Aftermath a-1

by Charles Sheffield

  She had not changed the software, to incorporate the parameters of the new atmosphere determined by the data analysis. That had been Jenny’s work.

  Nor would she fly the Clark back home. That responsibility lay with Reza, now well into manic mood.

  What, then, did she do?

  She worried, when apparently no one else did. The others were completely confident that the problem that killed Zoe and the rest of the Lewis crew had been solved. As Reza cheerfully said, “Everything else was on the button, exactly the way it should have been. We’ve cleared up the only problem.” Yet it was his partner,

  Jenny, who in another context had assured the group that test a program as you liked, it always had one bug left. And she and Reza apparently didn’t realize that “program” was a general term, applying just as well to a return from orbit as to a computer subroutine.

  Celine wondered how much longer she would have delayed the attempt to return to Earth, without Reza’s remark the previous day: “The log shows this orbiter’s past due for maintenance. There’s a steady deterioration in condition, even when it’s not being used.”

  Reza’s reflection was staring at her. Apparently the sixty-second grace period had expired. It was now, or abort to a later time. Celine nodded. “Do it.”

  The thrust of the engines in front of her was silent and easy, apparently too gentle to affect their situation. It was surprising to watch the Schiaparelli and ISS-2 sail away ahead, continuing in their shared orbit. The or-biter had taken the first step, braking its motion enough to allow the trajectory of Clark to intersect the upper atmosphere.

  Now it was simply waiting. But not for long. In less than fifteen minutes they would know if the drag calculation had been the only problem affecting the Lewis.

  No one was wearing a suit. Celine had wanted that as a precaution against the failure of cabin integrity and loss of air. Two minutes of direct experiment ruled it out. Even without suits they could barely squeeze into the Clark’s limited cabin space. With suits, forget it. The pilot might fly home, but no one else would fit in with him.

  “Everything is nominal,” Reza announced. “The control routines are doing exactly what we hoped. We are losing altitude as planned and are already experiencing some atmospheric drag.”

  He seemed without a care in the world, but his words made Celine think of Zoe. She had said almost exactly the same thing, shortly before the Lewis disintegrated to its individual atoms.

  “Do the drag forces seem to be following the new model?” Celine was being pushed back into the hammock, harder and sooner than she expected. She had to ask if things were all right, even though there was nothing she could do if she didn’t like Reza’s answer.

  “The new model works fine,” Reza replied. His attitude didn’t tell her anything. He sounded ready to fly a ship through the gates of hell. “We’re coming down by the book. Trust crazy Reza. I think I could squeeze us a degree or two farther north if you want. It may be clearer there.”

  “What’s the cloud situation?”

  It was another problem, predictable but irritating. Normally the weather reports for a returning orbiter were provided by ground control, with access to metsat and to ground radar data. The Clark was forced to fly without any such aids. Reza was the only person on board who could see anything outside the ship.

  “Continuous cloud cover below, cumulonimbus by the look of them. But we’re a long way from touchdown. Drag is higher, skin temperature going up fast. Sit tight.”

  There was no choice. Celine didn’t need to be told about the drag forces, she was pressing harder and harder into the hammock. Wilmer, to her right, was rolling in on her a little. The hammock support was not quite centered — her own fault, that had been her job. But he was quite a load, especially under what already felt like two gees and more.

  “Hull temperature close to three thousand. We’re pushing three gees and projecting more than five.” Reza forced the words from compressed vocal cords. The ship’s deceleration was still increasing. “If there’s going to be unpleasantness, it will be right about here.”

  Unpleasantness. A pilot’s gift for understatement. Their bodies had spent most of the past year in free fall, and the year before that in a Mars gravity only forty percent of Earth’s. Five gees was intolerable. Celine had trouble breathing, and she could hear beside her Jenny Kopal’s painful grunts. Wilmer was a silent lump at her side. How much more? And how much longer? Only the thermal skin of the orbiter’s cabin wall protected them from the white-hot inferno beyond.

  “Hull temperature thirty-three hundred.” Reza’s reporting of the instrument readings was barely intelligible. “Five and a half gees. Angle of attack holding steady. Rate of descent constant. Hang in there. I think we’re through maximum drag.”

  It didn’t feel that way to Celine. But then the force pressing her into the hammock became perhaps a tiny bit less. Breathing was agony, but a reduced agony.

  “Hull temperature thirty-two hundred. Deceleration under four gees and falling. Rate of descent steady.” Reza tried to shout in triumph, and managed a wheezy croak. “We’re through the worst. We made it, guys. We’ve got lift. We’re home.”

  Home? Not quite. But the Clark was no longer skimming like a flung stone across the skies of Earth. Celine could tell that they were flying, descending fast but buoyed upward by aerodynamic lift from the air. She struggled upright and turned in the hammock to face Reza.

  “Where are we? Do you have any idea of our position and ground speed?”

  “Don’t know yet.” He turned to grin at her. “The micro-positioning circuit says thirty-eight north and eighty-two west, but I don’t know how much we can trust it. Depends if the GPS satellites are alive. I’d like visuals, but it’s nothing but clouds below. We’re forty-one kilometers up, descent rate eighty meters a second, airspeed eleven hundred, heading nearly due east.”

  Celine wanted to see for herself. So apparently did Jenny. As the deceleration dropped they started to crawl to the top of the hammock. At the same moment they realized that it was not feasible. They would change the mass balance of the little ship, but worse than that they would crowd Reza’s access to the controls. The overloaded orbiter was too small to permit passenger movement.

  Celine strained upward for one moment above the edge of the hammock before she slid back to her old position. She glimpsed white clouds below and ahead, their rolling heads bright in western sunlight.

  “I guess we can forget about ground assistance and ground information.” Reza was focused on the cloudscape ahead of the Clark. “The only way we’ll learn conditions below is to look at them.”

  He wasn’t asking Celine, he was telling her. Did she want to second-guess him? She peered again over the edge of the hammock.

  Reza had increased the angle of descent. The ship was swooping fast toward the cloud tops. “Seven thousand meters. Let’s hope the altimeter works with the changed atmosphere.” As he spoke the ship dropped into the clouds.

  Ahead of the orbiter sat unchanging gray vapor. The ride became uncannily smooth. The ship might have been hanging motionless, except for the altimeter. Celine could see it in the diffuse light that permeated the cabin. Its display was flickering rapidly downward: six thousand — five thousand — four thousand.

  At thirty-eight hundred meters, when she was beginning to panic, the orbiter vibrated heavily and a moment later was racing across the broken floor of the cloud layer.

  Reza could see what lay below, but she could not. His low whistle did nothing to reassure her.

  “What is it?”

  “Snow. On the ground, everywhere. If it’s deep we’ll have problems landing. The orbiters aren’t designed for that.”

  “Snow. I thought we were at latitude thirty-eight degrees?”

  “That’s what the instruments say.”

  “But that puts us nearly as far south as Richmond, and it’s almost April. There shouldn’t be snow.”

  “Hey. I didn’t o
rder it. I’m just telling you what we’ve got down there. And I don’t like the idea of trying to land in it.”

  “Do you see cleared areas?”

  “There was one patch of blacktop back there, looked like it could be a cleared runway. It’s behind us now. And there’s a big body of water ahead. It could be the James River or part of the Chesapeake Bay. Either way, it doesn’t help — we can’t land on water. We’d better take another look at what I saw, find out if we can land there.”

  The Clark banked steeply. Celine didn’t need to be told that they were losing altitude fast. When the engines were off, the orbiters had the glide ratio of a brick. Reza was conserving power for the final approach and landing, assuming he would find a place where that landing was possible. The orbiter circled, losing more height.

  “It’s not a commercial airport.” Reza giggled. “Not a military base, either. Not a highway. And not very big. But it’s all we’ve got. Hold tight. I’ll have to use the engines full throttle and bank at the same time to drop us in there.”

  Celine slid back down the hammock, to settle between Wilmer and Jenny. You dreamed for a whole year of the triumphant return to Earth. Although you never discussed it or admitted that you ever had such thoughts, you rehearsed mentally the words to be spoken as you emerged from the lander. Those dreams and words did not cover the case where you swooped to a blighted Earth across a snow-covered landscape, in a crippled and jury-rigged orbiter.

  “We’re very close,” Reza said happily. “Ten seconds to touchdown. But we’re moving too fast, and the strip we’re landing on is shorter than I thought. Even with maximum retro-thrust we’re going to overshoot the far end. Be prepared for something rough.”

  After that warning, the first contact of the orbiter with the ground seemed soft as a kiss. Celine heard the hiss of landing wheels and felt a tremor as they raced along the surface. The retro-thrusters howled, and once more she was pushed deep into the hammock.

  “This is it,” Reza said, and the orbiter shuddered and reared up onto its head. Celine felt one crushing moment of force. Then she was lying on her back, staring up at the cabin’s rear wall. Wilmer was lying half on top of her, muttering and wriggling.

  “Reza?” she asked.

  “I’ll live. I said you could trust me. How is it back there?”

  “All right,” Jenny said, and Wilmer added, “Me, too, but the side wall has bent in. I can’t move until Celine does.”

  “Don’t try.” From the sounds, Reza was releasing himself from his harness. “Sit tight and I’ll try to open the hatch. It’s going to be tricky. We’re in the middle of a snowdrift.”

  Sitting tight was easy. Unable to move, Celine could do nothing but wait and listen to Reza’s gasps and grunts of effort.

  “Good thing it slides,” he said after half a minute. “We’d never have opened it outward against packed snow. And the drift is almost to the top of the door. Another half meter and we’d have to tunnel free. But I can get to you now.”

  He kicked at the banked snow, enlarging the hole, and used the space he had made to crawl upward and free the hammock clamps on one side. Celine, Jenny, and Wilmer rolled together to finish in a heap near Reza’s feet.

  “Anyone have some first words for our return to Earth?” he said. “The ones I’d been working on don’t seem to apply anymore.”

  “We made it,” Jenny said shakily. “In that last few minutes, I felt sure we wouldn’t.” She reached out and put her arms around his neck. “I’ve always laughed at you when you told me what a great pilot you were. But you are.”

  “You’d better believe it.” Reza went on kicking at the snow, making a hole big enough to crawl through to the ground outside. “Celine, you first. You’re the head of the Mars expedition now.”

  His words brought back to Celine the memory of the crew members who were not with them. The sheer exhilaration of being alive faded. She eased her way feet-first into the hole that Reza had made, and the mound of snow crumbled and sank beneath her weight as she slid to the ground.

  She stood up, waited for the other three to join her, then said, “We, the surviving members of the first human expedition to Mars, honor the memory of Ludwig Holter, Alta McIntosh-Mohammad, and Zoe Nash. Without the lessons learned from their sacrifice, our own return to Earth would have been impossible.”

  Jenny gasped, and all four bowed their heads. They stood shaky-legged and silent for half a minute in the long-awaited air and gravity of Earth. At last Celine looked up and made her first inspection of their surroundings.

  She stood at the end of a long stretch of tarmac about fifteen meters wide and three hundred meters long. By her side the orbiter was nose-down and buried deep in a bank of snow that had damped the force of its collision. The ship was ruined and might never fly again, but crazy Reza could take pride in his piloting. Even orbiter specialists expected a runway twice as long and wide as this one.

  Beyond the runway, hugging the ground and partly dug into it, Celine counted half a dozen wooden buildings. Gray smoke rose from the chimneys of three of them, and the snow had melted from their roofs. Around the runway, trees clad in the foliage of late spring stood bowed down by snow. More deep snow covered the bushes and ground between them. In the distance, white hills stretched to the horizon. The orbiter had landed in the deepest part of a valley. The air that filled Celine’s nostrils was rich with strange but familiar smells, of smoke and pine needles and resin. She stretched her arms wide, luxuriating in wide spaces and open sky. The air was colder than she had expected.

  “And you told me,” Jenny said, “that the temperature on Earth is higher because of supernova heating?” It was less a question than a skeptical jibe intended for Reza, but Wilmer answered.

  “Globally, and overall. But the effects you’re most likely to notice are the fluctuations from normal weather. Like now. Much more chilly than usual for this time of year. Somewhere else, maybe down at the South Pole, it’s one big heat wave.”

  “Then take me to the South Pole,” said Jenny. Her teeth were starting to chatter. Celine suspected most of that was nervous reaction. On the other hand, Jenny was thin and lightly built, and she had removed her jacket on entering the Clark to provide a little more padding to the hammock.

  “We have to get inside,” Celine said. She gestured toward the buildings. “Inside there. They must have heat.”

  “And a place to rest.” Jenny took a trial step, then another. “If we can walk that far. Ooh, Earth gravity. My legs feel like spaghetti.”

  Reza took her arm to help her. “Come on. Walk. We have to.”

  “Maybe not.” Wilmer pointed along the valley, to a building shaped like an A-frame barn. The front had opened to reveal three odd-looking machines. They were painted dark red and had balloon tires, and a handful of people stood clustered around each one.

  “We don’t need to walk,” Celine said. “They’ve noticed our arrival. We can relax. Thank God, we made it. We’re home from Mars.”

  20

  Saul was explaining to Yasmin the history of his relationship with Tricia. The facts were easy, though he didn’t quite understand why he was offering them; and Yasmin did not ask.

  Did not ask that question, at least; she asked a hundred others. Did Tricia know of his political aspirations when they first met? Had he been in a relationship of his own at the time? How old was Tricia? Was he upset by her multiple marriages and divorces? Did he know her previous husbands personally? Her present husband? Did he know her family? Had she met his mother and his sister? Did she know how much he was worth? Did she, in fact, even realize that he was rich?

  As soon as they finished eating they moved into the next room, a small lounge with two old armchairs in front of a fireplace and a fake log fire. The room was heated by hot-water radiators that creaked and cracked as they expanded and contracted, so that Saul constantly glanced into the corners to see what else was going on in the room. He had come to the story of that final evening, when he
had told Tricia that all thoughts of marriage must be postponed until after the election. At a critical moment, just as he was trying to recall his own exact words, the overhead lights flickered and dimmed to an orange glow.

  He looked at Yasmin questioningly and she shook her head. “Nothing to do with me. It’s midnight, and they’ve gone to low power to conserve energy. I suspect someone is trying to tell us it’s bedtime. Go on.”

  The mood had changed as the hour advanced. Saul felt instinctively the shift in power dynamics. It was no longer a meeting of President and aide, but part of some undefined and evolving relationship. Differences of age and status were less relevant. Late at night, all cats are gray. And Yasmin’s eyes were tiger eyes, glinting a yellow reflection in the half-light. She had drawn her legs up beneath her on the armchair and was leaning forward, crouched and ready to spring. He thought she looked too beautiful to be true; but that was not why he had come to Indian Head.

  “I told Tricia this didn’t change the way I felt about her,” he said. “And we didn’t have to wait forever. We just had to avoid being seen together until after the election.”

  “Did she make a scene?”

  “Not a bit. We were in a San Francisco restaurant, the Catch of the Bay. Tricia listened to me very quietly when I told her. Then she said she had to use the rest room. She left the table. And she never came back.”

  “A shitty way to act, don’t you think?”

  “I guess so.” Saul was convinced that Yasmin was talking about his action, not Tricia’s.

  “Did you call her?”

  “Of course I did. I was off on the campaign trail the next morning, but I called her as soon as I could. All I got that night was her message service.”

  “Did you try to see her?” She rose from her chair in one fluid movement and came to perch on the broad arm of his.

  “Not at once. I was all over the country, they had my every minute programmed. It was three weeks before Tricia and I were even in the same town. Then she wouldn’t see me. Four weeks later, when I was up in Vermont, I received a media report that she had married Joseph Goldsmith.” He wondered if the bitterness showed in his voice. “My staff briefed me about him. Someone who was everything I wasn’t, first families of Virginia, horses and hunting and estates and a pedigree back to the mid-1600s.”