Shane Weldon had a dry, deadly sense of humor. No doubt it had come in handy in bars and the grab-ass sessions that were mission operations meetings, but right now it just bugged Zack. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
Weldon got serious. “Home Team analyzed the eruptions, which affected Keanu’s traj. It’s now in orbit around Earth. Short version, you landed on a spacecraft.”
Zack’s mind quickly cycled through a whole set of images triggered by that word. Star Wars. Star Trek. All kinds of weird metallic beasts from books and movies and comics, none of them resembling this stark but peaceful snowy landscape.
None of them anything he expected to encounter in his own life. “Good to know,” he said, sounding far more casual and flippant than he felt. “This wasn’t in the mission plans.”
“Copy that. We’re all in uncharted waters.”
“What do you want us to do?” He knew what he wanted to do . . . but Venture didn’t belong to him.
Then Weldon uttered more words Zack never expected to hear from Houston. “Knock on the door. See if anyone’s home.”
Again, Weldon didn’t wait for a response, speaking right through the lag. “You can say no. There’s a lot of sentiment here for packing up and coming home. Flight rules require a mission abort if a crew member becomes incapacitated.
“Our recommendation is, if she’s dying, you come back. If she’s stable, exploration takes priority . . .” The rest of the message, if anything, was lost in a wash of static.
“Wait one.”
Zack turned in time to see Yvonne—out of her suit now, wearing her suit undergarment with the legging cut away—being carried into the cabin by Tea. “Good timing,” Tea said. “How about a hand?”
Together the two of them easily lifted Yvonne up to a hammock. Zack got a look at the leg, and it was not pretty: a combination of bad break and exposure to vacuum . . . the worst frostbite imaginable.
She was conscious, at least. And she gamely offered a thumbs-up. Zack patted her shoulder, then slipped back into the airlock, where a tired-looking Dennis was leaning against the curving wall of the chamber. “What’s the prognosis?”
“She’s alive, but her leg—she will probably lose it.”
“So she should be returned to Earth.”
Dennis smiled and spread his hands. “Yes, by all means, lift off at the first opportunity. Just be sure to let me out before you do... .”
“Come on, Dennis!” Though they had never flown a mission together, Zack had trained with the doctor-cosmonaut in years past. He was well aware that Dennis was fatalistic even by Russian standards.
“A day will not make her condition worse. You should consult with Houston. Or have me come back tomorrow for a house call.”
“Is there something you could do here and now?”
Dennis considered this. “I could set her broken bones. I could also trim the damaged tissue . . .” Without waiting for a request from Zack, the cosmonaut began undoing his suit. “It might take some time.”
“I’ll tell Taj.”
Zack returned to the cabin, almost colliding with Tea, who had just finished attaching medical leads all over Yvonne. “Anytime you want to catch me up on whatever the fuck is going on . . .”
“Watch and learn.” Finding that the communications problem had cleared up, he got back on the line to Weldon, relaying Dennis’s diagnosis and the emergency treatment to come. “Assuming medical gives a go,” Weldon said, “you’re confirmed for one sortie, into the vent.”
“What length?” On the two Venture lunar missions, astronauts had demonstrated the ability to do overnight and even three-day sorties using the rover. It was a vital tool in the box; it was impossible to cover much territory—to literally get more than a couple of kilometers away from your landing site—to do any worthwhile science or engineering, then pack up and return, all in the standard eight-hour limit for suits.
“Overnight. Meanwhile, we’ll start working ascent trajectories for tomorrow.”
So now he was going to be camping out overnight on an alien starship! The fun never stopped. “So, to recap, with an injured crew member and a rival vehicle next door, with no sims or specific prep, we’re supposed to explore an alien starship.”
“Good summary.”
Zack turned to Tea, who was hearing this for the first time. “You’re second in command. Any objections?”
Tea blinked. “You’re not asking me, you’re telling me.” Zack could only nod. “Besides,” she said. “Brahma’s going in, right?”
Zack picked up the headset. “Houston, Venture. We’re go for First Contact.”
Superhuman effort isn’t worth a damn unless it achieves results.
ERNEST SHACKLETON (1916)
While Zack was dealing with Yvonne’s situation and the larger issues, Pogo Downey had followed Lucas back to the Brahma lander. “Your guy’s giving up his time to help us. Consider it payback.”
It was also a chance to get a close-up look at the Coalition craft and its “harpoon.” Zack’s conclusion turned out to be right: The thing wasn’t a weapon, at least not in any way Pogo could see. It actually gave Brahma an anchor to the slippery, low-gravity surface.
Pogo had conflicted views about Zack Stewart. The man was smart, that was clear. He knew science and engineering. He knew systems and procedures. Unlike just about everyone else, he knew the history of same, the how and the why some systems had evolved.
Even better, he was smart in a smart way; he knew his strengths and his weaknesses. He never pretended to be a pilot, unlike a few other civilian science types in the astronaut office, who started dropping terms like shithot and ops tempo into conversations that previously featured latte and Chardonnay.
He worked hard and led by example. He’d get his hands dirty, and when he played Mr. Goodwrench (an increasingly vital role on space missions), he was good with tools.
He liked science, but kept it in its place. And he had a glib way of making even the most idiotic experiments—the kinds astronauts usually described as “looking at stars, pissing in jars”—seem relevant.
Which got to another point: Zack was savvy, too. He had built effective, long-term relationships with science and medical folks—though that was to be expected for an astronaut from what Pogo called the “pencil-necked geek” world.
But to have made friends with the puppet masters in mission ops, the flight controllers? That took skills worthy of a K Street lobbyist, the kind Pogo had watched in horror during a tour at the Pentagon.
Stewart even seemed to have administrative folks on his side—the secretaries and IT types. Of course, tragic widowerhood didn’t hurt with the gals.
But, shit, he had to have had something going for him, for NASA to have given him command of the first lunar landing of the twenty-first century.
And yet . . .
Pogo had known quite a few special operators, Navy SEALs and Air Force pararescue guys, who had a cold-eyed ability to jump into icy water or fly a mountain pass on a moonless night, to cap an insurgent with a sniper rifle or slit one’s throat with a knife—and never question the order or worry about the consequences.
With a few drinks in him, he would gladly include himself in that particular club.
He wondered if Zack Stewart was ruthless enough to kill someone, or even more challenging, to order a man to his death.
The EVA ops around Brahma were basic: opening up bays in the descent stage and pulling out boxes. After fifteen minutes, Pogo was bored.
He was also distracted by the conversations between Zack and Taj, who had wisely decided to switch to a common frequency and dispense with relays through their respective mission controls. The first thing Pogo picked up was that Taj was dealing with a problem in its command-and-control system. It was all he could do to keep from telling Venture—“Hey, even the Indian guy has to call Bangalore for computer help!”—but he restrained himself.