Asimov's SF, February 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  The non-astronauts had trained to the best of their abilities. They were in the best physical shape of their lives; they could all handle zero-g like pros; and they'd even survived multiple simulated space walks without screwing up.

  Richard could do all those things and more. He'd had astronaut training in the 1980s, but had never gone into space because his business had taken off. Besides, he had hated NASA's regulations, many of them designed after the Apollo 1 and 8 tragedies. He had a hunch the regulations would become even more restrictive after more tragedies, and he left before they could.

  Even so, his hunch had been prescient. After Apollo 20's spectacular crash into the Moon's surface, the regulations for astronauts had become so restrictive, it was a wonder anyone signed up for the program. Particularly as the private sector began to make its own advances.

  Despite his retreat from the NASA program, Richard kept up his training. He was always a bit too thin. He trained on various exercise equipment for more than two hours daily—six on weekends. He became a marathoner. And, as the technology became available, he began to sleep in an oxygen deprivation tent, so that his lungs learned to be efficient with minimal oxygen.

  He wasn't the most in-shape person on this mission—after all, he was nearly fifty—but he was the most in-shape observer. He could outrun two of the astronauts, and he could certainly out-perform all of the researchers.

  Still, he felt nervous on the docking platform of the ship he'd helped design. He'd been in and out of these ships hundreds of times over the years. He'd even been in low Earth orbit for several trips, so standing on the platform in a space suit wasn't new.

  What was new was this sense of awe, this moment of surrealism: he had envisioned going into space on a rescue mission for almost forty years, and now here he stood.

  He was crossing into new territory.

  When Richard had mentioned this to Bremmer, Bremmer had laughed. You've been in new territory all your life, boss, Bremmer had said.

  But it was imagined territory, not just by him, but also by his specialists.

  This, this was new—to all of them.

  And no matter how much he justified it, no matter how similar he claimed it was to recovering wrecks of historic ships or finding the tombs of the pharaohs, he knew it wasn't.

  When he entered the Carpathia, he was becoming one of the first humans to recover a space vessel. He was someone who both captured and created history at the same time.

  Instead of being a billionaire or an inventor or a crazed eccentric—all of those media portrayals that haunted him even now—he'd become what he always dreamed of.

  He'd be an adventurer.

  For the first time, he felt as if he were stepping into his own life.

  * * * *

  The Carpathia was roomy. She was designed for longer trips with comfort in mind. While her cabins were small, the fact that she had them at all separated her from other ships. Her public areas were large and comfortable: a lounge; two research rooms, which could double as equipment rooms or extra sleeping berths; and a cargo bay, which had its own separate environmental system, designed—ostensibly—to bring back things found on the Moon. Richard had watched over the specs himself. He made sure that the cargo bay was also large enough to carry one 1960s Apollo capsule, with plenty of margin for error.

  Even though the ship's captain tried to give him the largest space, Richard insisted on the smallest berth. He also insisted on privacy—even though he had delegated as much as possible, he still had to conduct some business. And he had always been a loner. The idea of being in close quarters with a dozen people he barely knew made him shaky. He needed some privacy, a place where he could close the door and not see anyone else. This mission was of indeterminate length; he had to have a place that would keep him sane.

  Before he left, Richard tried not to watch the press coverage, but he absorbed it anyway: Richard Johansenn's vanity project, which would probably get him killed; Richard Johansenn's pipe dream; Richard Johansenn's dream.

  Columnists accused him of grave robbing or worse. The scientifically illiterate among them felt that he was taking money from the mouths of children for his little space adventure, not realizing that even if he didn't recover the capsule, he—and the country—would learn what happened to vessels that spent almost forty years in space just from the photographs he got of the ship.

  He tried not to have expectations of his own. He tried not to imagine—any more than he already had—what he would find.

  Instead, he downloaded old memoirs from the Apollo and Gemini missions as well as contemporaneous newspaper accounts and books written about those missions. He also scanned interviews with those crews, watching them, seeing what they had to say.

  He barely paid attention to the ride into orbit; he'd done that so many times that it felt like old hat. Two of the archeologists had clung to their couches, looking terrified. The rest of the newbies had watched with great fascination as the Carpathia passed through the atmosphere and settled into an elliptical orbit that in three times around would swing them away from the Earth and on a path to match course and speed with Apollo 8.

  Below, Earth was, as she always seemed, placid and calm—a deep blue planet with a bit of green, lots of cloud cover, the most beautiful thing in this solar system—maybe even in the universe.

  It was home; oddly, it felt like home even as he rode above its surface. It felt like home the way going back to Wisconsin felt like home, the way snow on a clear moonlit night felt like home, the way pulling into his driveway felt like home.

  Sometimes, when he was feeling spiritual and not scientific at all, he wondered if this sensation of home was inbred even when looking at the planet from space. Did the feeling come from knowledge that he had sprung from this place? Or did it come from something more innate, something bred into every creature born on that blue-green surface? Had the astronauts of Apollo 8 felt it as they pulled away from Earth? Or as they soared away from the Moon? Had they looked back, somehow, and reflected on their own folly? Or had they felt like explorers, finally getting a chance to escape?

  Richard mostly stayed in his cabin for the twenty hours it would take them to reach Apollo 8. He was nervous. He was worried. He tried to sleep, couldn't.

  He wanted answers, and he wanted them now. Yet at the same time, he was afraid of the answers, afraid of what he would find. Finally, he had dozed, coming awake instantly with a call from Susan Kirmatsu.

  Most of the flying was automatic; still, he had hired Susan, one of the best pilots ever, for this mission.

  He quickly made his way to the cockpit, standing behind Susan to watch. She wore her black hair in a buzz cut that accented her shapely skull. The console dwarfed her small form, yet she controlled the ship as surely as he controlled himself. She watched the read-outs on the screen, ignoring the double-sheets of clear pane plastic windows that he had built into the nose of the ship.

  Instead, he was the one watching the darkness ahead. Earth now had shrunk to the size of a large grapefruit. He had never been out so far before.

  The co-pilot, Robbie Hamilton, sat at another console and also watched the instrumentation. Two more pilots in seats behind him followed the flow of information on their handheld screens as well, ready to jump in at a moment's notice.

  "We have her,” Susan said. “She's coming in on the proper trajectory."

  Their plan sounded simple: They'd match Apollo 8's path, grab the ship, and pull her into the cargo bay.

  They'd done this type of thing before; such maneuvers were familiar to the astronauts on board now. Two of them had helped build the space station. Another had gathered dying satellites as part of his work for one of Richard's companies. And Susan had flown half a dozen practice missions, bringing in everything from satellite pieces to bits of rock, just to make sure that Hawk-class designs like the Carpathia could handle this bit of trickery.

  "Can I see her?” Richard asked.

  "Over here.” R
obbie ran his fingers along his smooth console, and then, on the screen in front of him, a new picture appeared. Something small and cone-shaped appeared in the upper left.

  Richard squinted. “Can we magnify?"

  Robbie slid his fingers across the console again, and this time the ship appeared close. And it was tumbling slightly. That had been another worry of his. If it had been tumbling hard and fast, they would have had to try to slow that down first.

  Apollo 8 looked worn. Its exterior had dark streaks and lighter streaks, which Richard did not remember from any of the photographs. The nose cone itself seemed dented, but that might have been a trick of the light.

  "How bad is she damaged?” he asked.

  "Dunno,” Robbie said. “We'll find out soon enough."

  Soon enough would be hours from now. It would take that long to match the speed and path of Apollo 8. Richard wasn't sure he could stand waiting in the cockpit.

  He went back to the lounge.

  The scientists were peering out the windows. The observers had dialed up the exterior view on one of the large screens and watched the changes the way someone would watch television.

  Richard couldn't stand that either, so he went back to his cabin. The bed took up most of the floor space. He had strapped his clothing bag into its little compartment, but he hadn't needed to. Unless something happened with the artificial gravity, everything would stay where he placed it.

  He was too restless to lie down, so he closed the door again and reentered the hall. For a man who planned everything down to the smallest detail, he was stunned that he hadn't thought through these last few hours, that he hadn't planned some sort of activity to keep his mind awake, active, and off the rendezvous.

  He returned to the lounge with a vague idea of reviewing the plans, but instead just sat silently in the corner, thinking about what he was about to do.

  Or not do, as the case might be.

  * * * *

  As the large screen showed a looming Apollo 8, Richard went back to the cockpit. He listened as Susan gave terse instructions, and watched through the windows he had designed as his ship—his ship—lined up with a ship he had only seen in his dreams.

  Apollo 8 looked larger than he expected and appeared formidable in a rockets-and-rivets kind of way.

  The capsule wasn't streaked, as he had thought at first; it was damaged with tiny holes blasted along its sides. The cone's nose was dented—something had hit it hard—but hadn't burst open. The small round portals had clouded over and appeared to be scratched.

  Susan reported damage near the engines that had malfunctioned—flaring too early and too hard, was the speculation, but no one knew exactly what had gone wrong. Once his team had the capsule, they might be able to figure that out and solve that old puzzle.

  Richard was shaking. He threaded his fingers together as the ship lined up next to the slowly tumbling capsule. The first thing they would do would be to stop the tumbling.

  He came to himself long enough to make certain the live feed back to Earth had actually started. It had. One of the other astronauts and one of the observers were giving a play-by-play as they watched through a different portal.

  Alicia Kensington, the modern day Walter Cronkite, had asked Richard to do the play-by-play, but he had known he would be too nervous. Yes, he was the celebrity, but he hadn't wanted to be at this moment.

  At this moment, he needed privacy.

  Eventually, as they worked to carefully slow the tumble, he made his way to the back, to the entrance of the hatch, watching on small screens as he passed. The tumbling stopped, and, next, the grappler's metal fingers found purchase near Apollo 8's hatch.

  He stood still as that happened, terrified. One of his greatest worries, one of the scientists’ great worries as well, was that the old ship would disintegrate when touched. It had been through a lot, the theory went, and it might have been held together by next to nothing. A push from the grappler, a touch of the hooks, the grate of metal against metal, might cause the capsule to come apart.

  And then his great adventure would be over.

  But the capsule didn't come apart. It held. In fact, it looked sturdier than the grappler.

  He turned toward the live feed, watching from one of the outside cameras, struck at the fact that the older ship looked so much stronger than the Carpathia. The Carpathia was built of lightweight materials, designed for maximum efficiency, both in space and in the atmosphere.

  Apollo 8 had a thick sturdiness he associated with his childhood, the sense he'd learned from every adult back then from his teachers to his parents, that if something was overbuilt, it was better, it could survive more, it would be the best it possibly could be.

  He smiled for the first time that day.

  They had been right.

  * * * *

  He stood outside the bay doors with Patricia Mattos, the chief archeologist. Her team waited behind them, shifting from foot to foot, obviously as nervous as he felt. They all wore their space suits, just in case there was a problem with the environmental systems when they went into the cargo bay, but at the moment, everyone held their bubble helmets. A few tucked their helmets under their arms, the way that the first astronauts used to as they walked to the rockets that would blast them into space.

  No one spoke.

  They watched the nearby screen, and listened to the scraping sounds within.

  The scrapes did not go onto the live feed. Neither did the conversation of the astronauts out there working the grappler—the grunts, the single-sentence acknowledgments, the occasional curse. Live feeds with live astronauts were NASA's purview. No matter what Alicia Kensington wanted, Richard was determined to keep some privacy here, some mystery.

  The entire world could watch if it wanted to as Apollo 8 got loaded into the cargo bay. They just couldn't hear the discussions as the astronauts got it into position.

  Susan had activated the cameras inside the bay as well, and started a second feed. The first came from outside the ship, showing Apollo 8 as it looked to the Carpathia. The second came from inside, showing, at the moment, the bay, and the backs of the astronauts, looking small against the vastness.

  The cargo bay was spacious and empty. Even though it had its own environmental system, it had few other controls—just an extra door and an airlock for smaller items, and a series of overrides near the back of the room, in case something malfunctioned with the bay doors.

  At the moment, the doors were open. The two astronauts, guiding Apollo 8 inside, wore their space suits and gravity boots. They looked like slimmed down versions of the men who had first walked on the Moon. Their bubble helmets were smaller and more efficient, their suits form-fitting for ease of movement, the gloves less bulky. Even the oxygen units were different, threaded into the suit itself instead of hanging off the back like a pack a child would wear to school.

  Accidents could still happen with the suits—the astronauts had to stay clear of the capsule and the grappler's metal fingers as much as possible—but they were less likely. Most people who died in space now did so because of their own carelessness, not because their suits ripped or malfunctioned.

  Still, Richard watched this part nervously. This was the most dangerous part of the mission. One small bump, a mishandling of the grappler, a momentary klutziness on the part of an astronaut, could result in disaster.

  He would never admit to the others that for him, a disaster would be the loss of the capsule somehow, not the loss of life. He'd be willing to lose his own life to bring this thing in; he hoped the astronauts would too.

  A darkness filled the doorway, and then the astronauts moved away. The view on the outside camera made it seem as if Apollo 8 had pointed herself into the Carpathia and gotten stuck. The view on the inside was a sort of darkness that could, when he squinted, resolve itself into the cone of the capsule.

  The astronauts, moving near the doors, gave it all a bit of perspective, but everything seemed large and a little out of co
ntrol.

  Richard held his breath.

  Next to him, Patricia Mattos was biting her lower lip. Her second for this part of the mission, Heidi Vogt, watched with wide eyes. Her forehead was dotted with perspiration much as Richard's had been earlier.

  Anticipation made them all nervous.

  He turned away from them and watched the screen. The scrapings from inside grew even louder—that unbearable squeal of metal against metal.

  "I hope nothing's getting ruined,” Heidi muttered, and one of the other scientists, someone whose name Richard couldn't conjure, nodded.

  Finally, the capsule disappeared from the view of the outside cameras. Two of the inside cameras only showed the capsule herself. The other two cameras had partial views of the bay doors, which were easing shut.

  Richard's heart started to pound. He still had fifteen minutes before he could enter the bay—fifteen minutes for the environmental systems to reestablish the artificial gravity. The temperature would remain low, and the atmosphere would remain a special mix to preserve everything. Richard's biggest fear was that they'd thaw out the craft and the bodies it held too fast.

  He didn't want three famous—legendary—astronauts to explosively decompress on a live feed heading back to Earth. He was already in trouble in some circles for messing with a grave; he didn't want to be responsible for one of the most disgusting mistakes ever made.

  He had promised America and, by extension, the rest of the world, that he would treat these men with respect.

  He planned to honor that.

  But first, he planned to free them from their decades-old prison.