Smoke, Mirrors and Deep Space

by Mary Quijano



  Smoke, Mirrors and Deep Space

  by

  Mary Quijano

  Copyright 2012 Mary Quijano

  * * *

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  First Edition License Notes

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to wherever you bought it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

  * * *

  Table of Contents

  1. Space

  2. Mission Control

  3. Trouble

  4. Big Trouble

  5. Awakening

  6. Memories and Dreams

  7. Uriel

  8. Space Dream, Stage One

  9. Gena, Preflight

  10. Rendezvous

  11. Gena, after

  12. Ray’s Predicament

  13. Ray Gets Gena a Job

  14. Meanwhile Back in Space

  15. Gena and Ray…and Andy Too

  16. More Space Dreams

  17. And Awakens Again

  18. Alex Finds Out What’s Up

  19. Daddy’s Boy, a Retrospective

  20. Defending His Life?

  21. The Academic Life

  22. Gena the Teacher

  23. Gena and The Prom Queen

  24. The McCormicks Move to Nasa

  25. The Astronauts’ Wives Club

  26. Personal Reflection and Refraction

  27. Whatever Happened to Ray?

  28. The Name of The Game

  29. Whatever Happened to Baby Alex?

  30. It’s About Time

  31. Past Choices

  32. Just Dinner

  33. So Now What?

  34. Awakening 2

  35. The Pi Factor

  36. Epilogue

  * * *

  1. Space

  COMMANDER ALEX MCCORMICK, astronaut, looked up from the blinking and glowing panel of buttons, levers and gauges that encircled the pilot’s chair of his Interplanetary

  Space Vehicle, raising his eyes to the central viewing screen overhead: And gasped despite himself. He quickly closed his mouth into a firm line, but could not stem the unbidden welling of tears that filled his dark blue eyes, making them temporarily bright with a barely contained excitement bordering on ecstasy, an emotion which mocked his outward show of control and composure, a tiny chink in his perfect armor of professionalism.

  This is… There aren’t words, no words at all. My God, my God; it’s beyond all—who could ever imagine this magnificence, this splendor. And the scale! It’s, it goes on…forever.

  “A - fucking - mazing,” he said aloud, as more appropriate to his image. He swallowed down the huge lump in his throat, fought hard to reabsorb the welling tears. “In - fucking -credible,” he added softly, for good measure.

  Jupiter had moved into and partially filled the entire left half of the 48-inch viewing screen, an incredible glowing jewel of swirling ruby, cream and ochre torrents, stark against the velvet black backdrop of the universe. Its tiny moon Io was like a dot of negative space moving quickly to the right, across its windswept face. Alex peered forward, looking for the second moon, looking for Europa.

  “Nope, no Europa yet. Probably on the back side right now.”

  All my life for this. Everything I’ve done, all I’ve given out and given up—for this one moment. And it’s not enough, not nearly. No amount of sacrifice could ever be enough to earn this, this…

  He swallowed hard again. Sighed deeply.

  Ah, Gena, Andy…I only wish you were here to share this view. You earned it, as much as I did.

  He leaned back in his captain’s chair, glancing over at the smaller monitor to the left of this main screen, which was transmitting live feed from the main floor of Mission Control in Houston. Flight Director Ray Peterson, a large, handsome man in his early fifties, stopped momentarily his bustle of unnecessary and redundant direction giving—of tweaking and controlling the vast array of instruments, monitors and space flight technicians that everyone including Ray knew operated best when left alone to do their jobs—and mugged his lips close to the screen, planting a big wet kiss on the monitor.

  “Who’s your daddy?” Ray said.

  “Watch it, big guy, people are gonna find out about us,” Alex replied. “By the way, you guys see what I see?”

  He looked deeper into his central monitor, squinting to try to bring Mission Control’s own main background view screen into focus, to see what they saw. It was an odd view, watching the flight, people back home looking at him in their monitor, while he was looking back at them in his own—like one of those new wave art sculptures, where you looked into a fancy, over-priced box at a mirror within, which reflected the image of your eyes into a mirror on the opposite side and back again into the first mirror. If you looked hard enough you saw your eyes reflected in an ever diminishing traipse toward infinity, and either reared back in nausea or paid the bucks for the thrill of buying your one chance at eternity.

  Here’s lookin’ at you, kid.

  Of course, they wouldn’t be seeing what Alex saw right now—this incredible view of Jupiter—not for another 35 minutes, the transmission time from Jupiter to Earth. As a matter of fact, their monitor screens at this very moment were showing what he had been looking at and doing 70 minutes ago. Time there and time back. And that big sloppy kiss from Ray was planted more than 35 minutes ago. By now—this exact now, no time/no space between us—the screen had already been wiped clean and Ray might well be planting a big sloppy kiss on someone else.

  Like Gena?

  Alex felt that familiar surge of anger, frustration, regret…and ultimately ennui at the thought of Gena. He sighed, a deep inhale of mind-cleansing canned air that immediately set off a chorus of little oxygen sensors blinking and beeping an overuse warning.

  “Ah, shut it!” he said aloud, looking back up at the view of Jupiter. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. Worth it all.

  He checked the third monitor, this one to the right of the main overhead screen, which showed the rear view from the space capsule. The sky was a deep violet curtain backlit by a trillion points of light from distant stars and galaxies, and he lost himself in this vastness for a moment.

  Way beyond this space capsule, if someone were there to look—which of course, no one was—from far out in space one might have thought the orange banded, softly glowing Jupiter looked like an enormous party light hung in a cosmic ballroom, twirling fast on an invisible string held by the hand of God.

  From this proximity her thin ring of tiny rocky particles as well as her various moons, sixteen in all, would have been clearly visible, circling the glowing orb li
ke moths. From the far lower right a faint pinpoint of white might have come into view, moving slowly and steadily towards the planet and her moons. And as this small white object drew closer: it might gradually have assumed the form of a small wedge-shaped spacecraft with twin thrusters at the end of each rear flange.

  These small rockets would have been off at this moment, the tiny ship merely gliding through the empty corridor of its trajectory under its own inertial momentum. Closer still, and the insignia USA - EUROPA 1 might have become visible, stenciled along the side of the vehicle.

  But of course, no one was really there to see this. Only in his imagination was it real.

  Inside the space vehicle, Alex began to make adjustments on the control panel in front of him, flicking switches, reading gauges, pushing buttons. As he did so, he was simultaneously communicating his every move and the resultant read or reaction into the headset he was wearing, and receiving instantaneous feedback from a voice that to his ear sounded exactly like that of Flight Director Ray Peterson with a slight sinus infection.

  In the monitor above, a small moon was just now appearing on the right side of the screen, a glowing white miniature planet of ice: Europa.

  “I’m nearing approach window four-five-zero,” Alex reported tersely. “All systems are nominal…preparing to adjust glide path to target.”

  “You’re looking good, Europa One,” replied the nasal voice of Flight Director Petersen. (Only of course it couldn’t be Director Petersen: he was 70 minutes from a response.) “Prepare to ignite left forward thruster for a five-second burn at a distance of ten thousand K. Repeat, five-second burn at ten thousand K.”

  Of course it was just the onboard computer responding to Alex’s input. He knew that. But it had been determined that a simulated voice from Mission Control was good for the psyche, so they made it sound like Petersen was right on top of things, in control. You’re not really all alone out there, son.

  “Roger that, Houston,” Alex replied to the onboard computer. “Coming up on ten triple zero K. Five, four, three, two…Left thruster on…we have ignition.”

  The ISV suddenly began to shake, but not alarmingly. Some shaking was expected. There was a muffled roar from the rear of the ship, and when Alex glanced in the rear view monitor, flames appeared. As the left thruster rocket burned, Alex could feel the ship angle slowly to the right. The moon Europa appeared in the central monitor, now directly ahead of the rocket ship.

  Alex’s heart raced with excitement. The oxygen monitors bleeped and chirped in alarm.

  “Fuck you,” he muttered under his breath, as he reached forward to flip a switch, not sure if he were directing the comment at the sensors or himself.

  “Left thruster off,” he reported calmly.

  “Looking good, Europa: Your trajectory is right on the line and holding steady. Prepare for final approach,” said the simulated voice of Ray Petersen.

  Alex was beginning to find the ruse a little annoying; insulting actually. It’s me running the show up here, not Petersen.

  He knew what he was doing, he knew the computer would verify and handle. He didn’t need the pretense of talking to another human to figure things out. But he’d go ahead and play it their way. Had to, if he ever hoped to get another space assignment.

  “Copy, Houston. Angle of approach 15 degrees, present speed 13 K per second, distance 7 thousand K and closing.”

  “We need to slow you down to about one tenth that before final approach, Alex.”

  “Alex”! Isn’t that cute. They must have thrown that in for a comforting personal touch, figuring I might be getting a little nervous about now.

  “Prepare to fire your back thrusters,” the onboard computer continued, “for a thirty-second burn at the 5 K mark.”

  “Roger that, Houston,” Alex responded drily. “Preparing to fire.”

  * * *

  2. Mission Control

  THE HUGE ROOM at the Johnson Space Center was an intense, if subdued, bustle of meaningful activity. Technical support personnel of all ilk—both male and female; young, and old; and all equally smart in their NASA jumpsuits—manned the banks of monitors set up in four rows before a wall-sized screen. The center of the screen mapped the trajectory of the space vehicle from Earth to its target, the moon Europa orbiting around the planet Jupiter. The screens to the right and left showed—respectively—the interior of the space vehicle, with Alex at the controls, and the view from the space vehicle’s central monitor, showing its approach to Jupiter.

  Ray Petersen, looking handsome and fit in his own jumpsuit, the one with the words “Flight Director” on the back, and special insignia on the arms and pocket, was conferring with one of the technicians.

  “It does take a little getting used to, Dr. Nguyen,” he agreed. “While he’s making the adjustments to get the bird in orbit and landed, we’re still watching him glide toward Jupiter. And by the time we get to actually see him make the maneuvers, he’s either down or…” he glanced around as if to ensure no one was near enough to hear, lowered his voice, raised a brow and said, “dead.”

  “He’ll be okay, boss,” the techy reassured the older man, but his voice had the uncertainty of a question.

  Ray patted his shoulder, knowing which of them needed the reassurance.

  “I was kidding, Doc.”

  Ray walked over to the food service table near the side rear door and poured himself a fresh cup of coffee.

  At the rear of the room was a large viewing area with several rows of upholstered seats and its own food service table. It was separated from the control room by a glass wall. Its primary access doors led out through the rear, so that there was no direct entry to Mission Control proper except through two doors flanked by armed military guards. The seats in this spectator gallery were filled with reporters and their camera crews, as well as a few dozen other interested parties.

  Ray turned toward the viewing gallery, looking for a face. Spotting her, he nodded a formal solemn acknowledgment of her status in this proceeding; then, unable to resist, he gave her a slow wink.

  In the first row, receiving the wink with a blush, sat a pretty Asian woman in her early thirties. She was small, but as elegant in her carriage as a much taller model; slender, but tough and wiry under the softness of breasts, curves and satin skin. She wore woolen slacks too hot for that part of the state at any time of year, and a white silk blouse. And she was trying very, very hard not to care too much, either about what might happen to her husband three hundred and ninety million miles away, nor what might happen tonight with the man ten feet away. But in her hands a tissue was being unwittingly shredded into tiny pieces. Seated next to her was a tall, handsome boy of about fifteen. Gena McCormick squeezed his hand.

  “You okay, honey?” she asked.

  Beads of perspiration gleamed on the boy’s smooth forehead, sparkles of moisture alit on the soft line of hairs that had begun recently to darken his upper lip, a promise of the manhood soon to come. His jaw was set and grim; but as she looked towards him Gena saw that his eyes—like his father’s right now, she imagined—were alight with inner excitement.

  She smiled ruefully. Andy felt her gaze, and glanced over at her. Seeing her expression, he grinned wickedly

  “Come on, Mom—you know he’s in heaven right now. I mean,” he was flustered at his misspeak, “not that way. Not…I just mean that he’s having a ball.”

  “I know he is, honey. I know.”

  “You must be very proud right now,” the reporter—who’d just appeared out of nowhere—insisted as she pushed her mike under Gena’s nose to catch the expected affirmation.

  “Proud?” Gena smiled. “Oh, oh soitinly.”

  Andy suppressed a giggle, just barely.

  The reporter looked momentarily non-plussed, searching her retinue of response alternatives for one that would fit.

  “Certainly,” she repeated, buying time. “Certainly you are. Your husband,” she checked her watch as if to confirm it, �
�has just come out of his last hiber-sleep a few moments ago to gaze upon the face of Jupiter from a vantage point never before seen by man. How do you think he must be feeling right now?”

  “Oh, dirty, hungry, in need of a long satisfying pi—” the reporter drained white, and Gena took mercy on her—“Just messing with you a little,” she grinned. “Sorry.”

  The reporter, looking relieved, pasted on a big good humored, I-can-take-a-joke grin, and nodded.

  “I am sure this is the highlight of his life,” Gena said with great sincerity. “This is what it was all about, everything he did, every extra effort, every sacrifice. It must be incredible, to know you’ve actually achieved your ultimate goal in life. Few of us ever do.”

  “So…you’re proud of him,” the reporter reiterated.

  “Of course. We both are,” Gena smiled, grabbing Andy around the shoulders for a solid squeeze.

  Now the reporter could finally say the line she’d been trying to work into the interview, one she’d thought up all by herself last week. “So, you are the wind beneath his wings?”

  Gena just looked at the woman, her smile never fading as it hardened into ice.

  As the silence grew uncomfortable, the woman’s eyes darted around the room to find a new target. They lit on a former astronaut soon to make a bid for the senate, and she quickly excused herself with what grace she could muster.