Gravity
Tess Gerritsen

Copyright

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

Harper

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in the USA by Pocket Books 1999

Copyright © Tess Gerritsen 1999

Tess Gerritsen asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780006513087

Ebook Edition © JULY 2011 ISBN: 9780007370795

Version: 2016-10-05

To the men and women whohave made spaceflight a reality.

Mankind’s greatest achievements are launched on dreams.

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

THE SEA

1

THE LAUNCH

2

3

4

5

6

THE STATION

7

8

THE SICKNESS

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

THE AUTOPSY

16

17

18

THE CHIMERA

19

20

21

22

23

24

THE ORIGIN

25

26

27

THE SEA

28

GLOSSARY

Keep Reading

Acknowledgments

TESS GERRITSEN

By the Same Author

About the Publisher

THE SEA

1

The Galápagos Rift

.30 Degrees South, 90.30 Degrees West

He was gliding on the edge of the abyss.

Below him yawned the watery blackness of a frigid underworld, where the sun had never penetrated, where the only light was the fleeting spark of a bioluminescent creature. Lying prone in the form-fitting body pan of Deep Flight IV, his head cradled in the clear acrylic nose cone, Dr Stephen D. Ahearn had the exhilarating sensation of soaring, untethered, through the vastness of space. In the beams of his wing lights he saw the gentle and continuous drizzle of organic debris falling from the light-drenched waters far above. They were the corpses of protozoans, drifting down through thousands of feet of water to their final graveyard on the ocean floor.

Gliding through that soft rain of debris, he guided Deep Flight along the underwater canyon’s rim, keeping the abyss to his port side, the plateau floor beneath him. Though the sediment was seemingly barren, the evidence of life was everywhere. Etched in the ocean floor were the tracks and plow marks of wandering creatures, now safely concealed in their cloak of sediment. He saw evidence of man as well: a rusted length of chain, sinuously draped around a fallen anchor; a soda pop bottle, half-submerged in ooze. Ghostly remnants from the alien world above.

A startling sight suddenly loomed into view. It was like coming across an underwater grove of charred tree trunks. The objects were blacksmoker chimneys, twenty-foot tubes formed by dissolved minerals swirling out of cracks in the earth’s crust. With the joysticks, he maneuvered Deep Flight gently starboard, to avoid the chimneys.

‘I’ve reached the hydrothermal vent,’ he said. ‘Moving at two knots, smoker chimneys to port side.’

‘How’s she handling?’ Helen’s voice crackled through his earpiece.

‘Beautifully. I want one of these babies for my own.’

She laughed. ‘Be prepared to write a very big check, Steve. You spot the nodule field yet? It should be dead ahead.’

Ahearn was silent for a moment as he peered through the watery murk. A moment later he said, ‘I see them.’

The manganese nodules looked like lumps of coal scattered across the ocean floor. Strangely, almost bizarrely, smooth, formed by minerals solidifying around stones or grains of sand, they were a highly prized source of titanium and other precious metals. But he ignored the nodules. He was in search of a prize far more valuable.

‘I’m heading down into the canyon,’ he said.

With the joysticks he steered Deep Flight over the plateau’s edge. As his velocity increased to two and a half knots, the wings, designed to produce the opposite effect of an airplane wing, dragged the sub downward. He began his descent into the abyss.

‘Eleven hundred meters,’ he counted off. ‘Eleven fifty…’

‘Watch your clearance. It’s a narrow rift. You monitoring water temperature?’

‘It’s starting to rise. Up to fifty-five degrees now.’

‘Still a ways from the vent. You’ll be in hot water in another two thousand meters.’

A shadow suddenly swooped right past Ahearn’s face. He flinched, inadvertently jerking the joystick, sending the craft rolling to starboard. The hard jolt of the sub against the canyon wall sent a clanging shock wave through the hull.

‘Jesus!’

‘Status?’ said Helen. ‘Steve, what’s your status?’

He was hyperventilating, his heart slamming in panic against the body pan. The hull. Have I damaged the hull? Through the harsh sound of his own breathing, he listened for the groan of steel giving way, for the fatal blast of water. He was thirty-six hundred feet beneath the surface, and over one hundred atmospheres of pressure were squeezing in on all sides like a fist. A breach in the hull, a burst of water, and he would be crushed.

‘Steve, talk to me!’

Cold sweat soaked his body. He finally managed to speak. ‘I got startled—collided with the canyon wall—’

‘Is there any damage?’

He looked out the dome. ‘I can’t tell. I think I bumped against the cliff with the forward sonar unit.’

‘Can you still maneuver?’

He tried the joysticks, nudging the craft to port. ‘Yes. Yes.’ He released a deep breath. ‘I think I’m okay. Something swam right past my dome. Got me rattled.’

‘Something?’

‘It went by so fast! Just this streak—like a snake whipping by.’

‘Did it look like a fish’s head on an eel’s body?’

‘Yes. Yes, that’s what I saw.’

‘Then it was an eelpout. Thermarces cerberus.’

Cerberus, thought Ahearn with a shudder. The three-headed dog guarding the gates of hell.

‘It’s attracted to the heat and sulfur,’ said Helen. ‘You’ll see more of them as you get closer to the vent.’

If you say so. Ahearn knew next to nothing about marine biology. The creatures now drifting past his acrylic head dome were merely objects of curiosity to him, living signposts pointing the way to his goal. With both hands steady at the controls now, he maneuvered Deep Flight IV deeper into the abyss.

Two thousand meters. Three thousand.

What if he had damaged the hull?

Four thousand meters, the crushing pressure of water increasing linearly as he descended. The water was blacker now, colored by plumes of sulfur from the vent below. The wing lights scarcely penetrated that thick mineral suspension. Blinded by the swirls of sediment, he maneuvered out of the sulfur-tinged water, and his visibility improved. He was descending to one side of the hydrothermal vent, out of the plume of magma-heated water, yet the external temperature continued to climb.

One hundred twenty degrees Fahrenheit.

Another streak of movement slashed across his field of vision. This time he managed to maintain his grip on the controls. He saw more eelpouts, like fat snakes hanging head down as though suspended in space. The water spewing from the vent below was rich in heated hydrogen sulfide, a chemical that was toxic and incompatible with life. But even in these black and poisonous waters, life had managed to bloom, in shapes fantastic and beautiful. Attached to the canyon wall were swaying Riftia worms, six feet long, topped with feathery scarlet headdresses. He saw clusters of giant clams, white-shelled, with tongues of velvety red peeking out. And he saw crabs, eerily pale and ghostlike as they scuttled among the crevices.

Even with the air-conditioning unit running, he was starting to feel the heat.

Six thousand meters. Water temperature one hundred eighty degrees. In the plume itself, heated by boiling magma, the temperatures would be over five hundred degrees. That life could exist even here, in utter darkness, in these poisonous and superheated waters, seemed miraculous.

‘I’m at six thousand sixty,’ he said. ‘I don’t see it.’

In his earphone, Helen’s voice was faint and crackling. ‘There’s a shelf jutting out from the wall. You should see it at around six thousand eighty meters.’

‘I’m looking.’

‘Slow your descent. It’ll come up quickly.’

‘Six thousand seventy, still looking. It’s like pea soup down here. Maybe I’m at the wrong position.’

‘…sonar readings…collapsing above you!’ Her frantic message was lost in static.

‘I didn’t copy that. Repeat.’

‘The canyon wall is giving way! There’s debris falling toward you. Get out of there!’

The loud pings of rocks hitting the hull made him jam the joysticks forward in panic. A massive shadow plummeted down through the murk just ahead and bounced off a canyon shelf, sending a fresh rain of debris into the abyss. The pings accelerated. Then there was a deafening clang, and the accompanying jolt was like a fist slamming into him.

His head jerked, his jaw slamming into the body pan. He felt himself tilting sideways, heard the sickening groan of metal as the starboard wing scraped over jutting rocks. The sub kept rolling, sediment swirling past the dome in a disorienting cloud.

He hit the emergency-weight-drop lever and fumbled with the joysticks, directing the sub to ascend. Deep Flight IV lurched forward, metal screeching against rock, and came to an unexpected halt. He was frozen in place, the sub tilted starboard. Frantically he worked at the joysticks, thrusters at full ahead.

No response.

He paused, his heart pounding as he struggled to maintain control over his rising panic. Why wasn’t he moving? Why was the sub not responding? He forced himself to scan the two digital display units. Battery power intact. AC unit still functioning. Depth gauge reading, six thousand eighty-two meters.

The sediment slowly cleared, and shapes took form in the beam of his port wing light. Peering straight ahead through the dome, he saw an alien landscape of jagged black stones and bloodred Riftia worms. He craned his neck sideways to look at his starboard wing. What he saw sent his stomach into a sickening tumble.

The wing was tightly wedged between two rocks. He could not move forward. Nor could he move backward. I am trapped in a tomb, nineteen thousand feet under the sea.

‘…copy? Steve, do you copy?’

He heard his own voice, weak with fear: ‘Can’t move—starboard wing wedged—’

‘…port-side wing flaps. A little yaw might wiggle you loose.’

‘I’ve tried it. I’ve tried everything. I’m not moving.’

There was dead silence over the earphones. Had he lost them? Had he been cut off? He thought of the ship far above, the deck gently rolling on the swells. He thought of sunshine. It had been a beautiful sunny day on the surface, birds gliding overhead. The sea a bottomless blue…

Now a man’s voice came on. It was that of Palmer Gabriel, the man who had financed the expedition, speaking calmly and in control, as always. ‘We’re starting rescue procedures, Steve. The other sub is already being lowered. We’ll get you up to the surface as soon as we can.’ There was a pause, then: ‘Can you see anything? What are your surroundings?’

‘I—I’m resting on a shelf just above the vent.’

‘How much detail can you make out?’

‘What?’

‘You’re at six thousand eighty-two meters. Right at the depth we were interested in. What about that shelf you’re on? The rocks?’

I am going to die, and he is asking about the fucking rocks.

‘Steve, use the strobe. Tell us what you see.’

He forced his gaze to the instrument panel and flicked the strobe switch.

Bright bursts of light flashed in the murk. He stared at the newly revealed landscape flickering before his retinas. Earlier he had focused on the worms. Now his attention shifted to the immense field of debris scattered across the shelf floor. The rocks were coal black, like magnesium nodules, but these had jagged edges, like congealed shards of glass. Peering to his right, at the freshly fractured rocks trapping his wing, he suddenly realized what he was looking at.

‘Helen’s right,’ he whispered.

‘I didn’t copy that.’

‘She was right! The iridium source—I have it in clear view—’

‘You’re fading out. Recommend you…’ Gabriel’s voice broke up into static and went dead.

‘I did not copy. Repeat, I did not copy!’ said Ahearn.

There was no answer.

He heard the pounding of his heart, the roar of his own breathing. Slow down, slow down. Using up my oxygen too fast…

Beyond the acrylic dome, life drifted past in a delicate dance through poisonous water. As the minutes stretched to hours, he watched the Riftia worms sway, scarlet plumes combing for nutrients. He saw an eyeless crab slowly scuttle across the field of stones.

The lights dimmed. The air-conditioning fans abruptly fell silent.

The battery was dying.

He turned off the strobe light. Only the faint beam of the port wing light was shining now. In a few minutes he would begin to feel the heat of that one-hundred-eighty-degree magma-charged water. It would radiate through the hull, would slowly cook him alive in his own sweat. Already he felt a drop trickle from his scalp and slide down his cheek. He kept his gaze focused on that single crab, delicately prancing its way across the stony shelf.

The wing light flickered.

And went out.

THE LAUNCH

2

July 7

Two Years Later

Abort.

Through the thunder of the solid propellant rocket boosters and the teeth-jarring rattle of the orbiter, the command abort sprang so clearly into Mission Specialist Emma Watson’s mind she might have heard it shouted through her comm unit. None of the crew had, in fact, said the word aloud, but in that instant she knew the choice had to be made, and quickly. She hadn’t heard the verdict yet from Commander Bob Kittredge or Pilot Jill Hewitt, seated in the cockpit in front of her. She didn’t need to. They had worked so long together as a team they could read each other’s minds, and the amber warning lights flashing on the shuttle’s flight console clearly dictated their next actions.

Seconds before, Endeavour had reached Max Q, the point during launch of greatest aerodynamic stress, when the orbiter, thrusting against the resistance of the atmosphere, begins to shudder violently. Kittredge had briefly throttled back to seventy percent to ease the vibrations. Now the console warning lights told them they’d lost two of their three main engines. Even with one main engine and two solid rocket boosters still firing, they would never make it to orbit.

They had to abort the launch.

‘Control, this is Endeavour,’ said Kittredge, his voice crisp and steady. Not a hint of apprehension. ‘Unable to throttle up. Left and center MEs* went out at Max Q. We are stuck in the bucket. Going to RTLS abort.’

‘Roger, Endeavour. We confirm two MEs* out. Proceed to RTLS abort after SRB burnout.’

Emma was already rifling through the stack of checklists, and she retrieved the card for ‘Return to Launch Site Abort.’ The crew knew every step of the procedure by heart, but in the frantic pace of an emergency abort, some vital action might be forgotten. The checklist was their security blanket.

Her heart racing, Emma scanned the appropriate path of action, clearly marked in blue. A two-engine-down RTLS abort was survivable—but only theoretically. A sequence of near miracles had to happen next. First they had to dump fuel and cut off the last main engine before separating from the huge external fuel tank. Then Kittredge would pitch the orbiter around to a heads-up attitude, pointing back toward the launch site. He would have one chance, and only one, to guide them to a safe touchdown at Kennedy. A single mistake would send Endeavour plunging into the sea.

Their lives were now in the hands of Commander Kittredge.

His voice, in constant communication with Mission Control, still sounded steady, even a little bored, as they approached the two-minute mark. The next crisis point. The CRT display flashed the Pc<50 signal. The solid rocket boosters were burning out, on schedule.

Emma felt it at once, the startling deceleration as the boosters consumed the last of the fuel. Then a brilliant flash of light in the window made her squint as the SRBs exploded away from the tank.

The roar of launch fell ominously silent, the violent shudder calming to a smooth, almost tranquil ride. In the abrupt calm, she was aware of her own pulse accelerating, her heart thudding like a fist against her chest restraint.

‘Control, this is Endeavour,’ said Kittredge, still unnaturally calm. ‘We have SRB sep.’

‘Roger, we see it.’

‘Initiating abort.’ Kittredge depressed the Abort push button, the rotary switch already positioned at the RTLS option.

Over her comm unit, Emma heard Jill Hewitt call out, ‘Emma, let’s hear the checklist!’

‘I’ve got it.’ Emma began to read aloud, and the sound of her own voice was as startlingly calm as Kittredge’s and Hewitt’s. Anyone listening to their dialogue would never have guessed they faced catastrophe. They had assumed machine mode, their panic suppressed, every action guided by rote memory and training. Their onboard computers would automatically set their return course. They were continuing downrange, still climbing to four hundred thousand feet as they dissipated fuel.

Now she felt the dizzying spin as the orbiter began its pitch-around maneuver, rolling tail over nose. The horizon, which had been upside down, suddenly righted itself as they turned back toward Kennedy, almost four hundred miles away.

‘Endeavour, this is Control. Go for main engine cutoff.’

‘Roger,’ responded Kittredge. ‘MECO now.’

On the instrument panel, the three engine status indicators suddenly flashed red. He had shut off the main engines, and in twenty seconds, the external fuel tank would drop away into the sea.

Altitude dropping fast, thought Emma. But we’re headed for home.

She gave a start. A warning buzzed, and new panel lights flashed on the console.

‘Control, we’ve lost computer number three!’ cried Hewitt. ‘We have lost a nav-state vector! Repeat, we’ve lost a nav-state vector!’

‘It could be an inertial-measurement malf,’ said Andy Mercer, the other mission specialist seated beside Emma. ‘Take it off-line.’

‘No! It might be a broken data bus!’ cut in Emma. ‘I say we engage the backup.’

‘Agreed,’ snapped Kittredge.

‘Going to backup,’ said Hewitt. She switched to computer number five.

The vector reappeared. Everyone heaved a sigh of relief.

The burst of explosive charges signaled the separation of the empty fuel tank. They couldn’t see it fall away into the sea, but they knew another crisis point had just passed. The orbiter was flying free now, a fat and awkward bird gliding homeward.

Hewitt barked, ‘Shit! We’ve lost an APU!’

Emma’s chin jerked up as a new buzzer sounded. An auxiliary power unit was out. Then another alarm screamed, and her gaze flew in panic to the consoles. A multitude of amber warning lights were flashing. On the video screens, all the data had vanished. Instead there were only ominous black and white stripes. A catastrophic computer failure. They were flying without navigation data. Without flap control.

‘Andy and I are on the APU malf!’ yelled Emma.

‘Reengage backup!’

Hewitt flicked the switch and cursed. ‘I’m getting no joy, guys. Nothing’s happening—’

‘Do it again!’

‘Still not reengaging.’

‘She’s banking!’ cried Emma, and felt her stomach lurch sideways.

Kittredge wrestled with the joystick, but they had already rolled too far starboard. The horizon reeled to vertical and flipped upside down. Emma’s stomach lurched again as they spun right side up. The next rotation came faster, the horizon twisting in a sickening whirl of sky and sea and sky.

A death spiral.

She heard Hewitt groan, heard Kittredge say, with flat resignation, ‘I’ve lost her.’

Then the fatal spin accelerated, plunging to an abrupt and shocking end.

There was only silence.

An amused voice said over their comm units, ‘Sorry, guys. You didn’t make it that time.’

Emma yanked off her headset. ‘That wasn’t fair, Hazel!’

Jill Hewitt chimed in with a protesting, ‘Hey, you meant to kill us. There was no way to save it.’

Emma was the first crew member to scramble out of the shuttle flight simulator. With the others right behind her, she marched into the windowless control room, where their three instructors sat at the row of consoles.

Team Leader Hazel Barra, wearing a mischievous smile, swiveled around to face Commander Kittredge’s irate crew of four. Though Hazel looked like a buxom earth mother with her gloriously frizzy brown hair, she was, in truth, a ruthless gameplayer who ran her flight crews through the most difficult of simulations and seemed to count it as a victory whenever the crew failed to survive. Hazel was well aware of the fact that every launch could end in disaster, and she wanted her astronauts equipped with the skills to survive. Losing one of her teams was a nightmare she hoped never to face.

‘That sim really was below the belt, Hazel,’ complained Kittredge.

‘Hey, you guys keep surviving. We have to knock down your cockiness a notch.’

‘Come on,’ said Andy. ‘Two engines down on liftoff? A broken data bus? An APU out? And then you throw in a failed number five computer? How many malfs and nits is that? It’s not realistic.’

Patrick, one of the other instructors, swiveled around with a grin. ‘You guys didn’t even notice the other stuff we did.’

‘What else was there?’

‘I threw in a nit on your oxygen tank sensor. None of you saw the change in the pressure gauge, did you?’

Kittredge gave a laugh. ‘When did we have time? We were juggling a dozen other malfunctions.’

Hazel raised a stout arm in a call for a truce. ‘Okay, guys. Maybe we did overdo it. Frankly, we were surprised you got as far as you did with the RTLS abort. We wanted to throw in another wrench, to make it more interesting.’

‘You threw in the whole damn toolbox,’ snorted Hewitt.

‘The truth is,’ said Patrick, ‘you guys are a little cocky.’

‘The word is confident,’ said Emma.

‘Which is good,’ Hazel admitted. ‘It’s good to be confident. You showed great teamwork at the integrated sim last week. Even Gordon Obie said he was impressed.’

‘The Sphinx said that?’ Kittredge’s eyebrow lifted in surprise. Gordon Obie was the director of Flight Crew Operations, a man so bafflingly silent and aloof that no one at JSC really knew him. He would sit through entire mission management meetings without uttering a single word, yet no one doubted he was mentally recording every detail. Among the astronauts, Obie was viewed with both awe and more than a little fear. With his power over final flight assignments, he could make or break your career. The fact that he had praised Kittredge’s team was good news indeed.

In her next breath, though, Hazel kicked the pedestal out from under them. ‘However,’ she said, ‘Obie is also concerned that you guys are too lighthearted about this. That it’s still a game to you.’

‘What does Obie expect us to do?’ said Hewitt. ‘Obsess over the ten thousand ways we could crash and burn?’

‘Disaster is not theoretical.’

Hazel’s statement, so quietly spoken, made them fall momentarily silent. Since Challenger, every member of the astronaut corps was fully aware that it was only a matter of time before there was another major mishap. Human beings sitting atop rockets primed to explode with five million pounds of thrust can’t afford to be sanguine about the hazards of their profession. Yet they seldom spoke about dying in space; to talk about it was to admit its possibility, to acknowledge that the next Challenger might carry one’s name on the crew roster.

Hazel realized she’d thrown a damper on their high spirits. It was not a good way to end a training session, and now she backpedaled on her earlier criticism.

‘I’m only saying this because you guys are already so well integrated. I have to work hard to trip you up. You’ve got three months till launch, and you’re already in good shape. But I want you in even better shape.’

‘In other words, guys,’ said Patrick from his console. ‘Not so cocky.’

Bob Kittredge dipped his head in mock humility. ‘We’ll go home now and put on the hair shirts.’

‘Overconfidence is dangerous,’ said Hazel. She rose from the chair and stood up to face Kittredge. A veteran of three shuttle flights, Kittredge was half a head taller, and he had the confident bearing of a naval pilot, which he had once been. Hazel was not intimidated by Kittredge, or by any of her astronauts. Whether they were rocket scientists or military heroes, they inspired in her the same maternal concern: the wish that they make it back from their missions alive.

She said, ‘You’re so good at command, Bob, you’ve lulled your crew into thinking it’s easy.’

‘No, they make it look easy. Because they’re good.’

‘We’ll see. The integrated sim’s on for Tuesday, with Hawley and Higuchi aboard. We’ll be pulling some new tricks out of the hat.’

Kittredge grinned. ‘Okay, try to kill us. But be fair about it.’

‘Fate seldom plays fair,’ Hazel said solemnly. ‘Don’t expect me to.’

Emma and Bob Kittredge sat in a booth in the Fly By Night saloon, sipping beers as they dissected the day’s simulations. It was a ritual they’d established eleven months ago, early in their team building, when the four of them had first come together as the crew for shuttle flight 162. Every Friday evening, they would meet in the Fly By Night, located just up NASA Road 1 from Johnson Space Center, and review the progress of their training. What they’d done right, what still needed improvement. Kittredge, who’d personally selected each member of his crew, had started the ritual. Though they were already working together more than sixty hours a week, he never seemed eager to go home. Emma had thought it was because the recently divorced Kittredge now lived alone and dreaded returning to his empty house. But as she’d come to know him better, she realized these meetings were simply his way of prolonging the adrenaline high of his job. Kittredge lived to fly. For sheer entertainment he read the painfully dry shuttle manuals. He spent every free moment at the controls of one of NASA’s T-38s. It was almost as if he resented the force of gravity binding his feet to the earth.

He couldn’t understand why the rest of his crew might want to go home at the end of the day, and tonight he seemed a little melancholy that just the two of them were sitting at their usual table in the Fly By Night. Jill Hewitt was at her nephew’s piano recital, and Andy Mercer was home celebrating his tenth wedding anniversary. Only Emma and Kittredge had shown up at the appointed hour, and now that they’d finished hashing over the week’s sims, there was a long silence between them. The conversation had run out of shop talk and therefore out of steam.

‘I’m taking one of the T-38s up to White Sands tomorrow,’ he said. ‘You want to join me?’

‘Can’t. I have an appointment with my lawyer.’

‘So you and Jack are forging ahead with it?’

She sighed. ‘The momentum’s established. Jack has his lawyer, and I have mine. This divorce has turned into a runaway train.’

‘It sounds like you’re having second thoughts.’

Firmly she set down her beer. ‘I don’t have any second thoughts.’

‘Then why’re you still wearing his ring?’

She looked down at the gold wedding band. With sudden ferocity she tried to yank it off, but found it wouldn’t budge. After seven years on her finger, the ring seemed to have molded itself to her flesh, refusing to be dislodged. She cursed and gave another tug, this time pulling so hard the ring scraped off skin as it slid over her knuckle. She set the ring down on the table. ‘There. A free woman.’

Kittredge laughed. ‘You two have been dragging out your divorce longer than I was married. What are you two still haggling over, anyway?’

She sank back in her chair, suddenly weary. ‘Everything. I admit it, I haven’t been reasonable either. A few weeks ago, we tried to sit down and make a list of all our possessions. What I want, what he wants. We promised ourselves we were going to be civilized about it. Two calm and mature adults. Well, by the time we got halfway down the list, it was out-and-out war. Take no prisoners.’ She sighed. In truth, that was the way she and Jack had always been. Equally obstinate, fiercely passionate. Whether in love or at war, the sparks were always flying between them. ‘There was only one thing we could both agree on,’ she said. ‘I get to keep the cat.’

‘Lucky you.’

She looked at him. ‘Do you ever have any regrets?’

‘You mean about my divorce? Never.’ Though his answer was flatly unequivocal, his gaze had dropped, as though he was trying to hide a truth they both knew: he was still mourning the failure of his marriage. Even a man fearless enough to strap himself atop millions of pounds of explosive fuel could suffer from an ordinary case of loneliness.

‘This is the problem, you see. I’ve finally figured it out,’ he said. ‘Civilians don’t understand us because they can’t share the dream. The only ones who’ll stay married to an astronaut are the saints and the martyrs. Or the ones who just don’t give a shit whether we live or die.’ He gave a bitter laugh. ‘Bonnie, she was no martyr. And she sure as hell didn’t understand the dream.’

Emma stared down at her wedding ring, gleaming on the table. ‘Jack understands it,’ she said softly. ‘It was his dream too. That’s what ruined it for us, you know. That I’m going up and he can’t. That he’s the one left behind.’

‘Then he needs to grow up and face reality. Not everyone’s got the right stuff.’

‘You know, I really wish you wouldn’t refer to him as some sort of reject.’

‘Hey, he’s the one who resigned.’

‘What else could he do? He knew he wasn’t going to get any flight assignments. If they won’t let you fly, there’s no point being in the corps.’

‘They grounded him for his own good.’

‘It was medical guesswork. Having one kidney stone doesn’t mean you’ll get another.’

‘Okay, Dr Watson. You’re the physician. Tell me this: Would you want Jack on your shuttle crew? Knowing his medical problem?’

She paused. ‘Yes. As a physician, yes, I would. Chances are, Jack would do perfectly fine in space. He has so much to offer I can’t imagine why they wouldn’t want him up there. I may be divorcing him, but I do respect him.’

Kittredge laughed and then drained his beer mug. ‘You’re not exactly objective about this, are you?’

She started to argue the point, then realized she had no defense. Kittredge was right. Where Jack McCallum was concerned, she had never been objective.

Outside, in the humid heat of a Houston summer night, she stopped in the Fly By Night’s parking lot and glanced up at the sky. The glare of city lights washed out the stars, but she could still make out comfortingly familiar constellations. Cassiopeia and Andromeda and the Seven Sisters. Every time she looked at them, she remembered what Jack had told her as they’d lain side by side on the grass one summer night, gazing at the stars. The night she had first realized she was in love with him. The heavens are full of women, Emma. You belong up there too.

She said, softly, ‘So do you, Jack.’

She unlocked her car and slid into the driver’s seat. Reaching into her pocket, she fished out the wedding ring. Gazing at it in the gloom of her car, she thought of the seven years of marriage it represented. Almost over now.

She slipped the ring back into her pocket. Her left hand felt naked, exposed. I’ll have to get used to it, she thought, and started the car.

*There is a Glossary at the end of this book that contains many of these abbreviations.

3

July 10

Dr Jack McCallum heard the scream of the first ambulance siren and said, ‘It’s show time, folks!’ Stepping outside to the ER loading dock, he felt his pulse kick into a tachycardia, felt the jolt of adrenaline priming his nervous system into crackling live wires. He had no idea what was coming to Miles Memorial Hospital, only that there was more than one patient on the way. Over the ER radio they’d been told a fifteen-car pileup on I-45 had left two fatalities at the scene and a score of injured. Although the most critical patients would be taken to Bayshore or Texas Med, all the area’s smaller hospitals, including Miles Memorial, were braced for the overflow.

Jack glanced around the ambulance dock to confirm his team was ready. The other ER doctor, Anna Slezak, stood right beside him, looking grimly pugnacious. Their support staff included four nurses, a lab runner, and a scared-looking intern. Only a month out of med school, the intern was the greenest member of the ER team and hopelessly fumble-fingered. Destined for the field of psychiatry, thought Jack.

The siren cut off with a whoop as the ambulance swung up the ramp and backed up to the dock. Jack yanked open the rear door and got his first glimpse of the patient—a young woman, head and neck immobilized in a cervical collar, her blond hair matted with blood. As they pulled her out of the ambulance and he got a closer look at her face, Jack felt the sudden chill of recognition.

‘Debbie,’ he said.

She looked up at him, her gaze unfocused, and did not seem to know who he was.

‘It’s Jack McCallum,’ he said.

‘Oh. Jack.’ She closed her eyes and groaned. ‘My head hurts.’

He gave her a comforting pat on the shoulder. ‘We’ll take good care of you, sweetheart. Don’t worry about a thing.’

They wheeled her through the ER doors, toward the trauma room.

‘You know her?’ Anna asked him.

‘Her husband’s Bill Haning. The astronaut.’

‘You mean one of the guys up on the space station?’ Anna laughed. ‘Now, there’s a long distance phone call.’

‘It’s no problem reaching him, if we have to. JSC can put a call right through.’

‘You want me to take this patient?’ It was a reasonable question to ask. Doctors usually avoided treating friends and family; you cannot remain objective when the patient in cardiac arrest on the table is someone you know and like. Although he and Debbie had once attended the same social functions, Jack considered her merely an acquaintance, not a friend, and he felt comfortable acting as her physician.

‘I’ll take her,’ he said, and followed the gurney into the trauma room. His mind was already leaping ahead to what needed to be done. Her only visible injury was the scalp laceration, but since she had clearly suffered trauma to her head, he had to rule out fractures of the skull and cervical spine.

As the nurses drew blood for labs and gently pulled off the rest of Debbie’s clothing, the ambulance attendant gave Jack a quick history.

‘She was about the fifth car in the pileup. Far as we could tell, she got rear-ended, her car spun sideways, and then she got hit again, on the driver’s side. Door was caved in.’

‘Was she awake when you got to her?’

‘She was unconscious for a few minutes. Woke up while we were putting in the IV. We got her spine immobilized right away. BP and heart rhythm have been stable. She’s one of the lucky ones.’ The attendant shook his head. ‘You should’ve seen the guy behind her.’

Jack moved to the gurney to examine the patient. Both of Debbie’s pupils reacted to light, and her extraocular movements were normal. She knew her own name and where she was, but could not recall the date. Oriented only times two, he thought. It was reason enough to admit her, if only for overnight observation.

‘Debbie, I’m going to send you for X rays,’ he said. ‘We need to make sure you haven’t fractured anything.’ He looked at the nurse. ‘Stat CT, skull, and C-spine. And…’ He paused, listening.

Another ambulance siren was approaching.

‘Get those films done,’ he ordered, and trotted back outside to the loading dock, where his staff had reassembled.

A second siren, fainter, had joined the first wail. Jack and Anna glanced at each other in alarm. Two ambulances on the way?

‘It’s going to be one of those days,’ he muttered.

‘Trauma room cleared out?’ asked Anna.

‘Patient’s on her way to X-ray.’ He stepped forward as the first ambulance backed up. The instant it rolled to a stop, he yanked open the door.

It was a man this time, middle-aged and overweight, his skin pale and clammy. Going into shock was Jack’s first assessment, but he saw no blood, no signs of injury.

‘He was one of the fender benders,’ said the EMT as they wheeled the man into the treatment room. ‘Got chest pain when we pulled him out of his car. Rhythm’s been stable, a little tachycardic, but no PVCs. Systolic’s ninety. We gave morphine and nitro at the scene, and oxygen’s going at six liters.’

Everyone was right on the ball. While Anna took the history and physical, the nurses hooked up the cardiac leads. An EKG blipped out of the machine. Jack tore off the sheet and immediately focused on the ST elevations in leads V1 and V2.

‘Anterior MI,’ he said to Anna.

She nodded. ‘I figured he was a tPA special.’

A nurse called through the doorway, ‘The other ambulance is here!’

Jack and two nurses ran outside.

A young woman was screaming and writhing on the stretcher. Jack took one look at her shortened right leg, the foot rotated almost completely sideways, and knew this patient was going straight to surgery. Jack quickly cut away her clothes, to reveal an impacted hip fracture, her thigh bone rammed into the socket by the force of her knees hitting the car’s dashboard. Just looking at her grotesquely deformed leg made him queasy.

‘Morphine?’ the nurse asked.

He nodded. ‘Give her as much as she needs. She’s in a world of hurt. Type and cross six units. And get an orthopod in here as soon as—’

‘Dr McCallum, stat, X-ray. Dr McCallum, stat, X-ray.’

Jack glanced up in alarm. Debbie Haning. He ran out of the room.

He found Debbie lying on the X-ray table, hovered over by the ER nurse and the technician.

‘We’d just finished doing the spine and skull films,’ said the tech, ‘and we couldn’t wake her up. She doesn’t even respond to pain.’

‘How long’s she been out?’

‘I don’t know. She was lying on the table ten, fifteen minutes before we noticed she wasn’t talking to us anymore.’

‘Did you get the CT scan done?’

‘Computer’s down. It should be up and running in a few hours.’

Jack flashed a penlight in Debbie’s eyes and felt his stomach go into a sickening free fall. Her left pupil was dilated and unreactive.

‘Show me the films,’ he said.

‘C-spine’s already up on the light box.’

Jack swiftly moved into the next room and eyed the X rays clipped to the backlit viewing box. He saw no fractures on the neck films; her cervical spine was stable. He yanked down the neck films and replaced them with the skull X rays. At first glance he saw nothing immediately obvious. Then his gaze focused on an almost imperceptible line tracing across the left temporal bone. It was so subtle it looked like a pin scratch on the film. A fracture.

Had the fracture torn the left middle meningeal artery? That would cause bleeding inside her cranium. As the blood accumulated and pressure built up, the brain would be squeezed. It explained the rapid deterioration of her mental status and the blown pupil.

The blood had to be drained at once.

‘Get her back to ER!’ he said.

Within seconds they had Debbie strapped to the gurney and were wheeling her at a run down the hallway. As they swung her into an empty treatment room, he yelled to the clerk, ‘Page neurosurgery stat! Tell them we have an epidural bleed, and we’re prepping for emergency burr holes.’

He knew what Debbie really needed was the operating room, but her condition was deteriorating so quickly they had no time to wait. The treatment room would have to serve as their OR. They slid her onto the table and attached a tangle of EKG leads to her chest. Her breathing had turned erratic; it was time to intubate.

He had just torn open the package containing the endotracheal tube when a nurse said, ‘She’s stopped breathing!’

He slipped the laryngoscope into Debbie’s throat. Seconds later, the ET tube was in place and oxygen was being bagged into her lungs.

A nurse plugged in the electric shaver. Debbie’s blond hair began to fall to the floor in silky clumps, exposing the scalp.

The clerk poked her head in the room. ‘Neurosurgeon’s stuck in traffic! He can’t get here for at least another hour.’

‘Then get someone else!’

‘They’re all at Texas Med! They’ve got all the head injuries.’

Jesus, we’re screwed, thought Jack, looking down at Debbie. Every minute that went by, the pressure inside her skull was building. Brain cells were dying. If this was my wife, I wouldn’t wait. Not another second.

He swallowed hard. ‘Get out the Hudson brace drill. I’ll do the burr holes myself.’ He saw the nurses’ startled looks, and added, with more bravado than he was feeling. ‘It’s like drilling holes in a wall. I’ve done it before.’

While the nurses prepped the newly shorn scalp, Jack put on a surgical gown and snapped on gloves. He positioned the sterile drapes and was amazed to find his hands were still steady, even while his heart was racing. It was true he had drilled burr holes before, but only once, and it was years ago, under the supervision of a neurosurgeon.

There’s no more time. She’s dying. Do it.

He reached for the scalpel and made a linear incision in the scalp, over the left temporal bone. Blood oozed out. He sponged it away and cauterized the bleeders. With a retractor holding back the skin flap, he sliced deeper through the galea and reached the pericranium, which he scraped back, exposing the skull surface.

He picked up the Hudson brace drill. It was a mechanical device, powered by hand and almost antique looking, the sort of tool you might find in your grandfather’s woodshop. First he used the perforator, a spade-shaped drill bit that dug just deeply enough into the bone to establish the hole. Then he changed to the rose bit, round-tipped, with multiedged burrs. He took a deep breath, positioned the bit, and began to drill deeper. Toward the brain. The first beads of sweat broke out on his forehead. He was drilling without CT confirmation, acting purely on his clinical judgment. He did not even know if he was tapping the right spot.

A sudden gush of blood spilled out of the hole and splattered the surgical drapes.

A nurse handed him a basin. He withdrew the drill and watched as a steady stream of red drained out of the skull and gathered in a glistening pool in the basin. He’d tapped the right place. With every trickle of blood, the pressure was easing from Debbie Haning’s brain.

He released a deep breath, and the tension suddenly eased from his shoulders, leaving his muscles spent and aching.

‘Get the bone wax ready,’ he said. Then he put down the drill and reached for the suction catheter.

A white mouse hung in midair, as though suspended in a transparent sea. Dr Emma Watson drifted toward it, slender-limbed and graceful as an underwater dancer, the curlicue strands of her dark brown hair splayed out in a ghostly halo. She grasped the mouse and slowly spun around to face the camera. She held up a syringe and needle.

The footage was over two years old, filmed aboard the shuttle Atlantis during STS 141, but it remained Gordon Obie’s favorite PR film, which is why it was now playing on all the video monitors in NASA’s Teague Auditorium. Who wouldn’t enjoy watching Emma Watson? She was quick and lithe, and she possessed what one could only call sparkle, with the fire of curiosity in her eyes. From the tiny scar over her eyebrow, to the slightly chipped front tooth (a souvenir, he’d heard, of reckless skiing) her face was a record of an exuberant life. But to Gordon, her primary appeal was her intelligence. Her competence. He had been following Emma’s NASA career with an interest that had nothing to do with the fact she was an attractive woman.

As director of Flight Crew Operations, Gordon Obie wielded considerable power over crew selection, and he strove to maintain a safe—some would call it heartless—emotional distance from all his astronauts. He had been an astronaut himself, twice a shuttle commander, and even then he’d been known as the Sphinx, an aloof and mysterious man not given to small talk. He was comfortable with his own silence and relative anonymity. Although he was now sitting onstage with an array of NASA officials, most of the people in the audience did not know who Gordon Obie was. He was here merely for set decoration. Just as the footage of Emma Watson was set decoration, an attractive face to hold the audience’s interest.

The video suddenly ended, replaced on the screen with the NASA logo, affectionately known as the meatball, a star-spangled blue circle embellished with an orbital ellipse and a forked slash of red. NASA administrator Leroy Cornell and JSC director Ken Blankenship stepped up to the lectern to field questions. Their mission, quite bluntly, was to beg for money, and they faced a skeptical gathering of congressmen and senators, members of the various subcommittees that determined NASA’s budget. For the second straight year, NASA had suffered devastating cutbacks, and lately an air of abject gloom wafted through the halls of Johnson Space Center.

Gazing at the audience of well-dressed men and women, Gordon felt as though he were staring at an alien culture. What was wrong with these politicians? How could they be so shortsighted? It bewildered him that they did not share his most passionate belief: What sets the human race apart from the beasts is man’s hunger for knowledge. Every child asks the universal question: Why? They are programmed from birth to be curious, to be explorers, to seek scientific truths.

Yet these elected officials had lost the curiosity that makes man unique. They’d come to Houston not to ask why, but why should we?

It was Cornell’s idea to woo them with what he cynically called ‘the Tom Hanks tour,’ a reference to the movie Apollo 13, which still ranked as the best PR NASA had ever known. Cornell had already presented the latest achievements aboard the orbiting International Space Station. He’d let them shake the hands of some real live astronauts. Wasn’t that what everyone wanted? To touch a golden boy, a hero? Next there’d be a tour of Johnson Space Center, starting with Building 30 and the Flight Control Room. Never mind the fact that this audience couldn’t tell the difference between a flight console and a Nintendo set; all that gleaming technology would surely dazzle them and make them true believers.

But it isn’t working, thought Gordon in dismay. These politicians aren’t buying it.

NASA faced powerful opponents, starting with Senator Phil Parish, sitting in the front row. Seventysix years old, an uncompromising hawk from South Carolina, Parish’s first priority was preserving the defense budget, NASA be damned. Now he hauled his three-hundred-pound frame out of his seat and stood up to address Cornell in a gentleman’s drawl.

‘Your agency is billions of dollars overbudget on that space station,’ he said. ‘Now, I don’t think the American people expected to sacrifice their defense capabilities just so you can tinker around up there with your nifty lab experiments. This is supposed to be an international effort, isn’t it? Well, far as I can see, we-all are picking up most of the tab. How am I supposed to justify this white elephant to the good folks of South Carolina?’

NASA administrator Cornell responded with a camera-ready smile. He was a political animal, the glad-hander whose personal charm and charisma made him a star with the press and in Washington, where he spent most of his time cajoling Congress and the White House for more money, ever more money, to fund the space agency’s perennially insufficient budget. His was the public face of NASA, while Ken Blankenship, the man in charge of day-to-day operations at JSC, was the private face known only to agency insiders. They were the yin and yang of NASA leadership, so completely different in temperament it was hard to imagine how they functioned as a team. The inside joke at NASA was that Leroy Cornell was all style and no substance, and Blankenship was all substance and no style.

Cornell smoothly responded to Senator Parish’s question. ‘You asked why other countries aren’t contributing. Senator, the answer is, they already have. This truly is an international space station. Yes, the Russians are badly strapped for cash. Yes, we had to make up the difference. But they’re committed to this station. They’ve got a cosmonaut up there now, and they have every reason to help us keep ISS running. As for why we need the station, just look at the research that’s being conducted in biology and medicine. Materials science. Geophysics. We’ll see the benefits of this research in our own lifetimes.’

Another member of the audience stood, and Gordon felt his blood pressure rise. If there was anyone he despised more than Senator Parish, it was Montana congressman Joe Bellingham, whose Marlboro Man good looks couldn’t disguise the fact he was a scientific moron. During his last campaign, he’d demanded that public schools teach Creationism. Throw out the biology books and open the Bible instead. He probably thinks rockets are powered by angels.

‘What about all that sharing of technology with the Russians and Japanese?’ said Bellingham. ‘I’m concerned that we’re giving away high-tech secrets for free. This international cooperation sounds high-minded and all, but what’s to stop them from turning right around and using the knowledge against us? Why should we trust the Russians?’

Fear and paranoia. Ignorance and superstition. There was too much of it in the country, and Gordon grew depressed just listening to Bellingham. He turned away in disgust.

That’s when he noticed a somber-faced Hank Millar step into the auditorium. Millar was head of the Astronaut Office. He looked straight at Gordon, who understood at once that a problem was brewing.

Quietly Gordon left the stage, and the two men stepped out into the hallway. ‘What’s going on?’

‘There’s been an accident. It’s Bill Haning’s wife. We hear it doesn’t look good.’

‘Jesus.’

‘Bob Kittredge and Woody Ellis are waiting over in Public Affairs. We all need to talk.’

Gordon nodded. He glanced through the auditorium door at Congressman Bellingham, who was still blathering on about the dangers of sharing technology with the Commies. Grimly he followed Hank out the auditorium exit and across the courtyard, to the next building.

They met in a back office. Kittredge, the shuttle commander for STS 162, was flushed and agitated. Woody Ellis, flight director for the International Space Station, appeared far calmer, but then, Gordon had never seen Ellis look upset, even in the midst of crisis.

‘How serious was the accident?’ Gordon asked.

‘Mrs Haning’s car was in a giant pileup on I-45,’ said Hank. ‘The ambulance brought her over to Miles Memorial. Jack McCallum saw her in the ER.’

Gordon nodded. They all knew Jack well. Although he was no longer in the astronaut corps, Jack was still on NASA’s active flight surgeon roster. A year ago, he had pulled back from most of his NASA duties, to work as an ER physician in the private sector.

‘Jack’s the one who called our office about Debbie,’ said Hank.

‘Did he say anything about her condition?’

‘Severe head injury. She’s in ICU, in a coma.’

‘Prognosis?’

‘He couldn’t answer that question.’ There was a silence as they all considered what this tragedy meant to NASA. Hank sighed. ‘We’re going to have to tell Bill. We can’t keep this news from him. The problem is…’ He didn’t finish. He didn’t need to; they all understood the problem.

Bill Haning was now in orbit aboard ISS, only a month into his scheduled four-month stay. This news would devastate him. Of all the factors that made prolonged habitation in space difficult, it was the emotional toll that NASA worried about most. A depressed astronaut could wreak havoc on a mission. Years before, on Mir, a similar situation had occurred when Cosmonaut Volodya Dezhurov was informed of his mother’s death. For days, he’d shut himself away in one of Mir’s modules and refused to speak to Mission Control Moscow. His grief had disrupted the work of everyone aboard Mir.

‘They have a very close marriage,’ said Hank. ‘I can tell you now, Bill’s not going to handle this well.’

‘You’re recommending we replace him?’ asked Gordon.

‘At the next scheduled shuttle flight. He’ll have a tough enough time being stuck up there for the next two weeks. We can’t ask him to serve out his full four months.’ Hank added quietly, ‘They have two young kids, you know.’

‘His backup for ISS is Emma Watson,’ said Woody Ellis. ‘We could send her up on STS 160. With Vance’s crew.’

At the mention of Emma’s name, Gordon was careful not to reveal any sign of special interest. Any emotion whatsoever. ‘What do you think about Watson? Is she ready to go up three months early?’

‘She’s slated to relieve Bill. She’s already up to speed on most of the onboard experiments. So I think that option is viable.’

‘Well, I’m not happy about it,’ said Bob Kittredge.

Gordon gave a tired sigh and turned to the shuttle commander. ‘I didn’t think you would be.’

‘Watson’s an integral part of my crew. We’ve crystallized as a team. I hate to break it up.’

‘Your team’s three months away from launch. You have time to make adjustments.’

‘You’re making my job hard.’

‘Are you saying you can’t get a new team crystallized in that time?’

Kittredge’s mouth tightened. ‘All I’m saying is, my crew is already a working unit. We’re not going to be happy about losing Watson.’

Gordon looked at Hank. ‘What about the STS 160 crew? Vance and his team?’

‘No problem from their end. Watson would just be another passenger on middeck. They’d deliver her to ISS like any other payload.’

Gordon thought it over. They were still talking about options, not certainties. Perhaps Debbie Haning would wake up fine and Bill could stay on ISS as scheduled. But like everyone else at NASA, Gordon had taught himself to plan for every contingency, to carry in his head a mental flow chart of what actions to follow should a, b, or c occur.

He looked at Woody Ellis for final confirmation. Woody gave a nod.

‘Okay,’ said Gordon. ‘Find me Emma Watson.’

She spotted him at the far end of the hospital hallway. He was talking to Hank Millar, and though his back was turned to her and he was wearing standard green surgical scrubs, Emma knew it was Jack. Seven years of marriage had left ties of familiarity that went beyond the mere recognition of his face.

This was, in fact, the same view she’d had of Jack McCallum the first time they’d met, when they’d both been ER residents in San Francisco General Hospital. He had been standing at the nurses’ station, writing in a chart, his broad shoulders sloping from fatigue, his hair ruffled as though he’d just rolled out of bed. In fact, he had; it was the morning after a hectic night on call, and though he was unshaven and bleary-eyed, when he’d turned and looked at her for the first time, the attraction between them had been instantaneous.

Now Jack was ten years older, his dark hair was threaded with gray, and fatigue was once again weighing down on his shoulders. She had not seen him in three weeks, had spoken to him only briefly on the phone a few days ago, a conversation that had deteriorated into yet another noisy disagreement. These days they could not seem to be reasonable with each other, could not carry on a civilized conversation, however brief.

So it was with apprehension that she continued down the hall in his direction.

Hank Millar spotted her first, and his face instantly tensed, as though he knew a battle was imminent, and he wanted to get the hell out of there before the shooting started. Jack must have seen the change in Hank’s expression as well, because he turned to see what had inspired it.

At his first glimpse of Emma, he seemed to freeze, a spontaneous smile of greeting half-formed on his face. It was almost, but not quite, a look of both surprise and gladness to see her. Then something else took control, and his smile vanished, replaced by a look that was neither friendly nor unfriendly, merely neutral. The face of a stranger, she thought, and that was somehow more painful than if he had greeted her with outright hostility. At least then there would’ve been some emotion left, some remnant, however tattered, of a marriage that had once been happy.

She found herself responding to his flat look with an expression that was every bit as neutral. When she spoke, she addressed both men at the same time, favoring neither.

‘Gordon told me about Debbie,’ she said. ‘How is she doing?’

Hank glanced at Jack, waiting for him to answer first. Finally Hank said, ‘She’s still unconscious. We’re sort of holding a vigil in the waiting room. If you want to join us.’

‘Yes. Of course.’ She started toward the visitors’ waiting room.

‘Emma,’ Jack called out. ‘Can we talk?’

‘I’ll see you both later,’ said Hank, and he made a hasty retreat down the hall. They waited for him to disappear around the corner, then looked at each other.

‘Debbie’s not doing well,’ said Jack.

‘What happened?’

‘She had an epidural bleed. Came in conscious and talking. In a matter of minutes, she went straight downhill. I was busy with another patient. I didn’t realize it in time. Didn’t drill the burr hole until…’ He paused and looked away. ‘She’s on a ventilator.’

Emma reached out to touch him, then stopped herself, knowing that he would only shake her off. It had been so long since he’d accepted any words of comfort from her. No matter what she said, how sincerely she meant it, he would regard it as pity. And that he despised.

‘It’s a hard diagnosis to make, Jack,’ was all she could say.

‘I should have made it sooner.’

‘You said she went downhill fast. Don’t second-guess yourself.’

‘That doesn’t make me feel a hell of a lot better.’

‘I’m not trying to make you feel better!’ she said in exasperation. ‘I’m just pointing out the simple fact that you did make the right diagnosis. And you acted on it. For once, can’t you cut yourself some slack?’

‘Look, this isn’t about me, okay?’ he shot back. ‘It’s about you.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Debbie won’t be leaving the hospital anytime soon. And that means Bill…’

‘I know. Gordon Obie gave me the heads-up.’

Jack paused. ‘It’s been decided?’

She nodded. ‘Bill’s coming home. I’ll replace him on the next flight.’ Her gaze drifted toward the ICU. ‘They have two kids,’ she said softly. ‘He can’t stay up there. Not for another three months.’

‘You’re not ready. You haven’t had time—’

‘I’ll be ready.’ She turned.

‘Emma.’ He reached out to stop her, and the touch of his hand took her by surprise. She looked back at him. At once he released her.

‘When are you leaving for Kennedy?’ he asked.

‘A week. Quarantine.’

He looked stunned. He said nothing, still trying to absorb the news.

‘That reminds me,’ she said. ‘Could you take care of Humphrey while I’m gone?’

‘Why not a kennel?’

‘It’s cruel to keep a cat penned up for three months.’

‘Has the little monster been declawed yet?’

‘Come on, Jack. He only shreds things when he’s feeling ignored. Pay attention to him, and he’ll leave your furniture alone.’

Jack glanced up as a page was announced over the address system: ‘Dr McCallum to ER. Dr McCallum to ER.’

‘I guess you have to go,’ she said, already turning away.

‘Wait. This is happening so fast. We haven’t had time to talk.’

‘If it’s about the divorce, my lawyer can answer any questions while I’m gone.’

‘No.’ He startled her with his sharp note of anger. ‘No, I don’t want to talk to your lawyer!’

‘Then what do you need to tell me?’

He stared at her for a moment, as though hunting for words. ‘It’s about this mission,’ he finally said. ‘It’s too rushed. It doesn’t feel right to me.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘You’re a last-minute replacement. You’re going up with a different crew.’

‘Vance runs a tight ship. I’m perfectly comfortable with this launch.’

‘What about on the station? This could stretch your stay to six months in orbit.’

‘I can deal with it.’

‘But it wasn’t planned. It’s been thrown together at the last minute.’

‘What are you saying I should do, Jack? Wimp out?’

‘I don’t know!’ He ran his hand through his hair in frustration. ‘I don’t know.’

***

They stood in silence for a moment, neither one of them quite sure what to say, yet neither one ready to end the conversation. Seven years of marriage, she thought, and this is what it’s come to. Two people who can’t stay together, yet can’t walk away from each other. And now there’s no time left to work things out between us.

A new page came over the address system: ‘Dr McCallum stat to ER.’

Jack looked at her, his expression torn. ‘Emma—’

‘Go, Jack,’ she urged him. ‘They need you.’

He gave a groan of frustration and took off at a run for the ER.

And she turned and walked the other way.

4

July 12

Aboard ISS

From the observation windows of the Node 1 cupola, Dr William Haning could see clouds swirling over the Atlantic Ocean two hundred twenty miles below. He touched the glass, his fingers skimming the barrier that protected him from the vacuum of space. It was one more obstacle that separated him from home. From his wife. He watched the earth turn beneath him, saw the Atlantic Ocean slip away as North Africa and then the Indian Ocean slowly spun by, the darkness of night approaching. Though his body was weightless and floating, the burden of grief seemed to squeeze down on his chest, making it difficult for him to breathe.

At that moment, in a Houston hospital, his wife was fighting for her life, and he could do nothing to help her. For the next two weeks he would be trapped here, able to gaze down at the very city where Debbie might be dying, yet unable to reach her, touch her. The best he could do was close his eyes and try to imagine he was at her side, that their fingers were entwined.

You have to hang on. You have to fight. I’m coming home to you.

‘Bill? Are you okay?’

He turned and saw Diana Estes float from the U.S. lab module into the node. He was surprised she was the one inquiring as to his well-being. Even after a month of living together in close quarters, he had not warmed up to the Englishwoman. She was too cool, too clinical. Despite her icy blond good looks, she was not a woman he’d ever feel attracted to, and she had certainly never favored him with the least hint of interest. But then, her attention was usually focused on Michael Griggs. The fact that Griggs had a wife waiting for him down on earth seemed irrelevant to them both. Up here on ISS, Diana and Griggs were like the two halves of a double star, orbiting each other, linked by some powerful gravitational pull.

This was one of the unfortunate realities of being one of six human beings from four different countries trapped in close quarters. There were always shifting alliances and schisms, a changing sense of us versus them. The stress of living so long in confinement had affected each of them in different ways. Russian Nicolai Rudenko, who had been living aboard ISS the longest, had lately turned sullen and irritable. Kenichi Hirai, from Japan’s NASDA, was so frustrated by his poor command of English, he often lapsed into uneasy silence. Only Luther Ames had remained everyone’s friend. When Houston broke the bad news about Debbie, Luther was the one who had known instinctively what to say to Bill, the one who had spoken from his heart, from the human part of him. Luther was the Alabama-born son of a well-loved black minister, and he had inherited his father’s gift for bestowing comfort.

‘There’s no question about it, Bill,’ Luther had said. ‘You gotta go home to your wife. You tell Houston they’d better send the limo to get you, or they’ll have to deal with me.’

How different from the way Diana had reacted. Ever logical, she had calmly pointed out that there was nothing Bill could do to speed his wife’s recovery. Debbie was comatose; she wouldn’t even know he was there. As cold and brittle as the crystals she grows in her lab, was what Bill thought of Diana.

That’s why he was puzzled that she was now asking about him. She hung back in the node, as remote as always. Her long blond hair waved about her face like drifting sea grass.

He turned to look out the window again. ‘I’m waiting for Houston to come into view,’ he said.

‘You’ve got a new batch of E-mail from Payloads.’

He said nothing. He just stared down at the twinkling lights of Tokyo, now poised at the knife edge of dawn.

‘Bill, there are items that require your attention. If you don’t feel up to it, we’ll have to split up your duties among the rest of us.’

Duties. So that’s what she had come to discuss. Not the pain he was feeling, but whether she could count on him to perform his assigned tasks in the lab. Every day aboard ISS was tightly scheduled, with little time to spare for reflection or grief. If one crew member was incapacitated, the others had to pick up the slack, or experiments went untended.

‘Sometimes,’ said Diana with crisp logic, ‘work is the best thing to keep grief at bay.’

He touched his finger to the blur of light that was Tokyo. ‘Don’t pretend to have a heart, Diana. It doesn’t fool anyone.’

For a moment she said nothing. He heard only the continuous background hum of the space station, a sound he’d grown so accustomed to he was scarcely aware of it now.

She said, unruffled, ‘I do understand you’re having a hard time. I know it’s not easy to be trapped up here, with no way to get home. But there’s nothing you can do about it. You just have to wait for the shuttle.’

He gave a bitter laugh. ‘Why wait? When I could be home in four hours.’

‘Come on, Bill. Get serious.’

**

‘I am serious. I should just get in the CRV and go.’

‘Leaving us with no lifeboat? You’re not thinking straight.’ She paused. ‘You know, you might feel better with some medication. Just to help you get through this period.’

He turned to face her, all his pain, all his grief, giving way to rage. ‘Take a pill and cure everything, is that it?’

‘It could help. Bill, I just need to know you won’t do something irrational.’

‘Fuck you, Diana.’ He pushed off from the cupola and floated past her, toward the lab hatchway.

‘Bill!’

‘As you so kindly pointed out, I’ve got work to do.’

‘I told you, we can divide up your duties. If you’re not feeling up to it—’

‘I’ll do my own goddamn work!’

He drifted into the U.S. lab. He was relieved she didn’t follow him. Glancing back, he saw her float toward the habitation module, no doubt to check the status of the Crew Return Vehicle. Capable of evacuating all six astronauts, the CRV was their only lifeboat home should a catastrophe befall the station. He had spooked her with his mutterings about hijacking the CRV, and he regretted it. Now she’d be watching him for signs of emotional meltdown.

It was painful enough to be trapped in this glorified sardine can two hundred twenty miles above earth. To also be watched with suspicion made the ordeal worse. He might be desperate to go home, but he was not unstable. All those years of training, the psychological screening tests, had confirmed the fact Bill Haning was a professional—certainly not a man who’d ever endanger his colleagues.

Propelling himself with a practiced push-off from one wall, he floated across the lab module to his workstation. There he checked the latest batch of E-mail. Diana was right about one thing: Work would distract him from thoughts of Debbie.

Most of the E-mail had come from NASA’s Ames Biological Research Center in California, and the messages were routine requests for data confirmation. Many of the experiments were monitored from the ground, and scientists sometimes questioned the data they received. He scrolled down the messages, grimacing at yet another request for astronaut urine and feces samples. He kept scrolling, and paused at a new message.

This one was different. It did not come from Ames, but from a private-sector payload operations center. Private industry paid for a number of experiments aboard the station, and he often received E-mail from scientists outside NASA.

This message was from SeaScience in La Jolla, California.

To: Dr William Haning, ISS Bioscience

Sender: Helen Koenig, Principal Investigator

Re: Experiment CCU#23 (Archaeon Cell Culture)

Message: Our most recent downlinked data indicates rapid and unexpected increase in cell culture mass. Please confirm with your onboard micro mass measurement device.

Another jiggle-the-handle request, he thought wearily. Many of the orbital experiments were controlled by commands from scientists on the ground. Data was recorded within the various lab racks, using video or automatic sampling devices, and the results downlinked directly to researchers on earth. With all the sophisticated equipment aboard ISS, there were bound to be occasional glitches. That’s the real reason humans were needed up here—to troubleshoot the temperamental electronics.

He called up the file for CCU#23 on the payloads computer and reviewed the protocol. The cells in the culture were Archaeons, bacterialike marine organisms collected from deep-sea thermal vents. They were harmless to humans.

He floated across the lab to the cell culture unit and slipped his stockinged feet into the holding stirrups to maintain his position. The unit was a box-shaped device with its own fluid-handling and delivery system to continuously perfuse two dozen cell cultures and tissue specimens. Most of the experiments were completely self-contained and without need of human intervention. In his four weeks aboard ISS, Bill had only once laid eyes on the tube #23.

He pulled open the cell specimen chamber tray. Inside were twenty-four culture tubes arrayed around the periphery of the unit. He identified #23 and removed it from the tray.

At once he was alarmed. The cap appeared to be bulging out, as though under pressure. Instead of a slightly turbid liquid, which was what he’d expected to see, the contents was a vivid blue-green. He tipped the tube upside down, and the culture did not shift. It was no longer liquid, but thickly viscous.

He calibrated the micro mass measurement device and slipped the tube into the specimen slot. A moment later, the data appeared on the screen.

Something is very wrong, he thought. There has been some sort of contamination. Either the original sample of cells was not pure, or another organism has found its way into the tube and has destroyed the primary culture.

He typed out his response to Dr Koenig:

…Your downlinked data confirmed. Culture appears drastically altered. It is no longer liquid, but seems to be a gelatinous mass, bright, almost neon blue-green. Must consider the possibility of contamination…

He paused. There was another possibility: the effect of microgravity. On earth, tissue cultures tended to grow in flat sheets, expanding in only two dimensions across the surface of their containers. In the weightlessness of space, freed from the effects of gravity, those same cultures behaved differently. They grew in three dimensions, taking on shapes they never could on earth.

What if #23 was not contaminated? What if this was simply how Archaeons behaved without gravity to keep them in check?

Almost immediately he discarded that notion. These changes were too drastic. Weightlessness alone could not have turned a single-celled organism into this startling green mass.

He typed:

…Will return a sample of culture #23 to you on next shuttle flight. Please advise if you have further instructions—

The sudden clang of a drawer startled him. He turned and saw Kenichi Hirai working at his own research rack. How long had he been there? The man had drifted so quietly into the lab Bill had not even known he’d entered. In a world where there is no up or down, where the sound of footsteps is never heard, a verbal greeting is sometimes the only way to alert others to your presence.

Noticing Bill’s glance, Kenichi merely nodded in greeting and continued with his work. The man’s silence irritated Bill. Kenichi was like the station’s resident ghost, creeping around without a word, startling everyone. Bill knew it was because Kenichi was insecure about his English and, to avoid humiliation, chose to converse little if at all. Still, the man could at least call out a ‘hello’ when he entered a module to avoid rattling the nerves of his five colleagues.

Bill turned his attention back to tube #23. What would this gelatinous mass look like under the microscope?

He slid tube #23 into the Plexiglas glove box, closed the hatch, and inserted his hands in the attached gloves. If there was any spillage, it would be confined to the box. Loose fluids floating around in microgravity could wreak havoc on the station’s electrical wiring. Gently he loosened the tube seal. He knew the contents were under pressure; he could see the cap was bulging. Even so, he was shocked when the top suddenly exploded off like a champagne cork.

He jerked back as a blue-green glob splatted against the inside of the glove box. It clung there for a moment, quivering as though alive. It was alive; a mass of microorganisms, joined in a gelatinous matrix.

‘Bill, we need to talk.’

The voice startled him. Quickly he recapped the culture tube and turned to face Michael Griggs, who had just entered the module. Floating right behind Griggs was Diana. The beautiful people, Bill thought. Both of them looked sleek and athletic in their navy blue NASA shirts and cobalt shorts.

‘Diana tells me you’re having problems,’ said Griggs. ‘We just spoke to Houston, and they think it might help if you considered some medication. Just to get you through the next few days.’

‘You’ve got Houston worried now, have you?’

‘They’re concerned about you. We all are.’

‘Look, my crack about the CRV was purely sarcastic.’

‘But it makes us all nervous.’

‘I don’t need any Valium. Just leave me alone.’ He removed the tube from the glove box and returned it to its slot in the cell culture unit. He was too angry to work on it now.

‘We have to be able to trust you, Bill. We have to depend on each other up here.’

In fury, Bill turned to face him. ‘Do you see a raving lunatic in front of you? Is that it?’

‘Your wife is on your mind now. I understand that. And—’

‘You wouldn’t understand. I doubt you give your wife much thought these days.’ He shot a knowing glance at Diana, then launched himself down the length of the module and into the connecting node. He started to enter the hab module, but stopped when he saw Luther was there, setting up the midday meal.

There’s nowhere to hide. Nowhere to be alone.

Suddenly in tears, he backed out of the hatchway and retreated into the cupola.

Turning his back to the others, he stared through the windows at the earth. Already, the Pacific coast was rotating into view. Another sunrise, another sunset.

Another eternity of waiting.

Kenichi watched Griggs and Diana float out of the lab module, each propelled by a well-gauged push-off. They moved with such grace, like fairhaired gods. He often studied them when they weren’t watching; in particular, he enjoyed looking at Diana Estes, a woman so blond and pale she seemed translucent.

Their departure left him alone in the lab, and he was able to relax. So much conflict on this station. It unsettled his nerves and affected his concentration. He was tranquil by nature, a man content to work in solitude. Though he could understand English well enough, it was an effort for him to speak it, and he found conversation exhausting. He was far more comfortable working alone, and in silence, with only the lab animals as company.

He peered through the viewing window at the mice in the animal habitat, and he smiled. On one side of the screened divider were twelve males; on the other were twelve females. As a boy growing up in Japan, he had raised rabbits and had enjoyed cuddling them in his lap. These mice, however, were not pets, and they were isolated from human contact, their air filtered and conditioned before being allowed to mix with the space station’s environment. Any handling of the animals was done in the adjoining glove box, where all biological specimens, from bacteria to lab rats, could be manipulated without fear of contaminating the station’s air.

Today was blood-sampling day. Not a task he enjoyed, because it involved pricking the skin of the mice with a needle. He murmured an apology in Japanese as he inserted his hands in the gloves and transferred the first mouse into the sealed work area. It struggled to escape his grasp. He released it, allowing it to float free as he prepared the needle. It was a pitiful sight to watch, the mouse frantically thrashing its limbs, attempting to propel itself forward. With nothing to push off against, it drifted helplessly in midair.

The needle now ready, he reached up with his gloved hand to recapture the mouse. Only then did he notice the blue-green globule floating beside the mouse. So close to it, in fact, that with one dart of a pink tongue, the mouse gave it an experimental lick. Kenichi laughed out loud. Drinking floating globules was something the astronauts did for fun, and that’s what the mouse appeared to be doing now, playing with its newfound toy.

Then the thought occurred to him: Where had the blue-green substance come from? Bill had been using the glove box. Was whatever he’d spilled toxic?

Kenichi floated to the computer workstation and looked at the experimental protocol Bill had last called up. It was CCU#23, a cell culture. The protocol reassured him that the globule contained nothing dangerous. Archaeons were harmless single-celled marine organisms, without infectious properties.

Satisfied, he returned to the glove box and inserted his hands. He reached for the needle.

5

July 16

We have no downlink.

Jack stared up at the plume of exhaust streaking into the azure sky, and terror knifed deep into his soul. The sun was beating down on his face, but his sweat had chilled to ice. He scanned the heavens. Where was the shuttle? Only seconds before, he had watched it arc into a cloudless sky, had felt the ground shake from the thunder of liftoff. As it had climbed, he’d felt his heart soar with it, borne aloft by the roar of rockets, and had followed its path heavenward until it was just a glinting pinprick of reflected sunlight.

He could not see it. What had been a straight white plume was now a jagged trail of black smoke.

Frantically he searched the sky and caught a dizzying whirl of images. Fire in the heavens. A devil’s fork of smoke. Shattered fragments tumbling toward the sea.

We have no downlink.

He woke up, gasping, his body steeped in sweat. It was daylight, and the sun shone, piercingly hot, through his bedroom window.

With a groan he sat up on the side of the bed and dropped his head in his hands. He had left the air conditioner off last night, and now the room felt like an oven. He stumbled across his bedroom to flip the switch, then sank down on the bed again and breathed a sigh of relief as chill air began to spill from the vent.

The old nightmare.

He rubbed his face, trying to banish the images, but they were too deeply engraved in his memory. He had been a college freshman when Challenger exploded, had been walking through the dorm lounge when the first film footage of the disaster had aired on the television. That day, and in the days that followed, he’d watched the horrifying footage again and again, had incorporated it so deeply into his subconscious that it had become as real to him as if he himself had been standing in the bleachers at Cape Canaveral that morning.

And now the memory had resurfaced in his nightmares.

It’s because of Emma’s launch.

In the shower he stood with head bowed under a pounding stream of cool water, waiting for the last traces of his dream to wash away. He had three weeks of vacation starting next week, but he was a long way from being in a holiday mood. He had not taken out the sailboat in months. Maybe a few weeks out on the water, away from the glare of city lights, would be the best therapy. Just him, and the sea, and the stars.

It had been so long since he’d really looked at the stars. Lately it seemed he had avoided even glancing at them. As a boy, his gaze had always been drawn heavenward. His mother once told him that, as a toddler, he had stood on the lawn one night and reached up with both hands, trying to touch the moon. When he could not reach it, he had howled in frustration.

The moon, the stars, the blackness of space—it was beyond his reach now, and he often felt like that little boy he once was, howling in frustration, his feet trapped on earth, his hands still reaching for the sky.

He shut off the shower and stood leaning with both hands pressed against the tiles, head bent, hair dripping. Today is July sixteenth, he thought. Eight days till Emma’s launch. He felt the water chill on his skin.

In ten minutes he was dressed and in the car.

It was a Tuesday. Emma and her new flight team would be wrapping up their three-day integrated simulation, and she’d be tired and in no mood to see him. But tomorrow she’d be on her way to Cape Canaveral. Tomorrow she’d be out of reach.

At Johnson Space Center, he parked in the Building 30 lot, flashed his NASA badge at Security, and trotted upstairs to the shuttle Flight Control Room. Inside, he found everyone hushed and tense. The three-day integrated simulation was like the final exam for both the astronauts and the ground control crew, a crisis-packed run-through of the mission from launch to touchdown, with assorted malfunctions thrown in to keep everyone on their toes. Three shifts of controllers had rotated through this room several times in the last three days, and the two dozen men and women now sitting at the consoles looked haggard. The rubbish can was overflowing with coffee cups and diet Pepsi cans. Though a few of the controllers saw Jack and nodded hello, there was no time for a real greeting; they had a major crisis on their hands, and everyone’s attention was focused on the problem. It was the first time in months Jack had visited the FCR, and once again he felt the old excitement, the electricity, that seemed to crackle in this room whenever a mission was underway.

He moved to the third row of consoles, to stand beside Flight Director Randy Carpenter, who was too busy at the moment to talk to him. Carpenter was the shuttle program’s high priest of flight directors. At two hundred eighty pounds, he was an imposing presence in the FCR, his stomach bulging over his belt, his feet planted apart like a ship’s captain steadying himself on a heaving bridge. In this room, Carpenter was in command. ‘I’m a prime example,’ he liked to say, ‘of just how far a fat boy with glasses can get in life.’ Unlike the legendary flight director Gene Kranz, whose quote ‘Failure is not an option’ made him a media hero, Carpenter was well known only within NASA. His lack of photogenic qualities made him an unlikely movie hero, in any event.

Listening in on the loop chatter, Jack quickly pieced together the nature of the crisis Carpenter was now dealing with. Jack had faced just such a problem in his own integrated sim two years ago, when he was still in the astronaut corps, preparing for STS 145. The shuttle crew had reported a precipitous drop in cabin pressure, indicating a rapid air leak. There was no time to track down the source; they had to go to emergency deorbit.

The flight dynamics officer, sitting at the front row of consoles known as the Trench, was rapidly plotting out the flight trajectories to determine the best landing site. No one considered this a game; they were too aware that if this crisis were real, the lives of seven people would be in jeopardy.

‘Cabin pressure down to thirteen point nine psi,’ reported Environmental Control.

‘Edwards Air Force Base,’ announced Flight Dynamics. ‘Touchdown at approximately thirteen hundred.’

‘Cabin pressure will be down to seven psi at this rate,’ said Environmental. ‘Recommend they don helmets now. Before initiating reentry sequence.’

Capcom relayed the advice to Atlantis.

‘Roger that,’ responded Commander Vance. ‘Helmets are on. We are initiating deorbit burn.’

Against his will, Jack was caught up in the urgency of the game. As the moments ticked by, he kept his gaze fixed on the central screen at the front of the room, where the orbiter’s path was plotted on a global map. Even though he knew that every crisis was artificially introduced by a mischievous sim team, the grim seriousness of this exercise had rubbed off on him. He was scarcely aware that his muscles had tensed as he focused on the changing data flickering on the screen.

The cabin pressure dropped to seven psi.

Atlantis hit the upper atmosphere. They were in radio blackout, twelve long minutes of silence when the friction of reentry ionizes the air around the orbiter, cutting off all communications.

‘Atlantis, do you copy?’ said Capcom.

Suddenly Commander Vance’s voice broke through: ‘We hear you loud and clear, Houston.’

Touchdown, moments later, was perfect. Game over.

Applause broke out in the FCR.

‘Okay, folks! Good job,’ said Flight Director Carpenter. ‘Debriefing at fifteen hundred. Let’s all take a break for lunch.’ Grinning, he pulled off his headset and for the first time looked at Jack. ‘Hey, haven’t seen you around here in ages.’

‘Been playing doctor with civilians.’

‘Going for the big bucks, huh?’

Jack laughed. ‘Yeah, tell me what to do with all my money.’ He glanced around at the flight controllers, now relaxing at their consoles with sodas and bag lunches. ‘Did the sim go okay?’

‘I’m happy. We made it through every glitch.’

‘And the shuttle crew?’

‘They’re ready.’ Carpenter gave him a knowing look. ‘Including Emma. She’s in her element, Jack, so don’t rattle her. Right now she needs to focus.’ This was more than just friendly advice. It was a warning: Keep your personal issues to yourself. Don’t screw around with my flight crew’s morale.

Jack was subdued, even a little contrite, as he waited outside in the sweltering heat for Emma to emerge from Building 5, where the flight simulators were housed. She walked out with the rest of her crew. Obviously they had just shared a joke, because they were all laughing. Then she saw Jack, and her smile faded.

‘I didn’t know you were coming,’ she said.

He shrugged and said sheepishly, ‘Neither did I.’

‘Debriefing’s in ten minutes,’ said Vance.

‘I’ll be there,’ she said. ‘You all go on ahead.’ She waited for her team to walk away; then she turned to face Jack again. ‘I’ve really got to join them. Look, I know this launch complicates everything. If you’re here about the divorce papers, I promise I’ll sign them as soon as I get back.’

‘I didn’t come about that.’

‘Is there something else, then?’

He paused. ‘Yeah. Humphrey. What’s the name of his vet? In case he swallows a hair ball or something.’

She fixed him with a perplexed look. ‘The same vet he’s always had. Dr Goldsmith.’

‘Oh. Yeah.’

They stood in silence for a moment, the sun beating on their heads. Sweat trickled down his back. She suddenly seemed so small to him and insubstantial. Yet this was a woman who’d jumped out of an airplane. She could outrace him on horseback, spin circles around him on the dance floor. His beautiful, fearless wife.

She turned to look at Building 30, where her team was waiting for her. ‘I have to go, Jack.’

‘What time are you leaving for the Cape?’

‘Six in the morning.’

‘All your cousins flying out for the launch?’

‘Of course.’ She paused. ‘You won’t be there. Will you?’

The Challenger nightmare was still fresh in his mind, the angry trails of smoke etching across a blue sky. I can’t be there to watch it, he thought. I can’t deal with the possibilities. He shook his head.

She accepted his answer with a chilly nod and a look that said: I can be every bit as detached as you are. Already she was withdrawing from him, turning to leave.

‘Emma.’ He reached for her arm and gently tugged her around to face him. ‘I’ll miss you.’

She sighed. ‘Sure, Jack.’

‘I really will.’

‘Weeks go by without a single call from you. And now you say you’re going to miss me.’ She laughed.

He was stung by the bitterness in her voice. And by the truth of her words. For the past few months he had avoided her. It had been painful to be anywhere near her because her success only magnified his own sense of failure.

There was no hope of reconciliation; he could see that now, in the coolness of her gaze. Nothing left to do but be civilized about it.

He glanced away, suddenly unable to look at her. ‘I just came by to wish you a safe trip. And a great ride. Give me a wave every so often, when you pass over Houston. I’ll watch for you.’ A moving star was what ISS would look like, brighter than Venus, hurtling through the sky.

‘You wave too, okay?’

They both managed a smile. So it would be a civilized parting after all. He held open his arms, and she leaned toward him for a hug. It was a brief and awkward one, as though they were strangers coming together for the first time. He felt her body, so warm and alive, press against him. Then she pulled away and started toward the Mission Control building.

She paused only once, to wave good-bye. The sunlight was sharp in his eyes, and squinting against its brightness, he saw her only as a dark silhouette, her hair flying in the hot wind. And he knew that he had never loved her as much as he did at that very moment, watching her walk away.

July 19

Cape Canaveral

Even from a distance, the sight took Emma’s breath away. Poised on launchpad 39B, awash in brilliant floodlights, the shuttle Atlantis, mated to its giant orange fuel tank and the paired solid rocket boosters, was a towering beacon in the blackness of night. No matter how many times she experienced it, that first glimpse of a shuttle lit up on the pad never failed to awe her.

The rest of the crew, standing beside her on the blacktop, were equally silent. To shift their sleep cycle, they’d awakened at two that morning and had emerged from their quarters on the third floor of the Operations and Checkout building to catch a nighttime glimpse of the behemoth that would carry them into space. Emma heard the cry of a night bird and felt a cool wind blow in from the Gulf, freshening the air, sweeping away the stagnant scent of the wetlands surrounding them.

‘Kind of makes you feel humble, doesn’t it?’ said Commander Vance in his soft Texas drawl.

The others murmured in agreement.

‘Small as an ant,’ said Chenoweth, the lone rookie on the crew. This would be his first trip aboard the shuttle, and he was so excited he seemed to generate his own field of electricity. ‘I always forget how big she is, and then I take another look at her and I think, Jesus, all that power. And I’m the lucky son of a bitch who gets to ride her.’

They all laughed, but it was the hushed, uneasy laughter of parishioners in a church.

‘I never thought a week could go by so slowly,’ said Chenoweth.

‘This man’s tired of being a virgin,’ said Vance.

‘Damn right I am. I want up there.’ Chenoweth’s gaze lifted hungrily to the sky. To the stars. ‘You guys all know the secret, and I can’t wait to share it.’

The secret. It belonged only to the privileged few who had made the ascent. It wasn’t a secret that could be imparted to another; you yourself had to live it, to see, with your own eyes, the blackness of space and the blue of earth far below. To be pressed backward into your seat by the thrust of the rockets. Astronauts returning from space often wear a knowing smile, a look that says, I am privy to something that few human beings will ever know.

Emma had worn such a smile when she’d emerged from Atlantis’s hatch over two years ago. On weak legs she had walked into the sunshine, had stared up at a sky that was startlingly blue. In the span of eight days aboard the orbiter, she had lived through one hundred thirty sunrises, had seen forest fires burning in Brazil and the eye of a hurricane whirling over Samoa, had viewed an earth that seemed heartbreakingly fragile. She had returned forever changed.

In five days, barring a catastrophe, Chenoweth would share the secret.

‘Time to shine some light on these retinas,’ said Chenoweth. ‘My brain still thinks it’s the middle of the night.’

‘It is the middle of the night,’ said Emma.

‘For us it’s the crack of dawn, folks,’ Vance said. Of all of them, he had been the quickest to readjust his circadian rhythm to the new sleepwake schedule. Now he strode back into the O and C building to begin a full day’s work at three in the morning.

The others followed him. Only Emma lingered outside for a moment, gazing at the shuttle. The day before, they had driven over to the launchpad for a last review of crew escape procedures. Viewed up close, in the sunlight, the shuttle had seemed glaringly bright and too massive to fully comprehend. One could focus on only a single part of her at a time. The nose. The wings. The black tiles, like reptilian scales on the belly. In the light of day, the shuttle had been real and solid. Now she seemed unearthly, lit up against the black sky.

With all the frantic preparation, Emma had not allowed herself to feel any apprehension, had firmly banished all misgivings. She was ready to go up. She wanted to go up. But now she felt a sliver of fear.

She looked up at the sky, saw the stars disappear behind an advancing veil of clouds. The weather was about to change. Shivering, she turned and went into the building. Into the light.

July 23

Houston

Half a dozen tubes snaked into Debbie Haning’s body. In her throat was a tracheotomy tube, through which oxygen was forced into her lungs. A nasogastric tube had been threaded up her left nostril and down her esophagus into the stomach. A catheter drained urine, and two intravenous catheters fed fluids into her veins. In her wrist was an arterial line, and a continuous blood pressure tracing danced across the oscilloscope. Jack glanced at the IV bags hanging over the bed and saw they contained powerful antibiotics. A bad sign; it meant she’d acquired an infection—not unusual when a patient has spent two weeks in a coma. Every breach in the skin, every plastic tube, is a portal for bacteria, and in Debbie’s bloodstream, a battle was now being waged.

With one glance, Jack understood all of this, but he said nothing to Debbie’s mother, who sat beside the bed, clasping her daughter’s hand. Debbie’s face was flaccid, the jaw limp, the eyelids only partially closed. She remained deeply comatose, unaware of anything, even pain.

Margaret looked up as Jack came into the cubicle, and gave a nod of greeting. ‘She had a bad night,’ said Margaret. ‘A fever. They don’t know where it’s coming from.’

‘The antibiotics will help.’

‘And then what? We treat the infection, but what happens next?’ Margaret took a deep breath. ‘She wouldn’t want it this way. All these tubes. All these needles. She’d want us to let her go.’

‘This isn’t the time to give up. Her EEG is still active. She’s not brain dead.’

‘Then why doesn’t she wake up?’

‘She’s young. She has everything to live for.’

‘This isn’t living.’ Margaret stared down at her daughter’s hand. It was bruised and puffy from IVs and needle sticks. ‘When her father was dying, Debbie told me she never wanted to end up like that. Tied down and force-fed. I keep thinking about that. About what she said…’ Margaret looked up again. ‘What would you do? If this was your wife?’

‘I wouldn’t think about giving up.’

‘Even if she’d told you she didn’t want to end up this way?’

He thought about it for a moment. Then said with conviction, ‘It would be my decision, in the end. No matter what she or anyone else told me. I wouldn’t give up on someone I loved. Ever. Not if there was the smallest chance I could save her.’

His words offered no comfort to Margaret. He didn’t have the right to question her beliefs, her instincts, but she had asked his opinion, and his answer had come from his heart, not his head.

Feeling guilty now, he gave Margaret one last pat on the shoulder and left the cubicle. Nature would most likely take the decision out of their hands. A comatose patient with a systemic infection is already on death’s threshold.

He left the ICU and glumly stepped into the elevator. This was a depressing way to kick off his vacation. First stop, he decided as he stepped off on the lobby level, would be the corner grocery store for a six-pack. An ice-cold beer and an afternoon loading up the sailboat was what he needed right now. It would get his mind off Debbie Haning.

‘Code Blue, SICU. Code Blue, SICU.’

His head snapped up at the announcement over the hospital address system. Debbie, he thought, and dashed for the stairwell.

Her SICU cubicle was already crowded with personnel. He pushed his way in and shot a glance at the monitor. Ventricular fibrillation! Her heart was a quivering bundle of muscles, unable to pump, unable to keep her brain alive.

‘One amp epinephrine going in now!’ one of the nurses called out.

‘Everyone stand back!’ a doctor ordered, placing the defibrillator paddles on the chest.

Jack saw the body give a jolt as the paddles discharged, and saw the line shoot up on the monitor, then sink back to baseline. Still in V fib.

A nurse was performing CPR, her short blond hair flipping up with each pump on the chest. Debbie’s neurologist, Dr Salomon, glanced up as Jack joined him at the bedside.

‘Is the amiodarone in?’ asked Jack.

‘Going in now, but it’s not working.’

Jack glanced at the tracing again. The V fib had gone from coarse to fine. Deteriorating toward a flat line.

‘We’ve shocked her four times,’ said Salomon. ‘Can’t get a rhythm.’

‘Intracardiac epi?’

‘We’re down to Hail Marys. Go ahead!’

The code nurse prepared the syringe of epinephrine and attached a long cardiac needle. Even as Jack took it, he knew that the battle was already over. This procedure would change nothing. But he thought about Bill Haning, waiting to come home to his wife. And he thought about what he had said to Margaret only moments ago.

I wouldn’t give up on someone I loved. Ever. Not if there was the smallest chance I could save her.

He looked down at Debbie, and for one disconcerting moment the image of Emma’s face flashed through his mind. He swallowed hard and said, ‘Hold compressions.’

The nurse lifted her hands from the sternum.

Jack gave the skin a quick swab of Betadine and positioned the tip of the needle beneath the xiphoid process. His own pulse was bounding as he pierced the skin. He advanced the needle into the chest, exerting gentle negative pressure.

A flash of blood told him he was in the heart.

With one squeeze of the plunger, he injected the entire dose of epinephrine and pulled out the needle. ‘Resume compressions,’ he said, and looked up at the monitor. Come on, Debbie. Fight, damn it. Don’t give up on us. Don’t give up on Bill.

The room was silent, everyone’s gaze fixed on the monitor. The tracing flattened, the myocardium dying, cell by cell. No one needed to say a word; the look of defeat was on their faces.

She is so young, thought Jack. Thirty-six years old.

The same age as Emma.

It was Dr Salomon who made the decision. ‘Let’s end it,’ he said quietly. ‘Time of death is eleven-fifteen.’

The nurse administering compressions solemnly stepped away from the body. Under the bright cubicle lights, Debbie’s torso looked like pale plastic. A mannequin. Not the bright and lively woman Jack had met five years ago at a NASA party held under the stars.

Margaret stepped into the cubicle. For a moment she stood in silence, as though not recognizing her own daughter. Dr Salomon placed his hand on her shoulder and said gently, ‘It happened so quickly. There was nothing we could do.’

‘He should have been here,’ said Margaret, her voice breaking.

‘We tried to keep her alive,’ said Dr Salomon. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘It’s Bill I feel sorry for,’ said Margaret, and she took her daughter’s hand and kissed it. ‘He wanted to be here. And now he’ll never forgive himself.’

Jack walked out of the cubicle and sank into a chair in the nurses’ station. Margaret’s words were still ringing in his head. He should have been here. He’ll never forgive himself.

He looked at the phone. And what am I still doing here? he wondered.

He took the Yellow Pages from the ward clerk’s desk, picked up the phone, and dialed.

‘Lone Star Travel,’ a woman answered.

‘I need to get to Cape Canaveral.’

6

Cape Canaveral

Through the open window of his rental car, Jack inhaled the humid air of Merritt Island and smelled the jungle odors of damp soil and vegetation. The gateway to Kennedy Space Center was a surprisingly rural road slashing through orange groves, past ramshackle doughnut stands and weed-filled junkyards littered with discarded missile parts. Daylight was fading, and up ahead he saw the taillights of hundreds of cars, slowed to a crawl. Traffic was backing up, and soon his car would be trapped in the conga line of tourists searching for parking spots from which to view the morning launch.

There was no point trying to work his way through this mess. Nor did he see the point of trying to make it through the Port Canaveral gate. At this hour, the astronauts were asleep, anyway. He had arrived too late to say good-bye.

He pulled out of traffic, turned the car around, and headed back to Highway AIA. The road to Cocoa Beach.

Since the era of Alan Shepard and the original Mercury seven, Cocoa Beach had been party central for the astronauts, a slightly seedy strip of hotels and bars and T-shirt shops stretching along a spit of land trapped between the Banana River to the west and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. Jack knew the strip well, from the Tokyo Steak House to the Moon Shot Bar. Once he had jogged the same beach where John Glenn used to run. Only two years ago, he had stood on Jetty Park and gazed across the Banana River at launchpad 39A. At his shuttle, the bird that was supposed to take him into space. The memories were still clouded by pain. He remembered a long run on a sweltering afternoon. The sudden, excruciating stab in his flank, an agony so terrible he was brought to his knees. And then, through a haze of narcotics, the somber face of his flight surgeon gazing down at him in the ER, telling him the bad news. A kidney stone.

He’d been scrubbed from the mission.

Even worse, his future in spaceflight was in doubt. A history of kidney stones was one of the few conditions that could permanently ground an astronaut. Microgravity caused physiologic shifts in body fluids, resulting in dehydration. It also caused bones to leach out calcium. Together, these factors raised the risk of new kidney stones while in space—a risk NASA did not want to take. Though still in the astronaut corps, Jack had effectively been grounded. He had hung on for another year, hoping for a new flight assignment, but his name never again came up. He’d been reduced to an astronaut ghost, condemned to wander the halls of JSC forever in search of a mission.

Fast-forward to the present. Here he was, back in Canaveral, no longer an astronaut but just another tourist cruising down AlA, hungry and grumpy, with nowhere to go. Every hotel within forty miles was booked solid, and he was tired of driving.

He turned into the parking lot of the Hilton Hotel and headed for the bar.

The place had been spiffed up considerably since the last time he had been here. New carpet, new barstools, ferns hanging from the ceiling. It used to be a slightly shabby hangout, a tired old Hilton on a tired old tourist strip. There were no four-star hotels on Cocoa Beach. This was as close as you came to luxury digs.

He ordered a scotch and water and focused on the TV above the bar. It was tuned to the official NASA channel, and the shuttle Atlantis was on the screen, aglow with floodlights, ghostly vapor rising around it. Emma’s ride into space. He stared at the image, thinking of the miles of wiring inside that hull, the countless switches and data buses, the screws and joints and O-rings. Millions of things that could go wrong. It was a wonder that so little did go wrong, that men, imperfect as they were, could design and build a craft of such reliability that seven people are willing to strap themselves inside. Please let this launch be one of the perfect ones, he thought. A launch where everyone has done their job right, and not a screw is loose. It has to be perfect because my Emma will be aboard.

A woman sat down on the barstool beside him and said, ‘I wonder what they’re thinking now.’

He turned to look at her, his interest momentarily captured by a glimpse of thigh. She was a sleek and sunny blonde, with one of those blandly perfect faces whose features one forgets within an hour of parting. ‘What who’s thinking?’ he asked.

‘The astronauts. I wonder if they’re thinking, “Oh, shit, what’d I get myself into?”’

He shrugged and took a sip of scotch. ‘They’re not thinking anything right now. They’re all asleep.’

‘I wouldn’t be able to sleep.’

‘Their circadian rhythm’s completely readjusted. They probably went to bed two hours ago.’

‘No, I mean, I wouldn’t be able to sleep at all. I’d be lying awake thinking up ways to get out of it.’

He laughed. ‘I guarantee you, if they’re awake, it’s because they can’t wait to climb on board that baby and blast off.’

She looked at him curiously. ‘You’re with the program, aren’t you?’

‘Was. Astronaut corps.’

‘Not now?’

He lifted the drink to his lips, felt the ice cubes clink sharply against his teeth. ‘I retired.’ Setting down his empty glass, he rose to his feet and saw disappointment flash in the woman’s eyes. He allowed himself a moment’s consideration of how the rest of the evening could go were he to stay and continue the conversation. Pleasant company. The promise of more to follow.

Instead he paid his bar tab and walked out of the Hilton.

At midnight, standing on the beach at Jetty Park, he gazed across the water toward pad 39B. I’m here, he thought. Even if you don’t know it, I’m with you.

He sat down on the sand and waited for dawn.

July 24

Houston

‘There’s a high-pressure system over the Gulf, which is expected to keep skies clear over Cape Canaveral, so RTLS landing is a go. Edwards Air Force Base is seeing intermittent clouds, but that’s expected to clear by launch. TAL site in Zaragoza, Spain, is still current and forecast go. TAL site in Morón, Spain, is also current and go. Ben Guerir, Morocco, is experiencing high winds and sandstorms, and at this time is not a viable TAL site.’

The first weather briefing of the day, broadcast simultaneously to Cape Canaveral, brought satisfactory news, and Flight Director Carpenter was happy. The launch was still a go. The poor landing conditions at Ben Guerir airport was only a minor concern, since the two alternate transatlantic-abort landing sites in Spain were clear. It was all backups within backups, anyway; the sites would be needed only in case of a major malfunction.

He glanced around at the rest of the ascent team to see if there were any new concerns. The nervous tension in the Flight Control Room was palpable and mounting, as it always was prior to a launch, and that was good. The day they weren’t tense was the day they made mistakes. Carpenter wanted his people on edge, with all synapses snapping a level of alertness that, at midnight, required an extra dose of adrenaline.

Carpenter’s nerves were as taut as everyone else’s, despite the fact that the countdown was right on schedule. The inspection team at Kennedy had finished their checks. The flight dynamics team had reconfirmed the launch time to the second. In the meantime, a far-flung cast of thousands was watching the same countdown clock.

At Cape Canaveral, where the shuttle was poised for launch, the same tension would be building in the firing room of the Launch Control Center, where a parallel team sat at their consoles, preparing for liftoff. As soon as the solid rocket boosters ignited, Houston’s Mission Control would take over. Though thousands of miles apart, the two control rooms in Houston and Canaveral were so closely interconnected by communications they might as well have been located in the same building.

In Huntsville, Alabama, at Marshall Space Flight Center, research teams were waiting for their experiments to be launched.

One hundred sixty miles north-northeast of Cape Canaveral, Navy ships waited at sea to recover the solid rocket boosters, which would separate from the shuttle after burnout.

At contingency landing sites and tracking stations around the world, from NORAD in Colorado to the international airfield at Banjul, Gambia, men and women watched the clock.

And at this moment, seven people are preparing to place their lives in our hands.

Carpenter could see the astronauts now on closed-circuit TV as they were helped into their orange launch-and-entry suits. The images were live from Florida, but without audio. Carpenter found himself pausing for a moment to study their faces. Though none of them revealed a trace of fear, he knew it had to be there, beneath their beaming expressions. The racing pulse, the zing of nervousness. They knew the risks, and they had to be scared. Seeing them on the screen was a sobering reminder to ground personnel that seven human beings were counting on them to do their jobs right.

Carpenter tore his gaze from the video monitor and focused his attention back on his team of flight controllers, seated at the sixteen consoles. Though he knew each member of the team by name, he addressed them by their missioncommand positions, their titles reduced to the shorthand call signs that was NASA-speak. The guidance officer was nicknamed GDO. The spacecraft communicator was Capcom. The propulsion systems engineer was Prop. The trajectory officer was Traj. Flight surgeon was shortened to Surgeon. And Carpenter went by the call sign of Flight.

The countdown came out of the scheduled T-minus-three-hours hold. The mission was still a go.

Carpenter stuck his hand in his pocket and gave his shamrock key ring a jingle. It was his private good-luck ritual. Even engineers have their superstitions.

Let nothing go wrong, he thought. Not on my watch.

Cape Canaveral

The Astrovan ride from the O and C building to launchpad 39B took fifteen minutes. It was a strangely silent ride, none of the crew saying much. Just a half hour before, while suiting up, they had been joking and laughing in that sharp and electric tone that comes when one’s nerves are raw with excitement. The tension had been building since the moment they had been awakened at two-thirty for the traditional steak and eggs breakfast. Through the weather briefing, the suiting up, the prelaunch ritual of dealing out playing cards for the best poker hand, they had all been a little too noisy and cheerful, all engines roaring with confidence.

Now they’d fallen silent.

The van came to a stop. Chenoweth, the rookie, seated beside Emma, muttered, ‘I never thought diaper rash would be one of the job hazards.’

She had to laugh. They were all wearing Depend adult diapers under their bulky flight suits; it would be a long three hours until liftoff.

With help from the launchpad technicians, Emma stepped out of the van. For a moment she paused on the pad, gazing up in wonder at the thirty-story shuttle, ablaze with spotlights. The last time she’d visited the pad, five days ago, the only sounds she’d heard were the sea wind and the birds. Now the spacecraft itself had come to life, rumbling and smoking like a waking dragon, as volatile propellants boiled inside the fuel tank.

They rode the elevator up to Level 195 and stepped onto the grated catwalk. It was still night, but the sky was washed out by the pad lights, and she could barely get a glimpse of the stars overhead. The blackness of space was waiting.

In the sterile white room, technicians in lint-free ‘bunny’ suits helped the crew, one by one, through the hatch and into the orbiter. The commander and pilot were seated first. Emma, assigned to mid-deck, was the last to be assisted. She settled back into her padded seat, buckles secured, helmet in place, and gave a thumbs-up.

The hatch swung shut, closing the crew off from the outside.

Emma could hear her own heartbeat. Even through the air-to-ground voice checks chattering over her comm unit, through the gurgles and groans of the awakening shuttle, the thud of her own heart came through in a steady drumbeat. As a middeck passenger, she had little to do in the next two hours but sit and think; the preflight checks would be conducted by the flight-deck crew. She had no view of the outside, nothing to stare at except the stowage area and food pantry.

Outside, dawn would soon light the sky, and pelicans would skim the surf at Playalinda Beach.

She took a deep breath and settled back to wait.

Jack sat on the beach and watched the sun come up.

He was not alone in Jetty Park. The sightseers had been gathering since before midnight, the arriving cars forming an endless line of headlights creeping along the Bee Line Expressway, some peeling north toward Merritt Island Wildlife Refuge, the others continuing across the Banana River to the city of Cape Canaveral. The viewing would be good from either location. The crowd around him was in a holiday mood, with beach towels and picnic baskets. He heard laughter and loud radios and the bawling of sleepy children. Surrounded by that swirl of celebrants, he was a silent presence, a man alone with his thoughts and fears.

As the sun cleared the horizon, he stared north, toward the launchpad. She would be aboard Atlantis now, strapped in and waiting. Excited and happy and a little afraid.

He heard a child say, ‘That’s a bad man, Mommy,’ and he turned to look at the girl. They gazed at each other for a moment, a tiny blond princess locking eyes with an unshaven and very disheveled man. The mother snatched the girl into her arms and quickly moved to a safer spot on the beach.

Jack gave a wry shake of his head and once again turned his gaze northward. Toward Emma.

Houston

The Flight Control Room had turned deceptively quiet. It was twenty minutes till launch—time to confirm it was still a go. All the back-room controllers had completed their systems checks, and now the front room was ready to be polled.

In a calm voice, Carpenter went down the list, requesting verbal confirmation from each frontroom controller.

‘Fido?’ asked Carpenter.

‘Fido is go,’ said the flight dynamics officer.

‘Guido?’

‘Guidance is go.’

‘Surgeon?’

‘Surgeon is go.’

‘DPS?’

‘Data Processing is go.’

When Carpenter had polled them all and received affirmatives from all, he gave a brisk nod to the room.

‘Houston, are you go?’ asked the launch director in Cape Canaveral.

‘Mission Control is go,’ affirmed Carpenter.

The launch director’s traditional message to the shuttle crew was heard by everyone at Houston’s Mission Control.

‘Atlantis, you are a go. From all of us at the Cape, good luck and Godspeed.’

‘Launch Control, this is Atlantis,’ they heard Commander Vance respond. ‘Thanks for gettin’ this bird ready to fly.’

Cape Canaveral

Emma closed and locked her visor and turned on her oxygen supply. Two minutes till liftoff. Cocooned and isolated in her suit, she had nothing to do but count the seconds. She felt the shudder of the main engines gimballing into launch position.

T minus thirty seconds. The electrical link to ground control was now severed, and the onboard computers took control.

Her heart accelerated, the adrenaline roaring through her veins. As she listened to the countdown, she knew, second by second, what to expect, could see in her mind’s eye the sequence of events that were now playing out.

At T minus eight seconds, thousands of gallons of water were dumped beneath the launchpad to suppress the roar of the engines.

At T minus five, the onboard computers opened the valves to allow liquid oxygen and hydrogen to travel into the main engines.

She felt the shuttle jerk sideways as the three main engines ignited, the spacecraft straining against the bolts that still harnessed it to the launchpad.

Four. Three. Two…The point of no return.

She held her breath, hands gripped tight, as the solid rocket boosters ignited. The turbulence was bone-shaking, the roar so painfully loud she could not hear communications through her headset. She had to clamp her jaw shut to stop her teeth from slamming together. Now she felt the shuttle roll into its planned arc over the Atlantic, and her body was shoved back against the seat by the acceleration to three g’s. Her limbs were so heavy she could barely move them, the vibrations so violent it seemed the orbiter would surely fly apart into pieces. They were at Max Q, the peak of turbulence, and Commander Vance announced he was throttling back the main engines. In less than a minute, he would throttle up again to full thrust.

As the seconds ticked by, as the helmet rattled around her head, and the force of liftoff pressed like an unyielding hand against her chest, she felt a fresh lick of apprehension. This was the point during launch when Challenger had exploded.

Emma closed her eyes and remembered the simulation with Hazel two weeks ago. They were now approaching the point where everything in the sim had started to go wrong, where they’d been forced into an RTLS abort, and then Kittredge had lost control of the orbiter. This was a critical moment in the launch, and there was nothing she could do but lie back and hope that real life was more forgiving than a simulation.

Over the headset she heard Vance say, ‘Control, this is Atlantis. Throttling up.’

‘Roger, Atlantis. Throttle up.’

Jack stood with his gaze cast skyward, his heart in his throat, as the shuttle lifted into the sky. He heard the crackling of the solid rocket boosters as they spewed out twin fountains of fire. The trail of exhaust climbed higher, sketched by the glinting pinpoint of the shuttle. All around him, the crowd burst out in applause. A perfect launch, they all thought. But Jack knew there were too many things that could still go wrong.

Suddenly he was frantic that he’d lost track of the seconds. How much time had elapsed? Had they passed through Max Q? He shielded his eyes against the morning sunlight, straining to see Atlantis, but able to make out only the plume of exhaust.

Already the crowd had started to drift back to their cars.

He remained frozen, waiting in dread. He saw no terrible explosion. No black smoke. No nightmare.

Atlantis had safely escaped the earth and was now hurtling through space.

He felt tears trickle down his cheeks, but he didn’t bother to wipe them away. He let them fall as he continued to gaze at the sky, at the dissipating trail of smoke that marked his wife’s ascent into the heavens.

THE STATION

7

July 25

Beatty, Nevada

Sullivan Obie awakened with a groan to the sound of the ringing telephone. His head felt as if cymbals were banging on it, and his mouth tasted like an old ashtray. He reached for the phone and accidentally knocked it off the cradle. The loud thud made him wince with pain. Aw, forget it, he thought, and turned away, burrowing his face into a nest of tangled hair.

A woman?

Squinting against the morning light, he confirmed that there was indeed a woman lying in bed with him. A blonde. Snoring. He closed his eyes, hoping that if he just went back to sleep, she would be gone when he woke up again.

But he could not sleep now. Not with the voice yelling from the fallen receiver.

He fished around at the side of the bed and found the phone. ‘What, Bridget?’ he said. ‘What?’

‘Why aren’t you here?’ Bridget demanded.

“Cause I’m in bed.’

‘It’s ten-thirty! Hel-lo? Meeting with the new investors? I might as well warn you, Casper is wavering between crucifixion and strangulation.’

The investors. Shit.

Sullivan sat up and clutched his head, waiting for the dizziness to pass.

‘Look, just leave the bimbo and get over here,’ said Bridget. ‘Casper’s already walking them over to the hangar.’

‘Ten minutes,’ he said. He hung up and stumbled to his feet. The bimbo didn’t stir. He had no idea who she was, but he left her asleep in his bed, figuring he had nothing worth stealing, anyway.

There was no time to shower or shave. He tossed back three aspirins, chased them with a cup of nuked coffee, and roared off on his Harley.

Bridget was waiting for him outside the hangar. She looked like a Bridget, sturdy and redheaded, with a bad temper to match. Sometimes, unfortunately, stereotypes do ring true.

‘They’re about to leave,’ she hissed. ‘Get your butt in there.’

‘Who are these guys again?’

‘A Mr Lucas and a Mr Rashad. They represent a consortium of twelve investors. You blow this, Sully, and we’re toast.’ She paused, eyeing him in disgust. ‘Ah, hell, we’re already toast. Look at you. Couldn’t you at least have shaved?’

‘You want me to go back home? I can rent a tuxedo on the way.’

‘Forget it.’ She thrust a folded newspaper into his hand.

‘What’s this?’

‘Casper wants it. Give it to him. Now get in there and convince ‘em to write us a check. A big check.’

Sighing, he stepped into the hangar. After the harsh desert glare, the relative darkness was a comfort to his eyes. It took him a moment to spot the three men, standing by the black thermal barrier tiles of the orbiter Apogee II. The two visitors, both in business suits, looked out of place among all the aircraft tools and equipment.

‘Good morning, gentlemen!’ he called. ‘Sorry I’m late, but I got hung up on a conference call. You know how things can drag on…’ He glimpsed Casper Mulholland’s warning look of Don’t push it, asshole and swallowed hard. ‘I’m Sullivan Obie,’ he said. ‘Mr Mulholland’s partner.’

‘Mr Obie knows every nut and bolt of this RLV,’ said Casper. ‘He used to work with the old master himself, Bob Truax out in California. In fact, he can explain the system better than I can. Around here, we call him our Obie-Wan.’

The two visitors merely blinked. It was not a good sign when the universal language of Star Wars failed to elicit a smile.

Sullivan shook hands, first with Lucas, then with Rashad, grinning broadly even as his hopes sank. Even as he felt a surge of resentment toward these two well-dressed gentlemen whose money he and Casper so desperately needed. Apogee Engineering, their baby, the dream they had nurtured for the past thirteen years, was about to go under, and only a fresh infusion of cash, from a new set of investors, could save it. He and Casper had to make the sales pitch of their lives. If it didn’t work, they might as well pack up their tools and sell off the orbiter as a carnival ride.

With a flourish, Sullivan waved his arm at Apogee II, which looked less like a rocket plane and more like a fat fireplug with windows.

‘I know she may not look like much,’ he said, ‘but what we’ve built here is the most costeffective and practical reusable launch vehicle now in existence. She uses an assisted SSTO launch system. After vertical takeoff, upon climbing to twelve kilometers, pressure-fed rockets accelerate the vehicle to a Mach four staging point at lowdynamic pressures. This orbiter is fully reusable, and weighs only eight and a half tons. It fulfills the principles we believe are the future of commercial space travel. Smaller. Faster. Cheaper.’

‘What sort of lift engine do you use?’ asked Rashad.

‘Rybinsk RD-38 air-breathing engines imported from Russia.’

‘Why Russian?’

‘Because, Mr Rashad—between you, me, and the wall—the Russians know more about rocketry than anyone else on earth. They’ve developed dozens of liquid-fueled rocket motors, using advanced materials which can operate at higher pressures. Our country, I’m sorry to say, has developed only one new liquid-fueled rocket motor since Apollo. This is now an international industry. We believe in choosing the best components for our product—wherever those components may come from.’

‘And how does this…thing land?’ asked Mr Lucas, looking dubiously at the fireplug orbiter.

‘Well, that’s the beauty of Apogee II. As you’ll notice, she has no wings. She doesn’t need a runway. Instead she drops straight down, using parachutes to slow her descent and air bags to cushion touchdown. She can land anywhere, even in the ocean. Again, we have to tip our hats to the Russians, because we’ve borrowed features from their old Soyuz capsule. It was their reliable workhorse for decades.’

‘You like that old Russki technology, huh?’ said Lucas.

Sullivan stiffened. ‘I like technology that works. Say what you want about the Russians, they knew what they were doing.’

‘So what you have here,’ said Lucas, ‘is something of a hybrid. Soyuz mixed in with space shuttle.’

‘A very small space shuttle. We’ve spent thirteen years in development and only sixty-five million dollars to get this far—that’s amazingly inexpensive when you compare it to what the shuttle cost. With multiple spacecraft, we believe you’ll get an annual return on investment of thirty percent, if we launch twelve hundred times a year. Cost per flight would be eighty thousand dollars; the price per kilogram would be dirt cheap at two hundred seventy. Smaller, faster, cheaper. That’s our mantra.’

‘How small are we talking about, Mr Obie? What’s your payload capacity?’

Sullivan hesitated. This was the point where they might lose them. ‘We can launch a payload of three hundred kilograms, plus a pilot, to low earth orbit.’

There was a long silence.

Mr Rashad said, ‘That’s all?’

‘That’s almost seven hundred pounds. You can fit a lot of research experiments in—’

‘I know how much three hundred kilos is. It’s not much.’

‘So we make up for it by more frequent launches. You can almost think of it as an airplane to space.’

‘In fact—in fact, we’ve already got NASA’s interest!’ Casper interjected with a note of desperation. ‘This is just the kind of system they might purchase for quick hops to the space station.’

Lucas’s eyebrow shot up. ‘NASA is interested?’

‘Well, we have something of an inside track.’

Aw, shit, Casper, thought Sullivan. Don’t go there.

‘Show them the newspaper, Sully.’

‘What?’

‘Los Angeles Times. Second page.’

Sullivan looked down at the L.A. Times that Bridget had thrust in his hand. He turned to the second page and saw the article: ‘NASA Launches Astronaut Replacement.’ Next to it was a photograph of JSC high-muck-a-mucks at a press conference. He recognized the homely guy with the big ears and the bad haircut. It was Gordon Obie.

Casper snatched the paper and showed it to their visitors. ‘See this man here, standing next to Leroy Cornell? That’s the director of Flight Crew Operations. Mr Obie’s brother.’

The two visitors, obviously impressed, turned and looked at Sullivan.

‘Well?’ said Casper. ‘Would you gentlemen care to talk business?’

‘We might as well tell you this up front,’ said Lucas. ‘Mr Rashad and I have already taken a look at what other aerospace companies have in development. We’ve looked over the Kelly Astroliner, the Roton, the Kistler K-1. We were impressed by all of them, especially the K-1. But we figured we should give your little company a chance to make a pitch as well.’

Your little company.

Fuck this, thought Sullivan. He hated begging for money, hated getting down on his knees before stuffed shirts. This was a hopeless campaign. His head ached, his stomach was growling, and these two-suits had wasted his time.

‘Tell us why we should bet on your horse,’ said Lucas. ‘What makes Apogee our best choice?’

‘Frankly, gentlemen, I don’t think we are your best choice,’ Sullivan answered bluntly. And he turned and walked away.

‘Uh—excuse me,’ said Casper, and he went chasing after his partner. ‘Sully!’ he whispered. ‘What the hell are you doing?’

‘These guys aren’t interested in us. You heard them. They love the K-1. They want big rockets. To match their dicks.’

‘Don’t screw this up! Go back and talk to them.’

‘Why? They’re not writing us any checks.’

‘We lose them, we lose everything.’

‘We’ve already lost.’

‘No. No, you can sell this to them. All you have to do is tell the truth. Tell them what we really believe. Because you know and I know we’ve got the best.’

Sullivan rubbed his eyes. The aspirin was wearing off, and his head pounded. He was sick of begging. He was an engineer and a pilot, and he’d happily spend the rest of his life with his hands blackened by engine grease. But it would not happen, not without new investors. Not without new cash.

He turned and walked back to the visitors. To his surprise, both men seemed to regard him with wary respect. Perhaps because he had told the truth.

‘Okay,’ said Sullivan, emboldened by the fact he had nothing to lose. He might as well go down like a man. ‘Here’s the deal. We can back up everything we’ve said with one simple demonstration. Are the other companies ready to launch at the drop of a hat? No, they are not. They need preparation time,’ he sneered. ‘Months and months of it. But we can launch anytime. All we need to do is load this baby onto its booster and we can shoot her up to low earth orbit. Hell, we can send her up to hotdog the space station. So give us a date. Tell us when you want liftoff, and we’ll do it.’

Casper turned as white as a—well, a ghost. And not a friendly one. Sullivan had just taken them so far out on a limb they were clawing at thin air. Apogee II hadn’t been tested yet. She had been sitting in this hangar for over fourteen months, gathering dust while they scrounged for money. On this, her maiden voyage, Sully wanted to launch her all the way to orbit?

‘In fact, I’m so confident she’ll pass muster,’ said Sullivan, raising the stakes even higher, ‘I’ll ride in the pilot’s seat myself.’

Casper clutched his stomach. ‘Uh…that’s just a figure of speech, gentlemen. She can be flown perfectly well unmanned—’

‘But there’s no real drama in that,’ said Sullivan. ‘Let me take her up. It’ll make it more interesting for everyone. What do you say?’

I say you’re outta your fucking mind, Casper’s eyes told him.

The two businessmen exchanged looks, a few whispered words. Then Lucas said, ‘We’d be very interested in a demonstration. It will take us time to round up all our partners. Coordinate travel schedules. So let’s say…a month. Can you do it?’

They were calling his bluff. Sullivan merely laughed. ‘A month? No problem.’ He looked at Casper, who now had his eyes closed as though in pain.

‘We’ll be in touch,’ said Lucas, and turned toward the door.

‘One last question, if I may,’ said Mr Rashad. He pointed to the orbiter. ‘I notice the name on your prototype is Apogee II. Is there an Apogee I?’

Casper and Sullivan looked at each other.

‘Uh, yes,’ said Casper. ‘There was…’

‘And what happened to her?’

Casper went mute.

What the hell, thought Sullivan. Telling the truth seemed to work with these guys; he might as well do it again.

‘She crashed and burned,’ he said. And walked out of the hangar.

Crashed and burned. That was the only way to describe what had happened on that cold, clear morning a year and a half ago. The morning his dreams had crashed and burned as well. Sitting at his battered desk in the company office, nursing his hangover with a cup of coffee, he couldn’t help replaying every painful detail of that day. The busload of NASA officials pulling up at the launch site. His brother, Gordie, grinning with pride. The air of celebration among the dozen Apogee employees and the score of investors who had assembled under the tent for prelaunch coffee and doughnuts.

The countdown. The liftoff. Everyone squinting up at the sky as Apogee I streaked toward the heavens and receded to a glinting pinpoint.

Then the flash of light, and it was all over.

Afterward, his brother had not said very much, barely a few words of condolence. But that’s how it was with Gordon. All their lives, whenever Sullivan screwed up—and it seemed to happen all too often—Gordon would just give that sad and disappointed shake of the head. Gordon was the older brother, the sober and reliable son who had distinguished himself as a shuttle commander.

Sullivan had never even made it into the astronaut corps. Though he, too, was a pilot and an aerospace engineer, things never seemed to go Sullivan’s way. If he climbed into the cockpit, that was precisely the moment a wire would short out or a line would rupture. He often thought the words Not My Fault should be tattooed on his forehead, because more often than not, it wasn’t his fault when things went wrong. But Gordon didn’t see it that way. Things never went wrong for him. Gordon thought the concept of bad luck was an excuse to cover up incompetence.

‘Why don’t you call him?’ said Bridget.

He looked up. She was standing by his desk, her arms crossed like a disapproving schoolteacher’s. ‘Call who?’ he asked.

‘Your brother, who else? Tell him we’re launching the second prototype. Invite him to watch. Maybe he’ll bring the rest of NASA.’

‘I don’t want anyone from NASA.’

‘Sully, if we impress them, we’ll turn this company around.’

‘Like the last time, huh?’

‘A fluke. We’ve fixed the problem.’

‘So maybe there’ll be another fluke.’

‘You’re gonna jinx us, you know that?’ She shoved the phone in front of him. ‘Call Gordon. If we’re gonna roll the dice, we might as well bet the whole house.’

He eyed the phone, thinking about Apogee I. About how a lifetime of dreams can be vaporized in an instant.

‘Sully?’

‘Forget it,’ he said. ‘My brother’s got better things to do than hang out with losers.’ And he tossed the newspaper into the rubbish can.

July 26

Aboard Atlantis

‘Hey, Watson,’ Commander Vance called down to the middeck. ‘Come up and take a look at your new home.’

Emma floated up the access ladder and emerged on the flight deck, right behind Vance’s seat. At her first glimpse through the windows, she inhaled a sharp breath of wonder. This was the closest she had ever come to the station. During her first mission, two and a half years ago, they had not docked with ISS, but had observed it only from a distance.

‘Gorgeous, isn’t she?’ said Vance.

‘She’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,’ Emma said softly.

And she was. With her vast solar arrays fanning out from the massive main truss, ISS looked like a majestic sailing ship soaring through the heavens. Built by sixteen different countries, the components had been delivered into space on forty-five separate launches. It had taken five years to assemble her, piece by piece, in orbit. Far more than merely a marvel of engineering, she was a symbol of what man can achieve when he lays down his weapons and turns his gaze skyward.

‘Now, that’s a nice piece of real estate,’ said Vance. ‘I’d call that a view apartment.’

‘We’re right on the R-bar,’ said shuttle pilot DeWitt. ‘Nice flying.’

Vance left the command seat and stationed himself at the flight deck’s overhead window for visual approach as they neared the ISS docking module. This was the most delicate phase in the complicated process of rendezvous. Atlantis had been launched into a lower orbit than ISS, and for the last two days she had been playing a game of catch-up with the hurtling space station. They would approach her from below, using their RCS jets to fine-tune their position for docking. Emma could hear the whomp of the thrusters’ firing now and felt the orbiter shudder.

‘Look,’ said DeWitt. ‘There’s that solar array that got dinged last month.’ He pointed to one of the solar panels, scarred by a gaping hole. One of the inescapable perils of space is the constant rain of meteorites and manmade debris. Even a tiny fragment can be a devastating missile when it’s hurtling at thousands of miles per hour.

As they drew closer and the station filled the window, Emma felt such overwhelming awe and pride that tears suddenly flashed in her eyes. Home, she thought. I’m coming home.

The air-lock hatch swung open, and a wide brown face grinned at them from the other end of the vestibule connecting Atlantis with ISS. ‘They brought oranges!’ Luther Ames called out to his station mates. ‘I can smell ‘em!’

‘NASA home delivery service,’ deadpanned Commander Vance. ‘Your groceries have arrived.’ Bearing a nylon sack of fresh fruit, Vance floated through Atlantis’s air lock into the space station.

It had been a perfect docking. With both spacecrafts traveling at a speed of 17,500 miles per hour above the earth, Vance had approached ISS at the delicate rate of two inches per second, lining up Atlantis’s docking module to the ISS port for a good, tight lock.

Now the hatches were open and Atlantis’s crew floated one by one into the space station to be greeted with handshakes and hugs, and the welcoming smiles of people who have not seen new faces in over a month. The node was too small to hold thirteen people, and the crews quickly spilled into the adjoining modules.

Emma was the fifth to cross into the station. She popped out of the vestibule and inhaled a mélange of scents, the slightly sour and meaty odors of humans confined too long in a closed space. Luther Ames, an old friend from astronaut training, was the first to greet her.

‘Dr Watson, I presume!’ he boomed out, pulling her into a hug. ‘Welcome aboard. The more ladies, the merrier.’

‘Hey, you know I’m no lady.’

He winked. ‘We’ll keep that between us.’ Luther had always been larger than life, a man whose good cheer could fill a room. Everyone liked Luther because Luther liked everyone. Emma was glad to have him aboard.

Especially when she turned to look at her other station mates. She shook hands first with Michael Griggs, the ISS commander, and found his greeting polite but almost military. Diana Estes, the Englishwoman sent up by the European Space Agency, was not much warmer. She smiled, but her eyes were a strange glacial blue. Cool and distant.

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