Cape Canaveral
Florida, USA
28.3N 80.3W
Altitude: 10ft
Geology: Coastal peninsular – sedimental deposits
Like a trooper before battle, the excitement of action and the fear of extermination pervaded her body. As the plane took a left bank to align itself with the landing strip, she saw the needle-sharp colossus of the waiting rocket shimmering in the warm haze of the afternoon.
They arrived into a maelstrom of activity. On the various platforms the rocket was crawling with engineers. Their special seats were being fitted and final fuel and stores were being loaded. The astronauts changed quietly, and Soraya was given a stylishly short cropped haircut before they sat down for a last supper of steak and eggs and a final briefing.
Not much was said between them, just cursory comments and nervous pleasantries. When Kirsten had pulled out late the night before, Soraya thought that was an end to it. Now she was here with Eugene and Su-lin, reading their briefing notes. Boy, they were going to be busy. She made just one call to say goodbye.
‘Hey, Sis, I hope you’re watching the news. Hey! Look out for me on the gantry, but keep shtum! It’s still secret, girl!… No, listen, don’t worry, I’ll be back… Yes, it’s all cool… OK, see ya, must fly. Literally, must fly!’
Her stiff orange suit swished as she walked to the silver bus. From anywhere with a line of sight, a hundred photographic lenses strained to catch the astronauts and speculate who they might be.
The bus trundled down the long, hot concrete road towards the looming behemoth. Soraya had spent her life dodging round and about the feet of skyscrapers, but the rocket’s splendid isolation made it look extraordinarily tall.
This singular object just went on and on to the sky. Soon it would go beyond. At the base, Soraya could make out the five massive bell-shaped engines that would lift it off the Earth. Through a swirl of frozen fog, formed by the brittle, cold liquid gases being pumped into the tanks at each level, her eyes worked their way up to the top of the rocket.
The skeletal elevator was waiting as Soraya attached her handheld life support unit to the suit. Holding her helmet in the other hand she entered with her fellow astronauts, the steel concertina gates clanging like a prison sentence behind them. The car rose slowly and in the distance, through the flickering bars, they could see the massive assembly building and the ocean beyond.
Rocket 1 on Launchpad
Turning, Soraya could see the cold, steaming, massive, black-and-white girth of the rocket, diminishing in circumference as they ascended each stage. Su-lin gave her a reassuring smile. She had done this twice already. Eugene, an old veteran, just kept his own counsel and decorum.
The elevator jarred to a halt, their bodies momentarily losing weight and the doors opened to a green-painted bridge with a gaggle of technicians awaiting them. Taking their last breaths of free planetary air, the astronauts helped each other on with their goldfish-bowl helmets and checked the airways of the comms systems. The 20-foot walk was like a marathon. Soraya’s legs jellied as they trudged along the metal flooring. She stopped halfway and felt the urge to wave, more to the good Earth that had nurtured her than to any particular human being.
Ahead she saw the conical capsule. The open door beckoned her like an automaton’s Wendy house. Many hands helped her into the diminutive dark space, where straps, wires, leads and tubes soon threaded into her outer skin. The bright sunlight was eclipsed by the massive form of Eugene – last in and blocking the doorway. His waving elbow smashed her visor as he half fell into the middle seat.
‘Thanks a lot – oaf!’ she protested.
‘No problem. Any day, lady!’ he replied, turning and grinning at the face lost in the visors’ golden reflection.
Soraya was given a pat on the shoulder and a thumbs-up and the heavy hatch door swung over them and closed off the outside world. As her darting eyes grew accustomed to the dark interior, a myriad of lights and switches came into focus. A curious mixture of archaic controls and stitched-in modernity presented themselves.
A disembodied voice crackled over the headphones. ‘Houston here – can we check your telemetry and systems?’
Soraya studied the scene. ‘Sure thing, man! Fire away!’
All three astronauts sat checking and flicking their respective switches and controls, each encouraged by a flight engineer sitting hundreds of miles away in the serried ranks of monitors at mission control, Houston, Texas. Many others around them were also checking the state of the systems up and down the rocket.
When the technicians vacated the gantries and sped away in the silver NASA bus, the three small figures sat alone on top of enough explosive material to devastate a small town. Their checks complete, they could only wait patiently as the countdown ran its course like fine sand falling through an hourglass.
Every couple of minutes the voice would crackle over again, commenting on her heart rate and blood pressure, which, given the circumstances, were holding up pretty well. Her mind was racing. Visions of the Challenger disaster preyed on her imagination. Her small frame ached with the pressure of the straps. She thought of her childhood, her sister, her long-dead parents and what they might have thought. For once she was glad there were no children to worry about or weep for her. Then she heard the number 20. It jolted her back to the present, and the numbers flashed across her eyes, through the teens and down to the 10, 9, 8, 7, 6 – something moved within the rocket way below them; all the valves had opened up to release the fuel – 5, 4… 3… 2…
She heard the word ‘ignition’, then nothing else except her head cracking back onto the cushioned headrest and a grinding and straining of the massive structure. An extraordinary pressure pushed through her back, arms and legs. Everything was pinned back in the seat and the force was mounting with the acceleration. It was as if she no longer existed but was a crushed flower, preserved forever in a book. She fought against the power of the rocket and screamed to herself, ‘Survive, survive, survive!’
Dick Gordon Jr – Astronaut due to command the cancelled Apollo 18 moon mission
A record crowd stood on the beach, watching the rocket receding into the haze. In a small seaside hotel, through binoculars, Dick Gordon Jr wistfully dreamed. He watched the moment when the first stage, having completed its function, detached itself and fell away, with an immediate splay of jets emanating from the second stage as it kicked into action.
For Soraya there was a temporary halt to the ordeal, her body lifted for a moment as she felt the essence of the rocket change, then – bang! She snapped back against the seat, the chair pushing through her spine. She concentrated on the rhomboid window, watching the sky change from a dazzling blue to a deep black.
Onwards and upwards they travelled. There were no explosions, no faulty engines, and the rocket did its stuff, behaving beautifully. Milton’s work had not been in vain. True to Ford’s word, each stage lightly descended on fine silk parachutes, to be recovered and preserved as an exhibit that had an even greater place in history.
The ride was getting smoother. The infernal juddering died down to a point where the astronauts’ shaken eyes could begin to examine their screens and each other, and they could start to breathe without straining.
Through the windows, the black starry sky told them they had left the bonds of the Earth. A lightness of mind and body overwhelmed them and informed them that they were ‘in space’ and weightless.
‘Phoenix here, Houston. Looking very good!’ Eugene signed in.
There was a massive and relieved cheer as mission control released its pent-up anxieties and reflected on the success of one of the most peculiar chapters in NASA’s history.
Soraya released her straps and twisted in her seat to stare through the window at the curve of the Earth beneath them. She cracked her head against Eugene’s helmet. ‘Sorry, fella! Own back time!’
‘You can take that off now, lady,’ Eugene suggested, and in no time the three of them were
childishly bouncing their helmets around in the weightless environment.
Soraya pressed her nose right up to the thick glass. The rocket was performing a graceful roll. As it turned, the world with its thin skin of atmosphere, swirling clouds and endless seas and oceans, wheeled below them, followed by the inky blackness of the void and the white-hot outpouring of the sun. Earth appeared subtle and benign; the universe beyond, stark and forbidding.
As she thought of all the people down on Earth, a quiver rippled through her. The remoteness and the extremity of it all almost overpowered her, before imperceptibly giving way to the beauty and the awe of the spectacle laid before her.
It was not for long, as Houston’s voice burst through with serious things that needed to be accomplished. First were the checks. All three in unison needed to work through the systems again. Then Eugene and Su-lin would ease the remains of their rocket into the correct orbit. It was still a behemoth and a delicate touch was required to gently nudge it into a precise altitude. Their capsule was on top of the crew’s quarters, containing most of the supplies and the return rocket.
The alignment was crucial because in six hours they would be docking with the second spaceship, now being prepared for take-off.
Eventually, they slid gracefully into their designated position. There was no time to lose. A lot of preparation was needed outside the capsule before they would be ready to receive. The pumps purred, sucking their precious air out before they could reopen the hatch and venture out. Eugene’s training injury had left him restricted and with their helmets back on Soraya gave him a little kick as he struggled to pull himself out of the tight confines.
Soraya’s heart pumped and a thrill of excitement flushed through her as she deftly followed him out. There she was, frozen for a moment with the rolling planet spread out below her. A visceral apprehension charged her system, an instinctive fear of falling gripping her. Then an inner voice reminded her that though she was actually falling, it was in a grand circular orbit.
Focusing on the job at hand she watched Eugene with fascination as he made his way down the rocket. This man had spent more time working in space than any other, and there were whole sections of the ISS that owed their existence to his space engineering skills.
With the flick of Su-lin’s finger, ranks of external lights suddenly flashed on as they prepared for the ‘night’ they would be subjected to when they swung around the far side of the Earth. The stark white light of the day began to mellow into hues of yellow, then diminished to orange then red as the great arc of the Earth appeared to rise into the path of the sun.
In an instant they were in a pitch-black void. The natural tones of the daytime Earth were replaced by a cascade of spangles as the major conurbations and highways traced out their presence in artificial light.
Soraya looked in rapt wonder as she contemplated the weight of humanity now evident across the globe. Tearing her eyes away, her vision was gripped by the spectacular starscape emblazoning the heavens above. ‘Get a grip, sister!’ she muttered as she refocused. Always keeping three points of attachment, she hurried after Eugene, who was now unfurling the great rolls of rubber with which they were to festoon the main body of the crew’s quarters.
Once in place, the rubber would be filled with the precious water supplies for the voyage, freeing up valuable internal volume and creating a shield for the crew against the intense radiation of interplanetary space. It was taxing work, and sweat was collecting in small bubbles floating around Soraya’s visor by the time ‘dawn’ broke in a beautiful reversal of the sunset forty-five minutes before.
As the light returned she made out the tongue of Florida, from whence they had escaped the grip of Earth. From this distance the USA looked deceptively peaceful compared with the mayhem that had unfolded shortly after their selection.
It now seemed like a lifetime ago, but it had been only a few hours since they had been sitting in the auditorium, nervously waiting for the outcome of their final selection. Elin caught Mo’s eye. ‘Nervous, are you?’
Mo’s detachment was broken as he fiddled with an elastic band. If it were possible to be smug and disappointed at the same time, he was feeling it.
‘Don’t be stupid, we’re not going, innit!’ he hissed.
He had a guilty secret, undivulged even to his friends or father. Unlike those around him, he thought he already knew the results.
Mo hadn’t been chosen for his exceptional computer skills for nothing. His sharp eyes had picked up all the secret passwords and programs as the likes of Sharon and Edward had uploaded the selection data.
Surreptitiously hacking and wending his way through the NASA database, he had discovered their team was lagging behind ‘The Elves’.
‘Negative, don’t be! How do you know?’
‘Trust me, I know. There’s no way we’re going to Mars. Your mum’s team are way ahead and we ain’t putting the rockets together.’
Elin gave him a conspiratorial look and in hushed tones mouthed, ‘My mummia not going! Pulled out she has!’
The rubber band twanged across the room. ‘What?! But they were going to be…’ He tailed off, realising he could let the cat out of the bag.
Everyone knew there’d be two crews, one for Mars and the other to help assemble the craft in space. Now the cat wasn’t even in the bag, but out among the pigeons.
The fine-cut timing meant that the results of the medical samples and tissue testing on ISS had only just been uploaded into the database. Each would-be astronaut’s painfully extracted samples had been undergoing a series of tests in space.
The two great health risks to a long-term space traveller are bone loss, due to weightlessness, and the presence of constant radiation.
Two remarkable results were confirmed. Firstly, the growth plate cells of the children’s bones were undiminished and actually increased their growth to compensate. In contrast, adults in space suffer from irreversible osteoporosis.
Secondly, the youthful cells of the kids were confirmed to be incredibly resilient to the pervasive radiation of space. Their vigorous cells repaired or replaced themselves at a rate that significantly minimised their risks.
In stark comparison, the adults would suffer an increased threat of cancer or other cell damage. This had only been mitigated by choosing middle-aged adults, who simply had less time to live to develop these illnesses.
Once the late scores were uploaded into the matrix, the results brought the children almost level with the women. Then the bombshell. Kirsten had dropped out.
The senior mission members sat grim-faced around a conference phone. Luther had joined them, remotely ‘sitting in’ on their deliberations. He’d missed the initial row and was surprised at the stony silence when he asked innocently. ‘OK, who’s going?’
Sharon took a sip of her americano. ‘We’re at loggerheads, sir. The results backed “The Elves”, but Kirsten has pulled out. So the logical decision is either to cobble together a mixed team or send “The Other Things”.’
‘OK, give me more detail: who, what and when?’
‘Sure. For a mixed team, we could only send Felix with Soraya and Su-lin. He’s the lightest of the men and he’s been studying the science. However, he’s on a warning for groping Soraya at the party and she refuses to be alone in the same room as him, let alone a capsule for two years.’
‘What’s his science like now?’ Luther had seen him working away at it on his visit.
‘High school B grade, at best, I’m afraid.’
‘OK, what about the alternative?’
Then there was uproar as Stephen broke in. ‘The alternative is postponing the mission!’ He pointed at Edward. ‘And if that idiot was doing his job, he’d back me up!’
‘Exactly which idiot are you referring to?’ Luther was on voice only.
‘I’m not an idiot, I’m a logician,’ Edward blurted out. ‘He thinks I should veto the children on health-and-safety grounds.’
‘Too goddamn
right. You won’t let me tie up my shoe laces without training!’
‘But, Stephen, your previous job was killing people with drones! A completely different health-and-safety environment…’
‘Ford, help me out! You’re leading this mission!’ The president needed a firm hand.
‘Well, Edward’s right. The logical thing is to send the kids. They will suffer fewer health problems, they naturally love sitting around all day doing nothing and have proved they can do the job, but… We’re also worried about the politics and public reaction.’
‘How many damned times do I have to tell you? I am the politician – you get on and choose the astronauts on merit. I’ll go with Edward’s call on this! Choose “The Other Things”.’
Ford stuttered, ‘Do you actually mean we should send the kids?’
The last thing Luther heard after he answered ‘yes’ was the slamming of a heavy door as Stephen stormed out.
As Mo and the others waited with bated breath in the small auditorium, they became increasingly aware of raised voices in the room adjacent. Each felt the embarrassment of listening to an almighty row which they ought not to be witnessing, like when your apparently nice neighbours have a major domestic. The voices ebbed and flowed until a distant door slam, then all was quiet.
The children waited, glancing at each other, unable to comment, apart from Enza and Elin, who were snorting with suppressed giggles.
Mo hated rows. At home they were one-sided and usually ended with his auntie in tears. He had cringed as it ebbed and flowed, and welcomed the long silence that followed.
The children looked anxiously at the clock above the empty stage. They knew that today was the day and the project was already behind. Someone should have been chosen by now – what the hell was going on?
The Other Things Page 33