“You think?”
“Who knows? If we knew what God knew, we’d be God. Is it possible to fit all that up here?” He taps a finger on his temple.
I smile a little. “I keep thinking of what you said about these structures of the universe. The galaxies, how they’re in clusters and superclusters, and there are these massive voids, and you said it looks like the neurons in the human brain. What if it is?”
“Are you saying we’re in a giant mind?” He chuckles. “What, are we in our own minds? Whose mind is it? Mine or yours?”
“I hope for your sake it’s not mine,” I laugh. “As you know, it’s a little twisted up there.” I have been eating the rest of my tray, saving the meat for last, delaying gratification. I’ve also avoided this particular meal tray for the last few weeks of the mission, so I’d enjoy it more when it got here. It does taste good, but there isn’t quite enough somehow. Something’s missing. I take the last bite, and wish I had more, and find myself thinking: Now what?
“Maybe it’s God’s mind,” he says.
I can’t help but smirk. “God would have to be pretty tall.”
I look up. The mission clock is counting down. We are eager to be home, eager to see it all new, but it occurs to me that we will miss this, too.
•••
In the morning, we leave the sleeping chambers for the last time.
I double-check the storage areas and make sure to secure the Beta cloth book bag; I look one last time at the smooth metal walls. It feels like checking out of a hotel room, going back to front, inspecting the bathroom, the vanity, the bedroom, then looking under beds and opening every drawer, and finally standing in the door and looking it over once more. (Except here, of course, there’s no point just looking “under” anything…if you left something behind, it’s probably floating.)
“Don’t forget to make your bed,” Kerwin jokes.
“Yeah, right? Talk about your unnecessary tasks.” Still, the sleeping bag looks sloppy just hanging there; I pull the drawstring tight and flatten it out.
Then I float over to Shepard’s area one last time and see, tucked beside the frame, something I’d missed: a note of some sort, paper sealed in an envelope with LOUISE on the front. I can’t help but wonder what’s in it, and why I hadn’t seen it before.
Upstairs we use the control moment gyros for one last attitude change; we swivel the spacecraft stack again and look at Earth, big and blue and bright and colorful, all the mottled brown and green landforms, the impossible complexity. My heart swells. We’re both speechless.
Before leaving the main deck, we look around again at the galley area and the telescope console, at everything we will never see again.
•••
And now we’re up in the command module.
I’m in the left couch, the commander’s seat, and Kerwin is in the rightmost spot; we wanted to preserve the spacecraft’s rotational symmetry and flight characteristics during reentry, but the result of course is a sad ugly gap in the middle, like a missing front tooth.
But we are powered up, and everything’s working correctly, and the command module batteries are charged, and the voyage is coming to a close at last.
“We might be close enough for voice on the VHF now,” Kerwin says.
“Let’s give it a shot,” I say, then flip the switches. “Houston, Explorer. Comm check, over.”
I wait. Nothing.
“Houston, Explorer. Do you read, over?”
Then: “Explorer, Houston. We are picking you up via ARIA. Good to hear your voice, Buzz.”
This catches me short: I choke down the feeling welling in my chest, and blink away what might be tears. We have work to do. “Houston, Explorer. I believe you have a PAD for us.”
“Explorer, Houston. That we do. MIDPAC, 000, 153, 000…” They rattle off the numbers, all the wonderful numbers that tell us how we’ll be aligned when we hit entry interface, and the latitude and longitude of our splashdown point, and the distance and time we’ll be travelling through the atmosphere, and starting point for the entry monitoring system scroll, and the time we can expect to see our parachutes.
•••
We delay casting off our modules for as long as possible, right up to the entry interface, almost.
The service module goes first. This was not in the original plan, but it is basically depleted now. Then, at last, manned module jettison: a quick final jolt. It is strange to see it changing size in the windows, part of our past now, a home we can never revisit.
“Gravity should be interesting,” Kerwin says.
“Yeah.” Obviously nobody’s been up here this long, and there has been some speculation about how we’ll hold up, whether we’ll be able to handle our reentry tasks. Given the health aftereffects of the CME, there’s all the more cause for concern. The most alarmist of the doctors said we’ll be squished like grapes, that our brains or hearts will fail once we hit the high Gs.
“Gotta admit, I’m curious how we’ll hold up,” he adds.
“Before we went to the moon, they said the dust would ignite when we got it in the spacecraft,” I tell him. “They thought it would literally catch on fire, like one of those…electrostatic dust explosions in grain silos. If I was the type of person to listen to the naysayers, I’d never have taken this job.” It occurs to me that I’ve told him this before.
“Me neither.” There is a long pause, then: “Let’s keep talking, though.”
“Yeah.”
Entry interface is an arbitrary point 400,000 feet up; we pass through it, and the clocks start. “FDAI at 153 degrees,” I call out. “Looking good.”
Through the window I can see the service module and the manned module chasing us, and I know they should start tumbling and falling behind, but there is always some concern. I am looking as well for a third something, much smaller, probably miles behind us now.
“Coming up on .05 G.” Our bodies are settling into the couches for the last time, and from the clocks and instruments I can see we’re right on target, 29 seconds after entry interface.
Outside the window, I can see plasma now, wisps of plasma whipping past, and the colors getting thicker, orange-red but bits of yellow and red and even a little green and blue and purple here and there. I can see the manned module starting to tumble now, starting to heat up and tumble, and the service module is behind it now.
“Quite a sight,” Kerwin says. “Like you’re in a neon tube.”
“Yeah, I always liked it,” I tell him, then scan the EMS display. There is a cellophane graph that has started to roll, and our trajectory’s being inscribed on it, these thousand-plus miles of fiery passage. “EMS is working fine. 0.3 G and…whoa!”
Outside, there’s a terrific cataclysm, an explosion of plasma and sparks off in the slipstream, with some bits hurtling onwards and others fluttering off.
“What the hell was that?”
Out there now I see a myriad of fiery meteors chasing us, and slowly falling behind. I look again for something that probably isn’t there, something apart from all of it, a man-sized streak. No luck.
“Service module must’ve hit the manned module,” I tell Kerwin. We are sinking deeper in the couches now, pressed heavier and heavier. “Wow, that really feels like more than it is.”
“Yeah. 1.5 Gs. 2 Gs. P64 is working fine.”
I’m being squeezed now, uncomfortable; our bodies are flat in the couches and everything’s operating on pre-programmed parameters, so there’s not the same danger of blackout as there is in a fighter, where your torso’s upright and the blood gets pulled from your head but you must keep actively flying, but still it is strange and harsh. And now outside it is all color, no glimpse of space or Earth, and the pressure is building, building, building.
“5.4 Gs…5.8…6.1…6.2…”
“Man,” Kerwin gasps. “Feels like…12.”
And then it abates, just a bit; the reentry program is designed to bring it back down to 4 Gs and hold it f
or a few more seconds, and it’s still intense but we are in the atmosphere now, dug in deep and slowing like we need to be, slowing down so there is no risk of us skipping out of the atmosphere and ending up in orbit, and everything is going according to plan but it is difficult to pay attention to that, difficult to think of anything beyond the squeeze.
“OK, P65,” I call out, and we can feel the craft rotating, right on time; because the command module is weighted, it has a slight lift vector, and now we’re pointing that back upwards to ascend out of the atmosphere briefly, although we’re slow enough now that we’ll be falling back to Earth shortly one way or another.
We fly on for a couple minutes like this, the glow lessened now, the EMS cellophane showing that we have ascended a bit, and then P67 takes over and we start heading back down, and the G-forces start building again and I can tell from the EMS trace that we are slowing, slowing, slowing, and soon falling more or less straight down.
“P67 terminated,” I say. “SCS in effect.”
We keep watching the instruments, watching, watching, watching. Outside there is the strange full brightness now of daytime sky, harsh and unfamiliar. And there is the keen awareness that all of everything still hinges on these next few minutes, on the drogue mortars firing those parachutes out on schedule, and the drogues cutting away, and the mains firing, all of it packed and prepared and installed over a year and many millions of miles ago.
“Apex cover jettisoned,” I say. “Waiting on 9:32 for the drogues.” According to the PAD they gave us, the first parachutes should start deploying 9 minutes and 32 seconds after entry interface, so there is some concern when that doesn’t happen.
“9:35…9:40.”
And then at last, there is the whump, and they are firing off and de-reefing.
“Drogues are deployed! Cabin relief valve is open.”
“Wonderful news,” we hear in the headset.
And with the valves open we are breathing Earth’s air at last, fresh and real, and though the ocean is still miles below, I swear I can smell the salt.
The drogues cut away at last, and the main parachutes deploy, orange and white and glorious in the sunlight, and they are full and round and beautiful, and unless you’ve been hanging under a full parachute, life suspended, you cannot appreciate what a spectacular sight it is, and even through the singed windows, I swear I can see every detail, every beautiful stitch of fabric.
We are falling through clouds, glorious silver clouds, not thick but scattered, shiny and bright. Of course now we are at normal gravity, but it still feels like so much more.
“We have visual,” the air boss calls in our headsets. “Looking good. Swells maybe two feet. Nice gentle seas.”
When at last we hit, we hit hard, a violent splash that doesn’t feel real, but it is real. We are home at last.
Somehow we end up in Stable I position, upright. Everything feels impossibly heavy.
There are post-landing tasks; Kerwin has to cut the chutes like I did three years ago, and we have to safe the spacecraft and power it down, we have little tidbits of work to do, but over and above all else, in the big empty spaces between those moments, there is that unreal feeling that this is now real again, life on planet Earth, and the dark year of travel now past will soon start to fade, with some sharp details still remaining but so much of it becoming just a hazy memory.
Outside, the helicopters are circling. Our spacecraft is bobbing gently on the ocean swells. The seascape outside feels far too bright. We both feel weak, lightheaded. Our hearts are pounding.
“Swimmers in the water,” the air boss says. “We’ll have the recovery collar attached shortly.”
When I see the frogman at the hatch, it occurs to me that this is the first new face I’ve seen in a year.
“Recovery team has arrived,” I announce. “Post-landing tasks complete. Explorer is signing off.”
And with that, we’re done.
•••
Given our long stay in space, they’re recovering us differently than they did after the moon, bringing us directly on to the ship rather than cracking the hatch while we’re still afloat. The Ticonderoga steams over to us and soon looms above us, a massive gray overhanging cliff outside the windows. And soon they are hauling us up via crane, the entire capsule and us still inside.
We’re still lying on the couches. Joe looks ill.
“Hey, you’re not supposed to get seasick.”
“Very funny.” He does not laugh. He truly looks miserable.
I am eager to get out of the spacecraft, to climb out under my own power. They set us down on the aircraft elevator, which has been lowered to the hangar deck level, and there is a period of a few minutes while they make preparations outside, and I get out of the couch and nearly fall down, I feel so impossibly heavy.
I’ve unlocked the hatch, and now it swings open, and there is a platform and a red carpet leading off into the cavernous hangar deck, and it occurs to me that Joe should go first, so I help him out of his couch and he gets sick all over me, all over the floor, and I nearly slip helping him up and out, and they are reaching out for him, other Navy doctors placing hands under his arms and guiding him down the steps and down the carpet, past the dignitaries and the clicking shutters of the cameras.
And then I clamber out. I slip and stumble and nearly bust my face on the hatch; I cannot believe how strange it feels. And I want to walk down on my own, but my head is spinning, and there are corpsmen beside me now, and I stumble again getting out.
“You didn’t tell me you turned the gravity up to four,” I say, and I allow them to help me down the stairs.
Ahead, the hangar is a shadowy cave. Although my head is spinning, I can’t help but take a look over my shoulder at the great Pacific. The sea and the sky and the clouds all seem so impossibly vast now, this great amazing ocean expanse, all bright and clean and infinite again.
•••
We spend the next few hours being poked and prodded and measured and gauged: a blur of needles and lights and mirrors and scales and EKG pads. It’s a battery of medical tests every bit as invasive as the ones we took to become astronauts; I know I’ll never return to space, and this feels like the opposite. They have to make sure you’re healthy enough to go up there, and afterwards they have to make sure you’re healthy enough for normal life.
There are questions about me and about Shepard. They question Joe and me separately. I am vaguely uncomfortable about this. But eventually it is over.
Mid-afternoon, the ship’s radiotelephone patches a call through to Houston so I can talk to Joan.
“It is good to hear your voice, Buzz,” she says.
“It’s good to hear your voice, too.” I’m not sure what else to say. This is all so strange and new.
“I wasn’t sure you were going to make it back.”
“Neither was I.”
“The kids are really eager to talk to you.”
“I’m eager to talk to the kids.”
“I’ll put them on in a sec. I’m just…” There is a pause and I hear a sniff, and I realize she is crying. “When that thing with the sun happened, and they lost communication, they came to the door, and…later on, the thing with Alan, I was trying to hold it together, but…I didn’t know what to tell them. I…” Her voice dissolves now into sobs; she’s overwhelmed.
“We’re OK,” I say. “It’s gonna be OK, all of it is…”
“…and then the thing with your father, it’s just…”
“What happened with my father?”
The sobs soften, turn to confusion. “Wait, they didn’t tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
She tells me. I am numb.
•••
By early evening, we are walking unassisted for longer stretches, although it still feels strange. The ship’s barely moving; one has to deal with the normal naval architecture issues, bulkheads with oval hatches rather than plain doorways, and so on, but even in the short flat
hallways I feel odd, like I have to relearn locomotion.
There is a memorial service for Shepard on the fantail deck. It’s solemn and tasteful and moving; I’m surprised when I cry.
We dine on steak and ice cream, with the captain and the head of the support contingent. There is a professionalism and reluctance to bother us, but curiosity does eventually get the better of them, and they ask all the usual questions: “What was it like up there?” and “How does it feel to be home,” all those questions I don’t know how to answer. I don’t entirely mind, because the food’s amazing, the most magnificent meal I’ve ever tasted.
Afterwards we get to stroll up on the flight deck. The carrier’s suspended all normal operations for us; there are curious enlisted men gawking over by the island, but officers keeping them at bay, so we have it to ourselves, the whole massive expanse of black steel under endless sky.
I wake in the middle of the night and need to go to the bathroom. I know where I am but I am groggy; I see the dim shapes of the bunk, and the wedge of light from the hatchway, and I push myself off the bulkhead like I can just float over there, like I’m still weightless and can cross the room with a push of the fingers.
I spill out of the bed in a tumble of sheets and blanket, and fall to the deck’s cold gray steel.
•••
Two days later, we have to fly to Santa Barbara to meet President Reagan.
We get an early breakfast in the wardroom, waffles piled high with strawberries and cream, strip after strip of greasy but delicious bacon, coffee so hot it must’ve been brewed directly from a steam pipe.
“We never got to meet President Humphrey,” I say as we eat. “Poor guy. What did he get? 180 days?”
“Second shortest presidency in history,” Kerwin says. “Almost half of it as a lame duck. Although Garfield’s wasn’t much longer, and he spent a lot of his dying.” He chuckles. “It’s weird to think we’ve got the star of Bedtime for Bonzo as president.”
Island of Clouds: The Great 1972 Venus Flyby (Altered Space Book 3) Page 30
