Island of Clouds: The Great 1972 Venus Flyby (Altered Space Book 3)

by Gerald Brennan

  The headset voices come back: “Explorer, Houston, we are monitoring the large solar event on your downlink. Getting some concerning info from OSO-7. Be prepared to…” The transmission crackles, but it sounds to me like something-something command module.

  “Command module?” I ask.

  Shepard looks concerned and angry. “Houston, Explorer. We do not copy. Please repeat and explain your last about the command module.’”

  I will myself to stay still. The entire area is lifting off, rising like a steam bubble in a pot of slow-simmering soup, only it’s two-dimensional, more or less. And then at last, the bubble starts to burst, flinging material all over, much of it spaceward, towards us.

  “Wow.” I’m still photographing, but it’s hard not to just stare in wonder.

  “Gentlemen, I do believe that’s a coronal mass ejection,” Kerwin says.

  “Did you get that, Buzz?” Shepard’s floated over at last.

  “I think so. We’re still transmitting TV. Hopefully they caught all of it.”

  Shepard transmits: “Houston, Explorer, please tell us you caught that, over.”

  I remain transfixed. The x-ray images are spectacular: it’s like watching a volcano in slo-mo. Parts of what erupted are falling back into the sun, but the mass that’s lifted off is substantial, and it’s clearly continuing on towards us, and as I do the math I realize it isn’t slow at all, it’s just so big that you forget it’s also fast. I run the numbers again in my head. They sound impossible.

  I need validation. “Wait, the sun’s what…865,000 miles in diameter?”

  “More or less,” Kerwin says.

  “And how long did that thing take to lift off? Under an hour, right?”

  He sees where I’m going with this. “It had to be under an hour. And it’s hard to tell looking edgewise, but the ends of the loop are more than a solar diameter away from the limb now. So that’s well over a million miles an hour…”

  “So it should reach us in a few days. That’ll be interesting.”

  I see a flicker-flash, in a dark corner high against the ceiling. Then there’s another down in the latrine hallway. I’ve never seen two in such quick succession.

  Then Shepard says: “What was our last from them?” Meaning the last transmission. “Did they clarify about the command module?”

  And it occurs to me we should have had our response by now. There is an awful icy hand around my stomach. “Houston, Explorer, comm check, over.”

  Shepard speaks into his own headset. “Houston, Explorer, we’ve received no comms for several minutes. Please confirm...”

  Again I see a flicker-flash. And another. “I swear, I’m seeing those flashes again.”

  Kerwin gets a look like he remembered something. He pulls out his dosimeter. “Uhh, gentlemen, what do your PRDs say?”

  We carry the dosimeters in a pocket on our thighs; they’re about the size of a pack of cigarettes. I fumble for mine, and when I see the numbers, all I can say is: “Oh.”

  Underneath the word RADS, there’s a series of black and white rotary digits, like the odometer of a car. The device is incremented in units of .01, but the whole number seems completely off from what it was, improbably high now. And the last couple digits are moving visibly.

  None of us has ever seen that, in all of our time up here.

  “Jesus,” Shepard says.

  “They wanted us in the command module,” Kerwin says, so cold and urgent that we forget he’s the junior crewmember. “We need to get up there now.”

  All the exciting solar work now feels like nothing. I abandon the console and float into the hallway. As I float past the bathroom, my bladder twinges with regret: I should have gone while I had the chance. I head up the tunnel, with Kerwin and Shepard right after.

  The command module is dark and depressing, unlit and chilly.

  “Explorer, Houston,” we hear at last in the headsets, crackly and far away. “We’re recommending you drop what you’re doing and get to the command module. There may be radiation associated with this event, and the shielding should be much better in there. Please acknowledge. Over.”

  To Shepard I ask: “How long do they want us in here?”

  He gives a look of mild annoyance: of course he doesn’t know any more than I do. “Houston, Explorer. We have moved to the command module. Please advise if you want us to turn it on, and how long we’ll be up here. Over.”

  “That’s, what 180, 190 rads more than it was?” Kerwin is looking again at his dosimeter. Then, to Earth: “Houston, Explorer, sorry for the double transmission. We’re seeing some heavy readings on the dosimeters. Science Pilot dosimeter is now 53901 and climbing. Over.”

  “Gotta be a glitch.” I turn. “Right?” The last word sabotages whatever certainty the rest of the statement held.

  “Well I don’t feel anything,” Shepard says.

  “That’s…that’s not how it works with radiation,” Kerwin replies. “At least at this dose, it’s not one you could actually feel. Not right away.”

  “But we will feel it?” I ask.

  “We will.”

  •••

  We float around the command module and start to settle in. I fold up the center couch, and there’s a little more room.

  “It’s climbing a lot slower now,” Kerwin says, taking yet another look at the dosimeter. “We’re still getting some rads, though. They’re probably not gonna let us back down there until this is over. And that might be a while.”

  “There we go,” Shepard says. “Buzz, you want to turn it on now, or wait for confirmation?”

  “I…uhh…gotta take care of some bladder business first. Guess I’ll have to do it up here.”

  I dig through the lockers for all the pieces of the contraption, the condom with the tube and the urine bag, all the stuff we’ve avoided on this trip, except for the spacewalks. Now that I’m thinking about the fact that I have to go, I can barely think. When it’s all assembled, it feels like it’s just in time; instead of the overall awfulness of everything, my mind’s narrowed to this bliss, this blessed release. But it’s over soon enough.

  The radio comes back on: “Explorer, Houston. It appears the charged particle activity is still increasing. Go ahead and power up the command module when you get a chance. We’re going to have you stay up there until further notice. We copy the PRD dose. Please keep us informed of any sym…” (Static.)

  “Symptoms?” I ask.

  Kerwin nods. “Symptoms.”

  •••

  It takes time for Houston to tell us more; it takes so long I start wondering if something’s happened to the comms.

  While we wait, the loneliness feels magnified a hundredfold. Plus there is this overwhelming notion that something massive and irrevocable has happened, something we cannot understand, let alone stop. To keep my thoughts at bay I start turning on the command module, running through the checklist. That helps a bit.

  At last we hear from Earth: “Explorer, Houston. The CME looked pretty bad from down here. You may see some symptoms in the next few hours. Glad you’ve got a doctor on board. We will work out a plan to keep things working if you can’t work. Over.”

  “Houston, Explorer. We will keep an eye out for symptoms, over,” Kerwin transmits.

  “That’s it?” I sputter, incredulous. “Isn’t there…something more we should be doing?”

  “There isn’t a lot they can do for us,” Kerwin says. “This is high-energy radiation. Gamma ray and x-ray photons. And protons accelerated to near-light speed. If we were on Earth and this was a…nuclear plant accident or something, it would be more about keeping us from ingesting isotopes that were emitting alpha particles. Something like that, we could take iodine, at least, to keep our thyroids from picking up radioactive iodine from the atmosphere. But here…” He gives a weightless shrug. “Particles and shielding. The more mass between you and the source, the better. That’s why these things don’t affect people as much on Earth…they’re no
t just protected by the magnetosphere, but the mass of the atmosphere.”

  “What kind of symptoms are we talking here, doc?” Shepard asks.

  “In the next few hours? It’s possible we’ll get some nausea. Maybe some trouble on the other end of the digestive tract. You can also see some…”

  I turn back to the checklist. The lights are on now, and everything’s looking a little more comfortable, but I’m having a hard time focusing. Or harder. I read the checklist. I reread it. “Wait, we’re not up on the comms here. Are we?”

  Kerwin gives me a look. “…some of that.”

  “What?”

  “That can be another sign of ours.”

  The sentence I’ve heard makes no sense. “Ours?”

  “A.R.S. Acute Radiation Sickness, the thing we’re talking about?”

  “No, uhh…what’s a sign?”

  “Confusion.”

  I take a long pause. “Are you sure?” I smile, a little.

  “Very funny.”

  “What else?” Shepard asks.

  “We covered this in training, didn’t we?” Kerwin seems surprised at our ignorance.

  “I don’t know, did we?” I smile.

  Shepard gives a little look, like: come on. “What else?”

  “Hair loss. Fatigue. Basically it kills off a lot of the very active cells, like in your bone marrow, so your white and red blood cell counts go really low. But yeah, at higher doses, you get extreme confusion.”

  “You know, I don’t think we did cover this in training. I think you’re a little…uhh…” I give a look that says: mixed up.

  “Hardy har har,” he says. “’Physician, heal thyself,’ right?”

  He’s quoting as snappily as ever, Honeymooners and Shakespeare, so I’m hoping we’re going to be OK. But it feels like gallows humor.

  “Well, again, I don’t feel any different,” Shepard says.

  “It does take a few hours at this dosage. It wreaks havoc on different molecules, and then that starts to have effects at the cellular level. Like I said, depending on how it hits the bone marrow, we could really be wiped out for a few weeks.”

  There’s a twinge in my stomach. I don’t know if it’s angst, or the tip of something much bigger.

  But I need to work. This part’s my responsibility. I double-check and triple-check the comms switches. And then at last I’m confident enough to transmit: “Houston, Explorer, we are up and running on the command module comms. Over.”

  I gather my thoughts, organize the objects floating about my personal space.

  The next transmission arrives soon enough that it’s possible they haven’t heard our latest. “Explorer, Houston, we’re…” The crackly voices in the headset sound more distant than ever. “…have you cease work on any non-flight tasks.” “We want to…” (Static.) “…ment. We’ll run the numbers. Then if necessary, we’ll take care of the…” (Crackle.) “…rection scheduled for 29 September. Over.”

  “Erection?” Shepard says, just to us.

  I laugh, grateful for the break in the tension. “I’ll let you handle that one solo.”

  “I heard alignment and course correction.” Kerwin says, then keys the mike. “Houston, Explorer. We copy alignment and course correction if necessary. We’ll get started in a moment. Over.” Then to us, again: “They get it. We might not be able to work for a while.”

  I get back to throwing switches. These are routine tasks, but there is an extra tension to it now, knowing it isn’t part of the plan. If we are off course, we need to fire the engine and rectify it now, or we won’t be able to, for who knows how long. But we hadn’t planned on staying in the command module for an extended period, so we will have to keep a close eye on the fuel cells…

  Enough. Those decisions are days in the future. I force myself to concentrate on the here and now. “Moving on to alignment.”

  “We’re going to run a Program 23, right?” Shepard asks. “Venus and three stars?”

  “Yeah. Get a state vector and see if they want to do a PAD for a burn.”

  “All right.”

  The computer program requires us to measure the angles between the stars and a planet, to confirm our position in the Solar System. I float down to the lower equipment bay, to the telescope and sextant; I key the commands in to the computer so we can look back at Venus, the former object of our desire, already 16 million miles away now.

  “Do you mind if I take a look, Buzz?” Shepard asks, with something like humility.

  The telescope attached to the sextant is only one-power, so it’s an odd request; we could observe it far better in the manned module, whenever we’re allowed back down there. Then again, this way we can see it as it really is. “Be my guest, captain.”

  He floats on down to see for himself; he lingers at the eyepiece like a man looking at a picture of an old flame. “Hard to believe we were ever there.”

  I can’t see Kerwin’s face from where I’m at, but I hear a smile in his voice: “If we were ever there.”

  Shepard floats off. I take another look: Venus is bright and distant, not much more than another star. I make the measurements and plug them into the computer to transmit them back to the ground.

  Then Shepard gives me a look. I’m expecting an order for some other flight-type task, but it’s: “We may as well get started on dinner.”

  “OK.”

  In the headset I hear: “Explorer, Houston. We copy your…” (Static.) “…mission. The state vectors are close. We will run everything…” (More static.) “…RTCC and see if we have a PAD for you.”

  “Houston, Explorer, we copy,” Shepard replies. “Send us a PAD if you have one. Until then, my crew needs to be fed, so we’re gonna eat while we can. Over.”

  “Is it just me, or are the comms worse up here?” I ask.

  “Yeah,” Kerwin says. “It’s like it’s dipping every so often.”

  “We’ll take a look while we eat,” Shepard says.

  Kerwin gives a little look like: what is the point of dinner? But he doesn’t say anything.

  We have a few meal pouches up here: not the full dinner trays, but enough to tide us over. When I stop and think, though, I’m not quite as hungry as I probably should be; it feels like we’re going through the motions, more from hopefulness and force of habit than anything. Routine feels awful until there’s a chance that you won’t be able to do it anymore. Then it becomes a refuge.

  Still, I dole out the food packets while the computers crunch through the numbers, 70 million miles away. We do still have hot water up here; we heat up the packets and crack them open.

  “Football’s coming up in a few weeks,” Kerwin observes.

  Shepard looks down at his pouch like he’s wondering what he’s doing. “What’s there to be excited about? Oilers are gonna suck. Patriots are gonna suck. Miami and Dallas are gonna be tough to beat again. We’re probably better off not seeing all the carnage.”

  “Are you more of a Patriots fan now that they’re New England instead of Boston?”

  “I’m just glad they rejected that…idiotic name change.” Shepard talks, but I’m watching his food pouch. It hasn’t moved. “Bay State Patriots. What Masshole thought of that?”

  “I am looking forward to getting back to some games,” I chime in. It feels good to be talking, rather than thinking about the fact that I suddenly don’t want to eat.

  “I’m looking forward to walking,” Shepard says. “Getting some serious rounds of golf in, to make up for all the ones I’ve missed…”

  “I think we’ve all earned the right to kick back a bit, after this,” Kerwin observes. He’s peeled open his pouch of meatballs but seems in no hurry to dig in. I focus on his spoon. It doesn’t move.

  “I do want to stay busy,” Shepard replies. “Whatever I do. I don’t know how much any of us is going to have to do at NASA after this. I’m sure we’ll all end up moving on at some point. Some of the guys have talked about beer distributorships. I guess it’s a
good steady cash flow and a decent amount of work, but you can also kick back a bit, especially if you’ve got an established brand and a solid territory. But I don’t know. I think I’ll stick with the bank stuff. I mean, whatever it is, unless there’s some challenge, some competition…”

  Shepard still hasn’t eaten anything; I’m sure he’ll take a bite after this, but he doesn’t.

  “I don’t know what else I want to do,” I admit. “It would have been easy to get out, after the moon. It would’ve been the easiest thing in the world. It was practically a job just sorting through all the job offers. But…I don’t know.”

  “It’s a different world when you don’t have someone else telling you what to do,” Shepard says.

  “It is,” I acknowledge. “You know, it’s funny, all the opportunities I had…the thing I thought about most was just going back on active duty. It’s nice being part of something bigger. You don’t have to figure out what to do, just how and when. And I guess that’s something we’ll all have to…” I’m not sure what to say or how to say it. “…I guess you get so used to being a part of something. And this job in particular. You wonder who you are without it. Mike Collins, obviously he left, he’s a diplomat now, and he seems to love it. But I don’t know what I’d be if I wasn’t an astronaut.”

  “Excuse me, gentlemen.” Shepard wipes his face to clean off the food he never ate. Then he turns his head towards the bottom of the console, like he’s heading for the tunnel and the manned module.

  “You’re going down there?” Kerwin asks.

  “Couple minutes. It won’t kill me to use the bathroom like a human being, will it?” Shepard asks, then floats down out of sight.

  “You’re not eating?” I ask Joe.

  “I gotta admit, I’m not exactly hungry. You?”

  In the thin atmosphere it’s hard to tell, but I think I hear something from down in the direction of the bathroom, sounds of sickness. “No. Not exactly.”