Offworld

by Robin Parrish

  The high-pitched whine of the ship turned to a series of creaks and groans, and Chris knew that this was it. What was left of the Ares was ripping itself apart out from under them, from the tremendous stresses being placed upon it. The spiraling was so fast that consoles, tools, dials, and screws were shaken loose and went flying through the compartment in a mad cyclone. Any second a ferocious final surge would separate the command module around them, and they would be sucked out by the explosive oxygen decompression into space. Their bodies would be lost forever, unrecoverable by NASA, drifting forever out in the depths of the universe.

  That is, if that really was space as he knew it out there in the black.

  Either way, they would be dead in moments. Seconds. Maybe less.

  So ends the noble Ares and her crew ...

  The window suddenly cleared, and he saw that something was rushing straight at them. Or maybe they were rushing at it, faster than a bullet.

  Chris opened his mouth and shouted at the top of his lungs, "Brace yourselves!"

  The words had just left his mouth, seeming to hang with a hollowness in the air, when everything went black.

  Chris coughed himself awake. He was sopping wet.

  Smoke filled the cockpit, but the emergency floodlights had kicked in, warning alarms flashing, bathing everything in red. The windows were still completely blacked out.

  The ship was no longer moving.

  Trisha sat beside him, still buckled into her seat but unconscious, a trickle of blood evident near her left temple.

  Behind them, Owen wheezed, a bubble pulsing in his nostril.

  The heat inside the cockpit was almost unbearable. Chris felt as though he was being smothered by his heavy space suit.

  "Terry .. " he whispered, trying to see the back of the cockpit through the haze and smoke and dim lights. He unstrapped himself from his seat and pulled off his helmet as Trisha and Owen slowly began to regain consciousness.

  When he stood, a rush of vertigo overwhelmed him and he teetered but didn't fall. Chris wondered how much time had passed since the ship came to a stop. He was forced to move slowly, feeling his way through the command module in the relative darkness and smoke.

  He almost stumbled over Terry, who was in a crumpled heap near the main hatch.

  "How is he?" asked Owen.

  "He's breathing, but he's pretty banged up," answered Chris.

  "We have cabin pressure," Trisha said, springing to life, her gloved fingers sliding across her damaged console with practiced precision. "Backup power is up and running."

  Chris turned Terry over and pulled the young pilot's helmet off. "Did the command module ever detach?"

  "I can't tell," replied Owen.

  Trisha spoke up again. "I think-I think we landed. I have a GLS light"

  GLS stood for Ground Landing System, an automated program designed to take over the landing procedures for the crew should they be rendered incapacitated. It was housed and operated entirely from the ground, close to the runway at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

  "Hey," moaned Terry. "What ... ?"

  "Take it easy," said Chris. Owen joined them and helped Terry up to a sitting position. Chris returned to the front.

  "You're hurt," he said, unlatching Trisha's helmet as she continued to work. He dabbed at the gash on the side of her head with his fingers. It wasn't bad, although he could feel a sizable egg rising under the skin.

  "Minor concussion at worst," he said. She didn't respond, focusing instead on her work.

  "We have gravity," Terry offered, sounding a little more awake. "If the GLS kicked in ... then we're on the ground at Kennedy, right?"

  Owen looked up. "If we're on the ground," he said, his brown eyes scanning the windows, "why is it still dark outside?"

  `And why haven't they come for us?" asked Trisha. It was standard procedure after a space landing for the ship to be surrounded by rescue and cleanup personnel. Even though they couldn't see out, or communicate with anything beyond the ship, they should at least be able to hear something from outside. If nothing else, a NASA worker should have knocked on the hatch by now just to see if they could get a reply from the crew.

  "If we're not on the ground ... we're on something," Chris concluded. He worked his way back to the hatch again, and despite Owen's protests, Terry pulled himself up to stand.

  Trisha stood, satisfied that everything that could be done to secure the ship had been done. She quickly moved to a first-aid locker and retrieved a few supplies.

  "The flight surgeon can patch us up," Terry said, refusing Trisha's help.

  Chris squinted, trying to see through the tiny window in the hatch, though it was dark.

  "What do you see?" Terry asked, massaging a bruise on his wrist.

  Chris shook his head. "It's just dark." He turned. "Beech?"

  Owen stepped over to his console and examined it. "I'm reading oxygen outside," he said with a heaviness in his voice as Trisha poured something onto a cut on the back of his neck. "Atmosphere is clear of chemical toxins."

  Chris looked around, doubt coloring his features. Landing spacecraft were known to give off various dangerous chemicals immediately upon landing that couldn't be safely breathed. If the air was already clear of those contaminants, then the four of them had been unconscious for a few hours, at least. He waited until Trisha met his gaze, his unspoken question answered with a nod.

  "We can't stay here," he concluded. "The ship is too hot, and this smoke isn't good for our lungs. I don't think we have anything to lose by opening the hatch. Agreed?"

  There were nods all around.

  Chris clutched the mechanism that released the hatch. A loud hiss pierced the air as the cabin depressurized to match the outside atmosphere, and he felt his ears pop. Just ahead was a second door, the outer door. He moved to it, unlatched and pushed the door downward until it opened....

  He was immediately bathed in intensely bright light.

  It was so bright that Terry, Trisha, and Owen put their hands up to block the light from their eyes.

  Without a word, Chris stepped from the ship onto the outer hatch, which had folded down into a stepladder. The others soon joined him, standing on the steps just outside the ship.

  They scanned the horizon in all directions.

  The ship had come to rest on the long runway at Kennedy Space Center. But their arrival couldn't be called a landing.

  Trisha was the first to turn back and examine the craft. The others followed her, and Chris' blood turned to ice. The Ares' command module was unrecognizable-charred and disfigured, her ceramic outer tiles and windows burned completely black, her two wings withered and torn. The tail fin was gone. All that was left of the mighty rocket ship that carried them to another planet was a tragic heap, an utterly ruined mass of black, burning metal.

  Chris shook his head. "We shouldn't have survived that."

  "We're alive, man," said Terry. `And we're home. That's enough for me."

  Owen's eyebrows were furrowed as he scanned their surroundings. "Has anyone else noticed that `home' is ... awfully quiet?"

  The others examined the landscape. It was true. There was nothing moving, no people or rescue vehicles. In the distance, there were no cars driving along the roads of Kennedy Space Center. From the sun's position overhead, it was late morning, but it was as if no one on the planet had noticed a flaming rocket ship falling out of the sky.

  Chris stood up straighter, blocking out the bright sunlight with his hand and squinting into the distance. "They should have sent the ferry to retrieve the ship," he said. "You think we're giving off too much radiation?"

  "Maybe they didn't think there was anything left of the ship to retrieve," suggested Terry.

  Trisha stopped winding a bandage around Chris' forearm, and looked up. "There's us," she said.

  A long moment passed in silence as all eyes scanned the NASA complex surrounding them. For the first time in his life, Chris felt weak in the knees.

 
; "Nothing," said Owen slowly, "is moving. At all."

  Terry spun, looking in all directions. "Where is everybody?"

  TWO

  Chris opened his eyes and stared straight up into the colossal F1 engine bell of a very real Saturn V rocket. The mammoth machine was suspended in the air but horizontal, extending almost four hundred feet in length. The rocket was broken apart and on display in its multiple stages, enclosed inside a custom-made building lined with brightly colored gift shops and attractions. Hanging from the ceiling on one side of the rocket was a row of enormous re-creations of the Apollo mission crew patches, laid out in chronological order. The dark building's interior was lit by colorful signs and neon lights, all designed to appeal to tourists.

  Chris knew there were five engine bells attached to the bottom of the Saturn V rocket, and he lay directly under one of them, off to one side of the massive ship. He sat up. Before him was a wall of plate-glass windows looking out onto a line of palm trees, an overgrown patch of grass, and a series of grandstands for VIPs to get the best possible view of launch pads 39A and 39B-from which every manned mission into space was launched.

  He looked around, his mind slow to process. He knew this place. It was the Apollo/Saturn V Center at Kennedy Space Center. A major stop on the public tour and not far from the runway on which the Ares had crash-landed. He'd been in this building many times-he'd even spoken here before. NASA's golden boy. A career Air Force pilot who'd been given the opportunity of a lifetime. One he'd promised he wouldn't fail, though at the time he wondered if the press wasn't right, that he'd been given the role because of his looks more than his ability. Being back here returned his perspective. Something about sitting right underneath the three thousand ton vehicle-the most complex piece of machinery ever constructed by man, until the Ares and the powerful booster rockets that shot it into space came along-always made him feel like a gnat. No single person could live up to the expectations of the position, so why shouldn't it have been him?

  The Apollo/Saturn building had power, but it was deserted. That thought helped him remember that he was back home, that the Ares had crashed violently, but they were alive. Alive, and ... alone? Had he passed out on the runway? He remembered the world seeming to spin beneath his feet, and then ...

  He'd woken up here.

  His pulse quickened, his breaths coming faster, more shallow.

  "You're awake."

  Chris looked behind to see Owen half walking, half jogging in his direction from somewhere deeper within the building, carrying several small items in his arms. He still wore his flight suit, minus the helmet, and it was then that Chris realized he was still wearing his own flight suit as well.

  "Here, eat something," Owen said as he came closer, maintaining his logical, businesslike tone, even now. He opened his arms and Burke saw a selection of snack bags containing chips and cookies, no doubt requisitioned from the building's gift shop or deli. He shrugged as Chris examined the junk food. `All I could find."

  Owen Beechum was the crew's mission specialist, a genius-level intellect, and the one member of the crew without a background in aviation. He was an expert in many fields of academia, making him an invaluable addition to the team. But Owen's appointment to the crew hadn't come without controversy; he was a late addition, brought on just over a year before the mission was scheduled to depart. The previous astronaut assigned to his job-a longtime NASA scientist named Mitchell Dodd-shocked the world with an announcement that he'd been diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. So Owen joined the team. The oldest member of the crew at forty-three, though he was in the most enviable physical shape of any of them.

  He was also the only member of the crew to have left behind an immediate family on Earth. On a long-term mission where the crewmemhers were largely chosen based on their marital and social status-or rather, their lack thereof-a team member with a wife and young son who would have to live without him for two and a half years for the sake of a mission was a hard sell to the public. NASA argued that Owen's value to the team overrode all other concerns, but that hadn't stopped the press from being particularly hard on Owen and his family leading up to the mission's launch, invading their privacy and labeling Owen as "the ultimate workaholic" and "NASA's deadbeat dad."

  And those were the nicer headlines.

  Chris, who had personally chosen Owen's predecessor Mitchell Dodd as his mission specialist, had been strongly opposed to Owen's appointment at first, since NASA had overridden his authority and insisted that Owen be added to the crew. Apparently they'd discovered him teaching at a small university, and his extraordinary mind made him their new golden boy, an overnight sensation. But despite the crew's early misgivings, Owen quickly earned their respect and trust by training alongside them day and night, putting in extra hours to catch up to their levels of aptitude, giving one hundred and ten percent during the mission, and never once complaining about the realities of space travel.

  Chris noticed that Owen had sweat beads on his bald head, even though his brawny frame was in optimum physical shape. It would have taken more than the bulk of Owen's space suit to cause him to perspire this much.

  "You-you carried me here from the runway? All by yourself?" Chris said.

  "It was the closest shelter. That I could easily break into, anyway." Owen nodded at the wall of glass windows and Chris noticed that at the bottom right corner, a single pane had been shattered, tiny pieces all over the floor.

  Chris nodded, then tore into one of the bags of cookies. A small part of him didn't care if they turned out to be stale or not; it would he the first time he'd had real cookies in more than two and a half years. Much longer than that, in fact the crew's preflight training had lasted more than two years itself, and his diet had been strictly monitored in all that time.

  "Where are the others?" he asked with a mouthful of cookie, looking around.

  "Firing Room. We'll meet them there once you've had a chance to get your footing. I found a tour bus outside that has enough juice to get us there. Trisha wants to get on the radio and see if she can reach anyone. She also said something about reviewing whatever video we can find, to see if we can turn up some clues about ... what's happened."

  Chris nodded that this was a good idea, though he wondered just how long he'd been unconscious, if this many things had been decided without him. But then his thoughts returned to the crash and how they'd emerged from it to find Kennedy Space Center completely deserted. What was going on here? Was it just Kennedy, or ... ?

  No, he had to push all such fears aside. There was still a chain of command, even when nothing made any sense, and he was still at the top of it.

  "I don't need to wait. I'm fine," Chris said, already getting up. "Never better."

  Owen rose beside him. "No one suspected otherwise, Commander," he assured him with sincerity.

  Trisha and Terry rounded a corner and opened the double doors to Firing Room #2. It was one of two such control chambers located inside the Launch Control Center, a long, narrow edifice adjacent to the colossal Vehicle Assembly Building. Like most structures at Kennedy, the LCC had lots of straight, clean lines and retro white elegance. Its entire back side was covered with slanted windows that faced the two main launch complexes, though the Firing Room itself faced away from these windows.

  Seeing the Firing Room empty was perhaps a greater shock to their systems even than crashing. This room was the central hub at Kennedy of all operations for their mission; anytime an American was in space, the Firing Room was packed with hardworking men and women doing everything they could to ensure the success of the mission and the safe return of the crew.

  The dozens of computer terminals still glowed with power, many of them continuing to receive data from the downed Ares, even now. The large main screen at the front of the room was flashing a hazard warning due to the crash. But no one was there to see it, nor to turn it off. Trisha located the appropriate console and switched off the warning lights.

  Trisha and Terr
y were both still covered with bruises and crusted blood, dirt, and sweat, but they'd shed their hefty flight suits, keeping only their basic one-piece jumpsuits. They had little concern for appearances; all either of them could think about was figuring out what was going on. There would be time for hygiene and mending injuries later. Getting their "sea legs" back after years in reduced gravity was a procedure that normally would have been allowed significant time and medical assessment, but there was nothing normal about anything now, and they were forced to muddle through physical oddities like balance issues and decreased muscle mass on their own.

  Trisha suffered the aftereffects worse than any of them. She would never ordinarily let the others see her wincing or groaning at the physical exertion each step required, but she couldn't stop herself from it today.

  Trisha Merriday was what NASA referred to as a "twofer" on the Mars mission. NASA normally had two types of astronauts: pilots and specialists. Her brief stint as a Marine pilot qualified her to pilot the Ares when needed, while master's degrees in both astrophysics and geology gave her mission specialist status.

  Though much of her time on Mars was to be dedicated to scientific research duties, NASA made the unusual move of selecting the twenty-eight-year-old as the mission's second in command. Efficient, determined, and passionate about space exploration, Trisha was one of NASAs stalwarts, a friendly, comfortable, and knowledgeable face to the public, and she wore the fact that she was the first astronaut assigned to the mission's crew-even before Chris-as a badge of honor.

  She only hoped Terry was too preoccupied with the larger situation to notice that she was operating far below peak efficiency.