Gravity (5 page)

“I don’t know.” They stood in silence for a moment, neither one of them quite sure what to say, yet neither one ready to end the conversation.

Seven years of marriage, she thought, and this is what it’s come to.

Two people who can’t stay together, yet can’t walk away from each other.

And now there’s no time left to work things out between us.

A new page came over the address system, “Dr. McCallum stat to ER.” Jack looked at her, his expression torn. “Emma—”

“Go, Jack,” she urged him. “They need you.” He gave a groan of frustration and took off at a run for the ER. And she turned and walked the other way.

Aboard ISS From the observation windows of the Node 1 cupola, Dr. William Haning could see clouds swirling over the Atlantic Ocean two hundred twenty miles below. He touched the glass, his fingers skimming the barrier that protected him from the vacuum of space.

It was one more obstacle that separated him from home. From his wife. He watched the earth turn beneath him, saw the Atlantic Ocean slip away as North Africa and then the Indian Ocean slowly spun by, the darkness of night approaching. Though his body was weightless and floating, the burden of grief seemed to squeeze down on his chest, making it difficult for him to breathe.

At that moment, in a Houston hospital, his wife was fighting for her life, and he could do nothing to help her. For the next two weeks he would be trapped here, able to gaze down at the very city where Debbie might be dying, yet unable to reach her, touch her.

The best he could do was close his eyes and try to imagine he was at her side, that their fingers were entwined.

You have to hang on. You have to fight. I’m coming home to you.

“Bill? Are you okay?” He turned and saw Diana Estes float from the U.S. Lab module into the node. He was surprised she was the one inquiring as to well-being. Even after a month of living together in close quarters, he had not warmed up to the Englishwoman. She was too cool, too clinical. Despite her icy blond good looks, she was not a woman he’d ever feel attracted to, and she had certainly never favored with the least hint of interest. But then, her attention was focused on Michael Griggs. The fact that Griggs had a wife waiting for him down on earth seemed irrelevant to them both. Up here on ISS, Diana and Griggs were like the two halves of a double star, orbiting each other, linked by some powerful gravitational pull.

This was one of the unfortunate realities of being one of six human beings from four different countries trapped in close quarters. There were always shifting alliances and schisms, a sense of us versus them.

The stress of living so long in had affected each of them in different ways. Russian Nicholai Rudenko, who had been living aboard ISS the longest, had lately turned sullen and irritable. Kenichi Hirai, from Japan’s NASDA, was so frustrated by his poor command of English, he often lapsed into uneasy silence. Only Luther Ames had remained everyone’s friend. When Houston broke the bad news about Debbie, Luther was the one who had known instinctively what to say to Bill, the one who had spoken from his heart, from the human part of him.

Luther was the Alabama-born son of a well-loved black minister, and he had inherited his father’s gift for bestowing comfort.

“There’s no question about it, Bill,” Luther had said. “You go home to your wife. You tell Houston they’d better send the limo to get you, or they’ll have to deal with me.” How different from the way Diana had reacted. Ever logical, she had calmly pointed out that there was nothing Bill could do to speed his wife’s recovery. Debbie was comatose, she wouldn’t even know he was there. As cold and brittle as the crystals she grows her lab, was what Bill thought of Diana.

That’s why he was puzzled that she was now asking about him.

She hung back in the node, as remote as always. Her long blond hair waved about her face like drifting sea grass.

He turned to look out the window again. “I’m waiting for Houston to come into view,” he said.

“You’ve got a new batch of E-mail from Payloads.” He said nothing. He just stared down at the twinkling lights of Tokyo, now poised at the knife edge of dawn.

“Bill, there are items that require your attention. If you don’t feel up to it, we’ll have to split up your duties among the rest of us.” Duties. So that’s what she had come to discuss. Not the pain he was feeling, but whether she could count on him to perform his assigned tasks in the lab.

Every day aboard ISS was tightly scheduled, with little time to spare for reflection or grief. If a member was incapacitated, the others had to pick up the slack, or experiments went untended.

“Sometimes,” said Diana with crisp logic, “work is the best thing to keep grief at bay.” He touched his finger to the blur of light that was Tokyo.

“Don’t pretend to have a heart, Diana. It doesn’t fool anyone.” For a moment she said nothing. He heard only the continuous background hum of the space station, a sound he’d grown so accustomed to he was scarcely aware of it now.

She said, unruffled, “I do understand you’re having a hard time. I know it’s not easy to be trapped up here, with no way to get home. But there’s nothing you can do about it. You just have to wait for the shuttle.”

He gave a bitter laugh. “Why wait? When I could be home in four hours.”

“Come on, Bill. Get serious.”

“I am serious. I should just get in the CRV and go.”

“Leaving us with no lifeboat? You’re not thinking straight.” She paused.

“You know, you might feel better with some medication. Just to help you get through this period.”

He turned to face her, all his pain, all his grief, giving way to rage. “Take a pill and cure everything, is that it?”

“It could help. Bill, I just need to know you won’t do something irrational.”

“Fuck you, Diana.” He pushed off from the cupola and floated past her, toward the lab hatchway.

“Bill!”

“As you so kindly pointed out, I’ve got work to do.”

“I told you, we can divide up your duties. If you’re not feeling up to it—”

“I’ll do my own goddamn work!” He drifted into the U.S. Lab. He was relieved she didn’t follow him. Glancing back, he saw her float toward the habitation module, no doubt to check the status of the Crew Return Vehicle.

Capable of evacuating all six astronauts, the CRV was their only home should a catastrophe befall the station. He had spooked her with his mutterings about hijacking the CRV, and he regretted it.

Now she’d be watching him for signs of emotional meltdown.

It was painful enough to be trapped in this glorified sardine can two hundred twenty miles above earth. To also be watched with suspicion made the ordeal worse. He might be desperate to go home, but he was not unstable. All those years of training, the psychological screening tests, had confused the fact Bill Haning was a professional—certainly not a man who’d ever endanger his colleagues.

Propelling himself with a practiced push-off from one wall, he floated across the lab module to his workstation. There he checked the latest batch of E-mail. Diana was right about one thing, Work would distract him from thoughts of Debbie.

Most of the E-mail had come from NASA’s Ames Biological Research Center in California, and the messages were routine requests for data confirmation. Many of the experiments were monitored from the ground, and scientists sometimes questioned the data they received. He scrolled down the messages, grimacing at yet another request for astronaut urine and feces samples. He kept scrolling, and paused at a new message.

This one was different. It did not come from Ames, but from a private-sector payload operations center. Private industry paid a number of experiments aboard the station, and he often received E-mail from scientists outside NASA. This message was from SeaScience in La Jolla, California.

Another jiggle-the-handle request, he thought wearily. Many of the orbital experiments were controlled by commands from scientists on the ground. Data was recorded within the various lab racks, using video or automatic sampling devices, and the results downlinked directly to researchers on earth. With all the sophisticated equipment aboard ISS, there were bound to be glitches. That’s the real reason humans were needed up here—to troubleshoot the temperamental electronics.

He called up the file for CCU#23 on the payloads computer and reviewed the protocol. The cells in the culture were Archaeons, bacterialike marine organisms collected from deep-sea thermal vents.

They were harmless to humans.

He floated across the lab to the cell culture unit and slipped his stockinged feet into the holding stirrups to maintain his position. The unit was a box-shaped device with its own fluidhandling and delivery system to continuously perfuse two dozen cell cultures and tissue specimens. Most of the experiments were completely self-contained and without need of human intervention.

In his four weeks aboard ISS, Bill had only once laid eyes on the tube 23.

He pulled open the cell specimen chamber tray. Inside were twenty-four culture tubes arrayed around the periphery of the unit.

He identified #23 and removed it from the tray.

At once he was alarmed. The cap appeared to be bulging out, as though under pressure. Instead of a slightly turbid liquid, was what he’d expected to see, the contents was a vivid blue-green.

He tipped the tube upside down, and the culture did not shift. It was no longer liquid, but thickly viscous.

He calibrated the micro mass measurement device and slipped the tube into the specimen slot. A moment later, the data on the screen.

Something is very wrong, he thought. There has been some sort of contamination. Either the original sample of cells was not pure, another organism has found its way into the tube and has destroyed the primary culture.

He typed out his response to Dr. Koenig.

What if #23 was not contaminated? What if this was simply how Archaeons behaved without gravity to keep them in check?

Almost immediately he discarded that notion. These changes were too drastic. Weightlessness alone could not have turned a single-celled organism into this startling green mass.

He typed,

The sudden clang of a drawer startled him. He turned and saw Kenichi Hirai working at his own research rack. How long had he been there? The man had drifted so quietly into the lab Bill had even known he’d entered. In a world where there is no up or down, where the sound of footsteps is never heard, a verbal greeting is sometimes the only way to alert others to your presence.

Noticing Bill’s glance, Kenichi merely nodded in greeting and continued with his work. The man’s silence irritated Bill. He was like the station’s resident ghost, creeping around without a word, startling everyone. Bill knew it was because Kenichi was insecure about his English and, to avoid humiliation, chose to converse little if at all. Still, the man could at least call out “hello” when he entered a module to avoid rattling the nerves of his five colleagues.

Bill turned his attention back to tube #23. What would this gelatinous mass look like under the microscope?

He slid tube #23 into the Plexiglas glove box, closed the hatch, and inserted his hands in the attached gloves. If there was any spillage, it would be confined to the box. Loose fluids floating around in microgravity could wreak havoc on the station’s electrical wiring.

Gently he loosened the tube seal. He knew the were under pressure, he could see the cap was bulging. Even so, was shocked when the top suddenly exploded off like a champagne cork.

He jerked back as a blue-green glob splatted against the inside of the glove box. It clung there for a moment, quivering as alive. It was alive, a mass of microorganisms, joined in a matrix.

“Bill, we need to talk.” The voice startled him. Quickly he recapped the culture tube and turned to face Michael Griggs, who had just entered the module. Floating right behind Griggs was Diana. The beautiful people, Bill thought. Both of them looked sleek and athletic in their navy blue NASA shirts and cobalt shorts.

“Diana tells me you’re having problems,” said Griggs. “We just spoke to Houston, and they think it might help if you considered some medication. Just to get you through the next few days.”

“You’ve got Houston worried now, have you?”

“They’re concerned about you. We all are.”

“Look, my crack about the CRV was purely sarcastic.”

“But it makes us all nervous.”

“I don’t need any Valium. Just leave me alone.” He removed the tube from the glove box and returned it to its slot in the cell unit. He was too angry to work on it now.

“We have to be able to trust you, Bill. We have to depend on each other up here.”

In fury, Bill turned to face him. “Do you see a raving lunatic in front of you? Is that it?”

“Your wife is on your mind now. I understand that. And—”

“You wouldn’t understand. I doubt you give your wife much thought these days.” He shot a knowing glance at Diana, then launched himself down the length of the module and into the connecting node. He started to enter the Lab module, but stopped he saw Luther was there, setting up the midday meal.