Gravity

‘But there’s no real drama in that,’ said Sullivan. ‘Let me take her up. It’ll make it more interesting for everyone. What do you say?’

I say you’re outta your fucking mind, Casper’s eyes told him.

The two businessmen exchanged looks, a few whispered words. Then Lucas said, ‘We’d be very interested in a demonstration. It will take us time to round up all our partners. Coordinate travel schedules. So let’s say…a month. Can you do it?’

They were calling his bluff. Sullivan merely laughed. ‘A month? No problem.’ He looked at Casper, who now had his eyes closed as though in pain.

‘We’ll be in touch,’ said Lucas, and turned toward the door.

‘One last question, if I may,’ said Mr Rashad. He pointed to the orbiter. ‘I notice the name on your prototype is Apogee II. Is there an Apogee I?’

Casper and Sullivan looked at each other.

‘Uh, yes,’ said Casper. ‘There was…’

‘And what happened to her?’

Casper went mute.

What the hell, thought Sullivan. Telling the truth seemed to work with these guys; he might as well do it again.

‘She crashed and burned,’ he said. And walked out of the hangar.

Crashed and burned. That was the only way to describe what had happened on that cold, clear morning a year and a half ago. The morning his dreams had crashed and burned as well. Sitting at his battered desk in the company office, nursing his hangover with a cup of coffee, he couldn’t help replaying every painful detail of that day. The busload of NASA officials pulling up at the launch site. His brother, Gordie, grinning with pride. The air of celebration among the dozen Apogee employees and the score of investors who had assembled under the tent for prelaunch coffee and doughnuts.

The countdown. The liftoff. Everyone squinting up at the sky as Apogee I streaked toward the heavens and receded to a glinting pinpoint.

Then the flash of light, and it was all over.

Afterward, his brother had not said very much, barely a few words of condolence. But that’s how it was with Gordon. All their lives, whenever Sullivan screwed up—and it seemed to happen all too often—Gordon would just give that sad and disappointed shake of the head. Gordon was the older brother, the sober and reliable son who had distinguished himself as a shuttle commander.

Sullivan had never even made it into the astronaut corps. Though he, too, was a pilot and an aerospace engineer, things never seemed to go Sullivan’s way. If he climbed into the cockpit, that was precisely the moment a wire would short out or a line would rupture. He often thought the words Not My Fault should be tattooed on his forehead, because more often than not, it wasn’t his fault when things went wrong. But Gordon didn’t see it that way. Things never went wrong for him. Gordon thought the concept of bad luck was an excuse to cover up incompetence.

‘Why don’t you call him?’ said Bridget.

He looked up. She was standing by his desk, her arms crossed like a disapproving schoolteacher’s. ‘Call who?’ he asked.

‘Your brother, who else? Tell him we’re launching the second prototype. Invite him to watch. Maybe he’ll bring the rest of NASA.’

‘I don’t want anyone from NASA.’

‘Sully, if we impress them, we’ll turn this company around.’

‘Like the last time, huh?’

‘A fluke. We’ve fixed the problem.’

‘So maybe there’ll be another fluke.’

‘You’re gonna jinx us, you know that?’ She shoved the phone in front of him. ‘Call Gordon. If we’re gonna roll the dice, we might as well bet the whole house.’

He eyed the phone, thinking about Apogee I. About how a lifetime of dreams can be vaporized in an instant.

‘Sully?’

‘Forget it,’ he said. ‘My brother’s got better things to do than hang out with losers.’ And he tossed the newspaper into the rubbish can.

July 26

Aboard Atlantis

‘Hey, Watson,’ Commander Vance called down to the middeck. ‘Come up and take a look at your new home.’

Emma floated up the access ladder and emerged on the flight deck, right behind Vance’s seat. At her first glimpse through the windows, she inhaled a sharp breath of wonder. This was the closest she had ever come to the station. During her first mission, two and a half years ago, they had not docked with ISS, but had observed it only from a distance.

‘Gorgeous, isn’t she?’ said Vance.

‘She’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,’ Emma said softly.

And she was. With her vast solar arrays fanning out from the massive main truss, ISS looked like a majestic sailing ship soaring through the heavens. Built by sixteen different countries, the components had been delivered into space on forty-five separate launches. It had taken five years to assemble her, piece by piece, in orbit. Far more than merely a marvel of engineering, she was a symbol of what man can achieve when he lays down his weapons and turns his gaze skyward.

‘Now, that’s a nice piece of real estate,’ said Vance. ‘I’d call that a view apartment.’

‘We’re right on the R-bar,’ said shuttle pilot DeWitt. ‘Nice flying.’

Vance left the command seat and stationed himself at the flight deck’s overhead window for visual approach as they neared the ISS docking module. This was the most delicate phase in the complicated process of rendezvous. Atlantis had been launched into a lower orbit than ISS, and for the last two days she had been playing a game of catch-up with the hurtling space station. They would approach her from below, using their RCS jets to fine-tune their position for docking. Emma could hear the whomp of the thrusters’ firing now and felt the orbiter shudder.

‘Look,’ said DeWitt. ‘There’s that solar array that got dinged last month.’ He pointed to one of the solar panels, scarred by a gaping hole. One of the inescapable perils of space is the constant rain of meteorites and manmade debris. Even a tiny fragment can be a devastating missile when it’s hurtling at thousands of miles per hour.

As they drew closer and the station filled the window, Emma felt such overwhelming awe and pride that tears suddenly flashed in her eyes. Home, she thought. I’m coming home.

The air-lock hatch swung open, and a wide brown face grinned at them from the other end of the vestibule connecting Atlantis with ISS. ‘They brought oranges!’ Luther Ames called out to his station mates. ‘I can smell ‘em!’

‘NASA home delivery service,’ deadpanned Commander Vance. ‘Your groceries have arrived.’ Bearing a nylon sack of fresh fruit, Vance floated through Atlantis’s air lock into the space station.

It had been a perfect docking. With both spacecrafts traveling at a speed of 17,500 miles per hour above the earth, Vance had approached ISS at the delicate rate of two inches per second, lining up Atlantis’s docking module to the ISS port for a good, tight lock.

Now the hatches were open and Atlantis’s crew floated one by one into the space station to be greeted with handshakes and hugs, and the welcoming smiles of people who have not seen new faces in over a month. The node was too small to hold thirteen people, and the crews quickly spilled into the adjoining modules.

Emma was the fifth to cross into the station. She popped out of the vestibule and inhaled a mélange of scents, the slightly sour and meaty odors of humans confined too long in a closed space. Luther Ames, an old friend from astronaut training, was the first to greet her.

‘Dr Watson, I presume!’ he boomed out, pulling her into a hug. ‘Welcome aboard. The more ladies, the merrier.’

‘Hey, you know I’m no lady.’

He winked. ‘We’ll keep that between us.’ Luther had always been larger than life, a man whose good cheer could fill a room. Everyone liked Luther because Luther liked everyone. Emma was glad to have him aboard.

Especially when she turned to look at her other station mates. She shook hands first with Michael Griggs, the ISS commander, and found his greeting polite but almost military. Diana Estes, the Englishwoman sent up by the European Space Agency, was not much warmer. She smiled, but her eyes were a strange glacial blue. Cool and distant.