Pluto's Ghost- Encounter Edition

by B. C. CHASE

  “I’m going to make myself at home in the shuttle,” he says.

  “Is that safe?” I ask.

  “Actually,” he says, “it’s probably much safer than in here. And I’ll have windows.”

  I glance with displeasure at the nadir portal in the American Lab. It far from our seats and small.

  Looking up at us and nodding, Commander Sykes says, “When I see all of you again, it will be on the other side of Saturn. Godspeed.”

  “Wait!” I say, unbuckling my seatbelt. “I want a window seat! Mind if I join you?”

  “The seats in the shuttle are really uncomfortable. None of the launch padding is on them. Is that okay with you?”

  “We’ll be past this planet in twenty-six minutes, right? I’ll survive.”

  “Okay, then. Let’s go.”

  As I float after him through the hatch into the shuttle, I say, “Will the stewardess be handing out drinks and peanuts or did budget cuts ruin that for us?’

  “Budget cuts,” Commander Sykes says.

  “Infight magazine?”

  “I’ll give you one of Josh’s procedure manuals if you want.”

  “No thanks.”

  We pass through the hatch down into an airlock on the shuttle. From there we enter the middeck, a room-sized space with a gray floor and locker doors lining the walls. It’s kind of stuffy and dark. I’m not a space enthusiast, but even I can’t help but feel a thrill at floating inside the shuttle Atlantis. As aged as the surfaces are, the long and storied history of the room is evident—almost palpable. In my mind’s eye I can see the astronauts huddled together in here sharing food and laughs or helping one another gear up for space walks in the days before the space station existed.

  Plastered on every surface are blue Velcro strips with tools and bags stuck to them. The locker doors appear like they’ve suffered some abuse. I point to them, chuckling, “Atlantis looks like she’s seen better days.”

  “That’s from the tape. I can’t tell you how many rolls of duct tape we used over the years just to stow stuff. Even with all the compartments and the Velcro, we never had enough places to stash all our crap.”

  Commander Sykes leads me up through an opening in the ceiling into the cockpit. The countless number of switches surrounding us on all sides is mind-boggling. With all the automation of today’s spacecraft, it’s hard to imagine that veterans like Commander Sykes really know what to do with all those buttons and had to use them during their shuttle careers.

  The windows, though, are what I came for and they don’t disappoint. The nose of the shuttle is pointed straight at Saturn’s sun-facing side. I can discern the details of the orange and beige clouds on the surface, gleaming in the atmosphere.

  There are two seats in the very front and Commander Sykes indicates to the one on the right. I take my place and buckle up. Calling it a seat would be very generous. It’s made of two flat, metal frames with rivets all along the outside. The only good thing I can say about it is that it’s blue and kind of futuristic-looking. I’ve got a joystick nestled between my legs that I would really like to get my hands on to play with. “Any chance I’ll get to use this?”

  “Don’t touch that,” Commander Sykes warns in response.

  “Yes, sir,” I say. “Does it work?”

  “No. Flight systems are powered down. But, actually, let’s get some lights on in here and some air running or we might pass out. You can switch on the APU.”

  Auxiliary power unit, I think. Now that’s something I’m familiar with. “Sure thing. How do I do that?”

  “See the panel to your right?” he says.

  “This one?” I say, pointing to a panel that is level with my seat and which I can easily reach with my right hand.

  He says, “Yes. In the area in the center it should be labeled ‘APU.’ Flip the red covers off those switches.”

  I am exhilarated at the chance to operate some actual space shuttle equipment as I follow his instructions. Before long, I hear an electric hum. Lights come on in the ceiling and the panels.

  That accomplished, my attention is once again drawn by the spectacular view outside the windows. We are traveling so quickly, it’s hard to believe that our rockets are not even firing yet. The shards of ice that make up the rings are speeding by below us at frightening speed. And our trajectory is bringing us lower and closer to them.

  “Look at that,” Commander Sykes says, pointing straight out the windshields. See that crescent near the edge? Just above the rings?”

  I try to look where he’s pointing. Saturn’s outer atmosphere is blue, a gradually diminishing haze rimming the planet. I spot a small half-sphere just above the rings where they circle around on the other side. “I see it,” I say.

  “That’s Enceladus, the moon. It has liquid water under a sheet of ice.”

  “Water? You mean CO2 water?”

  “H20 water, yes.”

  “That’s incredible.”

  “Yes. They always wanted to search there for life.”

  “So much for that. Life found us first.”

  “You know,” he says thoughtfully, “had they not contacted us, it probably would have been tens of thousands of years before mankind ever got around to coming this far. It just goes to show what you can do when you have to.”

  “And what limitless money can buy,” I agree. Then I ask, “What made you want to do it? You know, risk your life and become an astronaut?”

  “Once I learned about what it takes to become an astronaut, I felt like it’s what I was made to do.”

  “I wouldn’t disagree with that,” I say. “You do seem like you were born for this.”

  He gives me one of his half smiles. Then he asks, “What made you decide to drive trucks?”

  “It paid the bills,” I say. “But, really, it was after Betsy was... She had bullies and stuff, at school. Abuse,” I pause, tightening my lip. I can’t speak.

  “Oh,” Commander Sykes says. “I’m sorry.”

  “That was the final straw. I just packed our little life up and never looked back. Kept her safe.”

  “She came with you on the road?”

  “Oh yes. Until she grew up and learned to drive herself and then she wanted her independence, of course.”

  “And you did her school yourself?”

  “Yeah. I’d read all night and lecture her as best I could while I was driving and when I wasn’t driving we’d do the homework. We had some good times, Betsy and I.”

  “I guess that’s what you were born to do.”

  I smile, “Yeah. I guess it was.”

  “I bet you did it better than anyone else could have.”

  “I sure hope so,” I say.

  “Better hold on. The burn is about to start.”

  There is a rumble. Instead of being pushed back into my seat, I am pulled up toward the windshields, dangling from my seatbelt and fighting to keep my legs from tucking into the fetal position. “This seat’s in the wrong dang place!” I labor to shout. I feel like I’m launching on the fastest and most intense roller coaster conceivable. My blood rushes to my head.

  Commander Sykes is amused by my reaction, but even he strains to speak as he shouts, “That’s why I said ‘hold on!’”

  Enceladus slips behind Saturn’s blue outer atmosphere as we speed our way towards the gap between the rings and the planet’s surface. Coming into view ahead along Saturn’s distant circumference are the rays of the sunrise filtering through the clouds. We are racing just over the tops of the rings, gradually lowering. We’re so close to the rings that it is starting to get scary. The gap is directly ahead. I only wonder if we won’t skim the rings like a rock on water before we make it.

  “This is too close!” Commander Sykes shouts. “Our approach must be off!”

  There is a sharp pock sound followed quickly by another.

  “Way too close!” he intones.

  A tiny chip appears in one of the windshields.

  “Tim! We’re to
o close to the rings! We’re taking hits!”

  The g-force is painfully wedging me up against the shoulder straps of my seatbelt. My head is starting to feel like it might explode. Commander Sykes’ face is redder than an apple and his skin is scrunching up from the forces he is enduring. I’m sure Tim and the others are experiencing the same things back in Node 2. How he could possibly crawl down to reach the computers I have no idea.

  Tim says something over the speakers, but Commander Sykes doesn’t seem to be listening. He is staring out the windshields.

  Protruding above the edge of the rings is a massive chunk of ice the size of a building. It’s like a gigantic space iceberg. The station’s widest point is facing the rings, and, with our current trajectory, it will surely hit.

  “Tim!” shouts Commander Sykes. “We need to roll 90 degrees! X axis! 120 seconds!”

  “I can’t get down that fast!”

  Commander Sykes shouts, “Copy! I’ll try the orbiter’s RCS!” Then he fights against the acceleration to flip switches in the ceiling and down on the center console. He shouts, “Jim! Up there in the corner of the ceiling where it says ‘FWD RCS,’ I need you to flip those red covers open. Switch ‘HE PRESS’ to open for both.”

  I look up and struggle to make sense of his commands. I see the label FWD RCS and under that a couple rows of red covers. I pop them open to reveal the switches. I flip the two on top that are labeled He PRESS up to OPEN.

  “Good!” Commander Sykes praises. “Now where it says ‘tank isolation,’ flip that to ‘open,’ too.

  I comply. “Done,” I shout.

  “Okay, final step. Where it says ‘manifold isolation,’ switch those to open also.”

  I follow his instructions. “Check!” I shout.

  “Now close the covers!” he commands. Then he shouts, “Tim, the orbiter’s aligned with the Z axis, right?”

  Tim replies, “Yes!”

  “So I need to use the yaw?”

  “Correct!”

  He twists dials on the lower edge of two monitors. He strains to grasp a small, flat, square knob in the left corner of the flight deck. He nudges it. I hear a brief, faint sound like a small jet firing. He nudges it again. The sound repeats. Out the front windows, the horizon starts to rotate ever so slightly. It isn’t enough. We won’t make it. The shuttle is being barraged by pieces of ice, the loud sounds of their strikes making me wonder if our spaceship isn’t falling apart.

  Commander Sykes pushes the knob all the way. The rotation increases. We have seconds to spare before we’ll hit the chunk of ice, but we’ve only turned forty-five degrees. Commander Sykes bellows like an Olympic weight lifter as he fights to keep his hand on the knob. The rate of rotation is increasing exponentially—but so is our speed. The shuttle shudders.

  Just as we reach the edge of the rings and the huge ice-rock, we clock to ninety degrees. Out the windshields, I see the shuttle’s nose pass within inches of the ice.

  “Eric!” shouts Shelby, “Josh just passed out!”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me!”

  “He did!”

  “Is he okay?”

  “He’ll be fine!”

  We have cleared the rings and are soaring in the space between them and Saturn’s surface. The station is still spinning from inertia and Commander Sykes pushes the knob the opposite direction. Our rate of spin begins to slow until it stops, but the horizon is still shifting.

  “I was afraid of this!” shouts Commander Sykes. He continues to make adjustments with the knob, but he is unable to stop the movement. We are starting to swing around in an arc. The whole station is in a slow wobble. With the gigantic engines firing in the back, the wobble is quickly growing increasingly eccentric. If it doesn’t stop, we’ll be tumbling wildly out of control and probably into Saturn’s atmosphere.

  “Tim! Spiral divergence! Can you shut down the engines?”

  “I’ll try!”

  Katia’s voice comes over the speakers, “Tim! Be careful!”

  Commander Sykes continues to use the controls to try to stop the wobble. I can tell by the frustration on his face that he doesn’t think he’s having any success. Sweat droplets are streaking off his face.

  Suddenly Katia screams.

  Forty

  “What’s happening?” Commander Sykes demands.

  “Timmy!” Katia shrieks. “Timmy!”

  Tim groans in apparent agony.

  “Tim can you hear me?” Commander Sykes shouts.

  Katia is sobbing, “He’s bleeding!”

  Shelby shouts, “Tim! I’m coming down! Can you hear us?”

  “I can’t move,” Tim replies, his voice strained.

  Shelby asks, “How much pain?”

  “Too much!” Tim shouts.

  “Do you have feeling in your legs?”

  “No,” says Tim. “No, I don’t!”

  “I’m coming down to stop the bleeding!”

  “Stay there, Shelby!” shouts Tim. “You’ll fall too.”

  “Shelby,” shouts Commander Sykes, “I need you to shut down the engines!”

  “Tim’s bleeding out!” Shelby shouts.

  “Shiro!”

  “Yes!” Shiro replies.

  “Shut down the engines!”

  “Yes!”

  “I’m coming to help you!” shouts Commander Sykes.

  “But you’re too far!”

  “One of us has to make it!” Commander Sykes releases his seat belts and braces himself as well as he can as he hits the ceiling, which is lined with switches. How he can even consider maneuvering around with these g forces is inconceivable to me. I suppose it comes down to the fact that if he doesn’t stop the engines we will plunge into Saturn and break up in the atmosphere. As its speed increases, the gyrating motion of the station is starting to make me sick. I am suddenly reminded of what NASA told us about Columbia’s final moments.

  The Orbiter Columbia is tumbling end over end. Alarms are blaring. The lights are out. The crew is frantically making adjustments, trying to right the ship.

  Commander Sykes is using all his might to crawl along the ceiling. He reaches the back of the flight deck and crosses the windows on his way down to the floor. With the wild motion of the spaceship, he is pulled back and forth with each rotation. There are no handlebars in here for him to hold onto and he struggles to keep his position. His legs slip out from under him and he flies to the right, striking his head on the wall and wedging in the corner. I am hurled back and forth at the limit of my restraints. I grip the bottom of my seat.

  The air is sucked out of the cabin as it is torn from the rest of the shuttle, metal crumpling like foil. The cabin spins and tumbles wildly, jerking the crew so powerfully that their shoulder straps fail to lock and their torsos are hurled back and forth, restrained only by the belts at their waists.

  “I CAN’T MAKE IT!” Shiro shouts.

  Someone is screaming so loudly that it echoes up from Node 2 into the flight deck.

  Commander Sykes is bleeding. He meets my eyes, gritting his teeth as he braces himself in the corner.

  Blackness is closing in around my vision, but I can see Saturn’s atmosphere is spinning in and out of view in the front and back windows faster and faster, closer and closer. The planet’s light casts revolving shadows over the cabin’s instruments.

  The wind screams as fissures open across the walls of Columbia’s cabin, the metal flaking away. The fire roars in and, as it breaks apart, shards of the cabin tear limb from limb.

  The feeling that I’m about to die washes over my being like a tidal wave. I have never been afraid of death. But now death is coming for me unexpectedly, quickly, and inevitably. It isn’t sparing me a mere instant with which to oppose it, to reason with it, to try to reconcile myself to it, or to wish that it would go away. It’s here, and I’m terrified of it. I take in my last fleeting view of Saturn, the rings, and the stars. My vision fades to black and white. All sound echoes distantly. The last thing I hear
mercifully distracts me from my terror: someone is playing the piano. What the heck? I think. Who’s torturing me with this gosh-awful classical music as their final act? Must be Commander what’s-his-name. I didn’t even realize we had a piano on board… I’m passing out and my thinking is fuzzy.

  But then I feel the blood returning to my head. The blackness recedes, and my vision begins to crystalize. I can hear it as clear as a bell: Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata is playing over the speakers. What’s more, the wild spin of the station is diminishing.

  Commander Sykes hears it too. His face looks like a clock that doesn’t know what time it is.

  We’re not rotating anymore. Outside the shuttle’s windshields Saturn’s surface moves by linearly. The rumble of the engines ceases and the g-force stops jerking me against my seat restraints. The spin is entirely under control and it seems for all intents and purposes that we are moving along just as we should be. Having thought my life was over mere seconds ago, I am now struck dumb. I have no way to react to this because I have no idea what to think about it. I’m not even grateful I’m still alive because I’m so flabbergasted. For an instant, I wonder if I’ve actually died and gone to space heaven.

  But, no. I’m not dead. I don’t know what to think except that I know Commander Sykes is not responsible for the correction and I’m pretty darn sure none of our other crew were able to fix it.

  “Commander Sykes?” comes Shelby’s voice over the speakers.

  “Yes, Shelby,” replies Commander Sykes.

  “Did you correct the spinning?” she asks, her voice betraying the fact that she knows this is impossible.

  “No,” he says. “No, I didn’t. How is everyone over there?”

  “We’re wondering what the heck happened.”

  “Same here,” says Commander Sykes, meeting my eyes and wiping the blood from his head. “Same here,” he repeats. “How is Tim?”

  “I’m here,” says Tim, still straining to speak.

  “He’s hanging in there,” says Shelby. “The bleeding stopped.”

  Suddenly a blaring alarm echoes up from the station into the shuttle.

  Shiro shouts, “We have depressurization! COF, CUP, JEM-PM, JEM-ELM-PM!”