by J. P. Landau
Dusk gave way to night. He looked up, searching for Saturn, but he couldn’t find it.
“We are ready to go,” he repeated over and over. He was rationally calm and emotionally terrified.
22 | The Lazarevs
May 26 2027, 22 days before launch
STAR CITY, RUSSIA
Under a timid spring boreal Sun, Iman and Sergei strolled the last stretch to their house. To their right were boxy, nondescript apartment buildings, unaltered since the start of the Soviet space program. She got a lump in her throat and a dreadful sense of foreboding, instinctively embracing her tummy. They had lived in one during 2019 before upgrading to their current house in anticipation of their baby.
She read it once as a schoolgirl and never forgot Hemingway’s six-word story, “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” The emotional toll had been unsparing, and every new miscarriage kept reinforcing what she intuitively knew all along: there was a poison somewhere inside her. She was trembling. Better to let go of his hand. The doctors tried to identify the cause but found none—until eight months ago.
She looked at the attractive features of her husband. Beneath the stony shell laid a caring, loving man. Sensitive too. She was the only one who could spot his almost imperceptible smile, because she was fourteen weeks pregnant, further than she had been in five years. Sergei was convinced this time was different. Even I’m getting hopeful. He had visited a fortune-teller in early January—during the Russian Orthodox Epiphany, the best time of year for omens—which accurately predicted Iman’s pregnancy. Everything would be okay the seer had assured him, and a healthy boy would be born at the end of the eighth month. There were many times since the cancer diagnosis when she had almost told him, but the pregnancy convinced her that silence was the right and only approach. “There is both good and bad news,” the doctor had told her recently, “the positive is that yours seems to have been brewing for a long time. A slow-growth cancer can last a decade before its runaway growth triggers. Also, mother-to-fetus contagion is very unlikely. The unlucky part is that this particular type has, uh, exceedingly low survival rates.”
Entering the house, she saw the boxes of vodka lined up for tonight’s dinner. Following tradition, no doubt everybody will get wasted. Even after nine years she still felt no attachment to Star City. It wasn’t the language. It was the drabness of it all, the perennial winters, the lack of social life as she knew it. An hour away from Moscow sounded near but the isolation was stifling. There were no foreigners. Except for a few Asian-looking Kazakhs, everyone was ethnically Russian.
She was resentful of Sergei’s fellow cosmonauts. They would steal the last few hours with her husband at home. The end of everyday life. Midday tomorrow, an escort would pick them up and take them to Sheremetyevo International Airport in the capital for their flight to America, with an official farewell ceremony led by the President of the Russian Federation. Army battalions, hordes of people, TV crews.
23 | Sophia Jong
May 29 2027, 19 days before launch
VENICE, LOS ANGELES
A tipsy Sophia entered her newly purchased fifth-floor apartment. She felt around for the light switch with her left hand, while holding her cellphone with her right. She gave up trying to locate it and used that hand instead to slip off her stilettos. She managed to remove only one before tripping forward on a life-size porcelain doll. They landed side by side. A Japanese fan had sent her what seemed like a ridiculously expensive model of herself dressed in an elaborate kimono, with an embroidered Saturn on the chest and all its sixty-two moons displayed around the rest of the robe.
“What was that, Tweety?” uttered the voice on the other end of the floored cellphone.
“The price of fame, Tina—it’s complicated. Listen, I’ll call you tomorrow, okay? Kisses.” Her sight had adapted to the low light and the big manga eyes looked back at her. Hi, big sis. In interviews she claimed to be five foot two, which made the mannequin a full inch taller than she really was. You’re splendid—but the perky boobs and the geisha feet are mostly artistic license, all right?
Back on her feet, she swung the curtains open. If Hitchcock was alive today, he would have filmed Rear Window right down here. By then she had more money than could be reasonably spent, but the pangs of guilt had made her—at the very last minute—buy the cheapest unit in the Shores complex. Which meant her flat was cornered against a twin building not fifty feet away.
Sophia stood by the window. A family of four was having supper in the apartment right in front of her. The father seemed to be telling a story while one child stealthily stole something under the table from the other. A fine, mischievous actress, the girl’s face betrayed nothing. It precipitated her own childhood memories: Sophia’s parents had a struggling all-you-can-eat Korean barbecue restaurant and lived right over it. She and her sister Jackie, now in the military, interacted with clients, taking orders and serving food, while the parents worked in the kitchen.
That afternoon, while having lunch with her family, Sophia did what she and Jackie had dreamed of doing since they could remember: securing their parents’ retirement by transferring the proceeds from her Rolex contract to them. Their constant financial worries were over. Her dad cried. Her mom, instead, was troubled by the quarantine. In her broken English, she wanted to know why the crew needed to isolate themselves for two weeks before launch if all previous missions did it a week prior. Jackie had answered, “Umma, their immune system will be weakened in space. The only way to eradicate flu and colds is to make sure no one is sick before they board. The more time they are isolated from the rest of us, the better.” Umma repeated her mantra, “But why, why you need go? Your family, ah? We stay here.” Sophia had restated her prime motive: because finding extraterrestrial life on Enceladus would be the most transcending, Earth-shattering, far-reaching discovery in the history of mankind. “Not make any sense. Any. Why you?” her mother lashed back. Sophia had dismissed the comment as a lost cause, but during the evening Umma’s words amplified in her head as she finally grasped their significance. Dad is not the healthiest and six years can be a really long time.
The girl in the apartment in front stood up and moved to the window. She cupped the sides of her eyes and pressed against the glass, looking straight in Sophia’s direction. This can’t be. Sophia’s apartment was in shadows. Yet … the actress was waving. At her! She immediately reciprocated. The other smiled widely. Sophia looked up and saw the full Moon shining on her.
24 | D-Day
June 17 2027, Launch Day
1:45 AM, T-minus twelve hours
JOHN F. KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FLORIDA
A searchlight ignited, slashing the darkness with a diagonal beam that revealed a metallic giant. A second lit up, intersecting at the apex of the crystalline obelisk. A third. A roar escalated from the hundreds of thousands camping and partying at Cocoa Beach, eighteen miles south of the launchpad. In half a minute, Shackleton and its tower were in the limelight of crossing rays rising from the ground and dispersing into the black like a giant folding fan.
This was the salvo for the opening, twelve miles west of Pad 39A, of the NASA Causeway bridge between the mainland and Cape Canaveral. A line of vehicles had sat idle since early the previous day for a chance to cross into the closest public spot. Half a million cars would be allowed entry, with many hopefuls bound to be upset once the barrier was shut.
Among the remaining 2 million that had flocked to the area during the week, the lucky ones were in or around Titusville, a town thirteen miles away right across the Indian River from Cape Canaveral. Swollen to seven times its resident population, it looked like a First World refugee camp. The rooms of apartments and hotels a few floors up had been trading at ludicrous prices on secondary markets.
Those able to afford the ultimate luxury floated in the ocean. Eight of the largest cruise ships in the world were berthed in Port Canaveral. The US Coast Guard had beefed up their fleet for the thousands of boats in the location an
d the many more coming, safeguarding the wide and long off-limits area east of Pad 39A, a standard procedure in case something went wrong with the launch.
3:08 AM, T-minus ten hours
MISSION CONTROL @ HANGAR ONE, CALIFORNIA
The seven mission specialists stared at their young Flight Director. Nitha looked absently around Mission Control. There was one solid wall covered in a giant screen digitally divided into seven sections, three glass walls, and a glass ceiling fifty feet above, hence the nickname, ‘the fishbowl.’ She knew the room was soundproof, but the people pacing around outside still distressed her. This is my worst possible nightmare, thought Nitha. They were listening over the phone to a group of senior meteorologists from the National Weather Service.
“So, to summarize, what’s the probability, Ben?” asked Nitha.
“It is too early to tell. I can’t really commit to a—”
“I will.” The voice overlaid with static was Dr. Nowak, a weather sage from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
He was on board the crown jewel ship of the agency, NOAAS Ronald H. Brown, somewhere east of Miami. “Look, right above me we have the fanciest Doppler weather radar in the world. As we speak, Miss Piggy is inside the storm completing—Miss Piggy is my secret love. She’s a Lockheed WP-3D Orion. A weather reconnaissance aircraft armed to the teeth with instrumentation. A hurricane hunter … in any case, we are in the presence of a tropical storm that—and here we leave facts and enter speculation—I think is developing into a hurricane. And hmm … I’m afraid it’s heading straight for the continent.”
“How many hours?”
“It’s a function of time and distance, right? I would say …” the static remained solo for seven painful heartbeats, “… 40 percent chance of hitting Florida during the next, hmm, call it eight to sixteen hours. But even if it gets hundreds of miles from Canaveral, the upper atmosphere will be badly altered … in any case, I think there’s no question about it—you need to postpone the launch.”
“Thank you very much for your time, Dr. Nowak. We’ll be in contact.”
“I’m sorr—” She had cut the line already.
Everyone avoided looking at the boss. She was thinking furiously.
The Atlantic hurricane season lasted from May to September. May and June had historically been the least active months but climate change was pulling the apex earlier and earlier. NASA and SpaceX had known for a long time that Cape Canaveral had an expiration date. Since the 2017 hurricane season it had shown worrying signs of being closer than anyone anywhere had anticipated. The entire Cape was barely a few feet above sea level. If the storm hit Canaveral, the launchpads would be flooded for weeks. But planet alignment between Earth and Saturn doesn’t much care about Earthly matters, thus the launch window would close until next year. A polite way of saying ‘forever’ as Jimmy likes to remind everyone, thought Nitha.
“It is absolutely prohibited to share this information with anybody else until I say otherwise. Understood?”
“Aren’t we supposed to tell the crew … at least?” said one of the mission specialists.
“No. We cannot.” She couldn’t dump the news on the crew yet. She knew they would have approved her decision.
4:27 AM, T-minus nine hours
JOHN F. KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FLORIDA
James finally gave up on sleep. He could count his heartbeat just by concentrating on his temples. His eyes trailed back to his visual fixation, the countdown clock hanging from a wall in the austere bedroom. He was awash with déjà vu. Is this real? Is this even likely? Has this already happened? He took three long breaths. Be in the moment, just like Yi taught us. Was he abandoning Belinda and their unborn child for a mission? Not just out of this world but to the edge of the Solar System? Concentrate. There’s nothing else before or after. The industrial noises came into focus: the humming of machines, engines, vehicles. Some people below, outside the quarantined building, exchanged brief, terse commands. I’m Stut-t-t-t-tering Jim, the s-s-s-s-scrawny 12-year-old with bad acne from 899 L-l-la Paz Way. He could envision all of his life’s road forks, a course that has implausibly made me a crew member of, and I’m paraphrasing, ‘humanity’s spearhead.’
The crew would be awake by 6:00 AM. Breakfast together half an hour later. And then—an irrational part of him wanted the flight delayed a few days. But what’s the point? We’re physically isolated from everyone except a handful of personnel in bunny suits.
Less than a mile away at the Launch Complex 39 Press Site, thousands of accredited reporters and cameramen prepared for the uninterrupted live transmissions starting soon, in a thick hubbub of accents and languages. A long serpentine line of broadcasting trucks slowly moved to their allotted spots.
7:01 AM, T-minus six hours
MISSION CONTROL @ HANGAR ONE, CALIFORNIA
Shackleton employees were gathering by the hundreds outside the fishbowl to watch, and—since broadcasting began a few minutes before—to listen to the twenty-seven specialists communicating with technicians on the ground at the opposite coast. The center of the screen showed a daring rocket pointing upward into a pristine sky, but the weather forecast oscillated between bad and awful.
There was mounting worldwide speculation about an imminent launch cancelation, yet Nitha ordered all personnel to clear the pad and authorized the loading of propellant into the rocket tanks.9 For the veterans working at the launchpad, the slightly accented, soft, and efficient female voice over the intercom was an abrupt departure from the loud tone ingrained in their minds.
8:53 AM, T-minus five hours
JOHN F. KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FLORIDA
Derya already felt the strain from grinning to the cameras, but James’ succinct order “not the time to be an asshole” while wholly unexpectedly looking at him kept him in character. His body was muggy inside the spacesuit and the effort to keep the helmet under his arm in a heroic, Apollo 11 posture was giving him pins and needles, as they were spurred on by the master of ceremonies—James A. Egger III—to the press conference. Expect retina damage from the flashes.
Minutes before, the final goodbye to family and friends across a glass wall ended less awkwardly than he had anticipated. Azra and her family were there but his sister’s forced, uninterested chat made it clear they had come for the novelty and free air tickets he had sent them, not for him per se. A technicality really. He wasn’t the only one, it seemed: “I wish—” and “Don’t—” were the last words in a stark little exchange between father and son James. In other news, Sergei’s misty eyes may be the strongest sign yet that he’s not an android after all. And his wife was definitely not, putting in a solidly melodramatic farewell.
10:24 AM, T-minus three hours
Nitha’s voice muted any conversation across news channels, cable networks, and billions of screens and smartphones. “Propellant loading complete. Weather briefing confirms a tropical storm making landfall in the coming hours, showing a distinctive hurricane pattern,” she pauses, “we are monitoring the situation closely. The launch schedule proceeds ahead unaltered.”
Meanwhile, the Coast Guard used radar to monitor and chase seven vessels that had entered the cordoned off area looking for the perfect vantage point.
10:44 AM, T-minus three hours
The astronauts walked out from the Checkout Building, waved to a boisterous press, and climbed into the Astrovan that would take them to Pad 39A.
The pecking order at the Press Site was plain to see. The bigger canopies, proudly displaying their brand logos, were set up at the front. Well-known faces were being interviewed to keep up the oomph in an otherwise action-less launch site.
“Quite a sight here at Cape Canaveral, as millions jam the Florida coast and three-fourths of the world population prepare to watch one of the most awaited moments in history. We have with us Scott Kelly, the American astronaut with the most days spent in space. Reactions?”
“‘Nice to be here!’ would be a disgraceful u
nderstatement. This is hallowed ground. In addition to Apollo 11’s cargo of Armstrongs, Aldrins, and Collins, the launching pad where Shackleton sits is where most shuttle missions launched, including Challenger’s 1986 and Columbia’s 2003 tragedies. Where the first manned SpaceX rocket lifted off in 2019. And now, where humanity’s hope is about to blast off into deep space,” said Scott Kelly.10
11:16 AM, T-minus two hours fourteen minutes
After a team helped each astronaut board and strap in, they closed Shackleton’s hatch.
11:41 AM, T-minus one hour forty-nine minutes
“Shackleton pressurization is complete,”11 said Nitha over the airwaves.
“Isn’t it odd that the Flight Director makes no mention of current weather conditions? A number of experts are urging the launch to be called off,” said the reporter.
“NASA’s Weather Launch Commit Criteria was violated the moment we heard about the cloud wall south off the Florida coast. But here’s where Shackleton diverges. NASA protocols are broadly conservative and avoid possibly adverse conditions. If it were a matter—as it is most of the time—of delaying launch by a day or a week, Mission Control would have pulled the plug hours ago. But the stakes here are much higher. If they cancel, the mission could get postponed for a year. And a year can be a really long time. Many things can change. Trust me. I was in space for a whole one,” said Scott Kelly.