Going Interstellar (14 page)

“How you doing, Sara?”

“I’m good, boss. Wish you were with me.”

“In a way, I am. I assume you’ve had no problems?”

“Negative. Not a thing.”

“Okay. Have a big time.”

“I plan to.” Neither of us knew quite what to say. I’d be gone for at least four months and I wanted to tell him I’d miss him. But the world was listening, and I didn’t want to give everybody a laugh line. Not at Morris’s expense, anyhow. I thought about asking who was answering the phones now that I was gone, but I let it go.

***

At about 0300 I passed the Moon. At 0829 I hit five million mph.
Liberty
called, wanting to know about fuel consumption. We were doing better than anticipated.

There was a delay of about a minute. Then they were back: “
Excelsior
, you are go for Starbright.”

Starbright was the name they’d given Minetka. They had a tendency to overstate things when they named projects. “Copy that,” I said.

I thought they were finished, but a few minutes later the voice returned: “Be advised solar activity is currently higher than normal. It is expected to increase over the next few hours, but it shouldn’t present a problem for you.”

Nothing more was scheduled until midnight the following day. Until then we’d continue to accelerate. Then I’d shut the engines down and we’d go into cruise mode for two months. When the
Excelsior
got within range of Minetka/Starbright, I’d need another two days to brake.

I ran a second systems check. That was unnecessary really; an alarm would alert me to any likely problem. But I was a captain again and I enjoyed the role, which I played to the hilt.

I would have liked to wander around the
Excelsior
in uniform, soliciting reports from my crew the way they did in the science fiction films. And welcome a few passengers on board. Glad you chose Brightstar Transport, ladies and gentlemen. We hope you enjoy the trip. Beverages will be served as soon as we reach cruising speed . . . in another day and a half.

Actually, there wouldn’t have been much space available for visitors.

Later that first evening,
Liberty
called again. It was Morris. “How you doing, Sara?”

“Need a chess partner, Morris.” Actually he didn’t play chess. But he understood.

I was pretty sure Calkin frowned on Morris’s inclination to talk informally with me. He undoubtedly saw it as a character flaw, a weakness. It was something lower-level employees do, and Calkin would have thought that Morris was demeaning himself, or maybe worse if he was actually listening to our exchanges.

I had to wait almost four minutes for his response. “Mary’s coming for the weekend, with Adam and Mike.” His wife and kids. Erika had fought her way back after the accident, and had returned to college. “We’ll be looking for a place.” I wondered whether he’d be buying, since NASA’s future was so uncertain. “When we get settled, we’ll have you over. Make a party of it.” That was the kind of remark guaranteed to get him in trouble with Calkin. He’d think Morris was losing his mind.

“Adam will want something on the beach,” I said. The time delay meant nothing to me, of course. But I could imagine Morris, hooked up from his office (where it was close to noon), trying to keep the conversation coherent.

Standard operating procedure required me to check in twice daily. I complied, informing
Liberty
each time that everything was on schedule.

I was still accelerating on the second day when I passed the orbit of Mars. The
Excelsior
had gone seventy-two million miles when, at midnight of Day 2, I finally shut the drive down and we went into cruise mode.

I could have put everything on automatic and gone to sleep at that point, waking when we got into the vicinity of Minetka, or when we received a transmission, either from
Liberty
or, if we were very lucky, from Lucy. But I couldn’t bring myself to do that. Even though I took no pleasure in being alone in that ship, I knew I would not get there again, and I could not rationalize throwing my chance away. The day would come when I would wish very much to come back, to live again in the
Excelsior’s
cockpit, riding through the night. So I stayed awake. I asked
Liberty
to forward some radio programs, which they did. They knew I enjoyed the talk shows, so they kept me well-supplied with them. I even heard my own voice talking with the space station. “Everything on schedule.” “All systems five by.” “Saw an asteroid today.” Nothing very exciting.

I continued to ask about the
Coraggio
, and those clips also got played. One female host commented that my apparent concern was “touching.” She emphasized
apparent
. Of course she would. There was really nobody aboard the
Excelsior
.

The talkers had always seemed to me narrowly focused and out of touch with reality. And from my perspective approaching the asteroid belt, that hadn’t changed. But they had voices. And maybe that was all that mattered. I didn’t care if they were talking about a celebrity’s wedding dress or a corrupt politician. They had voices, and I, simply by listening, became part of the conversation.

***

Unfortunately, a flight through the solar system isn’t likely to be what most people expect. I’d have loved to soar past Mars, pick my way through the asteroids, get a good look at Jupiter, and glide through Saturn’s rings, but my course to Minetka wasn’t going to take me close to anything . . . other than Neptune.

I was cruising at three million miles per hour, so even had I gotten within a reasonable distance of Saturn, which I would have given much to see, I wouldn’t have been there long.

My reports acquired a boring sameness.
Liberty
, this is
Excelsior
. Running warm and still on schedule.

The operators always responded, “Copy that,
Excelsior
.” One of them, a woman whose name I never learned, asked me a couple of times if I was okay. Unlike the others, she seemed to realize, or allowed herself to pretend, that she was really talking to somebody. Soon, I didn’t hear her anymore and I wondered whether she’d gotten into trouble. I didn’t ask the other operators about her because, if something
had
happened, I didn’t want to risk getting her in deeper. I tried to convince myself that she’d simply been promoted, or had run off with an English teacher. But that was the incident that made me realize I seriously disliked Denny Calkin.

I never found out what, if anything, had happened.

I spent a lot of time just watching the basic image on the monitors: a black canopy full of lights. Where’s a good comet when you need one?

Morris had stopped calling about the time I cleared Jupiter’s orbit. By then the delay in any exchange was preposterous. If I’d asked Morris how he was doing, I would have had to wait an hour and a half for my answer. We kept communicating, though, but by voice message.

“The world is watching, Sara. You’re getting constant coverage. Right up there with
America First
and
Wild for You
. Harry Pavlo, on a talk show yesterday, said you should write a book. Mary thinks the book thing is a good idea. Anyhow, Adam’s teachers have asked if you’d be willing, when you come back, to talk to some of her students at the high school. We haven’t tried anything like that before, but I don’t see a problem with it if you don’t.”

On Day 8, I left Saturn behind. Or would have had it been in the area. I mentioned earlier that I’d wished I could have seen it up close. Actually, I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t. I’d refrained from checking its position because I wanted to keep the possibility open. But the odds were remote. And they held: it turned out to be on the other side of the sun somewhere, which meant I wouldn’t even have a shot at it on the way back.

In the meantime, the talk shows lost interest in the Eagle mission. We were replaced by Tim Hurst, the popular comedian, who’d been photographed at an orgy when he was supposed to be working on a new film; and by the on-again/off-again corruption scandal of Senator Brickhouse, who’d built his career as a crusader against lawbreakers of all stripes.

I knew that Morris had liked the press we were getting, and had hoped that interest would remain high. And I’ll confess I’d enjoyed the attention myself. So I manufactured an image of an asteroid flashing by, and sent it on to
Liberty
. It created a mild sensation. And of course no harm was done.

To really make a splash, though, I needed something more stirring than a chunk of rock. I was seriously tempted to arrange a close passage with a comet, but I was pretty sure I couldn’t get away with it.

One possibility would have been to create an alien vehicle, send a startled message back, along with pictures. ‘It tracked me for about an hour. Then it turned away and disappeared within minutes.’

But I couldn’t get that one past my conscience. And Morris wouldn’t have approved.

I also thought about an asteroid with a feature on it like a temple. Or a
face
. Faces were good. But it would have to get lost and eventually become a historical mystery like Stonehenge or the
Mary Celeste
or Judge Crater, and I knew I’d never be able to keep my secret. Eventually I’d unburden myself to Morris, and embarrass him. I couldn’t have that.

I did the right thing, of course, but what a blown opportunity.

On Day 24, I passed the orbit of Uranus.

One of the radio people noted the event, remarking that I was now in God’s country. The Kuiper Belt lay ahead, beginning near Neptune. Than Pluto. And finally the Oort Cloud, roughly a light-year distant. It would be a long ride even for the
Excelsior.

***

I was several days beyond Uranus when
Liberty
relayed an interview from CBS. The interviewee was Colin Edward, who was identified as the chief of operations for NASA. Chief of Operations. That had been Morris’s title.

Damn.

Edward talked about plans for the future, where the space program hoped to be in ten years, and, yes, he said, the hunt for the
Coraggio
was on schedule. “But you have to realize,” he said, “that we’ve heard nothing from the ship for several weeks. I think we need to face reality: It’s lost out there, and our chances of finding it are slim at best.”

I’d never heard of Colin Edward. And when I did a quick search I discovered he’d been a major fund raiser for President Ferguson. He was another political operative. This time as chief of operations.

A few minutes later, I got another jolt: Calkin had resigned. His replacement was somebody else I’d never heard of.

I remember thinking that I was glad to be out on the far side of Uranus.

I waited, hoping to get a message from Morris saying he’d gone back to Huntsville. But there was nothing.

During the early morning on Day 30, the end of the first month, I made my standard report and signed off. By then, I was far enough out that a transmission exchange took seven or eight hours. A reply came in somewhat after 1300: “Copy your numbers,
Excelsior
. Your old boss asked me to say hello.”

They wouldn’t even let him near the mike. I guess they were afraid he might say something negative.

I responded by asking that someone tell Morris I missed him. Then I simply drifted through the electronic complex of what had become home while whatever remained of my enthusiasm for NASA and the Global Initiative melted away.

That evening I set the automatic responder to send the twice-daily reports to
Liberty,
and the timer to wake me when we were two days from Minetka. Then, for the first time since leaving Earth, I slept.

I had no sense of the passage of time. When I was conscious again, it was Day 62. I was more than four and a half billion miles out, well into the Kuiper Belt. Minetka lay some eighty million miles ahead: time to start braking.

To do that, I had to turn the ship around and point the tubes forward. I checked the scopes first to ensure there was nothing immediately ahead. Turning the
Excelsior
at its current velocity was the most dangerous part of the flight, because it brought the ship out from behind its shield and exposed it to whatever might lie in its path. When you’re traveling at 864 miles per second, it doesn’t take a very big pebble to make a very large hole. The turn would require four minutes and eleven seconds. Once it was completed and the engines had come online again, the danger would all but evaporate because anything that posed a threat would be blown away.

The Kuiper Belt, of course, doesn’t have anything as specific as a boundary. It constitutes a vast ring of dust, ice, and rocks orbiting the sun at a range of approximately three to five billion miles. Thousands of the rocks are more than a hundred miles across, several with a greater land surface than North America. Minetka ranks among these.

I had to delay the turn for about half an hour because the scopes were picking up light debris in our path. When it was clear, I swung the ship around and started the engines. We began to decelerate.

I informed Liberty that the maneuver had been successfully completed. The response, “Copy that,
Excelsior
,” arrived thirteen hours later.

The
Coraggio’s
last report had been to signal completion of the same turn. She had gotten this far.

If you read about the Kuiper Belt, it sounds crowded: millions of rocks and ice chunks constantly bumping into one another. But seen through the scopes, it was strictly empty sky. I’d seen some of the images Lucy sent, so I wasn’t surprised. And I can’t say I was disappointed, because I didn’t want to get anywhere near a collision. Still, I’d have liked to see
something
. In any case, I didn’t go back to sleep.

Now and then I got a blip on my screens. But of course I never saw anything that was close. We were moving too quickly. Anything nearby became, at best, a blur. By then my velocity was down to 414 miles per second. Crawling along.