At that moment, Harley’s lingering doubts about this “Megan” vanished. Let the girl be the judge. If she believes this is her mother, then so be it.
“It’s all right, sweetie. The circle of life.”
“You always said that was crap, Mom. You said life was harsh.”
“I’m better informed now.”
The picture fuzzed out for several seconds. Rachel could only stare with teary eyes. When contact resumed, she cleared her throat and said, “Did you see angels?”
“Only now.”
Harley couldn’t decide which effect was more annoying, the lag or the occasional glitches in video or audio. Rachel, however, seemed not to be bothered. “How did this happen?”
“I really don’t know, sweetie. I mean, I assume there’s some big old purpose, but no one has explained it. One moment I was with you in Florida . . . you know. Then I was here looking at Daddy.”
“God, how’s Daddy?”
“See for yourself.” The camera jiggled and panned to one side. Harley and Rachel could see Zack Stewart, a bit scraggly looking, but smiling and waving. Then the camera shifted back to Megan.
“What’s going to happen?” Rachel said. “Are you coming home?” The lag stretched on to double its normal length before Megan said, “No. For one thing, there’s no room.”
Rachel shook her head in disbelief, and suddenly Harley realized that this conversation might indeed have been a bad idea. It was one thing to see your lost mother . . . that one last look was what every sad song in history asked for.
It was quite another level of horror to lose her a second time. “But . . . you can’t stay there!”
Another long lag. This time “Megan” seemed to be talking to Zack or someone off camera. Then, strangely, she seemed to pull away, as if that someone had hold of her. “Listen, Rachel . . . I don’t really know the purpose to this, to my being back. But I can tell you this, my darling daughter . . . I think you’re going to get a message. I don’t know what or when. Just . . . don’t be scared, okay?”
Confused and hurt, Rachel looked at Harley. “What is she talking about?”
“I don’t think any of us know, Rach.” He felt stupid, but wasn’t going to compound the stupidity by giving uninformed advice.
Rachel turned to face her mother. “I’ll try. I won’t be scared.”
Another lag; this one ended with a smile. “You won’t know what I’m talking about until it happens.”
The picture jiggled, as if the camera operator had to change position. Off-screen voices could be heard . . . Spanish? No, Harley realized: Portuguese. Lucas.
Zack appeared in the frame. “We’ve got to break off. Uh, we’re doing fine, under the circumstances.” He waved.
Then the screen went to snow. Harley rolled as close to Rachel as he could, acutely aware that she might just collapse. He signaled Kennedy to join him.
But the girl surprised him. She swiftly wiped her eyes and shook her head. “Well, that was pretty weird.”
Harley took her hand. “Why don’t you stick with me for a while?”
“That would be great.”
To Kennedy, Harley said, “I’m taking her to the Home Team.”
Q: How did you learn you had been selected as an astronaut?
HALL: Oh, wow. You know how it goes . . . if you get a call from the HR guy, you didn’t make it, but if it’s the chief astronaut, good news? Well, I was actually at Houston, at JSC, for a meeting on the Saturn launcher when I ran into the HR guy. And he got this weird look on his face and said, “I need to talk to you.” And I went, “Oh, crap.” Then he said, “No, wait, not me, exactly—” So then I knew. It was kind of typical . . . I was always around NASA all my life.
ASTRONAUT YVONNE HALL, DESTINY-7 PREFLIGHT INTERVIEW
“Don’t touch that!”
Dennis Chertok literally jumped so high that he bumped his head on the sloping wall of the Venture cabin. Keanu gravity at work. Yvonne had awakened and seen the cosmonaut busy opening cupboards on the rear bulkhead. Her shout startled him. He rubbed his head. “That’s a fine way to talk.”
Emerging from the druggy sleep of several hours, she reacted without thinking, just feeling that somehow this wasn’t right. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I’m your attending physician.” He was wearing his Coalition undergarment along with, strangely, a pair of half-glasses that made the cosmonaut look very much like some old country doctor on a house call.
“I thought you’d left!” Attuned as she was—as they all were—to the steady drone of fans and pumps, she also realized she and Dennis were alone in the cabin. “Where’s Tea?”
“EVA,” Chertok said. “She and Taj went into the vent with the others.”
“And she let you babysit me?”
“Both mission controls approved.” He inclined his head toward the communications panel at the front of the cabin. A computer screen was showing nothing but snow, though Yvonne could hear static and occasional voices on the comm. “Feel free to confirm.”
“No, thanks.” She reached for a handle, trying to get herself out of the hammock.
“Careful.”
“A fall won’t actually hurt in this gravity.” Nevertheless, just raising her head made her feel queasy . . . and low gravity or not, her bandaged leg felt leaden. “What did you do to me?”
“Set your broken tibia, removed vacuum-damaged tissue.”
“Well, thank you. But I feel like shit.”
“You are rather badly injured.” She barely knew Dennis Chertok, having shared a single training session with him years back. She knew his reputation, of course: he was the Tape Monkey, the Mr. Goodwrench, the Cosmonaut Handy Man, the five-time space veteran who could repair a malfunctioning toilet with a cardboard tube and a paper clip, or reprogram a computer with one typing hand tied behind him.
All this, and a medical doctor, too. Through her fog, glancing down at her thickly bandaged leg, Yvonne wondered just what improvisations Dennis had developed to deal with her injuries. “I feel as though I should eat something.”
Dennis gestured toward the cupboards he had just been warned off. “That’s what I was looking for. Food.”
“Check the left side. My stuff is in the third row.”
The cabinets contained not only food, but the medical kit, clothing, supplies, any gear not directly related to operational tasks like EVA.
“First let me help you down—”
“I’m fine!” That came out louder than she intended.
Dennis simply turned away. That was one of the great things about Russians, Yvonne realized. They were happy to let you dig your own grave. Over his shoulder, he said, “What sounds tasty?”
“A sandwich.” Astronauts chose their own meals and on her ISS tour, Yvonne had learned that her favorite was a ham and cheese sandwich smothered in mustard and pickle. Living in zero or near zero-g made you crave sharp flavors.
As the cosmonaut rummaged in the juice boxes and shrink-wrapped trays, Yvonne continued her extraction, a process complicated by the bulky PPK case that shared the hammock.
Eventually, with no obvious grace, she managed to get her legs headed out and down, leaving the PPK behind. The deck, which looked a long way down, proved to be a gentle half-step.
“So, what’s the latest?”
“There is bad news. Patrick Downey is dead.” Now Yvonne knew she was too drugged to function, because she somehow absorbed that shocking piece of information without question, or tears. She knew that spaceflight was incredibly dangerous. She had clear memories of the loss of Columbia and its crew when she was a freshman at Rice. Given where they were, what had already happened to her, somehow the news seemed inevitable. “Tell me how.”