Island of Clouds: The Great 1972 Venus Flyby (Altered Space Book 3)

by Gerald Brennan

  “EMS function off,” I say, and flip the last switch.

  “Beautiful burn, baby,” Shepard crows. (With him, when things go well, it’s always “baby.”) “Very impressive production, Buzz.”

  “Buzz B. de Mille, at your service.” I flip my binder to a graph showing abort parameters. “Twenty minutes remaining in the two-impulse abort window.” If something has gone wrong, we have a very limited amount of time to fire our engine in the direction opposite travel and return ourselves to an elliptical orbit. And the amount of velocity change required increases steadily during that time. After six minutes, for instance, two burns of just over 3400 fps would cause us to fall back into an elliptical orbit with a two-day period. But after 19 minutes, that same change would leave us in a 10-day orbit.

  “Explorer, Houston, everything is looking fine. We’re right where we want to be. Congratulations to our first interplanetary voyagers.”

  “Thank you, Houston,” I transmit.

  “Do you have a projected time for LOS Goldstone?” Shepard asks. (As the globe turns, our tracking station in California will dip below the horizon, and we’ll lose their signal. Further out it will not be an issue, but for now we have to pay attention to these things.)

  “Shouldn’t be for another four minutes,” they say. “ARIA is standing by after that.”

  And just like that, we’re back to routines. The normal back-and-forth of regular mission discussion.

  •••

  “How was your week in the barrel?” Deke asks.

  It is the summer of 1969. The moon mission took a week; the “week in the barrel” has been much longer, an exhausting grind of state dinners and speaking engagements and press conferences and photography sessions in country after country, England and Sweden and India and so many others. (The barrel reference comes from a crude joke, not worth repeating in polite company—an ungracious reference, but one I can relate to.) We’ve been selling the world on something we’ve already done. And being back at the office doesn’t feel much better; I still have massive stacks of mail, overflowing piles of letters from all around the globe.

  “A week would have been tolerable,” I tell him.

  “Everything’s tolerable, Buzz,” he says. “It’s our attitudes that make them intolerable. The public put you up there. It stands to reason you’d have to do publicity.”

  “The American taxpayer put us on the moon. Not the people of…Colombia, or Japan.”

  “These things generate goodwill. Winning hearts and minds. You know this.”

  “Next time, we need to spend six months in space and a week talking about it.” There’s a heaviness in my chest, either at the memory, or at the thought of more to come: the fear I’ll spend the second half of my life talking about a single day in the middle of it.

  Deke half-smiles. “It wasn’t all bad, was it?”

  “I suppose there were some good things. It deprogrammed me a bit, got me to stop talking in acronyms.”

  “How so?”

  “Telling a story at some noisy party to foreign dignitaries who barely speak English, every time you say ‘The LM,’ the other person says ‘The what?’ So it’s like ‘The LM,’ ‘The what?’ ‘The LM,’ ‘The what?’ ‘The…lunar lander.’”

  This earns me a chuckle.

  Now I get serious again. “I want to get back on flight status.”

  “For the moon?”

  “Well, I’d love to get back up there. But it’d be selfish to get back in line when so many other guys are still waiting their turn. The Original Nineteen, that group that came after…”

  “They’re calling themselves ‘The Excess Eleven,’” Deke says. “They write it out like it’s a…designator for an experimental aircraft or something. XS-11. Helps to have a sense of humor, I guess.”

  “I guess.”

  Deke purses his lips. One of those gestures that can mean many things. “Well, we are crewing up the Venus mission. We’re gonna need some people with some heavy experience.”

  “A year in space.”

  “364 days,” Deke corrects me with a wry smile. “Far enough away that conversation with Earth won’t be possible.”

  “Sounds dangerous.”

  “Yep. Of course, we still have to fly the test mission. Three men in the manned module, in a high elliptical orbit with maybe a five-day period, so we’ll be able to bring them home relatively soon if anything goes wrong. Keep them up there for three months or so, monitor the systems, make sure it’s all feasible. It’ll be a useful, necessary mission. Set some temporary endurance records. But I won’t insult you by offering that.”

  “Thank you,” I nod. “What about Mars?”

  “That’s not on the table.”

  This isn’t what I’d been hoping to hear. But I feel like I can’t back out.

  “Venus comes first,” Deke continues. “And we’re gonna need some people who’ve been around the block a few times already. So to speak. You want six months up there? I’ll give you double.”

  I’m assuming, of course, that I’ll be in command. It only stands to reason.

  •••

  “Are you excited?” Joe Kerwin asks.

  He’s upside-down relative to me as I float in from the command module with the last of my personal effects: a Bible and some books.

  “Excited?”

  “First night in the new digs.”

  It is one of the more noteworthy mission events; we’re putting the command module to sleep for the bulk of the trip, to conserve its fuel cells and energy. We’re only planning to power it up for a course correction on the outward trip, for the Venus encounter itself, and for two course corrections on the return trip. For the vast bulk of the 360-odd days remaining, the can-shaped manned module will be our home, a tin mini-planet blazing its own lonely trail through the solar system.

  “It is a pretty neat place,” I admit.

  Floating in from the command module tunnel, there’s a main deck with the bulk of the equipment necessary for us to live and work in space. From “above,” it’s shaped like a mushroom; the “stem” is a narrow corridor with the latrine area at its base, and the “cap” is a larger semi-circular area where Kerwin’s now floating suspended. (There’s a bit of what I’d call a gravity bias to its layout, by which I mean it was definitely built with everything right-side-up relative to the “floor,” which is opposite the command module tunnel, like it was on the lunar lander.)

  “No nausea?” I ask.

  “Nope. Feeling fine.” He tucks into a somersault, pushes off against the mess table, and spins like a pinwheel.

  I reorient myself so I’m right-side up relative to the so-called floor, facing out of the corridor and into the larger room. There’s all the familiar stuff from training: a mess table and food reheating station on the right, telescope console on the left. On the curved outside wall there’s a decent-sized window, with the radio equipment and solar panel controls and circuit breakers arranged around it. It’s a good bit roomier than the command module, which doesn’t mean it’s large, per se, but it is large by space standards. (In zero-g every volume feels a little bigger; the area above your head is no longer wasted dead space, but rather a usable part of your physical environment, a place you can reach with as little thought and effort as you’d put into grabbing something right next to you.) Everything looks strange, though. Or maybe it’s me.

  “Where’s Shepard?” I ask.

  He nods behind me, towards the latrine.

  “Gotta get in there myself,” I add.

  “Gonna have to wait in line,” he says.

  “Cripes.”

  “We all shut down?” he nods up towards the command module.

  “Still gotta run the last two pages of the checklist,” I told him. “We were behind on the schedule, and I wasn’t up on the manned module comms yet, so they said to go eat. Finish after dinner.”

  “OK,” Kerwin says.

  We float and wait.

  “Christ, wh
atd’ja bring a newspaper in there, or what?” I mutter towards the toilet.

  No response.

  “I know you didn’t fall in. Nothing falls up here,” I say, and Joe chuckles.

  Still no sounds from the toilet.

  For some reason I suddenly imagine Shepard dead in there, maybe from a heart attack. What would that be like? Us floating up here for a year with a corpse? Old man Shepard, a decade older than us, and already a grandfather: it is a plausible outcome. And I’d be in command… (I don’t know where this thought’s coming from, but it’s ugly. I smirk and shake my head.)

  At long last, Shepard opens the latches and pulls down the curtain.

  “There he is.” I exclaim. “You didn’t hear us?”

  “Hear you?”

  “We were talking about you.”

  “I don’t think the sounds carry well in 5 psi. Plus, with the curtain…”

  His answer’s reasonable. To make things simple and easy for the environmental control systems, our spacecraft and module have been pressurized at a lower pressure than we’re used to on Earth. Rather than the 14.7 psi one gets at Earth’s surface, it’s only 5; you get the same partial pressure of oxygen, but much less nitrogen. And one consequence is that you have to be right next to someone for them to hear you.

  Still, it bugs me. “Your whole crew’s lined up for the john,” I observe.

  “Rank has its privileges,” he grins as he floats our way. On top of that, he gives me a look, like he’s daring me to defy him.

  This strikes me as a prime example of Naval Academy bullshit, the product of a dysfunctional ethos built on exaggerated respect for hierarchy and technology; it’s a culture where things are more important than people. (For all my time in the Air Force, graduating from West Point at least got me to value the Army’s take on leadership. In the Navy, officers eat in separate wardrooms, waited on by enlisted men; in the Army, officers follow their troops through the chow line at the mess hall, only eating whatever’s left after all the enlisted men are fed.) I know my place, but I still feel the need to keep him in his.

  At last I take a deep breath and give a little twisted smile. “Lotta pressure in other parts of the system. We don’t want to have an explosion.”

  “Ew. Oh. OK, you can go ahead,” Kerwin said to me.

  “Thanks,” I eagerly move past Shepard and float on in.

  “Are we shut down upstairs?” Shepard asks before I can close the curtain. “I wanted to have that done before dinner.”

  “I can’t hear you.” I mouth the words and point to my ears for comic effect. “5 psi!”

  The toilet/hygiene area is pretty crude, a circular curtain with a shitter and a shower all in one space. (I shouldn’t knock it, for it is in fact a tremendous improvement over what we had on the moon missions. We had to piss into a tricky condom/tube contraption, which pinched a bit but wasn’t as awful as taking a crap; on the moon we were supposed to do that in our undergarments, whereas in the command module we had to do the deed in plastic bags which had a blue chemical pellet that you had to knead into your fecal matter, supposedly deactivating it and rendering everything safe and sanitary, but in reality only doing a partial job at best, leaving the most advanced machine in human history smelling like an open-pit latrine by the end of every mission.) We have an airflow device that pulls all the waste in the right direction, ensuring that your urine and feces don’t go floating off towards your fellow crewmembers. And unlike past space toilets, this one does at least give you the truly essential attributes of any good crapper: not just cleanliness, but time for silent contemplation.

  I spend my time in there replaying our recent dialogue in my head. I have to say, I don’t entirely buy Shepard’s explanation. As plausible as it is, the guy can be an ass, and I wouldn’t put it past him to just take his sweet time and not even acknowledge that we were waiting. (Is that what it takes to be a leader? To just not care what everyone thinks of you? Sometimes it seems that way.)

  I put my head in my hands, although of course it doesn’t feel anything like it does on Earth. I will myself to be still, and try to calm my mind.

  •••

  Soon after Deke first talks to me about the mission, I’m back in New Jersey, on a quick visit home to see my father.

  We’re in the study, where he usually holds court: a stately dark room with books all precisely arranged on dust-free shelves, waiting for a white-glove inspection that will never come. He’s poured us both whiskeys from a crystal decanter. You might see this scene and think we’re relaxing over drinks, but one never relaxes around my father.

  “Is he offering you command?” my father asks.

  “I interpreted it that way,” I tell him.

  “He should be offering you command, right?”

  “Believe it or not, I want to have it even more than you want me to have it.”

  “He needs to offer you command, Edwin.” As usual, he feels the need to repeat himself a little more insistently. And he stares at me.

  I look away. You have to look away eventually. It’s like being in the same room as the sun. (Back at the Academy, our mil art classes talked about the forts of Vauban and Louis XIV, the Sun King; I remember hearing that name and immediately thinking of my father. And here I am again, with the Sun King holding court. And it still feels the same. My father’s the sun. I am the son of the sun.)

  “I’ll be sure to discuss it with him.”

  “You will,” he says.

  I scan the room. He keeps rare titles, wonderful books on aeronautics and rocketry, signed originals from Goddard and others with personalized inscriptions, the type of stuff that would be immensely valuable if he ever had a notion to sell. It’s like a temple to the past. But there is at last, something of me in there: a picture of me on the moon. (Of course, even that is a picture of the past. But at least it’s my past.)

  Again he speaks: “I’m proud of you, Edwin. You know that. But they need to give you the respect you’re due, and they won’t give it to you unless you demand it. Like that business with the stamp. First man on the moon. Man, singular, and a picture of Ed White. You did it together, as a team.”

  “We’ve talked about this already.”

  “I know, it just…gets to me. You’ve done a lot for them. You made it happen, more than anybody else. You’re capable of command. They need to put you in command.”

  I look back at him. There are vague thoughts I cannot understand, let alone speak: thoughts about father and mother, and life and death, and the sun and the moon.

  I clench the crystal tumbler of whiskey. There are many things I can do with it, but I set it down in a measured and deliberate fashion, with an excess of control.

  I think: the center of gravity has shifted in this relationship. You will be remembered as my father, not I as your son.

  But of course I do not say it. I need to keep these things under control.

  I pour another whiskey and drink. I turn to face him, and stare, and speak: “I will discuss it with him.”

  Later, in the room with Joan, I finally let myself go.

  “I don’t know what he wants,” I say. All that pent-up emotion now tears at the edges of my voice and makes it sound ragged and weak, far weaker than I want. “I just don’t know what he wants. How can you please a man like that?”

  “You can’t,” Joan says.

  “How?” I ask again. “I mean, what is ‘enough?’ How can you please him?”

  “You can’t, just…” Her voice spikes and breaks. She takes a deep breath and puts the pieces back together. “You can’t. Stop trying.”

  •••

  After dinner, I end up back in the command module, alone.

  “Houston, Explorer. Standing by to complete power-down.”

  There is a slight delay. The distance between us and Earth is ever growing, a yawning chasm. (We had that on the moon trips, too, but there was a limit to it. Here it will get inexorably larger until we can’t even converse.)
/>   “Explorer, Houston. Confirm we are on page 11-2 of the power-down checklist.”

  “Confirmed, Houston. I’m up on the manned module comms.” I’m no longer transmitting via the service module’s high-gain antenna, so we can keep talking once I cut the power.

  Another delay.

  “Go ahead.”

  “OK, pulling circuit breakers 2, 6, 7, 8, 11. Master Alarm.” The light on the panel is flashing red, accompanied by an insistent tone.

  I pause, then hear: “Expected. Proceed.”

  I clear the alarm. Silence returns. “Main Bus A and Main Bus B are zero. DSKY in standby mode. Pulling breakers 13, 15, 16 and 17. All console lights are off.”

  It feels wrong, turning off a spaceship in flight. I know it has to happen; they’ve calculated every margin for fuel and power, and this is actually the safe responsible option. And they already did it on the test mission. But it still feels wrong.

  I float over to the alignment telescope. “Telescope retracted. Cover in place.”

  “Explorer, Houston. We copy telescope stowed.”

  I flick off the cabin lights. “And we are dark.”

  “Very good. That about covers it. We will need a dosimeter reading from everyone when you can get to it.”

  “Copy that.” Now that we’re outside the Van Allen Belts, they are more closely monitoring the amount of radiation we get, just as they did on the moon mission. “CMP dosimeter reads 12472. Others coming shortly.”

  I float back through the tunnel into the manned module to find the others. Our command module, the part where we do the actual active flying, launch and orbital insertion and course correction and reentry, is an inert mass of unpowered circuitry and dead metal. We are all passengers now.

  •••

  Back in Houston, I stroll by Deke’s office. He’s in there alone, but still I walk to the bathroom and check myself off in the mirror one last time. I think of those old cadet routines: dress-offs and gig lines and shoeshines.

  When I stroll back, he’s still there alone.

  I take a deep breath. (I have no problem speaking up for myself. Some have accused me of being blunt. But if I don’t do it, who will?)

  “Got a minute, Deke?”