Gravitational Constantly: A Novella (8 page)

“Hey…” she put her hand over mine and leaned in closer to me “…I'm not going out there to die, Andy. I'm going out there so I can move on with my life. I've got to see, at least this once, if there is something out there. If I have the ability to make a difference, to change the world. I have to take that chance.”

I laughed and shook my head, turning to look toward the asteroid belt and beyond. “You're as stubborn as a damn bull. I know you're going. I just had to tell you that I don't want you to.”

She smiled so wide and bright that her eyes shamed the Milky Way. Our lips met as she climbed over the console and into my lap. “I'm glad you want me to stay,” she whispered. “I'm going to come back to you. I promise.” We kissed a longer and deeper kiss than the first. “You know, I've spent more time in a shuttle than I have on solid ground I think.” She pushed open one of the head compartments to reveal several small levers. She took my hand in hers and guided it to the first, slowly gliding her fingers over mine, stroking the lever ever so slightly. “This is the auxiliary engine's switch.” She wrapped her hand around the lever and closed mine on it then gave a quick jerk that made me gasp. A loud bang sounded from the back of the shuttle and a high-pitched hum buzzed through the ship.

Cara laughed at my sudden surprise, and she moved my hand to the next lever while taking my tongue into her mouth. She stroked the lever while we explored each other’s mouths. “This is the emergency fuel pump,” she said, gasping as we pulled the switch. Her left hand eased my right to the last lever while her right found my only one. “Do you know what this one is for?” she asked, giggling. I responded by pulling her shirt apart and sent buttons pinging off the sides of the shuttle and Cara into full laughter.

Her caramel skin was soft to the touch and incredibly smooth, except for the goose bumps that had begun to raise on her breasts. She pulled the final lever above our heads, bringing the auxiliary power system to a full roar, and me into her. There was no longer an experimental accelerating transport gate outside the shuttle. There was no Luna one hundred miles below us. There was no shuttle craft keeping us suspended, hanging in space. Our bodies entangled around each other, one not knowing the boundaries of the other. Our clothes drifted aimlessly through the shuttle. Cara's back pressed hard against the top of the shuttle and kept rhythm with the engine's pulse.

The radio was beeping, trying to get our attention. A voice came over the PA. “5183, please respond. Are you okay? Your auxiliary engines have been engaged and our instruments can't read your life signs because of the electromechanical interference. Do you need any assistance?”

Cara erupted with laughter and licked at my lips. “How about it? Do you need any assistance or can you finish the job?”

I narrowed my eyes on her, knowing that I had what I wanted in my sight. The only thing I've ever truly wanted in life. The only real thing that could ever exist. The one thing that couldn't be put into words and had nothing tangible or tactile to it. Love. The engines were warm now and the sound was deafening. The radio blared the voice of some flight control officer, but our moans and pants of love were all I could hear as the crescendo reached its pinnacle.

We lay on the shuttle floor, wrapped in and around each other. Cara lifted her head to my shoulder and laid it there.

“I wish I had found you sooner,” she whispered. She reached to the console, flipped a switch, and pressed a few buttons. The loud hum of the engines died and there was a low whirring noise as they came to a stop. She hit the communications panel with her ring finger and kissed at my neck while the static cleared. “This is shuttle 5183. Cara here. We're fine. You can call the cavalry back. Our aux system kicked in without cause. Everything reads normal now. 5183 out.”

I drew lines through Cara's hair with my fingers and listened to her breath while we lay coupled. “We can go to Earth when you get back. Who knows, maybe you'll like what I didn't. We'll hide ourselves away in some little valley in the mountains and become hermits,” I said with a laugh. “We can make our own little world there, Cara. After you've found what you're looking for. Just the two of us.”

“Our own world,” Cara repeated. “I'd like that. Do you think the universe will make room for us?”

“We'll make it so. Do you know what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immoveable object?” I asked rhetorically. “It goes right through it.”

“Yes, but which are we? The force or the object?” she asked.

“Both. We'll make our world without
its
consent.”

The music was loud and the party was hopping. The jazz band,
Mint Julep
, had set up on a bandstand against the staircase leading up from Futura's ballroom. Streamers of white, silver, and black flew from the ceilings, confetti seemed to fall eternal, and the champagne was flowing like a river. Hors d'oeuvres moved through the room on a human conveyer belt of servers balancing champagne and finger foods on sterling silver serving trays. Long tables with white tablecloths bordered the room, complete with carving stations serving roast, broiled chicken, veal, turkey, and several cuts of steak. Vegetables, fruits, cheeses, and breads lined the other half of the tables. No expense had been spared for Futura's celebration of the first manned “Space Gate” launch.

The media had coined the term “Space Gate” early on in its development. Sebastian seemed to like it, and soon enough the organization was referring to it as such themselves. It also helped wash the bad taste out of anyone's mouth that had uttered “Mars Bridge.” The press had been invited to the party, as well as politicians from Earth and Luna. All the top brass of Futura had shuttled up from Earth, including Victor Black, Sebastian's father. From the look on his face and the other wrinkled, gray-faced board members, he did not approve of the spectacle that Sebastian had made the launch party into. I, however, was having a hell of a time.

“Have you ever seen so many yuppies all packed into one room?” I yelled over top the music to Jayce and Cara. We had secluded ourselves the best we could at a table on the side of the ballroom. The table was strategically placed between the three pivotal points of interest in the room: the bar, the food, and the restrooms. However, it was not so close to either of the three as to get sucked into a conversation by some bystander waiting their turn to be served, or their turn to serve themselves, as the line coming from the restroom ebbed and flowed, sometimes to great lengths.

“I've been at Futura half my life, and I only recognize one out of ten faces,” Jayce yelled back. Most of the executive staff had also been invited to the party, although I also shared Jayce's observation and hardly recognized any of them. It seemed that even the lowest of the mail clerks had put on a tie and meandered into the party.

“Maybe that's because you are drunk, Jayce,” Cara howled, and we all laughed. It was true. I'd drank with Jayce on many occasions, but this was the first time I'd ever seen him near intoxicated. I relished the moment, because I feared it would never come again.

“We're two days from launch. Maybe you should be doing the same,” Jayce boomed back at Cara.

The band was in full swing and the quartet was playing wide open and on all cylinders. Guests were moving and shaking around the dance floor in a flurry, fueled by rhythm and booze. People had started to wander out onto the terrace overlooking the serene gardens of Futura Plaza. Lovers and ships passing in the night settled into dark alcoves, whispering soft words and softer kisses. A middle-aged woman, with time spent under the knife, was wailing with laughter and spilling her wine as she leaned too far over the balcony and nearly plunged to her doom. Her suitor ripped her midnight blue dress at the shoulder and broke her pearl necklace as he clawed desperately to pull her back to safety. Beads of pearls rained down onto the dance floor below like gleaming drops of starlight.

“This place is getting wild!” Jayce called out to Cara and me.

Cara was applying a fresh coat of lipstick and doing the
twist
in her chair to the music, “Oh really? I hadn't noticed.”

“I like it,” I yelled back to Jayce.

Cara closed her vanity mirror with a snap and put away her lipstick, “Well, if you'll excuse me, this girl has to go freshen up,” she said with a sardonic little smile and a wink of her left eye.

“You should relish peeing in gravity while you still can. I hear the waste system in the space suit is not ideal,” I said with a mocking grin. Jayce thought the joke funnier than it was and slapped the table in approval as he drained the last of his martini.

Cara slowly leaned over the table, placing one white-gloved hand in the center and the other lightly on my cheek and gave it a little slap. Her dress left little to the imagination, and Jayce and I were both caught staring into the sun. “You shouldn't tease a lady, my dear,” she said as she leaned closer to plant a ghost of a kiss on my lips and undoubtedly to show off the front of her dress or rather the lack there of.

Cara moved off toward the restrooms, and Jayce and I shared a silent glance of approval. Though he and Cara had shared some level of a relationship at some point in time, it never bothered me. Whatever they may have been, they regarded each other more so as siblings now, albeit very close siblings. Cara constantly chided Jayce to find a woman in vain. We both knew Jayce was committed to his work. I never asked, but I had the feeling that was the wedge that drove them apart in the past.

Jayce blew an overwhelmed puff of air through his lips. “Hey, let’s step outside and have a smoke.”

“You quit, remember?” I said mockingly.

“Damn it, you're right, but I'm sure you didn't. Come on, let's go.” He slapped me on the shoulder and started making his way out to the terrace.

I followed behind Jayce, wading through a sea of glittering dresses and dark suits, all meandering about in no particular direction or pattern. We perched on a quiet spot on the terrace away from the other partygoers who were loudly sipping cocktails, dancing or embracing in more intimate ways. The white stone railing was smooth to the touch and sturdy to lean on. We gazed down at the gardens below, where greenery and flowers snaked through a spider web of pedestrian paths used for strolling.

Jayce normally smoked cigars, but once in a while his Terran vices would get the best of him and he would smoke old-fashioned, hand-rolled cigarettes, of which I was accustomed to bring anytime we were doing any sort of drinking. I opened the gilded tin box he had given to me as a birthday present and removed two cigarettes. We took in the scenery for a time before Jayce summoned his best serious face and cleared his throat.

“Listen, Andy, why don't you think about taking launch day off. Sleep in, have breakfast in bed, take in a movie, or go to that damn Armstrong Park you love so much.” Jayce tried to sound playful.

“What are you talking about? Do you not want me there? Does Cara not want me there? Did she say something?”

Jayce took a drag of his cigarette and shook his head. “No, no, Cara hasn't said a thing. It's not that at all, and you know I need you there every day.”

“Right, I forgot. I'm the glue of this operation,” I said with a laugh.

“You might be, Andy. You never know what role the universe has written for you. I was just thinking that it might be better if you did something to take your mind off the launch. There's no need for you to sit there and worry for hours.”

I looked at Jayce suspiciously. “The two drone test launches went flawlessly. I'm not worried, Jayce. Are you?”

He took another puff and blew it out over the railing toward the garden. He seemed to be looking for something or someone in the garden, but I could tell he was looking past it too. “Andy, this is the furthest we've ever sent a human into space. I'm not going to lie to you, there are a lot of things that could go wrong. We may have solved the power problem, and the shuttle design is solid, but there are still unknown factors.”

“There's not much we can't see between here and Mars. What could happen?” I said.

“That's what I'm worried about, Andy, what we can't see. I hope I'm just being paranoid, and I probably am. It may end up being the most boring space flight ever recorded.”

When Jayce and I returned to the party, we found the zoo unattended. The animals were running wild, gassed up by negligent zookeepers, who were now indistinguishable from the menagerie they once kept. Most of the dignitaries from the colony and Futura had vanished. With the senior staff no longer present, Sebastian was conducting an orchestra of mockery across the room. Gobs of media socialites, tabloid journalists, civilian gawkers … and Cara clung to the hideous display of drunken posturing Sebastian was presenting.

I lumbered over to the closest bar with Jayce. We replenished our drinks and leaned against the bar, watching Sebastian flail his arms in expressive speech, spilling his drink every time he made a grand gesture. No doubt, he was explaining about the Lens Project, taking all the glory for himself and passing it off as his creation. His voice carried across the room when he was excited, and the echo of laughter from his crowd of slack-jawed simpletons could be heard over the band still tapping away on the stage.

“…and so I told him, not only could I do it in under five years, but I'd do it with style!” Sebastian roared from the other side of the ballroom.

Jayce and I exchanged a look with rolling eyes and laughter. “This guy's sense of self-worth never ceases to amaze me,” I said, shaking my head.

“He's a piece of work, that's for sure, but you do have to admire his conviction,” Jayce said.

I sat my drink on the bar and stared at Jayce incredulously. “How can you defend that bag of hot air?”

Jayce laughed and took another swig of his drink. “All I'm saying is that he had some drive to make this happen, that's all. You know, he was the one who recruited me to Futura years ago. I knew him from college back on Earth. Even then he was a bag of hot air, but balloons that travel great distances need hot air, Andy. That's something you should remember. If this flight is … erm …
when
this flight is successful, it will be the first step toward minor colonization of Mars and a new forward operating base for Futura, and mankind for that matter.”

“…yes, well, like I said, I'd do it with style! This here is about as much style as anyone needs!” We overheard Sebastian boasting as he grabbed Cara by the waist and pulled her close to him. Closer than I cared for.

Jayce saw the discontent forming along the ridges of my brow. “Cara's a big girl. She can handle him.”

We watched as pictures were taken of Sebastian and Cara, Sebastian's drink and balance leaning this way and that, all the time he kept laughing and sliding his arm around her waist to pull her in tighter.

“This is the guy that is flying your balloon?” I asked Jayce sarcastically.

“Well, he does not lack for improvement, I'll say that,” Jayce replied.

When I turned back to the bar for my drink, I heard the slap. Several of the onlookers were laughing and a few—more sober—looked embarrassed and concerned. Cara had a nasty scowl on her face and was trying to move away from Sebastian, but he had her wrist. He threw his drink in her face and delivered a backhand that caused her to stumble into a table and nearly fall to the ground if not for Sebastian grabbing her arm and wrenching her back to her feet.

I couldn't say how many paces it was from me to Sebastian, but only that I covered them so quickly I hardly realized that I had done so. I could hear Jayce behind me, trying to clamber his way through the crowd. My hand was on Sebastian's shoulder turning him, his dark face and bright eyes fixed in a scowl as he saw it was me. “You” was the only word he got out as the first of three hard right hooks drove him back and down through a table. A moment before the third connected, I thought he had his footing and there was about to be a fight, but the last hit sent him and the table and all the silverware, dishes, and glasses scattering through the air as the crowd began to shout and disperse. Cara was shouting something incoherent at me and arms were locked around mine, dragging me through a flurry of noise, confetti, and chaos. The band played through the entire scene and never missed a beat. Jayce was feebly consoling Cara and trying to restore order as others gathered around Sebastian's prostrate body.

I wrenched free of my captors at the door and fled out the exit into the garden. Shouts could be heard behind me as I ran through the arboretum. The band's music faded and turned to a high-pitched whir the further I ran. I was out the back gate and into an alley that connected to the ground shuttle station. The nearest shuttle was coming to a stop and opening its door for two well-dressed passengers that were likely guests at the party. I shoved past them and jumped into the shuttle, hit the ready button, and sped off down the track in a dizzying darkness that left me feeling the effects of the alcohol and adrenaline. Where the shuttle stopped, I couldn't say. I was somewhere in the Tourist district when I climbed out and began to walk aimlessly. My strength gave out in an alley between casinos, and I sat with my back against a brick wall and emptied myself of the poison I had enjoyed earlier.

Staring into the night sky, far above Luna, my home and Mother hung over my head, keeping vigil over my lost soul. Tears wet my face and salted my lips. The whirring noise had followed me from Futura's gardens and was now lyrics on my mind in some forgotten tongue. A thousand voices seemed to be humming a tune I had once heard, but long since forgotten. The Atlantians' tears that washed away and evaporated, rising high into the atmosphere and returning to Sol, now twinkled and hummed and pierced my ears and mind. I closed my eyes and let the darkness take me.