Gravity Read online

  This was why NASA had been kept in the dark. Why the truth could never be revealed.

  “And you haven’t seen the worst of it yet, Dr. McCallum,” said Roman.

  “What do you mean?”

  “There’s one more thing I want to show you.”

  They rode the elevator down to the next level, to subbasement three. Deeper into Hades, thought Jack. Once again they stepped out to face a wall of glass, and beyond it, another lab with more space-suited workers.

  Roman pressed the intercom button and said, “Could you bring out the specimen?”

  One of the lab workers nodded. She crossed to a walk-in steel vault, spun the massive combination lock, and disappeared inside. When she emerged again, she was wheeling a cart with a steel container on a tray. She rolled it to the viewing window.

  Roman nodded.

  She unlatched the steel container, lifted out a Plexiglas cylinder, and set it on the tray. The contents bobbed gently in a clear bath of formalin.

  “We found this burrowed inside the spinal column of Kenichi Hirai,” said Roman. “His spine protected it from the force of impact when Discovery crashed. When we removed it, it was still alive—but only barely.”

  Jack tried to speak, but could not produce a single word. He heard only the hiss of the ventilation fans and the roar of his own pulse as he stared in horror at the contents of the cylinder.

  “This is what the larvae grow into,” said Roman. “This is the next stage.”

  He understood, now. The reason for secrecy. What he had seen preserved in formalin, coiled up in that Plexiglas cylinder, had explained everything. Though it had been mangled during extraction, its essential features had been apparent. The glossy amphibian skin. The larval tail. And the fetal curl of the spine—not amphibian, but something far more horrifying, because its genetic origin was recognizable. Mammalian, he thought. Maybe even human. It was already beginning to look like its host.

  Allowed to infect a different species, it would change its appearance yet again. It could raid the DNA of any organism on earth, assume any shape. Eventually it could evolve to the point where it needed no host at all in which to grow and reproduce. It would be independent and self-sufficient. Perhaps even intelligent.

  And Emma was now a living nursery for these things, her body a nourishing cocoon in which they were growing.

  Jack shivered as he stood on the tarmac and stared across the barren airstrip. The Army jeep that had brought him and Gordon back to White Sands Air Force Base had receded to barely a glint now, trailing a fantail of dust into the horizon. The sun’s white-hot brilliance brought tears to his eyes, and for a moment, the desert shimmered out of focus, as though underwater.

  He turned to look at Gordon. “There’s no other way. We have to do it.”

  “There are a thousand things that can go wrong.”

  “There always are. That’s true for every launch, every mission. Why should this one be any different?”

  “There’ll be no contingencies. No safety backups. I know what we’re dealing with, and it’s a cowboy operation.”

  “Which makes it possible. What’s their motto? Smaller, faster, cheaper.”

  “Okay,” said Gordon, “let’s say you don’t blow up on the launchpad. Say the Air Force doesn’t blast you out of the sky. Once you get up there, you’re still faced with the biggest gamble of all: whether the Ranavirus will work.”

  “From the very beginning, Gordon, there was one thing I couldn’t figure out: Why was amphibian DNA on that genome? How did Chimera get frog genes? Roman thinks it was an accident. A mistake that happened in Koenig’s lab.” Jack shook his head. “I don’t think it was an accident at all. I think Koenig put those genes there. As a fail-safe.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Maybe she was thinking ahead, to the possible dangers. To what could happen if this new life-form changed while in microgravity. If Chimera ever got out of control, she wanted a way to kill it. A back door through its defenses. And this is it.”

  “A frog virus.”

  “It will work, Gordon. It has to work. I’ll bet my life on it.”

  A whorl of dust spun between them, kicking up sand and stray scraps of paper. Gordon turned and gazed across the tarmac at the T-38 they had flown from Houston. And he sighed. “I was afraid you’d say that.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  August 22

  Casper Mulholland was gobbling down his third package of Tums, and his stomach still felt like a bubbling cauldron of acid. In the distance, Apogee II glinted like a bullet casing planted point up in the desert sand. She was not a particularly impressive sight, especially to this audience. Most of them had heard the earth-shaking roar of a NASA launch, had been awed by the majesty of the shuttle’s giant columns of fire streaking into the sky. Apogee II looked nothing like the shuttle. She was more like a child’s toy rocket, and Casper could see disappointment in the eyes of the dozen or so visitors as they climbed the newly erected viewing stand and gazed across the bleak desert terrain, toward the launchpad. Everyone wanted big. Everyone was in love with size and power. The small, the elegantly simple, did not interest them.

  Another van pulled up at the site, and a fresh group of visitors began piling out, hands lifting at once to shield their eyes from the morning sun. He recognized Mark Lucas and Hashemi Rashad, the two businessmen who had visited Apogee over three weeks ago. He saw the same disappointment play across their faces as they squinted toward the launchpad.

  “This is as close to the pad as we can get?” said Lucas.

  “I’m afraid so,” said Casper. “It’s for your own safety. We’re dealing with explosive propellants out there.”

  “But I thought we were going to get an in-depth look at your launch operations.”

  “You’ll have full access to our ground-control facility—our equivalent of Houston’s Mission Control. As soon as she’s off the pad, we’ll drive over to the building and show you how we guide her into low earth orbit. That’s the real test of our system, Mr. Lucas. Any engineering grad can launch a rocket. But getting one safely into orbit, and then guiding her to a flyby of the station, is a far more complicated matter. That’s why we moved up this demonstration four days—to hit just the right launch window for ISS. To show you our system is already rendezvous-capable. Apogee II is just the kind of bird NASA’s looking to buy.”

  “You’re not actually going to dock, are you?” said Rashad. “I heard the station is in quarantine.”

  “No, we’re not going to dock. Apogee II’s just a prototype. She can’t physically hook up with ISS because she doesn’t have an orbital docking system. But we’ll fly her close enough to the station to demonstrate we can do it. You know, just the fact we’re able to change our launch schedule on short notice is a selling point. When it comes to spaceflight, flexibility is key. Unexpected things always pop up. My partner’s recent accident, for example. Even though Mr. Obie’s laid up in bed with a broken pelvis, you’ll notice we didn’t cancel the launch. We’ll control the entire mission from the ground. Gentlemen, that’s flexibility.”

  “I can understand why you might delay a launch,” said Lucas. “Say, for bad weather. By why did you have to move it up four days? Some of our partners weren’t able to make it here in time.”

  Casper could feel the last Tums tablet bubble away in a fresh spurt of stomach acid. “It’s simple, really.” He paused to take out a handkerchief and wipe the sweat from his forehead. “It has to do with that launch window I mentioned. The space station’s orbit is at an inclination of fifty-one point six degrees. If you look at a tracing of its orbital path on a map, it makes a sine wave varying between fifty-one point six degrees north and fifty-one point six degrees south. Since the earth rotates, the station passes over a different place on the map with each orbit. Also, the earth isn’t entirely spherical, which adds another complication. When that orbital trace passes over your launch site, that’s the most efficient time to lift off. Adding up
all those factors, we came up with various launch options. Then there’s the question of daytime versus nighttime launches. Allowable launch angles. The most current weather forecasts . . .”

  Their eyes had begun to glaze over. He’d already lost them.

  “Anyway,” Casper finished with a profound sense of relief, “today at seven-ten A.M. turns out to be the best choice. That all makes perfect sense to you, right?”

  Lucas seemed to give himself a shake, like a startled dog coming out of a nap. “Yes. Of course.”

  “I’d still like to get closer,” said Mr. Rashad on a wistful note. He gazed at the rocket, a snub-nosed blip on the horizon. “From this far away, she’s not much to look at, is she? So small.”

  Casper smiled, even as he felt his own stomach digest itself in nervous acid. “Well, you know what they say, Mr. Rashad. It’s not the size that matters. It’s what you do with it.”

  This is the last option, thought Jack as a bead of perspiration slid down his temple and soaked into the lining of his flight helmet. He tried to calm his racing pulse, but his heart was like a frantic animal trying to batter its way out of his chest. For so many years, this was the moment he had dreamed of: strapped into the flight seat, helmet closed, oxygen flowing. The countdown ticking toward zero. In those dreams, fear had not been part of the equation, only excitement. Anticipation. He had not expected to be terrified.

  “You are at T minus five minutes. The time to back out is now.” It was Gordon Obie’s voice over the hardline comm. At every step of the way, Gordon had offered Jack chances to change his mind. During the flight from White Sands to Nevada. In the early morning hours, as Jack suited up in the Apogee Engineering hangar. And finally, on the drive across the pitch-black desert to the launchpad. This was Jack’s last opportunity.

  “We can stop the countdown now,” said Gordon. “Nix the whole mission.”

  “I’m still a go.”

  “Then this will be our last voice contact. There can’t be any communication from you. No downlink to the ground, no contact with ISS, or everything’s blown. The instant we hear your voice, we’ll abort the whole mission and bring you back.” If we still can, was what he didn’t add.

  “I roger that.”

  There was a silence. “You don’t have to do this. No one expects you to.”

  “Let’s get on with it. Just light the damn candle, okay?”

  Gordon’s answering sigh came through loud and clear. “Okay. You’re a go. We’re at T minus three minutes and counting.”

  “Thank you, Gordie. For everything.”

  “Good luck and Godspeed, Jack McCallum.”

  The hard link was severed.

  And that may be the last voice I’ll ever hear, thought Jack. From this point on, the only uplink from Apogee ground control would be command data streaming into the onboard guidance and nav computers. The vehicle was flying itself; Jack was nothing more than the dumb monkey in the pilot’s seat.

  He closed his eyes and focused on the beating of his own heart. It had slowed. He now felt strangely calm and prepared for the inevitable, whatever that might be. He heard the whirs and clicks of the onboard systems preparing for the leap. He imagined the cloudless sky, its atmosphere dense as water, like a sea of air through which he must surface to reach the cold, clear vacuum of space.

  Where Emma was dying.

  The crowd in the viewing stand had fallen ominously silent. The countdown clock, displayed on the closed-circuit video feed, slid past the T minus sixty seconds mark and kept ticking. They’re going for the launch window, thought Casper, and the fresh sweat of panic bloomed on his forehead. In his heart, he had never really believed it would come to this moment. He had expected delays, aborts, even a cancellation. He had lived through so many disappointments, so much bad luck with this damn bird, that dread rose like bile in his throat. He glanced at the faces in the stands and saw that many of them were mouthing the seconds as they ticked by. It started as a whisper, a rhythmic disturbance in the air.

  “Twenty-nine. Twenty-eight. Twenty-seven…”

  The whispers became a chorus of murmurs, growing louder with each passing second.

  “Twelve. Eleven. Ten…”

  Casper’s hands were shaking so hard he had to clutch the railing. His pulse throbbed in his fingertips.

  “Seven. Six. Five…”

  He closed his eyes. Oh, God, what had they done?

  “Three. Two. One…”

  The crowd sucked in a simultaneous gasp of wonder. Then the roar of the boosters spilled over him, and his eyes flew open. He stared at the sky, at the streak of fire lifting toward the heavens. Any second now it would happen. First the blinding flash, then, lagging behind at the speed of sound, the pulse of the explosion battering their eardrums. That’s how it had happened with Apogee I.

  But the fiery streak kept on rising until it was only a pale dot punched in the deep blue sky.

  A hand clapped his back, hard. He gave a start and turned to see Mark Lucas beaming at him.

  “Way to go, Mulholland! What a gorgeous launch!”

  Casper ventured another terrified glance at the sky. Still no explosion.

  “But I guess you never had any doubts, did you?” said Lucas.

  Casper swallowed. “None at all.”

  The last dose.

  Emma squeezed the plunger, slowly emptying the contents of the syringe into her vein. She removed the needle, pressed gauze to the puncture site, and folded her arm to hold it in place while she disposed of the needle. It felt like a sacred ceremony, every action performed with reverence, with the solemn knowledge that this was the last time she would experience each sensation, from the prick of the needle, to the hard lump of gauze pressing into the flesh at the crook of her arm. And how long would this final dose of HCG keep her alive?

  She turned and looked at the mouse cage, which she had moved into the Russian service module, where there was more light. The lone female was now curled in a shivering ball, dying. The hormone’s effect was not permanent. The babies had died that morning. By tomorrow, thought Emma, I will be the only one alive aboard this station.

  No, not the only one. There would be the life-form inside her. The scores of larvae that would soon awaken from dormancy and begin to feed and grow.

  She pressed her hand to her abdomen, like a pregnant woman sensing the fetus inside her. And like a real fetus, the life-form she now harbored would carry bits and pieces of her DNA. In that way, it was her biological offspring, and it possessed the genetic memory of every host it had ever known. Kenichi Hirai. Nicolai Rudenko. Diana Estes. And now, Emma.

  She would be the last. There would be no new hosts, no new victims, because there would be no rescuers. The station was now a sepulchre of contagion, as forbidden and untouchable as a leper colony had been to the ancients.

  She floated out of the RSM and swam toward the powered-down section of the station. There was barely enough light to guide her through the darkened node. Except for the rhythmic sigh of her own breathing, all was silent on this end. She moved through the same molecules of air that had once swirled in the lungs of people now dead. Even now, she sensed the presence of the five who had passed on, could imagine the echoes of their voices, the last faint pulses of sound fracturing at last into silence. This was the very air through which they had moved, and it was still haunted by their passing.

  And soon, she thought, it will be haunted by mine.

  August 24

  Jared Profitt was awakened just after midnight. It took only two rings of the phone to propel him from deep sleep to a state of complete alertness. He reached for the receiver.

  The voice on the other end was brusque. “This is General Gregorian. I’ve just spoken to our control center in Cheyenne Mountain. That so-called demo launch from Nevada continues to be on a rendezvous path with ISS.”

  “Which launch?”

  “Apogee Engineering.”

  Profitt frowned, trying to remember the name. Every
week there were numerous launches from sites around the world. A score of commercial aerospace firms were always testing booster systems or sending satellites into orbit or even blasting off cremated human remains. Space Command was already tracking nine thousand manmade objects in orbit. “Refresh my memory about this Nevada launch,” he asked.

  “Apogee is testing a new reusable launch vehicle. They sent it up at oh-seven-ten yesterday morning. They informed the FAA as required, but didn’t let us know until after the fact. This flight is billed as an orbital trial of their new RLV. A launch into low earth orbit, a flyby past ISS, and then reentry. We’ve been tracking it for a day and a half now, and based on its most recent on-orbit burns, it seems possible they’ll approach the station closer than they told us.”

  “How close will they get?”

  “It depends on their next burn maneuvers.”

  “Close enough for an actual rendezvous? A docking?”

  “That’s not possible with this particular vehicle. We have all the specs on their orbiter. It’s just a prototype, with no orbital docking system. The best it can do is a flyby and a wave.”

  “A wave?” Profitt suddenly sat up in bed. “Are you telling me this RLV is manned?”

  “No, sir. That was just a figure of speech. Apogee says the vehicle is unmanned. There are animals aboard, including a spider monkey, but no pilot. And we’ve picked up no voice communication between ground and vehicle.”

  A spider monkey, thought Profitt. Its presence aboard the spacecraft meant they could not rule out the possibility of a human pilot. The craft’s environmental monitors, the carbon dioxide levels, would not distinguish between animal or human life. He was uneasy about the lack of information. He was even more uneasy about the timing of the launch.

  “I’m not certain there’s any cause for alarm,” said Gregorian. “But you did ask to be notified of any orbital approaches.”