Asimov's SF, February 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Part One: 2007

  Richard remembered it wrong. He remembered it as if it were a painting, and he were observing it, instead of a living breathing memory that he had a part of.

  The image was so vivid, in fact, that he had had it painted with the first of what would become obscene profits from his business, and placed the painting in his office—each version of his office, the latter ones growing so big that he had to find a special way to display the painting, a way to help it remain the center of his vision.

  The false memory—and the painting—went like this:

  He stands in his backyard. To his left, there is the swing set; to his right, clotheslines running forward like railroad tracks.

  He is eight, small for his age, very blond, his features unformed. His face is turned toward the night sky, the Moon larger than it ever is. It illuminates his face like a halo from a medieval religious painting; its whiteness so vivid that it seems more alive than he does.

  He, however, is not looking at the Moon. He is looking beyond it where a small cone-shaped ship heads toward the darkness. The ship is almost invisible, except for one edge that catches the Moon's reflected light. A shimmer comes off the ship, just enough to make it seem as if the ship is expending its last bit of energy in a desperate attempt to save itself, an attempt even he—at eight—knows will fail.

  Someone once asked him why he had a painting about loss as the focus of his office.

  He was stunned.

  He did not think of the painting, or the memory for that matter, as something that represented loss.

  Instead, it represented hope. That last, desperate attempt would not have happened without the hope that it might work.

  That's what he used to say.

  What he thought was that the hope resided in the boy, in his memory, and in his desire to change one of the most significant moments of his past.

  * * * *

  The real memory was prosaic:

  The kitchen was painted bright yellow and small, although it didn't seem small then. Behind his chair were the counters, cupboards and a deep sink with a small window above it, a window that overlooked the sidewalk to the garage. To his left, two more windows overlooked the large yard and the rest of the block. The stove was directly across from him. He always pictured his mother standing at it, even though she had a chair at the table as well. His father's chair was to his left, beneath the windows.

  The radio sat on top of the refrigerator, which wasn't too far from the stove. But the center of the room, to his right and almost behind him, was the television, which remained on constantly.

  His father could read at the table, but Richard could not. His mother tried to converse with him, but by his late childhood, the gaps in their IQs had started to show.

  She was a smart woman, but he was off the charts. His father, who could at least comprehend some of what his son was saying, remained silent in the face of his son's genius. Silent and proud. They shared a name: Richard J. Johansenn, the J. standing for Jacob, after the same man, the family patriarch, his father's father—the man who had come to this country with his parents at the age of eight, hoping for—and discovering—a better world.

  That night, December 24, 1968, the house was decorated for Christmas. Pine boughs on the dining room table, Christmas cards in a sleigh on top of the living room's television set. Candles at the kitchen table, which his father complained about every time he opened his newspaper. The scent of pine, of candle wax, of cookies.

  His mother baked her way to the holiday and beyond; it was a wonder, with all those sweets surrounding him, that he never became fat. That night, however, they would have a regular dinner, since Christmas Eve was not their holiday; their celebration happened Christmas Day.

  Yet he was excited. He loved the season—the food, the music, the lights against the dark night sky. Even the snow, something he usually abhorred, seemed beautiful. He would stand on its icy crust and look up, searching for constellations or just staring at the Moon herself, wondering how something like that could be so distant and so cold.

  That night, his mother called him in for dinner. He had been staring at the Moon through the telescope that his father had given him for his eighth birthday in July. He'd hoped to see Apollo 8 on its way to the lunar orbit.

  On its way to history.

  Instead, he came inside and sat down to a roast beef (or meatloaf or corned beef and cabbage) dinner, turning his chair slightly so that he could see the television. Walter Cronkite—the epitome, Richard thought, of the reliable adult male—reported from Mission Control, looking serious and boyish at the same time.

  Cronkite loved the adventure of space almost as much as Richard did. And Cronkite got to be as close to it as a man could get and still not be part of it.

  What Richard didn't like were the simulated pictures. It was impossible to film Apollo 8 on its voyage, so some poor SOB drew images.

  At the time, Richard, like the rest of the country, had focused on the LOS zone—the Loss Of Signal zone on the dark side of the Moon. If the astronauts reached that, they were part of the lunar orbit, sixty-nine miles from the lunar surface. But the great American unwashed wouldn't know the astronauts had succeeded until they came out of the LOS zone.

  The LOS zone scared everyone. Even Richard's father, who rarely admitted being scared.

  Richard's father, the high school math and science teacher, who sat down with his son on Saturday, December 21—the day Apollo 8 lifted off—and explained, as best he could, orbital mechanics. He showed Richard the equations, and tried to explain the risk the astronauts were taking.

  One error in the math, one slight miscalculation—even if it were accidental—a wobble in the spacecraft's burn as it left Earth orbit, a miss of a few seconds—could send the astronauts on a wider orbit around the Moon, or a wider Earth orbit. Or, God forbid, a straight trajectory away from Earth, away from the Moon, and into the great unknown, never to return.

  Richard's mother thought her husband was helping his son with homework. When she discovered his true purpose, she dragged him into their bedroom for one of their whisper fights.

  What do you think you're doing? she asked. He's eight.

  He needs to understand, his father said.

  No, he doesn't, she said. He'll be frightened for days.

  And if they miss? his father said. I'll have to explain it then.

  Her voice had a tightness as she said, They won't miss.

  * * * *

  But they did.

  They missed.

  Mission Control had a hunch during the LOS, but they didn't confirm the hunch with the astronauts, not right away. They asked for a few things, another controlled burn, hoping that the ship might move back on track, a few more reports than usual just to get the men's voices on tape while they were still calm (apparently), but nothing they did changed the tragic fact that the astronauts would not return to Earth.

  They would float forever in the darkness of space.

  And for a while, they didn't know. The ship itself had limited control and almost no telemetry. The astronauts had to rely on Mission Control for all of their orbital information—in fact, for most of their critical information.

  Later, it came out that the astronauts deduced the problem almost immediately, and tried to come up with solutions on their own.

  Of course, there were none.

  Which was why Cronkite looked so tense that Christmas Eve, sitting in the area cleared for broadcasters in Mission Control. Cronkite had known that the three astronauts were still alive, would remain alive for days as their little capsule headed into the vast beyond. They stayed in radio contact for longer than anyone felt comfortable with, and because they were heroes, they never complained.

  They spoke of the plainness of the Moon, and the beauty of the Earth viewed from beyond. Apparently, on a closed circuit, they spoke to their wives and children one final time. They belonged to the Earth, as long as the radio signal held. As long
as their oxygen held. As long as their hope held.

  That was what Richard remembered: he remembered the hope.

  No one played the tape any longer of Lovell, Borman, and Anders, talking about the future. The future had come and gone. What reporters and documentarians and historians played nowadays were the goodbyes, or, if they were more charitable, the descriptions of Earth—how beautiful it looked; how small; how united.

  It's hard to believe, Lovell said in what would become his most famous quote, that such a beautiful place can house so many angry people. From a distance, it looks like the entire planet is at peace.

  Of course it wasn't.

  But that didn't concern Richard then.

  What worried him—what frightened him—was that this failure of the space program would end the program.

  It worried the astronauts as well. They made a joint appeal with what would be damn close to their last breath.

  This is not a failure. We're proud to be the first humans to venture beyond the Moon. Please continue the space program. Get us to the Moon. Get a base on the Moon. Send another group to explore the solar system—one who can report back to you. Do it in our name, and with our blessing.

  Merry Christmas to all.

  And to all, a good night.

  That broadcast brought Richard's mother to tears. Richard's father put a strong hand on Richard's shoulder. And Walter Cronkite, that stalwart adult, removed his glasses, rubbed his eyes for a moment, and gathered himself, much as he had done five years earlier when a president died unexpectedly.

  Cronkite did not say much more. He did not play the radio reports from the bitter end. He let Lovell, Borman and Anders’ desired last statement be their last statement.

  He did not speculate on the means of their deaths, nor did he focus on the failure.

  He focused on the future.

  He focused on the hope.

  And so did Richard—

  At least, he tried.

  But while he worked toward the conquest of space, while he studied his physics and astronomy, remained in great physical condition so that he could become an astronaut at a moment's notice, he would look through his telescope into the darkness beyond the Moon—and wonder:

  What had they seen in those last hours?

  What had they felt?

  And where were they now?

  * * * *

  Nearly forty years later, they were coming home.

  Or as close to home as they could get with a dead ship and a dead crew, and no one heading out to greet them.

  Apollo 8 had ended up in an elliptical orbit around the sun, much as the experts predicted might happen. The orbit took just over sixteen months to complete, but kept the small craft far above the plane of the Earth's orbit most of the time. The first time Apollo 8 had come home, or at least close to home, it had been just over eighteen years.

  That first time they were discovered almost by accident. Sunlight, glinting off the capsule, drew the attention of amateur astronomers all over the world. Something small, something insignificant, reflecting light in an unusual way.

  People speculated about what it was, what it might be. Giant telescopes from the Lowell Observatory to the new orbiting telescope began tracking it, and pictures came in, pictures showing a familiar conical shape.

  It couldn't be, the experts said.

  But it was.

  Everyone hoped it was.

  Richard spent those heady days begging his friends at the University of Wisconsin's observatory to turn their telescope toward it—ruining research, he was sure, and he didn't care. He wasn't even an astronomy student any longer. He had done his post-grad studies in aeronautics and engineering and had just started the company that would make him the country's first billionaire.

  But in those days, he was still a student, with little power and even less control.

  In the end, he had to go to the outskirts of town, away from the light, and try to see the capsule for himself. He stood in the deep cold, the ankle-deep snow, and stared for hours.

  Finally, he convinced himself that he saw a wink of light, that it wasn't space dust or the space station the U.S. was building in Earth orbit, or even some of the satellites that had been launched in the last few years.

  No, he convinced himself he saw the ship, and that fueled his obsession even more.

  Perhaps that, more than the incorrect memory of the original loss, caused the wink of light on the capsule in his painting.

  Perhaps that was the catalyst for it all.

  Or maybe it was, as his mother claimed, his overactive imagination, held in place by his first experience of—his first real understanding of—death.

  Only this didn't seem like death to Richard. It never had. In his mind, there was always a chance that the three men had lived. Maybe they had gone on, as their ship had gone on, exploring the solar system, seeing things that no man had ever seen up close. Or maybe they had encountered aliens, and those aliens, benign like the ones in the Star Trek shows of Richard's childhood, had saved them.

  He knew such things were improbable. He had been inside an Apollo capsule in the museum in Huntsville, Alabama, and he had been shocked at how small those capsules were. Human beings were not meant to live in such small places.

  He also knew how fragile the capsules were. The fact that the capsule had survived for so many years was a miracle. He knew that. He also knew that his thoughts of the men's survival were a remnant of his childhood self, the one who didn't want to believe that heroes died.

  All his plans, all his hopes, for the next eighteen years after that first sighting, were based on the theory (the certainty) that the astronauts were dead. And that Apollo 8 would survive again and return.

  The ships he had built, the missions he had planned during those years, were based on the idea that he was going after a death ship, a bit of history. He was going to recover Apollo 8, the way an archeologist would resurrect a tomb from the sand or a deep-sea explorer would record the remains of famous ships like the Titanic.

  Richard had spent much of his fortune and most of his life finding ways to greet Apollo 8 on its next near-Earth return.

  And now that the ship had been spotted on its odd elliptical orbit—on schedule, just like the scientists said it would be—he was ready.

  And he was terrified.

  Some nights he'd wake up in a cold sweat, wondering if a man should ever achieve the dreams of his childhood.

  Then he'd remember that he hadn't yet achieved the dream. He'd only created the opportunity.

  And sometimes he'd wonder why that wasn't enough.

  * * * *

  The ship, which he had had primed and ready since the beginning of the year, was named the Carpathia after the ship that had rescued most of the survivors of the Titanic. He liked the metaphor, even though he knew deep down that there would be no survivors of Apollo 8. The command module itself was the survivor; a manned ship that had gone farther and longer than any other man-made vehicle and had returned.

  Mankind had sent craft almost everywhere in the system, from rovers on Mars to probes to Venus, and had greater knowledge of the solar system than ever. NASA planned to send more craft even farther out, hoping to go beyond the bounds of the solar system and see the rest of the galaxy.

  Government funding was there—it had always been there—for space travel. The latter part of the twentieth century and the first part of the twenty-first were called the Epoch of Space Travel.

  Richard liked to believe humankind would look back on it all, and call it the Beginning of Space Travel. He hated to think that satellites and a large, fully equipped space station in orbit, a small base on the Moon, and some commercial traffic would be all that there was to space travel.

  He wanted to see human beings on Mars; humans—not unmanned craft—exploring the far reaches of the solar system; humans boldly going, as his favorite childhood show used to say, where no one had gone before.

  And that was why he sta
rted Johansenn Interplanetary, all those years ago. With a broader version of that speech, with a great marketing strategy, and with the best minds in the country helping him create the space vehicles, the prototype bases on Mars and beyond, and finally, just last year, the artificial gravity technology that would take mankind to the stars.

  Much of this technology, primitive as it was, had military applications, so Richard got his money. His was the first private firm that specialized in space travel, even though he didn't achieve space travel for another few decades after his funding. Instead, he created subcorporations to handle the other scientific developments. Artificial gravity was just one component. He also corralled computer scientists to help him make computers small, so that the space craft wouldn't need bulky on-board computers. And one of his computer visionaries, a man named Gates, had proposed selling those smaller computers to the business market.

  That idea alone had made Richard a billionaire.

  Others, from the freeze-dried food to the lighter-than-air space suits, simply added to his fortune.

  Everyone thought he was the visionary, when really, all he wanted to do was the very thing he'd been too young to do in 1968.

  Rescue Apollo 8.

  * * * *

  So that was how he found himself wearing one of his own spacesuits, standing on the docking platform outside the Carpathia, looking up at its streamlined design. Up close, he couldn't see the scaled-back wings, which allowed the ship to glide when necessary. Nor could he see most of the portals installed for the passengers, since this thing had been designed as both research vehicle and luxury liner.

  He could see the outline of the bomb bays underneath, added so that this ship design, like so many others, could be sold to the U.S. military for applications he wasn't sure he wanted to think about.

  That the Carpathia had the bomb bays, he attributed to the paranoia of his chief designer, a man named Bremmer, who, when he learned what Richard really wanted to use this ship for, said, “You don't know what you'll encounter. Let's make sure this is a fully functional military vehicle as well."

  Which meant that they had to have a military unit on board, astronauts who knew how to use the guns and the bombs and the defensive technology that Richard only understood in theory. There was the military unit and the research team—real archeologists, excited that they got to practice at least part of their craft in space; a handful of space historians and some medical personnel, in case something horrible came into the Carpathia through Apollo 8. Then there were the investors, the “tourists” as the real astronauts called them. Richard liked to call them “observers,” partly because he was one, no matter how much he liked to pretend he wasn't.