Pillar to the Sky

by William R. Forstchen

  They drifted back to the station, where Jenna stood in the open hatchway, and she did as ordered.

  “Now hold my hand tight.”

  Again she did as ordered as he gave a gentle push to his EVA backpack—not much acceleration, just several meters a second, but enough to move them away from the security of the tower and the station module.

  “Switch to private comm channel,” he said, as he reached over with his free hand and punched the frequency into the link mounted to her forearm.

  “You reading me?” he asked.

  “On line with you, Kevin.”

  “Just stay with me for this,” Kevin said.

  “I’m with you.”

  Somehow, in this last day of EVA, she had learned a sense of security by being only meters away from the space station. But now? Kevin seemed to just be heading off into deep space, and for a moment it was disorienting, frightful. Earth was “below,” or was it above? The sun to “one side,” or was it the other? The moon? She decided for the sake of her sense of equilibrium that it was overhead.

  And they floated on. Ahead, a small dot of light was resolving itself. It was Maury.

  She took a deep breath. She had thought across the hours what to do for him. She had decided he should be returned to earth for a fitting burial. His family would want that.

  His slowly tumbling form drew closer. Kevin fired a retro thrust to slow, the last few meters barely closing on him as he finally reached out and took hold of Maury’s backpack, joining the three together.

  He did not turn him around, and Victoria was grateful for that; she did not want to see his face. Maury … the one who had broken the ice between the two crews with his smuggled offering; who had bonded with Kevin; who had the respect of all; who could outswagger Kevin one minute but be as quiet, introspective, even poetic, as Jenna the next as he gazed out at the universe …

  “Would you join me, Victoria? We’re switching to comm link 122.9.”

  She did as requested; a moment of static.

  “Commander Hurt, are you with me?” Kevin asked.

  “With you, son.”

  My God, Victoria realized, it’s Maury’s father.

  “And his mother is with me as well.”

  No one spoke for a moment.

  “And your request stands, sir?” Kevin asked.

  “That it does, son, and thank you.”

  Whatever had been agreed to had transpired without Victoria’s knowledge.

  “Sir, you’ll have to help me. Do you have someone who can read the service?”

  “We have our minister Father Thomas Allen here, son, he’ll help us.”

  Victoria took a deep breath, punching the keypad on her arm to block off her own voice while still listening as the minister far, so very far below read the traditional Anglican service for burial at sea, but changing the last words to “commend his mortal remains to the universe above…”

  “Rest with God my good friend,” Kevin whispered, and, powering up his backpack thrust, he pushed forward; then, while holding tightly to Victoria’s hand, he let go of Maury and reversed his thrust.

  She was glad her comm link was silenced.

  They watched for a moment as Maury drifted away.

  “Son, thank you.” It was Maury’s mother. “Miss Morgan, God be with you and your venture, and thank you as well. Now, return safely to us.”

  That hit her far too deeply, and she clicked open her comm link only long enough to offer her condolences.

  “Commander Hurt, Mrs. Hurt, your son will forever journey to the stars. I hope when my time comes I have such a fate. My condolences, for he was my friend.” Her voice was breaking as she clicked off. Kevin held her hand as she broke down in sobs; then, finally drawing a deep breath, she switched back over to their private comm channel.

  “OK, my friend,” she whispered, “take us back.”

  Kevin turned the two about, and started back to the station a kilometer away. It could be recorded that the two had just embarked on the longest space walk ever, but she would cut dead with an icy glare any who would ever dare to mention that.

  Not a word was spoken between the two as they ventured back, Victoria at least gaining some orientation and even a touch of the old wonder as she floated across the heavens between earth, moon, sun, and stars, the future her father had dreamed of and which she now lived. Was this your final glimpse, Daddy? she wondered, and knew that it was.

  Jenna helped to guide them back through the airlock, and Victoria was so grateful to get the EVA suit off. A brief argument ensued between her and Kevin, who had been in his suit without relief for nearly three days, and he had finally conceded that he would shower first while Victoria just floated in silence in the station, looking over at Jenna from time to time, Jenna giving her a thumbs-up and whispering that Sanders was stable and resting comfortably.

  And for a moment she did wonder. Was this really worth the price? Haunted by the last words of her father, the stoicism of Maury’s parents, the moving words of the burial service, the pale features of Sanders, in drugged sleep while Jenna floated beside him—even the nervous glances of Fredericks, who, once everything was sealed up and repressurized, had finally come out of the replacement crew’s capsule, but it was obvious he utterly cracked under the strain and would now have to live with that.

  Was it really worth it?

  What would my father say of all this sacrifice? she wondered.

  But as soon as she asked that question of herself, she already knew the answer.

  Perhaps the fate of the entire world in the not-too-distant future would rest on what they did here this day. Was that not worth it? All that they took for granted, especially in flight and then space flight, had been paid for by the lives of others or by the actions of those such as Glenn, Leonov, and Armstrong, who came back, but also the crews of the lost Soviet missions, of Challenger and Columbia, and others who knew the risks but took those risks. For those who lived, and those who gave their lives for what they believed in, would any complain of their fate or demand a retreat from what they had accomplished?

  That was what gave Maury’s parents strength, what had given her father strength, and what now must give her strength.

  “The descent ribbon is 1,000 meters from docking,” Singh announced, but she barely looked over; instead, her gaze focused on the large porthole and the distant earth below.

  “All systems nominal. This one is going smoothly: fuel still at 6 percent, more than enough reserve. Two hundred meters, five meters down per second, four meters off target at 322 degrees but adjusting.

  “On target, fifty meters … forty meters, retro fire decreasing descent rate. Ten meters … Five …

  “We got dock and latch secure! Pillar Two is secured!” Singh cried, actually rising up out of her chair, looking back at Victoria.

  And at nearly the same moment her friend Kevin unlatched the door to the shower and floated out, smiling, at least wearing shorts to be decent, his beard shaved off.

  “The shower is all yours, Miss Victoria,” he said softly.

  “Thank you, Kevin.”

  23

  Twelve hours later they had Sanders strapped into the capsule along with Fredericks, who seemed to stir enough to understand Singh’s briefing on what to do. As the capsule pilot they hoped at least those instincts would kick in correctly. Singh had reviewed with Dr. Bock on the ground what she had done, and there were a few suggestions about ensuring the artery clamps were well secured and Fredericks briefed on what to do if bleeding resumed. On a private channel Franklin had flat-out ordered Victoria to come down, an order she refused, with Franklin muttering about mutinies and perhaps even firings but she did have a trump argument that she was now thoroughly trained in stitching ribbon, that without her Kevin was the only one with experience and there would be zero backup if Jenna was pressed into that service instead.

  “Besides, I want to be up here for the first test run of my project,” she said, and felt s
he had trumped Franklin with that one. Thus she stayed on.

  Sanders made it down safely, with Fredericks all but silent throughout the descent, yet another drama that held the world’s attention.

  Even as his module descended, the ground team at Kiribati carefully adjusted the tension on the tower, ran through the calculations yet again with regard to potential impacts—there would not be a major threat for another four months—and the following day hooked on the first stitcher, which would double the width of the Pillar up five hundred miles from the surface. Another two stitchers would then laminate additional ribbons on top of the first two, doubling the thickness, and then the process would gradually work its way up the pillar. Kevin and Victoria began stitching ribbon from the top down. With only one more expensive rocket-powered supply launch to go, additional supplies after that could go up the Pillar.

  They had a highly stable ribbon in place; now it was just a question of strengthening it to handle the first loads that would go up and down its entire length. The next challenge then: to try the experiment that Victoria had designed and insisted must go forward, and she would stay aloft until that was accomplished.

  It all settled into a routine in which time seemed to just float for Victoria: a daily EVA to load on the next reel and send it on its way; some hours on her iPad talking with her mother, Franklin, and her various team leaders who were keying up for their test; and, like her father, hours at the large porthole, just looking out in wonder, and dreaming of all that now could be.

  NASA’s resurgence had been a source of joy. She was given a video tour of Goddard by her mother, introducing old friends who had been called back, and scores upon scores of new young faces who had grown up believing that space was indeed the future of humanity, while so many others became mired in dystopian nightmares. Now, thanks to the Pillar, dreams not believed in since the 1960s were alive again.

  Her mother’s video tour included a stop at Erich’s old office, preserved as if he had just stepped out of it but a moment before. It was now something of a museum for the entire facility, and she smiled at the sight of it, remembering playing under the table as a child of four when her parents held conferences with “Uncle Erich,” who always had a small toy or some such thing hidden in his filing cabinet if she was a good girl while he met with her parents.

  How she wished he had lived long enough to now see what was transpiring. But, like her father, she had mystical sense that he was still part of the effort and enjoying every minute.

  NASA was again the place of the can-do spirit, the dream factory, the inspiration broadcast daily to a hundred thousand schools in America and yet more around the world. Victoria was pleased with the new role she had assumed, of educator. She finally took on a ten-minute spot each day called “News from Space with Dr. Victoria,” in which she went over the previous day’s events. She turned her imagination to it, stepping way past the routines of showing how a “ball” of water behaved in zero g or doing gymnastics in the station. Instead she would strap a cam unit to her helmet and venture outside so all could see what she could see, leaving time at the end of each session for questions and answers and contests for students who could win a slot in NASA’s summer education program, with an ultimate prize, funded directly by Franklin, for a dozen high school students to achieve a flight out to Kiribati and a chance to intern for a month on the base.

  Jason had even raised the prospect of a climb aloft on the Pillar, citing how in the late 1920s the Boy Scouts of America held a competition in which the winner, Eagle Scout Paul Siple, went to Antarctica with the legendary explorer Admiral Byrd. Memories of the tragedy of the Teacher in Space Program lingered, but a new spirit of adventure was arising, and several youth organizations around the world indicated they would join in if such an ultimate adventure was offered … with which Victoria and Franklin readily concurred.

  And, of course, some giggly fifth grader finally did ask the ultimate question while schoolkids around the world were listening in.

  She did hesitate for a second when he asked her to show them how they “did it” up there. She finally replied she’d get back to him the next day. Down on earth, the media was quickly abuzz with anticipation about how she would handle it. She spent a day getting ready for that one, a show that she was told hit the top of the ratings with the school crowd. While discussing what to do the evening before that broadcast, Kevin, with a smile, offered to show how the “guy side of things” worked, which she and the other two women on board shut down without discussion.

  The show the next day, with a rather clinical discussion of the plumbing aboard the station, was capped with Jenna taking a shower—fully clothed, of course—and it was a hit.

  Kevin had grown far more quiet and introspective since Maury’s death, and for a while Victoria wondered if he was starting to go spacey, and if so, how to talk him into rotating back down when the next crew came up with the module addition. She finally decided against it. He and Singh would stay on: they had found their lives up there and “there” they would stay. Jenna, however, finally announced one day she was ready to rotate off. It took some prodding but then the real truth came out. It was Sanders. There had been a sense that something was developing between them while he was still on board. He had proposed after returning to earth, and since for the time being he was grounded she finally announced that she would return to earth as well.

  The weeks slipped by, the stitchers making the work seem almost routine, especially in contrast to the far more harrowing spinners working off the initial two-millimeter-wide thread. Meanwhile, preparations rapidly continued for Victoria’s “grand experiment.”

  Her proposal had met with some serious resistance yet again: besides putting additional stress loads on the Pillar, it presented more concerns about orbital impacts. But she had argued that even if they lost the link she dreamed of after even but a few days of operation—if it worked only briefly—it showed the way to the future that the Pillar ultimately offered.

  The next launch mission up was already being discussed in the media as perhaps truly the end of an era going back to the beginning of the 1960s—the drama of a manned launch into space. Certainly for some time to come the commercial suborbital and now orbital private launches would continue, but even those would die off as the Pillar was eventually opened to commercial traffic and the five-hundred- and thousand-mile stations opened for business. Granted, for decades to come, there would still be thrill seekers who wished to ride a rocket to space, in the same way some still restored and ran old steam locomotives or antique aircraft with just stick and rudder and “seat of the pants” flying rather than autopilot, but the days of rocket flight were indeed coming to an end.

  But a heavy-lift vehicle with the power of an Apollo or a shuttle lifting off from Kennedy, with all its might and splendor? Garlin was there, of course, to lament that the Pillar now threatened the existence of this very facility that had at its peak employed tens of thousands. She neglected to mention that for some time to come low-earth-orbit launches would still be very much the norm; a new generation of sats would go up, however, with enough maneuvering capacity to avoid the Pillar and booster stages that, after achieving orbital velocity, were designed for safe reentry over the Pacific or Indian Ocean.

  This last expensive launch would be for an additional manned module, to double the workspace and crew capacity. The station currently aloft definitely had gone beyond its intended lifespan, and everyone would breathe a bit easier when the team aloft had a fallback position. Packed in as well were the materials and drop units for Victoria’s grand experiment.

  For in her heart and mind, after all, that was the Pillar’s ultimate purpose.

  Gone, then, after this would be the days of ascent upon thrones of fire, and Victoria could understand how those of what one pundit now called “the First Space Age”—that of rocketed flight to space—would indeed miss those moments of high drama, in the same way some in the aviation community lovingly preser
ved and flew aircraft of a long-ago war and the “barnstorming” days of the 1920s and ’30s, when they took off from grass airstrips in underpowered “tail draggers,” while most others simply sat back and let their iPads guide them through all but the final seconds of landing on modern, paved landing strips.

  The launch went without a hitch.

  After docking, for the new team there was the ritual greeting of saluting the faded decal of the American and Kiribati flags, now joined by flags of NASA, India, the United Kingdom, and others, the request for “permission to come aboard” from Singh, who greeted them with a touch of reserve. Victoria most definitely felt that reserve as well after so many months aloft with her coworkers, her comrades, her friends.

  They looked different somehow, a little too fresh, clean, even tanned, and she wondered how they must look in turn. Spending extended time in zero gravity, even when slavishly devoting two hours a day to the exercise torture machine, made one assume a slightly hunched-over posture, using hands as much as feet to move around, mastering how to glide effortlessly the length of the station by a mere push of a finger without bumping into others, and each instinctively understanding the habits and idiosyncrasies of the others. It must be, the four had discussed more than once, how it had been aboard the sailing ships of the age of exploration, with several hundred crowded together in a living area not much bigger than their ship, on journeys of years, but in their case totally cut off from any word of home, and how when they returned to land it would often take weeks, even months, to learn how to live and move about with the unmoving earth under your feet.

  The new team, based on the experience of the last attempt at a crew transfer, and well briefed by Victoria, observed the rituals, one of them, of course, “secretly” breaking the rules with a smuggled-aboard gift, but strangely, this time Kevin did not join in other than a polite sip of the eighteen-year-old Scotch; if anything it seemed to trigger depression on his part. The new crew already had their bunk spaces aboard the new module, and there was a sense of remoteness between the two teams except when directly working together.