My Life as an Afterthought Astronaut

by Bill Myers

  Meanwhile, I heard the woman’s voice speaking into her intercom. “Uh, Skipper, we have a little situation down here.”

  Several minutes (and two full space sickness bags) later, all five of us were meeting on the mid-deck. Nobody seemed too thrilled about my being there, but luckily it didn’t look like they were going to make me get out and walk home. Their names were:

  COMMANDER PHILLIPS: He was in charge of the mission. I immediately liked him, especially when he decided not to throw me overboard.

  PILOT O’BRIEN: I wasn’t crazy about him, especially when he kept saying they should throw me overboard.

  MISSION SPECIALIST DR. LAMBERT: The woman who introduced me to my new hobby of collecting (and filling) space sickness bags.

  PAYLOAD SPECIALIST MEYER: A practical joker with a mischievous twinkle. If they gave space swirlies, noogies, or wedgies, he’d be the guy to look out for.

  “The way I see it,” Commander Phillips was saying, “we can either abort the mission and head home . . . or continue with some minor adjustments.”

  “If we abort,” Pilot O’Brien said frowning, “we won’t be able to deliver the next section of the space station. It’ll postpone the station’s whole assembly schedule . . . by months.”

  Commander Phillips nodded.

  “And we won’t be able to replenish the supplies of the crew that’s up in the station now,” Meyer said.

  “Or test the Personal Rescue Enclosures,” Dr. Lambert added. “That’s a major exercise we had scheduled.”

  Commander Phillips turned to me and sighed. “Your little stunt could cost NASA a bundle.”

  I swallowed and croaked, “I mow a lot of lawns during the summer.”

  “Son, at the cost of this mission, you’d be mowing lawns until the year 2275.”

  “I also do gardening.”

  The crew chuckled—everyone but Pilot O’Brien, who seemed to be looking from me to the exit hatch a lot. I wasn’t sure what he had in mind, but just to be safe, I inched a little closer to Commander Phillips.

  “What does Houston say?” Dr. Lambert asked as she handed me another space sickness bag.

  “Control says it’s our call,” Commander Phillips answered.

  O’Brien turned to me and scowled. “What do you say, Willy?”

  “Uh, my name’s Wally.”

  “Whatever.”

  “I’d, uh, be happy to stay,” I said. “But don’t I need a note from home or something?” I gave a nervous little laugh.

  No one laughed back.

  O’Brien glanced at his watch and grumbled. “We’ve got an OMS burn coming up. We better make a decision.”

  “Check with Control again,” Commander Phillips ordered. “See if you can get his parents.”

  O’Brien nodded and pushed up toward the flight deck. “Come on, Wilbur,” he ordered.

  “Uh, that’s Wally,” I said.

  “Whatever.”

  I glanced nervously at Commander Phillips, who nodded that I should follow.

  “I don’t think he likes you,” Meyer whispered.

  “Are there any exit hatches up on the flight deck?” I whispered back.

  Meyer grinned and shook his head. “But if I were you, I wouldn’t go sitting in any ejection seats.”

  I gave a weak smile and pushed off toward the f light deck. I would have performed an encore of my famous crash-and-burn routine, but Dr. Lambert reached out and caught me.

  “Easy,” she said, steadying me. “Not so fast.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You certainly have your share of accidents, don’t you?”

  If you only knew, I thought.

  “Willard!” Captain O’Brien called from the flight deck. “Get up here!”

  I drifted through the opening and up onto the flight deck. Suddenly, I sucked in my breath. It was awesome. The Earth, I mean. It filled all the windows and it was absolutely breathtaking. I know we’ve seen hundreds of pictures of it in hundreds of books and videos, but nothing has even come close to capturing its real beauty . . . all the blues and greens from the ocean, the darker greens and golds from the land. And, of course, all the glowing white clouds swirling across its surface. I tell you, God must get a lot of compliments with something like this hanging in his living room.

  O’Brien crawled into the pilot’s seat. “That’s the island of Madagascar down there.”

  I nodded in quiet awe. Not being a geography guy I didn’t know Madagascar from Montana, but it didn’t matter. The view was incredible. I swallowed and tried to say what I was thinking. “It’s . . . so . . . so . . .”

  “Yeah,” he said quietly, nodding, “you took the words right out of my mouth.” He pressed a button and checked a monitor. “We’re 145 miles high.” He pressed another button and continued. “And we’re traveling almost twenty-five times the speed of sound.”

  He reached for a small headset with a microphone and earpiece. “Here,” he said, handing it to me, “put this on.”

  A few seconds later we were talking with Earth.

  “Roger, Encounter,” a voice in the headset answered. “We have the boy’s father waiting on line in Florida. We are patching you in now.”

  There was a crackle, some static, and then:

  “Hello? . . . Wally? Wally, are you there?”

  I recognized the voice instantly. It had that wonderful mixture of love, anger, and concern.

  “Hi, Dad,” I said.

  “Well, you’ve really, really done it this time, haven’t you, son?”

  “I guess I have.”

  “I mean, you’ve really, really done it.”

  “Yes, I really have.”

  “I mean really, really, real—”

  “Dad?”

  “Yes, son?”

  “This is really, really long distance, so we better get on with it.”

  “Oh yes, good point.” He cleared his throat. “The people at NASA want to know if you should come down or if they can continue the mission.”

  “What did you say?” I asked.

  “I said I needed to talk to you. Now, they assure me it’s just as safe whether you stay a couple of days in orbit or come back right away. I have no reason to doubt them, but if you’re uncomfortable with staying up there and want to come back down—”

  “No, Dad, I really like it up here.”

  “I mean it, son, just say the word, and I’ll have them bring you back right now, this very—”

  “No, Dad, really.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “You bet,” I said, grabbing a pencil that was drifting by. I gave it a spin and watched it twirl across the cabin. “It’s really cool. What does Mom say?”

  “Well, she’s pretty nervous, especially the thought of you being up there all that time without any clean underwear.”

  I smiled. “Any other messages?”

  “Just Wall Street. She’s already made some deal with a Hollywood studio. They want to make sure you do lots of your usual crazy McDoogle stuff so they’ll have enough material for a movie and maybe a sequel.”

  I forced a chuckle.

  So did Dad, but I could tell he was holding back his real feelings. “Dad?”

  “Yes, son.”

  “Tell me what you think. Really, I mean.”

  “I, uh . . . well, that is to say . . .”

  I felt a lump growing in my throat. Good ol’ Dad. He always had trouble talking about his emotions.

  “I, uh . . .”

  “Go ahead, Dad, you can tell me.” On good days, when we’re alone, he can sometimes express his feelings. On bad days, when he thinks people are listening, he covers up by going for something macho like dollars and cents.

  “Well . . . right now NASA’s picking up the bill for all of our food and lodging. But if we cancel the mission, they said I’m going to have to pay for everything.”

  Good ol’ Dad. By the sound of things, there must have been a thousand people in the room listening to him.

/>   “Well, okay, then,” I said. “That makes the choice even easier. We better go for it.”

  Chapter 4

  Another Day,

  Another Catastrophe

  Commander Phillips and Pilot O’Brien were up on the flight deck getting ready for what was called an “OMS burn” . . . or for you civilian types, that’s Orbital Maneuvering System burn. Impressed? Me too. But I’d be even more impressed if I knew how to use their bathroom. I’m sure they had one. And after all this time inside the shuttle, I needed to use it . . . bad. Unfortunately, the idea of using a toilet without any gravity was scarier than not using it at all. So I waited.

  Down below, on the mid-deck, Payload Specialist Meyer was explaining the OMS burn to me. “We’re scheduled to rendezvous with the crew of the space station. They’re at a two hundred-mile orbit, so we have to fire our engines and accelerate to rise to their altitude.”

  I nodded, pretending to understand what he was talking about. But at the moment, I was more concerned about getting into the package of juice Dr. Lambert had given me to help calm my stomach.

  “It’s not that difficult.” She chuckled. “It’s almost like the juice cartons on Earth. All you do is insert this little straw here into that little hole there.”

  Unfortunately, that sounded a lot like physical coordination which, as we’ve already established, is not one of my specialties.

  Suddenly, Commander Phillips’s voice came over our headsets: “Okay, everybody, stand by for OMS burn.”

  I continued to struggle with the straw.

  “Uh, Wally,” Meyer said, motioning toward one of the portable footholds that they’d placed all around the cabin. “You’ll want to slip your foot into that.”

  I appreciated the thought, but by now I was a pro at being weightless. No way would I go f lying across the cabin just by putting a little straw into a little hole.

  Commander Phillips’s voice continued: “And five, four, three . . .”

  “Wally,” Meyer said, motioning urgently to the foothold.

  I nodded politely as I kept fighting to get the straw into the hole.

  “. . . two, one . . .”

  There was a loud WHOMP as the engines fired. The sudden acceleration sent me sailing across the cabin. Oh no, I thought, here we go again. But this crash-and-burn routine had a brand-new twist . . . the bag of juice in my hand. The bag of juice that hit the wall just before I hit it. The bag of juice that I squashed f lat, squirting a gusher of Papaya Delight out of the hole and all over myself.

  That was the good news. The bad news was that it didn’t fall to the floor or soak into my lap. Instead, it just floated all around the mid-deck in little juice balls.

  “Get it!” Meyer shouted as he unhooked his feet and shoved off in my direction. “Slurp it up before it gets into the electrical equipment!”

  I immediately obeyed. So did Dr. Lambert. Soon all three of us were darting around the cabin slurping little balls of juice into our mouths. We looked like dolphins or seals the way we swam and dipped and bobbed. Come to think of it, we sounded like them, too, the way we slurped and laughed and giggled.

  It was pretty funny . . . except for the part when it got into your hair, or splattered all over your body, or when Pilot O’Brien came down from the flight deck to see what all the commotion was about.

  “What’s going on?” he barked. “Who’s responsible?”

  All eyes shifted to me. I tried to give him my politest smile and most respectful attention. I would have pulled it off, too, if it weren’t for the loud belch that suddenly slipped out.

  “What is the meaning of this? What do you have to say for yourself?”

  All of the bouncing and drinking and jiggling had taken its toll. I definitely had something to say, though it wasn’t exactly what he expected. I opened my mouth and in my calmest, most mature voice screamed, “If I don’t go to the bathroom, I’m going to explode!”

  In one quick move O’Brien shoved off, grabbed me by the shoulder, and pushed us toward the exit hatch.

  “No!” I cried. “I’m only kidding, I can wait, I can wait!”

  To my relief he was not throwing me outside. He was taking me to the Waste Collection System which was just to the left of the hatch.

  In a second he had placed my feet in some metal footholds so I wouldn’t float. Next, he seat-belted me onto what almost looked like an airline’s toilet seat, snapped on what almost sounded like a giant vacuum cleaner, and pointed to what almost looked like a giant vacuum cleaner hose . . . except for the giant opening. I’ll save you the details, but if you understand the principal of suction and that the giant vacuum cleaner hose really did work like a giant vacuum cleaner hose . . .well, then you sort of get the idea of how to use a bathroom in outer space.

  Fortunately, washing my hands came a little easier. Across the way was a clear plastic bubble with a couple of hand holes in it. All you had to do was turn on the water and shove your hands inside the bubble. It would shoot water out of one side, spray it all over your hands, and suck the used water out the other side.

  It was pretty cool the way they kept using suction to replace gravity. Still, I wasn’t looking forward to taking any showers.

  “Hey, Wally,” Meyer called from the flight deck. “Come up here. You’ll want to see this!”

  I drifted through the opening where O’Brien and Meyer were both standing. But instead of facing forward, they were facing backward. They had their hands on a bunch of controls as they stared through two rear windows that looked out into the cargo bay. The cargo bay doors had been opened several hours earlier, and there was a huge cylinder-like tank inside. The cylinder was going to be a new section on the space station we were headed to.

  “Take a look,” Meyer said as he pointed to the right window.

  Outside, off to the right, was the space station. I’d seen pictures of it on TV, but not up close and in person. It was pretty cool. There were lots of framework girders and solar panels and stuff. There were also three or four of those giant cylinders exactly like the one we were about to unload.

  A new voice came through the intercom. “You’re looking good, Encounter.”

  Pilot O’Brien pressed a button and answered, “Roger. We’re standing by and waiting for your word to commence RMS.”

  “Who’re you talking to?” I asked.

  “Someone in the space station,” Meyer said as he flipped a few switches. “There are six of them. They’ve been up here a little over two months.”

  I looked back up at the station. It seemed weird that there were six human beings actually living inside that thing. Weirder still was that they actually wanted to live there. I mean, for a home it wasn’t much to look at (though I guess you wouldn’t have problems with noisy neighbors or door-to-door salesmen). Also, there wasn’t a lot of grass to mow, weeds to pull, or leaves to rake. And if they got cable, well, maybe living up there wouldn’t be such a bad deal after all—unless, of course, you were the one who had to empty the cat box . . . or walk the dog.

  “What’s that?” I asked, pointing to a long, fifty-foot pole stretched out above the cargo bay.

  “That’s the remote manipulator,” Meyer said. “It’s like a giant arm that allows me to pick things up and move them around from inside here.”

  I looked at the controls he had his hands on. One was above and between the two windows, the other was lower and to the right. They looked exactly like joysticks from some computer game, except probably a couple of million dollars more expensive.

  “Want to see how it works?” Meyer asked.

  “Sure!”

  “Give me your hands.”

  “You think that’s such a good idea?” O’Brien frowned as he worked his own set of controls beside us.

  “There’s nothing we can do but wait until they give us the word. What can the kid hurt?”

  Part of me wanted to explain that I could hurt plenty. After all, we are talking Wally If-It-Can-Mess-Up-Crack-Up-Or-Blow-Up
-It-Will McDoogle. But the other part of me really wanted the chance to play astronaut. Unfortunately, that was the part that won out.

  Carefully putting my hands on the controls and resting his on top of mine, Meyer explained what each button and each movement did. It wasn’t too complicated, and after a while I actually started to get the hang of it. Finally, he removed his hands and let me hold the controls by myself.

  What a rush! I was sweating, my heart was pounding, and my hands were shaking.

  “Okay,” he said, smiling. “Now, just do everything I tell you . . . very, very slowly.”

  I nodded.

  “And whatever you do, never, never press that button.”

  “This button here?” I asked, accidentally bumping into it. Suddenly, the arm spun to the left and crashed into the side of our payload.

  THUD

  The entire craft gave a shudder.

  “Yup,” Meyer said, groaning, “that was the one.”

  We all stared out the window. Everything looked in pretty good shape. Well, except for the giant dent I had just put in the cylinder. Too bad. To travel all this way just to deliver damaged merchandise.

  I could feel O’Brien’s eyes boring into me. After more silence than I thought was necessary, I cleared my throat and said, “Boy, I hope they won’t ask for a discount.” I gave them a sick look and forced a smile.

  They returned the sick look. They did not return the smile.

  Chapter 5

  Sweat Dreams

  It was hard for me to get to sleep that night.

  The lights were dimmed, and we were all inside our blue sleeping bags that were strapped to boards so we wouldn’t float around. Of course, that didn’t do much to hold down our arms or hair. It was kinda spooky looking around and seeing everybody’s arms raised out like zombies’ and their hair floating around like some Albert Einstein picture.

  But not as spooky as Meyer’s snoring. While everyone was cutting Zs, it sounded like he was cutting down an entire rain forest . . . with about a hundred chain saws . . . all at once. But it wasn’t the floating arms, or hair, or Meyer’s snoring that kept me awake.

  It was my thoughts about a pattern that had been forming. It seemed every time I broke the slightest rule, disaster hit.