by S. K. Vaughn
The tears came. For Stephen too. It was inevitable, this moment. The circumstances were bizarre, but that was par for the course in the Stephen and May saga. It was hard not to be able to put her mind at ease, to tell her all was forgotten and they could move on to whatever the future held. But he wasn’t certain that would be the truth. He hated himself for it, but he was still deeply stung by their split. It had effectively killed the core of what he’d felt for her, and the pain was so deeply wound up in his insecurities that it was hard for him to think back on some of the things May could not, mercifully, remember.
But despite his profound ambivalence about his past relationship with May, seeing and hearing her in this way strengthened his desire to get her home. In the end, she had been there for him. All he wanted her to know was that he also cared for her—deeply, in fact—and that had never wavered. It was the one thing that remained afloat in a sea of inconsistencies.
“Sorry,” she said, smiling and wiping her eyes. “I don’t mean to make this any harder for you, so I’m going to restrain myself for once. I’m such a blubbering fool these days . . .”
The Hawking II shuddered in the background and the lights around her flickered, throwing her into and out of darkness. When the tremor passed, the fear on her face and the way it made her shrink down like an abused animal tore his heart out.
“As you can see, NASA hasn’t quite gotten the whole engine-sync thing figured out, but it’s improving, thankfully. Everything is a lot better since we reconnected.”
She smiled warmly. Stephen could tell she wanted to say more but was holding back.
“I’m going to sign off now. There’s a tepid bowl of what I like to call ‘almost lasagna’ and a cup of ‘not even close’ tea waiting for me in the galley. Tell Raj that for such an amazing ship, he could have hired a chef or at least a short-order cook to consult on the food. If you ever feel like sending me a message back, I would love it. You don’t have to talk about uncomfortable feelings. Even if it’s to provide an update on pop culture or a review of local cuisine, it would be nice to hear from you, Stephen. Ciao for now.”
The screen went blank, leaving Stephen to endure its deafening silence. He had always thought of May as bulletproof, impervious to the rigors of her lethal profession. But for the first time, he was genuinely afraid for her.
30
Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas
March 3, 2066
Stephen was observing some of his researchers undergoing astronaut training at NASA’s Neutral Buoyancy Lab. A handful of them were going to be part of the landing party, so they were being trained to do their work in Europa’s gravitational environment, which had only a fraction of the strength of Earth’s gravity. Forty feet below the surface of the massive two-hundred-by-one-hundred-foot pool, a mock expedition station had been built, based on the structure that would be transported to Europa via landing vehicle. Lumbering around in EVA suits, Stephen’s researchers practiced their sample collection and analysis, while his engineers worked on setting up the equipment required for NanoSphere deployment. Progress was slow and often comical, but they were gradually getting the hang of it.
Earlier that morning, Raj had asked him, for the umpteenth time, if he wanted to check out the simulator facility. He hadn’t seen it yet, but Raj never shut up about how cool it was. Stephen had a free afternoon for once, so he decided to take Raj up on it. As he walked outside, passing excited tour groups melting in the hot sun, he laughed as he thought about the reason he finally wanted to see the facility after putting it off for so long: May might be there. She had made an impression on him at the mission dinner, but he wasn’t completely sure what it meant. Their exchange had been interesting and funny, but admittedly very odd, even for Stephen’s standards of eccentric behavior.
As he watched a couple pushing a stroller with two screaming toddlers, the idea of romance became more and more ridiculous to him. That was an area in which he had proven to be the worst kind of failure, exhibit A being his first marriage, and he’d pretty much given up on it after the divorce—not to mention the glaring fact that he and May were basically from different planets. Yet there he was, strolling with purpose across the Space Center campus, suddenly interested in the flight simulator. You overthink everything, idiot, he told himself. Even if you’re interested in seeing May, what difference does it make? You bend over backward to hang out with Raj, going bowling of all things, and never think twice about that.
“Dude, finally!” Raj yelled from behind him. “I’ve been trying to get you in here for weeks. Why the sudden change of heart?”
“Why do you have to give me a heart attack?” Stephen said, deflecting. “Jesus, you know better than that, you goon.”
“My bad. Anyway, glad you could come,” Raj said, slapping Stephen on the back.
He took Stephen into the simulator control center first. “Cool—we’re in luck. They’re doing a training session,” he said.
May and her first officer, Jon Escher, were piloting the landing-pod simulators. The simulator operator turned on the video and audio feed so Raj and Stephen could watch their flow. He also turned on their view. The rendering of the Europa environment looked so real that Stephen felt as though he were there. The shimmering ice shelf, with its dark fissures in the dim sunlight, was ethereal and foreboding.
“Pretty cool, right?” Raj said, punching his arm.
“Shut up,” Stephen said, concentrating on the simulator screen, and on May.
“Landing Pod Nine entering Europa atmosphere in T-minus sixty seconds,” May said calmly. “Watch your entry angle, Jon.”
Stephen knew how important the landing-vehicle training was, as they would be doing the maneuver several times while the Hawking II orbited Europa. The research crew would need to be ferried back and forth, along with their equipment. Landing on Europa was going to be very tricky. They knew it had a very slight atmosphere, but they had no practical experience navigating it, and then there was the fact that they had to land on a shelf of ice, some of it potentially unstable.
“That guy Jon is a total douche,” Raj whispered to Stephen. “Thinks he’s God’s gift.”
“Yep, vectoring right on the nose,” Jon said confidently.
“Adjust vessel attitude for more drag and potential wind shear,” May replied.
“I’m pretty flat—”
“Not flat enough, Jon.”
The simulator operator raised his eyebrows knowingly at Raj.
“Your boy’s about to get served again,” Raj said to him, laughing.
“Yep,” the man replied.
The simulator loaded a high-pressure water vapor plume that shot nearly 125 miles high. May quickly adjusted, and after a jackhammer ride through the atmosphere, she landed her vehicle softly on the planet surface.
“Like flying a hang glider in a hurricane,” Raj said to Stephen. “She’s all kinds of good.”
Jon, on the other hand, lost control of the vehicle, which nose-dived into a death spiral he did not have the power to pull out of and crashed, killing everyone on board. Stephen shuddered. Those dead people could have been his researchers.
“Shit,” Jon said. He looked like a teenage boy who’d been caught smoking in the bathroom.
“To say the very least,” Stephen said angrily.
“Jon,” May said over the comm.
“I know, I know,” he said, attempting to placate her.
“You know what?” she asked, not buying it.
“I fucked it up. Again.”
“Do you know your failure percentage?”
“No. But I’ll get this dialed in, I promise.”
“I know,” she said evenly, “because if you don’t, you’ll be replaced. You’ve fallen well below the acceptable range. Simply telling me you’ll improve isn’t good enough anymore. Flight is watching us closely. They read our performance reports every day. It’s a matter of policy that you’ll be replaced if you aren’t able to perform in the above-aver
age range for the duration of training. That means you are fresh out of fuckups, cowboy. You copy?”
“Copy.”
Stephen could see Jon was still placating, waiting for her to get off his back. “You’re right, Raj. Total douche.”
“Jon, have you ever lost someone important to you? Someone who died?” May asked.
“My father.”
“When did he die?”
“Three years ago.”
“And when did it hit you that you were never, ever going to see him again?”
“Damn,” Raj said.
“Quiet,” Stephen snapped.
“What kind of fucking question is that?” Jon asked angrily.
“It’s the kind of question I like to ask pilots who seem to have no regard for their own mortality and that of others—pilots who believe they’re invincible and can do no wrong. How many times do you think I’ve had to ask that question, Jon?”
“I don’t know.”
“Four,” May said. “Do you know what they said?”
“No.”
“The same thing you just said. Can you guess where they are now?”
“Dead?”
“That’s right,” May said. “I’ve had this conversation with four dead men. They didn’t listen to my instructions either. Do you think you can be different from them, Jon?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Then start acting like it. Because you’re going to be responsible not only for your life but for the lives of many others. Imagine if what happened in the simulator happened on Europa—if you killed yourself and other people on board. You could potentially put the rest of us in danger, maybe even endanger the entire mission. Not to mention the fact that, like you, people back home would have to live with never seeing their loved ones again. They wouldn’t even have anything to bury, because the force with which you hit that planetary surface would have left no recoverable remains. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Yeah,” he said, finally somewhat broken.
“Yes, ma’am,” she corrected.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“How about a coffee, and we’ll give it another shot?”
“Sure, that sounds—” he started.
“I take mine with two creams and two sugars. Hurry back.”
“Served,” Raj said. “She’s amazing.”
I know, Stephen thought.
31
“Reactor at nearly 82 percent capacity. Engines functioning normally. Congratulations, May. You have your ship back,” Eve said, playing a sound effect of a crowd going wild.
May sat on the bridge, breathing a sigh of relief as she surveyed the star field through her flight deck window. Somewhere out there was Mars, then home. Since sending her message to Stephen, she’d heard nothing in return. Of course, it was foolish to expect anything, especially under the circumstances. The fact that Robert Warren had allowed a personal message in the first place had been a miracle in itself. She could only imagine how difficult it must be for Stephen to stay in the mix with NASA being in rescue mode. Nevertheless, it made her feel a little melancholy.
“Thank you, Eve,” she said, forcing a smile. “I’m just going to kick back and let someone else do the driving for a change. Might even take myself out on a date. Go to a movie in our cinema module. I haven’t had a chance to enjoy that yet.”
“Actually, May,” Eve said, “now that we’re back on course, NASA has assigned you a fairly long and detailed list of tasks, in order of priority.”
“Right. Shortest vacation ever. Dare I even ask what’s first?”
“Full medical evaluation.”
“Terrible idea. Skip to the next.”
“I’m afraid not. It’s a direct order from Flight. They want to run a battery of physical and psychiatric evaluations. I can assist you.”
“You just ran my blood. Can’t I send that?”
“No, they want new samples, with video verification.”
“Really? What do they think, I’m going to cheat?”
“That was the directive. Sorry, May.”
They don’t trust me, she thought. Sole survivors never got fanfare, just questions and suspicions. She could only imagine the scenarios Robert Warren was entertaining. “We need to know what we’re dealing with,” he might say.
Oh God, they definitely don’t trust me.
“Eve, we haven’t yet done a body count in the landing-vehicle hangar. I need to do a bio-code inventory and prepare the deceased for interment.”
“Your physical and psychological evaluation—”
“Can wait. As commander, my first priority is to my passengers and crew, and I need to finally account for all of them.”
To hell with them. They can wait, she thought as she suited up outside the landing hangar airlock. Not them. Him. Robert. Prick. Glenn probably wants to break his jaw by now, prancing around the place like he knows anything about anything.
“We need to get this hangar fixed pronto, Eve. I don’t want to have to suit up and go into a meat locker every time I need to prep my vehicle for Mars.”
“Agreed. Mission Control is expecting to be able to do that as soon as they finish work on the reactor, with your assistance of course.”
“Of course. I can’t wait to see the rest of the list.”
Back in the frozen darkness of the hangar, May floated for a beat, allowing herself to adjust to the abject terror the place inspired in her. And then there was the god-awful cold. May imagined it as icy black tendrils, long and thin, creeping along the edges of her suit, looking for an opening to get under her skin and into her bones. Better to keep moving.
“Landing lights.”
Eve switched on the landing-vehicle lights. May gulped air and tried to calm her mind when the floating bodies appeared, some only a few feet from her.
“Okay, everyone, roll call.”
Every crew member wore a uniform with a bio code chip embedded in the fabric over the right breast. The code in the chip contained everything in the owner’s personnel data file. The camera in May’s helmet had a code scanner. She swam to the nearest body and got down to the grim affair of counting bodies and photographing faces. It immediately brought back the trauma of what had happened when she’d first found them. She couldn’t look at the ruined skin on their faces for too long or she might throw up again. And the fear was as invasive as the brutal cold. It bombarded her with irrational thoughts. May got through it by reminding herself that doing it was not only a service to the deceased, but also a reinforcement of her competence for NASA. She wanted them to be quite clear that she was capable of completing the mission with the professionalism and decorum required of her station.
Gallagher, Matthew. Payload commander. He’d been floating around the airlock door, minding his own business, bloated and dead. Boring Matt. Dead boring Matt.
“What a mess, Eve,” May said as she continued on.
“A tragedy of massive proportions. Statistically untenable.”
“What’s NASA saying about it? Are you hearing chatter?”
“Director Warren is trying to contain information so it does not go to the press.”
“You can call him Director Wanker now.”
“I’m assuming that’s a nickname created by you?”
“And earned by him. Do they say anything about me?” May asked, not expecting an answer.
“They’ve asked me to monitor you closely.”
May was momentarily shocked by Eve’s honesty.
“I’m not surprised. I suppose it makes sense under the circumstances.”
“Not to me,” Eve said. “Suspicion is not based on fact; it is based on speculation. When I asked them why they wanted me to watch you, they did not have a sufficient reason. My only conclusion is that they are speculating. Which, admittedly, is speculation itself.”
May laughed at what sounded like light moral outrage from Eve.
“I appreciate your candor. And you’re spot-on. Human beings are c
ompelled to add their personal prejudices and stories to everything. As a pilot, that’s been trained out of me. So you don’t have to worry about me getting lost in needless speculation—at least, not that often, and definitely not out loud.”
“That’s a relief.”
When May was finished, having scoured every inch of the pod hangar, she’d accounted for thirty-one people. Two people were missing: Jon Escher, May’s pilot, and Gabi Dos Santos, her flight engineer. She went to the supply module to check the hypothermic casket stack, a tall, grid-like structure that looked like the cross section of a metallic wasp hive. It contained a pearlescent interment container for everyone on board.
“They’re all empty, and none are missing,” May said angrily. “Could they have simply jettisoned the bodies of Jon and Gabi as part of quarantine?”
“There would have been no need for that. The hypothermic caskets saturate the body with ozone before freezing, killing all pathogens and parasitic organisms.”
“Great—so the bodies are on board somewhere, waiting to pop out of a bulkhead and scare the living daylights out of me.”
After a quick shower, May reported to the infirmary for NASA’s annoyingly comprehensive panel of tests. She’d been through the physical so many times that it was routine. The only awful part of it was having to go through it with the ship’s robotic flight surgeon unit. She had always hated the fact that it looked like a stubby phone booth with a screen for a face. Under its smooth metal skin, which opened in front, usually without warning, were its “guts”—tubes, wires, sensors, prods, and all manner of surgical implements. The whole thing smacked of design done by a team of antisocial geeks who clearly didn’t care who or what poked around their bodies. To make things even worse, it had its own horrible geek-given “acro-name,” as May liked to call it: ROSA, Remote Onboard Surgery Assistant. It looked nothing like a Rosa, so May just called it Igor.