A Step Beyond Read online

  The Japanese astronaut was neither young nor physically attractive. His face was streaked with lines caused by years of cigarettes, which he smoked surreptitiously and perpetually gave up cold turkey months prior to the qualifying physical of a mission. As a result of cigarettes and perhaps even more so because of coffee, which he drank by the pot, his teeth were noticeably stained. He told the doctors it was the coffee, and the concentrated amounts of caffeine they found in his blood seem to corroborate his story. When he had fully emerged from the portal, he dipped his head slightly, a compromise to the traditional Japanese bow, and shook the hands of the men present with a formality and precision that induced immediate but guarded respect.

  Robbins, with the video camera fixed to his eye, floated off to the side and slightly above the others. The docking module was not designed to hold so many human bodies at one time, complicating Robbins’s ability to maneuver to a good vantage point.

  “Welcome to Space Station Unity,” Nelson said. “I am Colonel Tom Nelson, and these are my colleagues. . . .”

  As soon as the camera was turned off, Komarov looked around the room, and declared: “There have been some additions since I was here last.”

  “Yes, there have,” Nelson responded. “The MSC was modified to accommodate the new arm. And the German GEM II module was installed last month. I will be taking you there shortly.”

  “Your fondness for acronyms will be your undoing,” Satomura remarked.

  Nelson smiled politely. There was something about Satomura that he didn’t like. “The new arm can handle fifty percent more mass. One hundred and fifty thousand kilograms total.”

  “Yes,” Komarov said, touching his surroundings. “The simulator was accurate. And beyond this module lies the life-sciences research laboratory.”

  “Quite correct,” Endicott responded. “I spend a large portion of my time there. We are about midway through an embryogenesis study. The Chiroptera order has yielded some interesting results.”

  “Chiroptera?” Tanya asked.

  “Bats,” Endicott responded politely.

  “We, too, have had some interesting results with the Chiroptera,” Satomura said. “The experiments were conducted during our last mission.”

  “I have read the preliminary reports,” Endicott replied and was on the verge of giving his opinion of the reports when Nelson interrupted and invited the others to follow him through the portal. They formed a semicircle around Nelson at the far end.

  “Has anyone heard of Edward E. Hale?” Nelson did not wait for a response. “In the late eighteen hundreds he described a space station two hundred feet in diameter. The station was made of brick. He called it the brick moon. The inhabitants, he speculated, would communicate with Earth by jumping up and down on the surface of the moon to produce Morse code signals. As you can see, we have come a long way since then.”

  “Our Konstantin Tsiolkovsky was, how do you say, more real,” Vladimir said.

  “Yes,” Nelson responded. “He also appeared on the scene half a century later. By that time bricks had been determined to be aerodynamically unsound.” They all chuckled at this.

  “Very amusing,” Colonel Dmitri Komarov said. “I am pleased to see we have progressed beyond their early designs.”

  “I agree wholeheartedly,” Nelson replied with a short laugh. “Although, I suspect a hundred years from now this station will seem as primitive as a brick moon.”

  “A hundred years from now,” Komarov said in a thick Russian accent, “our great-grandchildren will read about us in history books. We are the pioneers of the solar system. Our names will live forever.”

  They knew what he said was true. Decades would pass, centuries, even millennia, and their names would survive. In a couple of hundred years the discovery of America would dwindle in comparison to their feat. And though they felt proud of this, it did not seem entirely justified to them. Their role was fundamentally different from that of many of the earlier explorers. Christopher Columbus was the driving force behind his mission; they were not. Their part did not go too far beyond that of passengers. The American engineers had chosen a monkey to be the very first astronaut, and the monkey had performed admirably. The engineers preferred to consider the astronaut as a redundant component, a backup in case the automated systems failed. But it would not go down in history that way.

  “This is the life-sciences research lab,” Nelson said.

  “What have you done?” Tanya asked, pointing to a battered hummingbird with its wings tied back.

  “Ah,” Dr. Endicott said, “most unfortunate. In the middle of our first night, the poor creature managed to free herself of her restraint straps. She thrashed about uncontrollably in her cage until she knocked herself senseless. No gravity, you see. I found her unconscious the next morning. Feathers are still popping up. We were going to see if it was possible to train her to fly in space.”

  “How horrible,” Tanya said as she moved closer to examine the wounded bird.

  “Impossible,” Satomura barked. “A bird’s wing is structured to counter gravity. One flap of her wings and this bird would have gone straight up and slammed against the ceiling.”

  “I am inclined to agree with you,” Endicott said. “The bird’s trainer, however, felt she might adapt. It would have been a most interesting experiment.”

  Tanya turned away in disgust. She stopped at the sight of a small aquarium filled with goldfish. As she moved closer, she noticed there was something very odd about the way they were swimming. Some were upside down, some were right side up, and some were sideways. She watched one goldfish swim belly-up toward her. The fish stopped within centimeters of the glass and for a brief second appeared to study her face, then turned and headed sideways to the center of the aquarium, where it pushed its nose against a large air bubble. At the bottom, a school of fish was floating horizontally to the surface, but as they swam upward and separated from each other they quickly lost their orientation.

  “The next module is GEM II—the German Experimental Module,” Nelson said.

  Colonel Komarov had coaxed Carter into the Russian shuttle on the third evening of their stay with the promise of vodka. Carter knew that if NASA found out he had imbibed alcohol, there was a chance he would be scrubbed from the mission, even at this late date. NASA regulations on the consumption of alcohol in space called for the immediate and permanent dismissal of an astronaut. All the same, Carter was not overly concerned—like all the other times he had violated a regulation, he had no intention of being caught.

  Dmitri squeezed the plastic container until two ounces of the Russian vodka passed his lips. His eyes brightened as the chilled liquid burned its way through his body. He smiled and handed the vodka to Carter. Without hesitation, Carter put the container to his lips and squeezed. He welcomed the taste like a long-lost friend, and fought the desire to drink more.

  “Good,” he whispered, his voice stolen by the fumes of the alcohol. He handed the container back to the Russian. “You’ll need to come to the States and try some of our sour mash.”

  “Sour mash?” Dmitri asked, puzzled.

  “Bourbon,” Carter replied.

  “Ah, no thank you. I have tried. It tastes like bad scotch.” Dmitri grinned broadly and took a drink from the container. “Another?”

  “I must be careful,” Carter said. “Regulations.”

  “I understand. Your country, with all its talk about freedom, still has its restrictions. Does it not? No matter. Politics are not why we are here. Let us talk flying. Tell me about the X-51.”

  “Much of what I could say about the X-51 is classified,” Carter replied.

  “I would not want you to reveal classified information, of course. Tell me what you can. No more.”

  “I’ll have that drink after all,” Carter said, partly to reassure Dmitri that he trusted him and partly because it had occurred to him suddenly that he was acting like a prude. He took a large swig and felt the familiar warmth of the liquor e
ntering his system. “I’m a stick and rudder man,” he said, sinking into a deep Southern drawl. “The X-51 flies too much like the shuttle for my liking. Almost everything is controlled by computers. If today’s engineers had their way, they would eliminate us pilots altogether. Reduces the number of parameters they have to concern themselves with. She sure is one helluva ride though. One minute you’re under a blue sky, the next the sky is black as night.” He took another drink, this time unconsciously, as he recalled how the blue sky had disappeared. Komarov took the vodka from Carter.

  “Not too much,” Komarov said. “Regulations, remember?” “And I thought you were trying to get me drunk,” Carter said, grinning.

  “No, if I were trying to get you drunk, I would have brought bourbon.” They laughed at this.

  “The plane is little more than one giant fuel tank,” Carter continued after he had regained his breath. “There’s fuel in the wings, the hull, the nose, you name it. And as if that wasn’t enough, the scramjets are sucking up the atmosphere for more. Shit, they’d harness my farts if they could figure a way.” Komarov slapped his legs and laughed, and Carter waited until he was finished. “I heard someone once compare the space shuttle to a fish in the ocean carrying along a bag of water to breathe. Well, they finally figured out how to dispense with the bag.”

  “Very good,” Komarov roared.

  “Tell me about your plane,” Carter said.

  “That is where you have finally surpassed us. Our country still hasn’t flown the plane into space with a man aboard, as you know. Our automated flights are proceeding as planned. Our engineers are apparently afflicted with the same fear as yours. They don’t trust pilots.”

  “It must be something they teach them at school. Any idea when they’re going to let a man take it up?”

  “They say ten months. Maybe nine.” Komarov’s thoughts slipped inward as he stared unfocused at the vodka container. Streaks of gray and silver dominated the thick eyebrows of the Russian. Several creases lined his forehead. Even though he had the most coveted of all assignments, leading the Russian team to Mars, a part of him regretted more than anything that Vladimir would be in the pilot’s seat.

  At that moment Tanya Pavlova burst into the cabin and began speaking rapidly in Russian. Carter made out the name of her husband, Vladimir. There was a reddish mark on her cheek.

  She noticed Carter then and stepped away from Komarov as though she had mistaken him for someone else. She looked Carter in the eye. “I am so sorry. Please don’t be alarmed. It is nothing.”

  Carter mumbled a few unintelligible words in reply, attempting to impart his understanding and disguise his curiosity. He knew that she was lying, that she had been in a fight with her husband, and that he had struck her.

  “If you could excuse us,” Komarov said.

  “Certainly,” Carter replied, and turned to leave. He was dumb-founded. He wondered what had happened. The red mark on Tatiana’s face had to have been inflicted by Vladimir. Unless Dr. Satomura had slapped her, and that did not seem likely. No, it was Vladimir, no doubt. One week prior to their departure, and Tatiana and Vladimir were having marital problems. But was there more to it than that? Carter thought he had detected a sort of intimacy between her and Komarov. But he couldn’t be sure. Komarov’s wife, Vyera, was a member of the Russian jet set whose father had been a distinguished and wealthy member of the Russian Duma. She had kissed him good-bye on the launchpad in front of millions, perhaps billions, of people. Komarov had once told Carter that he loved his wife deeply, but also that he was occasionally unfaithful to her and did not feel the two were at odds.

  As he floated toward the docking adaptor, Carter felt a little giddy and disoriented, which was unusual for the small amount of alcohol he had drunk. Because of the absence of gravity, the stabilizing liquids in his inner ear, whose purpose was to maintain a sense of balance, sloshed unrestrained and erratic. He started to feel an uneasiness in the bottom of his stomach, and pushed his way quickly through the corridor toward the waste-management facility at the other end.

  The voices ceased and eyes looked up as Carter entered the galley the following day. Tatiana Pavlova had been talking. Her husband, Vladimir, was seated next to her, and Colonel Komarov was in the far corner with Nelson, eating breakfast. Vladimir’s hand rested on his wife’s knee. A layer of makeup had been carefully applied to her cheeks. Only someone who had seen her face the previous evening would know she had been struck. For a brief moment she stared nervously at Carter, then continued talking.

  “The estimated speed of the meteoroid was twenty-one kilometers a second. It was no larger than four millimeters in diameter. With our current technologies it would have been impossible to detect.”

  “But it could have been prevented,” Satomura said.

  “Yes,” Tatiana replied. “An exterior shell to absorb the impact could have prevented the accident.”

  “The additional weight would have been excessive,” Nelson interjected. It was an issue that had been heatedly debated after the Russian tragedy, and one which he felt would do little good to discuss further. “The odds of a similar incident are remote.”

  “One in ten thousand, to be precise,” Satomura said. “It is much more likely that we shall all die of old age.”

  Carter watched Tanya and her husband closely. They gave no indication of having been in a fight. In fact, they were holding hands. Carter was not familiar enough with Russian customs to know whether or not hand-holding was appropriate for a married couple in a professional setting, but that made little difference. It was obvious the two were going out of their way to appear happily married—most likely for his benefit. He looked directly at Tatiana until he caught her attention, then looked inquisitively at the joined hands. Her eyes shot him a warning glance. He noticed that her hand tightened slightly around Vladimir’s. Pleased at having obtained a reaction, he turned his attention to the rehydrated eggs on his plate.

  “A joint review of the flight plan is scheduled for this morning,” Nelson said, after everyone had finished their breakfasts. The review was primarily for the public, who would be watching it live. “Robbins, are you ready?”

  Robbins gave the camera lens one final wipe, then nodded as he brought the viewfinder to his right eye. A light on top of the camera flashed on to indicate the event was being televised.

  “The charts, Jean Paul.”

  Brunnet typed in a quick command at the keyboard, and a chart marked OPPOSITION CLASS—OUTBOUND VENUS SWINGBY appeared on a large screen against the wall. The chart was of the inner solar system, and a pair of dotted lines intersected the elliptical orbits of Venus, Earth, and Mars. The lines represented the trajectories of the American spaceship Liberty and the Russian ship Druzhba. In the event of an emergency, their flight paths were close enough for one ship to serve as a backup to the other. A box in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen contained dates.

  2021 OPPOSITION CLASS

  1. Earth departure, October 27, 2021

  2. Venus passage, April 9, 2022

  3. Mars arrival, October 16, 2022

  4. Mars departure, December 17, 2022

  5. Earth arrival, August 18, 2023

  “Good morning, Colonel Nelson,” said Dr. James D. Cain, his broad smile appearing on the high-definition monitor above their heads. Cain was the assistant administrator for the NASA Office of Planetary Exploration. He wiped some sleep from his eyes and acknowledged the others. Moments later the screen split in two, and Colonel Leonid Schebalin appeared on the other half. He spoke a few brief words in Russian to his crew, and when he was finished, he said in English: “Colonel Nelson, you are first on the agenda.”

  “Thank you, Colonel. The purpose of this discussion is to review the mission flight plan. The supply ship initiated trans-Mars injection five days ago. The ship is unmanned and contains scientific experiments, emergency cargo, and the backup lander. Three days from today, the two crews will board their respective crafts. Final prefl
ight preparations and maintenance checks will commence upon their arrival.” He approached the screen and pointed at the blue-green planet everyone knew to be Earth. “Two days later, trans-Mars injection will commence with the ignition of the main engines. The burn will establish a trajectory that will take the ships around the sun and past Venus. Shortly after the first stage has been jettisoned, the ships will extend their habitat and lab modules and begin a point-four-g spin.”

  Nelson placed his finger on a red-dotted line at a spot near the sun. “As we pass by the sun, our primary concern will be solar flares. The storm shelter will automatically be inflated with water by the computer when it has determined with eighty-five percent certainty a solar flare will occur. An alarm, similar to Unity’s, will sound. Jean Paul.”

  A high-pitched siren rang through the air, causing everyone to wince. It continued for five seconds, then mercifully stopped. “My apologies,” said Nelson. “The Russian alarm, I understand, is not quite as loud—partly owing to the fact that your habitat module is adjacent to the shelter.”

  “If our alarm fails,” said Satomura, “I am certain we will hear yours.”

  “The solar radiation will be one of many concerns,” Colonel Schebalin said, his stern voice bringing a quick end to their laughter.

  “Our next encounter will be Venus,” Nelson said, pointing at a rotating gold sphere. The sphere increased in size. “The gravitational field of Venus will accelerate the spaceship in relation to the sun. At Venus, the Liberty will release the probe, Greenhouse. The probe will land on the planet and deploy a robotic rover. We will control the rover from the Liberty as we pass over. This will eliminate the long delay associated with an Earth-based system. The surface will be photographed, and soil samples will be collected and analyzed. We will be looking for clues as to what might have triggered the greenhouse effect on a planet so similar to Earth. Surface temperatures on Venus can reach as high as nine hundred degrees Fahrenheit, mostly because of its thick carbon dioxide atmosphere. We will also be looking for evidence of life.”