Now four strangers were coming into their isolated but splendid universe. They were welcomed but also a threat, upsetting the delicate balance of their comfortable arrangement.
Victoria had taken the lead and boarded first; the other three new crew members, waiting in their launch vehicle, expected to be allowed to come aboard, but she had wisely counseled that they stay in their vehicle until she had smoothed the way for these three who had kept lonely watch for such a long time while those down on earth debated the future of this station and their dreams and for a while had even seemed ready to abandon the dream.
It struck her as strange, nearly moving her to tears, which she had long ago conditioned herself to contain, when she looked at one of the private bunks and saw the nameplate of her father. Singh came to her side as if to offer condolences. She forced a smile as she accepted her words about his bravery and inspiration, but said nothing in reply, which she hoped Singh would understand. They had preserved her father’s bunk as if it were a shrine to his memory.
“We’ve not entered it since he left. We really did hope that one day you would come up to join us and…” Singh’s voice trailed off. So curious, Victoria thought as she gazed at the closed curtains of the bunk. She had long ago come to terms with her father’s death. For these three, he had become iconic and what was unfolding now was a ritual they had long contemplated. She must now play her part.
The three floated beside her as she slowly pulled the curtain back and gazed within its narrow confines.
“We haven’t touched it since he went on his mission,” Kevin said. “We’d be honored if you would go in and check it out.”
The gesture struck her as far too sentimental, but she could see that to these three, who just might indeed be a bit “spacey” after all, it was a ritual they had anticipated ever since word had been sent up that she was part of the ascent crew.
They withdrew to the far side of the station by the control center as Victoria pulled herself into the bunk and then closed the curtain. It was a bit like a sarcophagus, a museum, a memorial to her father. Still secured to the wall were half a dozen old photographs, somewhat faded now from the unfiltered light of the sun. Her mother and father with their mentor, Erich, when they first met at Goddard and obviously had yet to realize, let alone admit, that they were falling in love. The standard formal photo, the two standing stiffly to either side of the elderly gentleman, looking at the camera and not at each other. My God, they looked so young! Dad had not yet been bowed and twisted by the ravages of Parkinson’s, she thought.
A photo of the two of them, now publicly in love, looking up from the desk in Erich’s office, papers scattered about, her father gazing at her mother while she faced at the camera; beneath the table it was obvious they were holding hands. Another of their wedding, then one of her mother holding her as a newborn, her father joyfully hovering in the background, slightly out of focus; then a photo of Victoria disembarking from the Brit’s Spaceship One with a childlike grin after their flight; another of Jason and her smiling, holding hands on a beach; which did give her pause to reflect. And then the one that moved her to tears: her father holding her; she was about four or so, the two of them looking at the camera held by her mother, both of them laughing about some long-forgotten joke.
It spoke much of her father, of what he held to be important in his life, that these were the images he had carried aloft. His personal pad was secured in a holding bin; that was his. It was almost like invading his privacy, and she left it alone. There were changes of clothes, an old faded “Goddard” T-shirt, the usual odds and ends, and then something caught her eye. A hint of gold, his wedding ring with a string looped through it, holding it in place as it floated away from the bulkhead, a slip of paper attached. She took the paper, turned it over. It was his handwriting.
If I don’t come back from this mission, give this to my beloved wife as a keepsake of our eternal love. Tell her that one day we will dance amongst the stars off the “shoulder of Orion.” Victoria, if you are reading this, as I pray you shall, know how much we both love you.
And now she did cry, a real, deep-in-the-soul cry, actually the first since the day her father died and she had been forced to turn a public face to the world. Up here she was alone, with his things, she did not have to be strong for her mother now, and was thankful the rest of the crew had so discreetly withdrawn. She wondered if they had seen the ring and the attached note, and that was why they had withdrawn to the far end of the station. But her heart told her no. They respected her father far too much to invade his privacy, even in death.
“I miss you so much, Daddy,” she whispered over and over as she gazed out the window to the heavens, but that sight gave her comfort as well: it was “his” universe, and somehow she felt he was actually still nearby, smiling his indulgent, loving grin for his little angel, who had given him so much joy in life and so much pride as she matured into who she was this day.
She would leave the ring and note in place until it was time for her to return to earth, when she would return it to her mother. She took several moments for a few deep breaths, gazed out the small bunk area’s porthole—she knew her father had spent hours with his nose pressed to the window—then eased herself out of the bunk and floated over to where the other three waited, seated around the “kitchen table” of the station … their station.
No one spoke for several minutes. It was obvious Victoria had been crying: in zero gravity the moisture still clung around her eyes. Singh was at the microwave and produced four sealed containers of hot tea, offering one to each, and settled into the seat across from Victoria.
“I have a replacement crew waiting on board the docked vehicle,” Victoria announced, wishing to move straight to the harder issues at hand. “You know that.”
None of the three who had maintained such a long and lonely vigil spoke.
“We have NASA backing now, more than we ever dreamed of three years ago. The government is putting forty billion into this in the next year, other nations ten billion more. It’s stunning what is going on back down there, thanks to you guys. Goddard, JPL, Langley, Kennedy, are again beehives packed with some of the best brains in the world. Even some of the old-timers going back as far as Apollo are pitching in.”
She laughed.
“I had one of the original Apollo guys actually all but cussing me out that he was still fit enough to get up here and lend a hand and would pay for the flight if need be!
“We have the same amount next year as well if they see progress. You kept the long vigil, my friends. The whole world knows that—is proud of you—and I think for the first time in a couple of generations a ticker tape parade is waiting.”
“So now we are to leave it?” Singh asked. “Is that it?”
Victoria did not reply, just nodded her head, and learned as her father had that such a simple gesture in microgravity required hanging on to the table.
“We took a vote, Dr. Morgan, before you got here. Who better to man this station than us? We are not leaving!” Kevin said angrily, such a sudden shift from but minutes before, when he was all but tearful as he helped guide her to her father’s sacred bunk.
“Which, by the way, we are naming Morgan Station,” Jenna added.
“Those so-called astronauts you just brought up with you, tucked in like Spam in a can: Who selected them?” Kevin asked sharply.
“It was a combined decision of NASA and Pillar.”
Jenna snorted disdainfully.
“I looked at their profiles. Never heard of even one of them,” Jenna said.
“Two were training for the Aries project,” Victoria replied, immediately realizing that Jenna and Kevin had already put her on the defensive, justifying rather than directing. “The oldest, Captain Sanders, flew one of the last shuttle missions, so he’s proven his stuff. I can assure you, they all know their stuff. The third, she flew with the Saturn Six project until that went down.”
“Yeah, went down in a flami
ng wreck. Damn near put the private space industry out of business,” Jenna pointed out.
Victoria said nothing, understanding how they felt. She did wonder at that instant if Defoe should have written an addendum to his book, noting that a week after being “rescued,” Robinson Crusoe and Friday demanded that the ship turn around and take them back to their island, where in reality they were perfectly happy.
She suddenly realized she had a real “personnel management” problem on her hands and wondered if her mentor, Franklin Smith, had agreed to her going up on this launch for precisely this reason and was now down there on Kiribati, quietly laughing his butt off.
She looked from one to the other.
“They’ve been well trained. I think you know the change in my role in this entire project.” She regretted saying that the moment the words slipped out of her; it implied a threat that she was now “the boss,” like it or not. She fumbled for a moment, then continued. “I would not have gone along with their coming up here if I didn’t think they were the best. All have a thorough briefing on ribbon deployment.”
“Bull,” Kevin sneered. “Two years of working up here versus some simulation training? No way! I’ve racked up over two hundred EVAs, out there damn nearly every day, looking at every angle of how to deploy the ribbon. I’m the only one in the entire universe who has actually stitched two ribbons together while in space and not in some damn simulator. I should ask for a damn raise rather than agree to being sent back down.”
“Besides,” Singh said, her voice soft, appealing. “We are no longer part of earth. We are the next generation. Live or die, we are part of the stars, the way your father was…”
She paused.
“… and still is.”
Victoria stared intently at Singh.
“Would you mind saying that again, please?” Victoria asked, voice choking.
“Your parents and Franklin gave us the shot at a dream when most had turned their backs on the potentials of that dream. As kids we worshipped NASA, dreamed of working for it, saw it as the gateway to the future. At a time when the dream flickered and nearly died—while politicians like Proxley fought against it and demagogues like Garlin denounced it but offered nothing as a realistic alternative—we still believed.”
She paused, looking into Victoria’s eyes.
“And then we three, out of all humanity we three were given a chance to help fulfill the dream. Hell, you can tell Franklin he is a lousy negotiator. Rather than pay us, we’d’ve paid him for the chance to do this.”
Singh looked at her two comrades, who nodded.
“Though I do wonder what my 401(k) looks like now,” Jenna said with a smile, “and my savings? I haven’t spent a dime the entire time I’ve been up here other than to send flowers to my mom and dad each month.”
Victoria could not help but smile at that.
“We no longer belong below on earth,” Singh announced, and there was a forcefulness to her voice.
“Don’t you miss it at all?” Victoria asked.
Singh smiled.
“Sure, I miss the green; and remember, I am from India, and we have the most lush variations of green on the face of that good earth below us—though some Irish I know might argue with me,” she replied, with a smiling glance at Kevin.
“I miss my parents, and there was once a young man I still think of at times who I learned recently married someone else,” she added.
Another moment of silence.
Victoria did not say anything, though she did feel a bit of a stab.
“Long ago—a long, long time ago—adventurers, explorers from your Europe, set sail around the world on a journey that would take years. I know your closeness to a historian who is an adviser to this project,” Singh said. “I remember him from the day we first flew together.”
Victoria nodded, struggling to show no emotion, this time holding on to the edge of the table.
“He’ll tell you that for each who did return, a score, all but forgotten by history, did not. But they went, many for a journey of years, knowing that it might be for years—perhaps forever—and welcomed the challenge. Some came up on distant shores half a world away and decided, ‘Here is my place; here I shall stay.’ Some with self-serving, even evil intent, others for the most part idealistic. I want you to realize, Dr. Morgan, that we are the latter.
“We originally came up here on a mission of but six months. That was over two years ago. But in that time we have changed. We talked night after night—if you can define our time up here as night and day—about what we would do when you and this crew arrived.
“And we made our decision together.”
She looked at Kevin and Jenna, who were smiling—Kevin, of all people, with tears in his eyes, nodding.
“We no longer belong on earth. This is our place. This is our dream. This is our life’s work. We hoped it would be you personally who would come up so we could discuss it as we now do, and we are grateful that you have done so.”
She paused, then looked back at Victoria.
“We are staying here to see the job done, and, once done, we are staying anyhow. We are the first of a new generation of spacefarers, thanks to Pillar and now, with blessed gratitude, thanks to NASA, and here we shall stay.”
* * *
A half hour later Victoria finally opened the private comm link down to Kiribati, Houston, and Goddard. She was actually tempted to use the line “Houston, we have a problem here.” But in reality they didn’t. She forced a smile as she simply said, “Ground, this is Station One.”
She hesitated for a moment and then said it.
“Correction. Ground, this is Morgan Station. We have an interesting situation to discuss.”
The “other three” were finally welcomed aboard with a formal, slightly forced, but nevertheless semi-friendly greeting ceremony. Given the naval background of two of the seven, they observed the old ritual of first saluting an American flag decal applied to the aft bulkhead, then saluted “Commander Singh” and said, “Request permission to come aboard, sir.”
There had actually been no tension whatsoever on the part of what was supposed to be the replacement crew. Prior to launch, the flight psychologists at Houston had even anticipated this scenario, at least to a certain degree, and discussed how to handle it. For that, Victoria was indeed grateful to NASA.
The living arrangements were that the three “space settlers,” as one media source had already branded them, would continue to occupy their old bunks. Victoria would have the fourth, which had belonged to her father, and the other three, when not on duty rotation, would retire to their docked module and maintain their personal possessions there.
In a gesture of compromise, Kevin even offered two of his precious pizzas as the evening meal with half of his cannolis as dessert, and Captain Hurt, an ex–British Harrier pilot, provided a certain liquid “refreshment” that was absolutely against regulations but which Victoria thanked God he had smuggled aboard in his personal gear bag, even though he might have lost his flight slot if it had been discovered.
“A traditional gift of my Scot ancestors on my mother’s side,” he said with a smile when he opened the flight bag and pulled out its contents. It did more to “smooth the waters” between the two teams than any speeches or appeals, and by the end of the evening Kevin was embracing the Brit-Scot as a long-lost comrade and explaining the complexities of stitching ribbon together in zero g without cutting yourself in half.
Kevin was now eager to see the “stitching machine” the team had brought up in their cargo compartment and then trying it out on the next day’s EVA. They started unpacking gear. One of the precious oxygen scrubbers that had been stowed for quick access in the crew cabin of their ship was soon installed to handle the extra load of four more on board, and within the hour the original three were exclaiming how wonderful it was, while the four “newbies” were gasping, with watering eyes, and wondering how these three “old-timers” had stood it for so lon
g. The place really did stink and would take some getting used to.
As Victoria settled herself into what had once been her father’s bunk, she smiled. It was obvious it was time for “the boss” to “take a hike” and leave the crews to get to know each other and merge into a single team. In a sense she would always be the “outsider,” but she had no regrets about that. Franklin in his mentoring had told her so often that she would have to take that role, almost like a monk or a nun, in much the same way that the original three in this station had done in order to survive.
The gift of Maury Hurt, the Brit-Scot, had done much to help in the bonding. Amazing, the human bonding rituals, she thought. Surely her beloved and much-missed Jason could give her scores of such examples from the past, of Irish and Chinese working side by side on the transcontinental railroad, perhaps ready to kill each other at first, but then most likely bonded by some of the same rituals, thanks to a hidden still using either rice or potatoes, and in short order willing to risk their lives for each other.
While they had celebrated, she wandered off on her own to examine the station, going over a detailed checklist given to her by a team at NASA. Morgan Station been aloft for over three years; it had been built around designs dating back to the 1970s. It was now fraught with perils. As for her “settlers,” they had been exposed to radiation from the sun for an extended period. By all rights and responsibilities she should order the three off the station and send them back down the next day while advising the three replacements to keep their EVA suits close at hand and, when not on duty, to spend every minute possible in their own ascent and descent ship.
Pillar to the Sky Page 39