The Fated Sky

by Mary Robinette Kowal

  Nathaniel lifted his head. “Is it more important than me?”

  God help me, I hesitated.

  His eyes widened, and he laughed. “Well. I guess I should have expected that.”

  “No—” I caught both of his hands and brought them to my lips. “It’s not that. It’s that I can’t imagine a situation where I would have to make that choice, your life or theirs. You might.”

  “Yes.” His blue eyes searched mine. I don’t know what he was looking for. “I might. Forgive me.”

  Rosh Hashanah is a time of forgiveness and atonement. It is a time of joy and reflection. The rest of our conversation was all of those and conducted without spoken language, though it was not necessarily silent.

  At least Parker was right: the BusyBee was soundproof.

  THIRTEEN

  14 ASTRONAUTS SPEED TOWARD MARS AT 36,000 MPH

  By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD

  Special to The National Times

  KANSAS CITY, KS, Oct. 19, 1962—The fourteen astronauts of the First Mars Expedition soared through the black emptiness of space tonight on their way to man’s first rendezvous with Mars. For those on Earth, when the three ships of the Mars fleet fired their mighty engines, they appeared to be bright stars circling the night sky in tight symmetry. Their ignition marks the beginning of man’s most far-reaching journey yet. After they completed nearly two orbits to build up their speed to a blistering 36,000 mph, the fleet’s booster rockets fired to send the crafts out of Earth orbit and toward Mars. It will take the astronauts 320 days to reach the red planet.

  Do you remember where you were when the First Mars Expedition left Earth orbit? I have been told that a quarter of the people alive on Earth watched on televisions or through telescopes, or listened to us on the radio. One hundred percent of the people on the moon did. There were cameras in the command module to record our voyage for posterity. Farther out, they would not transmit a clear picture, but for the departure, the people of Earth got to watch us go about our business, intercut with commentary from Walter Cronkite.

  I had been in the NavComp seat before. I sat at the window with my sextant and charts, my pencil and graph paper, and outside … darkness.

  Darkness and the Earth. That spinning globe of luminescent blues and whites and the sparkle of cities, like stars scattered upon the ground. And somewhere below the clouds was my husband.

  The comm crackled and Malouf came on the line as CAPCOM. “Niña 1, Kansas.”

  Parker toggled on the comm. “Go ahead, Kansas. Niña 1.”

  “Okay. Coming up on three hours and fifteen minutes as per flight plan; we have you Go.”

  “Roger. Go.” Parker grinned and glanced around the cabin at us. Sure, we were professionals, but this was the call to launch us away from Earth.

  “You can expect that the S-IVB will be ten degrees off in pitch at SEP attitude; however, that is Go. There is no problem involved.”

  “Roger.” He toggled off the mic and glanced over at me. “You got that?”

  “Confirmed.” I updated my notations in the nav manual. A ten-degree pitch difference fell into the category of minor and expected things—heck, we’d run sims where it was further off than that—but if we didn’t start taking it into account now, the error would muddy all the data downstream. I was the redundancy in case we lost touch with Earth and their computers.

  Around me, the rest of the crew did their assigned tasks, while I busied myself with the mathematics of space. Numbers danced beneath my fingers like stars in the sky.

  Malouf came on the line again. “Niña 1, Kansas. We would like to ask whether you did a VERB 66 ENTER to transfer the state vector from MSM to MM slot. We didn’t copy that down here.”

  Florence looked up from the mechanical computer, where she was mirroring my work. “I haven’t done that yet.”

  Parker frowned. “We did not.”

  “Okay.”

  Okay? That was it? I held my pencil poised over the paper. “Does he want us to do that now? It’s not on the schedule until—”

  “Do you want us to do that now?”

  “At your convenience.”

  “Roger.” Parker toggled the mic off. “Got that, Grey?”

  “Confirmed.” She scribbled a number on a tablet to the side of the toggles for the mechanical computer.

  The idea was that if we lost contact with Earth and something happened to me, the mechanical computer could function as a backup, but it could only hold about thirty operations in its memory. Why they wanted us to update it now, I couldn’t tell you, but the ways of Mission Control were sometimes mysterious.

  I leaned toward Florence. “Need any help?”

  She shook her head. “I’ve got a breather on the radio until they want to test the VHF, and my memory of the sims is that you’ll be pretty busy for the next—”

  “Niña 1, Kansas. We would like to have an approximate GET of your SEP maneuver to use for our ephemeris tracking data.”

  I rolled my eyes. On the ground, they sometimes forgot how long it took to actually do things. If they’d been relying on the mechanical computer, Florence would still be keying in data. I tried not to sound smug as I beat her to the answer. “Three hours, forty minutes, zero seconds.”

  Parker raised an eyebrow. “You didn’t even look that up.”

  “That’s why I get paid the big bucks.”

  Parker repeated the GET to Malouf. Down on Earth, the folks in Mission Control would be conferring on the data we sent to make sure everything was calibrated and on track.

  Toggling the occasional switch, Parker watched his gauges. “Got anything for Kansas, York?”

  “I’ve got the exact callout here for you, and a burn status report.” I nodded, without looking up from my paper. Poor Florence over at the mechanical contraption was still keying in the numbers. It might calculate faster, but that’s only if you didn’t count the time it took to program the damn thing. “DELTA-VX minus 00011, DELTA-VY plus 0002, DELTA-VZ minus 0002, roll 0, pitch 180, yaw 0.”

  Parker repeated all of that to the ground, while I went back to updating the nav plans. Granted, ground control should just send us the updated information, but I needed to have things already in place in case we lost communication.

  “Goddamn it.” Terrazas leaned toward the window and then sat back in his seat, shaking his head. “Inertia’s got the S-IVB traveling right on our tail.”

  That was the rocket that had pushed us up to full velocity for the trip. I grimaced and met Terrazas’s gaze. “This is going to be like the moon shot again. Parker, can you get us away from it? Otherwise, the star field will be obscured when it vents.”

  “Swell.” Parker shook his head. “I’ll have to do a couple small maneuvers to stay away from the S-IVB.”

  “Too late.” Outside my window, the stars seemed to multiply into hundreds of thousands of little fireflies. Caught in the light, the frozen propellant sparkled like stars, and my job suddenly got hundreds of thousands of times harder, just like it had on the moon mission. Fortunately, I had a lot of practice at struggling to identify stars.

  Parker sighed and toggled Mission Control. “Kansas, Niña 1. The S-IVB is venting, and it’s right on our tail.”

  “Roger. Understand; that is supposedly a nonpropulsive vent. The big blowdown maneuver starts at 04:44:55, and the vent occurs at 05:07:55.”

  Terrazas snorted. “Nonpropulsive, maybe, but it’s like a geyser.”

  Malouf asked, “How far away from the S-IVB you are now?”

  “Between one hundred fifty and three hundred meters.”

  “Okay, Parker. On your additional separation maneuver, we recommend that you make a radial burn, point your plus x-axis toward Earth, and thrust minus X for .91 meters per second. Over.”

  “I don’t want to do that; I’ll lose sight of the S-IVB.”

  “Okay. The reason we want a radial burn is to increase your midcourse correction so we can use the SPS. Stand by on it.”

  I lift
ed my head. “We don’t need to do that. Right now, our gimbal angles are about … roll’s about 190, pitch about 320, and yaw is about 340. We could do it in this position.”

  “Niña 1, Kansas. Where are you relative to the booster?”

  Parker studied me for a second before he responded. “We are directly above the S-IVB with the sun on the right side of the booster and visible in our left number one window.” As soon as he toggled off the mic, he turned to me. “Get those numbers ready for me. They’re going to ask.”

  “Copy.” I nodded and set the numbers down on the page to describe the model of the ship I held in my head. I was fully an adult before I realized that other people did not relate to numbers the way I did. For them, they are abstract shapes on a page that, at best, relate to a physical number of objects. For me, they have form and definition and mass and texture and color. I could hold the ship and the S-IVB and Mars and Earth in my head until the impurities burnished away and only the pure, smooth calculus of space remained.

  Back on Earth, Malouf said, “Okay. Understand; the sun is on the right side of the S-IVB and coming in your number one window. And are you—when you give us those angles, that means that your plus x-axis is pointed at it with those angles. Is that confirm?”

  “Confirmed. But York thinks we can do the burn without changing our gimbal angles.”

  I flipped to a reference page in my binder, just to double-check my numbers. “You can do a P52 realign, and that should take care of it. The S-IVB pitches about … It’ll pitch about ten degrees of its final attitude during the slingshot maneuver attitude.”

  From her station, Florence punched a button on the mechanical computer and it began to clunk away, with the snapping sound of vacuum tubes firing.

  Parker pursed his lips and nodded to Terrazas. “Two point four meters a second sound right to you?”

  “That’ll get us away and keep us lined up.” Terrazas leaned forward to look out his window. “It’s still in the same position.”

  Nodding, Parker turned on the mic to Mission Control. “Kansas, we’re going to have to hold up on the cisMars navigation until after this next little maneuver.”

  “Confirmed, Parker. We understand.” Behind Malouf, I could just make out the muted hum of voices in Mission Control. Even straining, I couldn’t pick out Nathaniel’s among them. “Can you give us an updated readout of your gimbal angles when your plus x-axis is pointed toward the booster, please?”

  “Stand by.” Parker turned over his shoulder to me. “Clear enough for you to get COAS on it?”

  “Confirmed.” I couldn’t sight back on Earth’s horizon, but if I put the shade on my sextant, the Sun was an option.

  “Niña 1, Kansas.”

  “Go ahead, Kansas.”

  “Could you give us those gimbal angles, Parker, when you have a chance?”

  Parker rolled his eyes. I was right there with him. Everything took longer in space than Mission Control thought. His voice was very calm when he replied. “York is getting the COAS right on it now, so it will be accurate.”

  Still working, I murmured, “Thank you.”

  “Done right or done over, is what my old man always said.”

  I sighted the final angle and leaned back from the window. “Okay. With the COAS right on the S-IVB, the roll reads 105, the pitch is 275, and the yaw is about 325.”

  Parker repeated all of that to me, then turned back to the mic and repeated it to Malouf, who repeated it back to him in the endless call-and-response litany of astronauts. “I’m beginning the burn at 2.4 meters per second, radially upward.”

  The thrusters beneath us fired and my rump slapped against my seat as we suddenly had weight again. It was a fraction of G, but after being weightless for the past nine hours, it felt like being on Earth again. When Parker let up on the throttle, inertia lifted me up into my shoulder straps. This was why we stayed strapped in during maneuvers.

  “Kansas, we made the burn at 7.7 plus X plus 00001 Y; and Z’s are all zeros. Gimbal angles, roll 180, pitch 310, and yaw 020.”

  “Confirmed. How is that booster looking now? Is it drifting away rapidly, or how does it look?”

  Parker leaned forward to look out the window. “Terrazas, you see it?”

  “Hang on.” He also leaned forward. “Got it. We’re ninety degrees from its x-axis, and we must be three hundred meters away and moving out.”

  Parker looked across Terrazas to me. “We get you far enough away to have a clear star field?”

  I rested my head against the window and gazed out at the dark. The spray from the S-IVB’s venting hung like artificial stars drifting in a clearly defined nimbus around the booster, but the rest of the night sky around us was dark and clear. “Confirmed.”

  “Kansas, this is Niña 1. I think we’ve got clearance; we got a little behind on our P23’s, but I suggest we go ahead and start those now.”

  “Confirmed, Parker. Thank you. At your convenience, could you give us the PRD reading? And as far as the P23 goes, that’s just fine to get started with it. It looks like your first star, which is number thirty-one, should be good until about 05:15 GET. Over.”

  Number 31. Arc to Arcturus, and straight on till morning.

  FOURTEEN

  ANNOUNCER: The American Broadcasting Company presents Headline Edition with Taylor Grant. November 2nd, 1962.

  GRANT: General Bradley’s speech in Kansas City today was one of several interesting news developments dealing with our military defenses. He addressed the Women’s National Press Club, and told the assembled ladies that the United States must spend heavily on military readiness as far into the future as we can see at this time. Bringing order to the civil unrest at home and abroad is of paramount importance to provide a stable basis for economic growth.

  We were only two weeks into the journey when we had our first equipment failure.

  I floated into the zero-g toilet on my way to the command module and grabbed the door frame to brake hard. A spinning globe of urine floated in the middle of the tiny head, surrounded by accompanying satellites.

  “Oh, for crying out loud.” I pushed back to look up and down the spindle—the long hall that ran the length of the Niña—to see if the culprit was still in sight, but whoever had clogged the thing had just left it.

  We had a gravity toilet in the centrifugal ring, but this one was used by whoever was on duty in the command module. Theoretically. In practice, it was usually faster to go down to the ring than mess with the zero-g rigging. But that didn’t mean we could let it be out of order. Much as I wanted to ignore the problem, since I’d found it, and had time, it was on me to deal with it. The fact was that there were only seven of us on the ship. No one was going to want to fix the toilet any more than I did, and leaving it was a surefire way to make folks resent me. Again.

  It really should have been on whoever fouled the thing in the first place, but my wrath could wait until after the urine had been contained.

  The excrement satellites were gross, but not as problematic as the liquid waste. The last thing we wanted was for a ball of urine to go “whizzing” down the spindle. Partly because it was disgusting, but also because that much liquid could cause all manner of mischief in the electrical systems. And the air intake. And also, gross.

  Trying to dodge the globules, I pulled off a length of toilet paper. The first order of business was to deal with the little spheres so I could get farther into the head without getting covered in pee. In a sort of weird dance, I swiped the toilet paper through the air, catching little droplets as I went. The paper soaked through almost immediately.

  There’s nothing quite as disgusting as someone else’s effluence. I stuffed the paper into the disposal pouch and grabbed more tissue as my skin tightened with the sheer ick. Clearly, I couldn’t just soak it all up with tissue, because that would throw our rations off. The toilet was designed to use a vacuum to pull the waste down into its tank so we only needed to use tissue for tidying at the end of operatio
ns.

  I slid into the bathroom and pulled open the little cupboard for a clean disposal pouch. Opening it, I shoved tissue inside to create a little cushion. With both hands, I held it open and brought it down over the main globule.

  It was sort of like snaring a butterfly in a net. But gross.

  When the urine hit the tissue, its surface tension broke and some of it wicked into the paper until it reached saturation point. The remaining dregs began spinning inside the bag. I pinched the opening shut and nested it into another bag. Then I used tissue as a sort of glove to snatch satellites out of the air and add them to the bag.

  Really. Was it too much to ask that people clean up after themselves?

  The job had been gross, but really hadn’t taken me that long. I shoved the bag into the disposal slot. This was so coming up in the Monday meeting. Heck, I would probably bring it up at dinner. I grabbed an alcohol wipe and began scrubbing my hands. It felt like a film of grime coated them, particularly under my nails.

  The toilet belched. An arc of urine floated up into the room like a long, yellow piece of rubber. It contracted, forming another globe.

  “You have got to be kidding me.” I grabbed another bag and shoved more toilet paper into it.

  As I brought it over the urine sphere, the toilet belched again. I flinched, just a little, but enough that the edge of the bag clipped the sphere. Urine clung to my hand, wrapping around it in a warm, liquid glove. I swallowed hard and clenched my jaw. So. Gross. Moving carefully, I reached for the tissue with my clean hand and brought a wad up to the bag. One end went into the bag and the other into the stuff coating my hand. The surface tension wicked into the paper and drew a lot of the stuff into the bag.

  At this point, I really didn’t care about wasting paper. I just wanted my hands to be clean.

  I also needed to get rid of the bag fast enough that I could pay attention to the toilet itself, because I was not doing this again. As soon as I had my hands mostly dry and the liquid contained, I tossed the bag into the disposal slot. Pulling myself down toward the toilet, I let my legs drift out into the corridor.