Flower-of-Sands_The Extraordinary Adventures of a Female Astronaut

by Grahame R. Smith

  ‘Well,’ Venetia replied happily, ‘gravity is not a constant, even on Earth. ‘In fact, …’ Here she was about to embark on a gravitational exposition when she was interrupted by Angie, her best friend on the project and partner in Orbit Skittles, the only sport apart from hill walking that Venetia enjoyed.

  ‘Vene, let’s get on board this hulk and in our cabins at least before we get scientific. We have three years to do that.’

  ‘We are sharing, aren’t we?’ Venetia asked her friend. ‘They won’t separate us as some sort of special test.’

  ‘This is Astrophysics Academy, not boot camp for some deep space exploration project. It’s university, Venetia. They don’t do things like that here.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be so sure,’ one of the girls in their party muttered sceptically.

  Angie sighed with mock exasperation. ‘Look, it’s just university. Get over it, folks.’

  Venetia agreed. It was university, and her tutor was Sir Michael Ravenswood, the distinguished physicist and astrophysicist, pioneer in space research, discoverer of numerous exoplanetary systems, moons, and trans-Neptunian objects. He was her hero. When other girls were going crazy over popular male music stars, she had Ravenswood’s portrait and discoveries on her bedroom wall. Physics, astrophysics, and mathematics were her life and those who had pioneered in these subjects her heroes.

  They stepped onto a moving walkway that spiralled towards a busy arrival lounge. A male synthetic met them, scanned their wrists, looked them thoughtfully in the eye, and politely ushered them towards a tube-way where a trans-pod shipped them through a maze of silver and violet steel structures.

  ‘Everything is so vast!’ Venetia surveyed the complex superstructure through which they floated like insects in a web of sunbeams and branches.

  ‘Why the optical scanning from that synthetic?’ Houssay, who always liked to find an issue, grumbled.

  ‘Just a formality,’ Angie said as they settled back and watched the interweaving of substation infrastructure looming on all sides. ‘As if anyone would try to fraudulently get on an astrophysics course. I ask you?’

  ‘You would be surprised,’ Houssay said cynically.

  ‘Honestly Houssay,’ Venetia laughed. ‘You would find trouble in paradise.’

  A transparent membrane formed across the trans-pod as they moved outside the substation and across a complex of umbilical tube-ways. The main part of the space station filled the heavens, blocking a view of the Earth.

  ‘This tube affair is like a gigantic art exhibit,’ Angie said nervously. ‘Are we attached to it?’

  ‘Of course,’ Venetia said. ‘There are force fields, invisible rails over which we are passing. The interior of the tubes are mostly engines, anti-grave, electrical, maintenance, all that stuff. Look, you can see people working inside and around them.’

  ‘Look at that person there,’ Houssay shouted. ‘Talk about spacewalk. It’s more like space speed dive. What is he doing?’

  ‘You can’t assume it’s a ‘he’,’ Angie said as she exchanged mock-exasperated looks with their companions, a woman, and two men.

  Suddenly, they were diving into impregnable glass forming the outer structure of the space station. Instinctively they braced themselves for impact, but there was none. Instead, the walls opened and they drove into what seemed to be living fluid bubbling with florescent flashes.

  They were in an arrival arena, floating in the gurgling liquid as if they had just returned from a family boat ride. They stepped off onto a platform where a smiling android official greeted them. The android blinked at each of them several times, before politely waving them on.

  What happened next was confusing. The sheer impact of impressions coming at them from all angles ensured confusion as a primary condition. Surprisingly, it was colourful. For starters, every standard space station coverall was an unusual colour, typical in design, but outrageous in every shade of primary colour. Hair was also colourful - blazing violet to silver gold, luminous green, red, and yellows.

  Venetia blinked repeatedly, but it did not help. Yet again, she felt wobbly and grasped Angie’s arm, simultaneously laughing with delight and breathless with apprehension.

  The section of space station they found themselves on stretched up in receding terraces where floating platforms and vehicles emerged and disappeared. Coloured flags floated about like butterflies or birds. Flashes of blue ran across the weaving complexity of pink and silver girders. This was where comprehension ended. Venetia and her friends were overwhelmed. It was all too much.

  ‘Excuse me.’

  The friends spun around and beheld a female dressed in a sober pale-green coverall and holding an electronic file. Headphones adorned her brown, innocuously styled hair. Her mouth was prim and business like. She had rolled up her sleeves and was competently typing on her slate. She was a comforting sight.

  The female continued. ‘My name in Lob, and I am assigned to your arrival process. Are you disorientated?’

  ‘Yes!’ Unanimous reply.

  ‘Okay, I can help with that. In the short term, I can offer you a highly selective beta-blocker, or a swim and a shower or a hot soak and a massage.’

  ‘I’ll go for the water treatment,’ Venetia said slowly. ‘I’ve heard about these new betas.’ Everyone agreed.

  A flag descended and stretched out at their feet.

  ‘Step on,’ Lob cried. ‘I will take you to the university campus. You can each bathe, after which I will register you all. Welcome to Ithaca University. Sir Michael extends his best wishes and welcome. He will expect you in the student’s lecture hall at 19.00, station time.’

  They followed Lob onto the flag, which had doubled in size in anticipation of its new passengers. Once again, Venetia felt wobbly and grasped onto the nearest person, who happened to be Lob.

  She went right through her and landed on the flag floor, uncomfortably close to the edge. A jolt of light-headedness ran through her as they flew up into flashing blues and silvers. She cried out in panic.

  ‘Oh, I forgot to tell you,’ Lob chuckled merrily. ‘I’m a hologram. Physically, I am not here at all. Strictly, I’m not anywhere. I am non-local. I hope you find that cool.’

  For Venetia, who was now a martyr to vertigo with a stomach that reached the top of her head, the prospect of being non-local and not having a body was strangely attractive, if not cool.

  Later, having sorted their living accommodations, they sat in the student auditorium, waiting for Sir Michael to make an entry. Venetia was apprehensive. Would he remember her? Despite her admiration of him, they had met before and it had not gone well.

  She thought back. She was ten and on a student prize project to the UK NASA space station in Martian orbit. Her paper on the influence of black holes in galactic formation had won her a place on a physics and astronomy summer camp. This so-called camp was on Space Station Olympus in Martian orbit with a promise of a spacewalk, a visit to Mount Olympus, and a tour of the new particle accelerator that stretched across the Ort Valley.

  All the children on the summer camp were enormously clever, but Venetia shone amongst them like an evening star. No one seemed to mind because she was such an okay person and seemed in ways outside science to be in continual need of guidance.

  A boy called Anglesey adopted her and became her best friend. Venetia, who was at least two years younger than the other children, inspired him in brotherly protection, something that gave him pleasure both for its own sake and because he sensed something special in Venetia. Despite his large, lopping frame, he was sensitive and capable of seeing that Venetia, even although she struggled to find her way around the station’s corridors, and could not decide what to have to eat, and kept walking accidentally into the boys’ loos, was a genius.

  At Sir Michael’s opening lecture to the children, Venetia sat on the edge of her seat, wide-eyed and spellbound, closely aware of every point that Sir Michael made, and bursting with questions. When it came to question time,
hers was the first hand in the air. Surprisingly, Sir Michael paid little attention to her, probably because he was afraid of isolating her and causing jealousy amongst her peers.

  For most of the summer camp, Sir Michael’s pupils and colleagues conducted the tutoring. A student called Alexandra, known mostly as Lex, took Venetia under her wing, introduced her to the latest technologies and methodologies in her subjects, and encouraged her in all that she approached and undertook.

  Towards the end of the camp, Sir Michael addressed the children on trans-Neptunian objects, the Kuiper Belt, and the Oort Cloud – areas of special interest to Venetia. After the lecture, she questioned Sir Michael about objects which her calculations predicted in the Kuiper belt and Oort Cloud. To her surprise, he was condescending and off hand in his replies, inferring that in some way she was venturing into areas beyond her. Lacking in guile, Venetia pressed him further, citing calculations from his own work. To her further surprise, he laughed her questions off, as if they were immature and overzealous. She was perplexed and felt that she had done something to offend him.

  A further incident compounded the situation. Following Sir Michael’s lecture, Venetia thought that she had better apologise for whatever it was that she done to displease him. She found his office, which was all glass within an open plan area of busy students and technicians.

  ‘Can I help you?’ a high-pitched voice came from a petite secretary with blue tinged hair and rimless glasses.

  ‘Can I see Sir Michael, please?’

  The petite secretary looked sceptical, but buzzed through to Sir Michael who looked up from his desk, saw Venetia, waved, and spoke into the secretary’s invisible, personal communicator.

  ‘He will see you,’ the secretary said, ‘but you need to wait.’

  She waited a long time, but eventually the secretary ushered her into Sir Michael’s room.

  He was looking at one of the mini-screens on his desk and only half looked up as she approached his desk. ‘What can I do for you, Venetia?’ He seemed preoccupied.

  ‘I’ve come to apologise, Sir Michael. I’m sorry if I was rude during question time.’

  ‘You were not rude, Venetia. I just need to give everyone a fair chance, that’s all.’

  ‘I don’t wish … to impose, or push myself forward.’

  ‘I’m sure you do not, over-enthusiastic perhaps, but not pushy.’

  ‘My parents have told me to apologise when I am insensitive.’

  ‘Insensitive?’ Sir Michael finally looked up.

  ‘Yes, I’m supposed to have non-verbal learning difficulties. I sometimes speak out of line and cause offence – without meaning to, of course. Apparently, people who are exceptionally good at maths and science tend to do that sort of thing.’

  ‘So, you consider yourself exceptionally good at maths?’

  Venetia hesitated, sensing that she had inadvertently stepped over a line. ‘It’s what I have been told, Sir Michael, I don’t mean …’

  ‘That’s enough, Venetia; I don’t wish to be short with you, but you need to join your friends on the shuttle for the Mars daytrip. They are waiting.’

  ‘Yes, I know. Thank you, Sir Michael. Oh …’

  During her interview, Venetia’s eyes had strayed from Sir Michael to a series of calculations on a semi-holographic white board facing Sir Michael, but which no one could see outside his office. Venetia could not help herself.

  ‘Oh, those calculations are Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud object predictions.’ She went over to the white board and peered through the complexity of holographic images. Sir Michael stiffened and rose from his seat.

  ‘Yes Venetia, that is correct. How did you know?’

  ‘They are like my own calculations, except that here (she pointed to a series of calculations in the lower left side of the white board) I do something different. I must have made a mistake.’ She gave an embarrassed laugh and embarked on a mathematical exposition and was so intent on her calculations that she did not hear Sir Michael interjecting.

  Finally, Sir Michael’s voice got through to her. ‘Venetia, you must leave immediately. Your classmates are waiting. You will miss that Mars shuttle countdown.’

  ‘Sorry, I got carried away. I’m doing it again, aren’t I – being insensitive. I apologise.’ She gave a ridiculous bow and left the room.

  Now, thirteen years later, sitting between Angie and Houssay, she felt suddenly apprehensive. Would Sir Michael remember her as a troublemaker? Her thesis on gravitational waves had won her a place at the Ithaca University of Physics and Space Research. But he had not replied to her additional research paper predicting the existence of a large planet the size of Saturn on the fringe of the Oort Cloud. Perhaps she had not learned. Perhaps she had been insensitive, pushy, and wrong.

  Well, not wrong she thought. That was her dilemma. She knew she was not wrong. But her calculations could be misinterpreted. They required dialogue, teamwork, explanation.

  She forced herself out of her reverie. At least, she was here at the university; that was the main thing. She had fulfilled the first part of her dream, to devote her life to astrophysical research that she hoped would involve space travel.

  As Sir Michael and his team came onto the platform, she brushed her fears aside and joined the others in enthusiastic applause. Following a brief introduction from the dean of the university, a woman, whom Venetia recognised as her old friend Lex, made an opening address on gravitational waves. The students were impressed with the extraordinary advances in this area, which Lex maintained was a major area of research at the university.

  Of course, all disciplines in astrophysics related to one another; that went without saying. But some disciplines were more exciting than others, and for Venetia, a major area of research was the outer solar system, trans-Neptunian objects, the Kuiper Belt, and objects in the Oort Cloud. She loved it, and she wanted to go there.

  She felt her stomach tense with excitement and apprehension as Sir Michael rose to address the audience. He spoke at length of the massive discoveries that he and his associates had made in many areas of astronomy. Towards the end of his lecture came the exciting part: the resurrection, after hundreds of years of neglect, of exploration into the extreme outer solar system, a branch of knowledge that had been lost in favour of solar system colonization and newly discovered interstellar travel; humankind had literally passed by the outer solar system. ‘Not anymore,’ Sir Michael concluded to rapturous applause and standing ovation.

  Venetia, flushed with excitement and having forgotten her doubts around Sir Michael’s attitude to her (real or imagined), entered the university canteen looking about for Lex, whom she longed to hug and catch up with.

  She had no trouble seeking out her old friend who shone like a beacon inside a noisy crowd of students and lecturers. Piercing green eyes peered from beneath a red-gold fringe. They embraced and Lex led Venetia to the nearest bar. They tried speaking, but it was impossible against the mounting hubbub of chatter and background music. Lex, who was an old hand at the student bar, ordered drinks, took Venetia’s arm, and steered her out of the bar to a quiet alcove with a panoramic window that revealed a stunning view of the Earth.

  ‘The rolling majesty of Earth,’ Venetia said, looking down at her home planet with wonder. ‘And Sir Michael plans to visit the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud. It’s very exciting.’

  ‘I know. It is the most Ithaca Uni thing ever,’ Lex laughed.

  ‘I hope they choose me to be on the mission. I can’t begin to tell you how exciting that would be.’ Venetia’s face suddenly clouded, as if remembering something unpleasant. ‘However, I don’t know why, and it may be my imagination, but I don’t think Sir Michael likes me.’

  ‘Venetia, my dear, I’m sure you are mistaken.’

  ‘I hope so, but I’m not sure. I got on the wrong side of him when I was a kid on a summer Martian camp; at least I think I did. I sometimes upset people without meaning to, without realizing it actually.’

/>   ‘I’m sure you will be on the mission, if it comes off. And it’s not just down to Sir Michael. There are many on the committee, including me. As far as I am concerned, your presence on the mission is inevitable. It’s a no-brainer. For God’s sake Venetia, you have pioneered in this area, and you are still a student. For you not to be on the mission would be an absurdity.’

  ‘I know,’ Venetia sighed as she gazed at the image of Earth through the window. ‘Anyway, it won’t happen for at least a year, and meanwhile I have university to contend with.’

  ‘I see you have made friends.’

  ‘Yes, I am best friends with Angie, and sort of friends with Houssay.’

  Lex gave Venetia a sly look. ‘Guess who else is here – an old friend of yours.’

  Venetia looked apprehensive. ‘Who?’

  Lex laughed. ‘Don’t look so scared. Guess. He is in his final year of course. I’m surprised you haven’t kept in touch, you were so close as children.’

  ‘You don’t mean … Anglesey.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Oh, my God, where is he?’

  ‘Somewhere between this room and planet Earth.’

  ‘Ha-ha, you are so funny, Lex. I will look him up, as soon as I can. By the way, can we eat. I’m famished?’

  ‘Absolutely. We should go Martian. There’s an excellent restaurant here. The faculty has booked half of the top floor. The food is amazing – really spicy.’ They both laughed, sipped their drinks, and gazed out at the compelling vision of planet Earth.

  Venetia sucked on an olive from her cocktail described as Messier 67. ‘I’ve eaten Martian before, you know. It’s surprising, the spices I mean. I suppose they need something to liven them up. The Martians I’ve met are seriously austere. I’m told the first settlers were even worse, rather like the Pilgrim Fathers.’

  ‘They say it’s the low-gravity.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Well, not really. I’ve had slightly too much to drink. It makes me say silly things.’