by Dean M. Cole
The government wrote instructions for everything. Vaughn had often joked that they not only told you how to wipe your ass, they even specified the number of squares.
After a lot of searching within the binder's three-inch-thick stack of pages, the man finally found a section labeled:
RTG INSTALLATION AND REMOVAL
Vaughn leafed through its pages and finally found the instructions for removing the device. After thumbing through the legalese, he started reading. A large warning preceded step one. It warned of dire consequences, up to and including a thermonuclear runaway—the described effects of which elicited visions of Fukushima—should one fail to properly power down and safe the device.
As with most government manuals, this one featured plenty of diagrams and drawings. So Vaughn soon had the RTG shut down and safed.
"Thanks, Mark."
After an hour's worth of toiling, Vaughn finally lifted the outer cover away from the RTG and released a long sigh. The inner capsule appeared to be intact. Not that he'd had cause to think it damaged, but according to the manual's multiple warnings, had it been cracked or otherwise compromised, his remaining days would have been few and rather unpleasant.
"Thank you," he whispered.
Looking down, he pulled his left hand away from his apparently safe testicles.
Several screws later, the last piece of hardware fell away. Vaughn grunted as he gently lifted the heavy power supply from the rover. Turning, he gingerly lowered it onto the cart that he'd brought for the purpose. Then he turned back to the BRUIE and began scavenging anything that looked like it might be part of the RTG's cooling system.
Finally, Vaughn emerged into the sunlight pushing a large cart. Atop its flat surface, the green box jittered with the passage of each crack and expansion joint in the concrete. The man winced at every jolt. He parked it behind the truck. Grunting with exertion, he slid the heavy, lead-lined canister and its nuclear cargo into the back of the vehicle. Then he added the scavenged hardware and plumbing.
An hour later, the fully loaded and refueled twin-engined airplane roared up one of Ellington Field's northbound runways. Finally, the King Air rotated and lifted skyward under a midday sun.
As broken bits of downtown's shattered skyline scrolled past Vaughn's left shoulder, the airplane turned north by northeast, toward distant Cleveland, Ohio.
Vaughn flew the King Air parallel to Cleveland Airport's longest runway. Faded and dust-covered airplane shards protruded from the remnants of the Boeing-fed bonfire. He could still see long scars etched into the concrete. They led from the point where each of the planes had belly-landed all the way to their final resting place. However, green grass had already reclaimed the adjacent scoured earth. Vaughn couldn't see Mark's final resting place. In the late-afternoon sun, the tall grass waved in the wind that streamed in from Lake Erie.
Debris rendered the main landing strip unusable, so the pilot throttled back the plane's engines and then landed it on the airport's shorter but relatively clear parallel runway. Then he taxied the King Air up to the gate in the NASA perimeter.
Vaughn shut down the airplane. He climbed over the fence and jogged toward the hangar. The old tug he'd left on the corner of the tarmac now looked ancient. It sat on four flat tires. Around it, weeds protruded from the ramp's multiple cracks and expansion joints.
A few minutes after entering the building, the man guided a forklift through its still-open doors. It made short work of the gate, ripping it from its track. Vaughn drove it over to the side and deposited the long chain-link panel onto the grass. Then he went to work on the opposite gate, the one that opened to the rest of the NASA facility. Half an hour later, and after a lot of grunting and struggling, Vaughn had the large RTG container removed from the airplane and loaded onto the forklift's metal tines. He secured the cooling hardware and plumbing to the top of the container using straps he'd borrowed from Houston.
Finally, he jumped back into the forklift. Mindful of the container's dire warnings, Vaughn took his time. He placed the forklift in gear and slowly drove it through the aviation ramp's opposite gate and into the NASA compound, not stopping until he reached the Space Power Annex.
Except for overgrown landscaping and pavement cracks now choked with weeds, everything looked as he and Mark had left it. He guided the forklift through the still-open overhead doors and into the large bay. He parked the vehicle just outside of the vacuum chamber and then killed its engine.
Vaughn was exhausted and starving. He checked his watch.
"Still one more thing to do, Captain."
The man jogged back toward the airplane. Arriving at the King Air, he set up the generator and ham radio. He soon had the system up and running. After a final glance at his watch, he pressed the transmit button.
Mixed sounds of wet smacking interrupted by agonized wails echoed through the station's reduced confines.
Suddenly, the radio in the distant Cupola crackled to life.
"Commander Brown? This is Glenn Control. Come in, Angela."
Through watery eyes, the woman looked at her watch. "Oh shit …" Then she gazed self-consciously at her greasy fingers.
It wasn't her fault.
"Come in, Commander."
In spite of her revulsion, Angela hungrily licked the fat from the outside of her fingers.
Another wail escaped her lips.
"Where ya at, Angela?"
The woman stuffed the last bone into the bag with the others.
She'd had to do it.
"I made it, Angela!"
After sealing the plastic bag and its gruesome cargo in an airtight container, Angela deposited it inside a hidden niche. Then she pushed off the wall.
A moment later, she drifted into the Cupola, joining the quartet of mice. Not wanting them to watch her eat their mother, she had stuffed the mice inside their vented plastic box and stashed them in the sun-warmed observatory. Now their beady little eyes seemed to stare accusingly.
"I had to," Angela said plaintively. "She was dead. I couldn't … I couldn't …" A sharp sob broke through her defenses. "I couldn't let her just … go to waste."
"Come in, Angela!" Vaughn said, worry now creeping into his words.
Angela wiped the tears from her eyes and then slipped the headset over her matted hair.
"Hey, Vaughn," she said, unable to keep her boiled-over emotions from her voice.
"What's wrong?" Vaughn said, suddenly on edge.
The woman shook her head vigorously. She'd rather die than share this part of her story with the man. Hell no!
She swallowed hard and then said, "N-Nothing."
"I'm so sorry, Angela. It's my fault."
Her eyes widened. "What?! Wasn't it there?"
"Huh? … Oh, the RTG! No, I found it right where you said." His voice softened, suddenly sounding thick with guilt. "No, I'm sorry that you're still up there, Angela, that you're still stuck in that damned station." After a long pause, he said, "It's my fault."
Angela blinked and then understood. "Oh shit. No, Vaughn. It's not you. It's me." A short, self-conscious laugh burst through her lips.
"Oh, so we're going there already, are we?" Vaughn said, the imagined smile back in his words. "My ex never saw it that way. As far as she was concerned, it was definitely all me." Then his humor evaporated. "But these days, I'm inclined to think she was right."
As the coughing fit passed, Angela shook her head. "No, Vaughn. This time it really is me. Just been feeling a little weepy. Guess I'm hormonal today," she lied.
"Now there's a condition no man is ever allowed to diagnose."
Commander Brown smiled, but then she saw eight accusing eyes staring at her from the plastic box, and the grin fell from her lips.
Finally, she said, "So you're back in Cleveland, Captain?"
Her use of his rank had its usual effect.
His tone became serious. "Uh … yes. I just placed the RTG in the bay outside the chamber."
Angela's eyes
kept returning to the little box-o-mice.
"This will work, Angela," Vaughn said. "I'll make it. I promise."
A long stretch of dead air followed his proclamation. Finally, she keyed the mic. "I know you will, Captain. I trust you, Vaughn."
Apparently placated, the man spent the next several minutes telling her of his plans, laying out what he'd need to do to get the thruster module ready for trans-atmospheric flight.
Finally, they set a time for their next radio call and terminated this one.
As Angela pulled off the headset, a fresh spasm of coughs racked her body. Each hack felt as if it were breaking off chunks of her lungs.
When the spasms finally subsided, the astronaut looked at the scrolling planet visible through the Cupola's main port.
"Hurry, Vaughn."
Chapter 27
Even two months after the Disappearance, the break room still smelled of burned eggs and scorched popcorn. Vaughn dropped a thick, three-ring binder onto one of its tables. The report of its impact echoed down the facility's empty hallways. As the man walked back to the vending machine, pebble-sized shards of its broken glass crunched under foot. In the otherwise dark room, the light from his Coleman lantern reflected off of them as if the kitchen now floated on a sea of yellow stars.
Vaughn reached into the large hole that the thick book had left in the front of the vending machine and grabbed his dinner. Then he dropped down onto the booth's laminated bench, depositing his ill-gotten booty onto the table between the sputtering gas-fed lamp and the binder.
He shoved aside a pile of pretzels and tore into a bag of Funyuns. After a long day without food, the man savored every crumb. The crunchy yellow rings had never tasted so good.
Vaughn drank from a water bottle that he'd liberated from the room's pantry—the damn soda machine had proven stubbornly resistant to his efforts to gain access.
He checked his wrist: 2:00 AM. He opened the three-ring binder.
"I'll sleep when I'm dead."
The exhausted man looked down and read the book's title. "Sigma Reactionless Thruster SSTO."
Contrary to Mark's protestations, Vaughn had paid attention to some of the original briefings. For instance, he remembered that SSTO stood for Single-Stage-To-Orbit. Theoretically, the module was capable of space flight. However, this one was far from complete, and its power source was nowhere near up to the task. But that was about as far as his knowledge went.
"You win, Mark."
Vaughn opened the binder and leafed through the Foreword and Table of Contents until he found the desired page. For a pilot to be master of his domain, to know how to properly respond to any in-flight emergency, he must have intimate knowledge of his aircraft's systems. With the spaceplane, Vaughn hadn't paid heed to that basic tenet, and it had nearly killed him, and it had jeopardized Angela, too.
He wouldn't make that mistake twice.
Vaughn placed his hand on the open page and read its title. "Systems Descriptions."
He took a long drink from the water bottle and then started reading.
Vaughn's eyes opened. He tried to blink the clouds from his mind.
Where in the hell am I?
In the corner of his vision, a horizontal rectangle of soft white light refused to resolve. For some reason, the side of his face hurt. He lifted his head, and something fell away from it. He looked down and watched a pretzel bounce off the open rear cover of a three-ring binder. Vaughn tried to sweep away the crumbs, but his hand just smeared them into a puddle of drool.
The man looked back toward the white rectangle. Now that he was sitting up, it resolved as a hallway. Indirect sunlight lit its far end. It was the sole source of light in Vaughn's universe. He didn't remember extinguishing the lantern. It must've run out of fuel.
Rubbing his eyes, the man slid to the edge of the booth. When he turned his head toward the dark lantern, his neck seized.
"Son of a bitch!"
Vaughn tried to massage the knots out of his neck as he exited the break room.
Stepping into the diffuse radiance of an early morning cloudy day, he looked around the courtyard. Even after months of the experience, the world's utter and complete silence still seemed odd. It had been that way since the Disappearance. No birds chirped, no crickets … cricketed, no cicadas pitched their bitch, just the occasional rustle of leaves. With the subsequent failure of the electrical grid, the silence had taken on an ominous depth.
A chill ran down Vaughn's spine.
Shaking his head, he jogged toward the vacuum chamber. The man had a lot of work to do and not much time in which to do it. Now that he'd read the manual cover to cover, Vaughn had a good idea of exactly what the module needed to function.
He hopped into the forklift and fired up its engine. Then the man gently deposited its precious cargo on the bay's concrete floor, well clear of the vacuum chamber's massive hatch.
The large door still sat partially open, just as he and Mark had left it. After a little coaxing—or in this case, bashing with the assistance of a forklift—Vaughn had the twenty-foot-wide door fully open.
Inside the vacuum chamber, he looked over the module. Everything appeared unchanged. Finally, he nodded and walked back outside.
"Time to go on a scavenger hunt."
An hour later, a white Home Depot truck with a scissor lift hooked to its bumper wheeled into the courtyard outside of the chamber's bay. Hardware and supplies filled the truck's flatbed.
After disconnecting the lift, Vaughn backed the truck up to the vacuum chamber door. He placed the vehicle in park and killed its engine.
The wannabe astronaut stepped out of the truck and walked over to the forklift. Pulling a brand new tape measure from his belt, he checked the width of its tines and the distance between the two steel planks. Then he turned and gave the bottom of the module an appraising look. The thruster still sat atop its scaffolding. After some mental calculations, Vaughn nodded.
Hitching a thumb over his shoulder, he pointed at the back of the loaded truck. "Did a little shopping in Home Depot's aviation aisle," Vaughn said with a crooked grin.
The thruster module had three major limitations, electrical supply primary among them. However, the RTG should take care of that problem. The other two biggies were weight and life support. He couldn't add much to one part of that equation without negatively impacting the other.
In regard to overall weight, the manual had confirmed what Mark had said. The Sigma Module's fifty percent hover power signaled its ability to climb continuously, both inside and outside the atmosphere. The thruster didn't need to be very aerodynamic. That continuous climb capability meant that the vehicle could stay at an aerodynamically sustainable speed until clear of the atmosphere. Once air resistance fell off, it could accelerate to orbital velocity. However, he didn't have unlimited time to reach orbit. The module was completely open. Vaughn had neither the time nor the resources nor knowledge to build a pressurized cabin. And even if he had, he doubted the module could handle the extra weight. So that meant he'd have to make the trip in a spacesuit. But if it took days to catch up to the ISS, Vaughn would run out of air and be dead on arrival. So he had to maximize the module's acceleration capability: he needed to lose all unnecessary weight and affect some aerodynamic improvements to permit moderate in-atmosphere speeds followed by significant exoatmospheric acceleration.
An hour later and covered in sweat, the man climbed behind the controls of the forklift. He'd already repositioned it so that the tongs now supported the bottom of the module. A web of Home Depot-supplied cargo straps secured it to the frame of the forklift.
He fired up the machine's propane-powered engine. Vaughn placed his hand on the lift control lever.
"Here goes nothing."
He eased the lever back and the hydraulic motor whined as it tried to lift the Sigma Module. It didn't budge, but as Vaughn began to release the control lever, the module raised an inch above the platform. The sudden release rocked both the thrust
er and the forklift. Vaughn froze, chewing his lip as he stared at the slowly swaying machines. A moment later, the rocking subsided. The man let out a long sigh. "Son of a bitch, that was close."
Gingerly, he actuated the forklift, raising the module another inch. Suddenly, the vehicle tilted forward, and the module's landing gear dropped back onto the scaffolding. The impact sent a massive bang echoing through the hot chamber. The forklift teetered on its front wheels. The scaffolding creaked and groaned as if it might collapse.
"Shit, shit, shit …" Vaughn whispered, afraid that louder sound waves might bring the whole damn thing crashing down.
Gingerly, he lowered the module back onto the top of the scaffolding. It creaked but held as the lift's rear wheels returned to the floor.
Vaughn released the breath he'd been holding.
"Son of a bitch!"
After a moment's consideration, he nodded and climbed down from the vehicle. He unloaded the materials from the back of the truck and then drove it out of the facility. An hour later he returned with a fresh supply of building materials.
Vaughn heaved bags of concrete onto the back of the forklift. After securing the piled sacks with several cargo straps, he stood back and gave the entire jury-rigged setup an appraising look.
"That dog'll hunt … I hope."
Vaughn climbed back behind the controls of the lift and started it. He wiped the sweat from his brow and then extended a trembling hand toward the lever.
"Please, God, please, let this work."
He eased back on the stick and the hydraulic motor whined under the load. But this time, it lifted the module straight up. All four wheels of the forklift maintained full contact with the ground.
Vaughn backed up the lift. As the thruster cleared its support structure, the man gently lowered the module until it hovered a few inches above the floor. He breathed a sigh of relief. Then Vaughn guided the vehicle out of the vacuum chamber. When he finally reached the center of the Space Power Annex's large courtyard, he lowered the Sigma SSTO Module onto the pavement next to the stack of hardware.
