and had followed its path heavenward until it was just a glinting pinprick of reflected sunlight.
He could not see it. What had been a straight white plume was now a jagged trail of black smoke.
Frantically he searched the sky and caught a dizzying whirl of images. Fire in the heavens. A devil’s fork of smoke. Shattered fragments tumbling toward the sea.
We have no downlink.
He woke up, gasping, his body steeped in sweat. It was daylight, and the sun shone, piercingly hot, through his bedroom window.
With a groan he sat up on the side of the bed and dropped his head in his hands. He had left the air conditioner off last night, and now the room felt like an oven. He stumbled across his bedroom to flip the switch, then sank down on the bed again and breathed a sigh of relief as chill air began to spill from the vent.
The old nightmare.
He rubbed his face, trying to banish the images, but they were too deeply engraved in his memory. He had been a college freshman when Challenger exploded, had been walking through the dorm lounge when the first film footage of the disaster had aired on the television. That day, and in the days that followed, he’d watched the horrifying footage again and again, had incorporated it so deeply into his subconscious that it had become as real to him as if he himself had been standing in the bleachers at Cape Canaveral that morning.
And now the memory had resurfaced in his nightmares.
It’s because of Emma’s launch.
In the shower he stood with head bowed under a pounding stream of cool water, waiting for the last traces of his dream to wash away. He had three weeks of vacation starting next week, but he was a long way from being in a holiday mood. He had not taken out the sailboat in months. Maybe a few weeks out on the water, away from the glare of city lights, would be the best therapy. Just him, and the sea, and the stars.
It had been so long since he’d really looked at the stars. Lately it seemed he had avoided even glancing at them. As a boy, his gaze had always been drawn heavenward. His mother once told him that, as a toddler, he had stood on the lawn one night and reached up with both hands, trying to touch the moon. When he could not reach it, he had howled in frustration.
The moon, the stars, the blackness of space—it was beyond his reach now, and he often felt like that little boy he once was, howling in frustration, his feet trapped on earth, his hands still reaching for the sky.
He shut off the shower and stood leaning with both hands pressed against the tiles, head bent, hair dripping. Today is July sixteenth, he thought. Eight days till Emma’s launch. He felt the water chill on his skin.
In ten minutes he was dressed and in the car.
It was a Tuesday. Emma and her new flight team would be wrapping up their three-day integrated simulation, and she’d be tired and in no mood to see him. But tomorrow she’d be on her way to Cape Canaveral. Tomorrow she’d be out of reach.
At Johnson Space Center, he parked in the Building 30 lot, flashed his NASA badge at Security, and trotted upstairs to the shuttle Flight Control Room. Inside, he found everyone hushed and tense. The three-day integrated simulation was like the final exam for both the astronauts and the ground control crew, a crisis-packed run-through of the mission from launch to touchdown, with assorted malfunctions thrown in to keep everyone on their toes. Three shifts of controllers had rotated through this room several times in the last three days, and the two dozen men and women now sitting at the consoles looked haggard. The rubbish can was overflowing with coffee cups and diet Pepsi cans. Though a few of the controllers saw Jack and nodded hello, there was no time for a real greeting; they had a major crisis on their hands, and everyone’s attention was focused on the problem. It was the first time in months Jack had visited the FCR, and once again he felt the old excitement, the electricity, that seemed to crackle in this room whenever a mission was underway.
He moved to the third row of consoles, to stand beside Flight Director Randy Carpenter, who was too busy at the moment to talk to him. Carpenter was the shuttle program’s high priest of flight directors. At two hundred eighty pounds, he was an imposing presence in the FCR, his stomach bulging over his belt, his feet planted apart like a ship’s captain steadying himself on a heaving bridge. In this room, Carpenter was in command. ‘I’m a prime example,’ he liked to say, ‘of just how far a fat boy with glasses can get in life.’ Unlike the legendary flight director Gene Kranz, whose quote ‘Failure is not an option’ made him a media hero, Carpenter was well known only within NASA. His lack of photogenic qualities made him an unlikely movie hero, in any event.
Listening in on the loop chatter, Jack quickly pieced together the nature of the crisis Carpenter was now dealing with. Jack had faced just such a problem in his own integrated sim two years ago, when he was still in the astronaut corps, preparing for STS 145. The shuttle crew had reported a precipitous drop in cabin pressure, indicating a rapid air leak. There was no time to track down the source; they had to go to emergency deorbit.
The flight dynamics officer, sitting at the front row of consoles known as the Trench, was rapidly plotting out the flight trajectories to determine the best landing site. No one considered this a game; they were too aware that if this crisis were real, the lives of seven people would be in jeopardy.
‘Cabin pressure down to thirteen point nine psi,’ reported Environmental Control.
‘Edwards Air Force Base,’ announced Flight Dynamics. ‘Touchdown at approximately thirteen hundred.’
‘Cabin pressure will be down to seven psi at this rate,’ said Environmental. ‘Recommend they don helmets now. Before initiating reentry sequence.’
Capcom relayed the advice to Atlantis.
‘Roger that,’ responded Commander Vance. ‘Helmets are on. We are initiating deorbit burn.’
Against his will, Jack was caught up in the urgency of the game. As the moments ticked by, he kept his gaze fixed on the central screen at the front of the room, where the orbiter’s path was plotted on a global map. Even though he knew that every crisis was artificially introduced by a mischievous sim team, the grim seriousness of this exercise had rubbed off on him. He was scarcely aware that his muscles had tensed as he focused on the changing data flickering on the screen.
The cabin pressure dropped to seven psi.
Atlantis hit the upper atmosphere. They were in radio blackout, twelve long minutes of silence when the friction of reentry ionizes the air around the orbiter, cutting off all communications.
‘Atlantis, do you copy?’ said Capcom.
Suddenly Commander Vance’s voice broke through: ‘We hear you loud and clear, Houston.’
Touchdown, moments later, was perfect. Game over.
Applause broke out in the FCR.
‘Okay, folks! Good job,’ said Flight Director Carpenter. ‘Debriefing at fifteen hundred. Let’s all take a break for lunch.’ Grinning, he pulled off his headset and for the first time looked at Jack. ‘Hey, haven’t seen you around here in ages.’
‘Been playing doctor with civilians.’
‘Going for the big bucks, huh?’
Jack laughed. ‘Yeah, tell me what to do with all my money.’ He glanced around at the flight controllers, now relaxing at their consoles with sodas and bag lunches. ‘Did the sim go okay?’
‘I’m happy. We made it through every glitch.’
‘And the shuttle crew?’
‘They’re ready.’ Carpenter gave him a knowing look. ‘Including Emma. She’s in her element, Jack, so don’t rattle her. Right now she needs to focus.’ This was more than just friendly advice. It was a warning: Keep your personal issues to yourself. Don’t screw around with my flight crew’s morale.
Jack was subdued, even a little contrite, as he waited outside in the sweltering heat for Emma to emerge from Building 5, where the flight simulators were housed. She walked out with the rest of her crew. Obviously they had just shared a joke, because they were all laughing. Then she saw Jack, and her smile faded.
‘I didn’t know you were coming,’ she said.
He shrugged and said sheepishly, ‘Neither did I.’
‘Debriefing’s in ten minutes,’ said Vance.
‘I’ll be there,’ she said. ‘You all go on ahead.’ She waited for her team to walk away; then she turned to face Jack again. ‘I’ve really got to join them. Look, I know this launch complicates everything. If you’re here about the divorce papers, I promise I’ll sign them as soon as I get back.’
‘I didn’t come about that.’
‘Is there something else, then?’
He paused. ‘Yeah. Humphrey. What’s the name of his vet? In case he swallows a hair ball or something.’
She fixed him with a perplexed look. ‘The same vet he’s always had. Dr Goldsmith.’
‘Oh. Yeah.’
They stood in silence for a moment, the sun beating on their heads. Sweat trickled down his back. She suddenly seemed so small to him and insubstantial. Yet this was a woman who’d jumped out of an airplane. She could outrace him on horseback, spin circles around him on the dance floor. His beautiful, fearless wife.
She turned to look at Building 30, where her team was waiting for her. ‘I have to go, Jack.’
‘What time are you leaving for the Cape?’
‘Six in the morning.’
‘All your cousins flying out for the launch?’
‘Of course.’ She paused. ‘You won’t be there. Will you?’
The Challenger nightmare was still fresh in his mind, the angry trails of smoke etching across a blue sky. I can’t be there to watch it, he thought. I can’t deal with the possibilities. He shook his head.
She accepted his answer with a chilly nod and a look that said: I can be every bit as detached as you are. Already she was withdrawing from him, turning to leave.
‘Emma.’ He reached for her arm and gently tugged her around to face him. ‘I’ll miss you.’
She sighed. ‘Sure, Jack.’
‘I really will.’
‘Weeks go by without a single call from you. And now you say you’re going to miss me.’ She laughed.
He was stung by the bitterness in her voice. And by the truth of her words. For the past few months he had avoided her. It had been painful to be anywhere near her because her success only magnified his own sense of failure.
There was no hope of reconciliation; he could see that now, in the coolness of her gaze. Nothing left to do but be civilized about it.
He glanced away, suddenly unable to look at her. ‘I just came by to wish you a safe trip. And a great ride. Give me a wave every so often, when you pass over Houston. I’ll watch for you.’ A moving star was what ISS would look like, brighter than Venus, hurtling through the sky.
‘You wave too, okay?’
They both managed a smile. So it would be a civilized parting after all. He held open his arms, and she leaned toward him for a hug. It was a brief and awkward one, as though they were strangers coming together for the first time. He felt her body, so warm and alive, press against him. Then she pulled away and started toward the Mission Control building.
She paused only once, to wave good-bye. The sunlight was sharp in his eyes, and squinting against its brightness, he saw her only as a dark silhouette, her hair flying in the hot wind. And he knew that he had never loved her as much as he did at that very moment, watching her walk away.
July 19
Cape Canaveral
Even from a distance, the sight took Emma’s breath away. Poised on launchpad 39B, awash in brilliant floodlights, the shuttle Atlantis, mated to its giant orange fuel tank and the paired solid rocket boosters, was a towering beacon in the blackness of night. No matter how many times she experienced it, that first glimpse of a shuttle lit up on the pad never failed to awe her.
The rest of the crew, standing beside her on the blacktop, were equally silent. To shift their sleep cycle, they’d awakened at two that morning and had emerged from their quarters on the third floor of the Operations and Checkout building to catch a nighttime glimpse of the behemoth that would carry them into space. Emma heard the cry of a night bird and felt a cool wind blow in from the Gulf, freshening the air, sweeping away the stagnant scent of the wetlands surrounding them.
‘Kind of makes you feel humble, doesn’t it?’ said Commander Vance in his soft Texas drawl.
The others murmured in agreement.
‘Small as an ant,’ said Chenoweth, the lone rookie on the crew. This would be his first trip aboard the shuttle, and he was so excited he seemed to generate his own field of electricity. ‘I always forget how big she is, and then I take another look at her and I think, Jesus, all that power. And I’m the lucky son of a bitch who gets to ride her.’
They all laughed, but it was the hushed, uneasy laughter of parishioners in a church.
‘I never thought a week could go by so slowly,’ said Chenoweth.
‘This man’s tired of being a virgin,’ said Vance.
‘Damn right I am. I want up there.’ Chenoweth’s gaze lifted hungrily to the sky. To the stars. ‘You guys all know the secret, and I can’t wait to share it.’
The secret. It belonged only to the privileged few who had made the ascent. It wasn’t a secret that could be imparted to another; you yourself had to live it, to see, with your own eyes, the blackness of space and the blue of earth far below. To be pressed backward into your seat by the thrust of the rockets. Astronauts returning from space often wear a knowing smile, a look that says, I am privy to something that few human beings will ever know.
Emma had worn such a smile when she’d emerged from Atlantis’s hatch over two years ago. On weak legs she had walked into the sunshine, had stared up at a sky that was startlingly blue. In the span of eight days aboard the orbiter, she had lived through one hundred thirty sunrises, had seen forest fires burning in Brazil and the eye of a hurricane whirling over Samoa, had viewed an earth that seemed heartbreakingly fragile. She had returned forever changed.