Walking on the Sea of Clouds

by Gray Rinehart

  Now she knew.

  The pain rose in intensity with the engines’ roar and then it rose faster than the noise. When the launch locks released and the countdown became a countup—and the vehicle’s acceleration pushed her deep into the cushions—Stormie was screaming inside her helmet. Fire pouring out of the base of the rocket awakened the latent fire in her bones, a feeling like her flesh was being torn apart and ground up like sausage. She screamed in rage as much as in agony, furious that the joy of this moment was denied her. In the deepest, still-thinking part of her brain, she was grateful her microphone was turned off.

  She yelled so loud and so long she became lightheaded; the moving figures in the display in front of her face blurred. The other half of the display darkened, and she vaguely realized that meant they were passing through the upper atmosphere and into space. She turned her attention to the camera view, grit her teeth, and smiled as one view showed her a curving expanse of Earth beneath them.

  Over the next few hours their orbit would be circularized and raised and matched to the Clarke station. Stormie tried to relax, to let the gentleness of freefall comfort her agonized body. She switched on her microphone to answer the controller’s status query, and her voice sounded almost normal.

  Her stomach protested when it didn’t feel gravity come back; she took deep, slow breaths and forced herself to accept the sensation of hanging just past the apex of a roller coaster. The smell as a couple others lost the battle with their innards bothered her less than she had feared. Gradually her stomach relaxed and so too the pain started to subside; she decided to go to sleep, even as her fellow passengers started to chat and move about.

  After briefly assuring her he was fine, Frank didn’t chat any more, though, and Stormie forced herself alert enough to bring up his status display in her monitor. His vital signs were stable, but showed a frightening series of spikes early in the flight; curious, she displayed her own status record. Their vitals showed similar patterns of distress, and her heart ached to think that his ride had been as torturous as hers.

  Oh, Frank, I’m sorry. I’ll make it up to you.

  She hadn’t meant to say it aloud, but she must have because Frank answered, “No apologies, my love. We are here. We have ‘slipped the surly bonds,’ have we not? We may not have lifted off on ‘laughter-silvered wings,’ but surely we now tread the ‘untrespassed sanctity of space.’ Or perhaps we are trespassing the sanctity of space. I am not sure.” He fell silent; his vitals slowed down and he might have snored.

  “Yes, Frank,” she said. “Although, I might prefer ‘rushing amorous contact high in space together … she hers, he his, pursuing.’” She closed her eyes.

  From his seat, Jake said, “I almost think my Virgin Galactic flight was more exciting.”

  “That’s always how it is,” Rex answered. “We build things up with dire warnings and gloomy forecasts, but in the end, they’re always anticlimactic.”

  Speak for yourself, Stormie thought as she let herself drift into sleep.

  * * *

  Tuesday, 22 May 2035

  Nearly two weeks after Stormie and Frank launched, Jim Fennerling still couldn’t stop smiling.

  The lithe, olive-skinned clerk at the front counter at WellSportz noticed his grin as he wheeled himself through the front doors.

  “You still happy, Mr. Jim?” she asked.

  “Absolutely, Honoria.”

  “That’s good. Your friends, they’re doing okay?”

  He told her yes, though he lost a fraction of his smile since it was only a partial truth. Stormie and Frank had acclimated well enough to freefall, but they were stuck on the Clarke station and it looked as if they’d be there for several more weeks. The Consortium’s transport to and from the colony wasn’t as regular as they’d hoped it would be at this point. Their contracts manager had told Jim it was a maintenance issue—that the vehicles were in overhaul earlier than anticipated—but his unofficial contacts had told a different story: the two ferries were making more runs to and from the asteroid instead of to and from the lunar base. That made some amount of sense, since the lunar base wasn’t ready yet to house more than a few miners on rotation—the first four-person unit was due any day. He just wished the AC would be straight up with him about the transit schedule.

  Jim wheeled himself into the workout room. His insurance company would’ve liked him to work out at the hospital, but he preferred it here: being around athletes was much better than being around sick people. The sports therapists seemed to work him harder than the physical therapists at the hospital, and he liked that. They treated him the same as any of the walk-ins who were trying to get rehabilitated.

  “Hey, where’s Tony?” he asked the unfamiliar but very fit redhead who was resetting one of the resistance machines. She looked up and smiled, and Jim wished the medical miracle makers would hurry up with the nano-surgery that would fix his spine: she deserved a reaction that he couldn’t give her.

  She picked up a clipboard and glanced at it before she answered. “You must be Mr. Fennerling. Tony said you’d be in a little early. He’s in the office, do you want me to get him for you?”

  Jim waved her off. “No, you don’t have to do that. But you have me at a disadvantage. You are?”

  “I’m Cindy. I just started, as an intern. I’m at U.C. Santa Barbara.”

  “Very good—”

  A familiar voice interrupted him. “Okay, Jim, you’ll have plenty of time to charm the new help later.” Tony Marquez smiled his usual ferocious smile as he came through the door from the back room. Ten years out of the Marines, and he still looked as if he could outrun any new recruit. “You ready to go? You feeling good?”

  Jim had learned early on that Tony didn’t appreciate bluster and would usually make the offender pay during the therapy session. Day before yesterday Tony had made it his mission to work the smile off Jim’s face, and he’d almost succeeded. This morning Jim was tempted to hedge, but he still felt too damn good about how close Stormie and Frank were to finally putting the “lunar” in Lunar Life Engineering. “Tony, I am still so high I may as well be in orbit myself.”

  “Okay,” Tony said, “we’ll see how long that lasts. We’re going to let Miss Cynthia get you going, and I’ve told her to ride you like she’s an Apache with the cavalry on her tail. She’s all impressed that you know people who are going to the Moon, but she’s the only one, and I’ve warned her that you stink like the rest of us once you start to sweat. She doesn’t believe me, of course, but she’ll find out soon enough, won’t she?”

  “On the contrary,” Jim said, barely able to keep a semi-straight face as Cindy tittered behind the clipboard she held in front of her mouth, “I expect she’ll find my aroma enticing.”

  Tony’s lips compressed into a thin line for a second, and Jim fancied he could almost hear the man growl. Through half-clenched teeth he said, “Oh, she’ll find you a-ro-matic, I’m sure. Bench press, Mis-ter Fennerling. Move it.”

  Jim laughed and wheeled himself to the apparatus, and Cindy, now openly giggling, followed. She set up the weights while Jim pulled himself onto the bench, got situated, and strapped in. They always did the bench press first, because it was the only exercise he had to get out of the chair for: the other equipment he could roll his chair into place to use.

  Cindy proved to be an able motivator, even if her approach was nearly the opposite of the run-roughshod-over-the-patient technique Tony preferred. She was firm when she needed to be, but that wasn’t often: Jim worked out harder than usual without as much prodding. By the time he got through the military press and in position at the rowing machine, he realized it was because he wanted to impress her. Tony must’ve figured it would happen, because he slipped back to the office without once having to badger Jim about not working hard enough.

  Jim got a little dizzy during the row, enough that his right eye blurred for a moment, but he still finished strong. Cindy kept him supplied with water, which he gratefully dra
nk while she set up the curls. He blinked a few times until his vision cleared and got back to work.

  The dizziness smacked him hard about five minutes into his time on the upper body ergometer, and his right hand slipped off the handle. He slowed the rotations his left hand was doing and pulled his right hand back up … and overshot the handle. His knuckles rapped against the ergometer’s white plastic case.

  “Are you okay?” Cindy asked.

  Jim ignored her. He turned his attention to the right handle, watching it mostly with his left eye as it moved through the air in front of him. Vaguely, gradually, he remembered that his left hand was turning the handle and he slowed it even more. He reached out and up and finally intercepted the handle with his right hand. He kept the speed slow at first, and started speeding up when he remembered that Cindy had asked him a question.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” he said. “A little dizzy, that’s all. It’s nothing.” He wanted to look at her, but he thought he might let go of the handle again if he stopped watching it closely.

  “Do you get dizzy very often?”

  Jim snorted out a little laugh. “Yeah, every so often. I usually don’t worry about it … it’s not like I’m going to fall down or anything.”

  Jim’s field of vision seemed to have contracted to a sphere about a meter in radius, in the center of which he struggled to keep his hand steady and the ergometer running. A vague shape entered the sphere just beyond his hands and did something to the machine; it suddenly became much easier to spin, and his hands rushed after the faster-turning handles.

  His right hand slipped free of the handle and made a couple of lazy attempts to grab it before he dropped it down to his lap. The effort made him incredibly tired, and every motion seemed as if he was pushing through an invisible gelatinous barrier. He moved his fingers against something—rough, wet. He wasn’t sure what it was, and it took a long time to look down and even longer for him to recognize that his hand was feeling his own leg. His leg couldn’t feel his hand touching it; he thought he should be sad about that, but for the moment he wasn’t sure why.

  “Jim, look at me,” Tony said from far away.

  Jim looked to the left and swayed. Tony was suddenly right in front of him, and Jim wasn’t sure how he got there that fast or what happened to the spinny thing he was using. Tony caught him and held him upright. Tony’s rugged face was blurry; Jim turned his head a little to the right to see him with his left eye, but Tony pushed against his jaw and held him facing front and center.

  “Jim, I want you to do exactly as I say. Right now, I want you to smile at me.”

  Jim wasn’t sure he understood.

  “Don’t look puzzled, just do as I say. Think about your friends up in space, and how happy you are for them, and give me a big smile.”

  Frank and Stormie, his friends and partners. He was happy they were on their way, feeling weightless and trying to make themselves useful on the space station until they could get to the Moon. It must be so nice to float and to fly—

  Jim grinned, but Tony frowned.

  His face felt funny … a little numb … and Jim puzzled over that. Maybe some nerve damage from my workout?

  “Okay, Jim, next thing,” Tony said. He backed away a little and continued, “I want you to raise both arms over your head, like I’m doing right now.”

  Jim shrugged. Whatever you say, Tony.

  It was harder than he anticipated; all that lifting had really weakened his right arm. Once he raised it, it kept moving back down.

  “Okay, Jim, that’s enough. Hang on a second.” Tony leaned over to Cindy and said something to her. She ran toward the front desk. Tony said to Jim, “Alright now, repeat after me: I think the Dodgers are going to win the pennant.”

  “Not likely with their pitching rotation,” Jim said. His tongue fought against him, as if he’d come from the dentist with a face full of Novocain.

  “Just say it, exactly the way I did. I think the Dodgers are going to win the pennant.”

  “I think the Dodgers are going to win the pennant.”

  “Again.”

  “I think the Dodgers are going to win the pennant.”

  “One more time, and really listen to what you’re saying.”

  Agitated now, Jim put his frustration in his voice as he said it. But he paid attention like Tony said, and what he heard frightened him.

  “Ah thing a doggers ah gone twin a pent.”

  Jim looked down at his lap, at his sad legs and his hands curled atop them. He clenched his fists, but only his left fist closed. His vision clouded with unexpected tears. The smell of the antiseptic they wiped down the machines with made him dizzy.

  He looked up at the trainer. “Was happing, doan ee?” He turned his head so he could see better, with his left eye. The old Marine had tears on his cheeks.

  Far away, a siren wailed.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  The King of Nubia

  Saturday, 26 May 2035

  Van was out of breath by the time he got to the dormitory, and it seemed too early to be sweating so heavily. But summer came early to the New Mexico desert, and while the dry air pulled the sweat from him he chafed a little at the salty film it left behind.

  The dormitory was cool enough that he shivered as he ran up the stairs and down the hall. Barbara wasn’t in their room, but her datapad was. One corner of the screen blinked a soft purple light, to show his absent wife that she had a message from him.

  He started growing annoyed, but found that he couldn’t. He transferred his ire to the kaput intercom system. If it had been working, he wouldn’t be running around the training area looking for her.

  He pulled up Barbara’s schedule on his own datapad, just to verify that she didn’t have any appointments. This morning was blocked as free time and self-study, the same as when he’d looked at it twenty minutes ago.

  Think, dummy, where would you be if you were your wife?

  He ran to the women’s bathroom and yelled for her from the doorway; nothing. He ran to the dayroom; no luck there, either. He ran out of the building and over to the cafeteria, and there she was, having a cup of coffee and talking with Krissa bin-Alal. The two of them looked up as he shoved the doors open and ran through, and they laughed as he tried to slide to a stop next to their table and ended up on one knee, halfway under the next one.

  “What are you doing?” Barbara asked. “Are you okay?”

  Van disentangled himself from a chair. Instead of standing up, he leaned forward and put his hands on their table. “Hey, I tried to call you,” he said, still out of breath.

  “What? Is something wrong?”

  “No, no, it couldn’t be righter. I just got a call from Gary.”

  Barbara glanced at Krissa, who looked puzzled. “Gary Needham, up at the colony,” she said, and turned back to Van with a half-smile on her face. “So what did Gary say that’s got you all worked up?”

  “We got moved up in the rotation, baby,” Van said. For only the thousandth time in his life, Van wished he was a better dancer; he probably looked foolish—on his knees, waving his arms and swaying in an awkward semblance of rhythm—but he was too excited to care. He and Barbara had to work through the same training program as everyone else, yes, and he appreciated the need for it, but he’d been there and almost ached to go back: the waiting, playing around on mockups of equipment he’d actually handled, live and in person, was brutal to him. Once the launch schedule got buggered, he’d worried that the wait would grow long enough to drive him batty. But now he didn’t have to worry: the train was coming to the end of the tunnel.

  Barbara asked, “So who did you pay off, and how much did it cost us?”

  “Nothing like that, babe. We’re switching with George and Yvette Fiester, until her arm is healed. Gary greased the skids for us.”

  “For you, you mean.”

  Van shook his head and chuckled. “No, I mean for us: Beverly’s been giving him grief about getting you up there as quick
as he can. Said she needs someone else to talk to in real time, which he said he figures means she wants to talk about him as much as she talks to him.”

  “Or more,” Barbara said.

  Krissa asked, “Van, did he mention any other changes to the rotation?”

  “No, just that the Fiesters will go up later. I don’t think it’s so much a matter of her actual healing, but I guess she’ll go through some physical therapy before they certify her for flight again.”

  “Like someone else I know,” Barbara said.

  Van only smiled; a few weeks ago his graceless slide onto the cafeteria floor would have left him in agony. Now he was happy enough that he could take her friendly jibe exactly as she said it, without reading any criticism into it. He leaned back at the realization.

  “What?” Barbara said. “What’s that look for?”

  “Huh?” Van snapped out of it. “Nothing, just thinking.”

  “Well, don’t hurt yourself.”

  “No chance of that.”

  “Don’t I know it.” She turned to Krissa and shook her head. When she turned back, her face was set though a little apprehension showed in her eyes. “So did Gary give you an actual launch date? How does it affect the rest of our training?”

  “I tried to get him to say we could leave today—”

  “What? I’m not ready. I’ve still got two days left on my LVN-1 orientation—”

  “I know, that’s okay, I’ve already run all the equipment—”

  Barbara’s voice rose a few notes. “That’s fine for you, but that doesn’t help me. And we were supposed to go up and see Daddy after we got done here.”

  Van was tempted to tell her not to whine, but instead he reached over and brushed her arm with his fingers. “Don’t worry, sweets, you’ll still get to. No matter how much I begged, the launch date wasn’t going to change.”

  Barbara eyed him as if he was a con man trying to score off her. “Okay, then, when’s the date?”

  “About three weeks—June fifteenth is the earliest date. So we’ll still be able to dig your dad out of the snow before we go.”