“Tanner? You must be that genius engineer fella I hear tell about,” Dylan said with a smile. “I understand you’re making millions off some invention. Metal foam, if I recall. I figured you’d buy yourself a nice beach mansion, get high, and surf all day. Or whatever it is y’all do out west.”
Chad had certainly entertained the notion. “That? That’s only money. This here?” He pointed an arm grandly toward the training center. “This here is an opportunity to be part of the next great step for humanity. This here, it’s priceless.”
“I couldn’t agree more.” Dylan glanced up toward the sun. “Seems someone forgot to tell the weatherman it’s December. It’s hotter than hell’s brass hinges out on the blacktop. What say, we git inside?”
“After you!”
“No, after you.”
The two walked together into the lobby of the training facility, taking their first steps into the vast unknown.
#
Sara’s Audi pulled up to the gates of a small, exclusive marina half an hour southeast of NSA headquarters at Fort Meade.
“Good afternoon.” A guard, an older gentleman, greeted her with a disarming smile. “How can I help you, young lady?”
“Sara Wells. I’m sailing with Jake Hayden.” How wonderful to have a real person here to greet visitors. Such a charming one, too.
“Ah, yes. Director Wells. It’s a pleasure to have you with us today.”
“Sara. Please, call me Sara.”
“All right Miss Sara, head along this road then take your second left. Slip thirty-two, all the way down at the end.”
“Thank you…?”
“Quinn, ma’am. There’s a strong wind out on the river. We might get a light rain later on, too. We have loaner weather gear if you need it.”
“Thank you, Quinn. I’m all set. Have a wonderful day.”
“You too, Miss Sara.”
She drove the short distance and found parking near the slip. Jake was aboard the thirty-eight-foot sailboat, rigging it. He stood and waved as she approached.
“I’m glad you could make it!” he said.
They hugged.
“Here. You love chocolate so much. With the cold weather, I decided we could use some hot chocolate.” Sara handed him a large, aluminum cylinder.
“Chocolate?”
“Organic and low sugar, of course.”
“Of course,” he said, more focused on her eyes than the warm beverage.
They finished rigging the boat and headed into the South River. Grey, billowing clouds darkened the choppy water. Sara took a seat near the stern and stared at a distant storm front.
“You OK, Sara?” Jake set the boat’s autopilot and sat beside her.
“Sorry, Jake. Abel… Dr. Okoye had a health scare. A heart attack.”
Jake wrinkled his brow. “Is he…?”
“He’s going to be all right in a month or two. There is a family history, so his doctors prepared his heart with opsins. The auto-EMT could use a laser rather than a paddle to keep him alive. I understand it’s painless. He’s getting his heart rebuilt with stem cells. It will take a while, but they expect a full recovery. I’m flying down to see him tomorrow.”
Jake put an arm around her. “I’m glad he’s OK. Are you all right?”
“Sure. Or, I will be. It just… it just got me thinking. About life. About why we’re here.”
Jake pulled her closer. She felt his warmth as the boat, driven by a gathering wind, sliced through the chill December water. Clouds thickened in the afternoon sky, and a drizzle began to fall.
“Why don’t we go inside?” Jake asked. “I picked up a delicious chowder for us.” He double-checked the auto-nav then they took refuge in the cozy, warmly lit cabin. Koa wood panels, highly polished brass fixtures, and porthole windows hearkened back to an earlier age of sail. “Chowder, please,” Jake said.
The AI steward replied, “Right away, sir.” Several robotic arms emerged from the wall and moved a food container from cold storage to a heating unit. Part of a wall slid out, reconfiguring itself into a table ideal for two diners.
“Impressive,” Sara said.
The food filled and warmed them. They sat for hours talking of many things. Friends, hobbies, youthful adventures. They laughed and joked, shared a bottle of wine then half another. The AI steered them down the river, around the Chesapeake Bay, then unhurriedly back toward port. The dock was a distant spot peeking through the haze as the sun began to set behind thick, dark-gray rain clouds.
“It’s almost sundown, and we’ve hardly been out of the cabin,” Sara said. “Let’s go on deck.”
The wind howled, pushing the boat across the bay at a good clip. Sara sat on the port rail, facing forward to watch the setting sun. Jake sat beside her and put one arm around her waist, then his other across her chest. He pulled close and kissed her tenderly on the cheek.
Her muscles stiffened. She felt the blood rushing in her ears, an urgent pounding, a klaxon sending her to high alert. “Jake, no. I’m…” She pulled away and turned to place a hand on his shoulder. “This has been great. You’ve been great, and I want this. It’s just now, with everything going on. I can’t.” Her eyes pleaded for understanding.
He sat up straight. “All right. I understand, Sara. I thought we were really connecting. That we have something.”
He’s hurt. Heart-wrenching, life’s incomplete hurt. “We do have something. We’re good for each other, but it can’t be more than it is. Not now.”
“If not now, when?”
“I don’t know. My life is consumed with work. It has to be that way. If I allow myself distractions, I will fail.”
“Relationships aren’t only distractions. They give you balance and inner strength.”
“I can’t fail. Not now.” If only I could tell Jake just how much is at stake.
He stood and walked to the boat’s stern, staring out over the gloomy sea. The wind gusted, sending a ripple through the sails. Jake turned back to her. “All right, Sara. I understand.”
No, he doesn’t.
“I hope it won’t be awkward between us.” His cheeks were rosy in the failing light. “I want whatever we can have together.”
Sara moved to him and placed her hands lightly on his shoulders. Her eyes met his. “So do I, Jake.”
Adaptations
Dylan stared down from an elevated, glass-walled office at the six point two-million-gallon pool where astronauts received neutral buoyancy training. At eighty meters long, thirty wide, and fifteen deep, the pool was large enough to contain a full-scale mock-up of a spacecraft. He formed a tilted half-smile, raised an eyebrow in disbelief, and said, “How the heck is this supposed to work, Roy? It takes months to train a mission specialist on how to do their job without their tools floating away or puking in their helmet, and two years for the whole program. It was hard enough getting Dr. Okoye up to speed, and we at least had a little time to do that.”
Roy Evans placed his hand on Dylan’s shoulder. “I know, Dylan. I know. I have half a mind to ask the president to overrule the flight surgeon, but the fact is, he’s right. No matter how high the stakes, Dr. Okoye can’t fly this mission.”
“We can send a trained mission specialist up to work with Dr. Okoye over a remote link.”
Roy frowned. “Whatever that is orbiting Jupiter, it won’t be remotely similar to anything we trained on here at NASA. This mission calls for the best theoretical engineer we can get to Jupiter. It’s a hands-on job. We need someone who lives and breathes the fundamentals, someone who can abstract and improvise. California boy there-” He gestured toward the pool. “He’s probably the best engineer of our time and maybe the best who ever lived. He’s an outstanding theorist, yet he can build things - really complex things - with his own two hands. He’s a quick study and in excellent physical shape. Dylan, we’ve got to make this work.”
Dylan turned to Director Evans. The two had known each other for many years and been through a dozen mission
s together. He studied the man’s expression. Faded blue eyes, set firmly in an athletic face topped with short, styled white hair reflected the resolve of a man out of options. There was no hint of room for discussion. “OK, yeah. We’ll make it work. Let’s at least add a few more weeks of training. Five days might as well be five hours. It’s not enough to make a difference.”
The Director looked Dylan squarely in the eye. “We’ve stepped up the construction schedule the past three weeks. We’re sending two, three unscheduled cargo rockets to the space station every day to get your ride ready. If the Chinese haven’t detected that alien thing in Jupiter orbit, they at least know we’re up to something by now and they’re sure to be in high gear trying to figure it out. She’ll be ready to launch in five days. This crew has to be ready by then.”
“You’re set on launching before Christmas.” Dylan paced the room, finally resting both hands on the transparent wall facing the massive pool. Dr. Tanner, clad in a lightweight spacesuit, stepped off a platform into the water with the grace of an experienced SCUBA diver. “You honestly think she’ll be ready? You know, as in ‘won’t fly apart when we fire up the engines’?”
“We all know it’s a dangerous mission, but Pops Bosko gave the Jupiter Express his blessing. You and I both know he wouldn’t do that if the fundamentals weren’t solid.”
“He’s also given us both the lecture about the thousand unknowns that can go wrong.” Dylan crossed his arms over his chest and turned back to Roy. “If Pops gives it a thumbs up, that’s good enough for me.”
#
“How was the pool?” Musa Malik called out as Chad strode into the gray-and-tan conference room. Musa sat at a wood laminate table with Dylan and Ian. The Astronauts had the rather large, modest room to themselves. Musa curled his muscular arm as he took a massive bite out of a falafel.
“Any time around water’s bound to be great.” Chad smiled easily and slapped Musa on the back. “Wouldn’t you say?”
“I would rather be up in the air, or in space, myself,” Musa said. “I never learned to swim until I joined the Navy.” His words were loud, almost boisterous. He extended a powerful arm. “Musa,” he said in a deep, friendly tone.
“Chad Tanner.” The Californian extended his arm and shook hands.
“It’s a true pleasure to meet you, Chad. I have followed your work for some time now.” With a condoling smile, Musa said, “I thought they were going to keep you in the tank all night.”
Ian stood to introduce himself. “Ian Weems. Pilot.”
Chad shook his hand and with a nod said, “Pleased to meet you, Ian. The instructor down at the pool told me you’re quite the legend around here. They say you have more time in space than any other active astronaut. Everyone respects you around here.” Chad winked. “Of course, I’ve read your book.”
“I try to do my best, and they keep putting me back up there,” Ian said.
Musa added, “Oh, I should have told you. I’m the flight engineer for our trip. I’ll be keeping our cobbled-up ship held together all the way to Jupiter.”
“Cobbled up?” Chad’s eyebrows raised, thin crease lines tracing his forehead.
Musa lowered his eyes. “I guess they didn’t tell you everything. NASA didn’t have a Jupiter-capable, manned ship lying around. We had theoretical plans, nothing more. Due to the urgency this mission imposes, we needed to… improvise.”
“Shoot, Musa,” Dylan said, “cut through the bull.”
Musa’s lips pursed briefly, then morphed into a frown.
Dylan waited a heartbeat or two then continued, “Chad, pull up a chair.” He spoke with a stronger-than-usual Texan accent and with the look of a parent about to break bad news to a child. With a faint smile, he said, “I had them fix you up a turkey, avocado, and sprout wrap. That’s what y’all eat out there, right? I would have had ‘em toss a little weed on it, but that’s still not legal in the great state of Texas.”
Chad cast a tight-lipped smile Dylan’s way and added with an exaggerated tone, “My favorite, how did you know?”
“Chad,” Dylan said, his voice again serious, “this mission is risk built on uncertainty sprinkled with a whopping dose of unpredictability. There has never been a manned mission to Jupiter. Hell, no manned American ship has been out further than Mars. Even the Chinese haven’t been beyond the Alinda asteroids with their manned mining expeditions and not much further than that with the robotic ones. The ship we’re going to board in four-and-a-half days isn’t designed to fly to Jupiter. It’s an unmanned resupply ship for Mars Station. They’re bolting some cots into the cargo area, strapping on some oxygen tanks, layers of radiation shielding, and a shit ton of fuel modules. If we’re lucky, they’ll have time add a window and bolt down a few chairs. From concept to launch, we had a whopping ten months. They cycled every orbital resupply rocket in the fleet beyond its design limit getting all that into orbit for assembly at Scobee Station.” Dylan paused, allowing time for the meaning of his words to be fully absorbed.
The Californian listened intently, leaning forward with arms crossed on the table.
“Dr. Okoye was supposed to take your seat on this mission. He’s the only man at NASA even remotely qualified to deal with… whatever the hell is up there. I don’t know if they told you, but he suffered a heart attack two days ago. The president still wanted him on the mission. Can you believe that? The flight surgeon had to put his foot down real hard. You could have been in training the last ten months as a backup, but nope. ‘National Security,’ they said. Now here we are, about to hop on a rocket ship held together with baling wire and duct tape, fly much further than anyone ever has, and you have five days of astronaut school before we blast off. Hell, we’ll probably explode as soon as we turn the key.” He locked eyes with Chad, deep concern etched in his weathered features. “Are you sure you want to do this, son?”
Chad sat back in his dark, carbon-gray chair, arms still crossed, and lowered his chin. He exhaled audibly through his nose, breathed in easily, and said, “I have no illusions of this mission being safe. The thing is, I lived and breathed science and engineering for as long as I can remember. Longer, even. There’s a picture of me in diapers, with a geodesic dome I made out of toothpicks and gumdrops.” He cracked his knuckles. “Some people say Leonardo da Vinci was the last person to know everything, meaning to know the entire body of academic knowledge available at the time. If not him, another genius around the same time certainly holds the distinction. I don’t know everything there is to know about every topic. No human can anymore. But I understand the fundamentals of just about everything, and I know how to dive in deep. There are no more huge leaps for me, only incremental challenges. But that there?” He pointed up over Dylan’s head, in fact fairly close the Jupiter’s current position in the night sky. “That represents knowledge unknown to any human. That knowledge calls out to me like a siren calling to an ancient mariner. I know heeding its song might well lead me to my doom, but I’m fully prepared for that risk.”
There was silence at the table.
Musa laughed uneasily. “Sirens? You could have picked a metaphor that doesn’t involve death for all aboard, eh?”
Dylan stood and regarded his crew. He rested both hands firmly on the table, looked each in the eye, then said, “We’re all in this then. Eyes wide open.” He forced a smile. “We’ll make it to Jupiter. We have to.”
#
Chad rolled his yoga mat out on the floor of his inadequate officer’s quarters. There was barely enough room for an evening exercise regimen. He sat with legs crossed, open hands resting on his knees. Eyes closed, he breathed in through his nose. One. Two. I guess this is what it feels like to cram for a test. Out through his mouth. One. Two. In again. One. Two. Months of astronaut training compressed into a few days. Out. One. Two. Three. In. One. Two. Open your mind, absorb concepts, the big picture. Out. One. Two. Three. Four. In. One-
A chime sounded. Chad opened his eyes. A video feed, security footage f
rom one of his sailboats, played on a holopad next to his mat. As the vessel neared the dock, its moorings reached out like the tentacles of an octopus hunting its prey, finding the cleats, and wrapping securely around them. One of my nicer contributions to sailing. Jake Hayden and NSA Deputy Director Sara Wells were on the boat’s deck. They spoke for a few moments, but the audio was too muffled by gusting wind for Chad to make out the words. Sara waved goodbye and walked toward land. Jake went back inside.
“Call Jake Hayden,” Chad spoke.
“This is Jake.”
“Hi, Jake. Chad here. I hope I’m not disturbing you.”
“No, not at all. We got back. I was cleaning up a bit. Hey, thanks for letting me borrow your boat.”
“No worries. How did it go?”
“We had a good wind.”
“You know what I mean.”
“With Sara?” Jake frowned. “Not so well, I’m afraid.”
“Is there anything I can do to help?”
“I don’t think so, thanks. I’ll call her in a day or two and see where things stand.”
“Let me know if you think of any way I can help you get in with her. Impossible dinner reservations, theater, sports seats. I have you covered.”
Jake studied Chad’s image. “Thanks. I’ll let you know.”
Chad hung up, then folded his limbs into lotus pose. He breathed slow, deep, clearing his consciousness. A sharp image of Jupiter formed in his mind. He focused on where the alien structure should be and reconstructed it from his memories of the briefing material. He tried to zoom in, to imagine detail that was not visible in the satellite imagery. Details, with some luck, he might soon see in person. What purpose does this serve? Why would a civilization advanced enough to cross the stars want to visit Jupiter? Are they coming to Earth? Is there even a ‘they,’ or could it just be technology? If it is technology, could it be advanced enough to qualify as ‘they’ after all?
Chad did not sleep early, and he did not sleep well. His mind raced for hours, processing the day’s high-speed mission specialist training while grasping with the implications the mission carried. In the wee hours of the night, he dreamed. He was a child again before he understood why other children found him daunting. There was a boy. Not any specific boy from his childhood, more an abstraction, an amalgamation of the boys he knew. Chad struggled to explain how to build a bridge, one strong enough to support his weight, with Lego. He searched for simple words, simple concepts. The boy would not understand. He wasn’t ready to understand, no matter how Chad tried to explain. The boy wanted to build Lego cars and bash them together. Frustration. Exasperation. Why do I even play with this boy? Why do I try? He doesn’t understand and won’t for years. By the time he does, I’ll be on to bigger things. The scene became murky and the boy faded from view. Random yet vaguely unsettling images tugged at Chad’s subconsciousness for a time. One of those images formed into a floor. Walls appeared around him and a hazy ceiling. He couldn’t discern any details the way things often are in a dream, but somehow, he knew he was inside the alien structure. I comprehend! It is so beautiful. He glanced back at Earth, far larger than it would truly be from Jupiter, through a portal that was neither there nor not there until he turned his mind in that direction. They won’t understand.
The Gods We Make Page 12