“It was a stupid idea!” Sheehy shot back, venom in her voice. “I told that moron Popov not to do it!”
“But not why.”
“I shouldn’t have needed to! I told him it was too close, there were controls, wires, cables, all kinds of things that could be messed up by a stray foot, knee, elbow, whatever! But no! ‘Zhe show must go on, because I say so!’” she mimicked the Russian’s accent. “And I have no idea how Cocoran managed to make it through to the astronaut corps without washing out. He is the most uncoordinated, insensitive, obliv- uhm, blind-to-his-surroundings EXCUSE for an astronaut I have ever seen!”
“Calm down, Clare.” Cardwell attempted to appease the irate astronaut. “You can’t blame them for what they didn’t know about. And I expressly told you not to tell any of ‘em.”
“True.” Sheehy took a deep breath and let it out. It didn’t really seem to help that much, but at least it enabled her to sound calm. “So do you have anything for me? Something that’ll get me home soon?”
There was another pause, and she tried not to grind her teeth, well aware that it could cause damage, not just to her teeth at this point, but to her jaws. And that WOULD be a mess, she thought. Break my jaw, then I can’t even manage to cram in what nourishment I’m getting, and the situation deteriorates further. And I can’t get home to medical treatment, so I’d have to wire my own jaw shut. Fun, fun.
“The news is bad, Clare,” Cardwell finally admitted. “When the MALTSI interim report came out, the National Institutes of Health got fourteen kinds of livid, and cut off MALTSI’s funding at the ankles. The program is gone, and without it, we have nobody doing the research we need to get you home. I’m working on it hard; I’ve pulled in the Chief Astronaut, the Chief Medical Officer, even the Deputy Administrator, who is considering approaching the Chief Administrator in confidence. We’re trying to scrape up the monies to replace the NIH funding for MALTSI so the research can continue.”
Sheehy fairly gaped at the comm panel in horrified shock.
“…And if you can’t?” she eventually choked out.
“Don’t even think it, Clare. We will. We have to. We’ll think of something.”
“I’m going to die up here, aren’t I?”
“No, Clare. Not if I can help it.” Cardwell could be heard swallowing, then he said, “Keep your chin up, kiddo, and we’ll talk as soon as I know anything more.” And he broke the comm.
Sheehy sat, staring blankly at the console, rubbing her knee absently.
Gradually, first her eyebrows, then her entire face, drew together into a fierce, angry scowl.
***
:::PLAYBACK COMMENCING:::
Houston TX, JSC MCC Medical Back Room
Increment 57
MALTSI Mission Elapsed Time 1 year, 10 months, 2 days, 7 hours, 12 minutes
Subject: MALTSI Test Subject
Flight Director Gayle Murphy and defunct project MALTSI’s chief scientist Dr. Chris Adams sat across from Peter Cardwell. Their faces were solemn.
“That…was not good,” Adams remarked, forehead creased in worry.
“No, it was not,” Cardwell agreed, equally concerned. “And it was not at all like the Clare Sheehy I know, either.”
“Me either,” Adams confirmed.
“Meaning?” Murphy wondered.
“Meaning there’s something going on in her head, and it doesn’t bode well,” Cardwell explained. “What’s worse, she doesn’t see the damage.”
“What damage?” Murphy asked. Cardwell looked past her at the MALTSI alumnus. Adams nodded at Cardwell, and reached for his laptop, waking it and pulling up some images.
“Look here, Flight,” he murmured. “You heard Pete talking with her about the skull fracture.”
“I did, and I found it most alarming.”
“As well you should,” Cardwell said. “See these two x-rays? This one,” he tapped Adams’ laptop screen, “is from Clare’s pre-flight checkout. This other one is the image she just downlinked, though I’m sure she forgot it was in the batch dump.”
“Oh, dear God,” Murphy whispered. “She’s got a…a dent, in, in her head.”
The two scientists nodded.
“I saw that right off,” Cardwell noted. “That’s a significantly depressed area in the parietal region of the skull, resulting from the improper healing of the skull fracture, and I cannot for the life of me see how, given that level of damage to the skull, there hasn’t also been damage to the brain beneath it. The parietal lobe, specifically.”
“Damnation,” Murphy said, staring at the screen. “And so you think that her, her…”
“Her personality changes,” Adams supplied.
“Yes, her personality changes—”
“—Are almost certainly due to the brain damage,” Cardwell finished. “Yet she can’t see it, or recognize that she had to have had symptoms of concussion. More, that region of the brain is involved in proprioception, the ability of the brain to coordinate spatial sense and navigation, meaning she’s much more likely to slam into things in the close confines of the cabin.”
“Which in turn causes increasing damage to her skeletal structure,” Adams added.
“And it’s also involved in language processing. Did you notice how she stumbled over some of her words, and got certain others — like ‘moron’ — stuck in her head?” Cardwell asked. He paused, tapping his fingers to his lips as he considered the situation. “We have a seriously compromised crew member.”
“Then let’s bring her down, get her medical help.”
“We can’t,” Cardwell replied, maintaining an impassive façade. “The whole reason for this problem in the first place is because the bone density protocols backfired somehow. Right now Clare Sheehy couldn’t sustain her own body weight on Earth — her entire skeleton would collapse and it would kill her. Let alone the g-forces encountered during re-entry.”
Murphy stared at them, flabbergasted.
“What the bloody hell are you doing about it, then?”
“We’re working on it, Gayle,” Cardwell told her, trying to remain calm, running his hand through his hair as a distraction. “That’s why Chris is here. I brought him in from MALTSI’s home office. I had to play fast and loose with some rules, but I hired him to consult, at least temporarily, with my private practice. That at least covers his travel expenses.”
“Meanwhile, the MALTSI team is working — without pay — to figure out what went wrong, and why, and try to determine what to do about it,” Adams added. “We think we have it narrowed down to some nepotism at the university, between a graduate student and his advisor that shouldn’t have been his advisor, and some totally falsified data.” He shook his head in disgust. “Damn sloppy excuse for science. I am NOT pleased, and I and my immediate colleagues are working to get the advisor fired, and the student — his nephew — expelled. YES, it was that bad. It was unconscionable. And I shall never forgive myself for being part of this whole…FUBAR. Hell,” he added, bitter as quinine, “I ran the thing. The buck stops here.”
“Ease up, Chris,” Cardwell murmured. “Big science project like that, you can’t do all the research by yourself. At some point, you have to trust your colleagues to do their jobs right.”
“Yeah, well, they didn’t,” Adams said, blunt and harsh. “It’s our fault, and I damn well know it.”
Cardwell had no answer for that. The three sat quietly for several minutes, just staring at the top of the conference table, worried.
“At any rate, we think we know where the mistake came in, and how it got improperly validated,” Adams admitted. “And we have some ideas about how to reinterpret the hormonal activity in bone catabolism and anabolism. But…”
He broke off, eyes going distant, and the other two waited silently for him to finish. When Adams resumed, it wasn’t what either flight controller wanted to hear.
“…But we don’t know if we can help Dr. Sheehy. She…may be too far gone.”
“SHIT
,” Gayle Murphy said with feeling.
***
:::PLAYBACK COMMENCING:::
International Space Station
Increment 57
MALTSI Mission Elapsed Time 1 year, 10 months, 3 days, 7 hours, 44 minutes
Subject: MALTSI Test Subject
“…So there’s nothing you can do? I’ll really die up here?” Sheehy whispered into the mic, on her second PMC in as many days.
“I didn’t say that, Clare,” Caldwell countered. “I said there’s nothing we can do right now. We’re not giving up, and you mustn’t, either. Just hang on. Give us some time.”
“Dammit, Pete! Do you know how long I’ve been up here already?! Up here with these idiots and morons?”
“Clare! Calm down! We’re doing everything we can! Now, I’m going to send up some new instructions, and I want you to follow them to the letter…”
***
:::LIVE DOWNLINK COMMENCING:::
International Space Station
Increment 58
Mission Elapsed Time 8 days, 12 hours, 14 minutes
MALTSI Mission Elapsed Time 1 year, 11 months, 18 days, 12 hours, 16 minutes
Subject: Sabotage
Maki left the Rassvet docking module, headed for the nearest communications console, but grabbed the closest handhold to stop as soon as he entered the Zarya module.
In front of him hovered Clare Sheehy, an evil leer on her face, and a wild light in her eyes. Her hair was free of its customary ponytail, and floated about her head in unrestrained disorder. Somehow its random, rippling patterns, as it appeared to stand on end, only served to heighten the deranged expression on her face.
Her left hand dangled awkwardly from a joint in the middle of her forearm that shouldn’t have been there. In her right hand she held a large mallet which Maki recognized as being from the Station’s EVA tool kit. To his horror, it was smeared with what looked like blood and some sort of yellowish-gray tissue. Red globules wafted in her wake, leaving a gruesome trail behind her; peering past her toward the Zvezda module, he saw the limp body of Commander Popov, glassy eyes staring, unblinking. As the commander’s body drifted in the connecting passage, it pivoted slowly, and Maki saw the dreadful wound on the back of his head, where his skull had been smashed in. And Maki knew what was on the mallet Sheehy wielded.
He swallowed hard, forcing bile back into his stomach from where it had crept into his throat, and returned his attention to Sheehy. Her leer had deepened.
“I told him we shouldn’t do it,” she said. “That it was dangerous. But he insisted. So I paid him back, tit for tat. Cocoran — he’s the one who really did it, you know. He got off the Station before I could return the favor for it. But you? You’re still here. It was Popov, and Cocoran…and you.”
“Clare, I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Maki protested, edging backward toward the Soyuz, wondering if he could take refuge behind the closed hatch, then depart the Station alone. “Please, calm down and put away the mallet. Let’s just talk over what’s going on here. I’m sure we can find a way to fix things.”
“Oh, we’re going to fix things,” Sheehy declared. “They told me I couldn’t go home. But they’re wrong! I’m going home, as of today!”
“So are you the one who reset the controls onboard the Soyuz? I did a quick check just now, and they weren’t in standby mode anymore.”
“You found that, did you?” She crept closer. He eased back.
“Yes, but it was dangerous, so I reset everything to standby mode.”
“Think so?” Sheehy smirked. Maki hid his cringe at the demented expression.
“Yes. I even spliced back the wires inside the port access panel. It’s safe, Clare. We’re both safe. Let’s keep it that way. I’ll call down, we’ll get you help, we’ll get you back home and everything will be okay.”
The laugh that emerged from her throat had more than a hint of hysteria in it.
“Get me back home! They’ll help! Those damn morons! They can’t even help themselves out of the rain! But I don’t need their help any more. I’m making my own way home, Riichi. Along about…now.”
There was a sudden loud thump that rattled the entire Station, followed by a kind of muted roar that went on and on. Then, to Maki’s surprise, he and Sheehy began slowly shifting toward the starboard side of the module.
“Chikushō!” he exclaimed. “That was a Soyuz deorbit burn!”
“That’s right,” a grinning Sheehy said, moving closer. “I told you, I’m going home. I’m going home if I have to take the entire damn Station with me!”
And she kicked hard off the bulkhead, hammer raised. Maki heard a sickening crunch, saw her lower legs seem to collapse as she screamed in agony, still swinging the hammer with all her might.
***
:::LIVE DOWNLINK COMMENCING:::
Houston, Johnson Space Center, MCC Front Room
ISS Final Increment 58
Mission Elapsed Time 9 days, 2 hours, 8 minutes
“…Dear God,” Flight Director Gayle Murphy whispered, watching the images on the big screen from the local television station depict the fiery re-entry breakup of the International Space Station over the waters of the Pacific, filmed from several different islands scattered across that ocean. “What has she done?”
“She?” Flight Surgeon Dr. Peter Cardwell replied, standing beside her, sick at heart. “She was dying by inches, Gayle. All for the sake of the dream.”
“But…the dream is worth it…isn’t it?”
“It is…but not like this, Flight. Never like this…”
“Flight, PAO, your loop. The news media is waiting, ma’am. Along with several Congressmen.”
Murphy groaned, pulling off her headset. Cardwell sighed, then turned, taking her elbow.
“C’mon, Gayle. Time to face the music and dance.”
:::END DOWNLINK:::
Afterword
I enjoy blending hard SF with mystery, and with my background as a payload flight controller for seven Shuttle missions plus several ISS increments, it seemed a logical notion to set a mystery aboard a near-future Space Station. I had advice from friends and former colleagues Dr. James K. Woosley and Larry Bauer.
I would like to specify I created a communications loop for this story. Normally private conferences (medical etc.), occur on Air-to-Ground-1, locked down outside intended conversants. But since that’s the main comm between Houston and the “guys upstairs,” I envisioned AG-3 expressly for any private comm from Earth to spacecraft.
For those interested, I’ve listed some references on subsequent pages for more information, starting with Wikipedia and moving to more sophisticated sources. But to summarize the core issues at the heart of this story…
Phenolphthalein has been in use for over a century as a laxative, though concern over long-term carcinogenicity has caused it to be removed from store shelves in recent years. However, it is also commonly used in chemical titration as a colored marker to denote pH in the solution being tested. I have myself used it for this purpose, and a skilled chemist can determine pH of a solution quickly and accurately with it, without need of additional or more sophisticated instrumentation. But titration equipment is gravity-based, so a space-based lab would need automated equipment. Arguably there are other means of instrumenting a solution to determine pH, but as aforementioned, a skilled chemist is just as fast, and in some cases, more accurate.
It’s a concern that long-duration space flight may cause mental issues, even up to and including psychotic breaks, due to the relative isolation and very restricted environment — it is not, after all, as though one can go for a relaxing stroll after dinner! If those factors are combined with brain damage due to impact/skull fracture, serious psychological problems might ensue.
Also microgravity effects upon skeletal systems are known. It seems there’s a glitch that develops between systems breaking down old bone and those building new bone, such that in microgravity, the new bone system
s significantly reduce activity, if not outrightly shut down, while old bone systems maintain, or even possibly increase, activity. More, it produces permanent damage: while the bones remineralize upon return to a gravity environment, they remain less dense than before the spaceflight. It is perfectly reasonable, therefore, to postulate a point of no return — where bone loss has become so great, the skeletal system cannot survive return to a gravitational environment.
Since bone breakdown/deposition systems are hormone-regulated, a reasonable means of attempting to circumvent bone loss might be artificially manipulating those hormones. However, we’re still working to understand this synergy, and what works on Earth might not necessarily work on everyone in space. More, if we add in a postulated data scandal such as has been uncovered in a couple of different fields in recent years, there is the potential for harm over and above the normal spaceborne bone loss.
I’d like to point out that this story is an exploration of possibilities, not an indictment of any system, and certainly not intended to be anti-NASA; I am very pro-NASA. If it is an indictment of anything, it is the tendency in some branches of the scientific community to falsify data to get ahead at the expense of real science.
Ultimately it must be remembered that space exploration is an inherently dangerous business, given the inimical environments surrounding the explorers. However, it is not only desirable, it is NECESSARY. Without doubt there are large rocks out there, quite capable of destroying civilization as we know it. Even lesser rocks have the capability for destroying entire cities; the Chelyabinsk bolide over Russia in 2013 could have wiped out the city had its trajectory been more nearly vertical. And this, without it ever having to strike the ground — the transfer of energy and momentum, the same transfer which shattered windows and knocked down walls over a broad area due to the shallow angle, would have flattened everything beneath it, and possibly produced a shallow crater into the bargain, had it been less tangential in its trajectory.
It therefore behooves us to maintain and expand our spacefaring capabilities, for certainly there are dangers out there…but there are also resources as well, resources that will aid us in expanding our civilization and our capabilities.
Science Fiction by Scientists: An Anthology of Short Stories (Science and Fiction) Page 17