Satellite

by Nick Lake

  “yeah.”

  “starboard x-axis.”

  “thanks.”

  there’s an androgynous peripheral assembly on the end of each of the station’s arms, a hatch that pairs with an identical 1 on my mother’s docking module—either of them can be active or passive, depending on what’s needed, & every ship the Company builds has the same ones, so anything can dock with anything else. it’s pretty clever.

  “on my way,” i say into the intercom.

  “figured u would be,” says Virginia.

  i cut thru the garden, half expecting to c Libra there, working on her plants, but i guess she’s still asleep. i roll around a corner & into the starboard side of the x-axis crossarm—i flex my legs to bounce off a wall of bare panels, using my feet to redeploy my momentum in a new direction, the inertia carrying me straight thru a hatch & a spectrometer module. i cross 2 more experimental modules & then i’m at the hatch.

  the air lock is closed, waiting. a transparent door secured by a rotating safe-style lock, like when Wile E. Coyote tunnels into a bank vault. beyond it is a space 6 ft. long, full of pumps that can make it a vacuum or a room full of air, depending.

  & beyond that is the hatch door, the APA—it just looks like a ring of hooks & latches & attachments, which is precisely what it is.

  everything closed, everything waiting.

  except me, i realize suddenly. i’m not closed. i’m open, & it’s going to get me hurt. so i flush my air lock—suck all the hope out of myself until i’m a vacuum inside, no feelings—& then i’m ready for my mother.

  in fact i try not to think of her at all. i focus instead on pretending that i’m going out for another EVA, a real 1 this time. instead of a ship docking, we’re using the APA to let me out, so i open the air-lock door & step thru, & when i’m in there i lower the helmet onto my suit & it automatically fastens into place, & i check my air & twist the rotating locks on my gloves & then i raise a hand to the vidlink terminal & give Virginia the command to dump the air, before opening the—

  hatch, which at that moment clicks & hisses, on the other side of the air lock, taking me out of my daydream. the station’s x-axis is currently facing vertical to the earth, so i’m looking down at the door my mother will come thru.

  then the central part opens, radially, like an old-fashioned camera shutter, & i can c right thru the air lock & into the repurposed Soyuz module that has brought my mother & Flight Officer Brown up here. i c them too, but at an odd angle, still strapped into their seats.

  “docking successful,” says Virginia, over the whole station speaker system. “welcome to Moon 2, officers. welcome back, i should say.”

  there’s movement in the module, & then after what seems like a really long time but is probably minutes, i c the 2 astronauts come clumsily swimming out, like sea creatures in suits of blubber, rising out of the deep. they hold on to the sides of the hatch & 1 by 1 pull themselves into the air lock, where they take hold of handrails & wait, still in their helmets & full EVA gear.

  “please wait a moment while i bring atmospheric pressure in line with the station,” says Virginia.

  “10-4,” says 1 of the astronauts, revealing himself to be Flight Officer Brown—it’s hard to c into the smooth, shiny visors of the helmets.

  there’s a loud hiss, & streams of vapor start to pour into the air lock, as it fills with oxygen & nitrogen. i wave thru the door separating us & 1 of the astronauts waves back.

  Flight Officer Brown.

  it takes time for the air to fill the empty space. try it. breathe out, breathe all the air from ur lungs. then tank them up again. then imagine ur lungs are a space 6 ft. by 6 ft.

  hiss.

  hiss.

  hiss.

  then i feel a hand on my shoulder & turn to c Orion, floating behind me. he grabs a handle to pull himself into position next to me.

  “hey,” i say. “u’re up.”

  “hard not to be, when Virginia’s shouting over the speakers,” he says. but he’s smiling.

  “thanks,” i say.

  he shrugs. “doesn’t happen every day,” he says. which kind of summarizes our whole childhood experience with our mothers in 1 sentence.

  “Libra?” i say.

  he shakes his head.

  “asleep?”

  “no. thinking about Mo— about our mother.”

  “yeah,” i say. “i get it.”

  i do. i know she wishes her own mother was coming. i know Orion does too, tho he’s being nice & generous about it because nice & generous is what he is.

  hell, even i wish their mother was coming. or that my mother was a different mother. i don’t know.

  “14 lb/sq-in environmental pressure achieved,” says Virginia over the speakers. “u may step out of ur suits & prepare to board the station.”

  my mother & Brown start to unclip their gloves & helmets.

  “shall we?” says Orion. he yanks on the handle he’s holding & the force floats him to the door. he puts his hands on the lock & i c the veins in them, the tendons, the strength. i am not looking forward to this. at the same time i am looking forward to this because what my mother & Brown are here for, among other things, is to take us home.

  to earth.

  to gravity.

  to birds.

  to sky & air & the smell of bonfires & leaves underfoot & the feel of grass against skin & a million other things.

  i hit the intercom next to me. “hey, Virginia. Orion’s here with me. u want us to open the hatch?”

  “sure.”

  my mother & Brown have taken off their suits now & are facing us in white t-shirts & underwear—it gets hot in a space suit. my mother, of course, is un-self-conscious about it. she would have to have a self to be conscious about, & she has logic gates in place of doors inside her. she just hovers there, watching me & Orion, as if we’re interesting species of fish.

  not Brown—he is doing a sort of awkward self-hugging thing. cold, maybe, too, i guess.

  Orion & i take opposite ends of the wheel lock & spin it counterclockwise, which sounds easy but actually it’s pretty hard to turn. muscles raise in his arms. we rotate it 3 full revolutions & there’s a click & a shhhh sound & it sighs open. we reach behind us, grab handrails, & pull ourselves—& the door—back.

  it swings open & my mother comes thru, Flight Officer Brown behind her.

  “Leo,” she says.

  “Mother.”

  she looks the same. no more lines or wrinkles than when i last saw her. smooth dark skin. those big eyes that make her so beautiful in images but so disconcerting in person, because there is nothing behind them; they are like the portals of the station, only u look for stars & u don’t c them.

  “u’ve grown.” she pauses. “i suppose that’s what u do.”

  “me specifically?” i ask.

  “children.”

  “hmm. i’m not a child anymore tho.”

  she tilts her head. “technically, yes, u are.” she is a very literal person, my mother.

  “yes, technically. but that’s not—”

  “where’s Duncan?” she says, interrupting me. “bridge? i want to check on the status of the cargo ship.”

  “um. yes. Virginia? yes, she’s on the bridge.”

  there’s a moment of silence. Orion looks at me. Brown, who is now on our side of the door & pressing himself into the paneled wall, looks at both of us.

  “well, come on, then,” says my mother. “cargo’s due to dock in 3 hours. the first unmanned supply vehicle to leave earth & rendezvous with the station in history. this is a significant moment.”

  Orion squeezes my forearm. i let the air out of my lungs.

  it has been 11 months since i last saw my mother.

  “ok, Mother,” i say.

  “i prefer Chief Officer Freeman when we’re on station,” she says, deftly slipping past me as if she has been in 0 g all this time, as if she hasn’t been down on earth; she swims graceful as a dolphin up the shaft o
f the crossarm toward the conservatory.

  “ok, Chief Officer Freeman,” i say to her departing feet.

  there’s a long pause.

  “um, hi,” says Flight Officer Brown, looking embarrassed. “nice to meet u.”

  i follow my mother, with Orion & Flight Officer Brown keeping up behind me. or Orion keeping up anyway; this is Brown’s first time in 0 g, apart from training simulations, & he is bashing against things as he makes his way thru the station.

  we stop at 1 of the first modules, where there are bright orange jumpsuits. my mother selects 1 for her & 1 for Brown & they pull them on.

  when we reach the bridge Virginia mock salutes, but my mother doesn’t understand irony, so she nods in recognition. they’ve known each other all my life but u wouldn’t realize it to look at their interaction. Virginia raises her eyebrows at me & i smile behind my mother’s back.

  a few minutes later Brown comes in, dragging himself thru the hatch into the module. he is pale & sweating. he looks like he might pass out at any moment. Orion peeled off when we passed thru the garden—Libra was there & he waved to me as they started to talk about some plant she was inspecting.

  “first time?” says Virginia.

  “yes,” Brown manages.

  “it gets better,” she says. “give it a day or 2. we have some pills too.”

  “thanks,” he says.

  “don’t take the pills,” says my mother. “the quicker ur body realizes u’re in 0 g the better.”

  “oh, i think it realizes,” he says.

  Virginia asks them how their flight went. my mother dismisses her with a gesture—as if to say, we’re here, that’s all that needs to be said about the flight. we’re not raining down on the Atlantic as shards of debris.

  “what’s the ETA of the cargo container?” she says.

  “2 hours 48,” says Virginia.

  “ok,” says my mother. “let’s go thru the manual.” pause. “the manual please, Duncan.”

  pause.

  “oh,” says Virginia, eventually, as if she’s forgotten her surname since yesterday’s sim. i mean, me & Libra & Orion don’t use it. “yes. of course.” she reaches past some screens on a desk & pulls out a folder. inside are sheets & sheets of technical data. mostly print is dead on earth, but on the station, u need it. in case the systems & screens go down. “actually there’s kind of a problem i want to talk to u about,” says Virginia.

  the faulty gyro, i guess. & i frown a question at her.

  she ignores me, looking at my mother instead.

  “u can go,” my mother says to me. she seems to reflect on this. “if u want. u know, play with ur friends.”

  “i’d like to stay,” i say.

  she frowns, genuinely puzzled. “why?”

  “because…” i say. & then i stop, baffled by the size of the question & the impossibility of doing it justice. “because i want to know, & because this is what i want to do,” i say.

  “what is?”

  i point to the blue & green sphere of the earth below us, to the instruments. “this. space.”

  “u want to do space?”

  “yes! i mean, flights. EVAs. the stuff u do.”

  “u want to be an astronaut?”

  “yes.”

  her frown has diminished marginally. “well, ur math grades are good enough, i suppose. i just didn’t think…i didn’t think of u doing anything. i mean u’re just a kid.”

  “i’m growing up. that’s what we do, remember?”

  she looks me over. “yes. yes, i suppose u are.”

  “he’s already got the not-feeling-sick part down,” says Flight Officer Brown, whom i have decided i like, even if he is turning green now.

  “& he did an EVA already,” says Virginia. “& he’s pretty good when it comes to the computers, that idea he had about the frequencies & taking a Fourier transform, it was really—”

  “not an EVA,” says my mother. “a 2-minute exfil from the hatch, then reeled back in like a fish.”

  “it counts!” i say.

  “i’m not denigrating u,” she says. “in fact i’m pleased u…share my interests. it’s just a real EVA is a big deal. dangerous. the levels of preparation…we’ve been planning ours for hundreds of hours: the 1 Flight Officer Brown & i are doing tomorrow, to install the new gyro & the new cooling panel motherboard. & even then, something might go wrong. the slightest misstep & we’ll be dead.”

  at this, Brown looks even more queasy, if that’s possible.

  “so what u’re saying is u don’t want me to die,” i say.

  “well, it would be very inconvenient. imagine the paperwork Boutros would want.”

  is that the ghost of a smile at the corner of her mouth? no. my mother does not joke.

  “anyway, let’s look at these manuals,” my mother says.

  she & Virginia pore over the codes & instructions for more than an hour, going over every detail. Brown floats over to the porthole & looks down on South America, then the ocean, then more ocean, then more ocean.

  “it’s mostly ocean,” i say.

  “i’m gathering,” he says.

  then Virginia beckons me over. she points to the screen. “i’m showing ur mother the vibration g graph. look.” i’m surprised because she was ignoring me earlier when she went over everything with my mother, but maybe she was just waiting for the right time. she’s known my mother years, after all.

  i look. the gyro, the 1 that’s slightly defective, is putting out 0.9 g now, a faint vibration that is running thru the whole ship. nearly enough to trigger an automatic warning.

  “so take it out of law,” says my mother. “like we said in the meeting. if it’s messing up calibration of the cargo container, just remove it from play.”

  “i have,” says Virginia. “we’re on 3 gyros & boosters. & that’s fine for macro adjustments, but it’s really not fine-tuned enough for the small movements we need.”

  “then make the cargo container do the small movements. feed it all into ur data.”

  “i’ve simmed that too, & it just might work. but ur son here had an idea about ascertaining the precise frequency & then—”

  “yes,” says my mother. “the Fourier transform he mentioned in the sim. in theory it seems plausible. why don’t u run it past ground control?”

  so Virginia contacts ground control & tells them the situation.

  “vibration is 0.9 g?” says an engineer named Singh.

  “yes.”

  “any fluctuation?”

  “well, yes, but never above 2 g.”

  “i’m running the sims down here too,” he says. “& it all looks fine to me. too risky to try something untested.”

  my mother shrugs. she pats my arm awkwardly. “it was a good idea,” she says.

  this is in all honesty bewildering to me. usually my mother has only been interested in how i’m doing in my vidlink classes. maybe it’s because i’m going back down to earth with her. maybe it’s made her think about stuff. about me.

  i can always hope.

  20 minutes later, we have eyeballs on the cargo container. well, indirectly: Virginia pulls up an image on 1 of the screens of the big cylindrical object as it slowly climbs up to our altitude.

  –3,200 ft.

  –2,900 ft.

  –2,600 ft.

  Virginia is watching code scroll on about 5 different monitors, moving between them & various joysticks & input terminals, typing in data & commands. basically she’s controlling the station & the cargo container at the same time, or at least feeding inputs to the cargo container, in addition to its automatic sensors, that help it to make minute changes to its speed & angle in order to meet up with us.

  “ok,” she says. “slow & steady. velocity is adjusted; trajectory has docking in 4 minutes.”

  “good work, Duncan,” says my mother.

  “shit,” says Virginia. “shit shit shit.” she is looking at a screen where a graph is spiking, black line pulsing high up the y
-axis, like a SoundCloud file of a rave song.

  “2.5 g,” says my mother. “3 g.”

  Virginia leans on the button that connects us to Nevada. “our outlaw gyro is spinning out,” she says into the microphone. “bearings shot or something, i don’t know, but my h-infinity model is at its limits here.”

  “3.5 g,” says my mother. “3.7 g.” the vibration is now dramatic enough that we can feel it thru the ship—i put my hand on the metal wall & can detect the humming, like when touching 1 of Orion’s tuning forks.

  “it’ll power down automatically at 4 g,” says Singh, from down there on earth, where no one is about to be hit by a giant cargo container the size of a mobile home. in space. with nothing but nothing outside the suddenly flimsy-seeming windows.

  i look at the screen showing the container, the thought of it hitting them.

  the cargo container is getting closer.

  bigger.

  –2,000 ft. reads the screen.

  –1,600 ft.

  “not the point,” says Virginia to Singh. “it’s throwing the whole control system out of whack. & the cargo container used less fuel than we expected, so the sloshing perturbations are bigger than planned for—i’ve tweaked for it, but we’re compensating for a lot here, & the atmospheric drag is pretty high too, so i don’t know if i can bring this thing home, or if it’s just going to—”

  “so stop the cargo container,” says Singh.

  “i can’t stop the cargo container,” says Virginia. “do u have any idea of the inertia of—”

  “yes,” says Singh. “i’m an engineer with INDNAS.”

  INDNAS: aka the Company. formed by the merger of NASA, the Indian space agency, & a private company owned by a guy who pioneered internet shopping & now basically controls the selling of everything, everywhere.

  “ok, ok,” says Virginia. “but it’s a lot & the boosters on the container are not set up to reverse like a town car; they’re set up for small modifications of speed & direction.”

  “u designed the program,” he says. “what do u suggest?”

  “i helped design it. there was a whole team. & u designed the container,” says Virginia. “i suggest u should have installed boosters that rotated thru 180 degrees.”

  my mother moves next to Virginia. “this isn’t helping. Singh. it is Singh, isn’t it? this is a code red, boldface kind of scenario. we need help here & we need it now. cargo container is going to impact in…t minus 1 minute.”