“Still. It’s not as though that was the first time someone from the government overstepped their bounds around me. I should have taken into account what was at stake. What they were capable of.”
“Easy to look back and think you should have done something different,” Conn said. “You did the right thing at the time.”
“Well, they have the list now. Skylar Reece called me in a panic when they started investigating her background. I had to assure her that she wouldn’t turn up on TMI.”
“She was worried?”
“I guess so.”
“Special much?”
The two women laughed, laughs weighed down by worry.
# # #
Grant asked for and received permission to talk to Conn privately when the Bebop was a week out.
“Man, they’re really pouring it on, aren’t they?” Grant asked, companionably.
“That’s one way to put it,” Conn said. She was frazzled, but trying not to show it.
“Maybe you can sue somebody.”
“I’m told that would make things worse.”
“Probably. And anyway, is it—I mean, is what they’re reporting...is it true?”
“Which part?” Conn growled.
“Specifically, you being bipolar,” Grant said. “Is that—is that new? Something that just happened?”
“What are you talking about?” Conn said. “Is it—no, I’ve been that way all my life. I was diagnosed when I was a teenager.”
Grant paused, adding to the lag caused by how far the Bebop was from Earth. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Conn huffed. “I didn’t tell anybody.”
“I could have helped you. We all could have helped you.”
“Helped me do what?” Conn said. “I’m fine, with medication.”
“I just—I wish you had trusted me.”
“I told you, I didn’t tell anybody. It’s not like you were special.” Conn immediately regretted the remark. She spent the seconds it took to get to the Bebop wishing she could take it back.
Grant obviously wished she could, too. Their conversation was over after that.
# # #
Glenn Bowman was in his early fifties, a lifestyle coach with a fair-to-middling client base. Whether the former priest had been kicked out of the Catholic church or left of his own accord was never clear.
He had a solid, wide chin. His ears and the bulb at the end of his nose were prominent enough that cartoonists’ jobs were basically done for them. With his dark, bushy eyebrows and receding salt-and-pepper hair, and the rimless glasses he sometimes wore over his striking blue eyes, he looked like everyone’s favorite uncle. He was not the most photogenic person, nor the one with the most intellectual heft. But he was earnest without being overly intense, and even the most cynical observers came away thinking that Bowman genuinely believed everything he said.
His résumé, after the Catholic Church, was impressive: he ran a foundation that helped orphaned children find and reunite with extended family. He purchased a pet control shelter and made it no-kill. In his spare time, he played tennis like one of the demons he saw staring back at him from the moon.
He knew the moon shower was not good news for humanity. He told anyone who would listen that monsters were real and just beginning to show themselves. He found a following in people convinced that the moon, constantly disguising itself, ever-shifting, consumed monthly by darkness, was itself a talisman of evil, the devil’s charm. They believed, as he preached, that the scientific explanation for moon phases made little sense: an object orbiting the Earth should pass in and out of the shadow of the Earth relatively quickly. To them, the methodical, slow waxing and then waning of the moon from full to new was a warning to humankind: all that bathes in the light shall pass into darkness.
None of them seemed to ever entertain the thought that it might be the other way around as well.
Glenn Bowman weighed in on Conn and her celebrity more than once, and depending on the sympathies of the interviewer, cast her as either an unwitting tool or a prime mover of the coming evil. And as the moon missions approached, Bowman’s star was ascendant.
NINETEEN
Conn's Mission
April–July, 2034
Conn loved the suggestion from Marion Mitchell Morrison Middle School in Winterset, Iowa that the command module and lander be named after Don Quixote’s horse and donkey, respectively: Rocinante and Dapple. But Jake wouldn’t commit to naming the command module Rocinante, and she wasn’t going to have a Dapple without a Rocinante.
Eight schools nominated names from Conn’s favorite novel from when she was a girl, A Wrinkle in Time. She wanted to name the lander Mrs. Whatsit, and suggested Jake call the command module Mrs. Who. Jake replied via text:
Dislike Mrs. Who as name, much prefer Aunt Beast.
Conn couldn’t help but grin.
# # #
Conn was pleasantly surprised by the general public reaction to the revelation about her bipolar disorder. Consensus, at least in America, was that Conn was brave for pursuing her dreams despite disability. There was an almost tangible sense, too, that the campaign against her had gone too far.
Simulators for both the Dyna-Tech lunar lander Mrs. Whatsit and the European lander were sent to Houston for the last three months of mission training. The Dyna-Tech simulator was submersible, and Conn spent hours each day underwater in zero-G and one-sixth G conditions, playing out scenarios of lunar landings and liftoffs. During simulated landings, safety divers attached weights to her ankles at the appropriate time to mimic the transition from the zero-G of space to lunar gravity. On simulated liftoffs, they did the opposite. Their thoroughness made Conn more confident—they were thinking of everything.
During their morning stretches and jogs, Eyechart pointedly avoided Conn, turning away when she set herself down to stretch next to him, speeding up or slowing down to avoid jogging alongside. Nate Petan and other muckety-mucks, two of whom she later learned were the head of the ESA and of Roscosmos, made themselves visible often during the training: Conn supposed Petan was making sure nobody sabotaged these last three months for her. Surely he had other business there, too, but Conn liked to think maybe she had someone on her side for once. And whatever the reason, there was no repetition of the bad behavior she’d previously had from her instructors in Houston.
Jake showed up, as did the other joint mission astronauts, Scott Daniels and Didier Gonalons, having moved their training to Houston. Once all the astronauts arrived, the missions were segregated, and Conn didn’t so much as get to meet the other mission’s crew. In the case of Scott Daniels, she was particularly disappointed.
With the arrival of a submersible simulator of the new command module, Jake got some zero-G practice in over the next six weeks, a luxury he had done without in 2022.
“This is going to be a piece of cake,” Jake said once over lunch.
“I thought you said it was already a piece of cake,” Conn teased.
“Yeah, but now I mean it,” Jake said.
By the end of her final three months’ training, Conn knew what every screen indicated, what every switch did, what every dial should be dialed to, under what circumstances. She had literally practiced everything anyone could think of that could possibly happen to the lander in flight and on the ground. Her training was all the more comprehensive because the powerful computer aboard the Mrs. Whatsit would do most of the work: there was simply less that could happen, or at least that Conn would be able to influence.
Peo took her leave of absence from Illinois Tech and arranged to have her radiation therapy and other treatment done in Houston, so she could be near her astronauts as they trained, as well as within driving distance of Brownsville. When she learned that her stomach would have to be surgically removed, she arranged for it to happen in mid-June so she could return to full strength by mission liftoff in August.
The weekend before the surgery, Peo and Conn spent an evening together. Over
a delicious seafood dinner—perhaps the last such Peo would be able to indulge in—they talked about the near future.
“What you need to understand is that your mission is to help advance Dyna-Tech’s interests,” Peo told Conn. “You have a flag patch on your space suit, but you’re not there to represent America. Scott Daniels is. You’re there as an employee of Dyna-Tech.”
“I understand.”
“So you need to do two things. First, stay focused. Every one of the experiments you do and every sample you take has the potential to make Dyna-Tech money. Don’t blow them off. As difficult as it may be, don’t let your excitement over meeting an alien intelligence—or being on the moon—keep you from doing the rest of your job.”
“I won’t.”
“The second thing I want you to do is to establish a relationship with this alien intelligence, if in your judgment you can do that safely. I fly to Brownsville and California all the time to entertain prospective investors, mutual funds, individuals, whoever is interested in our company. Right? I glad-hand them, shmooze them, make them feel important. Let them know I know what I’m doing and that I do it well. Your challenge is to do that as best you can with these aliens. You are not a passive observer. You’re a celebrity. You can take charge of the meeting and no one will have anything to say about it,” she continued. “The world expects it. That includes the astronauts up there with you. They may resent it, but if you take the lead, they’re not going to correct you, or try to overshadow you.”
“Eyechart might.”
“Eyechart can suck it. I trained him and the ESA is giving him a ride up there because people owe him favors, not because he’s the best our species has to offer. You are.”
Conn felt herself blush.
“I mean it,” Peo said.
“I’m just nervous. I don’t know what to expect.”
“Nobody does. You’ll do fine. They wouldn’t invite us for a meeting if there wasn’t some way to communicate with them. Or if they were going to be in any way hostile.”
“I’m grateful for the pep talk, but what makes you say that? They could be letting us know they’re declaring war on us and are going to wipe everybody out, starting with the people standing in front of them.”
“Oh, pshaw,” Peo said. “To what end? So we can be ready for them? If they were hostile, they wouldn’t want to talk first.”
“Not even to give us the opportunity to surrender?”
“You’re going to make yourself sick with worry if you keep thinking this way. You’ll do great. You’ll be fine.”
But Conn wasn’t convinced. The last thing she wanted was for the aliens to give her the opportunity to speak for her people and talk them out of annihilating the human race, and for her to blow it. It gave her nightmares.
Over and over she dreamed she was on the moon, underwater because that was “on the moon” in her training experience. Two terrifying beings appeared before her, gray-green, enormous heads, sharp teeth in wide, drooling mouths—the monsters from the twentieth-century Alien series. They asked her if she was there to save her world from destruction. She couldn’t speak. She could only strain and groan and grunt as they killed her for her silence.
TWENTY
Countdown
August, 2034
It was less than two weeks to liftoff for Gasoline Alley and the moon. The Chinese had announced their launch for early morning central time on Sunday the twenty-seventh, so the NASA/ESA/Roscosmos joint mission decided to leave on Saturday, August 26. The Chinese mission would launch their command module into orbit, where it would rendezvous with and attach to their lander; then the whole thing would proceed to the moon, just like the Apollo missions had done. Dyna-Tech was sending Conn and Jake to Gasoline Alley, where they would find Aunt Beast and Mrs. Whatsit attached to one another and ready to fly to the moon. The joint mission was splitting the difference: its command module would ride the rocket into orbit, detach and dock at Gasoline Alley, pick up their lander there, and proceed.
Peo was pleased that the other missions were struggling with one another to get there first. She scheduled Conn to lift off on the twenty-seventh—fashionably late, the better to make an entrance. But she also wanted the flexibility to keep Conn on the moon for a number of days after September 2.
Hunter Valence and Jake Dander both expressed concern for the plan. Arriving last was fine, but they preferred that Conn not be the last to leave—in case of a problem with liftoff, she might need help, or in a real emergency, a ride. Peo conceded that the final decision would be made based on a comprehensive systems check of the lander after touchdown. If everything was A-OK, Conn would stay after everyone else left: if there was any concern, they would plan an earlier liftoff. Valence was satisfied, Jake was not—too many things could happen to a spacecraft that looked perfectly functional on the ground.
On August 23, the British, of all people, spilled the beans about the alien rendezvous: they expressed unease that the West’s first contact with alien intelligence would be either a glorified Russian bureaucrat or a recent American college graduate. They called for Didier Gonalons instead of Eyechart to land with Scott Daniels—as though all the jobs on the spacecraft were interchangeable, and the astronauts could swap at the last minute. Shortly after the British went public, NASA jumped right in and released a copy of the invitation animation on the feeds.
What appeared to be confirmation of the existence of alien intelligence rocked the world. Video of the moon shower was resurrected and played constantly. No major political leader wanted to admit he or she had been in the dark about the invitation, so every one of them expressed as much confidence in the moon missions and the personnel as if they had had a hand in selecting them. President Clinton all but took credit for picking Conn for Dyna-Tech’s privately funded corporate mission. It made Peo, who hadn’t voted for her, angry; but Dyna-Tech was in media blackout until liftoff, and so Peo held her peace.
There was panic on the fringes, but the fact people who knew what they were doing had been planning the moon missions for two years was a salve. In the main, the public was cautiously optimistic. But people wanted to know more about Conn than ever, as well as the specifics of the missions. What would be the first words said on the surface, the first words to the aliens? What science would be done? How would the three missions cooperate? Dyna-Tech had nothing to say, and the joint mission could only talk about what it was going to do, not Dyna-Tech or the Chinese, so the public—and the feeds and channels—speculated wildly.
Mostly, there was a collectively held breath. It was a scant week and a half before the alien rendezvous. After that meeting, everyone would have a better idea of what to worry about.
Conn spent a lot of time after her training officially ended still practicing in the submerged lunar lander simulator. On Friday, the twenty-fifth, she went home to Chicago to be with her dad for a day. They watched the joint mission liftoff Saturday morning. Then, Conn took a private chartered plane to Brownsville. She should already have been in quarantine, but Peo made the call: Conn should have time with her family the last thing before liftoff. A tropical storm brewed in the Caribbean, and all involved with the launch kept a wary eye on it.
At 4:00 a.m. central Sunday morning, 6:00 p.m. in Sanya, Hainan province, China, the Chinese rocket lifted off, with its three-man contingent. Conn’s countdown was T-minus eleven hours.
She slept after the Chinese launch, and woke feeling completely unrested. She reported to a clean staging area at noon, armed with a month’s worth of medicine for her bipolar disorder. Jake met her there. As they were both scrubbed clean and put in orange flight suits, the monitor in the common room was covering the joint mission. Conn watched the astronauts float inside their command module with a surreal sense of detachment.
At 1:00 p.m., Jake and Conn were weighed, and the results sent to the operations center, which would advise if any tools or equipment would have to come off the spacecraft before launch. They were herded into
an elevator that lifted them toward the top of the rocket; they had to climb a scaffold ladder the last twenty feet to get in the capsule.
The weather threatened not to cooperate. The storm had moved into the Gulf of Mexico and stalled, acting like it couldn’t decide whether to head straight for Brownsville or not.
Bringing up the rear, Conn stopped, and looked to her right and down. She could see the Gulf, blue and coolly inviting. She smelled the salt in the air. The air was charged, the humidity oppressive. Conn felt like she was breathing through a washcloth. She looked back up. She had a sense of how much propulsive power would be beneath her soon. She felt dizzy.
She entered the capsule. She made her way to the copilot’s seat up front. NASA astronauts had someone help them strap in as tightly as possible: Peo believed if you had a belt you wanted people to be able to wear tightly, you should design it so they could tighten it and loosen it themselves, so Conn used a hand crank to tighten the straps around herself, nearly to the point of cutting off her circulation. It was a little after two.
The capsule was part of a SSIV like the one Conn had taken into space the first time. A flyer was mounted on its back, the one Conn and Jake would fly back to Texas in. The SSIV would be taken care of by dunkers. When enough SSIVs were docked at the space station, astronauts were hired to take them back down through the atmosphere and splash down in the right ocean. They called it dunking, and they called themselves dunkers.
Conn and Jake waited. Now not only did they have nothing to do, they couldn’t watch the feeds, and they couldn’t even move. Conn put her visor down and closed her eyes, breathing heavily.
“Are you OK?” Jake asked.
“Yeah. You?”
“Sure,” Jake said. Then they sat again in silence.
With fifteen minutes left in the countdown, they began to receive instructions from tower control. Jake, as the pilot, flipped the appropriate switches and swiped the appropriate screens. The computer would do most of the flying. There was nothing for Conn to do.
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