by B. C. CHASE
Put that one down in the list of famous sayings to give Armstrong a run for his money.
The manual leaves me little more equipped to clean and sanitize the station than I was before I read it. So I think I’ll ask the person who lived here for a year already and did a lot of cleaning and sanitizing in that time, Commander Sykes. He even spent some time entirely alone on the station, so if anyone knows as much as there is to know about how to run it, fix it, and sanitize it, that would be Commander Sykes.
I wander around the station for a few minutes on the prowl for him until I hear his and Commander Tomlinson’s subdued voices coming from the Japanese lab. They sound like they’re having an argument, but they don’t want anybody to hear them.
Commander Tomlinson says, “But he isn’t worthy of that trust.”
Calmly, Commander Sykes says, “I’ve been on five missions with him. I trust him.”
“He lied to us, to all of us. A bald-faced lie without even a twinge of guilt. I think that speaks to a different kind of personality, don’t you? Someone who can lie so easily like that… It’s scary.”
“He made a mistake. If you hadn’t berated him publicly, he probably wouldn’t have lied.”
“Oh, so what he did is my fault? You’re very talented at scrambling up the truth, Eric.”
“I didn’t say that what he did was your fault. I said he probably wouldn’t have lied if the conversation had been held in private using different language.”
“But what about the SAFER? It wasn’t functional, yet he claims that he tested it.”
“The checkout doesn’t prove anything. The computer is programmed to fire twenty-four bursts of nitrogen, and then the readout gives the percentages. That doesn’t mean the unit was 100% functional.”
“The Lockheed Martin engineers created and programmed that test. Are you saying they would create something bogus that doesn’t actually do anything to keep us safe?”
“I’m saying that a checkout with no fault is not a fail-safe against any kind of problem.”
“Well, I’m saying that we don’t know if he even completed the checkout, and given the fact he lied about the Cue Card, chances are he lied about the whole thing, too. A person who tells a single lie is a liar and cannot be trusted. I think you’re showing a serious lack of discernment here. Kurt cannot be relied upon to follow procedures, and he cannot be trusted to tell the truth. He needs to be monitored closely. We need to put a SPHERES on him.”
“No. I won’t do that, and you shouldn’t either.”
“Fine, but when he screws up next time, I won’t ask for your opinion. I’ll do what needs to be done.”
Commander Tomlinson suddenly floats into Node 2 from the Japanese Module and spots me. He smiles darkly, “Hello, Old-Timer. Eavesdropping again?”
“I had a question for Commander Sykes.”
“What’s the question?”
“I wanted him to show me how to do a thing or two from the cleaning manual.”
Commander Tomlinson nods. “And you’re asking him instead of me because he has more experience on the station?”
“Yes,” I confirm.
“Sounds logical. But nobody knows procedures better than I do.”
“I can’t disagree with that,” I say. And I mean it, though I don’t intend it to be a compliment. He has made it blatantly obvious that no one knows, values, or knocks people upside their heads with procedures better than he does.
“Go ahead and ask him. But after this, please get some sleep.”
“It’s only nine o’clock.”
“Yes, and we need to transition to the standard flight plan.”
“Standard flight plan?”
“Yes, according to NASA’s schedule, we should be up at 6 o’clock.”
“That’s great by me. But who’s to say what time six o’clock is out here?”
“We’re moving to Greenwich Mean Time. It’s protocol. We need to follow protocol. That means right now it’s actually one o’clock in the morning. I’d get to bed as soon as possible, if I were you, because in five hours we’ll need to be up.”
“Wow,” I facetiously remark, “Didn’t realize time was so much faster in space than it is on Earth.”
With a roll of his eyes, he goes on his way, and I enter the Japanese Module to find Commander Sykes floating there with his arms tightly folded across his chest in his usual way. He looks like he’s deep in thought.
I say, “Commander Sykes?”
He looks up, “Hello, Jim. What’s up?”
“I read this manual, but I wondered if you might be able to show me how to do some of the stuff in here. It’s a little over my head, I’m afraid.”
“Sure, no problem. When I was in the station for the year-long mission, I had to do all the procedures in there—at one time all by myself. We can get started tomorrow. Tomlinson wants us to move to GMT time so we need to get to bed ASAP.”
“Yes, he told me. Apparently, we’re going to lose three hours of sleep.”
“Yes, we are. And I have to do a spacewalk tomorrow.”
“You? For what?”
“The antenna array isn’t working. I’m going to go out there to see what I can do.”
I frown. “But aren’t you a little worried? I mean we’ve lost three people on spacewalks. It doesn’t seem safe.”
“Yes, I am worried. That’s why I’m doing it myself.”
“Be careful. We need you.”
He smiles. “You don’t have to worry about me. I’ll be just fine.”
We float back to the Habitation Module together. By the time we reach it, Commander Tomlinson has ordered the computer to shut off all the interior lights, and we are bathed in surreal, flickering green light from the equipment. Saying a quick goodnight to Commander Sykes, I enter my hatch. I’ve only been there a minute or two, taking a quick peek out the window and opening up my sleeping bag, before there is a faint knock on my door. I open it to see Katia there, holding a tablet in her hand.
“May I come in?” she whispers.
I nod and open the hatch wider for her to pass through. Once she’s inside, she closes the hatch herself and faces me. “There’s something wrong, Jimmy.”
“What is it?”
“Viktor should not have died.”
“How do you mean?”
She shows me the screen:
P(A ∩ B ∩ C) = 1.45e-38
I look at her blankly. She has a Ph.D. in mathematics. I don’t even have a college degree.
She explains, “We experienced three failures during the same EVA that caused Viktor’s death. First, the robotic arm went haywire. Then, his tethers broke free. Finally, his SAFER failed to operate. The statistical probability of all those failures happening at the same time is one chance in 145 undecillion.”
“Undecillion?”
“Yes, this number,” she taps on her screen.
145,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
”Wow,” I say. “That’s a big number.”
“Yes. It is many more stars than are in the whole universe. This should not have happened. Viktor should not be dead. This means it couldn’t have been my fault. I didn’t kill him.” She starts to cry.
“Of course you didn’t kill him,” I encourage. “It was an accident.”
She wipes her eyes, “It was no accident. The chance for at least one of those things to happen is one third of a percent. But the chance for all three to happen at the same time? Impossible. It was intentional. Someone wanted this to happen. Someone killed him.”
“If that’s true, then we should be able to prove it. Is there any evidence we might be missing? They looked at the tethers and those were fine. We can’t look at the SAFER because it’s gone. Can we glean any information from the robotic arm, do you think?”
“It just seemed to go wild. A programming error. I don’t know how to diagnose it.”
“Who does?”
“Tim, maybe. He’s a programmer.”
“We should talk with him tomorrow.”
“No,” she objects. “We can’t talk to anyone yet. We can’t trust anyone else. We don’t know who did it.”
“I think we have a pretty good idea who did it,” I say. “Don’t you?”
“Who?”
“Commander Tomlinson.”
“Josh?” she seems aghast. “He wouldn’t do that. He is very sad about Viktor. And he defended me when Valentin accused me.”
“Katia, be careful. I don’t trust Commander Tomlinson.”
“He told me you don’t like him. He told me you were causing some trouble for him.”
“He told you that?” I say, feeling betrayed. “When?”
“Today, when I showed him the statistics.”
“Why did you show him that?”
“Maybe because he’s the one who asked me to run them. He thought the whole thing was strange, so he wanted me to check it out mathematically. He stopped short of accusing anyone, but he knows that something isn’t right. This is just between the three of us for now.”
“Maybe he asked you to run the numbers as a smoke screen. Of everyone on this ship, he is the most likely to have done something. He wants to continue the mission, apparently at all costs. Katia, you are hurting. Commander Tomlinson might seem comforting now, but be wary.”
“But don’t you want to continue the mission like he does? Isn’t that what we all want? Isn’t that what the world is counting on us to do?”
“I think we need to contact Houston and find out what the world wants us to do.”
“The antenna arrays are totally destroyed. That is impossible now. We can’t go back. We must continue. I want to continue the mission.”
“Commander Sykes says it would be a delay of 150 days if we went back. That’s not so bad. The mission could proceed at a later date.”
“If we do that, we might miss our chance. They gave us the exact date to meet them on Pluto. That is the only day they will be there.”
“Or so they say.”
“We have no choice but to trust them.”
“Trust is earned, Katia. Don’t give it away without very good reason. That goes for them, and it also goes for Tomlinson. Watch out for yourself.”
Twelve
The next morning, promptly at 5:45 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time, we are awakened to music blaring over the speakers. It is Turandot. Commander Tomlinson floats around and bangs on all our hatches, “Time to get up!”
Couldn’t he have played some good old rock and roll? I wonder with agitation.
Once we have all sleepily drifted out into the lounge, he hands out the day’s flight plan, the first page of which looks like this:
TIME
CREW
ACTIVITY
06:00-06:05
CDR
IVA - Reading
06:00-06:10
FE-1
Morning Inspection. Laptop RSS2 Reboot
06:00-06:10
FE-2
Morning Inspection. SM ПСС (Caution & Warning Panel) Test
06:00-06:05
FE-3
Reading REMINDER
06:00-06:10
FE-5
Morning Inspection
06:00-06:05
FE-6
Horticulture
06:05-06:10
CDR
REMINDER - Reading Reminder
06:05-06:20
FE-3
HRF - Sample Collection and Prep for Stowage
06:05-06:10
FE-6
Morning Inspection
06:10-06:20
CDR
Morning Inspection. Laptop RS1(2) Reboot
06:10-06:40
FE-1, FE-2, FE-5, FE-6
Post-sleep
06:20-06:45
CDR
Post-sleep
06:20-06:25
FE-3
HRF - MELFI Sample Insertion
06:25-06:35
FE-3
Morning Inspection
06:35-07:00
FE-3
Post-sleep
06:40-07:30
FE-1,FE-2, FE-6, FE-7
BREAKFAST
06:40-06:55
FE-5
BREAKFAST
06:45-07:30
CDR
BREAKFAST
06:55-07:05
FE-5
Closing USOS Window Shutters
07:00-07:30
FE-3
BREAKFAST
07:05-07:30
FE-5
BREAKFAST
07:30-07:45
FE-6
On MCC Go Regeneration of БМП Ф1 Micropurification Cartridge (start)
07:30-08:00
FE-1, FE-5
Work Prep
07:30-07:45
FE-2
On MCC Go БМП Ф1 Absorption Cartridge Regeneration (start) - Handover
Notes:
1. See OSTPV for references to US activities.
2. Pre-sleep ops: daily food prep, dinner, pre-sleep
4. No Т2 Exercise at 05:45 - 14:45
5. No VELO Exercise is allowed: 05:45 - 14:45
Commander Tomlinson says, “Of course we have a much bigger crew than NASA planned for, so I’m going to write up flight plans for the extra astronauts. Shouldn’t vary too much from what you see here. There are several activities in this plan for which communications with Earth would be a prerequisite. Because that is obviously not going to be possible, just plan on doing horticultural activities during those times. I’m going to make some other minor adjustments to the flight plan as time goes on and as I see fit to better manage the capabilities of the crew. You will notice that today not a lot of time was devoted to horticultural activities. That changes as the days go forward. By the end of the month, over fifty percent of our time will be absorbed by horticulture. It’s a good thing we have Sarah with us, actually.”
Commander Sykes says, “But I don’t see anything on here about my EVA. I told you I’d need to do an EVA today to try to fix the antenna array.”
“We need to stick to the flight plan that NASA gave us as much as possible. As you can see, the antenna array is beyond repair. I decided that altering the flight plan was not a good idea, on the merits.”
“We need to try.”
“I’ll see if I can slip it in next week, once we get into the swing of our routine. For now, you’re not leaving the station, Eric.”
∆v∆v∆v∆v∆
It is day three of our flight, and the Earth is now a blue dot, little distinguished from the millions of other dots all over the sky, though it is brighter. The moon is a speck of light so close to the Earth that I’m sure by tomorrow they will be one. This morning, the music blaring over the speakers was Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Apparently Commander Tomlinson has a fondness for classical music and he’s determined to make the rest of us like it.
We are on our way to Venus. There is no turning back, at least not until we get there.
Katia has been spending increasing amounts of time with Commander Tomlinson, much to my chagrin. He has not shown any sign that we have reason to distrust him and has actually been leading capably and as diplomatically, as would be expected, but I still wish Katia would steer clear. I notice that whenever there is a cooperative activity, he and she seem to be scheduled together. It makes me wonder how much meddling with the flight plan he has already done.
Commander Sykes has grown unusually quiet and withdrawn. I’m worried about him. He is eager to get his hands on the antenna array. I have to agree with Commander Tomlinson that little can be done to fix it, as mutilated as it was by the robotic arm, but I suppose we have to try. I just worry about Commander Sykes’ safety.
I want to talk with Tim about the robotic arm malfunction—to see if he can look at the code. But I’d like to know where he stands with Commander Tomlinson before I show him my deck. I also want to talk more with Commander Sykes, but the flight plan is making t
hat next to impossible. Every time I get a moment with him, Commander Tomlinson seems to be nearby.
When the flight plan allows, some of us have taken to eating together in the mess area of the Habitation Module. This evening I find myself with Katia, Tim, Nari, Shiro, Yury, and Commander Tomlinson.
“If we do continue the mission, we’re going to be the first humans to reach another planet,” says Tim. He is munching on a freeze-dried steak.
“Not a planet,” corrects Commander Tomlinson. “Pluto isn’t a planet anymore.”
“True.”
“Why is that?” I ask. “Why did they decide Pluto isn’t a planet?”
“We can thank Martin Babcock for that,” Tim explains. “It became an obsession of his to discover the tenth planet, and he spent most of his life trying to do it. In 2005, he discovered a trans-Neptunian object that was much larger than Pluto. He named it Eris. Pluto, as it turns out, is one of many, many distant bodies orbiting the sun—probably hundreds or thousands—and it isn’t even a very big one, at that. If Pluto is a planet, then the list of planets in the solar system is growing much longer than any schoolchildren could possibly learn. There’s nothing special about Pluto. In the realm of the solar system, Pluto’s a nobody.”
I ask, “So they decided Pluto wasn’t a planet just because there were so many planets?”
Shiro explains, “What a planet is had never been defined by the International Astronomical Union, the group that approves the names of new space objects. Martin Babcock argued that a planet should not be an emotively-driven concept, which, at this point, he said it had become, since science had failed to establish universal guidelines. So the International Astronomical Union concluded that to be considered a planet, a body must meet three criteria: one, the object must orbit a star; two, the object must be round because it is so big that its gravity makes it round; three, the object must be big enough that it has cleared the field of its orbit, meaning its gravity has been sufficient to pull in or send out any other objects of similar size. Pluto, being an insignificant, small body out of possibly countless other Kuiper belt objects, does not meet the last criterion.”
