by Samuel Best
The crew had been operating in such close proximity to each other and for so many days that small talk had mostly fallen by the wayside. Jeff left Ming and Gabriel to their projects and walked around the centrifuge until they were directly on the other side of the central pillar. He was essentially on their ceiling, and they were on his.
Jeff ran his usual checks on the medical equipment. He patched the biometric computer into the communications mainframe so it could sync crew data with Mission Control. The communication delay between Earth and the ship wouldn’t become noticeable for another few days, and the company wanted to ensure they were getting medical data accurate to the millisecond until then.
Jeff watched rhythmic EKG blips flash on the screen as the system sent a data packet toward Earth, then he disconnected the biometric computer from the comms and reattached it to the mainframe.
Next, he was scheduled to run a diagnostics test on an experimental piece of equipment called the doctor pod. Diamond Aerospace had leased a few square meters of floor space aboard Explorer I to a Swedish company named Vitus, who had then installed a coffin-like medical unit with a clear acrylic lid. Once a patient laid down inside the pod, the hinged lid would close, and the pod would be able to perform a vast array of automated tasks, from something as simple as applying antiseptic bandaging for a minor cut to setting a broken limb. The idea behind it was to eventually eliminate the need for any kind of medical training amongst the crew.
The doctor pod was still in beta testing. Despite reassurances from the Vitus representative that the product was ready for use, Jeff and his fellow crewmates still received advanced medical training before leaving Earth, enough so that they could handle most emergency situations that might arise while en route to Titan. For anything more severe, they only needed to suffer through the small radio delay to and from Earth while waiting for instruction.
Needing medical assistance from Earth was not an expected scenario, however. His training instructors had admitted that, in space, there was a very thin line between marginally injured and outright dead. If things went wrong, they tended to go wrong in a big way, and no amount of medical advice from Earth would make a difference.
They went on to assure him that, as long as he was being careful, there would never be a need to get inside the doctor pod.
The acrylic lid of the pod opened slowly as Jeff approached. Thick steam rolled out and quickly evaporated, revealing Commander Riley lying atop a stiff, padded mat. He wore only a pair of exercise shorts and a neon green pair of opaque goggles. Tucked up next to him, one to each side, were the jointed robotic arms that performed most of the pod’s operations.
Riley groaned from within as he sat up, his legs dangling over the side. He peeled off his goggles and blinked at the harsh white light of the crew module.
“You know this thing has a UV setting?” he asked when he saw Jeff. Two strips of blue lights running down either side of the mat dimmed slowly until they darkened completely.
“I hadn’t gotten that far in the manual yet.”
Riley stood up and tapped a few keys on a control panel at one end of the pod. The machine beeped and the lid lowered slowly until it sealed shut. He grabbed his folded clothes from a small cubby cut into the plastic molding of the pod.
“There’s a lake about a ten-minute walk from my house,” said Riley. He pulled on a pair of blue sweatpants and tied them off at the waist.
“In Colorado?” Jeff asked.
Riley nodded. “Thing I miss most when I’m up here is being able to just…lie there on the shore, taking in the sun and listening to the birds.” He looked thoughtfully at the doctor pod. “I didn’t realize I missed it so much until I found out this thing had a low-powered UV setting.”
“Now all you need is a soundtrack of bird calls.”
Riley pulled on his white t-shirt and grinned ruefully. “That might be a little too real for me. I don’t like to forget I’m up here. It’s important to stay focused on the job.”
“Of course it is,” Jeff agreed. “But everyone needs to blow off steam from time to time.”
“Not us.” He looked at Jeff seriously. “That’s not why we’re up here.”
“We all had the same psychological profiling, Commander.”
What Jeff didn’t have to say, and what everyone on the ship knew, was that each of them had been chosen because they conformed to a very strict set of psychological guidelines.
As individuals, they needed to be perfectly content being alone for very long periods of time. They needed to be self-motivated, self-driven, and self-reliant. If any of them was the last person remaining on board the ship, they had to be mentally resilient enough to handle the rigors of extended solitude. The qualifying system of psych tests had been in place since humanity first punched its way out of Earth’s atmosphere, and had been refined to near-perfection over the following decades.
As a team, the crew needed to remain calm under pressure, to trust each other completely, and to be astute conflict resolvers. In other words, they needed to not act like a bunch of yahoos with a spaceship.
None of them would be on Explorer I if they hadn’t met all of those qualifications.
“Anyway,” Riley said with a contented sigh, “you should give it a shot.” He patted the lid of the doctor pod. “A few minutes on the UV setting followed by a good night’s sleep, and you’ll feel like you were back home again. Speaking of which…”
He excused himself and left for the crew quarters. Jeff would be seeing him again before his own shift ended. Riley’s idea of a good night’s sleep was four hours of light slumber followed by a brisk cold-water splash-off in the hygiene compartment. The guy never seemed the worse for it, though. Jeff felt groggy with anything less than six hours of sleep, which often made him wonder why he had thought it would be a good idea to allow himself to be sealed in a spaceship and sent so far from Kate’s warm bed.
Because we’re making history, he thought.
He had realized that long before the launch, and had increasingly pushed himself to the limit during his last few weeks on Earth. He stayed longer in the simulations, and he studied when he should have been resting. He knew he was better prepared for the Titan mission than any of the other potential flight engineers, and that’s why he believed Noah and Frank chose him out of the pool of remaining applicants.
Jeff knelt next to the doctor pod. The machine was still warm from Riley’s UV bath. The heat felt good in the slightly chilly crew module. Jeff called up the pod’s digital manual on the glowing control screen at the head of the machine and navigated to where he’d left off three days ago: suturing of minor lacerations.
He pressed a button and the two robotic arms within the pod moved in a demonstration, as if sewing up a cut on an invisible patient. Jeff checked his watch. Four more hours until dinnertime, and then he would get five minutes of precious airtime on the video feed so he could talk to Kate.
The opportunity only came around once every two weeks. The ship was still in range of two laser-capable antenna arrays, one in Sydney and the other in the desert of New Mexico. It allowed for near-instant communication between Mission Control and Explorer I. In another few days, however, Explorer would pass out of each laser’s targetable range. Every communication from that point onward would suffer a growing delay until they returned beyond the cutoff barrier on the journey back from Titan. Any video time with Kate would have to be prerecorded and sent as a packet burst back to Earth, and there weren’t too many free bandwidth spots between all the expected outgoing scientific data where he could squeeze in a quick message.
Jeff could barely wait to see her. He had even shaved that morning after letting his stubble grow for days. He hated doing it back on Earth, and in space the procedure was aggravating to the point of madness. There didn’t seem to be an easy, clean way to get the job done.
He had noticed that the other crew members tidied up more than usual for their short video conferences with their loved ones
back home. In the end, Jeff knew it was a good thing, because it kept them all from letting themselves go. It was good for morale, but more importantly, it kept the lived-in, unwashed odors from permeating too deeply into the insulation.
Jeff still smelled slightly of soap after his shower that morning, mostly because it was difficult to rinse off all the suds in the small hygiene compartment with nothing more than a drip faucet. His shirt was a little sticky against his skin, but he knew from experience that the uncomfortable sensation would fade. Of course, Kate couldn’t smell him over the video feed, but he thought the clean residue made him feel peppier and fresh for conversation. He didn’t want to betray any hint that he was very lonely without her, and he didn’t need anyone listening in on the conversation to hear how much he wished she were there.
Kate stared at herself in the bathroom mirror. She wore a lacy purple blouse tucked into a dark gray, knee-length skirt. Stopping short of high heels when she got dressed that morning, she instead chose her more comfortable black flats. Besides, the high heels wouldn’t have been visible on a video call to Explorer I.
She anxiously checked her watch. Five minutes until her scheduled video meeting with Jeff. An errant strand of hair fell across her forehead, and Kate impatiently tucked it behind her ear. She had let down her seemingly perennial tight bun that day, allowing her brunette hair to dance over her shoulders.
Anyone who had been paying attention would notice the eye makeup and lip gloss she almost never wore. She felt a little silly getting all dolled up for a five-minute conversation, as if she were in high school again, trying to capture the attention of a boy she knew she would only pass in the hall a few seconds of each day.
Kate smiled to herself. Before her mother had passed away, she told Kate it was a good sign if she still had feelings like that after being in a relationship with someone for a while. She only needed to start worrying when one of them stopped putting in the effort.
Her mother had been a font of advice, unwanted right alongside the welcome.
Kate pressed her lips together one last time to smooth the gloss, and nodded her own approval, reluctant though it was. She left the bathroom and walked through the empty break room.
Things were quiet on the operations floor. The team had been going about its business with about one-third of the usual amount of personnel for several weeks running. During those quiet days of the mission, only five to seven technicians were at their stations during any given shift. Rick had the day off, and Noah rarely came down from his office, if he was even in the building at all. Frank spent most of his time at his overseer’s desk up on the viewing platform.
Kate didn’t like having an overseer. She felt as if she were a line worker on a factory floor, her every movement scrutinized.
Coming back in to work after Rick told her about Michael Cochran’s murder had been surprisingly easy. She simply weighed the unlikely possibility that her company had something to do with the incident against leaving Jeff out in the cold on his mission. He would have survived without her, of course, but it wasn’t just about him. Kate needed to stay in contact with the ship for the sake of the entire crew.
Rick dropped the subject of the murder almost immediately after it happened. He had been strangely silent the last few weeks as Explorer barreled uneventfully toward Titan, the steady routine slipping into clock-watching monotony. Typically, he was full of chatter about the latest conspiracy theory to cross his desk on any given morning. Yet, recently, he had been just like any other employee in Mission Control. He kept his nose to the grindstone, put in his hours, and went home each day without a fuss.
His quietude disturbed Kate more than his default endless banter. She tried not to let the thought bother her too much as she walked to her workstation.
“Juan, how are we looking for that microburn?” she asked as she passed one of the Flight Operations desks.
“Everything’s A-okay, Ms. Bishop,” the stocky department head answered with a smile. His dark brown eyes twinkled jovially. “Lieutenant Ming is going to initiate the burn on our mark.”
“And the commander?”
The flight surgeon, an aging man named Walt, spoke up from a different workstation farther down the row. “Sleeping like a baby. You want me to wake him up?”
“Let him sleep. The guy doesn’t get enough as it is. Lieutenant Ming can handle this one.”
Walt smoothed his wispy, unruly white hair and leaned back, looking up at the display wall.
The crew had performed four microburns so far, each one providing small course adjustments to ensure Explorer remained perfectly aligned with its target destination. The burns had all gone off without a hitch. It wasn’t that Kate wanted to let her guard down when it came to safety, but they really didn’t need two pilots in the command module to push one button for the microburns.
She sat at her workstation and arranged a stack of papers to one side. She interlaced her fingers together on top of the desk and stared at the blank monitor of her station. Then she readjusted the stack of papers and interlaced her fingers together again.
“Ms. Bishop,” said Juan. “Call coming through for you.”
“Thank you,” she said professionally.
She cleared her throat and glanced around the room. Everyone pretended to be deeply involved in their work, presumably out of courtesy for her. It had been impossible to keep the fact that she and Jeff were in a relationship from the rest of the ground crew forever. After their first face-to-face video chat, when he wouldn’t shut up about missing her, the cat flew right out of the bag. She was grateful her coworkers respected her enough to not tease her about it, and to turn their heads the other way whenever she spoke with Jeff during a private call.
She reached out and pushed the ship’s feed button next to her monitor, and suddenly she was looking inside Explorer I. Jeff grinned into the camera. His short black hair was getting a little longer than she knew he liked. He stood in the centrifuge of the crew module, at one of the vehicle monitoring stations.
Kate smiled. “You shaved,” she said.
He cocked his head in confusion and tapped his ear.
“Oh!” Kate said. She quickly picked up her headset and slipped it on. “Better?” she asked into the microphone.
“There’s that beautiful voice.”
“I said you shaved,” she repeated.
“You let your hair down. And you’re wearing that shirt. You know I love that shirt.”
She plucked at the smooth fabric of her lacy purple blouse. “This old thing?” she joked.
He kept grinning like an idiot, which made her smile even wider.
“What’s so funny?” she asked.
“It’s just good to see you. How’s it going in the real world?”
“Everything’s fine here. The system has been running like clockwork ever since the hiccup at the ISS.”
“I meant how are you doing.”
“Oh. Things are quiet, but not too bad. My dad stopped by for a surprise visit.”
Jeff’s eyebrows went up. “Really? How’d that go?”
“He brought his girlfriend along.”
“Melinda?”
She shook her head. “Carrie. You haven’t met this one. She’s a year younger than I am.”
“She’s twenty-five?”
“Good one,” she said, winking. “But you should know that you can’t redeem brownie points from deep space.”
He shrugged. “I figured I’d stock pile ‘em anyway. For later, just in case.”
“Right.”
“Well, things are okay up here. Nothing new, really. Gabriel’s lima bean still hasn’t sprouted, so I get to hear about that every blessed minute he’s awake. The rest of the crew is still in high spirits.”
“And what about you?” she asked.
He was silent for a moment.
“I’ll be okay. I’m sticking to the routine. Things will pick up when we get to Titan, thankfully. Hopefully I won’t even have t
wo seconds of free time to rub together.”
Ming’s voice came over a speaker off-screen and Jeff looked up at the source.
“Jeff. Gabriel. Initiating microburn in one minute. Twelve second duration.”
Kate looked over at Juan, and he nodded.
“Do we need to cut the line for that?” Jeff asked.
“Let’s wait and see,” said Kate. “I’m not quite ready to hang up just yet.”
“Good. Me either.”
They were silent for a while, but were not uncomfortable with the silence.
“How’s Rick?” asked Jeff.
“Entertaining as ever,” Kate replied. “Did you know that NASA has operated a base on the moon since the early 1970s, and that they’re currently building one on Mars as well?”
His eyes sparkled with interest. “You don’t say?”
“I guess so. Rick read all about it on one his secretive websites.”
“It must be true, then. I wonder why Bell’s mining outpost on the moon has never seen NASA’s base.”
“Oh, it has,” said Kate. “Diamond Aerospace is under contract with NASA not to spill the beans.”
“Of course they are,” Jeff said. “How can someone as smart as Rick believe that stuff?”
“Intelligence takes all kinds, and–”
The screen shook and there was a loud bang from somewhere within the ship. An alarm blared in the background. Kate’s workstation lit up red with errors.
“Jeff, what is it?” she asked urgently.
On the screen, Jeff looked around the module, wildly trying to find the source of the problem.
“The walls are shaking!” he shouted. The video feed cut out and Kate’s monitor went blank.
“Jeff?” she said loudly. She leaned forward and smacked the blank screen of her monitor. “Jeff!”
“Full burn, full burn!” Juan shouted from his workstation.
“Canaveral, this is Explorer One,” said Ming over the speakers in the operations room. Her voice was strained but calm. “TAPS is at full power and I cannot shut down. Repeat, I cannot shut down power to the engine.”
