Gravity: A Novel of Medical Suspense

by Tess Gerritsen

  Jack looked at him. “Attacked?”

  “Just a figure of speech, Jack. I don’t know what process we’re dealing with. I know it’s not lab error. We’ve run controls on the other crew members, and they’re perfectly normal.”

  “But is he sick enough to warrant any evac?” The question was asked by the mission operations director for the shuttle. He was not happy about any of this. Discovery’s original mission was to retrieve and repair the classified Capricorn spy satellite. Now her mission had been usurped by this crisis. “Washington is not happy about postponing the satellite repair. You’ve commandeered their flight so Discovery can play flying ambulance. Is it really necessary? Can’t Hirai recover on the station?”

  “We can’t predict it. We don’t know what’s wrong with him,” said Todd.

  “You have a physician up there, for God’s sake. Can’t she figure it out?”

  Jack tensed. This was an attack on Emma. “She doesn’t have X-ray vision,” he said.

  “She’s got just about everything else at her disposal. What’d you call the station, Dr. Cutler? ‘A well-equipped medical facility’?”

  “Astronaut Hirai needs to get home, as expeditiously as possible,” said Todd. “That remains our position. If you want to second-guess your flight surgeons, that’s your choice. All I can say is, I’d never presume to second-guess an engineer on propulsion systems.”

  That effectively ended the argument.

  The NSTS deputy director said, “Are there any other concerns?”

  “Weather,” said the NASA forecaster. “I just thought I’d mention there’s a storm system developing west of Guadeloupe and moving very slowly westward. It won’t affect the launch. But depending on its path, it could be a problem for Kennedy in the next week or so.”

  “Thanks for the heads up.” The deputy director glanced around the room and saw no further questions. “Then launch is still a go for five A.M. CDT. See you all there.”

  TEN

  Punta Arena, Mexico

  The Sea of Cortez shimmered like beaten silver in the fading light. From her table on the outdoor deck of the Las Tres Virgenes café, Helen Koenig could see fishing boats heading back to Punta Colorado. This was the time of day she loved best, the evening breeze cool against her sun-flushed skin, her muscles pleasantly weary from an afternoon’s swim. A waiter brought the margarita she’d ordered and set the drink before her.

  “Gracias, señor,” she murmured.

  For an instant he met her gaze. She saw a quiet and dignified man with tired eyes and silver-streaked hair, and she felt a prick of discomfort. Yankee guilt, she thought as she watched him walk back to the bar. A feeling she experienced every time she drove down to Baja. She sipped her drink and gazed at the sea, listening to the whining trumpets of a mariachi band playing somewhere up the beach.

  It had been a good day, and she’d spent almost all of it in the sea. A two-tank dive in the morning followed by a shallower dive in the afternoon. And then, just before dinner, a swim in the sunset-gilded waters. The sea was her comfort, her sanctuary. It had always been so. Unlike the love of a man, the sea was constant and it never disappointed her. It was always ready to embrace her, soothe her, and in moments of crisis she found herself fleeing into its waiting arms.

  This was why she had come to Baja. To swim in warm waters and to be alone, where no one could reach her. Not even Palmer Gabriel.

  Her lips puckered from the tang of the margarita. She drank it down and ordered a second. Already the alcohol made her feel as if she were floating. No matter; she was now a free woman. The project was finished, aborted. The cultures destroyed. Even though Palmer was furious with her, she knew she had done the right thing. The safe thing. Tomorrow she would sleep in, order hot chocolate and huevos rancheros for breakfast. Then she’d slip beneath the waters for another dive, another return to her sea-green lover.

  A woman’s laughter drew her attention. Helen looked at the bar, where a couple was flirting, the woman slim and tanned, the man with muscles like steel cord. A vacation fling in the making. They would probably have dinner together, walk along the beach, hold hands. Then there would be a kiss, an embrace, all the hormone-charged rituals of mating. Helen watched them with both a scientist’s interest and a woman’s envy. She knew such rituals did not apply to her. She was forty-nine years old and she looked it. Her waist was thick, her hair more than half gray, and her face was unremarkable save for the intelligence of her eyes. She was not the sort of woman who attracted looks from sun-bronzed Adonises.

  She finished the second margarita. By now the floating sensation had spread to her whole body, and she knew it was time to get some food in her stomach. She opened the menu. “Restaurante de Las Tres Virgenes” it said at the top. The Three Virgins. An appropriate place for her to eat. She might as well be a virgin.

  The waiter came to take her order. She looked up at him and had just requested the grilled dorado when her eyes focused on the TV over the bar, on the image of the space shuttle poised on the launchpad.

  “What’s happening?” she said, pointing to the TV.

  The waiter shrugged.

  “Turn up the sound,” she called out to the bartender. “Please, I need to hear it!”

  He reached for the volume knob, and the broadcast spilled out in English. An American channel. Helen crossed to the bar counter and stared at the television.

  “…medical evacuation of astronaut Kenichi Hirai. NASA has not released any further information, but reports indicate their flight surgeons remain baffled by his illness. Based on today’s blood tests, they felt it was prudent to launch a shuttle rescue. Discovery is expected to lift off tomorrow at six A.M. Eastern Daylight Time.”

  “Señora?” said the waiter.

  Helen turned and saw he was still holding his order pad. “Do you wish another drink?”

  “No. No, I have to leave.”

  “But your food—”

  “Cancel my order. Please.” She opened her purse, handed him fifteen dollars, and hurried out of the restaurant.

  Back in her hotel room she tried to call Palmer Gabriel in San Diego. It took half a dozen tries to connect with the international operator, and when the call finally went through, she got only Palmer’s voice mail.

  “They have a sick astronaut on ISS,” she said. “Palmer, this is what I was afraid of. What I warned all of you about. If it’s confirmed, we have to move fast. Before . . .” She paused, glancing at the clock. To hell with this, she thought, and hung up. I have to get home to San Diego. I’m the only one who knows how to deal with this. They’ll need me.

  She threw her clothes into the suitcase, checked out of the hotel, and climbed into a taxi for the fifteen-mile ride to the tiny airstrip in Buena Vista. A small plane would be waiting for her there to fly her to La Paz, where she could catch a commercial flight to San Diego.

  It was a rough taxi ride, the road bumpy and winding, the dust flying in the open windows. But the part of the trip she truly dreaded was the flight coming up. Small planes terrified her. If not for her rush to get home, she would have made the long drive up the Baja Peninsula in her own car, which was now safely parked at the resort. She clung to the armrest with sweaty palms, imagining what sort of aviation disaster awaited her.

  Then she glimpsed the night sky, clear and velvety black, and she thought of the people aboard the space station. Thought of the risks other, braver human beings took. It was all a matter of perspective. A ride in a small plane is nothing compared to the dangers an astronaut faces.

  This was not the time to be a coward. Lives might hang in the balance. And she was the only one who knew what to do about it.

  The spine-rattling ride suddenly smoothed out. They were now on a paved road, thank God, and Buena Vista was just a few miles away.

  Sensing the urgency of this journey, her driver accelerated, and the wind whipped through the open windows, stinging her face with dust. She reached down to crank up the glass. Suddenly sh
e felt the taxi swerve left to pass a slow-moving car. She glanced up and saw to her horror they were on a curve.

  “Señor! Más despacio!” she said. Slow down.

  They were neck and neck with the other car now, the taxi just pulling ahead, the driver unwilling to surrender his gain. The road ahead wound to the left, dipping out of sight.

  “Don’t pass!” she said. “Please, don’t—” Her gaze shot forward and froze on the blinding lights of another car.

  She raised her arms to cover her face, blotting out the brilliance of those lights. But she could not shut out the scream of the tires or the shriek of her own voice as the headlights leaped toward them.

  August 3

  From his seat behind the glass partition of the crowded visitors’ gallery, Jack had a clear view down into the Flight Control Room, where every console was manned, every controller neatly attired for the TV cameras. Though the men and women working below might be intently focused on their duties, they never entirely forgot they were being observed, that the public eye was trained on them, and every gesture, every nervous shake of the head, could be seen through the wall of glass behind them. Only a year ago, Jack had manned the flight surgeon’s console during a shuttle launch, and he had felt the gaze of strangers, like a vague but uncomfortable heat trained on the back of his neck. He knew the people below were feeling it now.

  The atmosphere in the FCR appeared icy calm, as were the voices on the comm loop. It was the image NASA strove to maintain, of professionals doing their job and doing it well. What the public seldom saw were the crises in the back controller rooms, the near-disasters, the Chinese fire drills when things went wrong and confusion reigned.

  Not today, he thought. Carpenter’s at the helm. Things will go right.

  Flight Director Randy Carpenter was leading the ascent team. He was old enough and experienced enough to have witnessed a multitude of crises during his career. It was his belief that spaceflight tragedies were not usually the result of one major malfunction, but rather a series of small problems that piled up until they resulted in disaster. He was therefore a stickler for details, a man for whom every problem was a potential crisis. His team looked up to him—quite literally, because Carpenter was a giant of a man, six foot four and nearly three hundred pounds.

  Gretchen Liu, the public affairs officer, was sitting at the far left, last-row console. Jack saw her turn and give the viewing gallery an A-OK smile. She was dressed in her TV best today, a navy blue suit and gray silk scarf. This mission had caught the world’s attention, and although most of the press was gathered at the launch site in Cape Canaveral, there were enough reporters here in JSC’s Mission Control to pack the observation gallery.

  The ten-minute countdown hold ended. On audio, they heard final weather clearance, and then the countdown proceeded. Jack leaned forward, his muscles tensing as events cascaded toward liftoff. That old launch fever was back. A year ago, when he’d walked away from the space program, he thought he’d left all this behind. But here he was, caught up once again in the excitement. The dream. He imagined the crew strapped into their seats, the vehicle trembling beneath them as the chambers of liquid oxygen and hydrogen built up pressure. He thought of their claustrophobia as they closed their visors. The hiss of oxygen. The quickening of their pulses.

  “We have SRB ignition,” said the public affairs officer in KSC’s Launch Control. “And liftoff! We have liftoff! Control has now shifted to Houston’s JSC…”

  Tracing across the central screen, the shuttle’s course arced eastward along its planned flight path. Jack was still tense, his heart racing. On the TV screens mounted above the gallery, images of the shuttle were being transmitted from Kennedy. Communications between Capcom and shuttle commander Kittredge played on the speakers. Discovery had gone into its roll and was climbing into the upper reaches of the atmosphere, where blue sky would soon darken to the blackness of space.

  “We’re looking good,” said Gretchen over the media loop. In her voice they heard the triumph of a perfect launch. And so far it was perfect. Right through Max Q, through SRB sep, through main engine cutoff.

  In the FCR, Flight Director Carpenter stood immobile, his gaze fixed on the front screen.

  “Discovery, you are go for ET sep,” said Capcom.

  “Roger, Houston,” said Kittredge. “We have ET sep.”

  It was the sudden jerking up of Carpenter’s massive head that told Jack something had just changed. In the FCR, a flutter of activity seemed to animate all the flight controllers at once. Several of them glanced sideways at Carpenter, whose normally slouching shoulders had snapped up to attention. Gretchen had her hand pressed to her earpiece as she listened intently to the loop.

  Something has gone wrong, thought Jack.

  The air-to-ground loop continued to play on the gallery audio.

  “Discovery,” said Capcom, “MMACS reports umbilical doors have failed to close. Please confirm.”

  “Roger that, and we confirm. The doors are not closing.”

  “Suggest you go to manual command.”

  There was an ominous silence. Then they heard Kittredge say, “Houston, we’re A-OK now. The doors have just closed.”

  Only then, when Jack released a sharp breath, did he realize he’d been holding it. So far this was the only glitch. Everything else, he thought, is perfect. Yet the effects of that sudden surge of adrenaline still lingered, and his hands were sweating. They’d just been reminded of how many things can go wrong, and he could not shake off this new sense of uneasiness.

  He stared down at the FCR and wondered if Randy Carpenter, the best of the best, felt the same sense of foreboding.

  August 4

  It was as though the clock in his brain had automatically reset itself, shifting his sleep and wake cycles so that his mind snapped to alertness at one A.M. Jack lay in bed, eyes wide open, the luminous glow of his nightstand clock staring back at him. Like the shuttle Discovery, he thought, I am racing to catch up with ISS. With Emma. Already his body was synchronizing itself to hers. In an hour, she would be waking up, and her workday would begin. And here was Jack, awake already, their rhythms in near parallel.

  He did not try to go back to sleep, but rose and got dressed.

  At one-thirty A.M., Mission Control was quietly humming with activity. He glanced first in the FCR, where the shuttle controllers sat. So far, no crises had occurred aboard Discovery.

  He went down the hall to Special Vehicle Operations, the separate control room for ISS. It was much smaller than the shuttle’s FCR, with its own array of consoles and personnel. Jack headed straight to the flight surgeon’s console and sank into the chair next to Roy Bloomfeld, the physician on duty. Bloomfeld glanced at him with surprise.

  “Hey, Jack. I guess you’re really back in the program.”

  “Couldn’t stay away.”

  “Well, it can’t be the money. So it must be the thrill of the job.” He leaned back, yawning. “Not many thrills tonight.”

  “Patient’s stable?”

  “Has been for the last twelve hours.” Bloomfeld nodded to the biotelemetry readings on his console. Kenichi Hirai’s EKG and blood pressure readings blipped across the screen. “Rhythm’s steady as a rock.”

  “No new developments?”

  “Last status report was four hours ago. His headache’s worse, and he still has that fever. Antibiotics don’t seem to be doing much of anything. We’re all scratching our heads over this one.”

  “Does Emma have any ideas?”

  “At this point, she’s probably too exhausted to think. I told her to get some sleep, since we’re watching the monitor anyway. So far, it’s been pretty boring.” Bloomfeld yawned again. “Listen, I gotta take a leak. Can you watch the console for a few minutes?”

  “No problem.”

  Bloomfeld left the room, and Jack slipped on the headset. It felt familiar and good to be sitting in front of a console again. To hear the muted conversation from the other control
lers, to watch the front screen, where the station’s orbital path traced a sine wave across the map. This might not be a seat on the shuttle, but it was as close as he could get to one. I won’t ever touch the stars, but I can be here to see that others do. It was a startling revelation to him, that he had accepted that bitter twist in his life. That he could stand on the periphery of his old dream and still admire the view from afar.

  His gaze suddenly focused on Kenichi Hirai’s EKG, and he leaned forward. The heart tracing had shuddered up and down in a few rapid oscillations. Now it sketched a completely straight line across the top of the screen.

  Jack relaxed. This was nothing to worry about; he recognized it as an electrical anomaly—probably a loose EKG lead. The blood pressure tracing continued across the screen, unchanged. Perhaps the patient had moved, accidentally pulling off a lead. Or Emma had disconnected the monitor, to allow him to use the toilet in private. Now the blood pressure tracing abruptly cut off—another indication that Kenichi was off the monitors. He watched the screen for a moment longer, expecting the readings to reappear.

  When they did not, he got on the loop.

  “Capcom, this is Surgeon. I’m seeing a loose lead pattern on the patient’s EKG.”

  “Loose lead?”

  “Looks like he’s been disconnected from his monitor. There’s no heart tracing coming across. Could you check with Emma to confirm?”

  “Roger, Surgeon. I’ll give her a jingle.”

  A soft whine pulled Emma from a dreamless sleep, and she awakened to the cold kiss of moisture on her face. She had not intended to doze. Though Mission Control was continually monitoring Kenichi’s EKG on biotelemetry and would alert her to any changes in his status, she had planned to stay awake throughout the crew’s designated sleep period. But in the last two days, she had caught only brief snatches of rest, and those were often interrupted by her crewmates, waking her with questions about her patient’s status. Exhaustion, and the utter relaxation of weightlessness, had finally caught up with her. Her last waking memory was of watching Kenichi’s heart rhythm blip across the screen in a hypnotic squiggle, the line fading to a blur of green. To black.