With a few drinks in him, he would gladly include himself in that particular club.
He wondered if Zack Stewart was ruthless enough to kill someone, or even more challenging, to order a man to his death.
The EVA ops around Brahma were basic: opening up bays in the descent stage and pulling out boxes. After fifteen minutes, Pogo was bored.
He was also distracted by the conversations between Zack and Taj, who had wisely decided to switch to a common frequency and dispense with relays through their respective mission controls. The first thing Pogo picked up was that Taj was dealing with a problem in its command-and-control system. It was all he could do to keep from telling Venture—“Hey, even the Indian guy has to call Bangalore for computer help!”—but he restrained himself.
Especially since the next thing he learned was that the eruptions on Keanu were actually some kind of braking rockets . . . somehow making jokes at Taj’s expense seemed too trivial.
As a kid Pogo Downey had always thought UFOs were alien spaceships, that the government was hiding something. He’d largely put those suspicions aside by the time he entered the Air Force Academy, where he’d learned new and better ways to distrust governments. But he still believed that humankind was not alone in the universe. So to be standing on an alien artifact . . . well, it wasn’t entirely unexpected.
It was actually pretty cool.
By the time Natalia Yorkina, the second Russian on the Brahma crew, joined her teammate Lucas on the surface, it was obvious that Pogo was a third wheel. “Heading back. Good luck,” he told the Coalition team.
“We will all need luck,” Natalia said.
When Pogo reached Venture, Zack was back on the surface, already preparing to deploy the rover. “Getting a Buzz” was what the training teams had called it.
For years NASA had been in the stupid habit of bestowing individual names on pieces of equipment. The agency had even held a goddamn contest to name the rover that would be used on the third lunar landing, and “Buzz” had been the winner . . . after the second man to step on its surface.
Well, wherever he was, Buzz Aldrin was laughing, because while rovers Neil and Gene had been relegated to traverses on the nasty, asbestoslike lunar soil, rover Buzz was the first on an entirely new world.
Or starship. Let’s not forget that.
The Venture lander stood eighteen meters high and, with the low sun angle, cast a shadow three times that long. In that shadow, Zack pulled the lanyard that opened an entire fifth of Venture’s landing stage . . . Buzz slid out, tilted, then began to unfold itself.
During training on Earth, the deployment process had been fairly noisy, reminding Pogo of the rattling grind of an old roller coaster pulling its cars to the top of the loop.
But here, in the snowy vacuum, there was no noise. With a strange sort of majesty, Buzz’s wheels dropped into place, the cabin inflated to its full size, and the gold Mylar antenna unfurled. In no more than a hundred and twenty seconds, the spidery vehicle was ready for action. “It looks bigger here,” Pogo said. In the bays at Huntsville, surrounded by various models of lander and rover mockups, Buzz had looked a little sad and puny. Not on Keanu, though.
“Big enough.” Zack seemed distracted, which was understandable. Already tasked with a challenging spaceflight, he had watched his mission transformed into something out of legend: the first exploration of an alien artifact.
How could anyone prepare for that?
Pogo joined him in transferring additional equipment from the Venture lockers to Buzz’s frame: additional oxygen tanks, the scientific package, new cameras, cabling. The work progressed in stops and starts. One tank simply would not come out of the bay. “It’s like it fucking grew!” Pogo snapped, only dimly aware that he had just cursed on an open communications link.
Here he saw Zack Stewart in all his stoic glory. Without a word he jumped ahead on the unstow checklist and opened the adjoining bay, patiently handing the gear stored there to Pogo until it was empty.
Then he took a screwdriver and poked a hole in the adjoining wall. He used a pliers to peel open the leaves of the wall. “Is that a good idea?” Pogo hadn’t considered such a maneuver. It reminded him too much of working in his home garage. . . .
“This isn’t a load-bearing piece,” Zack answered, going back to the screwdriver, which he jammed into the opening to free the jammed tank. “Besides, when we leave, this all stays behind.”
Pogo couldn’t decide which was more surprising, the fact that the tank was freed in this manner or that those were the only words Zack Stewart uttered in half an hour.
Buzz had a bubblelike pressurized cabin large enough to hold four astronauts packed so closely they might have to take turns breathing. With two, it approached comfort. For now, however, there was no need for Zack or Patrick to depressurize the cabin: Buzz could be driven from outside, too. (It was a battery-powered electric vehicle not much more complicated than a golf cart.)
Or, as Zack quickly demonstrated, it could be pushed and pulled on the snow toward Vesuvius.
Within minutes, the two were standing at crater’s edge. “How are you holding up, chief?” Pogo asked. He was concerned about Zack’s silence during the work with Buzz.
“Just scouting the terrain. Check it out.” Zack picked up a chunk of ice and launched it into the vent. “Can’t just drop it . . . it might take ten minutes to hit.”
From this distance, Vesuvius Vent reminded Pogo of Meteor Crater in Arizona, a substantial hole in the ground at least a click across and almost a couple of hundred meters deep. He had visited it for lunar geology training. But the Arizona crater was rocky while Vesuvius Vent was largely whitish, covered with impossibly ancient ice and snow, except where the heat of the venting had exposed the surface.
Zack began “giving the suite,” doing a geological survey of the scene. “If that eruption had been volcanic, those bare spots would be black.”
“It would have rolled some of these boulders, too,” Patrick said. He was damned if he’d let Zack dominate the survey. Why waste five hundred hours of geological training?
“So it really wasn’t an eruption, just a venting. Steam.”
“Heat down below.”
“Some deposits and layering.”
“A long time ago, though.”
As they spoke, Zack and Pogo crab-walked their way along the rim, away from Venture and Brahma. “Too bad the floor is shadowed,” Zack said.
“If it is a floor, and not a bottomless pit.”
“If it’s a pit, it can only be a hundred kilometers deep.”
Pogo saw something below, and stopped so suddenly he almost lost his footing. He raised his sun visor to be sure. “Zack,” he said, “take a look.”
Zack joined him, both men looking down into the shadowy depths. “Venture,” Zack said, “are you getting imagery?”
“Not with you jiggling around,” Tea said. Helmet cams were great tools, but had the disadvantage of reacting to every twitch and jolt an astronaut made.
“Okay, we’ll try,” Zack said. “Call this anomaly one.”
“We can’t make it out—”
“It looks like a ramp,” Patrick said. “Directly at one o’clock, one third of the way up from the floor.” Indeed, from this angle he and Zack could see the vent floor . . . a relatively smooth, snowy surface . . . and what could only be a ramp hewn out of the vent wall.
“I make it ten meters wide,” Zack said. “But that’s only a guess.”
“It looks wide enough to drive a rover down.”
“Greetings!” From their voices on the radio, Pogo had heard Lucas and Natalia approaching. Now they appeared, Lucas literally towing a pile of equipment and supplies on a sled! “Cool! Somebody back in Bangalore was thinking ahead,” Pogo told them.
“This looks like a Russian innovation to me,” Zack said.
Now there were four spacewalkers gathered at the rim. Zack pointed out the ramp. Patrick heard Natalia gasp. “Amazing . . .�
�� she said.
Lucas sighed. “Too bad it doesn’t reach to the top.”
“It’s a long way away,” Zack said. “We’d have to drive a couple of hours just to get to the other side.”
Which reminded Pogo: “What are we doing with Buzz, anyway? There’s no easy way down to the bottom of this thing.”
Zack turned in his cumbersome suit, his gold sun visor raised . . . Pogo could see him smiling. “Everybody grab one wheel.”
Without understanding, Pogo simply followed orders, reaching for the rover. “Now what?” he said.
“Lift,” Zack ordered. Buzz weighed three hundred kilograms on Earth; on Keanu it could have been raised by a single human. It was only the sheer size of the rover that made it helpful to use four pairs of hands. “Now,” Zack said, “to the rim. Right there, the steep spot . . .”
Only then did Pogo realize that Zack planned to literally throw Buzz the rover off the rim. “On my mark,” Zack said.
Pogo wasn’t the only doubter. “Zack, are you sure about this?” Natalia asked.
“Yes. We need to explore Vesuvius, and the rover has the tools. No more questions. One, two, three—!”
Propelled perhaps three meters laterally, off the rim of the vent, Buzz floated down, down, down, kicking off one outcropping and starting a slow tumble, but still remained upright. The astronauts could see the rover bounce twice, then, just like Venture during its landing, settle onto the snow and ice.
“I don’t fucking believe it,” Pogo said.
“How do we get down?” Lucas asked.
“We’ve got no choice but to follow,” Zack said. He walked Pogo toward the rim—then pushed him over.
Pogo had logged two hundred parachute jumps back at the Air Force Academy. He was no stranger to the momentary terror of a great leap, though the impromptu, unequipped nature of this push caused him to tense.
The crazy maneuver confirmed one thing: Zack Stewart was the right choice to lead a mission like this.
CAPCOM: Venture, Houston. Yvonne, the center director is standing by. VENTURE (HALL): You mean my dad.
CAPCOM: Yes, your father, Dr. Jones.
VENTURE (HALL): Does he have something official or, ah, medical to discuss?
CAPCOM: That’s negative. He wants to speak . . . father to daughter. DIRECTOR (JONES): I just want to know how you’re doing.
VENTURE (HALL): I’ve already told the docs. They’re watching my condition.
DIRECTOR (JONES): We all are . . .
VENTURE (HALL): So much for privacy.
DIRECTOR (JONES): If you want to call this . . . call everything off, we’ll pull you out of there.
VENTURE (HALL): That sounds more like JSC director than father. DIRECTOR (JONES): I’m sorry.
VENTURE (HALL): Well, Mr. Director, tell my father that I’m enthusiastic about completing my mission.
DESTINY-7 AIR-TO-GROUND TRANSCRIPT (NO DISTRIBUTION)
Yvonne removed the headset. Four hundred thousand clicks from Earth, and I still can’t get away from this man.
She felt sick. She wanted to go home. But she would be double damned if she would make Gabriel Jones’s life any simpler or easier.
Flight surgeons report that Destiny astronaut Yvonne Hall’s condition is stable following an incident that took place during her historic EVA. An unexpected eruption from the Keanu feature known as Vesuvius Vent is believed to have caused a fall and subsequent damage to Hall’s suit. She was safely retrieved by Destiny commander Zachary Stewart and Coalition cosmonauts Munaretto and Chertok, and is now resting comfortably aboard Destiny. Further updates will be issued as warranted. Coverage of the second EVA by Stewart and Destiny astronaut Patrick Downey resumes shortly.
NASA PUBLIC AFFAIRS, AUGUST 22, 2019
The assault on Vesuvius Vent, which began with the bombardment of rover Buzz, followed by the parachute-free free fall of Col. Patrick “Pogo” Downey, USAF, continued with the free-fall landing of Dr. Zachary Stewart, then the sled of equipment provided by the Coalition of Space-Faring Nations.
Cosmonauts Lucas “World’s Greatest Astronaut” Munaretto of Brazil’s AEB (Agencia Espacial Brasileira) and Natalia Yorkina of the Russian Federal Space Agency followed more sedately; they had come equipped with rappelling gear and chose to leave anchor lines at the top before sliding down.
Watching the process made Zack impatient and confirmed his original judgment. Lucas, in particular, kept bouncing in the low gravity, literally hanging in midair for seconds at a time at the end of his rope, until regaining contact with the surface, and traction.
Natalia proved to be either an experienced climber or a natural low-gravity operator.
No matter, Zack was happy to have the rope option.
It was one thing to take a literal giant leap to the bottom of Vesuvius . . . it was quite another to do so with no obvious way back up. His last order to Tea was to get together with Taj and do a detailed survey of the Vesuvius slopes, in hopes of finding a road to the top.
While he waited, and while he still had communications with Venture , he was able to check his messages, which could be read on a tiny LED inside his helmet, about six words at a time.
There was a text from Rachel: HEARD YOU TAKE STEPS BUT COVERED MY EYES. BE CAREFUL AND COME HOME! LUV U.
He started to laugh. Even though it was easy, as the father of a teenage girl, to be distracted by the laziness, sloppiness, and occasional snotty attitude, Rachel was inescapably his child.
And Megan’s.
He did not want to unwrap the Megan memory box just yet. It would be too distracting. Focus on your environment!
He was standing in the bottom of a giant pit as wide as Minute Maid Stadium, just out of the cold shadow that darkened two-thirds of the surface here.
The surface itself was more rock than snow. It was nowhere near flat, either, but rather gently rolling, like the surface of a frozen ocean.
He was tired, his hands ached from the struggle against EVA gloves, yet he felt buoyant, alive, elated. Zack extended this private moment long enough to piss in his diaper. He comforted himself with the knowledge that he was continuing an astronaut tradition that went back to Alan Shepard on the first Mercury . . . and Buzz Aldrin during the first walk on the Moon.
Now it was time to dig more deeply into Keanu. The only moment in his life that compared was his first date as a licensed driver.
In fact, he could see several clefts in the shadowed walls of the vent. He couldn’t wait to start. He was delayed only by a mandated rest break (something he had learned to appreciate during his space station EVAs). Lucas and Natalia were busy unloading the sled, while Pogo was unspooling fiber-optic cable from Buzz. That line would provide real-time communications to Tea and Venture—aside from the habitability module on Buzz, which allowed for extended EVA, the cable was the only clear advantage the NASA team had over the Coalition so far.
Constant, real-time communication between Venture and Houston had its drawbacks. There wasn’t an astronaut alive who enjoyed having his every syllable broadcast in real time to millions. But it also allowed Rachel to see what her father was doing—and even send him the odd text.
Zack wondered if she sent messages to Tea, too. They had developed their own independent friendship since that very tricky moment nine months back, when Zack had first introduced his fellow astronaut to his daughter . . . as his girlfriend.
It was his own birthday, and he had continued the Stewart family tradition of selecting a favorite restaurant—this year a new California cuisine place on El Dorado. Rachel was present, of course, and so were the Meyers . . . By prearrangement, Tea had arrived ten minutes late. Zack had allowed her to kiss him, then introduced her as his date.
All Rachel had said, then, was “Gee, I wondered who the extra chair was for.”
That night she had been more pointed. “I think she’s fine, okay? But, God, you could have told me in private!” Well, no . . . they had been fighting so much over so many trivial matt
ers that season that Zack had simply been afraid to have a conversation with his daughter.
Things had gone better, with Tea spending more and more time at the Stewart house, and even going shopping with Rachel.
The only crisis had come when Zack took Tea’s spot as Destiny-7 commander. She had become . . . just another astronaut. Ever since the crew suited up at the Cape prior to launch, there had been no shared looks between them, no secret touches, very damn few private words. Yes, this mission was all-consuming, but did it have to destroy any vestige of human emotion? Was that what real spaceflight did?
More troublesome was the possibility that the mission just exposed Zack’s lack of true feelings for Tea . . . or hers for him—
“Zack, look what we got here!”
It was Lucas. The Brazilian astronaut—who had spent so much time in Houston over the past decade that he seemed more American than Zack—had unpacked a portable aperture-radar unit from the Coalition’s sled and was panning it, like a twentieth-century video camera, around the bases of the vent.
Zack and Pogo shuffled toward the Coalition team. “What have you got?”
Lucas handed him the radar gun, but Zack saw only a confused image that reminded him of a prenatal sonogram—more evidence that the Coalition team was better equipped and trained for exploring Keanu. “An opening,” Lucas said. “A big one.”
Pogo took the radar gun. He seemed to have a better idea of what it showed. “He’s right. Sucker’s ten meters wide, at least, and at least half that high. You could drive a semi through it.” As he handed the gun back to Lucas, he added, “Did I say straight edges?”
Keanu maneuvered. And there was a ramplike structure inside this vent. And now what seemed to be a portal with straight edges . . .
Zack could feel his heart rate climbing. “Let’s get rolling, then.”
They pressed forward like Arctic explorers . . . or so Zack imagined. Pogo led the way on foot, followed by Lucas pulling the sled, Natalia playing out the fiber-optic cable, and Zack driving Buzz at the rear. It was his job to keep Tea and Houston informed of their progress. The exchanges were curt and to the point. “Fifty meters from the cleft.” “Copy, fifty.”
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