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

by Gerald Brennan

  “Not sure why the spacecraft moved.”

  “Me neither.” Eagerly I scan the panel; everything’s a little off. “I have a fuel cell light on number 1, a fuel cell disconnect, AC BUS Overload 1, Main Bus A out. Let’s reset the fuel cell.”

  Once I do so, it seems everything is fine. I tell myself nothing happened.

  15:09.

  To the ground, I speak: “Houston, Explorer, the spacecraft…moved a bit and we had a slight power transient. Briefly lost the fuel cell. It looks like everything’s back to normal. Let us know when you want us to send the state vector. Over.”

  15:10.

  The radio comes on, too soon for them to have heard me. “Explorer, Houston. We’re waiting for you to begin Program 23. When complete, send the stars and sightings. Over.”

  I check my watch. Eleven and a half minutes ago…they should be where I was then. And that was before I started Program 23. Wasn’t it? I am not sure why I don’t know. How many minutes does it normally take to forget what time it is?

  Shepard’s mood’s growing more foul by the minute. Even Kerwin looks a little irritable.

  “We’ll sort this out,” I tell them, mildly annoyed as well. Then: “Houston, Explorer, Program 23 is complete. Stars are…uh, Rigel, Arcturus and Deneb. Shaft and trunnion angles as follows…” I rattle off the numbers. “We had a power issue after that, but we’re back up. Ready to transmit the state vector whenever you are ready.”

  15:13.

  The radio comes back. Again, too soon for them to have heard my most recent words. “Explorer, Houston. We copy clear LOS to Venus. Rigel, Arcturus, Deneb.”

  I sigh, exasperated. “Houston, Explorer, not sure if you copied my subsequent transmission. We had a power transient here, but we are ready to send the state vector. Over.”

  I wait.

  15:14.

  I count backwards from now, creating history from memory before it’s too late. In a few minutes, we should hear them acknowledging the power issue, and our reassurance that everything’s OK.

  15:15.

  The others are giving me looks, but I don’t want to start talking to them and potentially miss Houston’s response.

  Then at last: “Explorer, Houston. Comm check, over.” It is not a response.

  “Houston, Explorer.” I refuse to believe that this is an issue. “We are reading you three by four. We’ve completed P23 and the alignment and we are ready to transmit the state vector. Let us know how you’re reading us. Over.”

  I make extra careful note of the time: 15:16. I look at all the switches on the panel. I know I haven’t moved any of them, but I look and look again.

  More waiting.

  15:17.

  “Explorer, Houston. Comm check, over.”

  I know we have the S-Band on the manned module as well. So even if there is a transmission issue, we have another transmitter, whenever we’re able to go back down there. But I still need to respond. “Houston, Explorer. We are reading you three by four. Not sure if you’re reading us.”

  Shepard looks like he wants an explanation.

  Bracing for an interrogation, I figure I’ll answer the questions before he asks: “Signal strength from them is the same as it’s been. Nothing’s changed with the setup. I haven’t touched the panel.”

  The look on his face melts into something almost merciful. “I know you haven’t, Buzz.”

  “We’ll switch over to the manned module S-Band once we can go back down there.”

  “Yeah.”

  Kerwin is looking down at his dosimeter. “Gentlemen, can you take a look at your PRDs?” It’s a normal professional request, reasoned and measured, but I get the undercurrent, the awful truth, that he’s scared.

  And sure enough, mine says: 56020. “That jumped a lot, didn’t it?”

  “Was that another CME?” Shepard asks.

  “I think it was part of the same one,” Kerwin replies flatly. “The ‘mass’ part.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Wednesday was the high-energy photons. Light’s what…670 million miles per hour? So we got it as soon as we could see the event. And there were protons that were accelerated by that, probably like a bow shock. But you remember that whole massive arc of plasma lifting off the solar surface? That was still heading towards us, this whole time. And it wasn’t dense enough to hit us hard, but obviously, plasma’s a great electrical conductor…”

  My heart sinks and hits my stomach, and that starts rumbling again. “So that transient…”

  “There could have been a discharge. Out through the antenna, via the amps. They were designed pretty robustly, but they weren’t designed for this.”

  “Are you saying we actually passed through something?” Shepard can’t believe it. (To be fair, neither can I.) “Even at this distance, with the inverse square law and all that?”

  “The size of that event, it could’ve easily been a couple billion tons of material when it started,” Kerwin says.

  “Jesus.” Shepard shakes his head. “All right, let’s cycle all the breakers. Turn it all off and get it back going again, back to the last good configuration.”

  I get to work, despite my bad feeling.

  “We still have the manned module high-gain,” Kerwin feels compelled to remind everyone.

  “Whenever it’s safe to go back down there,” Shepard says.

  •••

  There is some part of me that does not believe all of this is happening. Given the redundancies in the comms systems, the multiple USB exciters and amplifiers and antennae, and all of the combinations with which they can be combined, it doesn’t seem possible that we’ve lost voice communication with home. I find myself thinking, at last, of Joan and the kids: wondering if they still have the squawk box rigged up in the kitchen, wondering what they think of all of this, imagining the conversations, concern and alarm and maybe even hysteria. Although then again, there’s a chance someone cut them off, just to keep them from worrying…

  Enough. I don’t want to think about any of this.

  “I need a break, quick,” I tell the guys, and avail myself of the bathroom contraption.

  If you are venting urine directly into the vacuum of space, there are engineering problems one doesn’t run into on Earth, or even with the quasi-normal toilet in the manned module. Specifically, if you open the valves before you start urinating, the suction from the tubes that connect your urethra to outer space will leave your johnson in a pinch. But if you just start peeing without the valves being open, the condom fills with urine and bursts, and you’re chasing down yellow goblin globules for the next half hour. The trick is to start your flow a split second before you open the valve; everything sprays gloriously out into the universe, a yellow burst of evaporating droplets that’s easily more interesting to look at than most of what you see in interplanetary space. I pay close attention and forget about everything else, and it all goes smoothly.

  Then I look down at my dosimeter: 56021. I turn to the others, who are still cycling breakers and checking switches on the console. “Uhh, can you guys look at your PRDs?”

  “What’s it, another spike?” Shepard asks.

  “No, no, it’s…I think it’s flattened out.”

  Shepard sees where I’m going with this: “Wonder what it’s like down there.”

  “Let’s do a little experiment,” Kerwin suggests. “We’ll write down all our dosimeter numbers, put one of them down there, wait an hour, and see if it’s changed more than the ones up here.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Shepard says. He volunteers to deliver his dosimeter down to the main deck, and after we scribble down the number, he goes. It’s a little gesture; after all we’ve absorbed, I’m not sure how much of a difference those couple minutes would realistically make. Still, I can’t help but appreciate it.

  The resetting of the comms is done. We’re still getting no indication that Houston has heard us. But I am encouraged, a little, by the dosimeters.


  Sure enough, when Shepard goes back to retrieve the PRD, it’s only gone up 0.02 rads, virtually the same as the ones we’re wearing.

  “All right,” he grins. “As commander of this mission, and in absence of guidance from Flight, I do believe we’re safe to reoccupy the manned module.”

  As we float on down, ground breaks in, Weitz’s voice weary in our headsets: “Explorer, Houston. Comm check, over.” Hopefully we’ll be able to answer soon enough.

  It is refreshing to go back down, the topsy-turvy transition from tunnel to hallway and into the relative roominess of the main deck, the telescope console and the kitchen area, everything looking strange and familiar, like an old friend.

  “Joe, get comms up and running, and let us know when we’re patched in.”

  “All right,” Kerwin starts flipping switches.

  “Good to be back,” Shepard says.

  “It is,” I concur.

  “OK, we’re up on the manned module comms,” Kerwin says. “Going push-to-talk.”

  “OK.” Shepard seems nonplussed, despite everything that’s gone wrong in the past couple days. “Houston, Explorer, we’ve had a power transient. We’ve lost the command module comms, but we’re back up on the manned module S-Band. How do you read? Over.”

  I take extra care to make sure my mic isn’t transmitting back to the world. Then to Al: “I’m gonna hit the bathroom quick.” He nods.

  Once I’m alone in there, I strip down. I’ve had the fecal containment garment on for a while, and it is beyond time to clean up a little. There is foulness of a strange consistency.

  I wipe up tiredly. We have a few spare containment garments, but not many. The bathroom itself smells awful. When we took turns down here, during the great sickness, we did not take enough time to clean. So I do a little.

  Then I look again at the black spot on my neckline, the one I was worried about not so long ago. I almost have to laugh. The way things are going, if I have time to die of cancer, I’ll be a lucky man.

  The radio: “Explorer, Houston. Transmitting in the blind. We’ve received no comms and no telemetry for over an hour. Please acknowledge. Over.”

  Kerwin replies eagerly: “Houston, Explorer, we read you three by four. We’ve switched from CM coms to the manned module. Please acknowledge. Over.”

  16:48.

  I float back out, and all of the sudden I feel all wrong. The clock has reset, but my mind is creating crazy scenarios.

  I drift over to the console, just to be an extra set of eyes. Of course everything looks normal: signal strength, antenna pitch and yaw. Shepard and I trade a weary awful look. He looks haggard and old.

  16:52.

  From distant Earth: “Explorer, Houston. Transmitting in the blind. We’ve received no comms and no telemetry for over an hour. Please acknowledge. Over.”

  Just like upstairs, the S-Band system in the manned module has two amplifiers, and the antenna can be dialed to beam widths of 40.0⁰, 11. 3⁰, and 4.4⁰, with corresponding increases in signal strength as the beam narrows. And the S-Band has a backup mode that changes how voice is transmitted, clipping the signal and transmitting directly on the main carrier to gain an extra few decibels of signal strength.

  Over the next few hours, we try every possible permutation and combination.

  Nothing.

  Everyone is impressively calm, steady and quiet, with none of the tension and pettiness that have cropped up at odd moments earlier in the mission. Or I should say that they seem calm, and whatever disturbance is within me stays down there, never reaches the surface, because I want to work smoothly, to work the problem and figure it out. And in those hours I feel a strange affection for my crewmates, some combination of Platonic and brotherly love, even towards Shepard, even in spite of everything: we seem to work best when the stakes are highest. And after we’ve tried everything, we do not despair; we simply reset all the comms circuit breakers again, and reconfigure everything again, and verify from the S-Band indicators that the antennae are pointed steadily back at Earth, and we try it all again, working from memory, the months and months of living and breathing these systems.

  Still: nothing.

  •••

  22:30.

  We dine in silence, a late tired dinner.

  It is nice to be back in the manned module, which does feel like home. And the food is sitting well enough, but the comms outage isn’t. None of us wants to think about what this means. We are all the type of people who will do anything to accomplish the mission. But we’ve done everything.

  You have to assume it will all work out in the end. If you don’t, why even start anything?

  “We should probably power down the command module,” I point out to Shepard as we tidy up. “We don’t want to get tight on the margins for the fuel cells.”

  “Yeah,” Shepard says. “It doesn’t look like we’ll be doing the course correction any time soon. You’ll be OK on your own?”

  “I can probably do it in my sleep at this point.”

  I am close enough to sleep that there’s not much difference. I plod through the checklists. I am exhausted and ready for bed, but I take my time. Absent-mindedly, I click the Push-to-Talk button on my headset. I’m so bone-tired I don’t really think about what I’m doing, but I do find myself slowly tapping out a familiar rhythm. Dot-dot-dot-dash-dash-dash-dot-dot-dot. S.O.S.

  There is an inescapable sadness as I power down the spacecraft this time. I wonder when we’ll power it up again.

  Back in the manned module, they’ve turned down the radios for the night, so low they’re barely audible. I don’t blame them. It is too depressing to hear the regular comm checks, the resignation in Crippen’s voice.

  I float back down to the sleeping chambers with my journal, and write:

  8 SEP 1972

  Hit by remnants of CME. Possible electrical damage to amplifiers. Houston is not receiving our communications. Could not perform course correction. Not sure when or if comms can be restored.

  I cannot believe any of this. I can’t help but wonder if we can survive anything else going wrong, or if we can survive this, even. I can’t linger too long on these dark thoughts. But tonight, they do drag me down to sleep, at least.

  •••

  The plasma hits hard.

  There is a slow roll moment at first, and then it builds and builds and builds.

  Within a minute we are tumbling like a leaf in the wind. The solar panels are all on the manned module, so it’s catching the brunt of it, and we can hear metal groaning, the spacecraft stack trying to break apart, the solar panels straining under the unexpected physical loads.

  We hear a tearing of metal. It shouldn’t be possible to hear anything outside the hull, but there it is, transmitted through the metal itself, a groaning and snapping.

  Then: silence.

  All the lights go out.

  •••

  In the morning, over breakfast, we discuss our plans for the day. We’re eating tiredly, but we’re eating. The radios are still down low and we can barely hear the voice that comes on every five minutes, like a super slow metronome. It’s enough to make me miss even the worst news days.

  “We should do the blood draws,” Kerwin says.

  “The blood draws?” Shepard’s absolutely incredulous.

  It does sound like a strange request. Every two weeks, we’ve been taking samples of blood and freezing them in an airlock on the cold side of the craft, so that when everything’s all said and done, they can get a look at how our physiology responds to a year in deep space. Obviously now there’s some question about the importance of such activities, all the old routines. Then again, there isn’t a lot else to do right now.

  “Might as well,” I concede.

  Shepard shakes his head tiredly. “Are you kidding me? This guy’s way too eager to be doing this. I think he’s part vampire.”

  “Dr. Acula, at your service,” Kerwin smiles thinly.

  We roll up our arms
and get to it. Each of us is trained, and it goes smoothly enough, until Shepard stops. “Wait a second.” He floats over to the radio console.

  “Come on, Al, you can’t get out of every medical…”

  But Shepard turns the volume up, and that tells us to shut up. We catch the tail end of the message.

  “…Morse S.O.S. late last evening. Please attempt another Morse transmission as soon as possible. Over.”

  Then, silence.

  “Jesus. Did we test the Morse yesterday?” Shepard asks.

  “We…no, I don’t…” I sputter. “We were so fixated on voice and data.” I have to laugh a little: we were so confident that we knew all the ins and outs of the radio that we never actually pulled out the checklists and followed them to the end, where the last-resort procedure is to use the push-to-talk button as a Morse key.

  “I didn’t think about it,” Kerwin says. “That is at the end of the checklist, isn’t it? I guess that’s what we get for not following the checklist.”

  Shepard gives him an ugly look, but we’re all excited enough about reestablishing comms that he can’t stay mad for long. “I guess,” he smiles a little. “Who sent an S.O.S., though?”

  It takes me a second to even remember that I’m responsible for this. “I think I tapped something out on my headset. When I was shutting down up there. I was so tired, I didn’t even stop and think about what I was doing. I…”

  Again the transmission comes on: “Explorer, Houston. After reviewing comms from yesterday, we believe we received a Morse S.O.S. from you late last night. Please attempt another as soon as possible. Over.”

  The news is so good that we’re all grinning now, even Shepard. “All right, who wants to go?” he asks.

  “I think my Morse is pretty decent,” Kerwin replies.

  “Let’s…all right. Message them: ‘Houston, Explorer…’”

  “I’m not sure we need that,” I interject. “I know, radio discipline, you-this-is-me, but I think they’re gonna know it’s us…”

  Shepard smiles a little wider, and continues. “’…Hit by remnant of coronal mass ejection. Possible electrical discharge and damage to high-gain amplifiers. Spacecraft otherwise running smoothly…crew health good…what else?”