In the Blackness of Space

by Robert Kuntz

  Ferris hesitates. “Are you, I mean…I don’t know how to ask this. Are you the only one alive?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry, Dr. Chapman.”

  “They kept me alive, Ferris. If it hadn’t been for them, I would have died.” After that, there’s nothing to say.

  I hear a sound in the background from Earth, as if someone scribbled on a pad of paper and shoved it across the desk to Ferris. “Can you get Dremenev’s enhanced pulse comm back online?” His voice sounds rigid and forced.

  “I don’t know much about that sort of thing.”

  “We can’t send data on this limited system. Dremenev left instructions. We have them recorded; we’ll play them back to you. He was too weak, at the end, to do the work, but I don’t think you’ll have a hard time. It’s mostly putting components in place and hooking up a few connections. You passed soldering, didn’t you?”

  “Ferris, the last time I soldered anything was in high school tech class.”

  “It’s like riding a bicycle, Dr. Chapman.”

  “I never rode a bicycle.”

  “You science types lead interesting lives.”

  I don’t want to lead an interesting life. I want to be back home on Earth.

  “Dr. Chapman, we’ll get you back,” Ferris says, as if he’s reading my mind.

  “What?”

  “The team’s been working on the best ways to turn the Galileo around and bring you home. The president said there’s been enough senseless waste of life. We’re to save you at all costs.”

  I think about Carmen’s bassoon. Those seven nauts had the courage and vision to go to space and it’s a senseless waste of life?

  I hear voices in the background and then Ferris speaks again. “We really need Dremenev’s pulse comm hooked up. This system works fine for voice, but we can’t get data from SINDAS without the enhanced pulse comm. Then we can take control of Galileo’s systems. After that, it’s the old story about turning an aircraft carrier. We’ll get you back.”

  Ferris lowers his voice. “You were good friends with Dr. Jepler. I’m not supposed to tell you, but he was fired from NASA. They’ve served a restraining order; he can’t contact any of us. Our jobs are on the line if we talk to him. He punched out two of the president’s advisors…”

  My first thought is Jepler, you carrion eater, you deserve it. One of your shady deals finally bit you. I imagine it was one of Jepler’s swindles in the joining bolt fiasco. When they were building the Galileo, a twenty-five-pound joining bolt sheared off, and we almost lost Ring Two. NASA needed to check all the bolts holding Ring Two together. The executives at Armalla Steel said, “Bring the bolts back to Earth and we’ll run them through the holo-scan.”

  We couldn’t tell if their executive brains were powered by monkey drool or if that was their way of saying this topped their priority list for the year the flaming netherworld froze over. Bringing the bolts back to Earth meant disassembling the skeleton of Ring Two. No one wanted to do that. On the other hand, no one wanted to send the rings into space with bolts ready to shear off.

  Enter Wild Bill. In the grip of his trade fixation, he’d crafted a sterling set of deals, cons, and reciprocal agreements. He “borrowed” a one-and-a-half-ton advanced holo-scan from Maryland Comprehensive Technical Institute in Baltimore to send to space. MCTI’s reputation had been trashed six months earlier when the CFO fled the country with a luscious-looking comptroller and a seven-million-dollar endowment fund. The publicity from MCTI’s gift of the holo-scan not only boosted the school’s reputation but somehow brought in a twelve-million-dollar endowment.

  Bahnwerk Space Research Inc., happened to have a space launch scheduled. It happened to have free space in the cargo bay which they were glad to donate. The crew happened to include four experienced holo-scan operators who just happened to have free time once they reached space. They wrestled the holo-scan around outside the ring. Seventeen hundred fifty bolts were inspected. Nineteen defective ones were replaced. In Houston, NASA celebrated—both that the mission hadn’t been shut down and also that we’d avoided the worst disaster since the O-rings failed on the Challenger back in 1989.

  No one ever knew all the deals Billy wrangled to get this done, but one night over roasted breadfruit seeds and bittersweet mocha-nut toffee froth in his apartment, he told me Bahnwerk Space Research had received ten years’ worth of NASA contracts. And he mentioned that the statute of limitations would run out in seven years.

  I’ll tell you something, Jepler. I’m glad you’re not at NASA. The statute of limitations for what you did to me will never run out.

  Suddenly, for no reason I can see, I’m so sad I’m near tears. Clouds of gray 59s leak from the sky and slide through my heart.

  “We’ll get you home, Dr. Chapman.” Ferris’s words scare the numbers away. Suddenly, I’m hungry for home, for the feeling of wind in my face, for a chance to see the sun rise and to watch storm clouds boil across the sky. I want to see Marsha coming toward me and hear her singing and feel the soft touch of her hand.

  Ginger and Mouser look up at me with luminous, mournful eyes. I know what they’re thinking: they don’t want to return. They spring to their feet with a buzzing growl in their throats, as if I’m shoving them in a cage.

  I hear muted voices from the comm. After a moment, Ferris says, “Are you sure you don’t want to start on the pulse comm right now?”

  “Ferris, I’ll call tomorrow. And here’s what I want: Dr. Jepler and Dr. Hudson at Mission Control, ready to talk to me. If they’re not there, no data will get back home. Do you have that, Ferris?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Ferris, tell your wife her peach cobbler is still the best I’ve ever tasted.”

  “Thanks, sir.”

  “Talk to you tomorrow.”

  I punch the switch to end voice transmission and wish I had something to throw against the wall. Mouser jumps to the floor and barks.

  “I know you’re not happy with me. Let’s go for a walk.” Ginger joins Mouser, barking angrily. “I don’t care if you don’t like what I’m doing. You’re not in charge.

  “We’re going to milk the goats. You can watch me put water on to boil for rice and beans and scramble up eggs and onions. For dessert, I’ll have a banana smoothie with goat milk yogurt and cinnamon.” We head out, down the gray-tiled corridor for the Ring One ag biome. “And after supper, our evening’s entertainment will be figuring out what to say to the president.”

  7

  May 2, 2052 (Launch plus 103 days), 02:29 GMT.

  I’m walking to Houston, seven days out of Charleston. I sleep in a field and wake in the middle of the night. I look up at the stars and name the constellations: Big Dipper, Little Dipper, Draco, Cassiopeia, the Pleiades. God writes in the heavens with the light of distant suns. As I look, the stars change. They waver and slide to new locations. They spin and whir out of place. They dodge and pulse and wink off and on like lunatics. The sky is drunk, filled with black 999s, wobbling, tumbling black 999s.

  I jump to my feet. “Come back! Come back! I can’t find my way.” No one hears. No one answers.

  The stars blur and flash. They swing and streak and pulse with lightning. I hear sharp cracks like branches breaking. Number 4040s pour from the sky, long and stringy, stinking like dead carcasses beside the road. I feel nauseous. If I pass out, I’ll be covered in stringy, stinking 4040s.

  The stars turn from the color of diamonds to the color of sand. They stop moving; they lose their brightness. It’s all senseless; there’s no distant sun; there’s no message from God.

  The stars have abandoned me. I’ll never get home.

  I wake, cold and sweating, filled with a surging panic, as if the gibberish of the heavens would swirl into me and I would become gibberish, too.

  I can’t move from the hammock. If I move, it will happen, the stars will swirl to tan and I’ll be abandoned.

  The poodles sense something, even in their sleep. They
rouse themselves and bounce over to me, jumping into the hammock. They’re warm. Their hearts beat with a comforting rhythm. Their soft tongues are wet and rasp against my face.

  I sit up in the hammock and they scramble into my lap. I look at their eager little faces. “I wish I’d had pups like you when I was young. Once I asked my aunt and uncle for a dog. They said, ‘We go without to feed you. How can we feed a dog?’”

  I scratch the pups’ heads and they settle down to sleep. “I guess after that, I thought I could never afford a dog. If you’d been my dogs in Charleston, you’d have come with me to Houston. You’d have come all the way; you wouldn’t have left me.”

  As if they understand me, Ginger and Mouser raise sleepy heads and give a tired yip.

  I wipe a tear from my eye.

  I lean back against the pillows. “When I moved in with Aunt Clara and Uncle Ralph, it wasn’t too bad. I was nine years, four months, and twenty-six days old.

  “They were older than my parents, Clara being my mother’s sister, older by fifteen years. They’d had three girls, all grown and gone, moved far away.

  “I learned not to talk about my parents. Whenever I tried, Aunt Clara would say, ‘Hush, child. That’s all behind you now.’

  “Uncle Ralph was a quiet, distant man, a hard-working farmer. He struggled with his tractor through the red muck of the South Carolina fields. He nodded at me when he saw me and called me ‘boy.’ I knew he would never do drugs or put me up a tree.

  “One night, during my second summer on the farm, after supper when the lightning bugs winked on and off in the yard, Uncle Ralph sat on the edge of the stone porch by the back door. Right next to him, Aunt Clara’s hollyhocks swayed in the evening breeze. I’d never seen flowers with stalks so tall and blooms so abundant. The world smelled fresh and loamy and alive.

  “My uncle nodded to me to sit beside him. And I thought, He’s going to teach me something. We’re going to become friends.

  “He pulled his worn pocketknife from the front pocket of his jeans and pried the edge of the blade into a peach pit, splitting the hard shell to reveal the kernel inside.

  “‘Boy, take a look at that there seed. There’s a whole world in there. That little thing can grow into a peach tree. You put your good mind to that a minute. How does God tell this little speck-a-thing to become a tree, and not just any tree, but a peach tree: every year blossoming and every year fruiting and growing more branches and sending out deeper roots and knowing to take up water and seek the sun? It’s all there, boy, all in that little feller.’

  “He plopped it in my hand, and it was the first time I held life. It was a little feller, but it seemed to throb in my palm, as if my uncle had mentioned only a speck of the wonder that it held.

  “Later, we studied Dr. George Washington Carver in school. I was fascinated with the hundreds of things he created from plants. He said that they told him their secrets. I knew what he meant. That peach seed had whispered to me.

  “But that was the last time I ever sat on the edge of the porch with Uncle Ralph.

  “The Comprehensive Greenhouse Gas Protection Bill passed forty-one days later, rushed into law against the threat of global warming. I was too young to understand what was happening then, but I studied the bill at college. It worked, but it was drastic and disruptive.

  “For Uncle Ralph, it was the end of tractor farming. Due to the greenhouse tax on gasoline, the carbon emission tax on vehicles, and the discouragement surcharge on using heating oil and wood-burning stoves, he built a solar heat unit for the house, parked his tractor in the barn, and bought a pair of mules. The car sat in the garage, covered with dust. He rode his bike thirty miles to the library, brought home podcasts about Amish farming, and proceeded to wrestle with mules and plows.

  “He was never as angry as my dad, but I could see the anger in him. I knew he wouldn’t hurt me, but I didn’t want to be with someone who was angry. It made me frightened inside. So I stayed away from him. And he never motioned me to sit down next to him on the porch again.”

  ****

  06:48 GMT.

  The next thing I know, it’s morning and I’m waking up. Ginger and Mouser scramble off my lap and race over to pester the goats.

  ****

  15:44 GMT.

  I slop through the wastewater lagoon. It seems so small, this vat the size of a backyard that’s the first part of the aquatic plant waste water recycling. I wonder for the twentieth time if the system will be stressed by inadequate waste. Then I shake the thought from my mind, grab a thick branch of canna stalks, slice through them with the machete, and toss them over my shoulder into the open collection pack. I slog over to the next clump, thin it with a whack of the blade, and add another handful to my goat fodder collection. The goats love this stuff.

  I wade to the edge of the lagoon and climb out onto the sani-tiled floor. I pull off my waders and hang them from the rod that juts over the lagoon. Water drips from them back into the pond.

  I slip off the collection pack and set it on the floor next to the door. Then, I strip the sweat-laden clothes from my body and toss them on top of the canna stalks.

  I take a few steps, slip into the water chamber, and it pummels me with a warm sani-wash. I can’t feel the sonic antiseptic bursts, but I imagine them as bursts of exploding number 828s, curling and splashing over my skin.

  ****

  17:31 GMT.

  I’ve finished aphid control, laundry, and milking. I head down the gray-tiled corridor to the Tri-Comm to call Houston. Ginger and Mouser jump up on the padded seats next to me and curl up like happy 6s. Behind me, the lights blink, brighten, and dim as SINDAS keeps her eye on everything.

  “Houston, Chapman here.”

  I’ve left the holo-vid off again. Ferris’s voice jumps through the speaker. “Dr. Chapman, good to hear you.”

  “You, too, Ferris. I need to talk to that crook Jepler about a bassoon.”

  “They have to bring him through security. They won’t let him wait inside. They treat him like scum.”

  “Because he punched out presidential advisors?”

  “No, because he tried to send a ship out after you, that prototype they used for testing, the Perced. The moment he heard about the cold radiation, he was like a barn fire. The engineers told him the Perced could do .97 Planck and catch up with the Galileo. He had it outfitted and ready for launch. They were going to send it without rings. No ecosystem, only supplies and a new crew for the Galileo. And they would have launched it, too. But the president insisted it be manned by Galileo’s back-up crew. We couldn’t find them. Jepler howled that excellent nauts were available, but the president insisted the risk was too great to use untested nauts. He demanded the team who’d been trained in space. All four of them were missing. We still don’t know where they are.

  “So the president shut down the launch. He said you don’t win football games with the third string, and if the Perced didn’t meet up with the Galileo, we were sending more nauts to their death.”

  My jaw is clenched. My hands squeeze the console shelf. I’m ready to yell at Ferris, tell him I don’t believe Billy did that for me. Then I think that Jepler must have had some kind of angle, another one of his horse-trading schemes.

  “What’s it like up there, Dr. Chapman? Have you been able to work on the pulse comm?”

  “Not yet. First thing this morning, I cleaned a ton of mud out of the trap that keeps silt from flowing into the ocean. I could use a hand if you’re available.”

  “Dr. Chapman, I’d jump at the chance.”

  “You’d be good, Ferris. But your wife would miss you.”

  He lowers his voice. “Judy would come along. We told Dr. Jepler we’d both go on the Perced. But we weren’t pilots or mission specialists so we didn’t make the cut. Now the president wants to shut down FarSpace. He shouldn’t shut down the dream.”

  I choke up and can’t speak. Why isn’t Ferris president? Why can’t we have a leader who dreams dreams? />
  “Are you there, Dr. Chapman?”

  “I hope you both get to FarSpace, Ferris.”

  His voice changes. “While we’re getting Dr. Jepler, can I patch you through to the president?”

  “Why?”

  “He’s making a big deal of bringing you home.”

  I don’t want to talk to the president, but this is not a good time to slight the man who could change things at NASA. “Sure, Ferris, patch me through.”

  “This is a private feed, Dr. Chapman. No media coverage. The president wanted it that way.”

  I bet he did.

  “Dr. Grant Chapman, what a miracle that you survived.”

  I grimace when I hear his voice. It doesn’t seem like a miracle to me. I’m in a prison, in space… I thrust away the thoughts so I don’t black.

  “It’s good to talk to you, Mr. President.” Now I sound like a politician. I’m as full of blather as the rest of them.

  “When you’re back on Earth, we can talk in person at the White House.”

  “That will be difficult, sir.”

  “Nonsense, we’ll send a jet after you and give you a parade through Washington.”

  “Mr. President, I’d rather not…”

  “Dr. Chapman, you’re a symbol for the nation. You’ll give people hope.”

  “It’s not that, Mr. President. I have phobias. I don’t ride in cars or planes. I keep my feet on the ground.”

  “And you’re in the Galileo?”

  “Ironic isn’t it?”

  “You’re pulling my leg.”

  “No, sir.” I take a deep breath. I don’t want to black, not when I’m talking with the president. “Sir, I’ve had these phobias for a long time. I’ve learned to live around them.”

  “But how’d they get you up there?”

  “They drugged me.” I’m about to rant about Benedict Ballpoint Billy. Then I realize the president’s not the best man to tell.