The Tranquillity Alternative (25 page)

He heard Aachener and Talsbach abruptly go silent. He didn’t have to look behind him to know that they were staring in his direction. Parnell forced himself to calm down; it wouldn’t do any good for him to blow up at Ryer now.

“Look,” he said, “let’s go back to square one. We’ve got our jobs to do. Regardless of everything else, that’s the first priority. We can’t go to the Moon and back snarling at each other … we’re the guys in charge here. Got it?”

Ryer was about to retort, then apparently reconsidered. She sighed, nervously flicking her hair away again; she didn’t look his way. “Yeah. Okay. Got it.”

“Good. So let’s make a deal. You do your job, and I’ll stay off your case.”

“Yeah, okay, Commander.” She pulled the duffel bag closer and began to dig into it. “Whatever you say … Christ, where’s that cap?”

Parnell felt his temper rising once more. She was avoiding him again, and the silly-ass game was beginning to piss him off. He reached forward to grab the duffel bag, intending to yank it aside so that she couldn’t use it to escape the conversation.

“And another thing,” he said as his fist grasped the bag’s nylon cord. “Cut the ‘Commander’ crap. My name’s …”

What happened next was the sort of accident that can only occur in free-fall. He didn’t intend to spill the duffel’s contents, but she wasn’t holding it firmly enough; in the next instant, boots, rolled socks, a sweatshirt, underwear, a spare jumpsuit, a toilet kit, a computer diskette … all practically exploded in midair, pulled outward by the force of his tug.

“Goddammit!” she yelled, but she was redfaced and laughing in spite of her anger as her personal belongings were made public. “Oh, shit, Parnell! Look what you’ve done!”

“Jeez … Cris, I’m sorry!” He heard the Germans laughing as he let go of his squeeze bulb and began grabbing for anything within reach.

He managed to snag one of the boots, a pair of white silk undies—he tried not to look at them too hard—and a sweatshirt before he spotted the computer diskette tumbling past his shoulder. He snatched it up and, out of curiosity, glanced at the handwritten label.

“Tetris?” he said. “Hey, I love this. My daughter got me into it …”

“Gimme that!”

Before he could react, Ryer dropped the clothes she’d retrieved, flung herself across the six feet of space separating them, and grabbed the diskette out of his hand. “That’s not for you!”

For an instant, he saw terror in her eyes. “Hey, whoa,” he said, surprised by her expression. “Easy does it. I’m just surprised you brought a game with you, that’s all.” He cocked his head toward the nearby computers. “If you’ve got a minute, let’s load it up and …”

“No,” Ryer said. “Let’s not.”

She unzipped a hip pocket of her jumpsuit, shoved the diskette inside, and zipped the pocket closed again before she forced a smile on her face. “C’mon, Gene,” she said. “Help me get all this stuff. We’ve got the second-post burn to do in a few minutes.”

“Uh … yeah. Sure.” Parnell handed her the armful of clothing he had already collected, then went to retrieve the toilet kit which was spiraling end-over-end toward the other side of the deck. No problem with him getting a good, close look at her panties, but let him touch a knock-off copy of an arcade game …

Damn, but she was a strange woman.

From The Associated Press (national wire); January 25, 1985

WASHINGTON—President Ronald Reagan today ordered that the remaining NASA space shuttle,
Discovery
, be temporarily grounded, following last Tuesday’s explosion of the shuttle
Challenger
.

The order was made public by White House spokesman Larry Speaks, in a brief statement issued to the press. “Until we know exactly what destroyed
Challenger
, we cannot allow
Discovery
to remain in service,” Speaks said.

The Executive Order follows preliminary reports by NASA accident investigators which indicate that
Challenger
was destroyed by a malfunctioning solid-rocket booster. Although Navy divers are still probing the wreckage of the shuttle off the Florida coast, analysis of film footage of its launch shows that flames erupted from part of the right SRB seconds before the explosion occurred.

The investigators theorize that the fire from the SRB might have burned through the shuttle’s external fuel tank, thereby igniting its volatile hydrogen-oxygen fuel.

Seven astronauts were killed in the disaster, which occurred during
Challenger
’s third test-flight.
Challenger
was the first vehicle in NASA’s new shuttle fleet. They were intended to eventually replace the Atlas-C space ferries, which have been in continuous use since 1965.

NASA spokesman Hugh MacDonald said that the Atlas ferries will continue to be launched from Cape Canaveral. “It’s an older class of vessel, but it has a superb safety record,” MacDonald said. “For the time being, we will be using the Atlases as the main workhorse for manned orbital operations, until
Discovery
is judged to be completely reliable.”

However, Speaks left little room for
Discovery
to be returned to service any time soon. “Until key safety issues are resolved, the President believes that we must act prudently to prevent a recurrence of this tragedy,” he said.

2/17/95 • 1407 GMT

T
HERE WERE A FLEETING
few seconds after he pushed open the outer airlock hatch and before he attached the tether of his suit’s lifeline to the catwalk railing, when Parnell felt an old, atavistic fear.

Oh my God, I’m falling
…

And indeed, so he was. But so was
Conestoga
itself, and even if by some strange accident he was cast away from the moonship, he would fall with the vessel. If such a thing were to occur, it would be embarrassing, because someone might have to suit up and come outside to haul him back in, but hardly fatal … so long as the lifeline held.

Yet, in those few seconds, common sense and experience did little to ease his nerves. Even though it had been half a lifetime since he’d taken his first spacewalk, and only a few hours since he made the short jaunt between
Harpers Ferry
and the moonship, this was different, because back there he was still in Earth orbit, while here …

Blackness. Utter starless void. A pit as deep as the universe itself, vast as all eternity.

And he still hadn’t attached the tether …

Parnell remembered when he had taken Gene Jr. on a camping trip to Canyonlands National Park, one of the last times he and the boy had been close enough to share a holiday. For three days they hiked through the Utah desert, sleeping in canyons and atop mesas, following trail markers and his map until they reached their destination, the confluence of the Colorado and Green Rivers. For three days they walked, sang Boy Scout campfire songs and Creedence Clearwater Revival hits, took snapshots of the Needles and Druid Arch, complained about boot blisters, sipped canteen water and dined on trail mix, and walked some more until, almost unexpectedly, they reached a place where the ground fell away and they found themselves staring into a primitive canyon with rock walls like the prows of enormous petrified battleships and the Y-shaped confluence so far below, it seemed as if they were in an airplane.

They had stood there, the toes of their hiking boots at the verge of the drop-off, soaking in the scenery, listening to the wind as it whispered through the enormous gorge … and then Gene Jr. did something only a goddamn fifteen-year-old would think of.

He grabbed his father’s shoulders and shouted, “Hey, don’t jump!”

In that instant, Gene’s knees had turned to butter, his arms flailed helplessly at the dry air, and a soundless scream threatened to emerge from his parched throat, because he imagined his feet losing contact with the dry crumbling soil, falling forward, plummeting thousands of feet down, down, down into the gaping abyss below.

It was one of the scariest moments of his life.

It had also been the first, last, and only time he had ever struck one of his kids. He lost his temper and gave the boy a slap. A glancing swat off the top of the head, not a solid punch to be sure … but Gene Jr. had never forgotten it, nor completely forgiven him. The following day they trudged out of the desert without saying much to each other, and it was only a few months later when Judith found a couple of joints hidden underneath a
Captain America
comic book in the boy’s bedside table drawer.

Hey, Gene? You copy?
Lewitt’s voice was crisp and clear within his helmet.

Hell with it. “I’m here. Just taking in the view.” Parnell reached forward, clamped the tether to the railing and gave the line a swift, hard tug to make sure it was secure. “Okay, I’m on the catwalk,” he added.

We gotcha.
Lewitt chuckled.
Don’t fall off now.

Coincidence. Jay was only joking. Gene had never told anyone, not even Judith, about the incident in Canyonlands.

He swallowed, gave the line another perfunctory tug, then pushed himself off the catwalk. “I won’t,” he murmured. “Going out to check the antenna now.”

He had originally intended to let the failure of the long-range radar system go unattended until they reached the Moon. It was nonessential equipment, after all, at least as far as their mission was concerned; it was there mainly to track other vessels in cislunar space.
Conestoga
could easily make touchdown at Tranquillity Base without it, using the short-range dish alone for the approach and final descent. Yet his conscience had continued to bother him until, sometime during lunch, he announced his intent to go EVA and fix the damn thing once and for all.

Both Jay and Cris had argued with him, each maintaining that a spacewalk wasn’t necessary and that they could handle the landing maneuvers without the LRR. Perhaps they could, but the fact of the matter was that Gene wanted a reason to leave the vessel for a few minutes. The tortured syntax of the Germans, Leamore’s remarks about obsolete American space technology, Dooley’s inability to eat without throwing food all over the place, Rhodes and Bromleigh wanting to videotape everything short of his visit to the head … altogether, his passengers made him need to escape the ship for a few minutes. Get a breath of fresh air, as it were, although he reckoned that if someone had so much as farted, he would have taken it as a good excuse to check the oxygen tanks.

So now he was alone, and what good had it done him? Just given him the time to confront old memories, and bad ones at that.

Parnell pushed it all to the back of his mind. Letting the lifeline trail behind him, he pulled himself hand over hand along the railing until he reached the outrigger spar leading to the radar mast. His helmet lamp traced the long I-beam until it ended at the pair of silver dish-shaped radar antennas at its end.

“Going out on the starboard mast now,” he said.

We copy
, Lewitt replied.
Good luck.

Easy now. One hand over the other. A rookie in the water tanks at Houston could do this. The LRR dish was the closer one of the pair, only fifteen feet away.

Once he was out from under the hemispherical bulge of the personnel sphere, he could have looked straight up and seen the Moon, but he didn’t allow himself that privilege. It was too distracting. Instead, he concentrated on the beam, absently humming to himself until he realized that he was doing the refrain from “Susie Q,” one of the CCR songs he and Gene Jr. had sung during the Utah trip. He stopped himself. Now was no time to be woolgathering, for chrissakes …

When he reached the dish, he checked it first. It was still intact, so he moved to the silver Mylar-wrapped instrument module mounted behind it. “Nothing seems to be wrong here,” he said, gently jostling both the antenna and module. “No sign of micrometeor impact. Looks good as new.”

Ummm
…
copy that, Gene.
Lewitt’s voice sounded distracted.
I’m still not getting anything here, though.

“Nothing?”

Not even a twitch. Flatline all the way.
Jay paused.
Maybe the module connection is bad. Try it again.

The instrument module was about the size of a shoebox, attached to the antenna by a single long bolt through its center. Parnell slipped a torqueless screwdriver from his utility belt and used it to unfasten the bolt. He caught the bolt with his right hand before it could drift away, then gently pulled off the module and turned it over in his thick gloves. The eight-prong connection appeared to be undamaged, and he told Lewitt so.

Might be a hardware failure
, Lewitt said.
Why don’t you bring it in for a test? If it’s screwed up, maybe I can run a bypass.

“Yeah. Sounds like a good idea.” Parnell opened a cargo pocket on his thigh and slipped both the module and the retaining bolt into it. “Okay, I’m coming back in. Have some hot chocolate waiting for me.”

Roger that. We’ll keep the porch light on.

Clumsily turning around, Parnell began to make his way back down the spar, his hands gripping the I-beam for support.

Halfway down the beam, though, his extended left leg became tangled in a dangling loop of the lifeline. Cursing under his breath, he reached down with his right hand to pull the line free. This caused his left hand to slip from the girder, and for a few moments he was drifting free of the spar.

He almost called out, but caught himself. He wasn’t in trouble, and he didn’t want to sound like a panicky rookie on his first EVA. Just the type of thing Rhodes would love to put in her next dispatch. He could almost hear it now: “A moment of peril today aboard the U.S.S.
Conestoga
, when mission commander Eugene Parnell, during a routine spacewalk to fix a radar dish, was nearly lost when he …” and so forth.

Instead, he quickly reached up with his right hand to grab the beam again. As he did, his fingers happened to slip within a slender electrical cable attached to the beam itself.

To his surprise, the cable was loose; the slightest pull of his forefinger yanked it several inches from the brackets that held it to the beam.