Capture.
“Sweet.”
“Certainly is.”
Hedy sounds relieved.
I was quite relaxed through the whole process. An array of metrics begins coming up on the screens in front of us. Although these will be relayed to Houston, Hedy reads off the salient points in case data transmission is patchy. Audio is simple. Nice big coarse radio waves sailing through space. Very little that can be lost. There’s nothing subtle about the bandwidth taken up by words, even less so when it comes to images, whereas a few digits can get lost.
“Seal is good. Eight clamps locked. Umbilical is in place and supplying power at a steady 12 V. We have atmospheric exchange and coolant passing between the two vessels. Redstone has docked with the Schiaparelli.”
There’s no reply, and there won’t be. We’re rostered for a rest period so no one will break that unless absolutely necessary. Sleep deprivation is a killer. Clocking up twenty-four hours without sleep is the equivalent of drinking a six pack of beer in terms of judgement, coordination and reaction times. NASA doesn’t mess around when it comes to fatigue management. Although it’s daylight outside, that’s an illusion, one perpetuated by our orbit passing every hour or so, throwing our body clocks out of whack. It’s at least 3 am back at Shepard. Anyone awake down there will see our metrics streaming in but they’ll remain silent as well. Rather than being a luxury, sleep is critical to functioning effectively. Like Neil and Buzz at Tranquility Base, it’s time to rest.
Hedy is already shutting everything down and dimming the lights.
“This is Redstone signing off. Setting the alarm for capture plus eight hours.”
We float free from our restraints for the first time. I don’t know about Hedy, but my bladder’s on the point of bursting. We’re both wearing adult diapers. There’s no shame in using them, but I’d rather not have to towel myself down before turning in for the night so I’ve held on a little longer than I should have.
“Can you give me a hand with this locking ring?”
Hedy is kind. Living together, we’ve learned each others tells, and she’s reading my physical anxiety. She’s already removed her gloves and helmet but is in no rush to take her suit off. There’s an etiquette to living together inside a tiny tin can, and it comes down to being able to read each other’s physical limits. I slide out of the upper torso of my spacesuit then roll forward out of the trousers. If there’s one advantage to living in space, it’s being able to float freely and undertake actions impossible on Earth. Space is like swimming in air. Having stripped down to my undergarments, I ask, “Do you want a hand with your suit?”
“I’m fine.” She’s loosened the ring around her waist but she’s taking her time. It’s a subtle way of saying, You can use the bathroom first. Before I can, however, there’s one more thing to do. Housekeeping. With a full bladder, I stuff my gloves inside the upper torso of my suit, loosely clipping the upper section to the legs and boots, and stretch a cloth over the helmet visor to protect the glass from scratching. With my astronomical scarecrow complete and sitting in my cockpit seat, I’m free.
There’s no modesty, no shame, no awkwardness between Hedy and me. I dart to the broad base of the capsule and fold down the toilet seat. Larger spacecraft, like the Shuttle of old, had privacy shields. The Redstone is based on the Orion floor plan. When it comes to interplanetary travel, space is a premium so privacy is an myth. The bathroom is discretely located beside a storage locker but isn’t out of sight. There’s an exhaust fan to spare the regular crew of six from body odors, but the nose acclimatizes rather fast to pervasive smells. Any lingering scents become the new baseline norm.
I relieve myself. Oh, hot damn, that feels good. Oh, so good.
Hedy ignores me back here, readying a sleeping bag. Rather than hanging from the ceiling, our sleeping bags have cords to prevent us from bumping into equipment or slowly bouncing off the walls and are strung up like hammocks.
“Tired?”
“Yeah.”
It’s funny, we’re talking about everything other than what’s happening. We’ve abandoned our wives. We’re orbiting Mars. We’re preparing to engage in what is the most audacious rescue ever undertaken in the history of Homo sapiens, but there are physical constraints. Even Superman gets shuteye, I guess. And it’s not just physical rest we need. Mentally, we’re both still processing what’s happening and all that’s yet to come. Heavy loads take their toll. Disconnecting is important, an opportunity to recharge our emotional batteries along with our bodies.
Hedy drifts past me, saying, “Tomorrow’s going to be a long day.”
“Yes, it is.”
I unfold my hammock, stringing it up as she uses the bathroom. I position myself strategically, keeping my back to her so she has at least the illusion of privacy.
Sleeping in space is like floating on air. Well, actually, it is floating on air. Sleep has never been a problem for me on any mission. It’s waking that’s tough. Not that it’s difficult to wake. On the contrary, waking up in space is akin to being struck by lightning. There’s no electric shock, as such, rather the shock of suddenly being aware of falling. Most people have had at least one dream along those lines—where they dream they’re falling off a cliff, only they wake with a jolt just before they hit the ground. Well, in space, waking is that dream magnified by a factor of a thousand. In space, there’s no bottom of the cliff, so it can be extremely disconcerting for that fraction of a second between being in a dreamlike state and the moment when consciousness kicks in.
I slide down into my sleeping bag. Rather than wrapping around me, it floats loosely beside me, barely touching my skin. I should switch out of my long johns, but clothes don’t get sweaty in space. They tend to bounce around the body rather than hang off the shoulders and hips, so they stay fresh longer—at least, that’s what I tell myself. I’ve still got my snoopy cap on. I shouldn’t be so lazy, but already my mind’s shutting down. The care factor is gone. No harm, no foul.
I secure a Velcro strap around my waist and cross my arms over my chest. Everyone has their own little ritual for sleeping in space. Some people like their hands tucked by their sides, others let them drift, which can be a little strange to look at as their arms float up in front of them, making them look like space zombies. Me, I prefer folded arms beneath my sleeping bag. Hedy shuffles around quietly behind me. Cabinets click softly. The toilet flushes. Fans circulate air, adding white noise to the cabin. This is home, sweet home for the next seven months.
“Night.”
Phobos
“Good morning, Redstone.”
That’s Jen. My heart skips and suddenly I’m wide awake.
The guys back at Shepard have probably cut a few corners on their rest period, wanting to get ahead of things for us, but the clock on our console reads 7:59:27, putting them right on time.
I drag myself out of my hammock, reaching over to activate the VOX command which will allow me to broadcast through the microphone built into my snoopy cap.
“Hey, good morning.”
I deactivate the alarm, bringing up the lights within the cabin and raising the LCD shutters. We’re somewhere over the daylight side of Mars, moving into night. A dark crescent curls around the massive planet, slowly hiding it from view. Below us, the last rays of sunlight catch the tips of mountains and craters, sand dunes and hills, casting long shadows over the red desert.
“How are you doing up there?”
“We’re good. Rested. Ready to go.”
Hedy drifts up beside me. She’s been awake for a while but let me sleep. Her hair is neatly pulled back in a ponytail and she’s wearing a fresh change of clothes. My scalp is itchy from the snoopy cap, while the strap is aggravating the stubble on my chin. I should run a razor with a suction unit attached over my face to clean up, but I’ll wait a few days until it’s really bugging me. Loosening the strap and having a good scratch will do for now.
Lisa comes on the radio. “Based on your orb
ital profile, Houston has sent through a plan for a phasing orbital maneuver to change your inclination to match the equatorial plane. Once you’re stable there, you’ll undertake a Hohmann transfer to bring you up to 6,000 kilometers, and from there, you’ll be able to close in on Phobos. I’m uploading the flight plan now.”
“Copy that.” Hedy isn’t showing any emotion. “What’s the window?”
“You’ve got a window every eight hours. Next one comes up in twenty minutes, but Houston is okay with a delay.”
“No. No. No. We’re up here to conduct a rescue. There’s no reason to delay.” Hedy looks at me. I nod in agreement. We’re not here for sightseeing. There’s no point in losing eight hours.
Something’s wrong. There’s something they’re not telling us. I’m not sure how I can tell, perhaps it’s their reluctance in pushing ahead.
I say, “Ah, Redstone. Do we have any more information on the target?”
Scott replies, “The Huŏxīng Wu is stable, still providing telemetry.”
“But?”
“Houston is forwarding metrics to us. We’re seeing two heart beats but they’re irregular, suffering from some kind of arrhythmia.”
Hedy asks, “Can you forward through a sample?”
I get the feeling there was some debate about telling us this. I suspect Jen pushed for disclosure, as she’d understand the implications better than anyone else.
Scott replies, “Signal’s fading. We’re losing you but will pick you up again on your next orbit, after your burn.”
An image appears on the screen, it’s a regular bumpy line, only its motion is unlike any heartbeat I’ve ever seen. Normally, there’s a squiggly blip tracking the contraction of various chambers within the heart. The ventricles do most of the work. The classic ‘lub DUB’ motion comes in two phases, from valves opening and closing to push blood out of the heart in the ‘lub,’ to the spiking ‘DUB’ when valves shift to allow the heart to refill with more blood. Then there are a few trailing bumps as the ventricles and atriums relax for a fraction of a second before the next heartbeat arrives. The image before us, though, has none of that. It looks more mechanical than biological. It’s the output of a heart monitor, that much is clear, even with Chinese characters overlaid on the image, but instead of messy beats delivered like a signature scrawled in a hurry, it’s a series of clear peaks spaced seconds apart.
“What the hell?”
Hedy is focused. “We need to get up there.”
“Agreed.”
Being decisive is a poor substitute for certainty, but it’s all we’ve got. At least two of the Chinese astronauts have died. We have no way of knowing how long the others will survive or what condition the Huŏxīng Wu is in. Whatever happened to them, their ship is crippled. Time is the enemy.
There’s no need to suit up for our plane change as it’s a low risk maneuver, so I stow the suits in the lower deck, securing them so they don’t move around once we’re under power. Even though we’re in communication blackout, with neither Shepard nor Houston able to pick up our signal, Hedy follows the procedure to undertake the orbital change by the book. As with all things in space, there’s a dedicated list to work through as we countdown the minutes to firing the main engine. The process is entirely automated. In theory, we could sleep through it, but we both work through the checklist, talking to each other about the various settings.
A plane change in space is not unlike trying to hit the offramp of a freeway covered in black ice. Brakes do nothing. Accelerating spins the wheels. Regardless of what we do, the car’s going to continue sliding on down the lane, but with the steering turned hard and a whole lot of gas, we’ll gain a little sideways motion. Keep that up, and slowly we’ll change course. Depending on the degree of the orbit, some plane changes cost more in terms of fuel than lifting off from the planet itself, which is why Lisa was concerned about our mass loading with the rock samples. We’ll be running on fumes by the time we reach Earth.
As with the launch, Hedy’s presented with a series of gate checks and abort actions allowing her to halt the procedure at any point. Sit back and relax and the Redstone/Schiaparelli will do all the work for us. The ABORT button on the LCD screen flashes, listing her options as the countdown drops to under two minutes, but she leaves them idle. Our reaction jets fire, turning the craft and aligning it in the direction we need to move. For a brief moment, we’re sailing around the planet sideways, very much like my hypothetical car skidding on ice.
The main engine fires and we’re pushed back in our seats. There’s no noise, no shaking, no resistance. The transition is smooth. The view outside our window barely changes. It’s night, but we’re altering the angle of our orbit rather than our position, aligning ourselves with the equator.
Once the burn is complete, Hedy starts the program for our altitude change. We’ll need another two burns, one to shift us into an elliptic orbit, reaching up to 6,000 kilometers, but perigee—the lowest point in our orbit—will still be down here at 2,000 clicks. Like the old Wheel-of-Death at the circus, with motorcycle riders racing around the inside of a steel cage, slowly looping higher and higher, we’re still sinking back into the middle with each revolution. We need to circularize with one final burn up at 6,000 kilometers. By then, we’ll be like the riders racing around the middle of the cage, straddling the steel mesh in a nice, smooth, regular, circular motion.
It’s a helluva lot of effort, but it’s only then we can close in on Phobos. That’s the irony of space travel. Far from being free from gravity as we float in our tiny tin can high above the surface of Mars, we’re still held firmly in its iron grip. Each burn is an attempt at wrestling ourselves away from the pull of an entire planet. As a kid, I remember being curious about Earth’s Moon. What holds it up in the sky? It wasn’t until I hit university that I got my answer. Nothing. It’s falling around Earth. That big, old cratered planetoid isn’t floating carefree in space at all. It’s caught by the same pull I felt as a kid standing on my porch in Nebraska.
“Stunning, huh?”
I nod. Hedy’s right. Each burn is a marvel of engineering, but I suspect her banal comment is a distraction from both what we’re undertaking and who we’re leaving behind. Having seen that seemingly mechanical heartbeat from the Chinese spacecraft, we’re both thinking this is a mistake. We’re going to find four bodies in that spaceship. Somehow, two of the suits have malfunctioned and are transmitting a glitch that’s been confused with a heartbeat—and it’s understandable. We all want to believe the best. No one wants to admit defeat and accept the loss.
“Hey, I—ah.” Hedy points at the control panel. “I’m waiting for a call, you know.”
“Oh, yeah. Sure. I was going to listen to some music anyway.”
Privacy is tough in space. Nothing happens quickly. In between each burn there’s at least an hour of floating in our seats just waiting around. Hedy clearly wants to talk to Lisa so I put on a mix of music and read an ebook on my tablet. With no Twitter or Facebook out beyond lunar orbit, we tend to read a lot. Most people assume we watch movies or keep up with television, but as with everything that comes from Earth, bandwidth limits our choices. Text is nice and small, so books are popular. Being an astronaut, most people take me for a sci-fi buff, and I am, but I’m living that dream so I tend to bounce between historical fiction like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Anything set firmly on Earth works for me. It’s strange to think of escapism as taking me back to Earth, not away from it.
I’m not sure how long Hedy chats, but it’s still daylight outside so we’re somewhere above Shepard as the base moves toward noon. She taps my thick suit and I pause a cover artist singing The Righteous Brothers classic, Unchained Melody.
“Did you want to chat with Jenny?”
“Sure.”
I switch over to onboard comms in time to hear Lisa handing over to Jen. It would be nice to see her, but the signal strength is too weak. We’re too far down r
ange.
I guess Hedy’s listening to music now. I really don’t know. Rather than reading anything, she closes her eyes. It’s tempting to think she’s leaning back and resting, but in weightlessness, there’s no leaning anywhere.
“Hey, how are you doing?” I ask.
“I’m good.”
After a decade of marriage, two words is telling. She’s not doing well at all.
“Everything’s going smooth up here. We’ve docked, changed planes and are undertaking an altitude shift. It’s all textbook stuff.”
“That’s good.”
Another two words? Really? Damn it. I feel like shit. I’ve let her down. I don’t know what else I could have done. If I’d stayed, I’d hate myself knowing Hedy was up here alone. I’d feel like a coward. But leaving Jen on Mars has carved a hole in my heart—in both our hearts. What words can make up for the loss we both feel?
There’s silence between us, but it doesn’t feel awkward. If anything, it’s a sign of acceptance. We’re both dealing with the separation in our own way. In some regards, it’s easier for me as there are tasks to be done, goals to be met, one more step to undertake, a procedure that needs to be reviewed, a performance metric to investigate. For Jen, there’s nothing but the inevitable wait between our passes overhead and the uncertainty of what’s happening while we’re out of radio contact. The tyranny of distance is found in helplessness.
I say, “No heroics, right?” Jen should be saying that, not me, but I’m echoing what I expect her to tell me. She laughs at how I beat her to the punch.
“Yeah, right. Like you’re actually going to listen to me.”
Hey, ten words. She made double digits.
Audio is a funny medium for communication. At first, it seems limited, as there’s no ability to see facial expressions or body language, but as strange as it seems, I can hear her smile, and that brings a smile to my face.
“We’re going to be okay, babe.” She knows what I mean. I’m not referring to this flight, but to our lives in general. We’ll make it beyond this moment. We’ll be reunited on Earth and our lives together will move on to a new phase.
Losing Mars Page 13
