Apollo's Outcasts

by Allen Steele

  Although she'd pulled her ball cap down low, it wasn't hard to tell that Hannah's face was red. The man who'd met us at the door saved her from making any sort of response. "All right, then," he said, "we're going to have to hurry now. Ms. Barlowe, Ms. Hernandez, Ms...um..."

  "Johnson," she whispered.

  "Right...Johnson." He pointed to a young woman standing a little further down the corridor we found ourselves in. "Please follow Ms. Cates. She'll take you to get you ready. Boys, you're coming with me."

  Logan took my bag from Melissa, then accompanied me down the corridor, letting the others lead the way. The girls disappeared through a door marked PASSENGER PREP-F; a little farther down the hall was PASSENGER PREP-M, which is where Logan, Eduardo, and I went.

  Our escort murmured something into his prong as he led us into the room, then he left us alone, shutting the door behind him. We'd barely had time to take in the hospital-style furnishings--gurneys, medicine cabinets, a counter with a computer terminal, some uncomfortable-looking chairs--when the door opened again and three doctors wearing lab smocks, surgical masks, and thin plastic gloves walked in.

  For the next twenty minutes, I underwent the fastest physical I'd ever endured. I'll spare you the details except to say that it was painful and humiliating. The doctors were considerate enough to pull curtains around the gurneys the other guys and I sat on. This didn't give us very much privacy, since I could hear what was happening elsewhere in the room, but at least I didn't have to see it. And while Logan and I were used to having people seeing us without our clothes--joining a high school swim team isn't something you should do if you have body shyness--it was pretty obvious that Eduardo didn't like taking his clothes off even for a medical exam. He put up a stink that didn't stop until his doctor threatened to tell his little sister what a coward he was.

  What is it with that kid? I thought. Is he disturbed or something?

  The physician who examined me tried to be gentle, but he was in a hurry; every couple of minutes he'd glance at his watch, and then move just a little faster. One of the first things he did was to hand me a suppository, and once he was through giving me the jelly-finger treatment he asked me to insert it myself. The reason for this soon became clear; he'd barely finished taking a blood sample when my stomach began to cramp, and without a word the doctor handed my crutches back to me and hastily ushered me to a toilet where I was able to empty my guts. Dad hadn't given us a chance to eat breakfast before we left the house; now I knew why.

  I had so many shots that my arms ached. But when the doctor opened my medicine box, he asked only a couple of perfunctory questions about the prescriptions and supplements I was taking before he closed it again and put it back in my bag. Apparently he already had my medical data in his pad; he didn't appear at all surprised to be dealing with a teenage kid who had LBDS.

  It was obvious that he'd been expecting me. Dad must have sent him this info in advance. If that were true, though, then that meant my father must have anticipated that he might have to send his kids to the Moon long before he actually had to do so.

  And if that was the case...did this mean he'd also expected President Wilford to be assassinated and Vice President Shapar to take his place?

  I had no answer for that. But the very question itself made me nervous.

  When the doctor was through, he left me alone for a few moments. I no longer heard Logan or Eduardo from the other side of the curtains, so I figured that they must have finished their own physicals. The doctor reappeared a minute later with an old-fashioned wheelchair and plastic-wrapped bundle containing a blue jumpsuit and a pair of cloth shoes. I'd never worn a single-piece outfit like this before; it fit snug but not too tight and had cargo pockets on its arms, chest, and thighs, with the ISC logo above the left chest pocket. The shoes were little more than athletic socks with plastic Velcro soles. He helped me into the jumpsuit but let me put on the shoes myself, then picked me up from the bed and carefully loaded me into the wheelchair. I'd been riding mobils for as long as I could remember, so an unpowered wheelchair was primitive beyond comparison.

  I started to reach for my crutches, but the doctor placed my bag in my lap instead. "You won't need them," he said. "Not where you're going." And then he pushed aside the curtains and wheeled me out of the prep room.

  The others were waiting for me in the corridor, each of them wearing identical jumpsuits and carrying their own bags. Hannah Johnson made her jumpsuit look good, and the Washington Nationals cap was a nice touch; I had to admit that, as much I was inclined to dislike her, she was easy on the eyes. On the other hand, Nina's outfit was a size too large, and she'd had to roll up the legs and sleeves for her to wear it at all. The doctor who'd examined me turned over to Melissa the job of pushing my wheelchair; he and the other doctors said goodbye and good luck, then disappeared through another door, once again leaving us in the care of the guy who'd met us at the door.

  He took a quick head-count to make sure no one was missing, then without a word he turned to lead us to a security door at the end of corridor. His keycard opened it for us; an older man was standing on the other side of the door. One look at us, then he nodded and led us down another corridor to an elevator. It opened and we entered; the older man pushed the lowest button on the panel, and down we went.

  As the elevator descended, Logan turned to me. "Was it fun for you, too?"

  "Loads. Can't wait to do it again."

  Melissa snickered and even Hannah managed a fleeting smile, but Nina's face remained without expression. Then Eduardo spoke up for the first time.

  "I didn't have fun," he said. "It hurt."

  At first, I thought he was being ironic. That, or just a bit dense. "Well, yeah..."

  "I don't want to do that again," he went on, as earnestly as if we were discussing an important issue, then he looked at his little sister. "Will we have to do that again, Nina?"

  "No, Eddie, we won't." Nina took his hand. "I promise."

  He beamed at her. "Good. I like that."

  Logan and I glanced at each other; neither of us said anything, but his left eyebrow raised a fraction of an inch. Eduardo Hernandez was intellectually disabled. He didn't show the physical signs of Down Syndrome, but it was clear to us that he had the mind of a child even younger than his sister. I was immediately ashamed of the unkind thoughts I'd had about him earlier.

  The elevator stopped and we got out in what appeared to be a subway station. A glass-walled tram stood at the opening of a tunnel. The older man held up an ID to a uniformed guard standing within a nearby kiosk. The guard nodded and pushed a button on a control panel, and the tram's rear door slid open. The young guy who'd met us outside stepped back into the elevator without so much as a farewell; his friend ushered us into the tram, and once the others were seated on padded benches and my wheelchair was locked down, the door quietly shut and the tram began to move into the tunnel.

  The trip took only a couple of minutes: a fast ride on an electromagnetic rail, with scarcely a bump along the way. When the tram reached the other end of the tunnel, we got out in what appeared to be an identical station. Another guard stood within another kiosk; she apparently knew that we were coming because she simply waved us through. We squeezed into an elevator a little smaller than the one at Operations and Checkout and let it take us up.

  I don't know what I was expecting to see when its doors opened, but it wasn't anything I would've imagined. Before us lay an enormous hangar, and within it was the shuttle. Resting upon its launch sled, which in turn was mounted atop a long concrete and steel monorail, the spacecraft dominated the room. More than two hundred feet long, its down-swept wings and twin vertical stabilizers were positioned just past the three black exhaust bells of its scramjet engines. The twin doors of its cargo bay lay open beneath an n-shaped service tower, a stepladder leading from its upper platform down into the spacecraft.

  I'd seen countless pictures of shuttles, of course, but I never thought I'd ever get so close
to one. Melissa was pushing my wheelchair; I heard her gasp. Logan whistled beneath his breath. I didn't really notice how the others reacted, except that Eduardo--Eddie--yelped in childish delight, as if the shuttle was a toy some gargantuan kid had left for him.

  "Wow!" he exclaimed, terror abruptly replaced by fascination. "What's that?"

  "That's the magcat." I replied.

  He gave me a quizzical look. "I don't see a cat."

  I tried not to laugh, even though some of the ground crew did. "No, no...magcat is short for magnetic catapult." I pointed toward the open end of hangar, through which we could see the rail extending out toward the Sea Wall two and a half miles away, its beacons flashing against the reddish-orange first light of dawn coming over the ocean. "See, that's the launch rail. It's magnetized, and that thing carrying the shuttle," I gestured to the sled, "will shoot straight down it until it reaches the end. The sled will stop when it gets there, and that's when the shuttle will fire its main engines and lift off. Understand?"

  "Uh-huh," Eddie mumbled, even though it was clear that he didn't. I glanced at Logan, and again he raised an eyebrow. Both of us knew this stuff cold, of course, but how do you explain superconductivity, opposing magnetic polarities, and 2-g acceleration to someone like Eddie? At least I'd managed to calm him down a little.

  Men and women in overalls were waiting for us at the bottom of the service tower. One of them waved us over, and our guide quickly led us to the ladder. As we got closer to the shuttle, I spotted its name, stenciled to the forward fuselage just below the starboard cockpit windows: Spirit of New York. Someone came down the ladder from the platform and walked toward us. Almost as wide as he was tall, the muscles of his arms and legs bulging against his blue jumpsuit, he had red hair in a buzz cut and a face like a friendly bulldog.

  "I'll take it from here, Gus," he said to our escort. The older man nodded and walked away as the man in the jumpsuit turned to us. "Hi, there," he said, forcing a grin that did little to hide his obvious discomfort. "I'm Captain Gordon Rogers, the LTV pilot."

  "What's a LTV?" Eddie asked. The technicians laughed again, this time a bit more nastily, and he looked at his sister. "Did I say a dirty word?"

  "No, you didn't." Nina took his hand again. "You need to be quiet now, Eddie, and listen."

  Capt. Rogers didn't seem to mind. "LTV means Lunar Transfer Vehicle...it's what you'll be riding the rest of the way to the Moon after the Spirit drops us off in low orbit." He pointed to the service tower. "We'll use that to climb aboard. The shuttle pilots are already in the shuttle and set to go as soon as we're ready."

  He paused to look us over, then his gaze settled on me. "You're Jamey Barlowe, right?"

  I nodded and he smiled. "Okay, then...we're bringing you aboard first." Turning toward the ground crew, he stuck two fingers in his mouth and gave a shrill whistle. "Osama, Sally...give Mr. Barlowe a hand here, willya?"

  If I thought I was going to leave Earth in any sort of dignified fashion, I was wrong. My wheelchair was left behind, of course--too much unnecessary mass that I wouldn't need in zero-g--but I could have climbed the service tower ladder by myself if I had my crutches. Instead, I had to put up with Osama lifting me out of the wheelchair and carrying me up the steps. He was big enough to make me feel like a baby in his arms. Sally followed us with my bag. She was nearly as big as her coworker, and when we reached the top platform, she squeezed past us to clamber down another ladder into the shuttle's cargo bay.

  Nestled within the bay was the LTV, a cylindrical vehicle with narrow windows at the bow and along its sides and the nozzle of a liquid-fuel engine at the stern. Sally dropped my bag through the top-side dorsal hatch to another person waiting inside the vehicle, then reached up to carefully take me from Osama and then pass me down to the guy below her.

  They were gentle about the whole business, but I'd rarely been more humiliated in my whole life. It didn't help that, when I happened to glance back at the others, I saw Hannah regarding me with pity. I always hated being thought of as the poor lil cripple boy, so I stared at her until she looked away.

  The LTV interior wasn't much larger than my family van, with a small cockpit up front and six acceleration couches arranged on either side of a narrow passenger compartment. Correction: five seats and, in the very back beside a closed hatch, what appeared to be a refrigerator with a Dutch door open at the top half. The technician tucked my bag in a ceiling net above the oval portholes before turning to the fridge; he opened its door, revealing what appeared to be an acceleration couch surrounded by deflated plastic bags.

  "Thanks, Dave. I'll take it from here." Capt. Rogers had come down the ladder behind us, and Dave grunted as he eased past him. The LTV pilot looked almost too big for his own craft; as he came toward me, he had to turn sideways to keep his broad shoulders from colliding with the forward seats.

  "Jamey?" He loomed over me, making me feel like a little kid in the presence of a pro wrestler. "Pleased to meet you," he said, offering his hand. "You can call me Gordie."

  "Hi...um, Gordie." Anticipating a big, manly handshake that would crush my fingers, I reluctantly took his hand, but his grasp was surprisingly gentle.

  "Good deal. Now, then--" he patted the top of the fridge "--this is what we're going to use to get you safely into space. It's called a Linear Acceleration Restraint, but most people who've used it call it the cocoon. It's designed for people like yourself who were born on the Moon."

  "Loonies, you mean."

  "Uh-huh...so you've heard that before. Then you must be familiar with this, too."

  I shook my head. I'd never seen a cocoon before; this was new to me. Gordie nodded and went on. "Anyway, every now and then loonies...um, people like you...come to Earth for a visit, and when they go back we use this particular LTV to get them there. In this thing, you won't be hurt when we take off. Understand?"

  I nodded, and he reached down to carefully pick me up from where Dave had left me. "The seat and the cells all around you will fill up with a sort of gel," he explained as he placed me into the cocoon. "They'll cushion your body when we hit the high-g's during launch. Got it?"

  "Sure." The seat was remarkably comfortable; I wouldn't have minded having it as an armchair back home. "But...when we take off, is it going to hurt?"

  "Nope. Not a bit...and here's why." There was a small panel in the cocoon just above my head. Gordie opened it and withdrew a plastic face mask connected to a rubber hose. "You're going to wear this on the way up," he said, showing it to me. "It'll feed you oxygen mixed with anesthetic gas, the same stuff you get when you go to the dentist to have your wisdom teeth pulled. Just before we launch, I'm going to push a button in the cockpit that'll feed you the gas. In three seconds, you'll be out like a light." He snapped his fingers. "Next thing you know, you'll be in space."

  I eyed the mask warily. "You're sure about this?"

  "Done it a half-dozen times already." Gordie grinned at me. "Trust me, kid...you'll love it."

  The others were beginning to come down the ladder; Melissa was first, her bag slung over her shoulders. I wasn't about to give Gordie a hard time while MeeMee was watching, so I nodded. "Make you a deal," Gordie said as he pulled the seat harness in place and attached it with a six-point buckle. "Sweat this out, and I'll show you how to fly this tin can. Okay?"

  I had no interest in learning how to fly a spacecraft, but I gave him a thumbs-up that the pilot seemed to appreciate. He pulled the mask down over my lower face and adjusted its elastic strap, then closed the cocoon. It must have seemed as if I sitting in a refrigerator, because Melissa giggled when she saw me. Gordie gave her a wink, then he patted the top of the cocoon. "See you soon," he said before turning to make his way to the cockpit.

  Logan took the seat in front of me, with Hannah across the aisle from him. He shoved his bag into the ceiling web next to Melissa's and mine, then paused to study me for a moment. "You look like a..."

  "Shut up." My voice was muffled by the mask, but the look
in my eyes must have told him that this was a bad time for a wisecrack.

  Dave went down the aisle, helping the others pull their seat harnesses around themselves. In the cockpit, Gordie had seated himself at his console and had pulled on his headset. Dave had just buckled Eddie's when Gordie looked back at him. "Hustle," the pilot said. "They're moving up the countdown."

  Dave raised his head. "What's going on?"

  "Just hurry up and get out of here. We need to button down the hatch."

  Melissa glanced at me; she didn't say anything, but something in Gordie's tone of voice bothered her. It worried me, too. I couldn't see anything through the porthole next to my seat except the inside of the cargo bay, but I could hear footsteps on the ladder rungs of the service tower.

  Dave finished his work, then hastily climbed up the ladder. He pulled it up behind him and slammed the ceiling hatch shut; its lockwheel turned, and a second later we heard him knock twice against the hull, signaling that it was tight. His shoes rang on the ladder rungs; a few seconds of silence, then what little light came through the windows was abruptly extinguished as the cargo bay doors lowered into place. A loud thump signaled that the LTV was sealed in.

  Air began to hiss through the ceiling vents, pressurizing the passenger compartment. In the cockpit, Gordie bent over his console, murmuring into his headset mike as he scrambled to complete the prelaunch checklist.

  "Gordie?" Logan raised his voice to call to him. "What's happening? Why are they moving up the countdown?"

  At first, it didn't seem as if the pilot had heard him. He finished the checklist, then began to tighten his harness. "Don't want to scare you guys," he said, not looking back at us, "but Launch Control has informed us that federal marshals showed up just a few minutes ago. Apparently they're searching for you."

  "Searching for us?" Melissa's hands gripped her seat. "Why would they be searching for us?"

  "They're not after you." Hannah's voice was little more than a whisper. "They're after me."