The Four Fingers of Death

by Rick Moody

  He and Abu got tethered, and they watched the right flank of the Pequod, the nearest face of the craft, dead in the water, it seemed, slower than it took a mechanical pencil to drift across the capsule. All the ignition that would be required had long since taken place, and now it was inert, until, right on schedule, the gaffer’s hook on the side of the Geronimo allowed them to reel in the other ship and secure it with some cables and some electromagnetic cleats. The two crafts sat like this, as close to motionless as you can be and still be moving, ever so slightly, because of the drift from the Pequod’s thrusters. Steve said to Abu, “Okay, can you take it from here?” He heard the crackle of Abu’s microphone, “Let’s get the rapist onboard.”

  And now the first unalloyed disaster of the Mars mission. Steve, according to what Houston had exhaustively detailed for him, was meant to turn back and fetch Debbie, and bring her out onto the surface of the capsule, and then the four of them, nearly half of the entire crew of the Mars mission, would meet between the two ships, like on a section of No-Man’s-Land between the two Koreas, or at the Wailing Wall checkpoint. At that stage, there would be no tethering of Debbie and Brandon, because they were only going as far as the hatch on the other ship, and if they were flush against their handlers, it should have been okay; it should have been. Steve turned his posterior on the Pequod and headed back for Debbie. He ought to have known there was something wrong when she wouldn’t say anything to him, when she assumed the space equivalent of passive resistance, until he wasn’t even sure, at first, if there was someone still in the space suit.

  “Goddamnit, Debbie,” he said. “I can understand you’re upset, and I can understand how scared you are, but please don’t make this more dangerous for me. I have a kid at home, and he’s sick right now, and the last thing he needs today is for something to happen to all of us. I’m begging you, just do what they want us to do and let’s get the hell back in the spaceship and go see the new planet. Can we do that, please?”

  At some point that rag doll in the space suit shook off his hand and stepped beside him out onto the surface of the Geronimo. Steve looked out across the hull of the ship, which seemed rare and proud in the starlight, and he saw Abu and Brandon coming in the other direction. Which meant, yes, that the Geronimo was now entirely emptied, with all of them out in the great beyond of interplanetary space, and the two little constellations of astronauts neared the halfway mark in the march of prisoner exchange. It seemed, like everything else in space, an impossible distance to traverse, and yet, considering the 33 or so million miles they had come, it wasn’t much. Eventually, they were all there, and the four of them hovered at the midpoint of their little journey, at least as we all reconstructed it, and there was a moment when Debbie and Brandon were standing there facing each other, and that’s when Steve thought he heard something in his intercom, something he was later uncertain about, the moment when Brandon grabbed Debbie by the shoulders and shouted. The exact words, unfortunately, are lost to history, though there has been much conjecture since. Abu reached out to stop him, and then there was some kind of explosion.…

  … What kind of explosion? What kind could there have been? It wasn’t an explosion you could have heard, because what you heard out there was nothing, because that was all there was to hear, nothing. So what was the explosion? How to be startled in space, when nothing exactly is what seems to be happening most of the time, when nothing is what time looks like. Well, there was a special provision in the space suits for ignition, if needed, some minor propulsion, in case an astronaut needed to drift, and this was intended only for use out of range of other astronauts, but Debbie had nonetheless ignited some of the oxygen propellant, and had used it to lift off. Because she wasn’t attached. She wasn’t tethered. When Steve looked up, he saw that Abu had tried to get out of the way and was now rotating wildly at the end of his tether, and Brandon was laid out flat against the side of the ship, clinging on to the spot where Abu’s tether was attached to the hull, and Steve’s first thought was, Well, everything is okay. But then he looked out into space. He looked into space, and what he saw was Debbie heading off from the ship, heading out, heading for the Van Allen belt, heading for Jupiter, and his heart plugged in his throat, at the significance of it, of what he had to do, which was to jump, because he had a generous length of cable and he could still go after her, at least part of the way.

  “Debbie, what the hell are you doing?” he called.

  Abu’s voice erupted too. “Debbie, for godsakes!”

  Steve drifted out on the cable, reaching for her, but when he thought he was getting close, there was a second burst from her oxygen pack, and she accelerated, farther out. “Abu,” he called, “what do I do? What do I do?”

  Abu was trying to haul himself in from the end of his cable. He was out of breath; he was at the limit of what he could do. Nevertheless, he said, “I’ll go after her.”

  “No, no. I’ll do it. Get Brandon into the capsule. Can you get Laurie and Arnie on the horn? It’s my problem; it’s my fault. I’ll go.”

  And Steve took hold of the cable from where it was fastened to his space suit, and he unhitched it. Kids, the space walk may be the freest you ever feel, but that doesn’t mean you are in any rush to relinquish that tether. Especially for such a grim purpose. Steve blasted a little bit of propellant out of the tank and headed after Debbie Quartz, who had about nine hours of oxygen left and all of space-time in which to use it. Unless, that is, she blasted the vast majority of oxygen out of the tank, which you could do if you were of a mind and knew how the suits were constructed. You could do it if you were very close to an alternate oxygen source or would be in the next two or three minutes.

  December 15, 2025

  Things have been a little heartbroken here, gang. We are not a contented crew; we are a worried and downhearted crew. For example, Laurie and Arnie were watching the whole thing with Debbie. They were watching and unable to intervene. They were watching and screaming into various intercoms and communicators. Like everything in the register of the space walk, the altercation between Debbie and Brandon took place in a nearly eternal slow motion. Laurie and Arnie were able to see it, to anticipate its outcome, to cry out, to punch into their texting keyboards, Code 14, Code 14, which must be the code that Houston is really tired of getting from us. I’ve heard recordings of Laurie sobbing to Houston (from some unauthorized site of Mars mission feeds), while Arnie tried to comfort her. Laurie and Debbie had been really close before liftoff.

  Meanwhile, after Debbie jumped, Abu was trying to get Brandon in the door to the Geronimo, trying to keep him out of the way. As I’ve said before, Brandon was a former boxer, and there was a lot of space suit wrestling going on just inside the air lock, which was worse than two-year-olds in snow pants going after each other, until Abu noticed that Brandon had a tear in his suit, which probably had to do with standing too close to Debbie when she lifted off. His suit must have partially ignited, even though they are meant to be heat resistant and flame-retardant. Abu was thinking that Brandon was just being unruly, when in fact the guy was probably suffocating, or maybe he was about to freeze to death, which you could do with even the tiniest rip, even though there are twenty-four redundant layers of Mylar. Once they got inside the hatch, well, wait—

  Did I mention the monologue that someone recorded of Steve going after Debbie, which also got broadcast on the Net? It must have been recorded by the Geronimo itself, in the black box, where almost everything is preserved, unless you’re really smart with the application of the cough button. And no one is that smart during an emergency. Effectively, nothing happens on the Mars mission without Houston knowing. Which means that eventually you will know, all of you. So in case you haven’t heard it yet, here’s what Steve said, according to the official record, while sailing out into the vacuum after the retreating figure of Debbie Quartz: “Debbie, listen to me, listen, please, don’t do this, Debbie. Debbie, what are you doing? It’s not worth it. Debbie. Come on! Deb
bie, we came into this together, and we’re going out together.… Listen, please! We dreamed the same dream, think about it, and if that dream isn’t going to happen, if it isn’t going to come to pass, it’s going to be because we all bungled it together! We’re family, Debbie, we all care about you.… One team, Debbie, one family… your problems, Debbie, my problems.… Listen to me, Debbie… whatever your bad feeling is, we can help. Your doubt and uncertainty about the mission, I have it too, Debbie.… Don’t leave us here worrying about what’s become of you. Don’t leave us thinking about you drifting out here.… Let us take care of you, for godsakes, let us love you back into shape, Debbie.… Please, please, please, don’t do this, Debbie. You’ve got the eight hours of oxygen, that’s it. Come on back, please. You don’t need to take it all so seriously, Debbie… just answer me, get on the intercom and answer me.… Please! Nothing is worth this. Think about your friends back on Earth, the people who care about you. Think about us, think about Abu and me, and the rest of the crew.… Think it over.… Debbie, Mars was supposed to be how we showed everyone back home that it wasn’t just about the petty infighting, the religious conflicts, the relentless war and hemorrhagic fevers and all of that, Debbie.… Mars was supposed to be when we thought big and acted big.… Debbie, please… you can use the left-hand thruster, make a big slow arc, Debbie, and I’ll meet you.… Nothing is worth this. I don’t care what you did, Abu doesn’t care, it’s nothing so bad that you aren’t always my teammate and my friend, please, Debbie!” At which point Steve got as far as he felt he could safely go, about a thousand yards. Up ahead of him was a white speck drifting off, a white silent speck, a stilled voice. Then Steve turned back to face the ship, gulped down a big throat full of bile when he saw how far out he was, how far a thousand yards is when you have gone from everything that was, the little tin can of night sky dreams, into everything that is nothing. Nothing at a degree or two above absolute zero. It took Steve another twenty minutes to get back onboard the Geronimo, and if you think Planetary Exile Syndrome is bad, kids, wait till you get a look at the disorder they refer to as Space Panic, which the psychiatrists think is related to earthbound agoraphobia, but worse. When an astronaut gets a good look at the infinite space of space and the size of himself in relation to it, that’s Space Panic. The void looks back into the astronaut; that’s what happens. And it happened to Steve. He just couldn’t really talk for a long spell.

  Oh, and when Steve did get back, Abu had a knife to Brandon’s throat and was saying, “What did you say to her, you piece of shit? I can kill you right now and say that it was the tear in your space suit. I can throw your worthless body out of the ship. No one will give it a second thought. No one will mourn for you, not your own family. You’ll just be drifting out toward Planet X, for nine hours, when your O2 runs out and you suffocate on your own frigging carbon dioxide, and we’ll be eating dinner and forgetting you were ever here. Is that what you want?”

  Out of the air lock, Steve drifted by them like nothing was happening at all. He took off his suit and paused to watch as dollops of blood floated past, blood that must have come from fisticuffs between Abu and Brandon. Normally, we clean up blood and fluids if they’re floating around, crumbs, any of that kind of thing. Sometimes you’ll see a spilled teaspoon of orange juice or water, rolling around in little liquidy balls, and you’ll chase after it and try to swallow it or herd it into a plastic bag, just so that it doesn’t get into a computer motherboard somewhere. Anyway, Steve didn’t pay much attention to Abu and Brandon as they pounded on each other, cartwheeling down the hatch to the cargo bay, Did you tear my suit on purpose? You dog! You trying to—, colliding with the handles on the containment closets. Instead, Steve took a syringe from the first aid closet, and then he tied off his arm, and he loaded himself up with enough lights-out for days. Which meant that Abu and Brandon, though they didn’t trust each other at all, though they were trying to beat the shit out of each other at that very moment, would end up having to negotiate restarting the engines, as Arnie and Laurie had just done, with coaching from Houston. We were all finding out: on the Mars mission you did some things because there was just no one else available.

  That night, the head of NASA, Dr. Anatoly Thatcher, came on-screen, all three ships, to give us the pep talk. Now, this was a laugh riot. The conference took place when José was meant to be asleep, but like every other NASA communication, it would get saved for him. Jim and I were at the kitchen table, attempting to play a strategy game, Martian Invasion. Jim had brought the cartridge himself from home. We were up to level eight, where the tripod creatures from the South Pole manage to slingshot themselves around Phobos. They were heading back to Earth: for Vancouver. It’s a full-scale Martian invasion!

  The screen on the instrument panel went blue, as it did before all messages from Houston, and there was the NASA seal, and then Thatcher came on, with his tortoiseshell glasses, and his shaved head, and big white eyebrows. “Ladies and gentlemen,” said he, “I know it’s been a rough day, perhaps one of the roughest days in the history of the American space program. I know some of you would rather take time to recover from your labors before watching this communication, and that’s fine with all of us. Here on Earth we’d like to talk about what we think has been happening there. We’d like to try to remember Debbie Quartz, a valued member of the Mars mission team. We’ll be reporting on all of this for the media on Earth, as you know, and these thoughts will therefore be excerpted in the press….”

  Everyone had a good story about Debbie Quartz. My story is simple, and I haven’t told it so far because I didn’t want to embarrass Debbie in this web diary—especially given how much trouble she was having from the moment we broke free of Earth’s gravitational pull. The story is this. In the last six or eight weeks before launch, it was becoming abundantly clear that there was trouble in my marriage. I’m not telling you anything that you haven’t been informed of here already. But somehow I was among the last to know. My daughter was spending most of her time at school, and listening to music I really didn’t care for, like that noise that is referred to as dead girlfriend. She had the piercings, the skull implants, you name it. Like any junior high kid, full of attitude and busy with extracurriculars. Impatient with parentally imposed anything. This was compounded by the times when my daughter didn’t really have enough to occupy her. She didn’t play field hockey or soccer. She was not an athlete. Some days, therefore, she came over to the mission campus near Cape Canaveral. My wife and I took advantage of the supervision opportunities that were available to us there. Older kids killed some time there now and then because the family center offered wireless digital networking and a small library of uploads, study aids, and games. Sometimes the kids were even allowed to watch satellite launches live.

  Even though Debbie didn’t have any close family, or maybe because of it, she always took time to go down to day care to look in on other people’s kids. She seemed to know everybody’s kids. She knew all the birthdays. She gave Steve’s son a home rocketry kit for his birthday one year, and she went out with Arnie and his twin girls to one of those animatronic restaurants, where, she later said, she’d accelerated a case of upper-frequency hearing loss. Of course, Debbie Quartz also knew my daughter, Ginger. In fact, my daughter, Debbie said, was her favorite kid of all the children of the mission. My daughter, according to Debbie, had that mixture of brilliance and melancholy and realism that makes for the most fabulous adults. Debbie volunteered to get me a GPS lapel pin for my daughter, so that I’d quit losing track of her and so that I could take a more active role.

  I laughed this off, because maybe I just didn’t want to hear it. Until the one night I was supposed to go pick Ginger up. It was during the first trial separation. I drove all the way to my wife’s brother’s place, where she and my daughter were staying, I knocked on the door, and my wife appeared in some kind of slutty outfit that had definitely not been donned in order to impress me. She said, “Where’s Ginger?” To which I said
, “What do you mean, where’s Ginger? I’m here to pick her up!” Probably you could write some of the scene yourself. Almost immediately, there was a lot of shouting back and forth, or at least a lot of shouting on my wife’s end of things. This despite the fact that we were supposedly parting amicably, which means with tremendous feelings of failure. But no bloodshed. No! It’s your turn to pick her up! No, it’s your turn! How could you be so callous!

  If you start thinking about space-time, and living in space-time, which you do when you’re about to get into an Orion-class rocket and blast out there into the blue, you inevitably start feeling philosophical about how human beings can have their own little wormhole-type moments, moments when, for example, the mistakes of your marriage come clear before you. Such a time might be when your kid goes missing. It is true that what I have mostly done is put everything ahead of my marriage, put my work ahead of my marriage, put my country ahead of my marriage, put my hobbies ahead of my marriage, put my individual retirement account ahead of my marriage, you name it. If I needed to go back for another round of hyperbaric-chamber training, I did it right then; I didn’t care if my wife was nursing the baby. If there was another soirée where attendance was optional, I went first and stayed last, and let my wife bail out whenever she needed to. I was a mixed blessing as a human being, and I knew I was a mixed blessing, but I allowed the space mission to be the one thing I could do. A long stint in emptiness between planets, where I am alone in my thoughts for weeks at a time? I can do this. Other people join the space program because they like military protocol, or the fraternity, or they want an adventure, or because they want to be famous. I wanted none of these things. I just thought I’d be good at the loneliness.