Gravity (32 page)

Jared Profitt was awakened just after midnight. It took only two rings of the phone to propel him from deep sleep to a state of complete alertness. He reached for the receiver.

The voice on the other end was brusque. “This is General Gregorian. I’ve just spoken to our control center in Cheyenne Mountain. That so-called demo launch from Nevada continues to be on a rendezvous path with ISS.”

“Which launch?”

“Apogee Engineering.” Profitt frowned, trying to remember the name.

Every week there were numerous launches from sites around the world. A score of commercial aerospace firms were always testing booster systems or sending satellites into orbit or even blasting off cremated human remains. Space Command was already tracking nine thousand manmade objects in orbit. “Refresh my memory about this Nevada launch,” he asked.

“Apogee is testing a new reusable launch vehicle. They sent it up at oh-seven-ten yesterday morning. They informed the FAA as required, but didn’t let us know until after the fact. This billed as an orbital trial of their new RLV. A launch into low orbit, a flyby past ISS, and then reentry. We’ve been tracking for a day and a half now, and based on its most recent on-orbit burns, it seems possible they’ll approach the station closer than they told us.”

“How close will they get?”

“It depends on their next burn maneuvers.”

“Close enough for an actual rendezvous? A docking?”

“That’s not possible with this particular vehicle. We have all the specs on their orbiter. It’s just a prototype, with no orbital system. The best it can do is a flyby and a wave.”

“A wave?” Profitt suddenly sat up in bed. “Are you telling me this RLV is manned?”

“No, sir. That was just a figure of speech. Apogee says the vehicle is unmanned. There are animals aboard, including a spider monkey, but no pilot. And we’ve picked up no voice communication between ground and vehicle.” A spider monkey, thought Profitt. Its presence aboard the spacecraft meant they could not rule out the possibility of a human pilot. The craft’s environmental monitors, the carbon dioxide levels, would not distinguish between animal or human life. He uneasy about the lack of information. He was even more uneasy about the timing of the launch. j L “I’m not certain there’s any cause for alarm,” said Gregorian.

“But you did ask to be notified of any orbital approaches.”

“Tell me more about Apogee,” Profitt cut in.

Gregorian gave a dismissive snort. “A minor player. Twelvemen engineering firm out in Nevada. They haven’t had a lot of luck. A year and a half ago, they blew up their first prototype twenty seconds into launch, and all their early investors vanished. I’m surprised they’re still hanging in there. Their booster’s based on Russian technology. The orbiter’s a simple, bare-bones system a parachute reentry. Payload capacity’s only three hundred kilos, plus a pilot.”

“I’ll fly out to Nevada at once. We need to get a better handle on this.”

“Sir, we can monitor every move this vehicle makes. Right now, we have no reason to take action. They’re just a small firm, to impress some new investors. If the orbiter presents any real concern, we can have our ground-based interceptors standing by to bring that bird down.” General Gregorian was probably right. The fact that some hotshot ground jockeys decided to launch a monkey into space did not constitute a national emergency. He had to move very carefully on this. The death of Luther Ames had unleashed a national uproar of protest. This was not the time to shoot down another spacecraft-one built by a private American firm, no less.

But so much about this Apogee launch disturbed him. The timing.

The rendezvous maneuvers. The fact they could neither confirm nor rule out a human presence.

What else could it be but a rescue mission?

He said, “I’m leaving for Nevada.”

Forty-five minutes later, Profitt was in his car and pulling out the driveway. The night was clear, the stars like bright blue velvet. There were perhaps one hundred billion galaxies in universe, and each galaxy contained a hundred billion stars. How many of those stars had planets, and how many planets had life?

Panspermia, the theory that life exists and is distributed throughout the universe, was no longer merely speculation. The belief that there was life only on this pale blue dot, in this insignificant system, now seemed as absurd as the ancients’ naive belief that sun and the stars revolved around the earth. The only strict requirements for life were the presence of carbon-based compounds some form of water. Both were in abundance throughout the universe. Which meant that life, however primitive, could be abundant as well, and that interstellar dust might be seeded with bacteria or spores. From such primitive creatures did all other spring.

And what happened if such life-forms, arriving as bits of cosmic dust, seeded a planet where life already existed?

This was Jared Profitt’s nightmare.

Once, he had thought the stars beautiful. Once he had viewed the universe with awe and wonder. Now, when he looked at the night sky, he saw infinite menace. He saw biological Armageddon.

Their conqueror, descending from the heavens.

It was time to die.

Emma’s hands were shaking, and the pounding in her head was so severe she had to grit her teeth just to keep herself from passing out. The last morphine shot had barely taken the edge off the pain, and she was so dazed by the narcotic she could barely focus on the computer screen. On the keyboard beneath her fingers. She paused to still the trembling of her hands. Then she began to type.

Her hands were shaking so badly she could not type any more.

She signed off and pressed “send.” In the medical kit, she found the supply of Valium. There were two tablets left. She swallowed them both with a gulp of water. edges of her vision were starting to black out. Her legs felt numb, as though they were not part of her body at all, but the limbs of stranger.

There was not much time left.

She did not have the strength to don an EVA suit. And what did it matter now where she died? The station was already diseased.

Her corpse would be just one more item to clean up.

She made her last passage into the dark side of the station.

The cupola was where she wanted to spend her final waking moments.

Floating in darkness, gazing down at the beauty of the earth. From the windows, she could see the blue-gray arc of the Caspian Sea. Clouds swirling over Kazakhstan and snow in the Himalayas. Down there are billions of people going about their lives, thought. And here am I, a dying speck in the heavens.

“Emma?” It was Todd Cutler, speaking gently over her comm unit. “How are you doing?”

“Not … feeling so good,” she murmured. “Pain. vision’s starting to fade. I took the last Valium.”

“You have to hang in there, Emma. Listen to me. Don’t give up. Not yet.”

“I’ve already lost the battle, Todd.”

“No, you haven’t! You have to have faith—”

“In miracles?” She gave a soft laugh. “The real miracle is that am up here at all. That I’m seeing the earth from a place so few people have ever been…” She touched the window of the and felt the warmth of the sun through the glass. “I only wish I could speak to Jack.”

“We’re trying to make that happen.”

“Where is he? Why can’t you reach him?”

“He’s working like crazy to get you home. You have to believe that.”

She blinked away tears. I do.

“Is there anything we can do for you?” said Todd. “Any one else you want to speak to?”

“No.” She sighed. “Only Jack.” There was a silence.

“I think—I think what I want most now—”

“Yes?” said Todd.

“I’d like to go to sleep. That’s all. Just go to sleep.” He cleared his throat. “Of course. You get some rest. I’ll be here if you need me.” He closed with a soft, “Good night, ISS. Good night, Houston, she thought. And she took off her headset and let it float away into the gloom.

The convoy of black sedans braked to a stop in front of Apogee Engineering, tires churning up a massive cloud of dust. Jared Profitt stepped out of the lead car and gazed up at the building. looked like an airplane hangar, windowless and bleakly industrial, its rooftop studded with satellite equipment.

He nodded to General Gregorian. “Secure the building.” Barely a minute later, Gregorian’s men gave the all-secure signal, and Profitt stepped into the building.

Inside, he found a ragtag group of men and women herded into a tense and angry circle. He immediately recognized two of the faces, Director of Flight Crew Operations Gordon Obie and shuttle Flight Director Randy Carpenter. So NASA was here, as he’d suspected, and this featureless building in the middle of the desert had been turned into a rebel Mission Control.

Unlike the Flight Control Room at NASA, this was clearly a shoestring operation. The floor was bare concrete. Spaghetti tangles of wires and cables were strung everywhere. A grotesquely overweight cat picked its way among a pile of discarded electronic equipment.

Profitt walked over to the flight consoles and saw the data streaming in. “What’s the orbiter’s status?” he asked.

One of Gregorian’s men, a flight controller from U.S. Space Command, said, “It’s already completed its Ti-burn, sir, and it’s now moving up the R-bar. It could rendezvous with ISS within forty-five minutes.”

“Halt the approach.”

“No!” said Gordon Obie. He broke away from the group and stepped forward. “Don’t do this. You don’t understand—”

“There can be no evacuation of station crew,” said Profitt.

“It’s not an evacuation!”

“Then what’s it doing up there? It’s clearly about to rendezvous with ISS.”

“No, it’s not. It can’t. It has no docking system, no way of connecting with the station. There’s no chance of cross-contamination.”

“You haven’t answered my question, Mr. Obie. What is Apogee II doing up there?” Gordon hesitated. “It’s going through a near-approach sequence, that’s all. It’s a test of Apogee’s rendezvous capabilities.”

“Sir,” said the flight controller from Space Command. “I’m seeing a major anomaly here.” Profitt’s gaze shot back to the console. “What anomaly?”

“The cabin atmospheric pressure. It’s down to eight psi. It should be at fourteen point seven. Either the orbiter has a air leak, or they’ve purposely allowed it to depressurize.”

“How long has it been that low?” Quickly the flight controller typed on the keyboard, and a graph appeared, a plot of the cabin pressure over time.

“According to their computers, the cabin was maintained at fourteen point seven for the first twelve hours after launch. Then around thirty-six hours ago, it was depressurized to ten point two, where it held steady until an hour ago.” Suddenly his chin jerked up. “Sir, I what they’re doing! This appears to be a prebreathe protocol.”

“Protocol for what?”

“An EVA. A spacewalk.” He looked at Profitt. “I think someone’s aboard that orbiter.” Profitt turned to face Gordon Obie. “Who’s aboard? Who did you send up?” Gordon could see there was no longer any point in holding back the truth. He said, in quiet defeat, “It’s Jack McCallum. Emma Watson’s husband.

“So it’s a rescue mission,” said Profitt. “How was it supposed to work? He goes EVA, and then what?”

“The SAFER jet pack. The Orlan-M suit he’s wearing is equipped with one. He uses it to propel himself from Apogee II to the station. Enters via the ISS airlock.”

“And he retrieves his wife and brings her home.”

“No. That wasn’t the plan. Look, he understands—we all understand—why she can’t come home. The reason Jack went up was to deliver the Ranavirus.”

“And if the virus doesn’t work?”

“That’s the gamble.”

“He’s exposing himself to ISS. We’d never let him come home.”

“He wasn’t planning to come home! The orbiter was going to return without him.” Gordon paused, his gaze fixed on Profitt’s.

“It’s a one-way trip, and Jack knows it. He accepted the conditions. It’s his wife dying up there! He won’t—he can’t—let her die alone.”

Stunned, Profitt fell silent. He looked at the flight console, monitors streaming with data. As the seconds ticked by, he of his own wife, Amy, dying in Bethesda Hospital. Remembered his frantic sprint through the Denver airport to catch the next flight home to her, and remembered his despair as he’d arrived breathless at the gate to see the plane pulling away. He thought of the desperation that must be driving McCallum, the anguish of being so heartbreakingly close to his goal, only to see it drift out of reach. And he thought, This will bring no harm to anyone here on earth. To anyone but McCallum. He has made his choice, with full knowledge of the consequences. What right do I have to stop him?

He said, to the Space Command flight controller, “Return control of the console to Apogee. Let them resume their mission.”

“Sir?”

“I said, let the orbiter continue its approach.” There was a moment of stunned silence. Then the Apogee controllers scrambled back into their seats.

“Mr. Obie,” said Profitt, turning to look at Gordon. “You do understand that we’ll be monitoring every move McCallum makes. I am not your enemy. But I’m charged with protecting the greater good, and I’ll do what’s necessary. If I see any indication you to bring either of those people home, I will order Apogee II destroyed.”

Gordon Obie nodded. “It’s what I’d expect you to do.”