Trajectory Book 1 (New Providence) (14 page)

“Have you ever been to the station?” Emma felt like talking might keep her from freaking out. So far so good. “That was possibly a stupid question.”

“Yes. I go up all the time. I’ll be going up with you today.”

“Oh! For some reason I thought you’d be staying here.”

“No. I get to ride in the shuttle and keep an eye on you. Make sure you don’t pop your helmet off and go on a spacewalk.” Harding grinned at her.

Emma made a noise that sounded like a gulp.

They arrived at her locker and Ms. Harding opened it up. “Put on your liner and then give me a holler when you’re ready. I’ll help you suit up.”

Harding turned and walked away, around one of the other rows of lockers.

Emma stripped out of her clothes down to her underwear and quickly pulled on the grey/blue suit liner. It was not an attractive garment but served as an insulation and anti abrasion layer inside the suit. She tested the padding on her right elbow by bumping it in the palm of her left hand. It was also padded in the knees, shoulders and crotch. She pulled at the suit and shifted around in it unsuccessfully trying to get comfortable.

“Ready.” Her voice sounded very small in her head.

Harding re-materialized in front of her wearing her own shapeless grey padded inner lining. “Lookin’ sharp, kid.” She flashed a smile and a thumbs up. “Now, let’s get your booties on. Believe it or not, this is way easier in zero-G.”

Emma could believe it. After climbing up onto the bench, she grabbed hold of the harness and lowered herself into the suit’s legs. She got stuck when her feet reached the ankles and had to squeeze them around into the suit’s boots one at a time. Harding kept each boot from bending too much as she got her feet inside.

“Usually easier doing it this way than disconnecting the boots from the legs. Hard to bend over and get the seals when you’re inside.” Harding explained, helping to hold the suit’s floppy legs as Emma pushed her feet into the end through the rings at the ankle.

Next, they lowered the suit’s chest piece over her head and Emma maneuvered her arms in around the bends in the elbow. The sleeves felt long and the torso was tight against her chest making it hard to reach the ends.

“Don’t worry. It gets easier when you’ve done it a few hundred times.”

Emma felt the suit’s torso click into the legs and Harding turned the lock.

“How’s that feel?” Harding was inspecting her handiwork, tugging on the seals around Emma’s waist.

“Feels big.” Emma wriggled her fingers around outside the rings at the end of the arms. Her shoulders were loose inside the chest piece. The legs were binding her in the crotch awkwardly.

“Ah you’ll get used to it. Measurements said this suit was the best fit for you. You’re a bit on the small side.” Harding pulled on the neck ring peering in. “We’ll keep the helmet and gloves in their bag until we’re ready to board. Follow me.”

Emma stomped after Harding around a couple of rows of lockers. They passed another person climbing into a suit. Emma looked away, embarrassed.

“Here’s mine. I might need you to lock me in.”

Harding climbed into her suit’s legs and then wormed up into the torso. When she was in, she pulled the torso down and told Emma to lock her in. Emma had a hard time sliding the ring seal into place with her hands half covered but managed to make it click.

“Good! You’re getting the hang of it in there?”

Emma grinned. Gave a lame thumbs up.

“OK, grab your stuff and let’s get going.”
 

035

Calypso.

Carl Lambert was on watch in the cockpit. After their endurance run earlier today he was happy just to relax weightless in the chair. Ben and the Captain were both racked out. He could hear the Captain snoring below in his bunk. Normally he’d be watching movies or reading on his tablet. He had a thing for horror movies and science fiction though he didn’t really feel interested in any of those. He felt like he was in a horror movie himself. The long lead-up to something awful happening.

This is bullshit.

Carl was running over the data from Control. He’d watched the footage from Watchtower a few dozen times, hoping to make some sense of what happened to Pandora, but there was nothing to it other than specks on a screen. The tiniest light show ever.

And you know what? The Captain’s flying us right into this shit and all they had was a mining feeder they’d turned into a space grenade. He and Trigger’d checked it out in the equipment room before he turned in and gave it one more going over. At least he was confident the thing would explode on command now. He just wasn’t convinced it would be useful as a weapon.

Maybe if they mounted it on their ship’s drone. Maybe.

Flipping through the navigation data, Carl started laying out some new course corrections. They started out as minor changes to the existing flight plan then got more extreme as he drew longer, wider arcs around where they expected the object to be.

“You like that?” He caught himself talking to his screen and rubbed the stubble on his head. He was tired. Getting loopy.

What if we slowed it right down? Like, cut our velocity in half and then drifted? He plotted that, ignoring Mars’ advancement in its orbit, moving ahead of them as he drifted the timeline forward with a new slower trajectory. This thing’d blow right past us. It’d be expecting us to head hard to Mars rather than coast in. Wouldn’t it?

He scratched his chin and looked at the final plot. They’d have to make up the time to Mars somehow. They’d have fuel if they conserved while drifting. Be a helluva lot easier on the engine too.

Carl looked up through the windows into space ahead of them. He floated up and looked at the stars and the Sun glowing distantly through the shaded glass. It’s out there. Whatever it is. And it’s coming straight for them.

The new plot made as much sense as anything else did. Not that anything about this made sense at all. What the hell was this thing that changed course in mid space? Had to be a ship, but what was flying it? Could it really be alien? They’d been broadcasting radio into space for two hundred years now. If there was intelligent life in the Galaxy, that’d give them two hundred years to hear them in their solar system and send out a ship to meet them, wouldn’t it?

What if they didn’t like what they heard?

He shivered, staring into the unknown. One thing was for sure: Carl Lambert wasn’t letting no little green men probe his butt.

Fuck no.

He saved his new flight plan. He’d bring it up with Edson in the morning when he got up. Maybe over breakfast.

Would Ben have his back?
 

036

Making Time.

Hey Jer,

You’ll never guess what happened. I’m going to Lighthouse! Commander Mancuso asked me to come up to help out on the science team. I guess we found the thing before Watchtower picked it up. I guess I’m kind of a big deal. *grin*

Anyway. I’m nervous. First time in a shuttle. First time off Mars. It’s huge.

Jerem reread. They picked Em for the station’s science team?

The last data we had showed the object tracking Calypso. I’ll be leaving here early today and will be blacked-out while in transit. I haven’t heard from Dad since they started their high trajectory.

I’m worried. I really hope nothing happens to them.

I guess I’m worried about a lot of stuff. Dad. You… Stuff.

Be careful out there, ok? I miss you. Will send more when I’m on the station.

luv,

Em XOXOXOX

Jerem flopped back in his bunk. They were cruising at 0.4G and had been for most of the day. The even gravity was nice. Comfortable. Heavier than home but not unbearable. He was getting used to it.

To: Emma Franklin

Subject: Re: Station

Em, that’s awesome news. That means I’ll get to see you a day or two sooner than if you’d been down in the colony. Maybe we can book one of the suites in the hotel. One of the nice ones they reserve for the Council when they visit.

I have to say, this is one of the roughest returns we’ve had. Normally there’s not much to worry about, you know? You can set the controls and just do your thing. Read a book or listen to music. Watch movies. It’s boring as hell. This is different. It’s like we’re waiting to see what happens so everybody’s on edge. Spooked. Now we’re bored and edgy.

What are we missing? What else is out there?

Good luck on your flight. Those shuttles give a pretty bumpy ride, but they’re safe. Just stay buckled in and trust your suit. Always Trust Your Suit.

I miss you a lot. I can’t stop thinking about you and it’s driving me crazy.

Mail me when you get to the station. J

He sent the message and opened up his photo book. He flipped through some pictures of her on his tablet. Selfies taken in various places sent to him at random then saved to his tablet. Smiling in her apartment, dark hair around her light brown face. Look of fake surprise in the park, her lips in a silent oh, those big bright eyes wide around their light green irises. Sleepy on her bed, eyes half-closed and a hint of a smile, her slender neck and a shoulder. Her lean body barely hidden under a sheet.

He put on some music and turned off the lights in his bunk. He tried to think technical thoughts. Math. The three-body problem of orbital dynamics. The Sun, Mars and their ship.

Every time he closed his eyes, all he could see was Emma’s giggling face teasing him. He fell asleep thinking about trajectories and imagined Emma and himself locked in a binary orbit. She tormented him in his dreams, naked, trying to run away from him. Jerem unable to catch her as she ran around him in a swirling circle, blue LED lighting like stars against a black room. Out of reach, she laughed and ran away.
 

037

Shuttle 8.

Emma buckled into her jump seat on board the shuttle. The seat was barely recognizable as such. A shell with a number of hooks and receptacles that her suit was built to fit into, forming a tight lock on her back and legs. Once attached, and checked over by Harding, she hit the button on her arm controls to inflate the inner lining in her suit. The suit filled up with air around her squeezing and securing her into position with protective padding.

The interior of the shuttle was not exactly built for comfort. Nominally pressurized, the inhabitants still wore full space suits for the transit to orbit. In addition to providing absorption against the shuddering methane rocket engine of the shuttle, the suits’ inflated interiors applied pressure to the extremities to maximize blood flow during heavy acceleration.

“You ok in there?” Harding asked over the intercom.

“I feel like a balloon inside a smaller balloon.” She gave an awkward thumbs up. She was doing that a lot and felt foolish for it. She wasn’t comfortable but found her suit strangely reassuring. Trust the suit, she reminded herself.

“Good. This is going to be your home for the next five hours.”

Yes. Emma tried not to think about being cramped up in here for that long. Despite her relative discomfort, she couldn’t complain. She was genuinely excited to be going up.

Space!

She just wished she had a better view instead of the metal interior of this shuttle. There were no passenger view ports. The exposed aluminum and steel was covered in webbing and hand-holds. Plastic cargo containers filled the aft part of the cabin. Her belongings were stowed in the front near the hatch with the others’ gear in a sealed compartment.

She looked around at the other passengers. Doctors. Engineers. Crew support. Nine people all with jobs on the station, leaving the ground for two to six month shifts.

Without windows, they had no view of the inside of Ascraeus Mons’ long-dead caldera where they’d be taking off. Inside the old volcano, they were sheltered against the swirling dusts of the Tharsis highlands fifteen kilometers below. Ever since the train entered that tunnel back in New Providence, she’d been unable to see anything outside of her immediate surroundings. She felt like cargo packed in bubble wrap.

Her helmet comms clicked and a staticky voice spoke into her ear. “Launch in T-minus—sixty seconds.”

No view of the dark sky, the Sun shining like a white-yellow ball through the thin mist. At this altitude the sky was almost black, barely any atmosphere. Wisps of carbon dioxide gas pooled inside the caldera forming a fog in the deep shadows of the canyon walls.

All Emma could see was the back of a helmet in the metal canister they were strapped into. She closed her eyes and breathed the filtered air puffing against her cheeks inside her helmet. She was really doing this.

Emma had dreamed of going into space ever since she was little. Her father Edson made it seem like a great adventure with the stories he told her. He used to bring her back little rocks from the asteroid belt, and tell her their names: Akagi, Chirman, Tithonus… She still had a collection of them in her room. Her mother was an astrophysicist who still taught at the university. She had at least one space rock named after her in the New Mars Near Space Catalog.