The Tranquillity Alternative

by Allen Steele

  So now he was alone, and what good had it done him? Just given him the time to confront old memories, and bad ones at that.

  Parnell pushed it all to the back of his mind. Letting the lifeline trail behind him, he pulled himself hand over hand along the railing until he reached the outrigger spar leading to the radar mast. His helmet lamp traced the long I-beam until it ended at the pair of silver dish-shaped radar antennas at its end.

  “Going out on the starboard mast now,” he said.

  We copy, Lewitt replied. Good luck.

  Easy now. One hand over the other. A rookie in the water tanks at Houston could do this. The LRR dish was the closer one of the pair, only fifteen feet away.

  Once he was out from under the hemispherical bulge of the personnel sphere, he could have looked straight up and seen the Moon, but he didn’t allow himself that privilege. It was too distracting. Instead, he concentrated on the beam, absently humming to himself until he realized that he was doing the refrain from “Susie Q,” one of the CCR songs he and Gene Jr. had sung during the Utah trip. He stopped himself. Now was no time to be woolgathering, for chrissakes …

  When he reached the dish, he checked it first. It was still intact, so he moved to the silver Mylar-wrapped instrument module mounted behind it. “Nothing seems to be wrong here,” he said, gently jostling both the antenna and module. “No sign of micrometeor impact. Looks good as new.”

  Ummm … copy that, Gene. Lewitt’s voice sounded distracted. I’m still not getting anything here, though.

  “Nothing?”

  Not even a twitch. Flatline all the way. Jay paused. Maybe the module connection is bad. Try it again.

  The instrument module was about the size of a shoebox, attached to the antenna by a single long bolt through its center. Parnell slipped a torqueless screwdriver from his utility belt and used it to unfasten the bolt. He caught the bolt with his right hand before it could drift away, then gently pulled off the module and turned it over in his thick gloves. The eight-prong connection appeared to be undamaged, and he told Lewitt so.

  Might be a hardware failure, Lewitt said. Why don’t you bring it in for a test? If it’s screwed up, maybe I can run a bypass.

  “Yeah. Sounds like a good idea.” Parnell opened a cargo pocket on his thigh and slipped both the module and the retaining bolt into it. “Okay, I’m coming back in. Have some hot chocolate waiting for me.”

  Roger that. We’ll keep the porch light on.

  Clumsily turning around, Parnell began to make his way back down the spar, his hands gripping the I-beam for support.

  Halfway down the beam, though, his extended left leg became tangled in a dangling loop of the lifeline. Cursing under his breath, he reached down with his right hand to pull the line free. This caused his left hand to slip from the girder, and for a few moments he was drifting free of the spar.

  He almost called out, but caught himself. He wasn’t in trouble, and he didn’t want to sound like a panicky rookie on his first EVA. Just the type of thing Rhodes would love to put in her next dispatch. He could almost hear it now: “A moment of peril today aboard the U.S.S. Conestoga, when mission commander Eugene Parnell, during a routine spacewalk to fix a radar dish, was nearly lost when he …” and so forth.

  Instead, he quickly reached up with his right hand to grab the beam again. As he did, his fingers happened to slip within a slender electrical cable attached to the beam itself.

  To his surprise, the cable was loose; the slightest pull of his forefinger yanked it several inches from the brackets that held it to the beam.

  He managed to catch the beam itself with his left hand, while he stared at the loose cable. Twisting his body until he could clearly look through his helmet faceplate, he saw that the cable led straight to the LRR antenna.

  This was the electrical conduit leading to the radar antenna, and it should have been snugly fitted against the spar.

  Having some problems out there? Lewitt asked.

  Parnell glanced up at the personnel sphere looming above him. A few people were watching him through the portholes, more than likely, while listening to the exchange through headsets or intercom speakers. On the other hand, they wouldn’t be able to see him clearly, because the spar itself was in their way.

  “Nothing to worry about,” he replied, keeping his voice even. “Just checking on something.”

  Hand over hand, he moved the rest of the way back down the spar, following the slender tapeworm with his helmet lamp as it snaked its way to the hull of the personnel sphere. Once he was on the catwalk again, he continued to trace the cable as it led beneath the catwalk, then up again to a small service panel about five feet from the airlock hatch. When he reached its end, he involuntarily sucked in his breath.

  The cable was dangling free of the panel, its end floating a few inches from the junction box.

  Certainly this would have been noticed by someone at the hangar while Conestoga was being prepared for launch. If an astronaut had accidentally pulled the cable loose, then either he would have fixed it on the spot, or a last-minute inspection of the moonship would have uncovered the problem.

  No. It looked as if someone had deliberately pulled the cable loose from the junction box just prior to launch.

  Yet, save for a couple of Wheel technicians who had briefly been inside Conestoga, the last people to come aboard the moonship had been its own crew and passengers.

  It would have been easy for any one of them to reach over and give the cable a good, hard yank …

  Gene? You copy? What’s going on out there?

  Parnell almost said something, but once again he checked himself. Too many people could be listening to this conversation. Besides, what he was thinking was absurd …

  Why would anyone want to knock out the LRR? It didn’t make sense.

  “Nothing, Jay,” he said. “Just looking at the Moon, that’s all.”

  Nonetheless, as he spoke, he pulled the screwdriver from his belt again and opened the service panel. “Nice night for a spacewalk,” he continued, trying to sound breezy as he quickly stretched the cable back to the panel and used the screwdriver to carefully reattach its bare end to the junction pole. “Moon sort of looks like … y’know … the way I saw it from the Beach House the other night.”

  Just a lot closer, right?

  “Right.” With the conduit now firmly back in place, he closed the panel and slipped the screwdriver back in his belt.

  “Okay, I’m coming back in now. Hope you’ve got that hot chocolate ready for me.”

  What, is it cold out there on the beach?

  Parnell pushed himself toward the open airlock hatch. “You could say that, yeah.”

  As he expected, there was nothing wrong with the LRR module.

  Lewitt taped it down to the old map table on B-deck, opened its case, and hooked it up to a computer diagnostics kit. Most of the crew members and passengers hovered or sat around and watched as he and Parnell pushed and prodded at it with electrodes and tweezers while consulting a loose-leaf service manual. Bromleigh caught the whole thing on videotape, of course; Rhodes said it looked like a scene from some old B movie Roger Corman once did, and when Dooley asked her if it was the same one where the spaceship computer goes insane and starts killing the crew, everyone laughed except for the Germans, who apparently weren’t into film trivia.

  The unit came up aces, which was just as well, since there were no spares aboard. In the old days there might have been one, but these weren’t the old days. So the next, obvious step was to put the module back in place and see what happened.

  Gene didn’t tell anyone about the loose electrical cable. He tried to convince himself that he was keeping his mouth shut because he didn’t want Rhodes and Bromleigh to get wind of what he’d found, that he didn’t want NASA to suffer embarrassment for avoidable hardware failure during the last American mission to the Moon. But the truth of the matter was, he harbored suspicions that he didn’t want to admit to himself, let a
lone to anyone else.

  So he sipped at his hot chocolate and waited for the next shoe to drop.

  He had gone EVA twice already that day, counting the spacewalk he had made from the ferry to the moonship. Therefore it was someone else’s turn to go out on the spar and put the LRR unit back in place.

  Jay volunteered for the job, and so did Uwe Aachener, but Cris insisted on doing the dirty work, pointing out that as flight engineer, Lewitt needed to remain on A-deck to monitor the systems in case there was another failure, and Aachener didn’t know quite enough about Conestoga to be qualified for the assignment.

  Her reasoning was inarguable. Within a couple of hours she was on D-deck, suiting up for EVA with the assistance of Hans and Franz. Leamore floated nearby, watching the procedure and clucking about the “terrible shape of American technology.” Parnell personally carried the LRR module down from the logistics deck, having already made sure that no one else placed their hands on the unit after he and Jay had completed their inspection. Only when Ryer was completely suited up and had climbed into the airlock did he hand the module to her.

  Aachener shut the inner hatch above her. Through the airlock window, Parnell watched her carefully store the module and its retaining bolt in the same leg pocket he had used only three hours ago. She gave the thumbs-up; then Jay decompressed the chamber and opened the outer hatch.

  It should be a cinch. If the unit was successfully put back in place, then the long-range radar would be operational once again, since Parnell had secretly repaired the real cause of the problem. It was that easy, and no one had to be any the wiser.

  A few minutes later, Parnell sat in his couch on A-deck, silently listening while Ryer repeated his journey across the catwalk and down the radar spar. When she’d made it all the way out to the LRR antenna, she unsealed the pocket and pulled out the module. She was withdrawing the restraining bolt when her voice suddenly rose.

  Oh, shit!

  Lewitt leaned forward in his seat. “What’s going on?”

  It’s … goddammit!

  Parnell clicked the vox switch. “What’s happening, Cris?”

  Fuck! It just slipped, I …

  “Just tell me what’s going on,” he said.

  A deep sigh came over the comlink, then: I lost the module, Gene. I was trying to get the bolt out of my pocket and I …

  “You lost the unit?” Lewitt snapped.

  Hell, yes! I let it go for just a second while I was pulling this … aw, damn!

  “Can you still grab it?” Parnell asked. “Can you retrieve the module?”

  A longer pause. Static over the comlink. No can do. It’s gone, out of reach … Christ, Gene, I was just trying to get the bolt out of my pocket when it slipped from my hand and …

  “You lost the unit?” Lewitt repeated. He let out his breath. “Is it out of reach?”

  What did I just tell you? Her voice was harsh, then instantly apologetic. I’m sorry, Jay. Can’t help it. Another pause. Sorry, guys, but I screwed up big-time. That thing’s on its way to Mars.

  Gene closed his eyes for a moment. “Don’t sweat it, Cris. It’s not that important. Just reel yourself back in. First cup of hot chocolate is on me.”

  Yeah, I copy. Another pause. Hell with hot chocolate. Anyone smuggle any booze aboard this boat?

  “I’ll try to find some,” Parnell said, then clicked off.

  It could have been an accident that the electrical cable had been pulled free in the first place. It certainly sounded as if another accident had just occurred as Ryer lost the LRR unit during spacewalk. And it wasn’t as if the long-range radar system was vital hardware to Conestoga’s mission. If someone wanted to deliberately sabotage this flight, there were plenty of Criticality One components from which to choose.

  Still …

  Parnell unbuckled his seat belt, and pushed out of his couch. The lady would want a squeeze bulb of hot chocolate after spending an hour in an ice-cold spacesuit, her desire for something stiffer notwithstanding.

  Yet, even as he pulled himself toward the ladder, he remembered Gene Jr.’s voice as he grabbed his old man’s shoulders when he was standing at the edge of a bottomless pit.

  Hey, don’t jump …

  From TV Guide; October 30, 1987

  Critic’s Notebook:

  It Still Ain’t Logical, Cap’n

  By Oral Fletcher

  Star Trek: The New Generation (Syndicated).

  Although it was a top-rated show for eight seasons between 1958 and 1966, not many people today recall the original Star Trek. In its time, Irwin Allen’s NBC adventure series inspired great loyalty among its viewers, mainly because of its heroic (if somewhat melodramatic) depiction of near-future space exploration just when the public was fascinated with the real-life exploits of the U.S. Space Force. Legions of children came of age following the orbital derring-do of USSF Capt Jimmy Kirk (William Shatner) and his wise-cracking scientist sidekick, Dr. Arnold Spock (Leonard Nimoy, now better known as the Oscar-winning director of The Good Mother).

  But that was a generation ago, and today the only devotees of Star Trek are the tiny cadre of sci-fi fans who have memorized Dr. Spock’s favorite line, “It just ain’t logical, Cap’n.” So it comes as a surprise that a spin-off series, Star Trek: The New Generation, is being syndicated in the U.S. and Canada, particularly in an era when the American public has become disenchanted with space travel.

  The creator and producer of the new series, Gene Roddenberry (The Lieutenant) seems mindful of this. Instead of doing a remake of the original show, the new Star Trek takes place three centuries in the future; instead of a USSF space station above Earth, its all-new cast travels the galaxy in a giant starship, the U.S.S. Enterprise. They include Capt. Jean-Luc Picard (Anthony Quinn), first officer Ryker (Steven Seagal), an emotionless android (Rob Morrow), and a telepathic counselor (Susan Sarandon), all of whom wear futuristic one-piece Spandex jumpsuits.

  Their allies and adversaries include a mixed bag of aliens in heavy makeup. These include benign Klingons, treacherous Vulcans, comic-relief Romulans, and in the two-hour pilot episode, a mysterious, omniscient entity called “Q” (Robin Williams) who puts humanity on trial for real or imagined crimes until finally outwitted by Picard and his teammates.

  It’s an ambitious start, particularly since very few sci-fi TV shows have attempted to depict life so far in the future, let alone realistically. The press kit proudly claims that scripts are checked by NASA scientists in order to ensure scientific accuracy, and several of these teleplays have been written by leading science fiction authors, including Harlan Ellison, David Gerrold, Norman Spinrad, and Salman Rushdie. The result is refreshingly adult scenarios; most notable is the third episode, “The Satanic Verses,” in which Picard confronts religious fanatics on a colony world who are bent on stamping out the last vestiges of creativity among its inhabitants.

  Despite such careful attention to details, the new Star Trek is hampered by its low-budget special effects. The sets are obviously made of papier-mâché and wood; props are repainted kitchen utensils, and even the Enterprise itself is suspended against a painted backdrop by half-visible fishing line. Compared to the sophisticated computer FX work pioneered by Japan’s Toho Studios for its Godzilla movies, Star Trek: The New Generation is primitive indeed.

  Less obvious, but nonetheless more indicting, is the show’s naiveté. Star Trek: The New Generation portrays a future in which humankind has left Earth and gone to the stars, coexisting in one way or another with all forms of alien life. It’s a sweet bit of sentimentality that will doubtless be applauded by diehard “trekkies,” but hardly realistic; the Enterprise is little more than Aladdin’s magic carpet with “dilithium warp drive.” At least the old Star Trek had enough sense to confine its adventures to the Moon and Mars, and the events of the last two decades have shown them to be false, not final, frontiers. A few years after cancellation of the original series, its gung-ho attitude was effectively lampooned by Lost In
Space, the Emmy-winning sitcom that more viewers will probably remember than the series it satirized.

  However, if you enjoy this sort of thing, Star Trek: The New Generation is uplifting fantasy, whose thought-provoking scripts more than compensate for the cheesy effects. Seen as such, the show is a winner, worth watching if your local independent station happens to carry it.

  Catch it while you can, though. It’s dragging the bottom of the Nielsen ratings, and probably won’t last more than a season. And that ain’t logical, Cap’n.

  FIFTEEN

  2/18/95 • 2317 GMT

  IT’S NEARLY MIDNIGHT BY the ship’s chronometer and all is quiet. Down in C- and B-decks, the passengers and most of the flight crew are strapped into their bunks, sleeping until the wake-up call at 0500. The decks are darkened, but moonlight shines through the portholes, eerily illuminating the long shadows of the slumbering forms; unencumbered by gravity, their hands drift above their chests, making them look like sleepwalkers who have been pinned down against their will.

  Aside from the occasional digital beep from the computers on B-deck, the only sound is soft music that filters down the gangway shaft from A-deck: cool jazz, Miles Davis’s “Kind of Blue,” a perfect sonata for fire watch.

  Gene Parnell lies in the astrogator’s couch, peering at the stars through the telescope’s binocular eyepiece. The shutters of the ceiling dome are irised open, allowing moonlight to illumine the command deck; he has clicked the lunar filters in place so he can spend a few hours studying the constellations before Jay Lewitt relieves him at 0200 Zulu. Two days out from Earth, Conestoga is nearly at the end of its long journey; tomorrow morning it will roll over, fire main engines to brake its outbound velocity and commence the direct descent to the lunar surface. For the first time since the mission began, Parnell is completely alone, and he relishes the peace and quiet while he can still get it.