by Edward Es
Dirt roads are not usually this wide. Kirshner’s 4-wheel drive Bronco rattles down the center, and the Doctor looks tired and disturbed as he drives robotically along, relying on his instincts. His trance is broken as he notices a horse and rider in the distance coming toward him. He stops the car and slowly exits, straining his eyes to see if he’s imagining things in such an exhausted state. He pulls his wire-rimmed spectacles out of his pocket and applies them to his head, his heart racing when he realizes who it is. Tom pulls Cirrus to a skidding halt and gets off the horse. He takes Theo, the canister, and the Book from the saddlebag and walks toward the Doctor.
Tom stops in front of Kirshner, who looks down at the objects, then into Tom’s eyes. The years he spent on this endeavor have been filled with roller coasters of emotion: triumph, disappointment, challenge, guilt. The most difficult of all has been the task of striving with all his ability to accomplish a goal he desperately hoped would be abandoned. The entire effort to this point had been an extravagant catharsis, the motivation an acting out of his friend’s grief. However, as evidenced by the resign in Tom’s eyes, the time has come to play it out. Regardless of what motives he imagined Tom to have, seeing his armful of cargo strikes Kirshner to the core. Choked with emotion, he reaches far down.
“My dear boy,” he says, looking up at the sky. “It has been such a long journey.” He looks back at Tom. “You would think it was about to end, but you have a very long way to go.” He embraces Tom, and thus the objects between them, then gently releases, stroking Theo’s head. “Please, come back home.”
Tom grabs Kirshner’s shoulder with a strong grip. “I suppose part of that depends on you, doesn’t it?”
Kirshner pats Tom’s hand. “Go, Thomas. God be with you.”
“You ride Cirrus back and make sure Billy gets him,” Tom says.
The Doctor looks at the horse in fear, mounts inelegantly, and rides off as if sitting on the head of a pin. Tom turns and enters the truck, leaving the door open for his cat. Zion licks a shoulder, stalling against an uneasy feeling. Against better cat judgment, he hops into the back and crawls under the driver’s seat. Tom slams the door and, wheels spinning in the dirt, skids and slides off in the opposite direction.
Isabel stands alone at the forward most railing of the top most deck of the ship, leaning into the wind. Her hair blows back across a white-fringed shawl draped over a formal gown of lustrous silver silk, her face tilted toward the Sun with closed eyes. Passengers linger nearby, keeping their distance as she opens her eyes slowly and looks down to the deck below, noticing a boy in a wheelchair. He is alone also, his chair aligned fore and aft, and rolls forward and back in it with the pitching of the ship. His only interaction with the chair is to apply braking to control speed and distance of glide. Isabel smiles, then returns to the confused mood she began with.
On the very bow of the ship near the loading hold is something covered by a huge tarp. This raises her curiosity, but only for a moment, roughly the extent of her attention span. Isabel takes her cane and starts to walk away, encountering the stares of those nearby, appreciative, but never comfortable with her celebrity.
Francine walks barefoot on the beach, playing driftwood-fetch with her golden retriever, Sessna. The dog’s frantic enthusiasm contrasts her pedantic throwing. After a couple of rounds, Sessna is sidetracked by a small mongrel that scurries up and sniffs upward. Wet noses bump, seemingly in play until, to Sessna’s surprise, the dog snarls and attacks her leg. She howls in fright, unwilling to defend herself as Francine rushes up and kicks the dog away, sending it off. Sessna looks up, humiliated and hurt, licking her chops in embarrassment, and trots off towards the house, head down, leaving Francine alone with the driftwood. She hurls it into the waves.
The mongrel jumps into the water and swims out to the wood, retrieving it to her feet. Francine crouches down, takes the stick, and can’t help but pat the dog on the head while Sessna watches from a distance with a look of confused betrayal. From behind, she hears a whistle, followed by a child’s voice that unnerves her more than it should.
“Sandy! Here, Sandy!”
Francine turns to see the silhouette of a boy near the water’s edge, sun rays spraying behind his head. She squints, barely able to look. The dog jumps into his arms and Francine shades her eyes, looks down, then looks up again to find no one. She rises and walks quickly toward the house, her arms embracing herself against the chill of the ocean air.
Billy sits cross legged in front of a morning campfire with his head bowed, chanting under his breath. He raises his head skyward, eyes closed, and throws powder into the fire, flaring it with pinpoint sparks of magnesium. Robert Linden watches from behind and walks up toward Billy, but stops a few yards away. Linden says, “Sha quanna, heo matto no kita pa.”
Without turning around, Billy answers, “Yototek, raxota ishne Tobats.”
Kirshner trots Cirrus toward the back of the warehouse and sees the flashing caravan of vehicles racing in the direction of the front gate. He dismounts as awkwardly as he mounted and, hugging the wall, slips into a side entrance, running across the expansive floor toward the office door.
From under the hanger-like doors, long shadows of approaching cars and people spill across the concrete. One lone guard sits by the smaller door, watching the Doctor enter the offices. He turns toward the door as someone tries to open it. The guard steps back as the intruders attack the metal door and finally propel it open. The FBI pours in, guns drawn, followed by their leader, Bud, entering like the conquering Caesar. After a standoff of stares, they grab the guard, overzealously containing him. Men spread across the floor looking up and around in confusion at the quiet emptiness. Bud spots the offices across the floor and motions for his men to follow.
Kirshner grabs an armful of manuals from a filing cabinet, opens the control room door and enters, closing it and testing the locks.
Tom arrives at the compound gate, a ten-foot high chain link barrier spanning the width of the wide dirt road as it enters the compound clearing. The left portion of the fence abuts a ravine wall that forms the east side of the compound. The right portion continues down to the river that parallels the road as the tributary emerges from the narrow ravine. The rock wall across the river tapers down sharply as the river passes the compound and continues northbound to join the Virgin.
The compound itself is an elliptical clearing, fifty yards wide from the alcove in the east ravine wall to the outward curve of the river. The sheer wall across the river is dark and wet, nearly always in shade, thousand-year-old water trickling from a contrasting white-lime calcium layer halfway down the face. The river curves left upstream and disappears around the clearing, while the blockhouse sits just inside the fence at the edge of the river. A stark, linear shadow lays across the river and partly up the wet wall.
Tom starts to open the gate with a garage door opener, but rethinks and stops it after a foot or so. He repositions the Bronco as a barricade, collects his precious articles, and gets out. Just as he squeezes through the gate, Butch runs up, shotgun in hand, ready for action. Realizing it’s Tom, he calms slightly, still red-faced and jittery. He looks at Tom’s armful, twitching one eye.
“Hot damn, Tommy. I guess this is it.”
“Now or never, right?”
“I’ll tell you something. You’ve got some huevos. I wish I was goin’ with you.”
“I’d love to have ya.” He pokes Butch in the gut. “Too much specific mass.”
“Up yurs, good buddy.”
“How we doin’?”
“Had a failure on the cooler an hour ago. The temp’s up on the A-Z. Plus the top load’s shy since the truck never made it.”
“How shy?”
“Maybe... fifteen percent.”
Tom ponders. “Well, not much we can do now.” Zion scampers up to Butch, body sweeps his leg once, then sits on his haunches and, licking
a paw, passes over one ear as they watch. “You know what that means.”
“Company’s coming.” He grabs the back of Tom’s neck. “Buona fortuna, Tom.”
Tom looks at the shotgun. “Hey, careful with the artillery. I don’t want anybody hurt.”
“Roger that,” Butch pouts.
Tom looks into his eyes, then hurries away toward the far end of the clearing where there’s a wide path that disappears, turning left around the ravine wall. He passes a small square building servicing two twelve-foot diameter spherical tanks, each feeding a six-inch cast iron pipe that parallels the path and disappears with it.
Butch closes the gate, takes the length of chain hanging from the latch, wraps it around both sides twice and secures it with a padlock. He walks over to an electrical box and throws a foot-long knife switch. A pulsating red light comes alive at the top of the fence next to the sign: WARNING!! HIGH VOLTAGE FENCE- KEEP OFF!!!
Inside the warehouse office, Bud and Sid each sit on a desk, puzzled as agents rifle through file drawers, turn over trash cans, and generally eyeball the room. Bud taps a pencil on his nose. “I don’t get it. Something’s missing here.”
An agent walks in. “We found a horse tied up in back.”
Sid answers, “A horse?”
“A horse. It’s Holmes’. Same one he rode off on.”
Sid and Bud look at each other, then Bud inquires, “What about the old man? Any sign of him?”
“Not since he took off last night like a bat out of hell in that four-wheeler. At least we thought it was him. Hard to tell from that distance in the dark.”
Bud looks around the room for the umpteenth time, then rests his eyes on the control room door. “Anybody try that closet?”
Another agent responds. “I did, but the door’s locked.”
Bud looks at him with raised eyebrow. “Oh, dear. The door was locked? Then I guess we’d better not open it.”
As the agent looks away, Bud walks across the room to the door, tries to open it, then really tries, exasperating himself in the process. Bud steams at all the agents, “Must be some pretty important coats in this CLOSET!”
Inside the control room Kirshner frantically inputs commands on a keyboard. He looks up and back at the sound of the door being assaulted, picks up the console mounted phone, and enters a number. After a pause he asks, “Any sign of him yet?”
The White Room is a cubicle with little in it but a chair. It resembles a short jetway and there is, in fact, a hatch open at the end. Tim Goulet, a strapping young ex-Marine, black sunglasses secured by a neon pink strap around his neck, answers over a speaker phone. “No, Doc, nothin’ yet. Let me look,” he says as he stands and stretches. Tim walks over to a porthole and sees Tom standing several stories down, looking straight up. He waves, and Tom waves back. “He’s here, down at ground zero. Looks like he’s comin’ up.”
Kirshner wipes the sweat from his forehead. “Better get him going, Tim. I’m about out of breathing room. I’m locking out the sequence from here.”
“Roger that, dude. I’ll kick his butt as soon as it gets up here.”
Kirshner hangs up. “Roger that, dude?” The pounding stops, freezing Kirshner as he turns to look over his shoulder. He quickens the pace in advance of the inevitable.
Up in the office, everyone stands by the door, panting, most of all Bud. “Jesus! What the hell’s this made of, kryptonite?”
“Yeah, it’s just a closet door,” says the same agent.
Bud looks at him again, this time anger overshadowing irritation. “Jerry, you dweeb. How did you ever make it into the academy, much less get out? I swear—” Suddenly Jerry’s comment hits him. He exits the office, Sid following.
Bud stands on the warehouse floor in line with the wall that the door opens into, assessing the next set of offices on the other side. “Now what kind of closet do you suppose is six feet deep?” he asks no one, then yells across the floor. “Get me a crowbar! Pronto!”
Tom faces a concrete pad the size of a small house with a six-foot launch arm on top of it, directly above of him. As he tilts his head up, he admires, foot by foot, all 181 feet of the Noah 1, a reconstructed Titan 3c booster, its brushed aluminum gleaming in the sun. It has, mounted on each side of the first stage, solid fuel boosters, though half the size of the originals. It stands poised, aimed skyward, threatening all 1,300,000 tons of potential thrust, the full-scale version of the probe launched the day before. A towering “N1” runs up the side of the booster, above that the same “H” which marked the stack of the cruise ship.
Perched at the pinnacle is a third stage unlike one a Titan has ever supported. The shining black capsule looks like a twenty-foot bullet, sitting atop a service module four feet wider than the launch vehicle itself. Stenciled on the capsule is a raised hand with a butterfly perched on top.
The elevator door opens and Zion darts in, followed by Tom. As the door closes, Tom stands at the back, reading the floor annunciator: G,1,2, and 11. Zion sits beside him, looking up as well. Tom looks down at him, Zion looks back, then they both return their gaze to the annunciator as Tom pushes the 11 button and the elevator moves upward. “Second floor. Lingerie. Sporting goods… Yarn,” Tom announces. No reaction. “Catnip.” Zion swishes his tail.
The elevator door opens and Zion jumps onto Tim’s lap, an obvious friend. “Hey, Wildcat! Give me five!” Zion paws at his outstretched hand. “Doc’s goin’ ballistic. Sounds like the man’s on his back.” He looks at Tom’s armful. “No kidding.”
“You could say that.” Tom places his cargo in a plastic container sitting by the open hatch, closes the lid, and sets it inside the capsule. He turns toward Tim. “Guess we better get this show on the road.”
There’s a stressed silence as Tom looks at Tim holding Zion. “Don’t worry, dude. I’ll take good care of him ‘til you, you know, get back.”
Tom nods. “Yeah, sure. I know.” He walks over, strokes Zion’s head, and places his hand on Tim’s shoulder. “Take care of yourself while you’re at it. Sam’ll make sure you don’t get hammered too hard.”
“Wanna see a hammer?” He clenches his raised fist. “Don’t worry about it.”
Tom grabs Tim’s fist. He turns sadly and starts to enter the hatch, then stops. Tom turns back around. “Oh, hell. You don’t get off this easy.” He pulls his cat from Tim’s arms and carries him into the capsule.
“It’s the Purrminator! Meow’ll be back!” Tim beams as he closes the capsule hatch behind Tom.
The capsule’s interior isn’t cramped, as were the Gemini predecessors. Colors are in a spectrum of light greens and browns, most surfaces covered with molded, lightweight plastic. The Doctor felt Tom might need friendlier surfaces to encounter as he learned the business of weightlessness and the certain unplanned trajectories he would take during the course of getting his bearings.
The bottom diameter is twelve feet, the usable interior length over fifteen feet with a bulkhead separating the control area from a pressure lock, making the control area ten feet long, allowing Tom to stand. The command seat is horizontal in the launch attitude, braced against the bottom of the capsule and attached to a rail. Facing the seat is a console with a desk and in the console three flat-screen monitors. A keyboard is embedded in the desk, and that is the extent of instrumentation. No dials, no knobs, no gauges.
Tom puts the cat on the seat back, stores his cargo in a bay to the right of the console, and reaches up to the panel. He touches heat activated switches near the monitors, causing the capsule to come alive in all manner of lights and displays, similar to a state-of-the-art airliner. The center screen shows a camera view from the top of the booster looking straight down. Zion looks up at the panel as, with the push of another switch, Tom locks the interior hatch mechanism with the ominous clang of a jailhouse door.
Kirshner anxiously eyes a blank monitor, then stills as
it flickers to life, showing a view of the interior of the capsule with Tom looking straight into the camera. “Anybody home?”
“Thomas, thank God. Listen—” A resounding thump from behind, followed by another, turns the Doctor around. “I’m afraid I’m about to lose control here.”
The capsule’s left screen displays a Mac desktop and Tom taps a touchpad, opening up a video control menu. One more tap and the center screen presents a wide-angle shot of the control room with the Doctor in center frame. Tom hears the banging going on behind.
“That would make your location the ‘out of control’ room, then, wouldn’t it?” He doesn’t get the laugh. “You think you got problems? Take a look at this.”
He changes the view on the screen to one looking straight up from the capsule. It shows camouflage netting above, with the barely discernible image of a helicopter hovering overhead.
Kirshner gasps. “Oh! That does it, Thomas. We have to scrub.” The picture on his screen returns to the capsule and Tom puts his face in the camera, the wide angle lens sweeping his Cheshire Cat grin around his head.
“Who do you think will win? Him or me?”
“Neither, son. Neither.”
“Wanna bet?”
Bud repeatedly applies the crowbar to the door and finally, with full body English, propels it open, nearly departing it from the hinges. He stands to catch his breath while looking at his accomplishment, the wide stairway leading downward, then scans around at his amazed cohorts, gloating.
“Let’s go!”
Kirshner turns around to witness the thunder of angry footsteps clanking down the metal stairs.
Tom watches the monitor as Bud and company appear, guns drawn, stopping in a compacted group in front of the Doctor. They’re momentarily idle as they look around, shocked to find what they expected all along. At a loss for words, as well as alternatives, Bud yells, “Grab him!”