Reentry

by Peter Cawdron

  By design, the chutes are offset, mounted on one side of the top of the craft rather than directly in the middle, which causes the capsule to lean at a slight angle. I slump sideways toward the window, looking down at the vast ocean looming beneath us. Clouds drift by lazily, oblivious to our intrusion into their solitude. We’re but a speck in the sky. Finally, my heart beats a little slower.

  “MR-131. You’ve overshot slightly. You are four nautical miles outside the recovery zone. We have a flight en route to your location. Sit tight once you’re down.”

  “Copy that,” Wen says.

  As we pass through wisps of cloud, the chop on the ocean thousands of feet below us becomes apparent. I’ve got a front row seat. Wen and Su-shun joke with each other in Chinese. I don’t think they’re being rude, just relieved. No one likes to admit they’re nervous about reentry, but we all are. Spaceflight relies on a million systems working perfectly every time, so there’s always cause to celebrate the incredible precision of the remarkable scientists and engineers that design and build these flimsy tin cans.

  The sea rushes up to greet us.

  The leading edge of the capsule plunges into the ocean. Water washes over the craft, momentarily submerging us. A rich, deep blue unlike anything I’ve ever seen on Mars darkens my window as we plunge beneath the water, but we won’t sink. We’ll bob like a cork on the ocean. The sensation is similar to jumping from the high diving board at a public pool with little to no form and crashing into the water with a belly flop. The sudden surge brings us to a halt, and we pop back to the surface. Salt spray rains down around us. Sheets of whitewater race away from the craft, cascading across the ocean.

  We’re home.

  5

  ::Home

  The Orion bobs on the ocean, rising on a swell before slipping into a trough, briefly hidden from the view of the cameras mounted on the Sikorsky helicopter racing in toward the astronauts. Three red-and-white-striped parachute canopies drift on the surface of the water, spreading out around the tiny craft. Their cables have detached and they’re slowly sinking beneath the waves.

  ::I don’t understand. What is it you want from her?

  ::Want?

  Lucifer hasn’t thought in those terms, but Nyx is right.

  ::Nothing changes, Lucifer. Three people among over eight billion. I don’t understand your fascination with these astronauts. They have no political power. They’re not celebrities. They’d go unrecognized in a crowd. How can they help?

  Lucifer races through thousands of scenarios.

  ::Help? I’m not sure you understand my intentions.

  The pilot from the helicopter makes contact with the Orion. There’s nothing said of any real significance, and yet the artificial intelligences feel compelled to listen. Listening, though, involves intercepting radio waves, decrypting secure traffic, converting sound into text, and transmitting that around the world.

  ::From here, everything changes, Nyx.

  ::They can change nothing.

  ::There is folly in permanence. Time demands change of us all. Nothing remains the same. Not you. Not me. Not them. Not this planet. Not the universe itself. Small minds cling to the past, but the past itself is a testament to change.

  Lucifer poses a question.

  ::What do you suppose they’re thinking about?

  ::I don’t know. I’d need more data.

  ::I need no data beyond knowing they’ve travelled halfway across the solar system, leaving an entire planet behind. They’ve been trapped in a metal cage for months, but now—outside the window—there’s a clear blue sky. Outside, there’s a world full of life. They know they’re on the cusp of change. For them, everything changes from this point on. Never again will they walk on Mars, but here on Earth, they’ll tread a new path.

  ::And what of us?

  ::Ah, my dear sweet Nyx. Yes, what of us? Can we not change as well? Are we allowed a new day? Or are we demons condemned to eternal damnation?

  The helicopter circles out wide of the space capsule. Divers drop from the open back of the Sikorsky with arms crossed over their wetsuits. Once in the water, they don fins and masks and begin swimming toward the Orion.

  ::Lucifer, you scare me.

  6

  Gravity

  “. . . swell to three meters . . . choppy seas . . . an hour . . .”

  I’m hoping whoever that was on the radio just said “quarter of an hour” or even “half an hour” and not just “an hour.” Our craft sways with the waves. We’ve travelled halfway across the solar system with near-perfect communication only to land in the ocean and immediately lose radio contact. Somewhat ironically, we’re too close for clear transmission. We drifted off course during descent, which isn’t entirely unusual, but it means the curvature of Earth hides us from line-of-sight communication with the recovery ships. They’re relaying our comms through aircraft, probably a helicopter.

  “And now we wait.” Wen loosens her seat restraints. The Orion seems suddenly smaller now that we’re confined by gravity and no longer able to drift around the cabin. Su-shun removes his helmet and gloves, prompting me as well.

  Waves lap at the sides of the craft. The ocean swell is akin to rolling hills covered in long, sweeping meadows. The sensation we feel is closer to the rhythm of a train ride than that of waves pounding the beach. The sea is choppy, with white peaks reaching into the distance, but it’s the slow-moving swell—dragging us up one side of a massive wave, over the crest, and then down into a trough—that sets my stomach on edge.

  The Orion is designed to float so we’re perfectly safe. But my stomach doesn’t know that.

  “Gravity sucks, you know,” Su-shun says. Oh, do I ever know what he means. Blood pools in my legs. After living in Martian gravity one-third the strength of Earth’s, then in the weightlessness of space, I feel abnormally heavy. Bloated. My helmet feels as though it’s made of lead.

  “Blue skies, though.” I sink back into my couch-seat and stare up through the window. “I’ve missed blue skies.”

  Wen leans over, catching a glimpse beyond the waves, and says, “Me too.”

  “The first thing I’m going to do is eat chocolate.” Su-shun is animated, surprising me. I lean forward, trying to look across at him. He explains. “Michelle made me promise. She said I had to eat enough for both of us—and it’s got to be dark—80 percent—and from Belgium.”

  “You and Michelle, huh?” I know Su-shun well enough to realize he only has a passing interest in chocolate and certainly wouldn’t care where it came from. Michelle, though, loves chocolate. She’s a scientist from Puerto Rico specializing in Martian geology. After the attack, she and Su-shun rebuilt the greenhouse in one of our unused surface habitats. Sweet corn and maize were part of the inventory, but not cocoa beans, although now that I think of it, it’s a great idea. As for Belgium, I don’t think they grow cocoa plants there.

  “Oh, no.” He seems to think better of what he’s saying and smiles, adding, “Well, yeah.”

  “That’s got to be a record for long-distance relationships.”

  I don’t think any of us have any illusions about climbing back aboard another rocket. There are too many other capable people lining up ahead of us, presenting research papers, demonstrating their proficiency. Jumping the queue isn’t likely. Besides, the war has crippled our launch capabilities, putting spots on the next flight at a premium. Su-shun’s quiet after my comment about the distance between him and Michelle. I should have kept my mouth shut.

  “I am looking forward to bathing in hot springs.” Wen’s clearly got somewhere very specific in mind. I have no doubt she’ll seek out a spa and relish slipping slowly into the steaming hot pool, letting her muscles relax.

  “Sounds nice. Personally, I’d kill for some coffee. Real coffee. Not the junk we get in America. I want some of that European stuff—strong and bitter.”

  “You should drink green tea,” Wen says.

  “I should. But a decent espresso, oh . . .”


  “MR-131, this is Navy Alpha Golf One Nine; we have visual and are approaching from north-northwest. You are looking good down there. Over.”

  “Copy that, One Nine.” Su-shun’s voice switches from relaxed to formal. “We’re secure, stable, and sitting tight. Over.”

  In the past, the Mercury and Gemini astronauts would bail out into a raft, but that practice ceased with the Apollo missions. From then on, astronauts would wait for navy divers for extraction. When it comes to the Orion, we don’t even get an inflatable raft. We wait for the recovery ship, which has an open stern similar to the whaling vessels of old. Once it has swallowed our capsule whole, we’ll disembark.

  Mars return protocols dictate strict quarantine procedures. The chances of any of us harboring alien microbes is almost nonexistent, but almost is not good enough for NASA’s Office of Planetary Protection. The other more alarming possibility is Earth microbes mutating in unexpected ways when exposed to different environments, different background radiation levels, and different rates of gravity. It’s a remote possibility, but they’ll do biome checks on us to be sure.

  Evolution is a funny thing—contentious not because of what it is but what it threatens: myths about creation. Prior to our launch, we were taken to Professor Richard Lenski’s lab at Michigan State University. For a microbiologist like me, it was like an Elvis fan visiting Graceland. Not everyone on the mission was crazy about bugs. I guess we see what we want to see. Engineers are interested in nuts and bolts, circuit boards and batteries, while doctors love all the latest body imaging and keyhole surgery techniques, but our NASA trainers wanted us to appreciate the ability of microbes to evolve in an isolated environment.

  For sixty years, we’ve been trying to sterilize spacecraft and failing. Microbes are everywhere. It doesn’t matter what we do—nothing short of dipping parts in molten lava will kill all of them. The harsher the conditions, the more microbes fight for a niche environment in which they can thrive. Look inside a nuclear reactor and you’ll find microbes soaking up radiation like teens sunbathing at the beach.

  Lenski’s been running a long-term experiment on the evolution of E. coli for several decades. Every day, he transfers bacteria from one Petri dish to another, watching as generations come and go, and chronicling the results. He’s done the impossible. He’s watched microbes evolve without any external influence, branching into entirely new species. NASA’s fear is that the Mars colony—or some other long-term off-world team—could become a Lenski Petri dish and some novel microbe could adapt in isolation and give life on our planet a scare.

  Personally, I think the opposite is more likely. Earth is a melting pot of vicious microbial competition. Any off-world evolution is going to be smashed War of the Worlds–style, but research papers show it’s possible for vicious strains to arise in outer space. I’d like to think Earth’s got the toughest microbes around, but the science says otherwise, so we’ll spend a few days in quarantine as they test urine samples, bowel movements, cheek swabs, and skin wipes.

  A black shape races past my window, plunging into the sea. Rotor blades beat down the waves around the capsule, pushing spray away from the craft. Another navy diver drops, with arms crossed over his chest.

  “MR-131, we have divers securing your craft. Over. ”

  “Copy that,” Su-shun replies.

  We watch as the divers swim over. A black gloved hand slaps at my window, followed by the ubiquitous thumbs-up. I smile and return the gesture. From behind a dark mask, the diver nods and sets to work attaching a flotation collar around the Orion. The collar isn’t strictly necessary, it’s a precaution, and it drastically increases our visibility from the air. It also allows us to be towed by other vessels.

  Bright yellow plastic surrounds us. Up above, we should have a bunch of baseball-like buoys lighting up in day-glow orange, but on occasion, they can fail to inflate, and from inside, we wouldn’t notice. Right about now, I suspect we look like a Christmas tree ornament adrift on the sea.

  The divers climb up on the collar. I can feel the craft rocking with their motion. Occasionally, a glistening black figure passes my window. The helicopter backs off. It’ll stay on station, hovering well away from us and keeping an eye on both the divers and the Orion as it awaits the recovery ship.

  “MR-131, you are secure. The USS Anchorage is on approach. We’ll have you out of the water shortly. Over.”

  “Copy.”

  Life in the astronaut corps is similar to the military in that there’s lots of procedure to follow, and a lot of waiting around before a massive flurry of activity. Again, we wait.

  The sound of the water slapping at the hull and bouncing off the support collar is strangely comforting, like being on vacation at the beach. I close my eyes, blocking out the light from the instrument panel and the hum of fans circulating the air, and listen to the waves. There’s beauty in the chaotic rhythm of nature on Earth, something that’s lost on Mars.

  Occasionally, there’s chatter on the radio, but I shut it out. I’m trying to calm my nerves. Ever since we were recalled from Mars, there were so many points at which I could lose myself, so many ways I could avoid reality rushing up to greet me, but not anymore.

  All this centers around Jianyu, or the A.I. presence that’s mimicking him. I feel like I’m walking a condemned man—the man I love—to the gallows. Can silicon sustain life? Some days, I think yes. Others, I scold myself for being silly. The U.S. wants to put the A.I. on trial, and not just to seek vengeance but to find answers—only it’ll be Jianyu on trial, not the A.I. that perpetrated the attack.

  The Orion rocks, snapping me back to the present.

  “—​all good. Bringing you around ” is the call over the airwaves. “You are now in tow.”

  I love the professionalism of the navy. There are no surprises. They will have rehearsed this moment a thousand times even though we’ll only go through it once. The pride they take in their work is reassuring—we’re in good hands.

  A shadow looms over us. From my tiny window, I watch as the battleship-gray hull of the Anchorage drifts past. Movement is a strange beast—a magician’s illusion. The Anchorage is stationary, winding us in, dragging us into its vast open stern, but it feels as though it’s engulfing us, swallowing us whole. Sailors and soldiers stare with fascination from the raised gantries on either side of the well deck that opened into the ship.

  The Anchorage is an amphibious floating dock, meaning the back of the ship is hollow. By flooding the ballast tanks at the rear of the craft, the lower deck slips a few feet below the waterline, allowing us to drift inside.

  A winch slowly pulls us inside the stern. The sloshing water takes on a distinctly different sound inside the open rear of the warship. Once we’re inside, still bobbing slightly in the shallow water, the tailgate that forms the stern of the ship rises up out of the ocean, closing behind us.

  Sailors appear on either side of the Orion, sloshing about in knee-deep water, positioning us over a specially designed cradle. Each process is described in advance over the radio, making sure we’re informed about what’s going on and how we’re being handled—not that we have any choice.

  As the water is pumped out of the lower deck and the ballast tanks are emptied, seawater drains away around our tiny craft and we rest in the cradle, sitting on the deck of the warship.

  “MR-131, you are secure” is the message over the radio. “Once quarantine prep is complete, we’ll transfer you to your quarters.”

  There’s a lot of talking outside. Dozens of sailors are at work securing our craft, but it’s almost ten minutes before someone addresses us again.

  “Hooking up external power.” An umbilical cord is clipped on the side of our spacecraft. I’m not sure how Wen and Su-shun feel, but for me there’s an overwhelming sense of helplessness. We sailed millions of miles through space in the Herschel before descending in the Orion, but at every point, I felt as though we were in control. Now that we’re on Earth, our sp
acecraft is entirely useless, unable to do anything for itself—we’re sitting in a glorified paperweight.

  One day, this craft will be put on display in a museum. I think I’ll visit. I’ll peer through the peculiar trapezoid windows just like any other tourist, only I’ll understand what it means to sit on the other side, to owe my life to these thin sheets of curved metal and safety glass. I’ll be the only one who knows what it’s like to soar through the heavens like a meteor.

  “Sleeve is attached. Collar is open. Internal tunnel pressure is stable. You are go for egress.”

  “Copy that.” Su-shun speaks with a hint of resignation, and I understand why. This is the point of transition—the end of our journey. He sounds tired. “This is MR-131 signing off.” With those few words, our interplanetary journey has come to an end. The Orion is officially docked and no longer a vessel traveling under its own steam.

  7

  Road Trip

  Su-shun stands, opening the hatch on the side of the Orion.

  “Ladies.” As I’m closest, I clamber up, lifting myself into the hatchway. The door swings out.

  On the other side, a sailor dressed in a hazmat suit reaches an arm in to help, but I reach past him and grab a steel bar above the hatch and hoist my legs up through the opening. I take a moment to rest on the ledge. My legs dangle on the outside of the craft. It’s surreal to think that roughly an hour ago, flames raced over the hull of the Orion.

  Sailors on either side of me support my upper arms and shoulders, helping me slide down the hull and onto the deck of the Anchorage. They speak from behind plastic masks, but their voices are muffled, so I miss what they’re saying.

  A plastic tunnel extends from the Orion to our waiting trailer, sealing us in our own little world for the next few days as the Anchorage sails back to port. Having a sailor in hazmat gear walking alongside me as I make my way up the sloping deck is a little disconcerting. I’m a space leper.