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

by Gerald Brennan

  The helicopter ride is uneventful, but it is great to see land, a thin hazy band on the horizon at first, gradually acquiring color and definition, growing into beautiful chapparal-covered mountains.

  We’re flying to Vandenburg Air Force Base. As we set down, I notice there’s a little clot of people in bright civilian clothes on the tarmac, and no press to be seen. I peer closer: Joan and Shirley and the kids.

  The helicopter doors open and the crew chief gives us a grinning OK, and for a blissful moment, all tension and troubles and past arguments are forgotten; we rush to our families, and are lost in a blur of hugs and kisses.

  This has all been scripted and planned without our knowledge; it’s a little disorienting, but I can’t complain. Once things have settled down, a suited civilian, someone I hadn’t noticed before, claps me on the back and speaks in my ear. “The president wanted to make sure you had a chance to see your families first.”

  “Give the president our thanks,” I tell him.

  The man chuckles. “You’ll see him soon enough.”

  •••

  We spend the next few hours catching up over lunch at the officer’s club, which has been cleared out for us. There’s still no press, and no president. Joan chatters on and on, filling us in on the details of the deception, the benevolent plotting that went in to making all these arrangements, the packing of suitcases for us back home, the planning for a couple days of vacation for us and the wives, with the kids packed back off to Houston.

  There is a last battery of tests at the medical clinic. I generally feel normal, but once, when walking down a long hallway, I find myself drifting off towards the right-side wall without realizing it.

  We change from our flight overalls into civilian clothes; they’re mine, but the fit is strange and loose. Then we’re whisked into a caravan of cars. There’s a smattering of press outside the gates of the base, but no stopping to acknowledge them.

  •••

  The ride takes an hour, takes us up, up, up into the Santa Ynez mountains, and again outside the gates of the president’s ranch there are a few newsmen and cameras, but we do not stop.

  The president’s property is beautiful, rolling grassy pastures and trees, and then a cute little adobe ranch house and stable, like something out of a Steinbeck novel. The president and Nancy greet us under the awning out front.

  “Welcome to Rancho del Cielo,” he says with a warm movie-star smile and handshake.

  “Heavenly Ranch?” Kerwin says.

  “Or ‘Ranch of the Skies.’ Although I guess you two have seen more of the heavens than most of us ever will in this life.”

  “It feels like heaven to me,” Nancy says. “When we realized we were going to be spending some time out east, we knew we’d need a little place to get back to. We’d had our eyes on this property for a little while, and we just had to get it.”

  “A California White House, huh?” Kerwin says. “Just like the Texas White House?”

  “There’s only one White House,” the president says, warmly but firmly. “That one’s the people’s house. This one’s our house.”

  “Well, it’s a pleasure to be here,” I say. It is really a gorgeous little place; for as much as I’ve been looking forward to getting back home, I have to admit it’s nice to have a little diversion, a little distraction, another little place to explore.

  “How are you feeling?” the president asks, and it does sound like he really wants to know.

  “Mostly back to normal,” I say, and Joe nods.

  “Well, if you’re up for it, we can go up and watch the sunset.”

  We pile back into the cars and drive up, up, up some more, and then where the road gets rough we get out and walk a bit. Gravity feels more or less normal now, but we do stop for a couple breaks.

  “Hope you don’t mind the little walk,” the president says the second time we stop.

  “Not at all, Mr. President.”

  “I’d have saddled up the horses, but I wasn’t sure you’d be up for that.”

  “It is nice to stretch the legs a bit.” I force a smile, although it is true. “And I’ve been on my share of hikes, back in the West Point days.”

  “West Point.” He smiles warmly. “I played a West Pointer once.”

  “I remember,” I smile. “Santa Fe Trail. You were…George Custer.”

  “Hopefully not an omen,” Nancy says.

  “I was a kid when that came out…but that woman. Your love interest, whoever that was. Beautiful.”

  Joan gives me a look.

  “Olivia de Havilland,” Reagan says. “It was a fun shoot, most of the time. We had a graduation scene. The costume department put us in that grey coat with all the buttons. Worst costume I ever had! I tell you, I’ve gotta give you credit just for wearing that thing more than once. Those were some uncomfortable uniforms.”

  I chuckle. “That they were, Mr. President.”

  “Beautiful place, though, that school,” Reagan says.

  “I haven’t seen any place prettier,” I tell him. “Although this is up there.”

  And then at last we are at the summit of one of the peaks, looking around in wonder at the magnificent views, and I am catching my breath, and it does feel good, amazingly good to be out and about.

  “I always think of Psalm 121 when I’m up here,” the president says. “I look to the hills, from whence cometh my strength. My help cometh from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth.”

  It is a lovely sentiment, but I can’t help thinking there’s something more, a line he’s waiting to deliver. But it’s too beautiful now to think about the future; the sun is dipping low, down the mountain range to the west, casting long and exquisite shadows across the low points of the rumpled and beautiful California terrain, all golden and green and gorgeous, and there are just enough clouds over there that you can look straight at the sun now; it looks like it does in one of those Japanese prints, far different than I’ve seen it in quite some time, and different than it is: large and fat and orange, warm and mellow and forgiving.

  •••

  In the morning we wake and head out to the terrace.

  Yesterday’s clear air is gone, replaced now by morning California mountain haze; it obscures the distant vistas and softens and flattens the trees; it lingers in the folds of pasture and wafts across the mirrored surface of the pond out back.

  Joe and I sit drinking coffee while we wait for the president. It is difficult to believe we were in space for a year, difficult to believe it’s over, difficult to believe everything.

  “I’m still upset I couldn’t get the film back inside,” I tell him.

  “On the water EVA?”

  “No. The one with Shepard. I tried to get the second canister in, the one from after the flyby.”

  Joe shakes his head a little. “I didn’t know you were gonna try.”

  “I didn’t tell you. I knew you’d say no.”

  “You know…” (He smiles.) “…it probably wouldn’t have mattered. The amount of high-energy radiation we got, the film would’ve been degraded. There might’ve been some images still, but very cloudy.”

  “Hmm…so the other stuff, the stuff that we took with the Hasselblad?”

  “Might be the same,” he says. “Those rolls were with us in the manned module, right? They got all the radiation we got. These may end up being the most disappointing set of vacation photos ever taken.”

  I’m disjointed, disbelieving; I do want to find an excuse to hope. “Those ones might’ve been more protected…we had some stowed away…”

  He shrugs and smiles. “I guess we’ll find out, huh?”

  The president comes out of the house, coffee mug in hand. Joe and I stand and offer our good mornings. He gives a little gesture like he appreciates the courtesy but doesn’t need it, and we all settle back down.

  “Well, I have to tell you, there’s a little bit of business I wanted to discuss here,” he says. “And I guess I should get righ
t to it. We’re cancelling the Apollo program.”

  Joe and I sit there, slack-jawed.

  “It’s been a tremendous set of missions, and a great honor to the country. You’ve raised all of our sights as to what man can accomplish. But it’s also been a big government expense, a costly set of missions. We’ve done what we needed to do with it, so it’d be a waste to spend more on it. It’s time to focus on making space exploration safer and more cost-effective.”

  “This is…quite a surprise, Mr. President,” I say at last.

  “Short of Alan Shepard, I know you two have sacrificed the most for this program. I know you want that to mean something. And it does.” He pauses to let us know this is real. “But it’s time for a new beginning. There’s plans for a space shuttle, a reusable vehicle that won’t have to be thrown away after every mission. They tell me it’ll be able to launch commercial payloads and bring down the cost of space exploration. And we’ll have greater capabilities for military missions. We can launch from here, from Vandenburg, overfly the Soviet Union, and be home in ninety minutes.”

  It is difficult to believe that I’m hearing what I’m hearing, but I am, in fact, hearing it. I glance over at the adobe wall. There’s a bronze plaque which reads: ON THIS SPOT IN 1776, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING HAPPENED.

  “The Apollo program is…there’s a lot that hasn’t been done yet, Mr. President,” Joe says. “Mars flybys, the space station…”

  “It’s time for a new beginning,” the president says. “The rockets we have, the multiple stages, it’s like…throwing away a limousine and buying a new one every time you go to the store. We need to be more cost-effective. Anyway, I wanted to tell you two before we make the announcement.”

  I am not sure what else to say. The decision has been made. The man is, after all, our boss.

  •••

  We spend the rest of the day exploring the ranch. Joan and I go for a couple walks, looking at the stable house, the placid little pond, the strands of trees. We talk about my father, and our future. My mind is elsewhere.

  In the afternoon, we are packing up, back into the cars for the ride down the mountain.

  This time, there is a press conference at Vandenburg, out on the tarmac, a podium and flags and a roped-off set of photographers. The sun is dropping towards the Pacific. I look for Venus but I cannot see her; I remember at last that she’s ahead of us now, orbitally, no longer the evening star.

  There is a speech. The president goes on about sunsets and sunrises, and new mornings to come. My mind is elsewhere.

  •••

  We fly back to Houston, an excruciatingly long flight across the darkening country.

  By midnight I am back at home, and nothing feels real. There is that sense when seeing the familiar after a long interval, that feeling of: has it always looked this way? Then comes the depositing of bags, the slobbering greetings from deliriously excited dogs, the touring of rooms to see new posters of new rock stars. And once that’s done, I slip out back.

  Alone in the backyard, I look above the trees at the distant stars, at the waning crescent moon, and a distant red spot: Mars.

  •••

  We spend a week in debriefings, separately and together, going over the mission in rigorous detail, setting down facts and opinions and recollections, getting it all down before memory fades and time takes its toll on our minds. It is important that nothing should be lost.

  I’m expected to write a full report as well. I get started on it in between meetings; I try to work on it at the end of the workday. I don’t feel like I have the right to go home without making some progress on it, and I miss several dinners as a result, much to Joan’s consternation. But I do not make much progress. I make several false starts and spend many minutes staring at the blank paper curled over the typewriter rollers. I do not know what to say.

  There is talk of this new program, this space shuttle, and a few people are enthusiastic about it, but the overwhelming sense is one of despair; there are no flights on the schedule any more, no moon landings or Mars flybys. Someone mentions to me that I’m lucky, that I at least made it somewhere else, and this mission which had seemed like a dead end was, in fact, the best thing anybody’s going to get for a while.

  I do not feel lucky.

  •••

  One night, I do not go home, but instead drive to the Shepards’ place, which I still think of as the Shepards’ place, even though it is now just Louise’s.

  There is a ceremony scheduled for the end of the week, a small private ceremony for the NASA community, but I want to talk to her before that. They don’t (or rather, she doesn’t) live with us, in the nice low ranch houses under the live oaks; Shepard had picked up a place in a high-rise downtown, an expansive place with sweeping views of the city.

  On the way, I stop at the bar for a drink or two. I know I need to talk to her; I know I need to face this. I do not want to do it alone.

  Then, at last, the final drive, the parking lot, the doorman, the call upstairs, the interminable wait for the elevator, the final walk down the hallway, the knock on the door.

  She looks awful; she looks like she’s aged a decade, at least. She welcomes me in, and we sit and have a drink.

  “We did all we could,” I say. “He and I had a few arguments, here and there, but at the end of the day, we were all in it together, and we all did everything we could. He spoke of you often. The last conversation I had with him, you were on his mind. He said…” I do not know what to say; I do not think I should recollect it all, or paraphrase his thoughts. “He said a lot.”

  She does not say anything to this but just nods, grimly and appreciatively.

  “When we were cleaning up his effects, right before reentry, I found this.” I hand her the envelope, slightly crumpled but still sealed, with LOUISE on the outside in his unmistakable handwriting; I realize now it was the last thing he ever wrote.

  She accepts the envelope and thanks me, but does not open it. I finish my drink and leave.

  •••

  There are publicity tours and speeches again. Life dissolves into takeoffs and landings, car convoys to hotels, hurried changing into evening wear, dinners with mayors and presidents, and an audience with the pope. And, with Joan, drinking and arguments and ultimatums.

  •••

  On our first trip back to Acapulco, we fight late into the night. We’ve been married over twenty years, but I don’t know if I can make it another month. I am thinking about a woman, a woman I met a year before the mission. I am still wondering if I made a mistake, if she is behind me or ahead of me now.

  I am scheduled to dive the next morning, a little charter boat with a couple tourists. We chat a little; it seems they’re all from the high Great Plains, from Saskatchewan and Winnipeg and Calgary, down here to bake in the Mexican sun until the Canadian cold is no longer even a memory. I don’t tell them who I am; I turn back to the bright sun on the blue waters, and swallow aspirin until my stomach hurts as much as my head.

  Still I am thinking of conversations, with Joan and the other woman, replaying them in my mind, what I said and what they said and what I should have said. There is some distraction in the inspection of equipment, aluminum tanks and glass gauges and black rubber tubing, but soon enough, that is done and we are sitting on the back of the boat and again I am thinking, thinking, thinking.

  Only the water brings relief; we push off the back of the boat, and there is the blessedly strange and familiar sensation of floating, all the once-heavy equipment now moving loosely. And then at last, pressing the button for the buoyancy compensator, the beautiful hiss of air in those seconds before your ears go underwater, and then a new world, water and bubbles and silence.

  I cannot stay down there forever.

  •••

  Back home, there are days when I don’t get out of bed and I don’t know why.

  There are trips to the hospital, reluctant consultations with doctors and psychiatrists, pills and
shocks, bright fearful days wandering sterilized hallways. I talk about many things with the doctors; I talk about Joan and the other women I’ve loved, and the Earth, and Venus; I talk about my father and my mother and the sun and the moon.

  I do not talk about the drinking.

  •••

  We move to Los Angeles. Our new house is out in the mountains; there is more space here, space for explorations and wanderings and still more animals.

  I write, I think, I work. I try selling myself; I try many things.

  It doesn’t make a difference. The house is larger than we can afford. There is never enough money. I find myself thinking about Shepard and all his dealings, about the oil wells, how he would have made out like a bandit in late ’73 when the embargo hit. I do not know why the simple things that are so easy for others are so hard for me: marriage, money.

  These things proceed on their inevitable trajectory. I just don’t know what to do with myself.

  On my first night alone in the house, I am afraid of being asleep, afraid of being alone. I wander outside and stare at the stars and think and think and think. It is colder than I expected up here in the hills this time of year. I do not know what I am doing; I do not know if I want to avoid sleep, or just delay it until it hits like a hammer and I don’t have to lay there in bed and think. I start up the coffee pot and brew a full urn; I drink Irish coffee late into the night, a sad confused mixture that offers temporary warmth.

  •••

  I am in a meeting. These people are here because they want to stop drinking, or because they have stopped and want to help others stop.

  I am not sure if I want to be here, or if I just don’t know where else to go. I have been experimenting with different career paths: serving on corporate boards, doing endorsements, writing books, and somehow now I am selling cars at a dealership on La Cienga. I’ve remarried and re-divorced. And through it all, there’s been drinking.

  Someone told me that this may, in fact, have something to do with my other problems. I’m doubtful. But I just don’t know what to do with myself, so here I am.

  The room is somehow both decrepit and clean: floorboards that have been worn down and waxed and worn down and waxed again, rickety metal folding chairs, Chairman Mao-sized posters of the two founders, lists of steps and traditions in red and black lettering, an ancient Bunn-O-Matic coffee machine that smells like it’s burned so many pots it should have a kill tally on the side. The sugar’s clumped up in a glass and metal shaker; the creamer’s in a cardboard canister, which means of course that it is that powdered crap. But if it’s this, or no caffeine, I’ll take this.