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

by Gerald Brennan

  I want to turn back, to head back upstairs and close my eyes to all of this.

  But it is indisputably real. And it is my problem.

  Shepard is floating there, his feet almost at hatch level, legs slightly splayed, head and arms down at the far end. It’s like I’m looking down into a barrel or a well at a man hanging by his feet.

  All of the sudden I feel desperately alone.

  I do not want to go down there. But I know if I do not go, I will know that I didn’t go. And that will not make it easier to deal with any of this later on.

  I try to nudge his feet, to move him off to the side so I can make it down there easily. As I’m pulling myself down there, his legs brush against me, and I shudder.

  He is pale.

  I want to turn back.

  I do not know what to do.

  He is pale and his eyes are closed, and his face is contorted in an unnatural way. I’m glad his eyes are closed, but the paleness and the facial expression keep me from pretending this is anything other than death.

  His skin is cold.

  I touch him just for a second, for the briefest flash of a second. I remember the heat of last night’s fever, and it seems impossible that his fire’s gone cold. It occurs to me that this is the first time I’ve touched a person that isn’t alive.

  I do not want to be here. I do not want to breathe. I breathe at last and realize the air is no worse than normal, not yet. I do not know what I expected.

  I try to grab the loose cloth of his coveralls in a way that I will not feel the firm mass of the body beneath. I turn him, slowly, so his head is upright relative to the way we normally sleep. It requires some careful thought and effort to avoid bumping his head against the bulkhead, and here and there I feel his body, and I shudder, but I do not bump his head, and I find some pride and satisfaction in that.

  I ease him into his hanging sleeping bag and zip it up to his neck. I do not know what else to do.

  I am exhausted and I feel desperately alone. I do not know if Joe is awake yet, but I know I am going to wake him. I have never been so eager to wake someone up.

  •••

  I float slowly back through the tunnel, tired already from the exertions of the day, both physical and emotional. Kerwin still sleeps. For a second I hesitate, hoping he’ll wake on his own, but he doesn’t, and seeing him there, eyes closed, I am all the more anxious to end this loneliness.

  I nudge him. “Joe.”

  He doesn’t wake up.

  “Joe. Come on.”

  Nothing.

  A black panic wells up in me. I tap him insistently on the shoulder with all the energy I can muster. “Come on! Joe!”

  “What?” He wakes into a fog, a semicoherent morning stupor; he sounds uncharacteristically irritable.

  “Shepard’s gone.”

  “Wait.” He weakly rubs his tired eyes. “Where did he go? How could he go anywhere?”

  He doesn’t get it yet, so I have to explain. “No, he’s…gone.”

  The meaning sinks in. “Oh. Oh, no. This is…” His chest expands, a deep sorrowful breath. “Jesus, I didn’t…I knew he was in bad shape, but I didn’t…”

  No words can cover the enormity of this.

  “Yeah.”

  He glances back behind the couches. “Wait, he’s…where did he go?”

  “He’s…I don’t know how it happened. I don’t know if he was fumbling in a blackout, if he tried to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, or what. He’s all the way down in the sleeping chambers. I put him in his sleeping bag. I didn’t know what else to do.”

  “Yeah but…what’s his condition?”

  “Well…he’s gone.” Here I fumble for words, wondering if he gets it after all. “I put him in his sleeping bag for now, I…I don’t know what…”

  “No, was…was he pale?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Cold?”

  I nod.

  “Was he stiff?”

  “Well, I was trying not to move him around too much.”

  “Yeah, but…we need to know.” He’s alert now, at least, sharp and alert, and there’s a relief in that, to be talking to a human that’s firing on all cylinders, mentally, at least. “Pallor mortis, algor mortis, rigor mortis, livor mortis. Those are the stages.” And yet he’s still tired. Both of us are still thick in the sickness. Speaking and thinking still takes work. “Pallor first, but the others start to happen concurrently. Livor mortis, we probably won’t have up here. The blood pools down at the bottom of the body. But rigor…”

  “Yeah.”

  We both stop for a moment, tired again, maybe, or because the reality of what we’re talking about continues to seep into the deep recesses of our minds. “We didn’t prepare for this.”

  “No, we didn’t. But we have to do something before that point. As bad a shape as we’re in…that will be a serious health hazard. We’ll have to wrap him up, seal him off, something.”

  I breathe, a heavy breath. I still cannot believe it has all come to this. “He is in the bag.”

  “I don’t know if the sleeping bag is gonna…as that stuff happens, there’s…” He doesn’t have to sketch it all out. We have months left to go up here, months with a body. We both know what that entails.

  “Maybe his suit…” I suggest.

  “Yeah. We’ll get him in there. We’ll have to do that.” Wearily he moves towards the gap in the couches, back to where the EVA suits are stowed.

  “Wait, are you…” I am weary beyond words and I do not want to do anything else today. It feels like something we need to prepare for, mentally and emotionally, something to psyche ourselves up for and do first thing tomorrow.

  “Buzz.” He looks at me and it snaps me out of my stupor. “We’re in a race against the clock here. Nobody knows if this stuff happens slower up here, or faster. If we’re going to do something, we either do it now, or we have to wait.”

  “How long?”

  “Three, four days maybe. And by that time, all the other stuff will be setting in.” He doesn’t have to say it, but my mind fills in the words: putrefaction. Decomposition.

  “Yeah, you’re right.” I sigh. “Let’s get moving.”

  •••

  Soon we are at work.

  Kerwin’s removed Shepard from the sleeping chambers and brought him up to the main deck so we’ll have more room to maneuver. And I’ve retrieved all the EVA suit parts from the storage bays.

  We’re both most concerned about the main article, the Torso Limb Suit Assembly. It’s a one-piece garment with a zipper that goes from crotch up the back to the shoulder, so even under normal circumstances, it takes some work getting into it. And even though we can dispense with certain preliminaries, like the liquid cooling undergarments, it certainly wasn’t designed to put someone in there without their cooperation.

  “How do you want to handle this?” Joe’s tone makes me realize I’m in charge, as far as he’s concerned.

  “We could draw straws.” It feels wrong to make even a weak joke, but it also feels necessary.

  “Actually, if you’re OK with it, you can hold the suit, and I’ll try to work his feet in.”

  “OK.” I realize he realizes how uncomfortable I still am, and I’m relieved. But I feel guilty to be avoiding the worst of it.

  “I am a doctor,” he gently reminds me. “This isn’t my first time dealing with this stuff. We should probably undress him.”

  “Let’s just try and get him in there first.”

  We work with a minimum of chatter. There is a silent reverence that sets in, in the presence of a body. Slowly and carefully we manipulate his legs down into the suit. His feet get stuck somewhere below the suit’s knees. I tug and tug, to no avail.

  “Let’s…lemme move around here.” Kerwin maneuvers to better help massage everything into position, and we try again. Still no luck.

  “All right, you’re right,” I sigh. Even this meager work has thoroughly tired me out. “We
need to get his clothes off.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I need a break first, though.”

  “We’re tight on time here.”

  “I need it. I think you do, too.”

  “Yeah.”

  We take our bathroom break. Neither of us have completely recovered from the gastrointestinal symptoms; there is some blood and mucus and foulness, and the same weary cleaning afterwards.

  Then, a snack. Our energy levels are very low, and we force ourselves to choke down some cookies as we plan our attack.

  At last we get back to Shepard. The coveralls he’s wearing are two-piece, and we wrestle his shoulders out of the top, then work the bottoms down from his hips and off of his feet. Exhausted, I rest for a moment, floating idly.

  “How are we looking?”

  “He’s starting to stiffen up.”

  “All right. All right.”

  For the long underwear, we opt for scissors. Kerwin cuts and I float next to him with the vacuum hose to police up any stray bits of thread. Then at last, the fecal containment garment, another gross mess. All the clothing and scraps go in a Beta cloth bag.

  At last, Shepard floats naked, unnaturally white and ugly. His hips are slightly bent, and his arms are forward, like a drowned man on the surface of the sea.

  “Here we go,” Kerwin says.

  Without the friction of the extra layers of cloth, his legs now slip smoothly into the suit. We work the rest of it up to his shoulders. I worry that we’ve taken too long to get to this point; I can tell there’s some stiffness now in Shepard’s arms. Joe struggles, frustrated.

  I swallow my pride and my bile, and move over to help. Together, we massage arms through sleeves and work the suit up over Shepard’s tense cool shoulders. Then we work to flatten him out. When we’re done with all that, I shudder and take a moment to collect myself.

  “Thank God that’s done.”

  “Yeah.”

  I grab the goldfish bowl.

  Kerwin interrupts. “Let’s do gloves first. I’m more worried about those. I don’t want to break anything.” Meaning fingers.

  Again I feel the need to pull my weight, so I grab one hand while Kerwin does the other.

  His fingers are a little stiff.

  I have to massage them to get them into the gloves.

  I fantasize about other things.

  After some trial and error, we get the gloves all the way on and locked. Then at last, the glass helmet, round and pristine. Once it’s on, it’s a little easier to imagine he’s asleep in there, that this is just some bizarre EVA rehearsal.

  We float back for a second and contemplate our handiwork. Then I realize: “We’re not done yet. We need to get him up there.” I nod back towards the command module.

  “You want to take him home with us?”

  “Well I don’t want to see him every day.” A little chuckle. It feels wrong to joke, and necessary. “Or at night when I’m trying to fall asleep.”

  “We better get going, then.”

  Kerwin floats up into the tunnel, maneuvering backwards so he’s upside-down relative to us. Relative to me. I ease Shepard up slowly, so Kerwin can keep his head and shoulders from bumping into anything. It occurs to me that I’m still thinking of Shepard as Shepard, as himself, as present but unresponsive, even though he is not himself any more. There is a body, and no one lives there anymore.

  “All right.” Kerwin’s muffled and distant, blocked from view by the corpse. “Head’s almost at the turn.” Some more mumbled somethings.

  “How’s that?” I have to move it to one side to hear a little better.

  “I said we need to slow it up.”

  This is the tricky part. We need to maneuver the body around the bend at the end of the tunnel, under the end of the control panel. There are plenty of edges and corners, and we don’t want to crack the helmet. If we do, it’ll defeat the whole purpose of getting him in the suit. The bowls are pretty thick, and we do have tape if there is a smallish crack, but neither of us wants to risk it. The suit’s made to protect what’s inside from the outside; now we need it to work the other way.

  Kerwin mumbles something.

  “What’s that?” Apart from the macabre aspects, it feels like we’re movers trying to bring a large couch up a tight and winding stairwell, yelling around the corners.

  “I think we need to flip him.” Joe’s mostly under the panel now, contorted around. “Bend his hips again.”

  “I don’t know if I have the leverage.” I move up in the tunnel, close to Shepard’s legs. I can’t move them very far. “Try now.”

  I hear some muffled noise that sounds like: OK. I push Shepard forward and there is a little strange resistance and I hear: “Stop! Stop stop stop!” and something terrible that sounds like fabric tearing.

  Joe never sounds this anxious, and when I hear it there is a deadness in me, an awful angst, and I wonder if we’ve just torn a hole in Shepard’s suit.

  I speak hesitantly but professionally. “Tell me I didn’t do what I think I did.” But inside it’s: Why do I keep fucking up?

  I see Joe maneuvering to see. “It’s…uhh. Yeah. It’s a tear.”

  Shit.

  “His shoulder caught on the hatch latch. I shoulda moved the hatch.” Like all good Catholics, Kerwin insists on taking the blame.

  “How bad?”

  “It…” I see him awkwardly reaching around and probing with fingers. “All right, that’s a relief. I think it’s just the Beta cloth.”

  I breathe, overwhelmed. The outermost suit layer’s just there to protect against micrometeoroids and to reflect some of the sunlight and thermal radiation; the inner layers, the pressure suit layers, are still intact.

  “Lemme move the hatch somewhere else.”

  “OK. Don’t lose it.” It feels good to chuckle a little.

  “Yeah, we might need it later.” He disappears.

  A flood of weariness comes over me, the sickness still not past, and all I can think is: I hope so. My stomach’s turning; I don’t know if it’s from the radiation, or the job.

  We try again, but it doesn’t get any easier.

  We try turning him and maneuvering him at different angles. We try moving his hips. But we stay stuck. We’re all the more skittish about violating the suit integrity now, and he’s just stiff enough now that we can’t quite pull it off.

  “Maybe we should stop for today,” Kerwin says at last.

  “I still want him up there.”

  “I do too, but…we can…” His next words aren’t quite audible.

  “How’s that?”

  “Here. Back him down.”

  I draw Shepard down into the manned module hallway so Kerwin and I can speak face-to-face. He maneuvers down to talk to me. “I said we can try again in a couple days. He’s in there.” Meaning the suit. “We’ve done the important part.”

  “Yeah.” I wish we’d done more. How do you know when you’ve done enough for the day? Does enough exist? “Yeah. All right. Well, let’s put the EVA helmet on him at least.”

  “Yeah.”

  This will keep us from seeing whatever will be going on inside the suit, for however long we’ll be looking at it. Kerwin floats up to retrieve it while I reposition Shepard.

  At last, the outer helmet. Before I close the gold visor, I force myself to take a last long look. His head is angled forward, and the neck ring’s right under his nose, like he’s trying to reach something down inside the suit. I murmur a silent prayer. Then I flick the visor down. There is nothing more to see.

  •••

  Upstairs, we tap out a Morse message using the omnidirectional antenna: Captain Alan Shepard KIA. Succumbed to secondary infection related to acute radiation syndrome early in the morning of 13 September 1972. Body placed in EVA suit to isolate remaining crew from biological processes. Remainder of crew still dealing with radiation symptoms but otherwise healthy. Over.

  We await their reaction. Minutes and minutes a
nd more empty minutes.

  Then: “Explorer, Houston. We…uhh…copy your transmission. Your health and safety are foremost in our minds. Calculations indicate you will need to shut down the CM soon; you have approximately one day of operational margin remaining on fuel cells. Will set up windows for communication using manned module antenna. Please transmit first…” (White noise.) “…opportunity. I say again…” They rattle through the transmission again, then close with: “Godspeed. Over.”

  “When can we talk again?” Kerwin asks.

  “We’ll say tomorrow. Noon. Repoint the manned module and transmit.”

  “Yeah.”

  I scribble it down: Shutting down command module after this transmission. Please save responses for next comm window 1200 hours HDT 14 Sept. We will be in position to receive. I read this, and look back at the message we transmitted and feel: coldness. We’re sending what we needed to send, operationally, but something is missing.

  “What did he say to you the other day?” Kerwin asks. “Before we came back up here?”

  I write more: Tell Louise her husband spoke lovingly of her in his last conversation, and longed to be with her again. Please offer our heartfelt condolences to her and the rest of the Shepard family. We did all we could. There is more I need to say to Louise, so much more, but it will have to wait until we’re home. Over.

  Kerwin taps it all out, the warm beeps of the push-to-talk, and when that is done we shut everything down once more and float back downstairs, past the telescope console again.

  I can’t help but notice the sun has calmed down at last.

  •••

  When my helmet clears the hatch at the start of the EVA, I look up and there it is, sculpted and carved and sharp, with nothing between me and it but my faceplate: Mars.