by Unknown
Of course it was the presence of the others that made it a threat. By himself, he was plenty of company for himself. Only other people could make him be alone.
The struggle behind his pale green eyes was manifest. What was it in him that polarized him to every group he associated himself with? Must he always invite this blackmail? “I apologize,” he said at last, hoarsely.
“You are a creative and resourceful crew member. Your suggestions are welcome.”
“I appreciate your saying so, Commander.”
“There will be no more insubordination.”
He nodded.
But she lingered, pondering, until finally she said, “I accept your apology.” She held out her hand and he shook it.
His diamond name bracelet sparkled in the colored light. Seeing it, her mouth softened into a half smile. “Maybe NASA will let you keep a souvenir—to add to that.”
“Enhance my colorful reputation.” He turned away from her, then caught himself at the lip of the corridor, on the verge of leaving the deck. His look back at her was quizzical, plaintive. “I thought maybe you had some fun today, Robin.”
Her features softened, although she did not smile. “Yes. I realized something. I realized I’d never been anywhere but straight up. There I was. In a cement mixer in space. A rock named for a mountain on Earth I saw once—from three hundred kilometers straight up.” She paused, and a nervous smile tugged at her mouth. Whatever she was trying to put into words, the words weren’t cooperating. She sighed. “Crazy.”
“Sometimes you gotta go a little crazy to have fun.”
That night, inside his sleep restraint, he thought about everything that didn’t get said in that encounter. Impossible not to cast her in the role of den mother. That’s what some of them in the corps called her behind her back: Ma Braide. Lucky for Travis it was so public, so obvious to everybody. Lucky he didn’t have to discover it for himself. Else he might not have caught himself in time.
Christ, but they were crazy, putting him on this mission; any half-decent psychiatrist would have known it. The way Travis felt sometimes, he could have gotten stressed and confused and done something really dumb by now.
But it was over, just about over. He’d made his amends—he’d made it all the way to the asteroid. Hey, the trophy’s yours, Ma. And here’s a little souvenir, this bracelet with the name of your son spelled out in diamonds.
He didn’t owe anybody anything anymore, except to keep quiet and do his job until they were home. But for the first time in months he was conscious of a powerful thirst, an awful craving for oblivion.
In Austin that night, Edna May Hill was making phone calls. “Darrell, this is Edna May. Now don’t let me interrupt your dinner, but I had to pass on the news. Albert just called me from the capital to say the president is personally going to address my boy Travis and the Starfire astronauts tomorrow morning when they leave that asteroid of his. Isn’t that something to make a mother proud?…Now you be sure and watch, you hear?”
18
“Ladies and gentlemen, the president of the United States.”
On comm screens in each of Starfire’s workstations the president’s sunny face appeared above the presidential seal—tugged and smeared into a cartoon by the interference.
“My fellow citizens, people of the world. It is with great pleasure that I address, on behalf of us all, the brave men and women of the crew of Starfire, who have established beyond doubt the great potential of aster…” A blast of static swept away the high voice and the picture that went with it.
“We’re not going to get a whole lot of this,” said Robin. “Will you give me the MFS pad update, Melinda?”
Melinda glanced up at Robin on the screen. “I have Houston’s numbers, but the star tracker failed to lock up.”
“Copy, it needs a warm-up. Uh-oh, here he comes again.”
“…fulfilling the promise of our forefathers—and fore-mothers—when they…” Then static swallowed the president again, more quickly this time.
Robin said, “Melinda, I’m going to record a reply, and when you decipher good signal evidence that the president has finished, you beam it back for me, okay?”
“Roger, Commander.”
“No disrespect, but we need to get on with our work.”
Melinda flipped record switches. “I’m set to record.”
“Here goes: Mr. President, on behalf of the crew of Starfire and all the folks at NASA, we, uh…we thank you. We intend to carry out our mission to the best of our abilities. Over.”
“Stirring stuff, Commander.”
“Well, I’m afraid to say more. How do I know what he’s saying?”
“Roger, I’ll send it as is. Listen, I can lock this up so it goes on its own when he stops talking.”
“Excellent, do it. And when you can, give me some firm aim-point numbers?”
Melinda tapped a moment, then turned to the computer screen. “Numbers coming at you. MFS burns at oh nine ten and all balls. Aim is X minus zero point two five seven, Y minus point two five seven oh, Z plus point oh oh nine.”
“Copy MFS burn at nine ten, aim X minus zero point two five seven, Y minus point two five seven oh, Z minus point oh oh nine.”
“Roger, except Z plus point oh oh nine.”
“My pencil slipped.” On the comm monitor Robin bent to her work. “Okay, everybody’s here, I think. Let’s count off.”
“Ready!” Spin said gleefully, abandoning his script. Houston, after all, was so far away that mission control was serving in a merely advisory capacity.
“Ready in NAVCOM,” said Melinda.
“PROP ready,” said Linwood.
“The mission specialist is ready for lunch,” said Travis.
“I think you mean launch.”
“Whichever comes first,” he drawled.
“We’ll try not to keep you waiting,” Robin said. “Let’s give it to the robots.”
She set the automatic launch sequencer by hand. At some point the president stopped talking and Starfire’s reply was sent beaming back to him through the static. For most of an hour the astronauts were bent to their redundant tasks, setting and resetting switches, checking the positions of those switches.
“T minus fifteen minutes and counting.” The voice was the gentle coloratura of Starfire’s own robot, replacing a too-distant launch control director. Although the ship’s computers routinely communicated some messages by synthesized voice and could be programmed to understand voice commands, humans reserved most voice communications to themselves. It wouldn’t do for the ship’s robot brain to take some offhand remark seriously. Like, “Get lost.”
Pumps spun up; the ship began to tremble. In the banks of capacitors inconceivable hordes of electrons were poised, ready to spill current into the lasers, igniting the beam.
The minutes ticked away until only one was left.
“Attention,” said the ship. “Attention.”
“I’ve got a light here,” said Linwood.
“Damn! I’ve got it. Spin?”
“No. I show a green board. Talk to me.”
Linwood said, “Negative coolant flow to radiator one. It’s the sensor at LB-four.”
“No. Four’s okay but five is negative on my board,” said Robin.
“I show no problem,” said Spin. “We’ve got about forty-five seconds to go/no go.”
“Running a system check,” said Linwood.
“T minus fifty seconds and counting,” said the ship.
After a long silence, Linwood said, “Well, arbitrator would have us believe it’s a soft bit in computer four.”
“T minus thirty seconds and counting,” said the ship.
Spin said, “Worst that can happen is auto-shutdown. We’re not going to melt anything.”
“Tell me something I don’t know. What do you show for coolant flow pressure?”
“Under batteries, four hundred ninety,” he said.
“Copy,” Robin said. “Same here.”
“T minus twenty seconds and counting,” said the ship.
“Auto-shutdown can have consequences,” said Linwood.
“Linwood, are you making a recommendation for a hold?” Robin demanded. “We have the time.”
“My life will get awfully complicated,” Melinda volunteered, “if I have to recalculate the solar probe launches all by myself.”
“Cut the chatter, please,” said Robin. “We have time for a good decision here.”
Linwood said, “No, Commander. I’ll go with the arbitrator.”
Robin’s voice was firm. “Go for enable.” Spin said, “Capacitors at rated V, LL pressurized, LD pressurized, LT pressurized, lasers locked, system locked—”
“Now the damn light went off,” said Robin.
“Not mine,” said Linwood.
“T minus ten seconds,” said the ship. “Nine, eight…”
“Now mine’s off,” said Linwood, relieved.
“Three…”
“Two…”
“One…”
“Power.”
“Ignition.”
The ship moved. The astronauts sank deep into their couches. The great wings began to glow.
“Attention,” said the ship. “Attention.”
“Showing failure to achieve rated power,” said Robin.
“Showing no coolant flow to wing one,” Spin said. “It’s a wash.”
“We’re in auto-shutdown,” said Robin.
Panels turned from green to red; a great shudder and groan went through the ship.
“There it goes, oh there it goes,” said Spin. The ship’s pain was his own.
Everybody was weightless again.
“Coolant override?” Robin asked.
“Negative, that kicked in.”
“Copy,” said Robin. “Damage report.”
“The safeties appear to have functioned nominally,” said Linwood.
“Well, it was a clean power down,” said Spin.
“I show no anomalies,” said Melinda. “Total delta-vees only about seventy meters per second. Want a position check?”
“In a minute.” Robin’s voice was remarkably calm. “All right, everybody take a deep breath.”
Everybody did; then they took another.
“Looks like lunch it is,” said Travis.
Perverse, but it struck them all funny.
At that moment the alert went out, from Sacramento Peak, from Kitt Peak, from Palehua, from wherever the solar observatories could see the sun. Within the previous hours a chain of small positive and negative sunspots had re-formed around the persistent members of the decaying sunspot group; a complicated mosaic of magnetic fields had knit itself among the spots; minor protoflares had burst from within the cluster.
Now, suddenly visible in the orbiting x-ray monitors, a bright loop of gas had snapped like a rubber band; electromagnetic radiation flooded the sky across the full spectrum.
Bulletins flashed to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, to the Air Weather Service, to NASA. This was a real flare, a big one. Too soon to know how big. It had escaped the forecasting net; it was even now in progress, growing and feeding on magnetic energy, spewing photon radiation and energetic particles into space.
On Starfire they still were debating what to do next when Linwood uncharacteristically interrupted his own lecture. “Urgent report, Commander,” said Linwood. “Significant radiation readings.”
“Message from Houston, Commander,” said Melinda.
“Can it for five minutes, Melinda,” said Robin.
“Recording gamma-ray bursts and hard x-ray bursts at short intervals from the sun,” Linwood continued.
“Can’t wait, Robin,” said Melinda. “Urgent situation.”
“What situation, dammit?”
“Houston says life-threatening solar flare radiation due to arrive our position—well, already.”
“Yaw thirty degrees left,” she ordered. “On manual.”
“Roger,” said Spin. “X thirty left.” His fingers flickered over the board. “Now.”
Forward and rear thrusters exploded in sustained fury, a cannonade. Starfire slowly slid end for end against the stars. Thrusters erupted again. The ship presented its stern to the sun.
“Linwood, what’s your ES?”
Linwood had switched on the audio feed from the Geiger counters. A crackle, sounding at first like crumpling cellophane, was quickly building to the sound of frying meat. “The useful numbers in the alert suggest solar protons with energies of well over fifty MeV will arrive within two minutes. Very high energy levels could be sustained indefinitely.” He cleared his throat, even at this moment speaking as carefully as if he were addressing a class. “I fear the mass in our fuel tanks is insufficient to shield us from a lethal dose in the event of prolonged exposure. The superconductive magnets of the main engine will doubtless deflect many charged particles; unfortunately, to maintain altitude—”
Robin interrupted. “On the MS, Spin. Back to Everest. Melinda, vectors please, straight to the robot.”
Melinda called up the numbers on the NAVCOM computer and fed them directly to the main computers. Lights blinked; Spin’s fingers hit the buttons; cannons boomed.
On stern thrusters alone, Starfire limped toward Everest.
“I’m seeing stars,” said Travis. Little prickles of white light were dancing in his vision.
“You’re seeing protons,” said Melinda. They all were. And in the process they were all losing bits of their retinas.
Already, sleeting protons were drilling holes through the ship, smashing its atoms to chunks and driving the debris forward to do more damage—invisible subatomic dumdums slamming through the brains and bones and soft tissues of the crew.
“No time to turn around,” Robin said. “Stand by to take negative gees.”
They had regained somewhat less than half the distance to Everest. To avoid overshooting the target they had to decelerate. Forward thrusters exploded.
Robin and Spin fell headfirst into their harnesses. Check-pads fell over their heads and recoiled on their cables, and pens and penlights and Swiss army knives fell out of their pockets and clattered on the ceiling.
Melinda fell into her harness; Travis fell into his. They endured a hard rain of bric-a-brac.
Linwood fell into his harness. He escaped the pelting of his own debris, for he kept a taut ship; everything in Linwood’s workstation was taped or Velcroed down. But a stabbing pain seized him, an involuntary groan escaped his lips—to be swallowed in the forest-fire howl of his Geiger counters.
The hammering roar of the ship’s thrusters ceased. They were weightless again. On the flight deck screen the gnarled black surface of Everest rolled up under the ship.
“Do it by hand,” Robin ordered. She watched Spin grab the stick. Never had he seemed more a part of the ship, sensing as it sensed, moving as it moved. Under the gentler thrust of vernier jets, Starfire sidled into the asteroid’s shadow.
In Linwood’s workstation the howling white noise of the Geiger counters rapidly fell off to random clicks. Linwood reached to switch off the counter’s audio. “We appear…to be adequately shielded by Everest, Commander.”
“Your biomeds indicate a slow pulse, Linwood.”
“Must have been taking it easy, Commander.” He tried a laugh, uncharacteristic of him.
“Irregular pulse,” she said.
“I’ll attend to it.”
“Okay. What do our consumables look like?”
“Precisely, unh…perhaps you will give me a moment. Presently I would say that we are somewhat below nominal lines for this stage of the mission.”
Robin took a breath. “Well, it’s a different mission.”
“This is Mission Control. Intermittent LOS continues. We are aware that Starfire suffered an MFS failure due to a malfunctioning radiator. We are aware that Starfire attempted to shelter from flare radiation in the shadow of the asteroid. We cannot presently confirm that
they were successful in this attempt; however, we are receiving fragments of communication and telemetry, which are being deciphered in an attempt to clarify them. The press conference scheduled for nine P.M. has been cancelled, repeat cancelled…”
19
The flare on the sun persisted for four hours and in that time released half a million times the energy the United States consumes in a year. Twenty minutes after the flare was detected on Earth the first accelerated protons arrived; forty-six hours later the shock wave collided with the Earth’s magnetosphere and triggered a magnetic storm. The sunspots continued to swarm; after the first flare subsided, new flares continued to bloom at short intervals.
Fax dailies and video news shows waxed lurid with purest speculation concerning the fate of Starfire. For two days NASA issued only prepared statements to the media, until at last a press conference was scheduled. As it got under way, the magnetic storm was at its height.
The big auditorium in JSC’s Building Two was packed, the air thick and hot with uproar. A table draped with blue felt was set up on the stage; the dignitaries straggled in to take their seats behind it, about as eagerly as suspects in a police line-up. Taylor Stith was first; the chief flight director joined him, then the commander of the alternate crew, Dick Crease; then two flight planners. Then the public affairs officer. Then Jimmy Giles. Glumly they faced the press.
The reporters restively tolerated the opening statements—then suddenly, sensing a pause in the prepared text, they were screaming at the panelists, interrupting each other’s questions, interrupting the answers.
“…two days ago, and you say don’t even know where they are?”
“No sir, we know where they are, I said we don’t know—”
“Why haven’t they contacted you?” The questioner was a woman this time.
“As we explained, ma’am, communication has been extremely difficult due to solar activity. Our DSN, uh, deep space network has been out of commission for most of the past two days. As you’re aware, no doubt, major areas of northern Europe suffered power outages earlier this morning as a direct result of the phenomenon, which will give you some indication—”