by Dean M. Cole
The pool was still full of welcoming blue water.
The inside of Vaughn's mouth felt like a sun-dried leather shammy.
He walked to the pool's edge and unceremoniously dropped into its cool embrace. The boots filled with water and fell from his kicking feet. Vaughn took a deep swallow then erupted into a spasm of coughs that ended with him vomiting up unwelcome salt water.
"Damn it!" He punched the water. Looking up into the surreally tranquil sky, Vaughn shook his head.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck!"
His legs went limp. The man's head slipped beneath the surface as he released his held breath in a long exhalation. The sound of the rising bubbles rang loud in his ears. Vaughn's ass hit the pool floor, and he just sat there shaking his head, silent tears of shame and frustration mixing freely with the pool's salt water.
When burning lungs forced Vaughn to the surface, he took in a long breath. Finally, he walked to the near edge, head hanging, saline tears flowing into the saltwater rivulets that ran from his matted hair and beard. Vaughn climbed from the pool and headed to an adjacent bar. He plucked a green bottle from a not-so-cool cooler and hoisted it into the air.
"Yeah, Houston. We've got a problem alright."
He downed the golden liquid in three long gulps. The empty bottle shattered at his feet. Vaughn cracked open another beer and held it up to the sky as well.
"Thanks to yours truly, we got one helluva cock-up!"
A moment later, the second empty bottle burst across the concrete.
Vaughn woke soaked in sweat. Each heartbeat brought a fresh wave of skull-splitting pain. The front door must have closed while he'd been asleep. He flipped on the bedside lamp and then rolled off the bed's flower-festooned polyester cover. He threw open the door.
Cool night air flowed around him. Vaughn stood there for a long moment, kneading his temples with his thumbs.
Head hanging, the man sauntered back into the suite. He bounced off of the doorjamb as he stepped into the bathroom. Vaughn turned on the water. One solitary drop fell from the faucet.
Probably for the best.
Yesterday's beer binge had only worsened his thirst. His mouth had gone from desiccated shammy to Sahara desert. Had water flowed from the tap, Vaughn wouldn't have stopped with washing his face. He would have taken long slurping draws of the wet stuff. As much as he hated himself at the moment, the man didn't think drinking Mexican tap water of unknown vintage constituted a good plan.
Vaughn found clear, safe bottled water in the room's small, inoperable refrigerator. He stood in the open front door, running fingers through greasy brown hair as he drank the warm water.
Aside from yesterday's salty dip, he hadn't bathed since before his ill-fated lunch with JFK. And judging by the odor rising from him, sleeping in a hot box hadn't improved the situation.
After his beer binge, Vaughn had discovered that the resort's air conditioners didn't work. Every room he'd stumbled into had been sweltering. Finally, the man had settled on one in a deeply shaded corner. Before passing out, he'd propped open the door, giving the room a modicum of ventilation.
Apparently, the spacesuit boot had been about as effective of a doorstop as it had been a sneaker.
Vaughn kicked the shoe. It slid across the concrete and dropped into the pool. Seeing the splash, he thought of the single drop issued by the bathroom sink. After giving himself another appraising sniff, he stepped back into the room. A moment later, he emerged with a tiny bar of soap and an equally small bottle of shampoo.
The man tossed a couple of musty white towels onto the pool's coping and then followed the space boot into the water.
Several minutes later, he emerged from the now cloudy and soap-scummed pool feeling cleaner on the outside, but his head and heart still ached.
He took another long draw from the bottle. The headache had ramped down. The pulse-induced throbbing in his noggin had dwindled from an overwhelming chain of tactical nuclear detonations to a manageable rhythmic series of hand grenade explosions. However, as his head cleared, the knowledge of his failure and its ramifications floated closer to the surface.
Vaughn threw aside the water.
"Too much blood in my alcohol system."
He'd drained the pool bar yesterday, so the man walked up to the nearby lobby. He'd spotted a large cooler up there earlier.
Vaughn grabbed a warm beer and stepped back outside. He opened the brown bottle with the church key he'd stolen from the bar.
As he raised the beer, the naked man studied the eclectic collection of cars adorning the adjacent parking lot. Rental cars and SUVs filled most of the spots, but one vehicle, in particular, drew his eye. A dune buggy sat in a parking space near the front of the building.
The bottle stopped an inch from his lips. Vaughn stared at the tubular steel that formed the buggy's frame.
"Son of a bitch," the man whispered. Then he tossed the still full beer aside. It shattered on the pavement.
A smile slowly migrated across his bearded face.
"Vaughn Singleton, you're a goddamned idiot."
Chapter 25
Mesmerized, Angela watched Nadine's plump little body kick and swim its way through the module's chilly air. A loud rumble trumpeted from the woman's stomach.
Nadine turned a nervous eye to the human.
Angela looked away self-consciously. The protest of her tortured hollow abdominal cavity went on longer than usual, echoing off of the module's inner walls. When the sound stopped only to resume a short moment later, she realized it wasn't her stomach anymore. A faint voice trickled into the JEM from the direction of the Tranquility module!
Angela's eyes widened. "Vaughn?!"
She pushed off the wall and glided toward the open hatch. She could feel Nadine's babies wriggling in her hair. They had burrowed in there underneath her hoodie. It was one of the few ways they could stay warm in the station's frigid environs. Angela had left the hatches cracked open between Tranquility and the Japanese Experiment Module, overtaxing the JEM's environmental controls. With the reduced electrical supply, the system struggled to keep that much living space above freezing. Fortunately, sunlight warmed the Cupola and its parent Tranquility module for a portion of each orbit. Otherwise, they'd have frozen to death overnight.
Angela's breath fogged as she passed into Tranquility. Now she heard Vaughn's voice clearly.
"Commander Brown! Are you there?" The man's voice sounded as if he was in near panic.
"Oh, thank God," Angela whispered. "Thank you, thank you."
She clamped the headset over her cold ears. "I'm here, Vaughn." A hacking cough racked her body. Then she said, "What happened? Are you okay? Where are you?"
"There you are," Vaughn said with evident relief. "Don't worry about me. Are you okay?"
"I'm all right, still here … Not like I'm going anywhere." Angela winced. "Sorry, I didn't mean it that way … Anyway! How'd the landing go?"
"Uh … Not good. I … I botched it. The plane is toast."
Angela's stomach cramped. Feeling as though she might become ill, she placed a hand over her abdomen—not that there was anything to throw up. All of her earlier doubts suddenly burned with renewed fuel. The man had already told her that this was the only spaceplane.
That was it.
Nothing else existed, nothing that could be fueled and operated by one man, anyway.
Angela would die up here.
"Don't give up on me, Commander."
The woman shook her head. "It's okay, Vaughn. You did your—"
"I have another plan!"
Angela closed her eyes and released a long sigh. Then she pressed the transmit button and tried to sound enthusiastic. "What is it? Something else there in Area Fifty-One?"
"Well … I didn't actually make it all the way back to Groom Lake."
This time, Angela couldn't keep the disappointment from her voice. "Where are you?"
"I'm in Cabo San Lucas."
"Okay," the woman said
drawing out the word. On the verge of tears, she added, "Glad one of us is getting to enjoy a little vacation."
"I'm not kidding, Angela. I think I really have a way to get up there."
Commander Brown closed her eyes again. A wave of guilt washed over her. This man had risked everything to try to save her, and now she was chewing on his ear. Angela took a deep breath and then let it out in another long exhalation. Finally, she smiled weakly. "I'm all ears, Vaughn. Talk to me," she said, sounding more optimistic than she felt.
After a long pause, the captain continued. "Listen, Angela. Remember that thruster module I told you about?"
"Yeah, the experimental prototype you and Mark hovered in the vacuum chamber."
"Yes, that." The man's voice took on an annoyingly confident tone. "I'm going to fly it to you."
Angela's brows knitted. She frowned. It took all her will not to yell at the man. The woman counted to ten. After a calming breath, she said, "It's a rather big step to go from a thirty-foot hover to making orbit, don't you think, Captain?"
"I don't know … maybe. But they did say it had crossed the threshold."
"What threshold?"
"Mark said that the power it hovered with proved that the module could reach space."
"As is?"
Suddenly, Vaughn's voice sounded less sure. "Well, not like it currently is." After a pause, he added, "I'd have to make some modifications. Most of them aren't that big of a deal, but there is one that I'm not sure about."
When Angela refused to play along, Vaughn drove on.
"It's the power. Right now, it just has a bank of batteries, probably like you'd see in an electric car, just bigger. I need something that can supply that much electricity continuously and work in a vacuum. Unfortunately, I'm not Mark Watney in The Martian, so I can't just dig up one of those radioactive power supplies."
Angela's eyes widened. "An RTG!"
"A what?"
"A radioisotope thermoelectric generator!" she said excitedly. "Like the one on the Curiosity rover."
"Yeah, that," Vaughn said. "But it would probably need to be more powerful than even that one."
Suddenly animated, Angela pulled herself closer to the radio. "Can you get to Houston, Vaughn?"
"Uh … Yeah, I think so. Why?"
"There's something there that might work!"
Angela spent the next ten minutes describing the device and where he could find it.
"Okay," Vaughn said excitedly. "That sounds perfect! I'm at a small airport now. When I was looking for this radio, I saw an aircraft that can get me there. Ellington Field has a bunch of runways. I'm sure at least one of them will be clear enough to land on."
Angela nodded. "Ellington's close to JSC, too. Did you write down the directions I gave you?"
"Yes, ma'am." After a pause, he said, "It's good to have you back, Angela." The smile had returned to his voice. "Don't give up on me, Commander."
Angela smiled. "Hurry to me, Obi-Wan."
"I'll call you from Cleveland."
"Please do." Angela paused and then added, "Fly safely, Vaughn. You're still my hero."
After a long silence, the man's voice returned choked with emotion. "I'll do my best to live up to that, Angela."
The radio fell silent. Commander Brown removed her headset. For a moment, she watched the planet scroll beneath the station. Finally, she rested a hand on the Cupola's main window.
"You already have, Captain Singleton."
A couple of minutes later, she drifted back into the JEM. Upon seeing her, Nadine emitted a single squeak and started swimming toward Angela and her little rat's nest.
The astronaut slowly plucked the baby mice from her hair and gently nudged them toward their mother.
Entranced, Angela silently watched Nadine's fat little body as it wriggled through the air.
Then the animals flinched as another stomach growl drowned out the squeak-filled reunion.
Chapter 26
An open operator's manual jittered and danced on the airplane's copilot seat. Before take off, Vaughn had studied the plane's normal procedures checklist and even familiarized himself with the King Air's laundry list of emergency procedures. The man had no wish to repeat the spaceplane disaster. He smiled inwardly. Mark would have called it progress.
A beautiful sunrise greeted the plane as it flew out over the western Gulf of Mexico, crossing the beach just south of the US border. The pilot guided the airplane northeast, toward Houston. Fifty minutes later, he glimpsed land again. After a moment, Vaughn recognized it as Freeport, Texas. Massive uncontrolled fires had reduced its large industrial complexes into twisted masses of melted metal and charred pavement. Beneath the plane, dark, curling waves rolled across Surfside Beach. Back in his high school days, Vaughn had spent many an afternoon surfing those rollers, but now a ruptured and badly listing supertanker blocked much of the town's beach. The ship's load of crude painted the waves black for the next twenty miles.
As the west end of Galveston Island passed beneath the King Air, Vaughn guided the plane north. Ahead, Houston's iconic skyline now looked like a jagged line of burned, fractured giant crystals. Visible beyond his destination, the Houston ship channel painted a black scar across the land. Almost all of its industrial complexes appeared to have fallen to the massive post-apocalyptic fires. The hellish trail of destruction led all the way to downtown's decimated skyscrapers.
Vaughn turned from the disturbing image and focused on his destination. Firestorms had destroyed the hometown of his youth, but fortunately, Ellington Field stood relatively unscathed.
The pilot lined up the plane with the airport's clearest runway. After completing a landing that had required one hop and two quick lateral jaunts to avoid debris, the man taxied the King Air up to the terminal and shut down the engines. Then he searched the parking lot until he found a suitable vehicle. After loading the Mexican ham radio, Vaughn jumped into the truck and exited the field.
He didn't need maps for this part of the voyage. Vaughn had grown up here, knew the roads like the back of his hand. And with the area's flat terrain, he'd have no problem circumnavigating any blocked streets.
Vaughn soon arrived at the entrance to NASA's Johnson Space Center. No guards challenged him at its gate. He passed through the security checkpoint unmolested. A few minutes later, the man parked the truck in front of the facility that Angela had specified.
As he stepped from the truck, Vaughn recalled their brief conversation with Director McCree. He looked northeast. Gazing into the cloudless sky, the man tried to envision the rapidly approaching wall of light. In his mind's eye, he watched it expand, swallowing an ever-increasing portion of the visible sky.
A shudder ran down the man's spine. He turned back to the large, white building. Its power had failed, so the electronic locks offered no resistance. Vaughn walked straight through the front door and all the way into the main service bay. The sign above its entrance read:
BRUIE ASSEMBLY ROOM
EUROPA BUOYANT ROVER FOR UNDER-ICE EXPLORATION
Vaughn stepped into the bay. A car-sized rover with only two wheels hung from a ceiling hoist. The barbell-shaped device looked like a giant Segway. Thick, hollow metal wheels with four-foot diameters adorned each end of its ten-foot-long cylindrical body. NASA had designed this rover to explore the ice-covered ocean of Europa, one of Jupiter's moons. They had planned for it to melt through the mile-thick sheet of ice that covered the Jovian moon. Once it had penetrated into Europa's ocean, its buoyancy would pin those large wheels to the bottom of the ice. Then it would navigate the sheet's underside, driving around like an upside-down Segway.
According to Angela, the BRUIE rover required a very large and energetic power source to melt through that much ice and then explore the underlying ocean. The Department of Energy had delivered the vehicle's nuclear-powered electrical generator only a few days before the Disappearance. She had told him that it was the largest radioisotope thermoelectric generator, or RTG, e
ver created for the space agency.
Vaughn scanned the room. His eyes lit upon a large green box. A smile blossomed on his face.
"This is going to be easier than I thought."
Next to its radiation warnings, the green case sported a big red RTG label.
Vaughn smiled and jogged to the generator case.
"Angela, you rock!"
The man started unhooking its numerous latches. Multiple labels warned of the dire consequences of screwing with this package. They promised everything from imprisonment to loss of hair and child-spawning capabilities. However, Angela had assured him that it would be safe … as long as he didn't screw up.
A moment later, he slowly lifted its hinged lid, cupping his balls … just in case. The tight piano hinge creaked like a door in a haunted house.
The damn thing was empty!
Dropping the lid—and releasing the family jewels—Vaughn scanned the room but saw no other place where the RTG could be, save one.
"Son of a bitch!"
Vaughn shook his head. He walked to the buoyant rover and scanned its surface. He soon found a compartment decorated with a yellow radioactive warning label and its trio of black triangles. A quick glance told him that roughly a million screws and two miles of arcane plumbing and wiring attached the damn thing to the rover.
"Really?!"
Nearby, he found a very high-tech toolbox filled with expensive-looking wrenches and drivers. Vaughn reached inside of it and retrieved a screw gun that looked as if it should fit the million-odd socket head bolts that affixed the RTG to the rover.
He trotted back to the BRUIE and jammed the Allen wrench bit into the first bolt. Then he froze. A frown spread across his face as he ground his teeth together. Mark's words rang in his ears. You never applied yourself. You just cruised through life, winging it.
Vaughn shook his head again and set the tool down on the nearest bench. Several minutes later, he walked back into the room, a thick, three-ring binder under arm. It had taken a little searching, but he'd known the manual had to be there somewhere.
