Pillar to the Sky (39 page)

He could only nod.

“Actually, if I had to choose a way to go,” she whispered, “that would be it.”

She was silent again for a moment.

“Thought I should let you know.”

“Understood.”

She relaxed and smiled again.

Kevin had returned from Gary’s ascent pod, grinning and holding up a vacuum-packed cooler, “Compliments of Phil’s Bar-B-Que Pit” stenciled on the side of it. Jenna, with a shout of delight, left the table and floated over to grab it.

Gary could see why they called him Conan: Kevin was a rare combination of sheer physical brawn combined with a sharp mathematical mind and icy nerves. From the looks of him, Gary guessed that every spare minute of the day, when the rest of the crew was not on the exercise machine, Kevin was pounding away on it. He had let his black hair grow long. The left side of his face was scarred by third-degree burns from the crash landing of a suborbital flight for a competitor of the Brit’s. He was something of a legend in the fledgling suborbital business. He had started off as a mechanic but quickly showed he knew the operation of the craft better than some of those who flew it; went through flight school; rated as a pilot, and when an engine fire caused an abort, he guided the ship in and managed to get all the passengers out, then spent a month in a burn unit.

Looking at him again, Gary decided that this was one no-nonsense man who looked almost like a throwback to the “high steel” construction workers of a century earlier.

“Now, how are you feeling, sir?”

“‘Gary,’ remember?”

She relaxed.

“Sure, Gary. Honestly, how do you feel?”

He slowly turned his head left and right, looked up and down, the others watching him, perhaps a bit nervous. This was, after all, the legendary co-designer of the Pillar. They had been fully briefed on his physical condition and, unknown to Gary, had been given the option of vetoing his joining the crew; the vote, anonymous, had been two to one in favor. All were now seasoned veterans aboard the station, and prior to that had experience in the suborbital business—and all had experienced the extreme displeasure of someone getting sick in zero gravity. A few never acclimated and were useless for any work for days, even weeks in space. Gary forced a smile of reassurance. Though the air was, of course, artificially pumped and constantly recycled, the atmosphere did have a slight gamey scent to it after months of continuous occupation.

“I wouldn’t mind checking out the view,” he finally said.

“Just go about cautiously at first. You’ll get the hang of it all in a few days. Kevin, why don’t you lend him a hand; I got to get back to my duties.”

Kevin pushed off from the table, extending a rough hand, which Gary took while Jenna started working on stowing the food and other supplies that had been jammed into the pod, since it was still months out until the next resupply launch. Meanwhile Singh floated over to her station at the control center, settled into a chair, and buckled herself in.

“Glad to have you aboard, Doc,” Kevin said.

“Hey, it’s ‘Gary.’”

“Nah, you’re ‘Doc’ to me. You’re the wizard who designed this dang thing we’re working on. Believe me, I know mechanical design even though I didn’t get the degrees you did, and I gotta say, you did one helluva job.”

There was actual admiration in the man’s voice, and Gary could not help but smile. Huge, tough exterior but inside, the soul of a dreamer of space like he was.

“Now check this out!” and Kevin guided him to a circular porthole, eighteen inches in diameter, set nearly in the “floor” of the station. Kevin guided Gary’s grasp to a recessed handhold.

He could not help but gasp in wonder.

He was now one of the privileged few out of all humanity: a total of nine Apollo crews who had ventured to the moon and back, and the teams across the last year who had lofted up here to guide the first wire deployment and now occupied this station. Only they across all of history had been granted the vision to see the full disk of the earth below, luminescent; the wondrous blue-green of the vast Pacific; but also the western half of South America, the east coast of Asia, all of Australia, and what must be the east coast of India cloaked in clouds. There was no sense of motion, as those flying in low earth orbit knew, with the landscape but a few hundred miles below rapidly drifting by. Instead it felt as if they were just hovering, which in fact they were, almost like angels looking down from celestial heights.

They were not traveling in the fast orbit of the lower reaches of space, where one actually did sense motion over an ever-changing landscape below; they were firmly locked in place, 23,000 miles directly above the platform, a mile south of Aranuka. He had half expected to actually be able to see that, but of course not from this altitude. Even the “wire” itself quickly disappeared from view in its long descent, adding to the sensation of hovering like guardian angels over their home world.

But as he watched, there was indeed now a sense of movement as the demarcation line of sunset and sunrise half a hemisphere wide shifted along at nearly a thousand miles an hour at the equator.

It actually was disorienting for a moment, even with the awareness that they were stationary above one spot, and that it was the earth rotating that was causing the demarcation lines of sunrise and sunset to shift below them.

A strange, wondrous feeling, and he felt such a swelling of pride and joy.

“Commander Singh”—he laughed—“I mean Selena, can I patch in a call to my wife and daughter?”

She looked back from her station, smiled, spoke a few words into her headset, unbuckled herself from her seat, and brought an iPad over. A few seconds of static and then there was Eva looking at him, grinning, eyes tearing up.

“Thank God you are safe!” she cried in Ukrainian.

“Safe and sound. You got Victoria with you?”

“Getting her now,” and as Eva spoke she was walking out on to the deck of the platform and actually looked a bit foolish as she gazed straight up as if she could actually see him, and then back at the iPad’s camera.

“I can’t believe you are really up there!”

“Believe it!”

“Hey, Daddy!”

Victoria now crowded into view beside Eva.

“Hi, angel.”

“How you doing up there?”

“You two have to see this,” he cried, and switched the camera view on the iPad, pointing it out the window, Kevin quietly leaning in to help steady it, since Gary’s hands were trembling. Kevin made eye contact with him, gesturing that he’d hold the unit for him. It was a simple but so compassionate gesture. Gary talked excitedly for several minutes about the view, exclaiming with delight that he thought he could actually see Honolulu lighting up for the night.

His two girls let him ramble on until finally he realized he was hogging the conversation and then tried to sound casual as he asked, “So how are things down there today?”

It was a delight to hear both of them laugh. He knew they were worried sick about his ascent and relieved at last that he was safely aboard and in safe hands.

“Just green with envy, Daddy!” Victoria cried with delight.

“Won’t be long before you two are up here as well, and then after you millions more will eventually follow. Eva, you’re right: just this view, it changes everything. Everything about how we see our world, ourselves, our futures”—his voice choked a bit—“our daughter’s future. I can’t wait for you to see it, to paint it, for my favorite composer to come up here and write her music while seeing what I am seeing. Maybe words cannot do it, but music by someone like Constance Demby can explain it all, though if old Ray Bradbury was still alive I bet he could almost reach it.”

He fell silent, afraid emotion would completely overtake him if he continued.

His two “girls” were silent as well, gazing at him, smiling with joy for him.

He looked over at Singh.

“This is a secured channel, right?” he asked.

She nodded.

“Private channel,” she said.

He looked back at the iPad, switching the camera view back to focus on him.

“And don’t worry, I’m feeling just fine. Tell that busybody Dr. Bock I think we are onto something when it comes to therapy and treatment in this environment—for a lot of things.”

He let go of the handhold and then did something reckless, pushing up, tucking his legs in, and actually somersaulting, laughing at first but then seconds later wishing he had not as Singh hurried over to steady him, Kevin reaching up to guide him back to the view port. But it had the effect he wanted down there: both Eva and Victoria were laughing with delight.

He forced a smile, willing himself to focus back on the earth, doing as Singh had advised, thinking above him was up and he was just looking down while the fluid in his inner ear continued to slosh around.

“I’m going to sign off for now,” he said. “Got to stow my gear and see what zero-g sleep is like. I just want the two of you to know how much I love you; Victoria, how proud I am of you. Don’t worry, up here I am actually free to again move around as I darn well please. And oh, yeah, tell Franklin thanks for what he spent on this: best damn investment in the history of humanity.”

“I know that.”

It was Franklin. Eva shifted the camera on her iPad to one side and his friend was standing there, grinning at him.

“God bless you, Franklin. I look forward to the day you see from up here what you created.”

Franklin’s dark features were creased with a wide grin.

“What you and Eva convinced me could be real,” he replied. “Now go get some rest. The ever-hovering Dr. Bock is just out of range of this camera and ready to start swearing at you for pulling off your monitoring wires once you got a thousand miles up and we knew the lift pod would take you all the way.”

“You’re damn right I’m upset with him,” Gary could hear off camera. “Tell Singh I want a full physical report 1800 hours our time here.”

Gary laughed.

“I’ll think about it,” and then he reached over and touched the iPad to turn the camera off.

“Thanks, Kevin.”

“Sure, Doc. Now, two things. See those smudge marks on the window?”

“Yes,”

“That’s from our noses pressed to it. There are times we actually argue about who gets the window, so we have a schedule for that. If the window is free, it’s yours, but if it’s on someone’s schedule … well, then it’s mine!”

Gary could not help but laugh with understanding.

“Technically it’s my scheduled time right now, but what the hell. You take it and enjoy it. We’ll get your bunk made up, I’ll show ya how the shower and head work, and between us two guys you do need a shower. Physical for you at 1800 hours, dinner at 1900. I’m the cook for tonight and I just might share a slice or two of Luigi’s Pizza from New York, if you think your stomach can handle it.”

“Damn straight.”

“Don’t push it too much at the start,” Singh called from her post back at the monitoring station. “And, Kevin, you’re on EVA standby at 2100 along with Jenna, so you know the rules: no eating for six hours before EVA. We’ll have dinner after the next spinner is hooked up and on its way down.”

“Ah, damn it.”

“All right, then, a midnight snack.”

Gary could hear Jenna cussing in the background that her beloved Phil’s Bar-B-Que, imported all the way from Black Mountain, North Carolina, was going to have to wait as well.

“Doc, you just hang here for a while, enjoy the best view in the universe,” Kevin said. “The orbital mechanics are awesome with this. The only time we are in total darkness is for a few minutes when our rotation carries us around so that the earth below eclipses the sun. My God, it is incredible: everything below is dark, but the entire band of the atmosphere from pole to pole is glowing. Or just as wild when the moon behind us eclipses the sun, but down below, the earth is illuminated. That is why there are so many nose smears on the window.”

Kevin laughed.

“When the earth eclipses the sun, we draw cards for who gets the longest look-see. You have a small nine-inch port in your private bunk but that kinda looks just straight out. But still, you get to see the stars and, depending on the time of day, the sun or moon, but it’s not the same as looking straight down.”

He paused.

“You feel a need for the head right now?” Kevin asked.

He did actually but shook his head. His stomach was settling down, and it did make him feel like a little kid in need of someone to show him how to use the various sanitary devices on board.

“Sure, Doc,” and he clapped him on the shoulder with his big, beefy hand. “Couple of days from now when you get a feel for the place we’ll show you a couple of games.”

“Games?”

“Tag, for one,” and he looked back at Singh with a bit of a sly grin.

“I heard that, and the rules are tag only the other person’s head.”

Kevin chuckled.

“Heck, locked up here for a tour of duty, it does get to you,” he whispered in a guy-to-guy voice.

“We do some gymnastics. Jenna is the wiz on that: she can do an octuple somersault within the length of the ship. I prefer just doing the Superman routine of flying back and forth. Once your inner ear settles down, we’ll teach you the ropes.”

Though it sounded appealing, he said nothing, keeping his focus on the earth below and trying not to think about attempting even one more somersault at the moment.

“I’ll come back and fetch you, Doc, when we’re ready to take you around for the rest of the stuff.”

Kevin left his side, giving him a gentle slap on the back and another “Glad to have ya aboard, sir.”

It was so reassuring. He had worried about how these three professionals would greet what they might see as an intrusion looking over their shoulders rather than a fully trained replacement crew member even if everyone had quietly agreed that the man who had been “bumped” was a well-trained genius but had the personality of a dead wet fish. It was obvious that so far they were enjoying the fact that one of the designers of the “world” they now lived and worked in was sharing it with them.

He hoped that in the months to come he could prove his worth.