by Tom Abrahams
“Should we go back?” Candace asked.
“No,” Jackie said emphatically. “That would lead them into our neighborhood. We don’t need that.”
“You think they’d come into the neighborhood?”
“Candace, they’re breaking into cars in the middle of the day on a major street. They’ll loot neighborhoods next. Ours doesn’t need to be the first.”
“So what, then?”
Jackie put one foot on a pedal, stood tall to push it forward, and propelled herself forward. “We’re on bikes. They’re on foot. We speed right by them.”
Candace followed Jackie’s lead and started pedaling to keep pace. “I don’t know, Jackie,” she said.
“We don’t have a choice. I’m finding out what’s up with my husband. These punks aren’t stopping me.”
Jackie stood from her seat and pedaled with purpose. She gripped the handlebars, steering around stalled cars and trucks.
The boys were huddled behind the cars they’d burgled. A couple of them pointed and looked in her direction. She tried to ignore them and pressed harder, moving the bike faster and faster as she zigged and zagged along the boulevard.
Candace was at her side, breathing heavily, exerting herself to propel the bike as fast as she could. If it hadn’t been for the slalom course in front of her, Jackie knew she’d zoom right past the thugs without a problem. As it was, she worried they’d take the right path and knock her from the bike. She prayed they’d flunked geometry and physics.
Thankfully the four-lane road was split with a large grassy median running along the center of it, providing a little extra distance between her bike and the boys.
She was ten yards from being directly across from them when they started running at her. A couple of them bolted straight for her. Another two ran for Candace. The bald one and the lookout ran ahead to try to intersect their path.
The boys were smart, Jackie thought as she pedaled harder, jerking the bike from side to side as she gathered more speed. They were surrounding them. If the first two stopped or slowed them, the trailing boys would close ranks. This wasn’t good.
The bald boy and the lookout were sprinting across the median a few yards ahead of her. Jackie tried to swerve to the left. A minivan blocked her path. It was too late.
“Go around the van!” she called to Candace, who’d slipped a couple of bike lengths behind her. “To the left!”
“Got it!” Candace huffed.
Jackie looked at the two boys running straight for her. The bald one’s teeth were bared. He looked like a rabid dog. He was fast—faster than Jackie had calculated. He was mere feet from her, his arms outstretched and his hands balled into fists. He was yelling something at her. She was too focused on avoiding him to comprehend it.
At the last moment, she swerved right. She split the narrow space between his outstretched left arm and the lookout, who couldn’t control his body enough to redirect his momentum.
Jackie bounded onto the median, rumbled onto the grass, and almost lost control of the bike as she rapidly decelerated onto the uneven turf. She dropped her right foot from the pedal and dragged her toe along the ground to catch her balance just enough to prevent herself from falling forward over the handlebars or losing complete control of the bike.
Her heart was pounding. Her legs burned. She looked over her left shoulder. The boys were still coming at her. She tried to find the pedal with her foot but couldn’t find her footing.
“Gimme the bike!” growled the baldheaded teen, spit flying from his mouth and sticking to his chin. “Come back here and gimme the bike.”
Jackie didn’t understand his anger. She stared into his narrow black eyes. There was depravity there in someone so young. He couldn’t be more than sixteen or seventeen. He might not even be shaving yet. But he was lean and muscular; the veins in his arms pressed against the pale skin on his forearms and biceps.
She found the pedal and pushed herself away from him and his trailing pack. The bike bounded onto the pavement and the rear tire skidded. She turned the handlebar sharply left to straighten her path.
Quickly she regained her rhythm and was pedaling away from the boys, who couldn’t keep pace. Up ahead, still on the other side of the road, was Candace. She was still standing, working the bike as she propelled it farther away from the threat,
Jackie checked over her shoulder. She was safe. For now.
“Keep going!” she called ahead to Candace.
Candace responded by throwing her a thumbs-up. She kept pedaling without looking back.
Jackie weaved between the stalled cars, SUVs, and trucks. Once she was sure she was far enough away from the boys, she dropped onto the seat and glided.
Despite the chill, she was sweating, her legs heavy with exhaustion. Her mind was racing. They’d not even been without power for a full day and the looting had begun.
There were kids roaming the streets as if they owned them. She saw no police, no firefighters. No authority at all.
She’d lived through so many storms before where the infrastructure was tested. It always felt temporary. It was an inconvenience. This, she felt in her gut, was different.
She pressed down on the pedals and pressed toward the front gates of Johnson Space Center, hoping she’d find answers once she got there.
She also hoped she wouldn’t see the gang of teenage thugs again.
SATURDAY, JANUARY 25, 2020, 2:17 PM CST
CLEAR LAKE, TEXAS
The guard at the gate wasn’t budging. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Shepard,” he said without any emotion. “I cannot let you past the gate. We’re on a lockdown.”
Jackie affected her best “I-don’t-care-what-you-say-I-want-what-I-want” voice, enunciating every word as clearly as she could without spontaneously combusting.
“It. Wouldn’t. Make. A. Difference. If. The. Center. Was. Quarantined. For. Ebola,” she said. “I want to see someone about my husband. You do understand he’s one of three astronauts in orbit right now?”
It was a rare occasion Jackie would mention her husband’s vocation. Other than her close friends and family, she never talked about his work. Most people who cared about it already knew.
This was that moment, though, when she calculated it was best to remind the man why she was being such a persistent pain. She had a right to information. She had a right to know her husband’s condition.
“Yes,” said the guard. “I am aware that Mr. Shepard is on the ISS. I can imagine your frustration, but—”
Jackie snapped, unable to contain her emotions. “Do you have a spouse in space right now?”
“No. I—”
“Then you cannot imagine.”
“I have my orders.”
Candace put her hand on the small of Jackie’s back. “Can I make a suggestion?”
Jackie took a deep breath and exhaled through her nostrils. “Sure.”
Candace stepped to the side, next to the space separating the guard and Jackie. She smiled and started talking to the guard.
“We both understand the sensitivity of the moment,” she began. “I think my friend just needs information. She doesn’t have to come onto the property if somebody could come to her.”
“Everybody is extremely busy, ma’am. We—”
Candace held up her hands, stopping the guard before he again drew the wrath of Jackie. “Just let me finish, please,” she said sweetly. “You could get someone on the phone or the intercom. Those are working here, right?”
The guard shook his head. “I can’t discuss that. It’s privileged information,” he said and held up a finger before either woman could protest. “But I’m sure I could facilitate a situation report via phone.”
Jackie and Candace thanked him. He disappeared into one of the guard booths that separated the lanes leading in and out of Johnson Space Center. To their right was a parking lot and a badging office. That was where official visitors, contractors, and the media picked up their temporary credentials whenever t
hey were on the property. To the left, past the guard booth, was a rocket-length building and a cluster of standing rocket engines.
It was called Rocket Park and was a nice attraction for visitors who wanted to learn more about the space program’s infancy. The standing rockets were a Gemini-Titan, a Mercury-Redstone, and Little Joe II. Inside the long building that resembled a closed airplane hangar was a Saturn V rocket. They were the machines that built the space program.
They were also fantastic museum pieces worthy of the Smithsonian. Still, Jackie always thought about the shuttle when she visited JSC. It was missing from the garden and from nearby Space Center Houston, the tourist attraction that drew a million tourists every year.
The Space Center had lost out on receiving one of the surviving orbiters when NASA retired the program. Instead, it got a mock shuttle and a real Shuttle Carrier Aircraft, the 747 aboard which shuttles made the cross-country journey from California to Florida when they couldn’t land at Kennedy Space Center.
It was a crime. Houston and JSC were home to the manned flight program. The first word spoken on the surface of the moon was “Houston.” Most of the astronauts and their families lived in the Houston area. They’d given their lives and lifestyles for the betterment of space exploration. Instead, New York City got a shuttle. New York?
Jackie sucked in a deep breath and blinked back tears, looking at the Rocket Park and thinking about how much she and her family had given up for the program and how much more she feared she was about to lose.
“Thank you, Candace,” she said. “You pulled me back from the ledge. I was about to lose it.”
Candace smiled. “Of course. You helped me last night. You’re giving me a place to stay, feeding me. Trying to help you was the least I could do.”
Jackie wrapped her arms around her new friend. Candace initially flinched, then relaxed into Jackie’s embrace and reciprocated with her own hug. The split-second comfort of the embrace was interrupted when the guard emerged from the booth.
“Mrs. Shepard,” he said and waved her toward the booth, “I have someone on the line for you.”
Jackie held up crossed fingers to Candace and walked the short distance into the booth. There was a phone receiver on the desk. She picked it up and drew it to her ear.
Her heart was pounding. “This is Jackie Shepard,” she said breathlessly.
The woman’s voice on the other end of the line was vaguely familiar. “Mrs. Shepard, this is Irma Molinares. We’ve met before. I’m in the astronaut corps and I am the crew support astronaut.”
“Yes,” Jackie said. “I know who you are. Clay speaks highly of you.”
“That’s very kind of him,” Molinares replied. “I wish I could be delivering you the information I have face-to-face, but it’s all hands on deck, as you can imagine, and for security reasons we’re on lockdown.”
Jackie’s stomach tightened. She grabbed the desk with her free hand and leaned over. “Is Clay…” She couldn’t finish the sentence. Saying it out loud would make it real.
“Honestly, we don’t know. We believe the crew is alive, but we haven’t been able to reestablish communication with them since the event.”
“What event? What actually happened?”
“The best I can tell you right now is that there was a solar storm. It interrupted our ability to speak to the ISS. We were in the middle of a transmission when we lost contact.”
“Solar storm? Like a solar flare?”
“Similar,” Molinares said. “Though not exactly. This was what’s called a coronal mass ejection. To put it simply, it unleashed a tremendous amount of magnetic radiation.”
“That’s why we lost power?”
“Roger. As far as we can tell, most of the world is either functioning with limited or no electrical capabilities. The grids are fried. That’s the unclassified information we’re receiving from foreign space programs and our own military.”
“How long will we be without power?”
“Nobody knows. Communication is so hit and miss that we can’t determine the depth of the permanent damage to global electrical and communication capabilities.”
“And you said it’s radiation that caused it?”
“Roger.”
“Is that dangerous to the crew?”
Molinares paused before answering. “Potentially,” she said. “Not immediately. Maybe long term. It likely wouldn’t have killed them.”
“Likely?”
“Likely.”
Jackie’s knees felt like jelly. She found a chair and pulled it toward herself to sit down. She untangled the phone’s cord and leaned back in the seat.
“The greater concern, and I’m just being as honest as I can be with you, is what the magnetic blast did to their life-support systems.”
Jackie ran her hand through her hair and curled a finger through the ends of the strands. “You can’t monitor that from mission control? I thought you could tell everything from those monitors and computers you have there.”
“Normally we can.” Molinares was speaking calmly. “Right now, we can’t. We have redundant systems here that allowed us to recover power and revive critical systems across a variety of platforms. The ISS is not one of them.”
“What does that mean? What are you not saying, Irma?”
There was silence on the other end of the line. Jackie then heard muffled voices before Irma Molinares answered her questions.
“We are able to monitor a couple of systems,” she said, her words measured. “We know that there is currently limited power on board. We also know there is a pressure leak.”
“A pressure leak?”
The guard appeared at the doorway to the booth. Jackie shot him a knife-edged glare and he stepped away.
“Roger,” said Molinares. “It’s on the Russian side of the ISS, which is a good sign. The crew was in the middle of an EVA when the CME hit them. Shep—your husband was in the Cupola, assisting Greenwood and Voin with their work. We think alarms, if they’re functioning, would have alerted him to the leak. He’d be attempting to fix it or initiate the emergency evacuation protocol.”
“Speak English, Irma.”
Molinares sucked in a deep breath. “He’d know there was a pressure leak and he’d either fix it or get out of Dodge. Given that we see the pressure in the Russian side of the ISS dropping and not stabilizing, he’s likely trying to leave.”
“Leave how? A Soyuz?”
“Roger.”
“Where’s it parked?”
Molinares paused again as if caught off guard by the question. “Uh…”
“Irma?”
“It’s on the Russian side.”
Jackie laughed incredulously. “So you’re telling me they may be on the American side, which is good. But to leave, they have to be on the Russian side, which is bad.”
“Roger.”
“And that’s if they’re even alive.”
“Roger.”
“Which you can’t confirm.”
“Unfortunately.”
“So what are you doing?” Jackie asked, fighting the heavy weight of dread and fear that sank her deeper into the chair. “And how will I find out what you learn? I can’t stay up here at the gate indefinitely.”
“We’re working on providing a space for you and your children here at JSC,” she said. “That way we can keep you apprised of any new developments. Are your children with you?”
“No,” she said. “Our daughter, Marie, is at our house. And my son, Chris, is…I don’t know where he is.”
“What do you mean, Mrs. Shepard?”
“He’s on a camping trip in North Texas. I haven’t heard from him yet.”
“That complicates things,” said Molinares. “I imagine you wouldn’t want to be here with your son unaccounted for.”
“Roger,” Jackie said snippily. “I guess we’ll come back once he’s home. You’ll hold a place for us?”
“Of course,” said Molinares. “And if I le
arn anything before you come back, we will figure out a way to get someone to your house. We have the address.”
“Good,” Jackie said. It wasn’t much, but it was something. As soon as anyone learned anything about Clayton, they’d let her know. “Thank you.”
“I’m sorry to cut our conversation short,” she said. “I’ve got to get back to work. We’re all pulling triple duty here. If you could put the guard back on the phone with me, I’ll give him instructions on what to do when you come back.”
“Okay,” Jackie said. She started to pull the phone away from her ear when she heard Molinares say her name.
“Jackie,” she said, her voice more feminine and comforting than it had been the entirety of their conversation. “Speaking for myself now and not NASA,” she whispered, “I am so sorry. I cannot imagine the worry and the stress with which you’re coping. I wish there was more I could do or say to help ease both. I really do.”
“You saying that is enough, Irma. It really is.” Jackie pushed herself to her wobbly feet. She leaned on the desk and called the guard, handed him the phone, and walked out of the booth.
Candace stood yards away, her arms folded across her chest. Her eyes widened with expectation as Jackie walked toward her. “What did they say?”
“Not much good, really,” said Jackie. “The ISS has a pressure leak. They can’t communicate with the crew. They don’t know if they’re dead or alive.”
“That’s good news,” Candace said.
Jackie furrowed her brow. “How so?”
“If they don’t know he’s dead,” she said, “then I’m betting he’s alive. He’s a freaking astronaut, right? I mean, he must be pretty resilient, right?”
Jackie smiled. She liked Candace’s optimism. And the young woman was right. Clayton was resilient. He was persistent. He was smart. She also knew that Clayton loved his family; he knew how important he was to their happiness and success. Jackie looked over her shoulder at Rocket Park and then up toward the afternoon sun. She decided to adopt Candace’s bright outlook. Clayton would find his way to the Soyuz. He would drop back to Earth. He would make it home and be the one to take Chris on his next camping trip.
