Gravity. Part 5

The moon, the stars, the blackness of s.p.a.cea"it was beyond his reach now, and he often felt like that little boy he once was, howling in frustration, his feet trapped on earth, his hands reaching for the sky.

He shut off the shower and stood leaning with both hands pressed against the tiles, head bent, hair dripping. Today is the sixteenth, he thought.

Eight days till Emma's launch. He felt water chill on his skin.

In ten minutes he was dressed and in the car.

It was a Tuesday. Emma and her new flight team would be wrapping up their three-day integrated simulation, and she'd be tired and in no mood to see him. But tomorrow she'd be on her way to Cape Canaveral. Tomorrow she'd be out of reach.

At Johnson s.p.a.ce Center, he parked in the Building 30 lot, flashed his NASA badge at Security, and trotted upstairs to the shuttle Flight Control Room. Inside, he found everyone hushed and tense. The three-day integrated simulation was like the final exam for both the astronauts and the ground control crew, a crisis.p.a.cked run-through of the mission from launch to touchdown, with a.s.sorted malfunctions thrown in to keep everyone on their toes. Three s.h.i.+fts of controllers had rotated through this room several times in the last three days, and the two dozen men and now sitting at the consoles looked haggard. The rubbish can was overflowing with coffee cups and diet Pepsi cans. Though a few of the controllers saw Jack and nodded h.e.l.lo, there was no time for real greeting, they had a major crisis on their hands, and everyone's attention was focused on the problem. It was the first time in months Jack had visited the FCR, and once again he felt the old excitement, the electricity, that seemed to crackle in this room whenever a mission was underway.

He moved to the third row of consoles, to stand beside Flight Director Randy Carpenter, who was too busy at the moment to talk to him.

Carpenter was the shuttle program's high priest of flight directors. At two hundred eighty pounds, he was an imposing presence in the FCR, his stomach bulging over his belt, his feet apart like a s.h.i.+p's captain steadying himself on a heaving bridge. "I'm a prime example," he liked to say, "of just how far a fat boy with gla.s.ses can get in life." Unlike the legendary flight director Gene Kranz, whose quote "Failure is not an option" made him a media hero, Carpenter was well known only within NASA. His lack of photogenic qualities made him an unlikely movie hero, in any event.

Listening in on the loop chatter, Jack quickly pieced together the nature of the crisis Carpenter was now dealing with. Jack had faced just such a problem in his own integrated sim two years ago, when he was still in the astronaut corps, preparing for STS 145.

The shuttle crew had reported a precipitous drop in cabin pressure, indicating a rapid air leak. There was no time to track down the source, they had to go to emergency deorbit.

The flight dynamics officer, sitting at the front row of consoles known as the Trench, was rapidly plotting out the flight to determine the best landing site. No one considered this a game, they were too aware that if this crisis were real, the lives of people would be in jeopardy.

"Cabin pressure down to thirteen point nine psi," reported Environmental Control.

"Edwards Air Force Base," announced Flight Dynamics. "Touchdown at approximately thirteen hundred."

"Cabin pressure will be down to seven psi at this rate," said Environmental. "Recommend they don helmets now. Before initiating reentry sequence." Capcom relayed the advice to Atlantis.

"Roger that," responded Commander Vance. "Helmets are on. We are initiating deorbit burn." Against his will, Jack was caught up in the urgency of the game.

As the moments ticked by, he kept his gaze fixed on the central screen at the front of the room, where the orbiter's path was plotted on a global map. Even though he knew that every crisis was artificially introduced by a mischievous sim team, the grim seriousness of this exercise had rubbed off on him. He was scarcely aware that his muscles had tensed as he focused on the changing data flickering on the screen.

The cabin pressure dropped to seven psi.

Atlantis. .h.i.t the upper atmosphere. They were in radio blackout, twelve long minutes of silence when the friction of reentry ionizes the air around the orbiter, cutting off all communications.

"Atlantis, do you copy?" said Capcom.

Suddenly Commander Vance's voice broke through, "We hear you loud and clear, Houston." Touchdown, moments later, was perfect. Game over.

Applause broke out in the FCR. "Okay, folks I Good job," said Flight Director Carpenter.

"Debriefing at fifteen hundred. Let's all take a break for lunch.

Grinning, he pulled off his headset and for the first time looked Jack.

"Hey, haven't seen you around here in ages."

"Been playing doctor with civilians."

"Going for the big bucks, huh?"

Jack laughed. "Yeah, tell me what to do with all my money." He glanced around at the flight controllers, now relaxing at their consoles with sodas and bag lunches. "Did the sim go okay?"

"I'm happy. We made it through every glitch."

"And the shuttle crew?"

"They're ready." Carpenter gave him a knowing look. "Including Emma.

She's in her element, Jack, so don't rattle her. Right she needs to focus." This was more than just friendly advice. It was a warning, Keep your personal issues to yourself. Don't screw around with my flight crew's morale.

Jack was subdued, even a little contrite, as he waited outside in the sweltering heat for Emma to emerge from Building 5, where the flight simulators were housed. She walked out with the rest of her crew.

Obviously they had just shared a joke, because they were laughing. Then she saw Jack, and her smile faded.

"I didn't know you were coming," she said.

He shrugged and said sheepishly, "Neither did I."

"Debriefing's in ten minutes," said Vance.

"I'll be there," she said. "You all go on ahead." She waited for her team to walk away, then she turned to face Jack again. "I've really got to join them. Look, I know this launch complicates everything. If you're here about the divorce papers, I promise I'll sign them as soon as I get back."

"I didn't come about that."

"Is there something else, then?"

He paused. "Yeah. Humphrey. What's the name of his vet? In case he swallows a hair ball or something."

She fixed him with a perplexed look. "The same vet he's always had. Dr. Goldsmith."

"Oh. Yeah." They stood in silence for a moment, the sun beating on their heads. Sweat trickled down his back. She suddenly seemed so small to him and insubstantial. Yet this was a woman who'd jumped out of an airplane. She could outrace him on horseback, spin circles round him on the dance floor.

His beautiful, fearless wife.

She turned to look at Building 30, where her team was waiting for her.

"I have to go, Jack."

"What time are you leaving for the Cape?"

"Six in the morning."

"All your cousins flying out for the launch?"

"Of course."

She paused. "You won't be there. Will you?" The Challenger nightmare was still fresh in his mind, the angry trails of smoke etching across a blue sky. I can't be there to it, he thought. I can't deal with the possibilities. He shook his head.

She accepted his answer with a chilly nod and a look that said, I can be every bit as detached as you are. Already she was withdrawing from him, turning to leave.

"Emma." He reached for her arm and gently tugged her around to face him.

"I'll miss you."

She sighed. "Sure, Jack."

"I really will."

"Weeks go by without a single call from you. And now you say you're going to miss me." She laughed.

He was stung by the bitterness in her voice. And by the truth of her words. For the past few months he had avoided her. It had been painful to be anywhere near her because her success only magnified his own sense of failure.

There was no hope of reconciliation, he could see that now, in the coolness of her gaze. Nothing left to do but be civilized it.

He glanced away, suddenly unable to look at her. "I just came by to wish you a safe trip. And a great ride. Give me a wave so often, when you pa.s.s over Houston. I'll watch for you." A moving star was what ISS would look like, brighter than Venus, hurtling through the sky.

"You wave too, okay?" They both managed a smile. So it would be a civilized parting after all. He held open his arms, and she leaned toward him for hug. It was a brief and awkward one, as though they were coming together for the first time. He felt her body, so warm and alive, press against him. Then she pulled away and started toward the Mission Control building.

She paused only once, to wave good-bye. The sunlight was sharp in his eyes, and squinting against its brightness, he saw only as a dark silhouette, her hair flying in the hot wind. And knew that he had never loved her as much as he did at that very moment, watching her walk away.

July 19

Cape Canaveral Even from a distance, the sight took Emma's breath away. Poised on launchpad 39B, awash in brilliant floodlights, the shuttle Atlantis, mated to its giant orange fuel tank and the paired solid rocket boosters, was a towering beacon in the blackness of night.

No matter how many times she experienced it, that first glimpse of a shuttle lit up on the pad never failed to awe her.

The rest of the crew, standing beside her on the blacktop, were equally silent. To s.h.i.+ft their sleep cycle, they'd awakened at that morning and had emerged from their quarters on the third floor of the Operations and Checkout building to catch a nighttime glimpse of the behemoth that would carry them into s.p.a.ce. Emma heard the cry of a night bird and felt a cool wind blow in from the Gulf, freshening the air, sweeping away the stagnant scent of the wetlands surrounding them.

"Kind of makes you feel humble, doesn't it?" said Commander Vance in his soft Texas drawl.

The others murmured in agreement.

"Small as an ant," said Chenoweth, the lone rookie on the crew.

This would be his first trip aboard the shuttle, and he was so excited he seemed to generate his own field of electricity. "I forget how big she is, and then I take another look at her and I think, Jesus, all that power. And I'm the lucky son of a b.i.t.c.h gets to ride her." They all laughed, but it was the hushed, uneasy laughter of paris.h.i.+oners in a church.

"I never thought a week could go by so slowly," said Chenoweth.

"This man's tired of being a virgin," said Vance.

"d.a.m.n right I am. I want up there." Chenoweth's gaze lifted hungrily to the sky. To the stars. "You guys all know the secret, I can't wait to share it." The secret. It belonged only to the privileged few who had made the ascent. It wasn't a secret that could be imparted to another, you yourself had to live it, to see, with your own eyes, blackness of s.p.a.ce and the blue of earth far below. To be pressed backward into your seat by the thrust of the rockets. Astronauts returning from s.p.a.ce often wear a knowing smile, a look that says, I am privy to something that few human beings will ever know.

Emma had worn such a smile when she'd emerged from Atlantis's hatch over two years ago. On weak legs she had walked into the suns.h.i.+ne, had stared up at a sky that was startlingly blue.

In the span of eight days aboard the orbiter, she had lived one hundred thirty sunrises, had seen forest fires burning in and the eye of a hurricane whirling over Samoa, had viewed an earth that seemed heartbreakingly fragile. She had returned changed.

In five days, barring a catastrophe, Chenoweth would share the secret.

"Time to s.h.i.+ne some light on these retinas," said Chenoweth.

"My brain still thinks it's the middle of the night."

"It is the middle of the night," said Emma.

"For us it's the crack of dawn, folks," Vance said. Of all of them, he had been the quickest to readjust his circadian rhythm to the new sleep-wake schedule. Now he strode back into the O and C building to begin a full day's work at three in the morning.

The others followed him. Only Emma lingered outside for a moment, gazing at the shuttle. The day before, they had driven to the launchpad for a last review of crew escape procedures.

Viewed up close, in the sunlight, the shuttle had seemed bright and too ma.s.sive to fully comprehend. One could focus on only a single part of her at a time. The nose. The wings. The tiles, like reptilian scales on the belly. In the light of day, had been real and solid. Now she seemed unearthly, lit up against the black sky.

With all the frantic preparation, Emma had not allowed herself to feel any apprehension, had firmly banished all misgivings. She was ready to go up. She wanted to go up. But now she felt a twinge of fear.

She looked up at the sky, saw the stars disappear behind an advancing veil of clouds. The weather was about to change.

s.h.i.+vering, she turned and went into the building. Into the light.

Half a dozen tubes snaked into Debbie Haning's body. In her throat was a tracheotomy tube, through which oxygen was forced into her lungs. A nasogastric tube had been threaded up her left nostril down her esophagus into the stomach. A catheter drained urine, and two intravenous catheters fed fluids into her veins. In her was an arterial line, and a continuous blood pressure tracing danced across the oscilloscope. Jack glanced at the IV bags over the bed and saw they contained powerful antibiotics. A bad sign, it meant she'd acquired an infectiona"not unusual when a patient has spent two weeks in a coma.

Every breach in the skin, every plastic tube, is a portal for bacteria, and in Debbie's bloodstream, a battle was now being waged.

With one glance, Jack understood all of this, but he said nothing to Debbie's mother, who sat beside the bed, clasping her daughter's hand.

Debbie's face was flaccid, the jaw limp, the eyelids only partially closed. She remained deeply comatose, of anything, even pain.

Margaret looked up as Jack came into the cubicle, and gave a nod of greeting. "She had a bad night," said Margaret. "A fever. They don't know where it's coming from."

"The antibiotics will help."

"And then what? We treat the infection, but what happens next?" Margaret took a deep breath. "She wouldn't want it this way. All these tubes. All these needles. She'd want us to let go."

"This isn't the time to give up. Her EEG is still active. She's not brain dead."

"Then why doesn't she wake up?"

"She's young. She has everything to live for."

"This isn't living" Margaret stared down at her daughter's hand. It was bruised and puffy from IVS and needle sticks. "When her father was dying, Debbie told me she never wanted to end up like that. Tied down and force-fed. I keep thinking about that. About what she saida" Margaret looked up again. "What you do? If this was your wife?"

"I wouldn't think about giving up."

"Even if she'd told you she didn't want to end up this way?" He thought about it for a moment. Then said with conviction, "It would be my decision, in the end. No matter what she or anyone else told me. I wouldn't give up on someone I loved. Ever. if there was the smallest chance I could save her." His words offered no comfort to Margaret. He didn't have the right to question her beliefs, her instincts, but she had asked opinion, and his answer had come from his heart, not his head.

Feeling guilty now, he gave Margaret one last pat on the shoulder and left the cubicle. Nature would most likely take the decision out of their hands.