Quantum

by Patricia Cornwell

  −1:27:44:1 . . . Returning my attention to the Wallops live feed as I brush my hair.

  Everything is still a go with no signs of a problem or threat beyond what we always expect at a resupply launch headed to the International Space Station, typically every three months, and a much bigger spectacle than the routine sounding rockets flaring up to deploy CubeSats and other devices, some no bigger than a shoebox. I note the usual number of cars in the parking lot near the pad, key personnel only, none of them furloughed.

  As best I can tell, at most 10 vehicles, and no emergency lights. Just red beacons flashing in a snow shower that by all accounts won’t amount to much on the barrier islands. But we’re going to get a good dusting here with blizzard conditions at times, predicted to start within the hour, and how unfortunate for anyone out in the elements.

  Tapping three Advil into my palm, swallowing them with a handful of tap water, and I can’t help but feel sorry for the masses showing up for the launch. I always feel bad for them, and at the same time am amazed by their passion and fortitude. The hour is awful, the weather often worse, and while the risk of bodily harm to spectators is minimal, there’s always the chance of what my Secret Service friends label that unwanted event.

  −1:27:00:4 . . . Rewrapping the towel around me . . .

  It could be all sorts of things ranging from disastrous to embarrassing. An assassination or a pie in the face. Anthrax sent in the mail or someone jumping the White House fence. How about a rocket blowing up like a small atom bomb? Or worst of all, multiple bad things happening simultaneously, especially with students and families standing right there. A catastrophic malfunction resulting in an explosion while kids and dignitaries are watching is the stuff of my bad dreams.

  −1:26:51:1 . . . Picking up my Glock . . .

  But no one said space exploration and all that goes with it is for sissies. And considering the fishing community, the cheerful hearty stock who run the seaside inns, businesses and restaurants of Wallops and Chincoteague, it should come as no surprise that a little sleep deprivation and frostbite never hurt the locals on launch day. Nobody seems to mind pitching in, working around the clock to keep the droves of visitors fed with a roof overhead.

  Even helping out with boats on occasion, because what goes up must come down. When research widgets and gadgets tethered to parachutes land in the ocean, someone has to pick them up. It could be a UFO for all the watermen know, and they don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t care. No problem ferrying the researchers out, or if need be securing whatever it is on their behalf.

  −1:26:15:2 . . . My fresh-scrubbed face staring back at me from the mirror as the mirror ball spins . . .

  Easy as hoisting a crab pot out of the drink, everyone happy to help. Frigid winds, downpours, heat waves, drone-size mosquitoes, gridlock traffic—nothing is going to stop die-hard space fans. Most of them rough-and-tumble NASA-loving islanders, the sort to have mailboxes shaped like rockets, and homebuilt crew capsules as yard ornaments. Along with inflatable astronauts and Space Shuttles, and painted-tire flowerbeds spangled with moons and stars.

  −1:26:00:2 . . . Opening the bathroom door . . .

  Of course, American flags are as common as rooftop lightning rods in the Land of Rockets, and there are an awful lot of trucks. Tourists aren’t quite as enthusiastic this time of year, but during warmer months they pour in from the mainland of Virginia and all around. Plus, our proud partners showing up, major aerospace behemoths, members of the military, the finest academic institutions in the land.

  −1:25:40:0 . . . Walking into the bedroom as the orb follows . . .

  But my favorite are those wide-eyed wonders from public schools like the one in Iowa whose students have been misled to believe that their Low Earth Atmospheric Reader will be installed during a spacewalk that begins in less than an hour and a half.

  For reasons of national security, LEAR will have to wait in silence and secret, its young wizards fortunately none the wiser as they and their beaming teachers gather in a special observation area at Mission Control to watch the EVA live feed.

  −1:25:11:1 . . . Headed to the chest of drawers . . .

  As we speak, enthusiasts are rolling up in herds, parking on the sides of the only road leading on and off the island. Gathering in the open-air VIP tent, or more miserably, standing outside in the field behind the visitor’s center.

  −1:25:01:1 . . . Digging in a drawer for cargo pants . . .

  All ages, professions and persuasions, spectators congregating, waiting for blastoff, and as the countdown gets closer, the security perimeter widens, pushing everyone farther back from LP-0A.

  −1:24:41:2 . . . Underwear and socks . . .

  When it’s an hour out, no one will be allowed within 1,524 meters (5,000 feet) of the rocket for obvious safety reasons and every other liability imaginable. All essential personnel will be at their stations if they’re not already, in various bunker-like buildings and blockhouses. The unsung heroes behind the scenes are assembling, none of them furloughed, and the sort to find a way around it if they had to.

  Driving up in 4-wheelers with cattle pushers, gun racks, tool chests. In hoodies, jeans, hunting boots, the true masters of space can pilot any dish antenna you’ve ever met. Doesn’t matter if it’s 1.8 meters (6 feet) in diameter or 10 times that.

  00:00:00:00:0

  WALLOPS ISLAND fairly blooms with astral signal sniffers of varying sizes and shapes, most made of metal painted flat white.

  Typically, these dishes are configured in arrays that bring to mind nosegays of monster morning glories, the petals being the parabolic reflector, the stamen the feed horn. Each flower, so to speak, is turned toward whatever it’s tracking, except for those mushroomed straight up like a saint lifting open hands to the heavens, praising and imploring.

  −1:24:20:0 . . . Sitting on the edge of the bed, putting on long underwear, keeping my eye on the countdown on my phone . . .

  When the dishes are faceup as if waiting for a sign from above, it means they’re parked, in sleep mode, off the clock. Or perhaps more apropos given the timing: furloughed. At any rate, they’re taking a break from hunting down invisible objects and energies moving as fast as the speed of light. And like Santa’s helpers and reindeer on their most important eve, there’s no rest for any Wallops antenna right now.

  −1:24:10:1 . . . Pulling on thick wool socks . . .

  Each has its important role in the cosmic teamwork required to haul a 6-ton metal tube into the mesosphere and beyond. It takes a village to raise a barn or a rocket, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and NASA’s Near Earth Network (NEN), in addition to other ground stations locally and far flung, will be listening and looking constantly.

  In fact, they already are and have been, antennas linking, joining forces like people holding hands in a chain that stretches into infinity. Working for a safe bon voyage and a safer universe. Hooking up into arrays that transmit and receive, give and take, download and reciprocate, please and thank you, and together we’re stronger. As all of us would be better off behaving, collaborating on what should and shouldn’t be there. At least metaphorically.

  −1:24:00:2 . . . Headed to the closet as the orb follows . . .

  But specifically and in rocketry before and during liftoff, the telemetry will be coming in fast and furiously, the parabolic reflectors, feed horns and actuators trained on LP-0A like man’s best friend listening to His Master’s Voice.

  −1:23:52:2 . . . Opening the closet door . . .

  Scientists, engineers, flight controllers, our protective service forces and emergency first responders have been going down mind-jamming checklists for weeks and days on end. No page of NASA acronyms and jargon has been left unturned, ensuring all is optimal, everybody laser focused and on edge. Le
ading up to those first few electrifying seconds when the rocket pushes off in a massive explosion you can feel in your hollow organs for miles and see from the mainland.

  Thundering up in billowing white clouds of steam, a pissed-off dragon propelled by orange plumes of plasmic fire. Shimmering, almost hovering as the air begins sizzling and crackling. Lifting, turning, streaking like a burning arrow in a northeast trajectory over the sea. Before receding into a ball of light like a fickle shooting star doing a flyby, headed back to outer space instead of to the ground.

  −1:23:32:0 . . . Carrying a police polo shirt, tactical boots to the bed . . .

  All told it takes less than 10 minutes from launch before the second stage separates, and the spacecraft (cargo capsule) begins slingshotting around the earth at 17,500 miles per hour. This can go on for days and weeks, the timing precisely calculated for when the Space Station’s robotic arm is best poised to grab the capsule midflight at an altitude of some 400 kilometers (249 miles) straight up as . . . well, as a rocket flies.

  −1:23:20:0 . . . Perched on the edge of the bed, pulling on my pants . . .

  The azimuthal angle for rendezvous depends on how the world turns. As long as the spacecraft stays in bounds, orbiting above the atmosphere between 59 degrees latitude north and south, it can be intercepted while flying over anywhere and anything. The Sahara, the Nile, mountains in China, an Australian dry lake bed. It could be over the Great Barrier Reef or an algal bloom in the Indian Ocean when Houston decides to snatch the spacecraft from orbit like a wild flying beast.

  −1:23:00:1 . . . Tying my bootlaces . . .

  No greater show on Earth and beyond as long as nothing goes off-nominal, and almost anything you might think of can, including the wrong sort of spectators showing up. While I have a lot to say about visitors in and out of Langley during public events, I don’t necessarily know who’s going to wander in at Wallops. Their protective services division works closely with ours but is separate.

  I don’t have any idea what important people might be attending this morning’s launch and live-feed spacewalk, not a clue about visitors on that wind-scoured island 100 miles from here. Probably not anybody crazy famous, I wouldn’t think. Difficult to keep that from leaking. But one never knows. There could be a celebrity, a prominent politician or two allowed in the VIP viewing room behind glass at Mission Control.

  −1:22:51:1 . . . Pulling on my shirt . . .

  I watch the countdown ticking by below the video feed. The seconds flicking past. Getting closer to liftoff, and I’m having serious trouble comprehending why my dad would be summoned out for any reason. Why him? And why would Dick and the Secret Service pick him up in those big SUVs, assuming I’m right about that? Is there a perceived threat, and why don’t I know?

  Are they at Langley or Wallops? Is it possible that the commander of Space Force is showing up at the launch with PR in mind, and for some oddball reason my dad is with him? Maybe Dick is supposed to be in that special room with all those kids watching a live feed of Commander Whitson tethering herself to the robotic arm and the node masquerading as an atmospheric reader. Bringing to mind a briefcase handcuffed to the wrist of a spy.

  −1:22:01:1

  Some 135 kilograms (298 pounds) of insanely sensitive payload must remain tethered to her at all times until she successfully installs the machine on the research platform. There can be no exceptions, including a loss of signal, in which event she’s been briefed to pull a red tab and activate a beacon on her payload.

  This will power up the quantum node, which has been in sleep mode on a backup battery supply since it was packed into the cargo bay at Cape Canaveral some two weeks ago. Up and running like a handheld radio in space, albeit an awkward one, and communication with the ground can be reestablished. Mission accomplished, disaster diverted. America’s first quantum machine is installed in outer space. Even if almost nobody knows.

  −1:21:52:2 . . . Gun belt going on . . .

  What the plan doesn’t take into account is that less than 1 percent statistical possibility of a catastrophic failure, with both the device and astronaut as casualties.

  As usual I’m a worrier, always looking for the devil in the details. And there sure enough is one during a robotically assisted spacewalk while moving a secret payload from the launch pallet to the experimental platform at the end of the 100-yard truss.

  I wouldn’t want anything to happen during that approximate 30-minute continuous ride to and from the installation. That’s when the less than 1 percent possibility factors in, especially when the arm is the greatest distance from the structure, 17 meters, or 56 feet.

  That’s an unmanageable reach when anchored by nothing more than a wire tether never designed for rappelling and sling loading people around.

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  TETHERS are for short-distance mishaps, such as losing one’s purchase on the handrails or taking a tumble off the Station. The wires come in 75-foot reels that can be clipped together, and aren’t intended as a plan B should you get stranded. For that you might want to consider your Simplified Aid For EVA Rescue (SAFER) “jet pack.”

  −1:21:31:0 . . . Putting on a level III ballistic vest . . .

  Problem is that might have saved you during virtual reality training at Johnson Space Center, but in the vacuum of weightless space the cold fact is there are only 30 seconds of the gaseous nitrogen propellant, which can’t be resorted to without ditching payload. That would be pretty depressing after all is said and done.

  Even in a typical mishap involving a reasonable distance, the SAFER is an unknown gamble. It might get you back to the nearest airlock. Assuming you manage the hand-control toggle switch exactly right. And line yourself up exactly right to hit your target while you and the Station are moving at Mach 23. One shot is about all you’ve got, and we can’t be sure how it would go.

  −1:21:00:0 . . . Finding a tactical jacket, gloves . . .

  Fortunately and knock on wood, so far no astronaut has become untethered during a spacewalk, and I can’t think of anything much worse. You’d be better off falling from a trapeze or high wire without a net. The latter you might survive badly, and hopefully there would be people around to help out and keep you company. But whether you live to tell the tale or not, most likely you wouldn’t have the horror of knowing it was coming.

  Not for long, maybe just a few seconds when you lost your footing or grip before a gasping audience under the circus tent.

  But to be disconnected in outer space with no means of rescue would be an unimaginable fate. Floating and tumbling helplessly in nothingness, unable to stabilize or propel yourself in a vacuum with only enough oxygen in your Extravehicular Mobility Unit (spacesuit) to last at most 8 hours.

  −1:19:41:1 . . . Walking out of the bedroom . . .

  There’s no Space Shuttle to send your way. It doesn’t fly anymore. Nor will you be talking to anyone.

  Ultrahigh frequency radios on and around the Space Station you just drifted away from are line of sight. You might be talking inside your helmet, but like the tree falling in the forest with no one around, you don’t make a sound to anyone beyond yourself. Existentially alone with your thoughts, carbon dioxide making you increasingly sluggish.

  Looking down on the blue-and-white planet that you now orbit, hurling around it faster than a missile while slowly poisoned by your own exhalations. Your body won’t be recovered. Leaving it to orbit until it finally burns up in the atmosphere. Like Icarus getting too close to the sun. Like space debris. Or a dead satellite.

  −1:19:33:0 . . . Gun drawn . . .

  Watching the seconds tick past, wondering why I haven’t heard from anyone about the Fort Monroe case. As important as rocket launches and spacewalks are, we also have a murdered Pandora employee who needs our attention, and I send Fran a text:
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  Heading to LaRC soon. Any new developments re: VY?

  She’ll know I’m referring to Vera Young. Was she autopsied tonight, or will that wait until morning? Do we know anything else? For example, and most importantly, what turned up on CT or MRI? Or has the body been scanned yet? Walking to the door that leads into my work area, gun ready just in case. But I know I couldn’t shoot my sister, and if she’s in the immediate vicinity, including on this property, then there’s nothing I can do except make sure she’s physically not in my presence that I know of.

  And she isn’t. Not directly, not in person, at any rate. The PONG she’s commandeered is overhead, following me like my new best friend as I open the door, scanning my equipment, desk, the pine tree near the bathroom. Nothing out of place, and waking up a laptop display, I take a look at what a signal sniffer might have to say about my roly-poly friend spinning over my left shoulder.

  “Well whad’ya know?” I announce, “Something chiming in around 2.4 gigahertz, imagine that.”

  I hold up the antenna and begin my strange little war dance, slowly turning in a circle. The peaks get stronger each time the drone is prompted to follow me, always some 45 centimeters (18 inches) away from my head. Both of us slowly spinning.

  “Consistent with video transmission. An easy signal to hide behind when you’re not the only video camera in town,” I inform the orb pointedly, and it has no comment.

  For all I know, Carme could be controlling the PONG from hundreds of yards away or even miles from here while the camera and other built-in sensors and devices download buckets of data to her even as I’m thinking this. In other words, my sister could control the drone from a car, from outside the barn, a hotel room, almost anywhere within the PONG’s 9,000-meter range, about 6 miles if nothing interrupts the signal. But that doesn’t mean she’s not under this same roof, and if she is, good for her.