Gravity (14 page)

“We’re just getting the EKG hooked up now.” She glanced at the monitor, at the cardiac rhythm racing across the screen.

“Sinus tach, rate of one twenty-four. Occasional PVCS.”

“I see it on biotelemetry.”

“Taking BP now…” She whiffed up the cuff, listened to the brachial pulse as the pressure was slowly released. “Ninety-five over sixty. Not significantly—” The blow caught her by surprise. She gave a sharp cry of pain as Kenichi’s hand flailed out, striking her across the mouth. The impact spun her away, and she flew across the module, colliding with the opposite wall.

“Emma?” said Jack. “Emma?” Dazed, she reached up to touch her throbbing lip.

“You’re bleeding!” said Nicolai.

Over her headset, Jack’s frantic voice demanded, “What the hell is going on up there?”

“I’m okay,” she murmured. And repeated, irritably, “I’m okay, Jack. Don’t have a cow.” But her head was still buzzing from the blow. As Nicolai strapped Kenichi to the patient restraint board, she hung back, waiting for her dizziness to pass. At first she did not register Nicolai was saying.

Then she saw the look of disbelief in his eyes. “Look at his stomach,” Nicolai whispered. “Look!” Emma moved closer. “What the hell is that?” she whispered.

“Talk to me, Emma,” said Jack. “Tell me what’s going on.” She stared at Kenichi’s abdomen, where the skin seemed to ripple and boil. “There’s something moving—under his skin—”

“What do you mean, moving?”

“It looks like muscle fasciculations. But it’s migrating across the belly…”

“Not peristalsis?”

“No. No, it’s moving upwards. It’s not following the intestinal tract.” She paused. The squirming had suddenly stopped, and she was staring at the smooth, unworried surface of Kenichi’s abdomen.

Fasciculations, she thought. The uncoordinated twitching of muscle fibers. It was the most likely explanation, except for one detail, Fasciculations do not migrate in waves.

Suddenly Kenichi’s eyes shot open, and he stared at Emma.

The cardiac alarm squealed. Emma turned to see the EKG whipsawing up and down on the screen.

“V tach!” said Jack.

“I see it, I see it!” She flipped on the defibrillator charge button, then felt for a carotid pulse.

There it was. Faint, barely palpable.

His eyes had rolled up, and only the bloodred sclerae were visible. He was still breathing.

She slapped on defibrillator pads, positioned the paddles on the chest, and pressed the discharge buttons. An electric charge of hundred joules shot through Kenichi’s body.

His muscles contracted in a violent and simultaneous spasm.

His legs thrashed against the board. Only the restraints kept him from flying across the module.

“Still in V tach!” said Emma.

Diana came flying into the module. “What can I do?” she asked.

“Get the lidocaine ready!” snapped Emma. “CDK drawer, right

“Found it.”

“He’s not breathing!” said Nicolai.

Emma grabbed the ambu-bag and said, “Nicolai, brace me!” He maneuvered into position, planting his feet on the opposite wall, his back pressed against Emma’s to hold her in place as she applied the oxygen mask. On earth, performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation is demanding enough, in microgravity, it is a nightmare of complex acrobatics, with drifting equipment, tubes and tangling in midair, syringes filled with precious drugs away. The simple act of pressing your hands against a patient’s can send you tumbling across the room. Although the crew had practiced this scenario, no rehearsal could reproduce the genuine chaos of bodies frantically maneuvering in a closed space, racing against the clock of a dying heart.

With the mask over Kenichi’s mouth and nose, she squeezed the ambu-bag, forcing oxygen into his lungs. The EKG line continued to thrash across the screen.

“One amp lidocaine IV push now,” said Diana.

“Nicolai, shock him again!” said Emma.

After the briefest hesitation, he reached for the paddles, placed them on the chest, and pressed the discharge buttons. This time two hundred joules arced through Kenichi’s heart.

Emma glanced at the monitor. “He’s gone into V fib! Nicolai, start cardiac compressions. I’m going to intubate!” Nicolai released the defib paddles, and they floated off, dangling at the ends of the wires.

Bracing his feet against the wall of the module, he was about to place his palms on Kenichi’s sternum when he suddenly jerked his hands away.

Emma looked at him. “What is it?”

“His chest. Look at his chest!” They stared.

The skin on Kenichi’s chest was boiling, squirming. At the contact points where the defib paddles had delivered their electric jolts, two raised circles had formed and were now spreading, like ripples cast by a stone in water.

“Asystole!” came Jack’s voice over her headset.

Nicolai was still frozen, staring at Kenichi’s chest.

It was Emma who swung into position, bracing her back against Nicolai’s.

Asystole. The heart has stopped. He will die without cardiac compressions.

She felt nothing moving, nothing unusual. Just skin stretched over the bony landmarks of his breastbone. Muscle fasciculations, she thought. It had to be. There’s no other explanation. With body braced in position, she began chest compressions, her hands performing the work for Kenichi’s heart, pumping blood to his organs.

“Diana, one amp IV epinephrine!” she ordered.

Diana injected the drug into the IV line.

They all looked at the monitor, hoping for, praying for, a blip the screen.

“There has to be an autopsy,” said Todd Cutler.

Gordon Obie, director of Flight Crew Operations, flashed him an irritated look. Some of the others in the conference room gave Cutler dismissive nods as well, because he had merely stated the obvious. Of course there would be an autopsy.

Over a dozen people had gathered together for this crisis meeting.

An autopsy was the least of their concerns. Right now, Obie was dealing with more urgent issues. Normally a man of few words, he’d suddenly found himself in the uncomfortable position of having reporters’ microphones thrust at his face whenever he appeared in public. The excruciating process of assigning blame had begun.

Obie had to accept a portion of responsibility for this tragedy, because he had approved the choice of every member of the flight crew. If the crew screwed up, in essence, he had screwed up. his choice of Emma Watson was starting to look like a major error.

That, at least, was the message he was hearing in this room. As the only physician aboard ISS, Emma Watson should have realized Hirai was dying.

An immediate CRV evac might have saved him.

Now a shuttle had been launched, and a multimillion-dollar rescue mission had turned into nothing more than a morgue run. Washington was hungry for scapegoats, and the foreign press was asking a politically incendiary question, Would an American astronaut have been allowed to die?

The PR fallout was, in fact, this meeting’s major topic of discussion.

Gretchen Liu said, “Senator Parish has gone on the record with a statement.” JSC director Ken Blankenship groaned. “I’m afraid to ask.”

“CNN-Atlanta faxed it over. And I quote, Millions of tax dollars went into the development of the emergency Crew Return Vehicle. Yet NASA chose not to use it. They had a critically ill up there whose life might have been saved. Now that courageous astronaut is dead, and it’s apparent to everyone that a terrible mistake was made. One death in space is one death too many. A congressional inquiry is in order.” Gretchen looked up with a expression. “Our favorite senator speaks.”

“I wonder how many people remember that he tried to kill our Crew Return Vehicle program?” said Blankenship. “I’d love to rub that in his face right now.”

“You can’t,” said Leroy Cornell. As NASA administrator, it was second nature for Cornell to weigh all the political ramifications.

He was their link to Congress and the White House, and he never lost sight of how things would play out in Washington. “You launch a direct attack on the senator, and things will really hit the fan.”

“He’s attacking us.”

“That’s nothing new, and everyone knows it.”

“The public doesn’t,” said Gretchen. “He’s making headlines with these attacks.”

“That’s the whole point—the senator wants headlines,” said Cornell. “We fire back, it’ll feed the media beast. Look, he’s never been our friend. He’s fought every budget increase we’ve ever asked for. He wants to buy gunships, not spaceships, and we’ll never change his mind.” Cornell took a deep breath and looked around the room.

“So we might as well take a good hard look at his criticism. And ask ourselves if it isn’t justified.” The room went momentarily silent.

“Obviously, mistakes were made,” said Blankenship. “Errors in medical judgment. Why didn’t we know how sick the man was?” Obie saw an uneasy glance fly between the two flight surgeons.

Every one was now focused on the performance of the medical team. And on Emma Watson.

She wasn’t here to defend herself, Obie would have to speak up for her.

Todd Cutler beat him to it. “Watson’s at a disadvantage up there. Any doctor would be,” he said. “No X ray, no OR. The point is, none of us know why Hirai died. That’s why we need the autopsy. We have to know what went wrong. And whether microgravity was a contributing factor.”

“There’s no question about an autopsy,” said Blankenship.

“Every one’s agreed on that point.”

“No, the reason I mention it is because of the…” Cutler dropped his voice, “preservation problem.” There was a pause. Obie saw gazes drop in uneasy contemplation of what that meant.

“The lack of refrigeration on the station is what he’s talking about,” said Obie. “Not for something as large as a human body. Not in a pressurized environment.”

ISS flight director Woody Ellis said, “Shuttle rendezvous is in seventeen hours. How badly can the body deteriorate in that time?”

“There’s no refrigeration aboard the shuttle either,” pointed out Cutler. “Death occurred seven hours ago. Add to that the time for rendezvous, the transfer of the corpse, as well as other cargo, the undocking. We’re talking at least three days with the body at room temperature. And that’s if everything goes like clockwork. Which, as we all know, is not a given.”

Three days. Obie thought of what could happen to a dead body in two days. Of how badly raw chicken parts stank if he left them in his garbage can for just one night… “You’re saying Discovery can’t delay her return home, even for an extra day?” said Ellis.

“We were hoping there’d be time for tasks. There are numerous experiments on ISS ready to come home. Scientists on the ground are waiting for them.”

“An autopsy won’t be of much help if the body’s deteriorated,” said Cutler.

“Isn’t there some way to preserve it? Embalm it?”

“Not without affecting its chemistry. We need an unembalmed body. And we need it home soon.” Ellis sighed. “There has to be a compromise. A way to get something else accomplished while they’re docked.” Gretchen said, “From a PR point of view, it looks bad, going about your usual business while a corpse is stored in the middeck. Besides, isn’t there some, well, health hazard? And then there’s … the odor.”

“The body is sealed in a plastic shroud,” said Cutler. “They can curtain it off out of view in a sleep station.”

The subject had turned so grim that most faces in the room were looking pale. They could talk about the political fallout and the media crisis. They could talk about hostile senators and anomalies. But dead bodies and bad smells and deteriorating flesh were not things they wanted to concentrate on.

Leroy Cornell finally broke the silence. “I understand your sense of urgency about getting the body back for autopsy, Dr. Cutler. And I understand the PR angle as well. The seeming lack of sensitivity if we go about our business. But there are things we need to do, even in light of our losses.” He looked around the table.

“That is our prime objective, isn’t it? One of our strengths as organization? No matter what goes wrong, no matter what we suffer, we always strive to get the job done?” That’s the moment Obie sensed the sudden shift of mood in the room. Up till then, they had been laboring under the pall of tragedy, the pressure of media attention. He had seen gloom and defeat in these faces, and defensiveness. Now the pall was lifting. He met Cornell’s gaze and felt some of his old disdain toward the man fall away.

Obie had never trusted smooth talkers like Cornell. He thought of NASA administrators as a necessary evil and tolerated them only as long as they kept their noses out of operational decisions.

At times, Cornell had strayed over that line. Today, though, he had done them a service by making them step back and view the big picture. Every one had come to this meeting with his or her private concerns. Cutler wanted a fresh corpse to autopsy.

Liu wanted the right media spin. The shuttle management team wanted Discovery’s mission expanded.

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.”

Emma’s running shoes pounded rhythmically on the TVIS treadmill, and every slap of her soles against the moving belt, 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 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 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 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 got sick.”

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

“And you couldn’t save him. So now you’re the corps fuckup.

“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.

Every one at NASA remembered it. It had happened four years ago, during a mission repair an orbiting comm satellite. Luther had been the mission specialist responsible for redeploying the satellite after repairs 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 said 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 status of astronaut ghost, still in the corps, but invisible to 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 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, 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.

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 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 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 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 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 undocking, the closing of those airtight hatches effectively ended human contact between them. They were once again separate vehicles, temporarily attached, like two dragonflies hurtling 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 a lifetime of good luck to carry her through the next day. It was point of pride for her that she’d never needed a sleeping pill. 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 had entered their living space, cast its shadow over their evening meal, 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, 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, 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, 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 animals she sometimes encountered in the woods.

She decided to move further 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 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 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 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 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 face. Only briefly did she stir, to brush the tickle on her cheek 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.