Offworld (2 page)

"Had the dream again, didn't you?" Trisha said softly, so her voice
wouldn't carry. She continued her relentless pedaling, the nonstop,
rhythmic sound threatening to lull him back to sleep. His brain was
still stumbling into consciousness, tripping over memories that were
weakly fighting to surface.

Chris nodded, not looking at her. He closed his eyes, straining
to think back ...

"How far did you get this time?" she asked.

Chris rubbed his eyes; it did nothing to clear away the bleary
lack of focus that was there. "Not much further than the sandstorm.
I passed out somewhere along the way. I don't remember anything
after that." His jaw clenched as he ground his teeth-a bad habit he'd
acquired since the mission began. "There was one new detail that
came back to me. I remember checking my air supply. There were
only four hours left."

Trisha stopped pedaling and the small cabin fell silent. "Four
hours? Are you sure?"

He nodded again, still not facing her.

"That can't be right. You were missing so much longer-you were
out of radio contact for over eighteen hours before we found you."

He spun on her, frustrated. "I know that!"

Trisha frowned, surprised.

"Sorry," he mumbled. "I just ... can't make sense of it. Any
of it."

Trisha studied him.

"I'm the first person to walk on Mars," Chris went on. `And there's
an eighteen-hour window of my time there that I can't account for.
NASAs expecting a full debrief as soon as we get home, and I can't
even begin to explain what happened. I just can't remember."

They both knew how NASA felt about ambiguities-especially
when it came to one of their astronauts. An unknown might as well
be called a failure as far as the media was concerned.

Trisha was considering a response when a shout came from the
command module, carrying all the way to their cabin, down near
the main engine.

"Chris, you better get up here!" Terry called out, his voice betraying a hint of panic. "We've lost contact with Houston!"

Chris bolted for the command module as fast as he could, Trisha
right behind with her exercise towel draped around her neck.

"What happened?" he said before he was fully in the cockpit.

"Ground Control's broken contact," Owen said calmly as if nothing were wrong. Owen Beechum, mission specialist on the team,
rarely flinched.

That was less true of the crew's command module pilot, Terry
Kessler, who paced the tiny five-by-five space at the back of the cabin
like a caged cat.

Chris pushed past Terry and took his seat at the nose of the ship,
examining his console. "We're still receiving telemetry."

"Telemetry, yeah," Terry replied, still pacing, "but nobody's
talking."

Trisha joined Chris in her customary seat beside his. At his nod
she leaned forward.

"Houston, this is Ares, respond please," she said with her finger
on a control marked VOX. It was like a speakerphone for the command module, transmitting everything they said back to Houston.
Her tone was all business.

No response.

"This is god of war calling Mount Olympus. Do you read?" Chris
called. The Greek mythology references were an easy habit they'd
fallen into less than a month into the mission.

A long moment of silence passed as the four of them listened and waited for a response that never came. Even Terry stopped pacing,
crossing his arms anxiously.

"What about the ISS?" suggested Trisha, referring to the International Space Station.

"Nothing" Owen shook his head. "No transmissions of any kind
are coming from the station."

Chris looked out at the stars but caught his own reflection in
the glass. He could see the others: Trisha sitting next to him, Owen
behind her, and Terry pacing again in the back. Chris looked past the
reflection, far into the deepness of space, wondering about the communication breakdown. Was it the ship? Something on the ground?

"Try Tranquility," he said softly.

Owen's eyebrows shot up, but then he quickly nodded, conceding
it was worth a shot. Though the Ares had no established procedure
for contacting Tranquility Base directly, Owen was more than capable
of working around such limitations.

Tranquility Base was the first and so far only-permanent base
on the surface of the moon. It resided in the Sea of Tranquility,
the same site where Armstrong and Aldrin had first walked on the
moon in 1969, and had been named in honor of Armstrong's famous
announcement when their tiny craft landed there.

A few moments of fingers brushing lightly over keys and Owen
nodded at Trisha that he was ready.

"Tranquility Base, this is Ares. Tranquility Base, Ares," Trisha said
into the microphone. "Do you copy?"

The silence of static returned from the tiny speaker above the
microphone. Trisha tried again, repeating her hail, but no reply
came.

"Systems diagnostic," Chris said mechanically to Owen.

Already done. By the numbers, all the way," he replied.

Chris glanced at Trisha and she looked back. An entire conversation passed between them in a single look.

Terry and Owen said nothing, waiting, and their silence lingered
in the air along with an unspoken question.

"If there's nothing wrong with the ship, then the problem is on the
ground," Chris concluded, rising from his chair. "Keep monitoring, let
me know when they get it fixed. Until then, we'll proceed as normal.
Hopefully, NASA can hear us even if we can't hear them."

With that, he disappeared down the corridor, the discussion officially over.

Trisha hesitated, not following Chris out of the command module.
Something about the apprehension in Terry's eyes held her back.

"But .. ." Terry stammered, "shouldn't we try something else?"

"Our options are very limited," Trisha pointed out. Like most of
the ship's countless systems, the communications equipment was
fragile, despite multiple redundancies, and not easily fixed if broken.
Just one of the prices paid for attempting to visit another planet.

Owen looked up from his console, agreeing with Terry. "It doesn't
add up, Trish. We should be picking up something, even if it's not
NASA. Satellite feeds, military broadcasts, signals to or from ... something," he concluded, pushing his glasses up on his nose.

The two of them waited for Trisha to respond, but she was lost in
thought. She was the consummate first officer, fiercely loyal to Chris,
and grateful he almost always deserved it. His leadership instincts
and decision-making were unlike anyone she'd ever worked with
before. And this time was no different.

"Chris is right," she said. ,If the radio is working on our end-and
the diagnostic says it is-then the problem is back home. And if the
problem is on our end, there's nothing we can do about it now," she
said before exiting the command module.

Trisha didn't follow Chris to the rear of the craft, where her
stationary bicycle waited. Instead, she detoured into the lavatory, which was located near the midsection of the ship, where gravity
was weakest.

Inside, she locked the door and leaned back against it. Lingering there, the crook of her right arm found its way up to rest against
her forehead. Her shoulders slumped, and she let out a very long
breath.

Soon she had folded slowly to the floor, as if an enormous weight
were bearing down on her back. She couldn't find the strength or
the will to get back up.

But a knock at the door startled her into rising again.

"Trish, that you in there?" It was Terry.

"Yeah," she called out. "Be out in a second."

"Hurry, could ya?" he said back in a soft voice, as if trying to keep
the others from hearing. "I'm gonna soak the carpet out here."

Trisha stepped forward to the flight medicine bin and retrieved
a nondescript pill bottle. She popped the lid and dry-swallowed two
capsules.

Collecting herself, she exited the lavatory, not bothering to watch
as Terry rushed inside.

Alone in the command module, Owen continued trying to get a
signal. Houston, Tranquility, the ISS, anything. But he received only
silence in return.

What was going on?

Truthfully, Owen was unsurprised that something like this had
happened. Aside from the mysterious eighteen hours when Chris had
gone missing, the entire mission had been glitch-free. And space travel
was never free from glitches. The technology was just too new, too
untested. Though he never said it to the others, he'd been waiting
for something to go wrong for months.

He thought of his wife and son waiting for him on Earth. Would he make it back to see them? Was this communications problem the
beginning of something bigger?

His gut told him it was. He was the least experienced astronaut
on the mission, but it didn't matter. He could feel it.

There was more going on here than they could see.

Earth loomed large each time the tumbling ship's forward windows
caught sight of it, and all eight eyes onboard the Ares were aimed
straight ahead, marveling at the beauty of a place they hadn't seen
in just shy of twenty-nine months.

"Houston, Ares," Chris intoned from his pilot seat up front, still
going through the motions in case Mission Control was able to hear
the crew, even if the crew couldn't hear Mission Control. If nothing
else, the flight recorder would be taping this historic moment for later
examination. "We are still receiving no transmissions from the ISS, so
we are proceeding with manual landing protocol. Over."

NASA took no chances when it came to the design of the Ares.
Redundancies were built into the ship to ensure the crew's survival,
and unlike past spacecraft, the Ares had three separate options for
returning safely to Earth.

The first and most ideal solution was for the ship to rendezvous
with the International Space Station and dock there. The crew would
then take a special shuttlecraft down to Earth, leaving the Ares to
be dismantled or recycled in orbit. Should anything go wrong with
the planned ISS docking, the second option allowed the command
module of the Ares to detach and reenter Earth's atmosphere by
itself. In a best-case scenario, the tiny crew-carrying module would
use its small wings and retractable landing gear to glide down to the
landing pad at Kennedy Space Center, much like the space shuttles did decades ago. In a worst-case scenario, the third option allowed
for the Ares' command module to float on the open sea, after the
ship had parachuted into the ocean, and to await retrieval there. Just
like NASAs first astronauts had used successfully in the Gemini and
Apollo missions.

With the ISS out of contact, procedure dictated that they go for the
manual glide landing at Kennedy. Yet it wasn't ideal, and only added
to the unspoken tension filling the tight spaces aboard the Ares. Per
standard landing protocol, all four of them donned their fireproof
pressure suits as a precaution for such a dangerous reentry.

No one said it, and no one had to; decorum was maintained just
as it had been for the entire mission. In the two-plus months leading
up to their arrival back to Earth, the crew still had been unable to
reacquire vocal contact with Mission Control. Whatever the problem
was, each passing day had made it more likely that it was on the
ship, not in Houston. Regardless, the time for fixes had almost run
out; it would just have to be sorted out on the ground. Their priority
now was getting there.

"Final systems check is complete, Houston," Chris reported. "Preparing to engage manual reentry sequence. Fire stabilizers."

At these words, Terry flipped a switch from his seat just behind
Chris. The young pilot's short, lean body was complemented by a
black crew cut and eyes that were always bright.

Chris grabbed a pair of handles that moved like joysticks. His
movements corresponded with tiny thrusters designed to expel just
enough thrust to affect the ship's orientation. With practiced movements, he used the controls to null the rotation of the ship, angling
its nose straight toward Earth. The blue planet filled the window.