Gravity Read online

  Cornell had just reminded them that they had to look beyond this death, beyond their individual concerns, and focus on what was best for the space program.

  Obie gave a small nod of agreement, which was noted by others at the table. The Sphinx had finally made his opinion known.

  “Every successful launch is a gift from heaven,” he said. “Let’s not waste this one.”

  August 5

  Dead.

  Emma’s running shoes pounded rhythmically on the TVIS treadmill, and every slap of her soles against the moving belt, every impact jolting her bones and joints and muscles, was another self-administered blow of punishment.

  Dead.

  I lost him. I fucked up and I lost him.

  I should have realized how sick he was. I should have pushed for a CRV evac. But I delayed, because I thought I could handle it. I thought I could keep him alive.

  Muscles aching, sweat beading on her forehead, she continued to punish herself, enraged by her own failure. She had not used the TVIS in three days because she’d been too busy tending to Kenichi. Now she was making up for it, had snapped on the side restraints, turned the treadmill to active mode, and started her run.

  On earth she enjoyed running. She was not particularly fast, but she’d developed endurance and had learned to slip into that hypnotic trance that comes to long-distance runners as the miles melt away beneath their feet, as the burn of working muscles gives way to euphoria. Day after day she had worked to build up that endurance, had forced herself, through sheer stubbornness, to go longer, farther, always in competition with her last run, never cutting herself a break. It was the way she’d been since she was a girl, smaller than the others, but fiercer. All her life she had been fierce, but never more so than with herself.

  I made mistakes. And now my patient’s dead.

  Sweat soaked through her shirt, a big wet blotch spreading between her breasts. Her calves and thighs were beyond the burn stage. The muscles were twitching, on the verge of collapse from the constant tension of the restraints.

  A hand reached over and flicked off the TVIS power switch. The running belt abruptly shuddered to a halt. She glanced up and met Luther’s gaze.

  “I think that’s more than enough, Watson,” he said quietly.

  “Not yet.”

  “You’ve been at it for more than three hours.”

  “I’m just getting started,” she muttered grimly. She switched on the power, and once again her shoes pounded on the moving belt.

  Luther watched her for a moment, his body floating at her eye level, his gaze unavoidable. She hated being studied, even hated him at that instant, because she thought he could see right through to her pain, her self-disgust.

  “Wouldn’t it be quicker just to smash your head against a wall?” he said.

  “Quicker. But not painful enough.”

  “I get it. To be punishment, it’s gotta hurt, huh?”

  “Right.”

  “Would it make a difference if I told you this is bullshit? Because it is. It’s a waste of energy. Kenichi died because he was sick.”

  “That’s where I’m supposed to come in.”

  “And you couldn’t save him. So now you’re the corps fuckup, huh?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, you’re wrong. Because I claimed that title before you.”

  “Is this some sort of contest?”

  Again, he shut off the TVIS power. Again the treadmill belt ground to a halt. He was staring her right in the eye, his gaze angry. As fierce as hers.

  “Remember my fuckup? On Columbia?”

  She said nothing; she didn’t have to. Everyone at NASA remembered it. It had happened four years ago, during a mission to repair an orbiting comm satellite. Luther had been the mission specialist responsible for redeploying the satellite after repairs were completed. The crew had ejected it from its cradle in the payload bay and watched it drift away. The rockets had ignited right on schedule, sending the satellite into its correct altitude.

  Where it failed to respond to any commands. It was dead in orbit, a multimillion-dollar piece of junk uselessly circling the earth. Who was responsible for this calamity?

  Almost immediately, the blame fell on the shoulders of Luther Ames. In his haste to deploy, he had forgotten to key in vital software codes—or so the private contractor claimed. Luther insisted he had keyed in the codes, that he was the scapegoat for mistakes made by the satellite’s manufacturer. Though the public heard very little about the controversy, within NASA, the story was known by all. Luther’s flight assignments dried up. He was condemned to the status of astronaut ghost, still in the corps, but invisible to those who chose shuttle crews.

  Complicating the mess was the fact Luther was black.

  For three years, he suffered in obscurity, his resentment mounting. Only the support of close friends among the other astronauts—Emma most of all—had kept him in the corps. He knew he’d made no mistakes, but few at NASA believed him. He knew people talked behind his back. Luther was the man the bigots pointed to as evidence minorities didn’t have the “right stuff.” He’d struggled to maintain his dignity, even as he’d felt despair closing in.

  Then the truth came out. The satellite had been flawed. Luther Ames was officially absolved of blame. Within a week, Gordon Obie offered him a flight assignment: a four-month mission aboard ISS.

  But even now, Luther felt the lingering stain on his reputation. He knew, only too painfully, what Emma was now going through.

  He stuck his face right in front of hers, forcing her to look at him. “You’re not perfect, okay? We’re all human.” He paused, and added dryly, “With the possible exception of Diana Estes.”

  Against her will, she laughed.

  “Punishment over. Time to move on, Watson.”

  Her respirations had returned to normal, even though her heart continued pounding, because she was still angry at herself. But Luther was right; she had to move on. It was time to deal with the aftermath of her mistakes. A final report still needed to be transmitted to Houston. Medical summary, clinical course. Diagnosis. Cause of death.

  Doctor fuckup.

  “Discovery docks in two hours,” said Luther. “You’ve got work to do.”

  After a moment, she nodded and unclipped the TVIS restraints. Time to get on with the job; the hearse was on its way.

  August 7

  The tethered corpse, sealed in its shroud, slowly spun in the gloom. Surrounded by the clutter of excess equipment and spare lithium canisters, Kenichi’s body was like one more unneeded station part stowed away in the old Soyuz capsule. Soyuz had not been operational in over a year, and the station crew used its service compartment as excess storage space. It seemed a terrible indignity to keep Kenichi in here, but the crew had been shaken badly by his death. To be confronted repeatedly with his corpse, floating in one of the modules where they worked or slept, would have been too upsetting.

  Emma turned to Commander Kittredge and Medical Officer O’Leary of the shuttle Discovery. “I sealed the remains immediately after death,” she said. “It hasn’t been touched since.” She paused, her gaze returning to the corpse. The shroud was black, and small pouches of plastic billowed out, obscuring the human form within.

  “The tubes are still in?” asked O’Leary.

  “Yes. Two IVs, the endotracheal, and the NG.” She had disturbed nothing; she knew the pathologists performing the autopsy would want everything left in place. “You have all the blood cultures, all the specimens we collected from him. Everything.”

  Kittredge gave a grim nod of the head. “Let’s do it.”

  Emma unhooked the tether and reached for the corpse. It felt stiff, bloated, as though its tissues were already undergoing anaerobic decomposition. She refused to think about what Kenichi must look like beneath the layer of dark plastic.

  It was a silent procession, as grim as a funeral cortege, the mourners floating like wraiths as they escorted the corpse through the
long tunnel of modules. Kittredge and O’Leary led the way, gently guiding the body through hatchways. They were followed by Jill Hewitt and Andy Mercer, no one saying a word. When the orbiter had docked a day and a half ago, Kittredge and his crew had brought smiles and hugs, fresh apples and lemons, and a long-awaited copy of the Sunday New York Times. This was Emma’s old team, the people she had trained with for a year, and seeing them again had been like having a bittersweet family reunion. Now the reunion was over, and the last item to be moved aboard Discovery was making its ghostly passage toward the docking module.

  Kittredge and O’Leary floated the corpse through the hatchway and into Discovery’s middeck. Here, where the shuttle crew slept and ate, was where the body would be stowed until landing. O’Leary maneuvered it into one of the horizontal sleep pallets. Prior to launch, the pallet had been reconfigured to serve as a medical station for the ailing patient. Now it would be used as a temporary coffin for the returning corpse.

  “It’s not going in,” said O’Leary. “I think the body’s too distended. Was it exposed to heat?” He looked at Emma.

  “No. Soyuz temperature was maintained.”

  “Here’s your problem,” said Jill. “The shroud’s snagged on the vent.” She reached in and freed the plastic. “Try it now.”

  This time the corpse fit. O’Leary slid the panel shut so no one would have to look at the pallet’s occupant.

  There followed a solemn ceremony of farewell between the two crews. Kittredge pulled Emma into a hug and whispered, “Next mission, Watson, you’re my first choice.” When they separated, she was crying.

  It ended with the traditional handshake between the two commanders, Kittredge and Griggs. Emma caught one last glimpse of the orbiter crew—her crew—waving good-bye, and then the hatches swung shut. Though Discovery would remain attached to ISS for another twenty-four hours while its crew rested and prepared for the undocking, the closing of those airtight hatches effectively ended all human contact between them. They were once again separate vehicles, temporarily attached, like two dragonflies hurtling together in a mating dance through space.

  Pilot Jill Hewitt was having trouble getting to sleep.

  Insomnia was new to her. Even on the night before a launch, she could manage to drop off cleanly into a deep sleep, trusting in a lifetime of good luck to carry her through the next day. It was a point of pride for her that she’d never needed a sleeping pill. Pills were for nervous Nellies who fretted about a thousand awful possibilities. For the neurotics and obsessives. As a naval pilot, Jill had known more than her share of mortal danger. She’d flown missions over Iraq, had landed a crippled jet on a heaving carrier, had ejected into a stormy sea. She figured she’d cheated Death so many times that surely he’d given up on her and gone home in defeat. And so she usually slept just fine at night.

  But tonight, sleep was not coming. It was because of the corpse.

  No one wanted to be near it. Though the privacy panel was shut, concealing the body, they all felt its presence. Death shared their living space, cast its shadow over their evening meal, stifled their usual jokes. It was the unwanted fifth member of their crew.

  As though to escape it, Kittredge, O’Leary, and Mercer had abandoned their usual sleep stations and had moved up to the flight deck. Only Jill remained on the middeck, as though to prove to the men that she was less squeamish than they were, that she, a woman, wasn’t bothered by a corpse.

  But now, with the cabin lights dimmed, she found that sleep was eluding her. She kept thinking about what lay beyond that closed-off panel. About Kenichi Hirai, when he was alive.

  She remembered him quite vividly as pale and soft-spoken, with black hair stiff as wire. Once, in weightlessness training, she had brushed against his hair and had been surprised by its boarlike bristliness. She wondered what he looked like now. She felt a sudden, sickening curiosity about what had become of his face, what changes Death had wrought. It was the same curiosity that used to compel her, as a child, to poke twigs into the corpses of the dead animals she sometimes encountered in the woods.

  She decided to move farther away from the body.

  She brought her sleep restraint bag to the port side and anchored it behind the flight-deck access ladder. It was as far away as she could get, yet still be on the same deck. Once again she zipped herself into the bag. Tomorrow she would need every reflex, every brain cell, to be operating at peak performance for reentry and landing. Through sheer strength of will, she forced herself into a deepening trance.

  She was asleep when the swirl of iridescent liquid began to seep through Kenichi Hirai’s shroud.

  It had begun with a few glistening droplets oozing through a tiny rent in the plastic, torn open when the shroud had snagged. For hours the pressure had been building, the plastic slowly inflating as the contents swelled. Now the breach widened, and a shimmering ribbon streamed out. Escaping through the pallet ventilation holes, the ribbon broke apart into blue-green droplets that briefly danced in weightless abandon before recongealing into large globules that undulated in the dimly lit cabin. The opalescent fluid continued to spill forth. The globules spread, riding the gentle currents of circulating air. Drifting across the cabin, they found their way to the limp form of Jill Hewitt, who slept unaware of the shimmering cloud enveloping her, unaware of the mist she inhaled with every soft breath or of the droplets that settled like condensation on her face. Only briefly did she stir, to brush the tickle on her cheek as the opalescent drops slid toward her eye.

  Rising with the air currents, the dancing droplets passed through the opening of the interdeck access and began to spread through the gloom of the flight deck, where three men drifted in the utter relaxation of weightless sleep.

  TWELVE

  August 8

  The ominous swirl had begun to take shape over the eastern Caribbean days before. It had started as a short wave trough aloft, a gentle undulation of clouds formed from the evaporated waters of the sun-baked equatorial sea. Butting up against a bank of cooler air from the north, the clouds had begun to rotate, spinning around a calm eye of dry air. Now it was a definite spiral that seemed to grow with every new image transmitted by the geostationary GOES weather satellite. The NOAA National Weather Service had been tracking it since its birth, had watched as it meandered, directionless, off the eastern end of Cuba. Now the newest buoy data was coming in, with measurements of temperature, wind speed and direction. This data reinforced what the meteorologists were now seeing on their computer screens.

  It was a tropical storm. And it was moving northwest, toward the tip of Florida.

  This was the sort of news shuttle flight director Randy Carpenter dreaded. They could tinker with engineering problems. They could troubleshoot multiple systems failures. But against the forces of Mother Nature, they were helpless. The primary concern of this morning’s mission management team meeting was a go–no-go decision on deorbit, and they had planned for shuttle undocking and deorbit burn in six hours’ time. The weather briefing changed everything.

  “NOAA Spaceflight Meteorology Group reports the tropical storm is moving north-northwest, bearing toward the Florida Keys,” said the forecaster. “Radar from Patrick Air Force Base and NexRad Doppler from the National Weather Service in Melbourne show radial wind velocities of up to sixty-five knots, with intensifying rain. Rawinsonde balloon and Jimsphere balloon both confirm. Also, both the Field Mill network around Canaveral as well as LDAR show increasing lightning activity. These conditions will probably continue for the next forty-eight hours. Possibly longer.”

  “In other words,” said Carpenter, “we’re not landing at Kennedy.”

  “Kennedy is definitely out. At least for the next three to four days.”

  Carpenter sighed. “Okay, we sorta guessed that was coming. Let’s hear about Edwards.”

  Edwards Air Force Base, tucked into a valley east of the Sierra Nevada in California, was not their first choice. A landing at Edwards delayed shuttle processing an
d turnaround for the next mission because the shuttle would have to be transported back to Kennedy, piggybacked to a 747.

  “Unfortunately,” said the forecaster, “there’s a problem with Edwards as well.”

  A knot had formed in Carpenter’s stomach. A premonition that this was the beginning of a bad chain of events. As lead shuttle flight director, he had made it his personal mission to review every mishap on record and analyze what had gone wrong. With the advantage of hindsight, he could usually trace the problem backward, through a succession of bad but seemingly innocuous decisions. Sometimes it started back at the factory with a distracted technician, a miswired panel. Hell, even something as big and expensive as the Hubble Telescope lens had started off screwed up from the very beginning.

  Now he could not shake off the feeling that he would later think back to this very meeting and ask himself, What should I have done differently? What could I have done to prevent a catastrophe?

  He asked, “What are the conditions at Edwards?”

  “Currently they’re looking at a cloud ceiling at seven thousand feet.”

  “That’s an automatic no-go.”

  “Right. So much for sunny California. But there’s the possibility of partial clearing within the next twenty-four to thirty-six hours. We might have reasonable landing conditions if we just wait it out. Otherwise, it’s off to New Mexico we go. I just checked the MIDDS, and White Sands looks good. Clear skies, head winds at five to ten knots. No adverse weather forecast.”

  “So it’s down to a choice,” said Carpenter. “Wait till Edwards clears up. Or go for White Sands.” He looked around the room at the rest of the team, seeking opinions.

  One of the program managers said, “They’re fine up there right now. We could leave them docked to ISS as long as we need to, until the weather cooperates. I don’t see the necessity of rushing them home to a less than optimal site.”