In the Blackness of Space

by Robert Kuntz

  “We’ve been in space almost a month, Grant. It’s awesome. When I would go to the mountains on Earth, Señor Jesús whispered in my heart that God made these mountains. Now I’ve seen the asteroids mightier than mountains. They were amazing, Grant, great jagged islands tumbling in space. When I saw them, Señor Jesús whispered in my heart.

  “Last week, we saw the Wilson-Hewlitt comet streak through space. Its tail glittered like diamond dust. Señor Jesús whispered, and I couldn’t stop shivering. Space is so vast, so empty, but as David sang in one of his psalms, ‘The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands…their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.’ I hear that voice, Grant. We all do.

  “Vicente’s doing a great job with your physical therapy. Your muscle tone is excellent. We fill in to give him a break, but if you wake up knowing Spanish, it’s because he talks to you non-stop.

  “Being on the Gal is so exciting, Grant. The Trempanni drive is even more efficient than they projected. We’ll reach .93 Planck sooner than we thought. Houston is ecstatic. Everyone on Earth watches our daily vid-feed. NASA’s requested funds from Congress for another FarSpace ship.

  “Dremenev’s pulse comm is brilliant. He’s sent beams of light across folds of space. We communicate with Houston in real-time—faster than the speed of light. Ihor took the second back-up and is building a larger, improved system so we can stream data back and forth.

  “Mac wanted to come see you today. But we’re short fifty bots, so he’s been ferrying bot kits from core storage to the lab and assembling them. While he works, he replays Jean-li Neuwin’s exclusive holo-vidcast about you extorting our two-hundred-pound packages from NASA. She says, ‘Until now,’ and Mac shouts at her, ‘Until Chapman, ya mean.’ She continues, ‘NASA officials,’ and Mac shouts, ‘the bloomin’ eejits.’ The recording goes on, ‘bowing to political pressure had refused to approve the nauts’ personal two-hundred-pound packages.’ Mac shouts ‘What would ya expect from bloomin’ eejits?’

  “Then he’s quiet, listening to the recording as he plugs in circuit boards, slips on protective covers, and tightens bolts. He works all the time with that twinkle in his eyes. Then Jepler says to her, ‘Listen to how strongly Dr. Chapman feels about this.’ We hear the click of Jepler thumbing his mini recorder and your voice booms out, ‘You don’t send people on a twenty-five-year mission in space and deny them two-hundred pounds of personal gear. If you’re loyal to your people, you let them take the stuff of their dreams.’ And Mac stomps his foot on the floor and says, ‘Take that all ya bloomin’ eejits.’ Then, laughing, he shuts off the recording and sings and dances around the lab. Today, he pointed a grease-stained finger at me and said, ‘Ya, tell him for me, Carmen. Chap’s a dragonslayer, don’t ya know. He took ‘em on. He stood for us. And every drop o’ Irish blood in me veins will stand for him.’

  “And Wild Bill Jepler, what an amazing man. He sneaked all sorts of things up here. There’s an espresso coffee machine, a trampoline, one of the most advanced telescopes I’ve ever seen, two pallets of real books, I mean with paper pages and everything. He sent us an ice maker and ice cream freezer with a big box of flavors. And, you know the arguments about our bio and chem labs, should they be level four or level ten? Billy got us a level ten. And then there’s the tuxedos for the men and evening gowns for the women. I don’t think we’ve found all Billy’s gifts yet.

  “But that’s icing on the cake. I’m here. I’m in space. Thanks for coming, Grant, for making it possible, for making it possible for me.

  “I’m not really crying. It’s just…I can’t explain it.

  “I’m just going to…play some Bach a while. I-I know you like him.”

  I’m suspended in black murky depths. I dream of oaks singing. Pure wordless sounds flow from the roots and echo like wind through the branches. The deep notes, round and pure as 0s, drip like light from leaf to leaf. When they are about to plummet to the ground, the moon tugs them skyward and they soar, spiraling up effortlessly, glistening like the stars. Long rumbling 3s of sound strut across the night sky, as if heaven were a horn and all the atmosphere its music. Light and sound meld in the air in steady rhythms, streaming into rivers of bright, billowing clouds.

  ****

  February 16, 2052 (Launch plus 28 days), 19:05 GMT.

  “Hola, Grant. Carmen again. We’re passing Saturn. You can’t believe how many rings it has. They’re all rippled from the gravitational interplay of the moons. In the faint light of the sun, they’re like roads of shining gems, vast and fragile, both at once. Like the mountains on Earth, they’re ageless, enduring, eternal. Yet, at the same time, they’re like gossamer, shimmering in bands of color floating in space, with the endless black of space behind them. I can’t get enough of them, how the light shifts over the rings. All the time I looked at them, I was filled with Señor Jesús’s whispers.

  “We’re the only people in history to see this. You’ll be amazed, Grant. When you wake up, we’ll play it back for you. SINDAS is recording everything.

  “But don’t look at Saturn. The planet’s a monster. The atmosphere churns and heaves like the skies are gnawing on life, trying to crush everything living. They try to pull you in, like an insane person convincing you their delusions are true. I screamed and had to tear myself away from the sight. I never want to see it again. I thought I’d never say that about a planet. But even Dremenev said it made him shiver. You know Ihor, his soul is an abacus. I respect him, but except for his love for his dogs, he’s got the spiritual sensitivity of a thumbtack. Never met a pure scientist until him.

  “We saw another wonder yesterday. A loose moon. It was a giant, ragged sphere, all rock, no atmosphere, racing through the blackness. Bronson thinks some gravitational quake tore it loose from Neptune or Uranus. It’s headed for the asteroid belt where it will be pulverized by those floating mountains.

  “I can’t get over being in space. When I’m gathering banana leaves to feed the goats, I’m thinking how we’re farther from Earth than anyone has ever gone. We’re blazing a trail, Grant.

  “I only have an hour, so I’m going to stop talking and play. It’s great to have my guitar and bassoon. I don’t know how I’d have handled the terror of Saturn without being able to play. I know you’re not an Elvis fan. You like the king of baroque, so here’s something else from Bach for you.”

  The forest sighs as it rises up from the earth, the great trees stretching and breaking free from soil. They call to each other, in long, liquid tones without words, the notes pure and round and long as the sky. The sounds lift and soar, skipping like stars, thudding with deep bass notes, racing across the heavens like they’re playing tag. No, not like a game. There’s an order, a progression. The patterns flow back on themselves and repeat and swirl around to repeat again, all in the deep dancing sounds of trees and stars singing without words.

  ****

  February 18, 2052 (Launch plus 30 days), 19:05 GMT.

  “Hola, Grant. Señor Jesús used you in an amazing way to bless me. I’m still trying to find the words to thank you. I was going to have to back out of the mission. You know I divorced Martin three months ago. He gambled everything away—the house, all that we’d saved in fifteen years. And not only gambled it away, but that much again in debt.

  “I told Billy Jepler I couldn’t go on the mission. It wasn’t just a matter of paying the creditors. It was Ángela, my sister’s kid. Rosabla’s my older sister. She looked out for me when we were kids. She helped me with my science fair projects, listened to me practice my speeches and bassoon. She bought me my first Elvis record and helped pay for college and my PhD.

  “Ángela’s her only child. She has severe drug-resistant Lennox-Gastaut syndrome, with tuberous sclerosis, multiple kinds of seizures, and developmental delays. You know how expensive the cure is for that? So I told Billy Jepler I couldn’t go. I explained about the debts and Ángela’s care. And Billy Jepler said not to
be rash, to wait four more days.

  “In three days, Billy called me. He told me you’d gotten us our two-hundred-pound packages. He said he had an offer for an instructional video—a series of bassoon lessons and recordings of songs I play in space. Now how did Wild Bill Jepler wangle something like that? But I got a contract. It’ll pay half my debts.

  “Billy sent five electric guitars in my two-hundred-pound package, and I sent four of them back. He auctioned them off—the only electric guitars on the planet Earth to have been in outer space, to have been played by the captain of FarSpace Ship Galileo. I couldn’t believe what people paid for them. How does he do that?

  “That didn’t cover everything, not by a long shot. But he’s got a twelve-million-dollar down payment on this bassoon, the only one ever to have left the solar system. Every year during the trip, they add a million dollars. My sister gets the interest, and when we get back, I trade the bassoon for the principle. I’ll miss my tube, but it’s worth it for Ángela and Rosabla.

  “I’m going to play now. SINDAS is recording everything. I just want you to know that in every note you hear, every recording I make, I thank you. You made it possible for me to come to space.”

  Whales rise up from the sea, endlessly rising, countless whales like rotund number 9s, floating on the ocean surface beneath the vast blue sky, rising on the waves, rising and falling like the breathing of the sea. A girl with thick black hair sits on one of the whales, laughing. Her hair swirls in the wind. Her laughter rises to the sky, the notes like stairs, a ladder of 4s going up beyond the atmosphere. The sound pulls me up the ladder. I don’t want to go. It’s not safe. What if the 4s fall? What if someone adds them up and they become a flat number 8 on the surface of the sea? What if the whales dive and the girl cannot sing?

  Then from far across the water, the pure song of the dancing forest of oaks reaches me. I see them in my mind: light dripping from the leaves, sound rising from the roots. The oaks sway their mighty boughs and the sound pours into the sky, patterns like 4s, doubled and redoubled, always even, always balanced, always true. The sound is as round as the moon and pure and light, and my fear falls away, and I know the ladder will last forever.

  ****

  March 22, 2052 (Launch plus 62 days), 21:00 GMT.

  “Hola, Grant. It’s Carmen. We passed the termination shock. We’re 8,794,000,000 miles from the sun, almost three times farther away than Pluto. When Mac announced we’d passed the termination shock, we danced around, like we did when we entered the Gal. Ihor cut loose and smiled. He actually smiled. I felt like a kid who’s seen angels.

  “Do you remember Michael Collins? He was command module pilot of Apollo 11, the first one that went to the moon. He said, ‘I have seen the ultimate blackness of infinity in a stillness undisturbed by any living thing.’ It’s like that, Grant, but it’s filled with Jesús’s whispers.

  “Soon we’ll pass the heliopause, outside the reach of the solar wind, into the cold of interstellar space.

  “It’s so amazing, Grant. I can hardly get my mind around it. All life on Earth needs the sun. Without sunlight, there are no plants or animals. Soon we’ll be outside the sun’s reach. We’ll be in the darkness of space, carrying our own light. God made people so wondrous, so amazing, that we can make our own little Galileo world and explore the galaxy. How could He do that? How could He make something as awesome as humankind?

  “Dios te bendiga, mi amigo. I wish I could get here more often, but it’s long days for all of us. I like the time in the ag. There’s something peaceful about the chickens clucking and pecking and the way the goats come up and butt you because they’re feeling mischievous.”

  ****

  April 13, 2052 (Launch plus 84 days), 19:05 GMT.

  “It’s Carmen. Grant, it’s terrible. It’s all my fault.

  “I’m not supposed to be here now. NASA says I shouldn’t tell you, but I’m the captain and it’s my call. Grant, you’re the only one who’s going to live. It’s my fault. I didn’t send them back.

  “Last week, we were working in the zero grav lab, right by the core, near the docking needle. We all felt it, a cold, electric shuddering that pricked through you like an icy wave. The first thing I thought was, We should get back inside. But after a few seconds, these freezing tremors passed, so I said, ‘Let’s stay on the job.’ The freezing waves returned like ice trembling through us, but we ignored them and kept on working. Bronson and Naomi joined us; we needed everyone. Four more times, those waves passed through us. We finished and came back in through the PELAD, the Primary Equipment Loading Air Dock. When we took off our spacesuits, we all had patches of frostbite.

  “Naomi marched us to the med bay and examined us. Ushamla and Ihor puked. Mac and Bronson passed out. Vicente sat there like a lost soul. It’s crazy. Some kind of cold radiation. All seven of us are going to die, Grant. Everyone but you. I want the mission. I don’t want to die.

  “Why did this happen? Why didn’t I make us go back inside?

  “I want to smash the Gal to pieces. I can’t stop crying. A verse from one of Asaph’s Psalms is screaming in my head: ‘Has God forgotten to be merciful? Has he in anger withheld his compassion?’

  “This is too much for me. It’s all my fault. I can’t carry this. Señor Jesús said, ‘Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.’ I don’t know how to come to Him with this. How can I trust Him when I’m to blame and we’re going to die?”

  “I can’t talk about it anymore. Vaya con Dios, mi amigo. I’m going to play. This will be the last time. I don’t have long. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I wanted to be here when you woke up.”

  I stand at the entrance of a New York City alley. Tall, red-brick buildings shadow battered dumpsters and bulging trash bags. The air around me is heavy with weak, shabby 6s, some gray, some green, some smudgy brown. Mounds of rotten lettuce and soggy piles of cardboard cover the broken pavement.

  The wind moans down the alley, a deep, endless mournful sound that tears at the bricks and rocks the dumpsters. There’s no noise from traffic, only the groaning wind. There’s no movement in the streets, no people, no animals.

  The wind gusts. Windows shatter. Shards of glass rain on the piles of garbage. The wind gusts again with a ferocious howl. Doors burst open.

  The howling sweeps through the empty shops, the abandoned apartments, echoing from wall to wall and meeting nothing but the lonesome sound of its own voice. The whole vast city is abandoned and only the forlorn wind remains.

  ****

  April 14, 2052 (Launch plus 85 days), 07:03 GMT.

  “Grant, wake up! You’ve got to wake up. It’s Naomi. We’ve taken out the feeding tube and flushed the drugs out of your system. You’re going to be OK.

  “Oh, it’s so good to see you open your eyes. Squeeze my hand, Grant. Good.

  “Grant! Not so hard! Let go! Grant!”

  ****

  10:12 GMT.

  “Grant, it’s Bronson. We’re in inter-stellar space, two months, three weeks, six days, and two hours after launch. You know it. Your body knows it. You’re going to be OK. We need you. Good. You’ve got to stick with us.

  “Grant! Don’t black out!”

  ****

  12:43 GMT.

  “Grant, it’s Bronson. It’s going to be OK. You can do this.

  “Good to see you. Lift your head, buddy.

  “Grant! Don’t! Grant!”

  ****

  15:15 GMT.

  “Grant, it’s Naomi. We’re dying. If you don’t feed the animals, they’re going to die. I’m not jerking you around. You’re the only hope we have left.

  “It’s good to see your eyes open. Please don’t black out. I don’t want the animals to die.

  “Grant, don’t you dare. Grant!”

  ****

  April 15, 2052 (Launch plus 86 days), 07:32 GMT.

  “Grant, it’s Bronson. You’ve got to wake up. Naomi and I may have two days. We missed the fir
st waves of cold radiation because we were chasing the blasted goats that escaped from the ag biome. The cold radiation didn’t penetrate the ship, only the needle bay where there’s not enough shielding. You’re safe, Grant.

  “Everyone on Earth knows that we’re dying. The president’s calling the mission a failure, a useless, tragic boondoggle.

  “I saw you work back in Houston. You fixed that atmospheric regulation subroutine for us. I never saw such focus. You’re a genius. You’re going to make it. And, Grant, thanks for going to bat for me about my blueprints. It’s crazy, but it helped to have them.

  ****

  April 16, 2052 (Launch plus 87 days), 16:45 GMT.

  “Grant, it’s Naomi. I’m taking the IVs out. And the catheter. When you come to, drink plenty of water. You’re in good shape. You’re going to be fine.

  “No physical therapy for you today. I’m too weak. Vicente’s gone. Slipped away two nights ago. It was just like him—quiet, not bothering anyone. He did right by you, Grant. And by the rest of us. I’d have married him. He was gentle and strong and good-hearted. Now, he’s gone.

  “The president’s gloating, saying he was right, the risk was too great, and we never should have come to space. He’s given us all Medals of Honor. That’s great for you; you slept through the whole thing.

  “Sorry, Grant. I shouldn’t take it out on you. My body’s shutting down. I hate dying.

  “When you wake up, please don’t let the kestrels die.”