Final Days

by Gary Gibson

  Amy waved Saul over to join them, ordering him to strip down before showing him how to put on a pair of rubber-lined long johns studded with flexible microscopic monitors. Following that, he clambered inside one of the racked spacesuits, which proved to be a one-piece garment entered through a diagonal zip running from the crotch all the way up to one shoulder. A how-to, uploaded to his contacts, described the function of each piece of equipment his suit contained in interminable detail, before guiding him through a full systems check that required him to put on a helmet and pressurize the suit to check for potential leaks or any other problems. Once he had the helmet on, icons appeared along the bottom of its curved interior surface, each bearing a name: Saul, Amy, Mitchell and Lester.

  ‘Jesus,’ exclaimed Amy, when she noticed Saul struggling to remove his helmet a few minutes later. ‘Trust an amateur.’ With a sorrowful look, she helped him unlock it from his suit’s neck ring.

  ‘How does the suit feel?’ she asked.

  ‘Itchy,’ Saul replied. ‘Not very easy to move.’

  ‘Believe me, it’ll be harder once we get to the lunar surface, but we’ll be there to guide you along the way.’ She turned and snapped her fingers at Mitchell, until she had his attention, too. ‘Didn’t you say Saul’s been up in space before?’

  ‘Just a sub-orb jump,’ Mitchell replied, still adjusting the fabric hood he had pulled over his head.

  ‘Right,’ Amy turned back to Saul, ‘well, this time it’s going to be a little different. We’re launching way ahead of schedule as it is, which means you need to be ready for anything.’

  ‘Like what?’

  She patted his shoulder. ‘I wouldn’t want to worry your pretty little head with the grisly details. You’ve got your rubber underwear on, that’s the main thing.’

  Mitchell glanced across at him. ‘Like when we jumped,’ he explained. ‘You have to pee inside your suit, remember?’

  ‘Somehow I’d managed to wipe that detail from my mind,’ Saul grumbled. ‘What about, uh, everything else?’

  ‘There’s a hose attachment for that,’ said Lester, helpfully.

  ‘Just remind me,’ said Saul, now flexing his arms and knees. ‘There are people who actually pay for this experience?’

  Lester started to reply just as a mild tremor rolled through the ground under their feet, lasting several seconds in all.

  ‘I’d better go check on things,’ Amy said quickly.

  Saul watched her hurry away. ‘How much trouble could a tremor like that cause?’ he asked Lester.

  ‘Hard to say.’ Lester shrugged, as he finished climbing into his own suit. ‘Doesn’t take much more than a cracked exhaust pipe or fuel line to cause more trouble than you’d believe. We’ve been very lucky we weren’t forced to postpone the launch a few days more, but the faster we can get up now, safety permitting, the better chance we have of avoiding any trouble.’ He waved a beckoning hand to the both of them. ‘All right, we’re about done here. Keep your suits on and come with me.’

  Saul picked up his helmet and trailed after Mitchell and Lester, down a narrow passageway decorated with images of vintage spacecraft from centuries past. Every step he took in the heavy boots felt as exaggerated and forced as if he were fleeing some nameless dread in a nightmare.

  The flight control room adjoined to the rear of the hangar, and consisted of little more than a low-lit booth with several wall-mounted screens, each showing a different view of the Saturn, either from close up or some considerable distance. Several personnel were crammed into this small space, all of whom greeted Lester by his first name before returning to their tasks. Saul listened to them quietly mutter to each other about liquid fuel ratios and payloads, their eyes fixed on one display or another.

  ‘This is it?’ Saul asked Lester. ‘I thought there’d be more to it.’

  ‘Technically speaking, we don’t even need this room,’ replied Lester. ‘We could run the whole thing through our contacts, if we wanted.’

  ‘Except you need at least a dozen people working together on something this complex,’ said one of the technicians, a narrow-faced woman with blonde hair. ‘And they need to talk to each other constantly. There’s too much that could go wrong, and just slip right by you, if you’re not careful. So run it from your contacts, my ass, Lester.’

  ‘Ginny,’ Lester retorted, in a tone of mocking disapproval.

  She turned round in her seat to face Saul and Mitchell. ‘We’ll be here for the first part of your launch,’ she explained. ‘There are too many variables and things that need to be monitored for us not all to be keeping an eye on things. But as soon as you’re out of orbit and well on your way, we’re heading up ourselves.’

  Saul stared up at the image of the Saturn. ‘And there’s really no room for us on one of the VASIMRs?’

  Ginny just looked at him like he was crazy.

  It took another hour for the launch technicians to run the final safety checks, before it was safe for them to board. Amy returned from her other duties looking hot and tired. She appeared to be even older than Lester, but it was clear they enjoyed tremendous loyalty from their staff. Saul thought he understood why, for there was something about them that seemed as permanent and unchanging as the desert outside. He watched as the Roses took turns in hugging each of their staff in turn, talking over their plans to reunite once they had all reached Copernicus.

  He leaned in towards Mitchell, who sat next to him on a bench at the rear of the booth. ‘They know not to stop once they get to the Lunar Array, right?’ he asked, under his breath. ‘They can’t risk stopping until they reach one of the colonies.’

  Mitchell shook his head. ‘Jeff told them not to stick around Copernicus, put it that way. Listen, while we’re on the subject, I’ve been thinking about your plan to shut down the Array. I’m not sure you’ve thought it through as thoroughly as you could have.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘How many EDP codes did you get hold of?’

  ‘Just the one,’ Saul admitted.

  ‘Maybe you don’t know this, but you’ll need at least two people before you can trigger a wormhole collapse. It’s not something you can do without help.’

  ‘That depends. Why, are you going to help me?’

  ‘Of course I am,’ Mitchell replied. ‘but how the hell do you propose to do it with only one EDP code?’

  ‘I don’t need more than one EDP code, not if one end of the Florida–Copernicus gate falls out of contact with the other. When that happens, everything changes, and the system will accept just the one code for all the colony gates.’

  A look of anger flickered across Mitchell’s face, just for a second, before he repressed it. ‘Are you sure of that?’ he asked.

  ‘t’s the one scrap of hope I have left to hang on to,’ Saul replied, remembering the things Olivia had said about Mitchell and knowing, in that moment, exactly what she had meant.

  A little while later, Saul and Mitchell, accompanied by Lester, Amy and a couple of their technicians, boarded a small bus that carried them towards the Saturn rocket, standing tall and glorious in its gantry. The sky above was a perfect vivid blue, and Saul had the sudden terrible realization that this was the last time he would ever see it. He felt like a man on the way to his own execution.

  The Saturn grew larger, the closer they approached, until Saul realized how immense the thing really was. He vaguely recalled archival footage of the earliest days of the space race: images of eerily similar gantries populated by hard-hatted technicians, and rooms filled with scientists and engineers working with impossibly primitive technology.

  ‘I’m not sure I really believe this thing is anywhere near as authentic as they say,’ Saul muttered quietly to Mitchell.

  ‘Gotta make some concessions,’ said Lester from up front, having obviously overheard everything he’d said. ‘Plus, nobody really wants to get blown up on the pad because of a valve that’s faulty simply because it doesn’t use up-to-date specifications.’
<
br />   ‘So . . .’

  ‘So the onboard computer systems are modern, all other appearances notwithstanding, and the whole thing’s built from similar composites to what they use in VASIMRs.’ He gazed over his shoulder at Saul, elbow resting on the back of a seat. ‘Plus, the original birds only carried three people, not five. The experience is the important thing. It just has to feel authentic, regardless of whether it really is authentic.’

  And it’s the last of its kind, thought Saul. He wondered how the Roses managed to cope; the way they were acting you’d almost think it was any other day, but maybe that was just what they had to do to keep it all together.

  Saul heard a rumble echoing from somewhere behind him, and turned to see one of the VASIMRs taking off at a terrifyingly steep angle. He craned his head to watch as it rose higher and higher, and caught sight of the Moon floating serenely above the top of the gantry.

  As the bus came to a stop by the base of the gantry, they all climbed out, Lester and Amy leading them over to an open elevator platform. A cluster of UP-compatible icons appeared around the elevator as Saul approached, mostly tourist stuff offering him the chance to view interactive information about the launch. Saul decided he’d like that just fine, since pretty much anything that took his mind off what he was about to do seemed like a good thing. Tiny, primary-coloured animations demonstrated the flow of fuel within the tanks, and also their expected trajectory in the seconds and minutes following take-off.

  The elevator swiftly carried the six of them up, before clanging to a halt near the gantry’s peak. Saul looked down through a window towards the ground and swayed slightly, one hand on the rail. It felt as if the land below pulling him back towards it with something more than mere gravity.

  Grief overwhelmed him at that moment with a nearly physical force, as if he were understanding for the first time just how much they were losing. It was as if it fell out of the sky, unexpected as a lightning bolt on a calm spring day, before wrapping itself around his chest and squeezing until he could no longer breathe.

  ‘Easy there,’ he heard Mitchell say to him, as if from very far away.

  ‘I can’t . . .’ Saul gasped.

  Mitchell leaned in close to him. ‘What’s happening out there,’ he whispered, casting his gaze around the bowl of the sky, ‘isn’t what you think it is.’

  What the hell does that mean? Saul wondered. But, before he had the chance to ask, Lester was beckoning him towards the open hatch in the side of the spacecraft, which was reached by a short bridge connecting the gantry to the rocket.

  ‘Get your helmet on and go first,’ said Lester, with a sympathetic expression. ‘Just take your time, and be careful as you go inside.’

  Saul nodded and clicked his helmet into place, then waited a few moments while one of the two technicians, a young woman named Sandy, double-checked its seal. Then she and the other technician, an older man named Frank, guided him across the bridge, before helping him climb in through the hatch feet-first.

  Saul carefully manoeuvred himself inside, and felt a surge of claustrophobia as he looked around the dark and cramped interior of the capsule. It looked considerably more primitive than he’d feared.

  A great deal of shuffling and manoeuvring was required as Lester, then Amy, and lastly Mitchell took turns to climb through the hatch. Amy directed Saul to get into one of five reclining acceleration seats – two up front and three behind, each mounted on shock-absorbers. When Frank climbed inside as well, the capsule became almost comically crowded. After a bit more shuffling, Frank carefully strapped first Saul and then Mitchell into two of the three rear couches before hooking them each up to the air supply.

  Saul looked around with a growing sense of dismay as Lester collapsed into one of the two front seats, studying a battered manual held in one hand while he began flipping toggle switches on an instrument panel with the other. Everything here was hard-edged and intensely physical, a direct contrast to the soft, rounded edges of most technology he had encountered throughout his life.

  After a moment Saul’s UP locked into the capsule’s data network, and a series of softly glowing displays, rendered in three dimensions, materialized around both the pilot and the co-pilot seats. He felt himself relax a little, realizing it was like Lester had said – it might look primitive, but appearances could be deceptive.

  He noticed Amy watching him. ‘It looks basic, but only on the surface,’ she said, tapping at a check-list floating in the air before her. ‘Ito;s like Lester said, a lot of what you see here is just for show.’

  Saul nodded in appreciation, working hard not to let her see just how scared he really was. His mouth felt paper-dry, his heart hammering so hard in his chest he wondered if he was in danger of having a stroke.

  Frank finished strapping Lester into the co-pilot’s seat, then performed the same task for Amy before finally exiting the capsule and securing the hatch behind him. A moment later Saul heard Ginny speaking to Lester over a shared A/V link.

  ‘All electrical systems look fine,’ he heard her say, ‘but we should have run a proper pre-launch check on the engines. Shit like that can get you killed.’

  Amy cackled. ‘Any problems with those and I’ll be too busy decorating the desert to worry about them. Just set us a countdown, and we’ll be on our way.’

  ‘Yeah, roger that,’ said Ginny, her voice tense. ‘You’re go for launch in one hour. And . . . good luck. We’ll see you there in a couple of day’s time.’

  ‘That we will, sweetheart,’ Saul heard Lester say with undisguised fondness. ‘Good luck to all of you as well.’

  Amy and Lester spent the better part of the next hour going over a series of interminable system checks. They talked about heat exchangers, fuel mixes, control valves and power assemblies. If Saul had really wanted to know what they were referring to, he could have checked with the how-to, but instead he stared up at the capsule’s ceiling, waiting for it to all be over.

  Once the countdown fell below ten minutes, Saul’s helmet began showing him the last seconds ticking away prior to liftoff. Thirty seconds before the display indicated zero, the capsule lurched very softly, while a crescendo-ing roar grew to such a volume that further thought became almost impossible. The countdown passed zero and they began to climb and, before very long, an invisible block of iron began to press down on Saul. Powerful vibrations shook his couch with such force that his vision blurred.

  ‘Hey, Dumont,’ Amy called over the shared comms, ‘any history of heart problems? Anything like that?’

  Saul struggled to form a coherent answer in the face of what he felt certain was his imminent death. ‘No,’ he finally managed. ‘Not that I know of.’

  ‘Good answer,’ she replied. ‘Because, under normal circumstances, no way in hell we’d have let you get on this boat without six months of medical check-ups and a daily work-out in the gym.’

  ‘He got checked out just fine before we went on our jump,’ Saul heard Mitchell announce.

  That was ten years ago, Saul wanted to say, but his throat refused to form any words.

  Finding he could access a ground-basedvideo feed of their launch through his contacts, he was shocked to see how far the Saturn had already climbed. A pillar of flame billowed out from its engines, nearly overloading the filters of the cameras as they angled upwards to follow their progress.

  The whole craft meanwhile shook with an insane violence. All Saul could do was stare fixedly at the back of Amy’s and Lester’s heads, visible through the clear polycarbonate shells of their helmets, while they continued to throw technicalities at each other with enthusiastic abandon.

  After another minute, a loud metallic boom jerked him hard against his restraints. His heart nearly stopped from sheer fright.

  ‘That’s first-stage separation,’ explained Lester. ‘Second stage kicking in now. And a nice even burn, if I may say so,’ he added with clear approval. ‘We’re doing good, folks. On any other day, I’d be popping champagne corks for
a flight this smooth. So just hang in there.’

  The shuddering began to diminish, and the intense pressure slowly began to abate. Lester had the grace to at least warn him of what was coming next, when the module shook with even more furious force.

  ‘What the hell is going on?’ Saul yelled.

  ‘We’re dumping our second stage now,’ Lester explained. ‘They’re so much dead weight once you’ve used the fuel they contain, so down they go. Check your how-to and you’ll see a live feed of it falling behind us. Only the best for our customers, right, sweetheart?’

  ‘Except he ain’t payin’,’ said Amy. ‘Nothing less than the end of the world’s going to get you a free ride in this firework.’

  Saul distracted himself once more with the how-to, which showed him a cylindrical section of the craft falling behind them, spinning away as it receded. The Earth was falling behind as well, a storm front fast spreading along the North-west Seaboard.

  The roar had now faded, but the air was filled instead with the sound of pinging metal and creaking bulkheads. Saul felt his weight slipping away. His stomach lurched as he remembered his long drop to the ground, years before, and he fought a surge of panic, clenching and unclenching his fists until it passed.

  ‘Not much of a head for heights, has he?’ he heard Amy remark.

  ‘Yeah, well,’ said Mitchell, ‘that’s probably my fault.’

  Before long they were unstrapping themselves and changing out of their spacesuits into loose-fitting overalls handed out by Amy. Lester and his wife kept them both busy after that, occupying their minds with small, routine maintenance tasks; but only those, Saul suspected, unlikely to result in any life-threatening failures.

  Over those first several hours of their journey, he came to know the three of them better than he’d ever really wanted to know any other human being. The cabin was too cramped and space too valuable for anything resembling privacy to be remotely possible, although, when they ate, the food proved to be distinctly more palatable than he might have reasonably expected. It was far from being high cuisine, mostly consisting of reconstituted dried food meant to reflect the diet of the original Apollo astronauts but, for all that, Saul felt considerably calmer after finishing his first meal in zero gravity.