I should have stopped.
I should have learned from the first time around this argument, but I couldn’t help it. The differences between science and religion were so core to my true self, that I couldn’t let it go. It’s one of my least admirable qualities.
“You believe a bunch of nonsense! Why is the Old Testament chock full of miracles, but nobody ever parts the Red Sea or turns water into wine nowadays? Why doesn’t your God just show Himself and convince people like me that He is real? It’d be easy for Him to do, wouldn’t it?”
That was the line I remember most, and I’d now spouted it twice to the girl who meant the world to me, convincing her that in fact she meant very little.
It would have been so easy to just listen to her.
I hadn’t done that. I was as full of anger and loss as the first time we had this fight.
I had always believed in my science, not some kind of magical God who sat on the clouds somewhere with his long white beard, judging people and micro-managing everybody’s movements simultaneously. It was ridiculous to think that nonsense was true in any meaningful sense of the word. Karen was smarter than that.
She shut down, staying quiet. I wasn’t sure if she was thinking about what I’d said, or if she was ready to throw me out. I suddenly wanted to take it all back and to not have her beliefs crushed by me. I was supposed to do it better this time.
My heart sank, because I knew exactly what was going to happen. She was going to say good-bye to me for the last time. We were too incompatible, she’d say, and she couldn’t be with somebody who refused to accept her religion, or at least accept that she believed it to be true and needed it to be a central part of her life.
I didn’t want to live through that farewell again, so I stomped on the imaginary accelerator in my mind, thrusting me forward in time, past the rest of the argument, past my feeble attempts to apologize, past Karen moving to Houston, faster and faster, until I hit my true time.
I was in Grandma’s apartment, and I sat down on her couch, a tear falling down my cheek. I wiped it away and knew I had messed up my chance to fix things with Karen.
Maybe I could take another run at it, moving back in time once more to find her and to not have the same argument. I knew I could do it, but it wasn’t the right thing to do. She was right that we really were incompatible at a very basic level. I’d be lying to her by trying to pretend otherwise, and that wasn’t any way to build a future together.
I glanced up, as if I could see through the ceiling at the spaceship high above, where Karen floated with her crewmates, racing around the globe at 25,000 miles per hour.
Chapter 9
Karen Anderson couldn’t help it. No matter how much NASA had prepared them to meet up with the Skywheel, when the Sagan finally caught up with the orbiting American space station and she could see it from the small cabin window, it amazed her.
She’d seen photos and news clips, of course, but that didn’t prepare her for the majesty of the station.
A decade earlier, the U.S. had decided to no longer continue funding the International Space Station. After its initial launch in 1998, the ISS was the jewel of space, built with the cooperation of Russia, the European Union, and many other nations. The old space station hadn’t aged well, though, and NASA started construction of the Skywheel years ago, rushing the past few years. The discovery of aliens on the moon’s far side had made its completion critical.
This time the U.S. was going at it alone.
“Pretty impressive, isn’t it?” asked Major Murray Thomson. Thomson was the commander of the Sagan. He’d been in space several times before, including once to help bring construction materials for the Skywheel.
“Amazing,” Karen said.
And it was. She looked back and stared again.
The station was a giant wheel, spinning around its central axis at three RPM. With the wheel being seventy-five feet across, that created an artificial gravity on the ring of about one-third that of Earth, twice that of the moon. The Skywheel could hold a crew of 106 people.
Today, there were about fifty on board. Several would be joining Karen on the trip to the moon. They would leave in three months. They needed the time for the technicians to finish constructing the Golden Luna, the ship they would take to the moon.
Until then, the Skywheel would be home.
Karen could see a shadow of her reflection in the window, and that of Major Thomson behind her. She suddenly felt self-conscious about her hair, and she turned and smiled at Thomson and used her hands to brush her hair back behind her shoulders.
“What’s it like on board?” she asked.
Thomson smiled back at her. He was floating in the tight capsule, only a few inches from where she also floated. She’d gotten used to the odd sensation that came with zero gravity and had stopped throwing up, which was a great relief.
They had told her, but she still hadn’t appreciated it, that free-fall feels like you’re falling from a high building, every second of every minute, falling nonstop. The sensation never stopped, but she was grateful it no longer seemed to make her vomit.
“It’s beautiful,” he answered. “Big, bright, and full of every comfort you could ever want. The sleeping quarters are on the rim of the wheel. Very comfy, with gravity pulling you down, so it feels much more natural than here.”
“I’m looking forward to that!” Karen laughed.
“The hub is also very large, but with no gravity. You can push off one edge and float over to the other side. It takes about twenty seconds.”
“What happens if you get stuck in the middle? There’s no way to move.”
Thomson grinned. “You always have some momentum, so eventually you’ll float to the other side.”
Major Thomson had been on the Skywheel for six months on a previous mission. Karen was glad he was going to accompany her to the moon. He had an air of confidence about him that she thought would be needed. One other crewmember would join them, and also two other scientists, to make a total of five travelers leaving the Sagan to live in the Skywheel.
Karen hoped the others were as easy to get along with as Thomson. She smiled again and looked at Thomson’s face, hard and chiseled, but with soft eyes and dimples when he smiled.
Thomson was a war hero, having fought the ground war in Syria. She remembered hearing about how he’d saved several members of his platoon, pulling them from danger without regard for his own safety. He had been on the news a lot back then, and she was a bit star-struck being on the same mission as him now.
“Are you okay, Karen?”
She shook her head and realized she’d been staring down at the deck below as she floated. She tried to shake off the feeling that she was way out of her league. NASA wouldn’t have asked her to come if she wasn’t the right person for the job.
Would they?
“I’m fine,” she answered. “Thanks. I think I might need a rest. It’s been quite a day.”
“Sure. Need a hand to get to your station?”
“No, I’m good.”
She left by pushing herself from a hand grip nearby and swam toward the back of the ship. What she really wanted was her church, but she’d go to her sleeping pod instead and pray in silence.
The sleeping pod looked like a giant car seat. She pulled herself into the pod and wrapped a seat belt and shoulder strap around herself to stop herself from floating away.
Nobody else was napping, but she’d been awake for more than sixteen hours, and she wasn’t needed to operate the ship, so it was no big deal for her to sleep.