by Robert Kuntz
In the low-ceilinged savannah, fourteen hanging lights are shorted out. The thick grasses are drenched and a bare trickle of water runs over the mud in the stream. Air vents are blocked with mats of dead grass and leaves. As I clear obstructions from the vents, I instruct SINDAS to send more water into the stream and ponds.
The rainforest, as SINDAS had reported, is awash in humidity. In nearly half-g, water from the waterfall sprayed out over everything. Trees and shrubs drip. A black-necked garter snake winds over the sodden gravel path. Water’s puddled in the garden plots. SINDAS will increase the heat and blow the warm, moist air from the rainforest through the thorn scrub and into the mangrove swamp. The cooler temperature there will increase precipitation and put the much needed water back into circulation.
As I step out of the biome, I greet the furry onslaught from the poodles. When they calm down, I pop ideas for Houston into SINDAS’s memory. I’ve worked on this mission for ten years, and I’m not going to stop now. I believe in it.
The president will shut down FarSpace when I return, but someday people will return to space. And that future FarSpace ship can be built to recover from a low-g emergency.
Suddenly, I’m thinking of the One with the thin, twisted crown. I try to shove the thought away, but I can’t. Mouser whines and Ginger jumps at my feet. I look down the corridor toward the hab. I don’t want to go there.
The pups scramble ahead, drawing me along in their wake. I don’t want to go, but it’s as though I’m burning with a fever. I have to look at the story—the one Uncle Ralph and Aunt Clara used to read me about the Son of God. I’m sure SINDAS has it in her memory. She could recite it for me, or pop it on a holo-screen. But I don’t want to hear her voice. I don’t even want to tell her about it.
The poodles dance and bark in the main room of the hab, as if they know where I’m going. They jump up on a soft chair and curl up together.
Then it’s quiet in the hab. I look at the spiral stair that leads up to the sleeping rooms. I’ve never been in the nauts’ sleeping rooms. I don’t want to go there, to see traces of Mac, or notes from Ihor, or work Naomi left unfinished. I don’t want to see Vicente’s football trophies or Ushamla’s tea service. I was damaged goods, and they cared for me. I can’t shake the weight of sorrow within.
Reluctantly, I climb the spiral stairs. Carmen’s room is first, the one most accessible, because she was captain. She’ll have what I need.
Her room has soft tan walls, with two brightly-colored serapes hanging on them. I can’t look at the dresser. She’ll have photos of Rosabla and Ángela, and I can’t bear to see them. On the end table, between her bed and the reading hammock, is a real book with an old, cracked, black leather cover. It looks like the Bible Uncle Ralph and Aunt Clara read from.
I pick it up, sit in the hammock, and let it sway for a minute before I set my feet firmly on the floor. I need to read the story. Why did He come to me in the midst of the blackness of space? Will I ever see Him again, hear His voice?
I look at the Bible and don’t know where to turn. How do I find the story about the barbed crown and the cruel cross? I know it’s not at the beginning of the book, nor at the end.
I hear Uncle Ralph and Aunt Clara in my mind. “He’s the Son of God. He’s our King.”
I remember His great and gentle love for me, and I get a glimpse of what they believed. But He was tortured. He died. What kind of king is that?
Carmen has a multi-colored cloth bookmark in her Bible. I open to the pages it marks and there is the story, as if it were waiting for me. I read it slowly, like Uncle Ralph used to do, sounding out the words gently. This Man was not guilty, but they crucified Him. They didn’t overpower Him. He allowed Himself to be nailed to the cross. What kind of man would do that?
I’m unsettled. Suddenly, I can’t read any more. I jump to my feet and the hammock sways behind me. I lean over to put the Bible back on the table. The thought comes to me that if I leave it here, I’ll have to come back here again. I scowl and stomp out of the room, the book in my hand. When I reach the living area, the pups bound down from their chair and jump at my feet.
I’m tired. I’m frustrated. He’s unsettling, this Son of God.
“I suppose,” I tell the poodles, “that you find this amusing.”
They look at me, heads cocked to the side, puzzled expressions on their faces, as if they’re right on the edge of understanding human words for the first time. “Right,” I say, “as if that’s going to happen.” Then I’m laughing and they’re jumping and licking my hands. I squat on the floor for a poodle-fest, feeling like a new person.
****
17:54 GMT.
I’m heading back to the ag biome, to call it a day, when SINDAS interrupts. “Level-one emergency, Captain. Report to Houston immediately.”
I turn around and head to the Tri-Comm with Ginger and Mouser trailing behind as if they hate the destination. When I arrive, I turn on only the audio feed. “Houston, Grant here.”
I’m expecting Ferris’s voice, but I hear, “Dr. Chapman, this is the president. You’re behind schedule. What’s taking so long to get that pulse comm fixed?”
I’m tired and frustrated. The last thing I need is a bureaucrat from home hassling me. I bite back an angry reply. “With all due respect, Mr. President, my priority is survival, not your schedule. We’ve had gravity and rotation problems. I’ll get to the pulse comm soon.”
“I didn’t realize the ship was that poorly built.”
I’m close to losing it. A thought from out of nowhere sparks in me: It’s one thing to follow Dr. H’s advice and be angrier, but probably not a good idea to practice on the president of the United States. A quick laugh escapes from my mouth.
“Dr. Chapman, are you laughing at me?”
“No, sir. I’m laughing at the humor of my situation.” I want to tell him that I’m the captain of this ship, and if he has any respect for those under his command, he’ll not call another level-one emergency because he wants to talk. But I chicken out. “If that’s all, sir, I’ll get back to my duties.”
“Just get that pulse comm fixed this week so we can bring you back home without further delay. That’s our number one priority.”
“Thank you, Mr. President.”
****
May 16, 2052 (Launch plus 117 days), 19:42 GMT.
I spent the morning programming SINDAS. I tracked down the AI routines that taught her to recognize goats and chickens and adapted them so she could recognize poodles. SINDAS had a complete natural history encyclopedia in her library banks, so I programmed her to recognize everything known to humankind. Not that she’ll have much occasion to identify rhinoceroses, but it made me feel better.
After lunch, I spent an hour in the fog desert, cleaning drip irrigation lines that had been clogged with sand. The fog desert was quiet, like Marsha, the kind of quiet that seeps into you and brings you a warm, peaceful feeling. I wondered what Marsha would say if I told her about being filled with the warmth of God. She’d probably be glad because she has that warmth in her.
Now I’m in the lab, bent over the pulse comm. My shoulders are tensed, and I feel like I could chew boulders and spit out sand. I’m raging at the president. He’s pressuring me to return on his schedule, for his glory. It makes me want to stomp on something.
I clamp down on my frustration. The last twenty-three connections are delicate, and I need to be steady. I thread a coated wire through the spaghetti-like tangle, crimp the stripped end to the connection terminal, and then touch it with the hot iron to zap the connections with a quick drop of solder.
I finish the eleventh connection and am placing the soldering iron on its stand when Mouser jumps up on my leg. He grabs my shirt tail with his teeth and tugs. I’m tense from the repairs, furious at the president, and I explode. “Mouser, cut that out!” He slinks back in the corner.
I don’t let him off the hook. “The president’s all over me to do this. You don’t want the data sent ba
ck; you don’t want me to return. You and he both think you’re the alpha dog. But all the work falls on me, every bit of it. Back off, buster. Stay in that corner until I’m done!”
He growls at me. I turn back to the connections.
I’ve finished the fourteenth, when I hear Ginger and Mouser scampering behind me. “Cut it out, you two.” They quiet down for a minute. But when I’m threading wire through a difficult jumble of components, they start chasing each other. “Stop it!”
Both poodles bowl into me, knocking me over and sending the pulse comm flying in the air. My arms stretch out to catch it, but I’m falling in the other direction. I slam to the floor and hear the crash of the pulse comm hitting the wall.
I roll over and sit up, seething. I hate every president and blasted dog in the universe. Mouser looks at me as if to say, You’re not supposed to go back home. Continue the mission.
I’m filled with rage. I grab Mouser. “You’re not the alpha dog. You don’t get to decide. I’m stuck in this tree, and I’ve decided to go home!”
Beside me, Ginger snarls.
I push Mouser away and climb to my feet.
Ginger barks at me and I shove her with my shoe. She skids across the floor.
“Get out of here, you nagging dogs. Get out!”
They race away, yelping, and suddenly the lab is quiet.
I pick up the pulse comm. It looks like a number 5,798 with the digits stretched and broken. Components dangle from the base on twisted wires. There’s at least three crushed chips.
“You blasted dogs! I hate you and all your kin.”
Then it sinks in. Ginger’s pregnant, and I kicked her.
14
“Houston, Grant here.”
I hear Ferris’s cheery voice. “Is the pulse comm ready?”
“Forget the blasted pulse comm! Get me Dr. H.”
“Right away.”
If Ferris feels badly because I snapped at him, I don’t care.
I sit at the console on the edge of tears. I am a total jerk, complete maggot slime.
Dr. H’s voice sounds over the system. “What’s wrong, Grant?”
“I got mad at the dogs. I kicked Ginger—and she’s pregnant.”
“You kicked her?”
“Well, I shoved her with my foot and she skidded across the room.”
Dr. H’s voice is calm. “What should you do?”
“I don’t know!”
“Give it your best shot.”
“If it were a person, I suppose I’d apologize.” It strikes me that I’m not really good at apologizing, that I’ve kept people at arm’s length so I’d never need to apologize. I’m flustered for a moment. Where did that thought come from?
Dr. H is saying something, but I don’t hear it. “I didn’t get that.”
He says, “I agreed with you. Go apologize.”
“But they’re dogs!”
“So what? Go.”
“Now?”
“I don’t mind waiting.”
I leave the Tri-Comm with the console lights blinking frantically and walk down the ivory-tiled corridor to the ag biome. When Mouser sees me, he bristles. Ginger backs away.
I kneel down. I don’t like doing this. It feels awkward. Then I take a deep breath and plunge ahead. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry I hurt you. I was wrong.” I realize, as I say those words, that I truly am sorry and somehow only in risking the words could I know that. Again, I’m unsettled. This is not the kind of thing I usually think. Where are these thoughts coming from?
Mouser peers up at me with a questioning look on his face.
I reach out my hand and scruff behind his ears. I stroke Ginger’s flank gently.
Mouser turns his head and licks my hand. Ginger follows his lead.
I don’t have any more words. I don’t know if I can trust myself and promise it won’t happen again. But the wriggling warmth of their bodies and their rasping tongues draw something back to life in me. I pick them up and they lick my face.
When I get back to the Tri-Comm, I’m not sure Dr. H will still be there.
“Dr. Hudson?”
“How’d it go?”
“We’re back to normal. They only hate me now because I want to come home.”
I remember how I snapped at Ferris. “Doc, there’s someone else I should apologize to. Is Ferris there?”
“I’ll open the line for him to join us,” Dr. H says, and I hear two brief clicks. “Go ahead. Ferris is on with us.”
“Ferris, I’m sorry. I was upset, and I took it out on you. You’ve been good to me, Ferris. When I power on the comm, I look forward to hearing your voice. It was a rotten way to treat you.”
“Don’t worry about it, Dr. Chapman.”
“Ferris, it’s important. You’ve done right by me.”
“Thank you, sir.” He pauses for a moment, “Dr. Chapman, believe me: I forgive you.”
“Thanks, Ferris. That means a lot to me.”
Dr. H’s voice returns. “What did you learn?”
“Give me a break. After all I’ve just been through…”
“No break. Men face things. What did you learn?”
I take a deep breath. I’ve lost it with the dogs and Ferris. I don’t want to lose it with Dr. H. “I don’t like apologizing. And”—I stumble to say—”I-I can get angry like my father.”
“Anything more?”
“I don’t want to be like him. I don’t ever want to be like him.”
“What happens when you are?”
“I don’t know.”
****
May 18, 2052 (Launch plus 119 days), 22:08 GMT.
I put down the soldering iron and sigh. That’s the last connection. Standing, I stretch my arms over my head and flex my fingers. Ginger and Mouser are sleeping on the padded bench.
I sweep the broken components off the lab bench into the trash can. Picking up the power cord of the pulse comm, I plug it in. Then I connect the comm to SINDAS’s test outlet. I thumb the button, lights flash on the wall console, and results blink onto the monitor screen reporting the circuits are solid, like sleek 10100s. Connections are firm. Amperage is proper. The last test results flash on the screen, and I feel a vibrant, triumphant glow inside. I look down at the finished pulse comm and think that I must have a satisfied smile on my face.
I unplug it, steady it against my hip, and head down the corridor to the Tri-Comm. Ginger and Mouser shake themselves from sleep, glare at me, and follow from a distance.
I’ve given up explaining to them why we have to go back home. They’re 100 percent naut. They don’t understand that one man can’t pull off a twenty-five-year voyage in space, not even with the help of a moronic computer and two miniature poodles.
In the Tri-Comm, I plug in the pulse comm and slide the unit into its niche in the bank of electronics. I flip the switch to put it online. Nothing shorts out. No alarms blare. Ginger and Mouser growl, then sniff in what sounds like disapproval, and curl up in the corner on the other side of the room.
SINDAS squawks, “Pulse comm functioning and ready for transmission. Data stream prepared. Time for initial data transfer is three days, three hours, twenty-nine minutes. Time for query transmissions is nine hours, fifty-one minutes, seventeen seconds. Time for data dump is fourteen days, twenty-three hours, nineteen minutes, forty-two seconds. Total time required is eighteen days, twelve hours, thirty-nine minutes, fifty-nine seconds.”
I flip on the audio link. “Houston, Grant here.”
Ferris’s jubilant voice greets me. “Dr. Chapman, you got the pulse comm fixed. We’re getting data, mountains of it.”
“Ferris, you’ll have enough data to pave Houston.”
He laughs. “Dr. Chapman, by the time the data trans is complete, the computers will have plotted your return vectors. Then we’ll take control of the ship and bring you home.”
Ginger and Mouser erupt with angry barks.
“Hey,” Ferris says, “the dogs are with you. I’d love to be in
space with dogs.”
“I hope you get to come, Ferris.”
“Unlikely, Dr. Chapman. The president’s shutting down NASA. He says we need to turn our attention to Earth. No more foolish adolescent dreams of voyages to the stars. My wife and I are looking for jobs in Little Rock. That’s her hometown. I’ll probably work in a bank, managing the data trans.”
I hear the resignation in his voice and don’t know what to say.
There’s a beep-whoop alarm from Ferris’s end, followed by the whirring sound of the all clear. “Wow, Dr. Chapman,” Ferris says. “You went for a space walk and changed three ECMs. You’re gutsy.”
“It wasn’t like that, Ferris.”
“Well, from the data we’re getting, if you hadn’t replaced those modules, you and all the water in the rings would be floating in space.”
Mouser barks at me, as if to say, You fixed that. Why are you being a wimp and going home?
“I need to talk to Jepler.”
“Sure, Dr. Chapman.” He pauses for a minute, as if deciding whether to say something. “You know, Dr. Chapman, Dr. Jepler is going to be proud of you for this space walk. If he’s told us once, he’s told us a thousand times, on the Galileo, you’re the man for the job.”
“Ferris, that buzzard virus betrayed me. He jammed me up here like I was a bottle he was stocking in supplies.”
Several voices murmur in the background. I hear Ferris’s curt voice say, “I’ll handle it.” Then he says, “Dr. Chapman, we can’t get Dr. Jepler here until tomorrow. Do you want to talk to Dr. H, too?”
“Good idea, Ferris. I’ll get back to you tomorrow.”
I leave the Tri-Comm and head to the hab. In the workroom, there’s a rice de-huller that needs to be cleaned and lubed. I look at it, standing on the workbench, and turn around. In the common room, I find Carmen’s Bible and turn to the terrible story. They nail the Son of God to the cross. They put a sign over His head, mocking Him as king. No one speaks out on his behalf. Even his disciples are silent. And then comes the line I can hardly bear to read: “And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, ‘Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?’—which means, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’”