IGMS Issue 11 (7 page)

"What happened? The baby?"

"The baby's all right. I'm all right too, thanks." That wasn't just him, he knew; everybody asked about the baby first, and it was starting to piss her off as she neared her term. She said, "They found you on the floor in the waiting room. They thought it might be a stroke."

"Oh, give me a break. I just fell asleep, that's all. Been staying up too late watching old movies. I'm fine, shit's sake." He looked at his hands and wrists, saw no barbed-wire wounds, and started to get up, but she pushed him down again, and he could feel the real fury in her hands.

"You
stay
there, damn it. A lot of people think they're just fine after a stroke, and they get on their feet, take a few steps, and
bang,
gone for good this time." Her face was sweaty with effort and anger; but he saw fear there as well, and heard it in her voice. "On good days I can just about stand you, and on the bad ones . . . God, do you have any
idea?"

"Yes," Jansen said. "Matter of fact."

Arl drew a long breath. "But when I saw you . . ." Her voice caught, and she started again. "I realized right there, I am not ready to have you gone, I'm
not.
Not you too, it's too damn
much
, do you understand me? Don't you dare die on me, not now. Not
now
."

Jansen found her hand on the bed, and put his hand over it. She did not respond, but she did not pull the hand away. "You look like me," he said. "Gracie's all Elly, but you've got my chin, and my nose, and my cheekbones. Must have really hated that, huh?"

The smile was thin and elusive, but it was a smile. "I hated my whole face. Most girls do, but I had reasons." She looked down at their hands together. "I even hated my hands, because they're too much like yours. I'm okay with them now, though, more or less."

Jansen said, "You're like me. That's what you hate." Her eyes widened in outrage, and she jerked away, but he held tightly to her hand. "What I mean, you're like the
good
me. The best of me. The me I was supposed to be, before things . . . just happened. You understand what I'm saying?"

Arl was beginning to frown in an odd way, staring at him. "You sure you haven't had a stroke? I wish the doctor'd get here. You talked while you were out, I couldn't make anything out of it, except it was really weird. Like you were havinga weird dream."

"Not a stroke," Jansen said. "Not a dream." He did not try to sit up again, but kept his eyes fixed on her. He said, "Just someplace I needed to be. Don't ask me about it right now, and I won't ask you about stuff you don't want to tell me, okay?" She did not reply, but her hand turned slightly under his, and a couple of fingers more or less intertwined. "And I promise I won't die until you're finished yelling at me. Fair?"

Arl nodded. "But this doesn't mean I actually like you. Just so you know that."

"Fair," Jansen said again. He did withdraw his hand from hers now.

Dr. Chaudhry came in, a brisk young Bengali with a smile that was not brisk, but thoughtful, almost dreamy. He sat down on the opposite side of the bed from Arl and said, "Well, I hear that you have been frightening your good daughter quite badly. Not very considerate, Mr. Jansen."

"I'm not a very considerate person," Jansen said. "My family could tell you."

"This is something you must change right away," Dr. Chaudhry said, trying to look severe and not succeeding. "You are going to be a grandfather, you know. You will have responsibilities."

"Yeah. Been thinking about that," Jansen said. He looked up at the lights on the ceiling then, and let Dr. Chaudhry count his pulse.

Part Two
 
(Part one is in issue 10.)

The Destiny laboratory was silent except for the background noise of the machinery. The shuttle crew and ISS crew together numbered 10 people and all of them quietly read their copies of Edward's e-mail and tried to absorb its contents. Astronomers had named the object ISBH-147. The acronym stood for Inter Solar Black Hole. Gretchen gasped when she looked at the number that followed it and wondered if it could really mean what it seemed to mean -- that this was the one-hundred and forty-seventh black hole they'd found tearing through the Earth's solar system. Gretchen knew that if they'd cataloged hundreds of them then there could be hundreds more.

The e-mail explained that impact with Earth was a possibility in the range of about fifty percent. The accuracy of this estimate would increase as ISBH-147 drew nearer. After Trevor's conversation with Edward, Nikolai and Gretchen had called a meeting and told everyone about the approaching object. So rather than being a surprise to the emotionally devastated crew, this information was a horrifying confirmation of what they already knew. The rest of the e-mail however, was not what they were expecting. Edward went on to explain that the reason they were being held on the space station was so that NASA could evaluate the feasibility of evacuating them. To Mars.

Several other countries including Russia and China were also working on evacuation plans. Unlike the US, these countries enjoyed the advantage of having functional landers. The Chinese lander was designed for a moon mission, but they still thought a landing on Mars might be feasible. Deceleration in the stronger gravity of Mars would require a great deal more thrust, but unlike the mission for which it was designed, this one would be a one-way trip. It was conceivable that the extra thrust could be attained by jettisoning the lower stage after fuel exhaustion in re-entry. The lander could then fire its own engine and continue its deceleration using the booster that was designed to carry it back into orbit.

Russia was in slightly better shape with a lander designed specifically for Mars, though there were differing reports on whether the craft was finished.

The US had no lander. All of America's resources had been spent on the shuttle program and the space station. The plan, according to Edward's e-mail, was to re-fuel the Phoenix from a tank in a Russian-made Progress cargo rocket that was being launched from Kazakhstan. They could then burn half of the fuel in the main engine of the shuttle and push it into a five-month trajectory toward Mars. Approaching Mars' orbit, the shuttle was to burn the other half of its fuel to decelerate, enter Martian atmosphere, and land "conventionally."

It was this last part that caused the crew -- one by one -- to stop reading and look up at Trevor. Myrtle, whose normally ruddy face was close to white, broke the silence. "Trevor . . . you can't land a shuttle on Mars can you?"

Trevor struggled with what to tell the crew. Eventually, he decided that they deserved nothing less than honesty. "There's about a hundred reasons why this won't work," he said.

Trevor, wearing his headset, waited patiently while he listened to a series of clicks at the other end of the line. A burst of loud static made him yank the ear-piece away from his ear, but he replaced it when he heard Edward's voice coming from the black foam padding.

"So it's working?" asked Trevor.

"If you can hear me, then it's working," replied Edward. He'd tasked his engineers to set up an encoding system so that their conversations wouldn't be monitored the world over.

"Edward, you're an engineer. Why'd you send me this?"

"Look Trevor, I know it's a little radical, but under the circumstances I think it makes sense."

"Which part makes sense? The shuttle is not an interplanetary craft. There's not enough fuel, there's not enough food, there's not enough water, there's not enough radiation shielding. And those are just the problems getting there, never mind the landing."

"We're sending up a Soyuz capsule filled with fuel. It should be enough. We don't have the trajectory yet, but we'll get it. It's just going to be a very slow ride. Maybe more like six months."

"Which is why there isn't enough food and water."

"You can clean out the ISS. Take everything with you. All the vegetation experiments, everything."

"And water?"

"Drink your piss."

Edward's voice was starting to contain a metallic edge, but Trevor was too involved with his own thought process to be warned off by it. "Fine, I'll drink my piss. Now let's talk about landing and re-entry. I've done the math Edward. In Mars' atmosphere I'm looking at a stall speed of roughly six hundred miles per hour, which means I'll have to put my wheels down at about the speed of sound and do it in rocky terrain. After that I suppose I can just step out and re-invent agriculture on another planet."

"Shut up, Trevor! Just shut up!" yelled Edward. The sound of his voice was like a bucket of ice water in Trevor's face. "How dare you talk to me about logistics? You're not the only one floating in space anymore. Our whole planet is floating in space and in three days, me, my family, my friends, and the rest of mankind are going to be crushed into a particle. Do I think you're going to make it? No! Of course not! But damn it, you're going to wave to the cameras, get in that shuttle, hit the engines and pretend like you are. Because otherwise, a lot of us might start to feel like the last five billion years were just a big waste of time."

The words rocked Trevor. "I'm sorry," he said.

He wasn't just talking to Edward. He was ashamed because it suddenly occurred to him how little he'd thought of his family. Tears, born from genuine sorrow and the onset of a hateful sense of guilt, began to form in the corner of his eyes. "Look, Edward, I've got to talk to my wife."

There was no answer for a moment. "I know Trevor. Your family is on their way here. So are the families of some of the other astronauts. For the rest, we'll try to arrange a private phone link."

"Thanks, Edward. Really. Hey, there's still a fifty/fifty chance it won't hit us right?"

"No, actually it's down to about 1 in 5 that it misses."

"Oh."

"Trevor, will you do it? The evacuation I mean."

"Of course."