Abruptly, Ian rose. He couldn’t take this anymore. There were too many things to think about and this was just one more. Some old phrase about a straw and a camel flitted through his brain and he repressed a bubble of nervous laughter.
“Thank you,” he said, though he wasn’t sure for what. “I’ll keep this all in mind.” He turned for the door.
“Of course, Mr. Talley. We’ll be in touch. I hope we’ve clarified things for you.” Fry stepped forward and pulled the door open for him.
Ian did laugh then, all the way to the brass outfitted elevators. Clarified? Fry didn’t know how murky things had just become.
* * *
21 days until launch
“No, damnit. No, Ian.” Jack leaned on the steel and glass desk in Ian’s office, the angry tension in his body causing the whole thing to vibrate.
Ian stood up and walked around the desk. “Look, Jack. It doesn’t mean we can’t go further later. But it’s safer to do a shorter trip, test our legs before we commit to two or three years in space.”
“Our legs?” Jack growled.
Ian wished he could take back the words even as they’d left his mouth. “Sorry, bad choice. But that does just underscore my point. Things were fine on the initial trip. We went to the moon, got home great. It was the long trip around Jupiter where the issues came in. Pluto is a hell of a longer ways out.”
“So we’ll just go that far again, huh? Hope we’ve fixed the issues? Because if we have, bro, we’re good. We can go right out to the damn dwarf planet and back easy-peasy. And if we haven’t fixed the problems or if we’ve made new ones, well, you think shaving a few million miles off the journey is going to save us?” Jack paced the small confines of the office, bouncing on his prosthetics.
“So we’ll be fine. So we’ll do what we set out to do last time and make it to Jupiter. That’s huge, Jack. Huge. We can do other trips.” He wanted to grab his brother, shake him or hold him or something, anything to bridge this strange gulf that had grown up between them since the disaster.
“What about Lancaster? He’s not going to let you shorten the trip without cause.”
“He’s not likely to live, he’s practically on borrowed time as it is,” Ian said.
“Well, hell, bro. If that’s the case why not just delay the launch and let the old man expire, right? Then we’ll just pop his corpsicle in a rocket and presto! He’s off to Pluto! Sure, voyage will take ten years, but he’ll get there just like he wants, probably. Providing he doesn’t fall into a gravity well somewhere or get hit with space debris and knocked off course. But hey! We’ll have sent him off ‘in good faith’.”
“That’s not even what I mean, or what Lancaster wants. Jesus Christ, I can’t have a rational discussion with you right now.”
Jack stopped pacing and stepped up close to his brother. With Jack in his prosthetics they were about the same height and blue eyes bored into brown.
“It’s not your fault,” Jack said quietly, “what happened to us, it isn’t your fault.”
Ian’s eyes burned with sudden tears and a large lump clogged his throat. He swallowed hard.
“We’ll just see, okay. We’ll get up there, get near Jupiter, and we’ll see. If it looks good to finish the journey, we’ll do it. But no promises, Jack.” Ian gripped his brother’s muscled shoulder for a moment. “I’m bringing you home safe this time.”
He fled his own office before Jack could respond.
Chapter Two
Launch Date
Everything Ian could think of or make anyone else think of had been checked, double checked, and then gone over one final time for good measure. He sat in the control room at the front of the Solomon with Jack and tried to breathe normally inside his pressure suit. There was nothing left to do but ignite the engines and get the show on the road.
“We’re ready, bro,” Jack said.
Ian hit the intercom switch to open a channel to the other three crew. Nick, Heidi, and Mr. Lancaster were strapped into seats in the kitchen lounge. It was probably a silly precaution to be in pressure suits and strapped in, since the IDG would keep the ride smooth and easy if it were working properly, but Ian felt a little safer this way and no one had argued much.
“We’re a go, guys, for real now,” he said even as his hands began typing the familiar codes into the console in front of him. His fingers only shook a little as he turned the exterior lights green to let the ground crew know they were go.
Nick’s voice came over the intercom, singing in a surprisingly good tenor from ‘Phantom of the Opera’, something about the point of no return. He broke off suddenly with an “ow, Heidi!”
“We hear you, Ian. We’re ready back here,” said Heidi.
Nick started in again with the singing. Ian hadn’t realized he was a musical fan or so well versed on Andrew Lloyd Webber.
“You’re fired, Nick,” he called out and then cut the intercom.
The IDG didn’t stop the vibrations of the rockets catching, igniting. Solomon shivered like a race horse waiting for the gate to open, the ship feeling alive for the first time.
Beside him, Jack had taken up Nick’s tune, humming it softly under his breath.
Past the point of no return. But we will return, I’ll bring us home safe. Ian sighed as the gentle pressure took and the Solomon lifted away from the Earth in a brilliant streak across the sky on its maiden voyage.
It seemed like no time at all before they hit high orbit and the brothers adjusted course. The plan was to orbit the Earth a few times building up speed, then head for Jupiter, or at least where Jupiter would be in a approximately two months.
“You can unstrap now,” Jack told the others.
They met up in the hallway, everyone bouncing around in the low gravity and laughing, even Mr. Lancaster.
“I’ve never felt so light,” he said. “This, I could get used to.”
“Hey guys,” Nick said with a sly smile, “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.”
“Yeah, Nick, you’re fired,” Jack said, thumping the smaller man on the shoulder.
“Mr. Lancaster, make yourself comfortable,” Ian said. “The rest of you have work to do. I want to use this time while we’re building up speed before the first burn to make sure everything is working. It’ll be easy to lose track of time up here, so start setting alarms.”
“You’re a real buzz-kill, Ian,” Nick said, “can we at least get out of these monkey suits?”
Ian flushed. He couldn’t let them relax, not yet, but he didn’t want to be a jerk either. “Sure, Nick.”
“All right!” Nick jumped up, putting his hands out at the last moment as he collided with the ceiling and dropped slowly back down. “Come on Doctor,” he said to Heidi.
“Will you be okay, sir?” she asked Lancaster.
“Go on, do your jobs. I know where my quarters are, I’ll stay out of the way.” He smiled and patted her arm.
“Okay, Doctor, let’s go.” Heidi and Nick glided off down the hall toward the control room.
Ian looked at Lancaster and shrugged. “Sorry,” he said and followed after them with an awkward bouncing gait, leaving Jack and the old man staring after him.
* * *
16 days in transit
“That was the last torch burn,” Jack said, settling himself lightly into one of the plastic bucket seats behind the solid table in the lounge. “Month and a half maybe to Jupiter. I’m already tired of packaged meals and powder showers.”
“Lady and Gents, we’ve reached cruising speed. The stewardess will be by with your drink orders shortly.” Nick grinned.
“Stewardess?” Heidi blinked at him. “Nice. I’m so glad I have a white noise program on my NetPad.”
“For drowning me out? You don’t want to do that,” said Nick. “I’m the only show in town.”
“Then this will be a long trip,” Lancaster said.
Jack, Heidi, and Nick all turned and looked at him. It was easy to forget he was there;
he hovered at the edges of their days like a benign and fragile ghost.
“Be nice, old man, or I won’t let you play cards with me,” Nick said.
“Cards?” Jack shook his head. “We’ve got only about a third Earth gravity here. Cards go everywhere in one g. Hate to rain on your gambling parade, dude.”
“I thought of that, Jack. Geez.” Nick smiled and slipped out of his seat. “That’s why I made my own set for the trip. Stainless steel with a red gold core, the faces etched in. They look pretty neat, if a bit tough to shuffle.”
Lancaster started to laugh, Heidi and Jack just stared at Nick for a moment before looking at each other and smiling. They knew they’d walked into that perfectly. Damn Nick.
“You know,” Heidi said, “If you applied that brain to useful things, you could really accomplish a lot.”
“I did, I figured out how to beat gravity, well, more or less.” Nick motioned around the room, “And look where that got me.”
“Go get the cards, son. You’re still a genius in my book,” Lancaster said.
“It’s in the blood, sir.” Nick took a little bow.
“Oh?”
“Yeah, while I was at MIT I ordered one of those do it yourself DNA heritage kits. Know what I found out?”
Jack and Heidi exchanged another glance. They couldn’t tell where this joke was going but couldn’t help playing along.
After a moment of silence, Nick waiting with a raised eyebrow, Jack gave in. “Dude, just tell us.”
“I’m a direct descendant of Leonardo Da Vinci.” Nick’s grin was even wider.
“What? I thought you were Korean?” Jack said.
“I thought you were Vietnamese,” said Heidi.
Nick laughed and ducked out the door, calling back over his shoulder, “Goes to show how little you people know about Leonardo Da Vinci.”
* * *
25 days in transit
Heidi poked a cracker at a reddish wet pile on the foil wrapper in front of her. It smelled more chemical than anything, with a faint tang of cilantro. “Is this supposed to be salsa?”
“As much as this is supposed to be peanut butter,” Ian said.
He had joined the crew for a rare meal, after Jack had made yet another pointed comment about Ian being all work and no play. The five of them sat around the table in the kitchen lounge with their ready eat meals. Ian knew he had only his own constant worrying and short temper to blame for the tension in the room. But the hours slid past and nothing went horribly wrong and he’d tired of the angry taskmaster persona.
“Looks more like lamb shit,” said Lancaster. The old man had his daily pills lined up in front of him and took them three at a time, alternating with sips from the grape juice box in his frail hand.
“You, sir, never cease to amaze,” Jack said with his easy grin.
“I thought your family were oil and real estate people, not farmers.” Heidi abandoned the salsa and nibbled on a corner of the dry cracker.
“Again, Jack, all of you, call me Will for chrissakes, not sir. Sir was my grandfather. And when the old bat retired he started one of those hobby farms. But like anything Bill Lancaster did, he had to make it run a profit.” Lancaster sighed with a rueful smile. “I took after him, I guess. But anyway, when the lambs are born, they drink the really rich milk, colostrum or something I think it’s called. And their shit, it comes out that same yellow orange as the peanut butter there.”
Ian dropped the foil tube onto his tray. “That’s disgusting. Thank you.”
The old man grinned and then his face froze. He clutched at his belly and dragged himself out of the seat, half swimming, half crawling to the waste receptacle. Ian and Heidi rose and moved toward him, Nick and Jack hanging back. Jack wasn’t wearing his prosthetics; he’d taken to sliding around on a wheeled board using his arms.
Ian looked down at the hunched old man, unsure of what he should do. It was easy to ignore that fact that they carried a dying man on his final journey and Ian knew deep down that was one of the reasons he avoided the crew as much as he could and yelled at them seeming the entire rest of the time.
It wasn’t fun having a reminder of mortality when stuck in a tin can flying at hundreds of thousands of kilometers per hour toward an unknown fate.
“Sir, I mean, Will, are you okay? Someone get him some water,” Ian reached down, his hands hovering just above Lancaster’s back.
Heidi grabbed her water off the table and held it out to Lancaster. His face was pale and sweat shined on his bald head. A bubble of spittle stuck at the corner of his mouth, tinged purple by the grape juice.
“Go on, I’m as good as I’ll be,” Lancaster said, waving one hand weakly at them. “I’m dying; it was never going to be pretty.”
Heidi took his arm, pulling him up. He seemed to weigh as little as a child in the low g. “Let’s get you to bed, okay?”
“Thank you,” Lancaster said. And then, softer, almost too low to hear, “Thank you all.”
* * *
39 days in transit
For Lancaster, the pain had become an old friend. It had been a tangible thing for years, a cloth against his skin. Sometimes it was sandpaper, scratching and burning. Other times, with the right combination of meds and enough sleep, the pain dulled to silk, a brush so soft within his bones that he hardly believed it to be there at all.
When the pain left him, Lancaster knew that he was ready, near the end.
He opened his eyes, forcing them to focus on the woman sitting beside his bed in the small chamber. The crew had taken to sitting with him sometimes as the hours grew worse. He hadn’t been able to keep down more than a sip of water lately.
Heidi had her headphones in, listening to a song Lancaster couldn’t make out. He realized he had no idea what sort of music she liked.
He touched her arm and she removed the headphones.
“What are you listening to?”
“The ocean.” Heidi smiled. “You feeling okay? Need water?”
“I’m fine. Talk to me, just talk to me. Where did you grow up?”
“I thought you’d researched us all before you approached Ian?” she said.
Lancaster sighed, feeling lighter by the moment, as though all the unimportant things were being lifted off his body like grains of sand, one after another.
“Humor an old man.”
“East L.A.” she said. “I know, why be an astronaut when you grow up in a city that has no stars, no real night sky. But I wanted to get out of there, and space seemed like a good idea.”
“I bought my son a telescope. From our deck in the Florida Keys you could see the rings of Saturn.” It was hard to focus on her expression so Lancaster closed his eyes.
Heidi wrapped her arms around her knees and watched the old man’s thin face. She wanted to ask him about his son, but the one time it had come up before Lancaster had left quickly. They’d all learned that Solomon was his son’s name and speculated that it was clearly related to this journey, somehow.
“I was in first grade when the 2004MN4 asteroid wiped out the International Space Station. I cried, not because those people had lost their lives, but because I knew, even that young, they’d never rebuild it. NASA had already phased out manned space missions and moon tourism hadn’t exactly caught on. I thought I’d never make it up here, not until I met Ian.” She talked more to fill the silence than anything. She wasn’t even sure he was awake or listening until he opened his eyes and smiled at her.
“The Prometheus Project. He did good, that boy. Most Ivy League trust-fund babies don’t get so ambitious.”
Heidi chuckled. “No, he’s unique.”
Lancaster felt the sand slipping off his body, grains of his life drifting out away from him. No pain now, not long now.
“Heidi, get Talley for me. Get Ian, please.” He closed his eyes again.
* * *
Ian sat in the control room, clicking through the various system cameras and keeping an eye on the computer that
calculated the ephemerides, the daily movement of the stars and planets. Two weeks, maybe three until they came upon Jupiter. Until he’d have to decide whether to turn back or go on. He didn’t know if Lancaster would live that long.
They tried to give him an IV once he’d become too nauseated to eat, but the old man had refused, calm but certain. He’d insisted they save their limited medical supplies for someone not already dying.
“Ian?” Heidi leaned through the door.
Ian jumped a bit in his chair, glad he’d buckled a strap over his legs. Most of the time no one bothered him in here. He felt alone, but knew on a certain level he’d brought it on himself. While no one, not even his brother, had invited him to play cards with them or hang out and joke, tell stories of the old days, Ian had also never asked to be included.
And he couldn’t seem to stop opening his mouth and asking the others if they’d checked on something or other or done some probably meaningless task.
“Sorry,” Heidi said, “didn’t mean to startle you.”
“No, it’s okay. What’s up?”
“Mr. Lancaster wants to see you. He seems strangely peaceful. I don’t know.” Her dark eyes dropped to the floor and she bit her lower lip.
“Okay, I’m on my way.” Ian wondered if this was it. The end. At least for Mr. Lancaster. Jesus.
The old man did look oddly serene. Ian hadn’t realized how much pain and tension had been in Lancaster’s face until he saw the lack of them now.
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