Riddled Space
Page 23
“Sounds unlikely,” said Shep.
“Well, the astronauts were all doped up so they wouldn't use so much oxygen, and so forth, so they let him go. While he was out there, he ripped his suit and died. There's this online video of that moment. . . him moaning a little and floating away from the capsule. I can't believe he did this to me!”
“Tricking you into naming the ERV after the gallant man who sacrificed himself to save the rest of the crew. Pretty nervy. I hope nobody else makes the connection.” Shep looked off in the distance. “I wish I had met Roque.”
“He was such a charmer. You would have liked him.” Lisa smiled distantly.
“A charmer, eh?” Shep paused, seemed to gather his nerve. “I know we promised never to ask.”
“I didn't. For one thing, the Commander who can't keep her hands off the crew doesn't last long. Second, Roque was paralyzed from the waist down. Nothing worked. And I mean nothing.”
“Oh, him! 'The Old Man of the Sea',” Shep said. “Except it's really of Space.”
“That's him. He asked me to do two favors, Shep. As soon as I get out of here, I want to go take care of them.”
“After a little time in Ohio, I hope,” he said. “Eddie and Susan were really unhappy that Aunt Phyllis moved in to take care of them.”
“Of course after Ohio!”
“Not to mention—I have reservations in Per Se for you, like I promised.”
“How?” asked Lisa, stunned.
“You're a celebrity, love. The manager assured me that no matter when you want to come, there will be a table waiting for you.”
Lisa smiled at Shep. “It might be a while, though. After I get out of here, I'm sure I will be tied up here with all kinds of debriefings and what not.”
And in this, she was absolutely correct.
***
It was days before John even found where Celine's room was, much less had the strength to make his way there.
“Hi Celine,” he said from his wheelchair. Celine's hair had mostly fallen out. John had always had close cropped hair, so his baldness was less noticeable.
“John! Oh, I must look awful!” she cried. “Thanks for visiting me!”
“Tyra came in today.” He waved a sheaf of papers with a large clip. “She filed.”
“I am so sorry,” she quietly replied. “Want to talk about it?”
“A little. I was right—there was another man. Moved in almost as soon as I lifted for orbit. I guess I had it coming. Twenty years in the business is a little long for any marriage. You know, I used to worry about how my mother would react if the marriage ended. Had nightmares about it, in fact. Even in the daytime. Remember that little scene with Commander Daniels, you, and I in the aid station? I was stuck in a funk with my mother chanting gleefully about how right she was about Tyra.”
“I remember, John. I am glad I could help you.”
John shook himself. “Well, that's in the past. It seems that surviving reentry in the Pruett puts everything else in perspective. Financially, I'll be wiped out. But I have this weird feeling that I'll get by somehow. But that's not why I came around. I wanted to find out how you were doing.”
“I tried to bar Garth from the hospital. He paid off a janitor, got in my room, started screaming about all the guys I was screwing in orbit.”
John's lips quirked, as if to smile. “I thought I heard a commotion.”
“Fortunately, the duty nurse snagged a couple of New York's finest. Since we're heroes, they actually listened to me for a change. Garth is in jail, and I am seriously thinking of filing a stalking charge.”
“You should. As well as let the whole story out about his abuse and stalking. The world is on your side now—no better time to use it. But enough of Garth. How're you doing?” he said, waving his arms to indicate the medical aspect of things.
“Docs say I'll make it. There will be a risk of certain cancers for some time, so I have to do all of the usual screenings at an accelerated schedule.”
“Same here. There's one additional thing, too.”
“I think I know what that is,” she said, waving her fingers in a scissor like motion.
“Yeah,” he nodded. “I wasn't sterile enough to go without, and everything was too damaged to take a chance. So, snip, I'm shooting blanks.” He dropped his gaze into his lap, flipping the legal papers a bit. “Not that it matters anymore.” A minute passed.
“I'm glad,” she said.
John looked up at her, wondering, to find her eyes dancing at him.
“Yes, John. Just as soon as we can. Would you like that?”
He wheeled over, took her head gently between his hands, and kissed her on the lips, as he had done so often in his dreams.
Fidelity
Dare County Cemetery, North Carolina, October 2, 2082, 1600 hrs.
The leaves on the occasional oak trees were changing glorious shades of red and yellow as Lisa made her way to the little cemetery on the eastern edge of North Carolina. It was a long drive from Ohio, after a much longer summer of meetings, press conferences, and even harsher sessions behind the closed doors of the UN bureaucracy.
Over and over she told her story, until the details were graven deeply into her memory. She was accused of every kind of malfeasance, and threatened with various forms of punishment, from simple firing to more complex crimes—abandoning her station, incitement to mutiny, and, most cutting of all, deserting Roque Zacarías on the station to die a horrible death.
Without the solidarity of her fellow crew, and most especially the testimony of Fred and Gayatri and Gus, as well as the records captured by the Peeping Tom program, Lisa wasn’t sure she would have gotten out of the UN alive.
And now, this final task. Roque's instructions were clear, and the grave was easily to find with its simple headstone.
Lynn Caren Merriweather
Born June 12th 2036
Died August 29th, 2055
Beloved daughter
So few words, and yet, such a profound life. Without this woman, Roque would never have been in space. Without Roque, there would have been no sleds, no tiles, no parachutes, and a space station full of dead spacehands.
Lisa pulled a flap of sod free from the base of the headstone. The sandy soil loosened easily. She carefully dug out a hollow and laid Roque's box with its nested tube of seawater from that long-ago summer next to the stone. Gently replacing the turf over the box, she gathered up the extra sand. Standing, she scattered it on the rest of the grave, speaking to the shade of the young woman buried beneath.
“He never forgot you, Lynn. Even unto death, he loved you and no other. He is up there now, orbiting above us, grasping the lock of your hair. I know that you and he are probably gazing down, chuckling at me. But he asked me to come, so come to this place I did, to bring you a token of his fidelity and honor the woman I never met. As he told me once, so I tell you. Farewell.”
Wiping her eyes, she saluted the grave and walked slowly back to her car. As she turned to look at the grave once more, she glanced to the sky, remembering Roque, and was the first to see the fireballs of the Moon slicing their way across the lowering skies.
Thank you for buying RIDDLED SPACE.
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From COME IN, COLLINS
by Bill Patterson
Coming soon
Travis Nadler paused before he put his helmet on. He took one long look around the safety bunker, and held out his fist to Bubba Cranford.
"Been a real trip up here. Glad to have served with you."
Bubba's grin startled him. "Y'all worry too much. We'll get through this. I like workin' with y'all, too. Git in the Can, man, or McCrary'll tunnel down here jest to chew you out."
Travis smiled, and put his helmet on. He helped Bubba climb into his ShelterCan, closing the door on the little one-man rescue capsule, then raced over to climb into his own. As he clamped the lid shut around him, he had the unpleasant thought that these ShelterCans might well be their caskets.
"LOX, radio, power, check. Batteries full. Spill valve set to auto. Bubba, you on?"
The suit radio in the standard moondog suit had a couple of circuits—one was extremely low power for work part communications, and the second was a more powerful, longer range variant, designed for communications with Moonbase Collins and a distant workparty.
"Yeah. How are you doing?"
"Fine. A little close, but they trained that out of us." Travis smiled then, all alone in his claustrophobic enclosure. Back on Earth, they were required to remain inside a ShelterCan trainer for seventy-two hours. Only those that survived the experience, known as 'Graveyard' were allowed to progress through UN Ground School training.
"Might be a little more than three days this time, you know," said Bubba. "LOX should last us at least a week."
"How much longer before it hits?"
"Two minutes, maybe less," said Bubba.
The long range radio channel interrupted them.
"This is McCrary. The debris plume is like a great sparkling curtain rising from the south. It has spread from one source and now extends from horizon to horizon."
McCrary paused, as if he was listening to a reply.
"Please relay this to everyone," said McCrary. "One hundred and twenty four years ago on Christmas Eve, three men rounded the Moon for the first time and reported back to Earth. As it was the dawn of spaceflight, they read from Genesis. I fear this is the end of spaceflight, so I will read from Revelations.
"I looked when He broke the sixth seal, and there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth made of hair, and the whole moon became like blood; and the stars of the sky fell to the earth, as a fig tree casts its unripe figs when shaken by a great wind.
"The sky was split apart like a scroll when it is rolled up, and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.
"Then the kings of the earth and the great men and the commanders and the rich and the strong and every slave and free man hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains."
McCrary was silent for a second or two.
"And now, our Moon is red, and we go to hide in our caves. Let this be our final transmission: From the crew of the Lunar Colony Michael Collins, we close with good night, good luck, and God bless all of you, all of you on the good Earth. I bid you farewell."
Silence reigned for a second or two.
"Who knew the Chief was so flowery?" Bubba kept the emotion out of his voice with an effort. After all, he had his image as the unflappable Southerner to maintain.
"Hear those thumps? McCrary left his radio on," said Travis. "That's the debris hitting the surface."
"The Works are going to get shotgunned," said Bubba. "All that work." The impacts, transmitted through the radio, increased rapidly to a continuous surf-roar which suddenly cut off.
"Oh, crap," said Travis, his voice raising slightly. "Chief get it?"
"I don't know," said Bubba. "Maybe it was—"
Whatever cause Bubba thought was lost in a sudden roar. The ground was snatched sideways, then began a savage sawing back-and-forth motion beneath the two Moondogs. The ShelterCans toppled over, moving slowly under the influence of the weaker Lunar gravity. The only sensation Travis felt was a slow-motion lean to one side. He braced inside the hollow cylinder as it seemed to pause in midair, unconnected to the violence taking place around it. He remembered it as the last moment he had any calmness and peace.
The ShelterCan struck the floor of the safety bunker and was immediately battered back and forth between the walls, ceiling, and floor of the small chamber, occasionally careening against Bubba's ShelterCan and the two other empty ShelterCans in the chamber. The motion seemed to take forever, but lasted less than ten minutes.
"Now I know how popcorn feels," Travis thought, shortly before one particularly savage collision knocked him unconscious.
* * *
For news about the RIDDLED SPACE Series, please visit my dedicated microsite.
DEDICATIONS
This book is dedicated, first and foremost, to The Wonderful Wife™, Barbara, who put up with countless hours of writer widowhood, in order that this book should see the light of the day.
To my late brother, John, whose unstinting support for my writing efforts, including the cans of Beanie Weenie, kept my going in the face of constant rejection.
To the English Department of the United States Military Academy, and it’s then head, BG(ret) Jack Capps. He was the first person ever to encourage me to write a book, and led a department whose drive for excellence gave me the tools I needed to become a good writer.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book would not exist if it were not for the support of The Wonderful Wife™, Barbara, who put up with a rather distracted husband, odd sounds coming from the Cave of Horrors, where the computer sits, and countless evenings of non-standard dinners.
To Samuel Peralta, who graciously accepted me into the Paradisi Chronicles
To M. Louisa Locke and Cheri Lasota, who graciously opened up the Paradisi Universe to other authors
To Felix R. Savage, who first accepted me into the larger indie author community
To Craig Martelle and Michael Anderle, who challenged me
to finally put all the puzzle pieces together and produce the Riddled Space series.
About the Author
Bill Patterson is the author of a computer-aided design software book, and a former magazine columnist. His fiction has been published 90 Minutes to Live (JournalStone, 2011), and his nonfiction in Rocket Science (Mutation Press, 2012), where his piece "A Ray of Sunshine" was nominated for the British Science Fiction Association's Award for Non-Fiction.
He is also one of two Municipal Liaisons for the Central NJ Region of the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) challenge. Bill also serves as an Event Host for the Princeton Writing Group.
He and his wife of 34 years, Barbara, live in Central New Jersey.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Title Page
Preface
RIDDLED SPACE
Angus Turley
Jeng Wo Lee
Lisa Daniels
John Hodges
Eddie Zanger
Celine Greenfield
McCrary
The Director-General
CAPCOM
Commander Daniels
Cargo Switch
Graft to Host
The Ride Upstairs
To The Moon, Zanger!
Final Flight
Assumptions
Wages of Sin
Eddie on Final
Lee's New Chief
CE McCrary Digs In