Smoke, Mirrors and Deep Space Read online

  Gena had liked her laugh; it was deep, throaty and real, and enjoyed itself immensely. She had the feeling Sarah was the same way.

  “Well then I’ll see y’all Friday,” she’d said, smiling as she hung up the phone, a thirty-something Nipponese now affecting a southern drawl, my my.

  By the third glass of wine that first meeting, Gena had found herself tipsily volunteering to handle all the club financial records for the upcoming Halloween Ball, a fundraiser expected to bring in over $10,000 for the Free Thanksgiving Dinner programs. However, she’d warned them, it was just until school started in September.

  “Are y’all comin’ in or what?” Sarah called out the door, breaking in on Gena’s sunset-induced trance. “The girls are finishing off all the wine!”

  There were ten or so of the astronauts’ wives already inside, and no one stood on ceremony in that group when it came to sampling the wine and hors d’oeuvres. Giggling, soft laughter, the occasional raucous snort, and murmurs of oral pleasure drifted toward her from the direction of Sarah’s formal dining room.

  Gena peeked around the corner, then presented her own offering, a nice 1989 Pinot Noir from Northern California.

  “Oh, yum,” purred Sheila Connell, grabbing the bottle and attacking it expertly with a corkscrew.

 

  Sheila was the wife of Buzz Connell, a space engineer currently halfway through a three-month stint on the International Space Station. With her three teenage daughters back in school and no job, she had a plethora of time to kill and no viable weapon, so she’d readily agreed last meeting to take over a large part of Gena’s responsibilities for the Halloween Ball finances now that Gena’s new teaching job had started.

  “How’s the bookkeeping coming?” Gena asked.

  “Not too bad; I got my daughters to help download those disks you gave me. And how about you, how’s the teaching coming?” she inquired as she worked the screw expertly into the stopper, then pulled down the little metal side arms that popped the cork out.

  “Great,” Gena said, letting the other woman fill her glass. “I can’t believe the difference between high school kids and middle school. They’re like a whole different species.”

  Sarah, standing nearby, laughed at this. “More to the point, it’s probably the fact that if a kid screws around in a base school, their old man—”

  “Or woman, mom that is,” Patty Austin interrupted as she sampled her way around the table.

  Patty was one of the handful of new astronauts’ wives that had arrived last June at the same time as Gena and Alex. They had even met each other a time or two back at Edwards, where both husbands had been stationed.

  “Or mom,” Sarah agreed, continuing her thought, “will be called on the carpet by the base commandant before the day is over. And that kid will get the fear of God put into him that night, so deep and so profound that the very thought of screwing off in class again will put a wet spot in his—”

  “Or her,” Patty interrupted again through a mouthful of cheese and crackers.

  “Aren’t y’all just the little feminist firebrand tonight,” Sarah sighed. “Or her…panties, you can be sure.”

  “Well,” Gena said, “…good, whatever the reason.”

  “By the way, sugar, do you have any idea what kind of strings Ray Petersen had to pull to get you that job?” Sarah asked archly.

  “What are you talking about? He said there was an opening.”

  “Not until he made one,” Melanie Gibson chimed in.

  Melanie was the club’s vice president and wife of one of NASA’s senior space flight training officers. “They got rid of a civilian biology teacher from Houston Unified to give you that ‘opening’…and not without a pitched battle from the local teacher’s union, I might add. The teacher went, but he went screaming and kicking.”

  “Well, he had been on staff there for more than ten years,” Sarah explained.

  “Gosh, wow…I had no idea—did he get another job?” Gena inquired.

  “Oh sure, sugar…in a Houston public high school…back to Planet of the Apes.”

  “No wonder he didn’t want to go,” exclaimed Patty, still gaining weight.

  “In any case, Gena doll; you might want to watch out for that Colonel Petersen—he’s been known to have an eye for the ladies,” Melanie warned.

  “Oh hush, Melly…he’d never mess with an astronaut’s wife and you know it.” Sarah turned to Gena. “It’s common knowledge he’s got political ambitions. A scandalous affair like that would destroy him—and I’m quite sure that’s a cost more than he’s willing to bear.”

  Gena found her glass being refilled, as she looked back and forth among the women, not quite sure what to make of all this.

  “Nonetheless,” Melanie purred, “it is a little odd how much trouble he went to just for little old you.”

  “I, I’m sure it’s just because of my husband’s importance to the program. I mean, he’s the only one that’s really familiar with the X-38 deep spacecraft. He was the primary test pilot for its prototype back at Edwards,” Gena explained.

  “Oh, maybe so, sugar, maybe so…but just be sure you keep your belt buckled tight, your boot heels sharp and your jeans above the knees when he’s around,” Sarah winked.

  “So, has he always been…bad?” Gena asked with a little smile, sipping her wine and trying not to appear unduly interested.

  “Pretty much…although he did have a wife and kid once: Kind of sad, actually.”

  * * *

  26. Personal Reflection and Refraction

  THE AIDE THAT had earlier brought the popcorn and soda re-entered the small auditorium and scurried up to the two men. He bent to whisper something in Uriel’s ear. Uriel nodded, whispered a reply and turned to Alex.

  “My aide informs me that there’s quite a spectacular meteor shower going on outside right now that you might find enjoyable. Perhaps this would be a good point to take a little break, allow you some time for personal reflection.”

  Alex shrugged. “You the man,” he muttered.

  He was feeling pretty depressed about all this by now. What they did or didn’t do wasn’t of much interest anymore. He’d actually like to sleep, but he followed the robed man out the door without argument.

  Instead of leading into another long white corridor, this door led outside the hospital into a big open space, a courtyard approximately the size of two football fields. The hospital building comprised one end of the enclosure, the other three sides were surrounded by high smooth white walls made from blocks of marble or perhaps ice. The left half of the courtyard sloped upward, forming a steep ice hill which leveled off at the crest, with a high white wall running along its zenith.

  As Alex disconsolately followed Uriel and the aide into the courtyard, he glanced up, and at once stopped, awestruck at the incredible vista. The sky was a deep bluish violet along the right horizon, fading gradually into a reddish glow on the left, where the great hulking body of Jupiter occupied nearly one fourth of the sky. Io—Jupiter’s closest moon—was a dark shiny sphere situated near the left periphery of Jupiter, about twice the size of a full moon on Earth.

  The meteor shower was nothing like any Alex had ever seen or imagined. A series of large glowing rocks hurtled across the sky one after the other, sometimes two or three at a time. So large they looked more like comets, their tails burned blue and green and violet behind them like the feathers of some exotic and otherworldly bird of paradise. About half of these meteors passed between Europa and Jupiter uneventfully, skipping across the thin film of oxygen surrounding Europa and along the edge of the thick Jovian atmosphere where they were extinguished in a spectacular but harmless display of fireworks. Others entered Jupiter’s atmosphere more directly, igniting in bright flashes as they exploded against the impenetrable wall of gases that made up the bulk of the enormous planet. A few even entered the thin atmosphere of sulfur dioxide and sodium ions that covered nearby Io, streaking downward in bright eerie blue a
nd green trails before exploding in tiny red flares against that moon’s volatile volcanic surface.

  Uriel glanced over at Alex, who had tears of emotion in his eyes at the beauty of it, a mouth that gaped open.

  “Yes, quite spectacular,” he said to the astronaut. “Tell me, Alex, was it worth it?”

  Alex turned, confused. “What?”

  “Your life? To see this show? Was it worth it?”

  “I…don’t know. Maybe. Right now, looking up, I’d say yes…but that’s probably because I haven’t really accepted that it’s over.”

  He continued to stare at the sky show above him for a moment, then turned back to Uriel. “But I do regret what it cost my family.”

  They both looked back up, and continued to stare at the spectacular display in silence for a while.

  Once more, Uriel broke the silence. “Do you think you could have done things a little differently, spent a little more time with your wife and son, and still have made it here?”

  Alex stared at him, thinking about the question before answering.

  “Maybe…yeah. I lagged, I lagged a lot. Hanging out with the guys after my shift was done, just shooting the shit…some was definitely brownnosing—that I had to do. Assignments at NASA tend to be somewhat…political. But some of it was just fun,” he admitted.

  He gazed back up at the meteor shower, eyes filling with tears. “Mostly I just loved it there. Loved it.” He shook his head. “Maybe if I’d put a little more time into my family I’d have loved it there just as much, huh?”

  “Maybe you would have,” Uriel agreed.

  Alex looked over at him thoughtfully. “So, is that it? Is that my lesson?”

  Uriel took a breath before answering carefully. “You were a fairly successful man by society’s standards, Alex. You must have been doing most things right in your life to get where you were. But now, now you’re just plain dead. Do you think there might have been a misstep in there somewhere? Not just in your personal, but in your professional life as well?”

  “But the crash was due to a malfunction, an unforeseeable technical failure.”

  “Unforeseeable? Are you certain?”

  “What do you mean, I couldn’t have…” Alex paused grabbing for the whisper of a thought, a memory; then his eyes widened in realization. “The little glitch with the pressure gauge on the left reverse thruster…”

  * * *

  Alex reached forward, beginning to flick switches, push buttons and read dials while communicating his actions to Mission Control. He was back in the Europa One, getting ready to move away from the International Space Station and begin his 19-month voyage to Jupiter.

  “Oh-two, 800 psi: T-one, check; t-two, check; t-three, check; t-four, check. Cee-Oh-two scrubber, check; fuel cell one, check; fuel cell two, check; fuel cell three, check; fuel cell four…uh, hold it.”

  Alex stopped his instrument check and leaned forward for a closer look at the fuel cell 4 gauge, which was not reading what it was supposed to. He tapped the gauge with his finger, but no change. It was still showing a low reading, in the red zone below nominal. He looked up questioningly at Rudi, who hung through the opening into the vehicle like a giant bat. Rudi frowned, then reached behind him into his tool box and produced a small wrench which he handed to Alex. Alex tapped the gauge a little harder as the flight director—who could be seen on the left monitor of the spaceship—leaned forward worriedly to question the delay.

  “What’s going on up there, Alex?” Ray asked.

  “Hold on,” Alex said.

  Another tap, and the little gauge rose into the borderline nominal range. Alex looked up at Rudi and shrugged; Rudi returned the shrug, giving him an uncertain thumbs up as Alex handed him back the wrench.

  “Just a little glitch,” Alex reported to Mission Control. “A minor false read on fuel cell four, probably just an air bubble. It’s nominal now. Continuing instrument readout: Gimbal, check; guidance, check, communication, check, EDS, check. All flight systems nominal, Houston. This bird is ready to fly.”

  * * *

  “Your orders were to report any potential problems and let Mission Control decide,” Uriel reminded him.

  “I fixed it. It was just an air bubble in the gauge,” Alex defended his action.

  “It was still borderline.”

  Alex turned to him, his hands and brows raised expressively. “It was minutes before lift off from the space station; there wasn’t time for extensive repairs.”

  “Or you’d miss your window of opportunity.”

  “Yes!” Alex shouted. “Yes!! There wouldn’t be as favorable an alignment for another six years, another opportunity at all for nearly a year…that’s a long time.”

  “Long enough to train someone new, if for some reason you happened to lose your public relations edge?”

  Alex took a deep breath, then looked up at Uriel. “Gena was divorcing me. She’d promised to wait until the mission was over.”

  “Uh-oh, divorce,” Uriel chided. “Not exactly the All-American Family image NASA’s PR department wants for its heroes.”

  “I think she might have waited the extra year if it meant I couldn’t do the mission—plus the three and a half more until my return to Earth.”

  “Then again, she might not have.”

  “Yeah,” Alex said, “that’s what I thought.”

  Uriel put an arm around Alex’s shoulder. “Maybe we need to go back inside and try to figure out

  why,” he suggested.

  * * *

  Alex found he was back in the auditorium with Uriel seated nearby, but he didn’t remember getting there. Before he had time to puzzle over that oddity, the stage below lightened a little, the setting that of a darkened living room. Alex recognized their rented home in Houston. He leaned forward.

  There was a faint rattle, then the front door opened quietly, and Gena slipped in. It was very dark, and she was obviously a little tipsy, as she bumped into the hall table, and had to make a quick clumsy grab at the vase of silk flowers to prevent them from falling. She giggled. Alex, hidden in the shadows of the living room a few feet away, watched from an easy chair, anything but easy.

  His voice, when it came, cut through the thick black stillness of the room like a hot knife.

  “Where have you been?

  Gena turned, startled. “Oh, hi! I thought you were staying at the base again tonight.”

  “The mission’s been delayed a couple of days…technical problems. Which doesn’t answer my question.”

  Gena shrugged, taking off her coat, turning on a light to look at him in its cold glow.

  “Me? Just out with the girls. We always get together before a launch, have a few drinks, laugh, joke, cry… It’s our support system. You know that.”

  Alex got up to follow her into the kitchen, where she browsed in the refrigerator until she located the wine cooler she’d secreted among the fresh vegetables.

  “I thought you went out the night before a launch, not the week before,” he accused.

  “How the hell would you know?” she shot back, whirling to face him. “You’re never home.”

  “Don’t start with me, Gena!” Alex warned.

  “Then don’t start with me!” She took a sip of her drink, a deep breath.

  “Anyway, I only meant that since you guys have to sleep, eat, and pee at Mission Control the last few weeks before any mission, how could you possibly know what your wives are doing…or care,” she added, sotto voce.

  “So who’s watching our son while all this sisterly, co-dependent support shit is going down?” He made a gesture with his hand to indicate her tippling the bottle of wine cooler.

  “Fuck you, Alex! A drink or two and I’m an alcoholic, right?”

  Alex grinned cruelly. “My, the little ‘drinky or two’ certainly has a leveling effect on your college-educated vocabulary. If your students could only hear you now!”

  Andy came into the room, rubbing his eyes. He was a tall, good-lo
oking boy of thirteen.

  “I heard yelling,” he said.

  “Go back to bed, honey. It’s nothing,” Gena told him.

  “Nah, wait! Andy! Why didn’t your mom get you a babysitter?”

  “He’s thirteen, for chrissake! I was waiting tables in my parents’ restaurant for pay when I was his age. I babysat for the neighbors from the time I was nine!”

  “You’re a girl.”

  “So? Are you saying males are less responsible?”

  “He’s my son—” Alex began.

  “GOOD answer,” Gena interrupted.

  “…and I want to make sure he’s safe and well cared for,” Alex finished, sounding a bit pompous even to his own ears.

  “Oh?” Gena countered. “Tell me, dear, does this sense of propriety only surface when there’s some parcel of blame to be meted out?”

  “No…” Alex felt flustered now. She was so cold; he hadn’t expected this. It made him uneasy. “No, I just… Damn it, Gena, I just wish—”