Gravity (29 page)

After CRV sep, it would take twenty-five minutes for the evac vehicle to bring up guidance and landing targets, another fifteen minutes to set up the deorbit burn. Another hour to land. U.S. Space Command would have them identified and tracked long before the CRV could touch down.

In the second row, the OSO flight controller raised his hand in a casual thumbs-up. With that gesture, he’d silently announced news, The CRV had separated. For better or worse, the crew was on its way home.

Now the game begins.

The tension in the room coiled tighter. Jack hazarded a glance at the two Air Force officers, but the men seemed oblivious to the situation, one of them kept looking at the clock, as though to be elsewhere.

The minutes ticked past, the room strangely quiet. Jack leaned forward, his heart hammering, sweat soaking his shirt. By now CRV would be drifting outside the station’s envelope. Their target would be identified, their guidance system locked onto GPS satellites.

Come on, come on, thought Jack. Go to deorbit now!

The sound of a ringing telephone cut the silence. Jack glanced sideways and saw one of the Air Force monitors answer it. Suddenly he went rigid and turned to Woody Ellis.

“What the hell is going on here?” Ellis said nothing.

The officer quickly typed on Ellis’s console keyboard and stared at the screen in disbelief. He grabbed the phone. “Yes, sir. I’m, that’s a confirmation. The CRV has separated. No, sir, I don’t know how it—Yes, sir, we have been monitoring the loop, but—” The oficer was red-faced and sweating as he listened to the tirade from the receiver.

When he hung up, he was shaking with rage.

“Turn it around!” he ordered.

Woody Ellis answered with barely disguised contempt. “It isn’t a Soyuz capsule. You can’t command it to drive around like a goddamn automobile.”

“Then stop it from landing!”

“We can’t. It’s a one-way trip home.” Three more Air Force officers walked swiftly into the room.

Jack recognized General Gregorian of the U.S. Space Command—the man now in authority over NASA operations.

“What’s the status?” Gregorian snapped.

“The CRV is undocked but still in orbit,” the red-faced officer replied.

“How soon before they reach atmosphere?”

“Uh—I don’t have that information, sir.” Gregorian turned to the flight director. “How soon, Mr. Ellis?

“It depends. There are a number of options.”

“Don’t give me a fucking engineering lecture. I want an answer. I want a number.”

“Okay.” Ellis straightened and looked him hard in the eye. “Anywhere from one to eight hours. It’s up to them. They can stay in orbit for four revolutions max. Or they can deorbit now and be on the ground in an hour.”

Gregorian picked up the phone. “Mr. President, I’m afraid there’s not much time to decide. They could deorbit any minute now. Yes, sir, I know it’s a hard choice. But my recommendation remains the same as Mr. Profitt’s.”

What recommendation? thought Jack with a surge of panic.

An Air Force officer called out from one of the flight consoles, “They’ve started their deorbit burn!”

“We’re running out of time, sir,” said Gregorian. “We need your answer now.” There was a long pause. Then he nodded, with relief.

“You’ve made the right decision. Thank you.” He hung up and turned to the Air Force officers. “It’s a go.”

“What’s a go?” said Ellis. “What are you people planning to do?

His questions were ignored. The Air Force officer picked up the phone and calmly issued the order, “Stand by for EKV launch.” What the hell is an EKV? thought Jack. He looked at Todd and saw by his blank expression that he didn’t know what was being launched, either.

It was Todd, the trajectory controller, who walked over to their console and quietly answered the question. “Exoatmospheric kill vehicle,” he whispered. “They’re going to intercept.”

“Target must be neutralized before it descends to atmosphere,” said Gregorian.

Jack shot to his feet in panic. “No!” Almost simultaneously, other controllers rose from their chairs in protest. Their shouts almost drowned out Capcom, who had to yell at the top of his voice to be heard.

“I have ISS on comm! ISS is on comm!” ISS? Then someone is still aboard the station. Someone has been left behind.

Jack cupped his hand over his earpiece and listened to the downlinked voice.

It was Emma. “Houston, this is Watson on ISS. Mission Specialist Ames is not infected. I repeat, he is not infected. He is only crew member returning aboard CRV. I urgently request you allow the vehicle’s safe landing.”

“Roger that, ISS,” said Capcom.

“You see? There’s no reason to shoot it down,” Ellis said to Gregorian.

“Stop your EKV launch!”

“How do we know Watson’s telling the truth?” countered Gregorian.

“She must be telling the truth. Why else would she stay behind? She’s just stranded herself up there. The CRV was the lifeboat she had!” The impact of those words made Jack go numb. The heated conversation between Ellis and Gregorian suddenly seemed to fade out.

Jack was no longer focusing on the fate of the CRV. He could think only of Emma, alone now, and trapped on the station, with no way to evacuate.

She knows she is infected. She has stayed behind to die.

“CRV has completed deorbit burn. It’s descending. Trajectory is on the front screen.” Tracing across the world map at the front of the room was a small blip representing the CRV and its lone human passenger.

They heard him now, on comm.

“This is Mission Specialist Luther Ames. I am approaching entry altitude, all systems nominal.” The Air Force officer looked at Gregorian. “We’re still standing by for EKV launch.”

“You don’t have to do this,” said Woody Ellis. “He’s not sick. We can bring him home!”

“The craft itself is probably contaminated,” said Gregorian.

“You don’t know that!”

“I can’t take that chance. I can’t risk the lives of people on earth.”

“Godddamnit, this is murder.”

“He disobeyed orders. He knew what our response would be.” Gregorian nodded to the Air Force officer.

“EKVS have been launched, sir.” Instantly the room hushed. Woody Ellis, pale and shaken, stared at the front screen, at the multiple trajectory tracings, toward an intersecting point.

The minutes went by in dead silence. At the front of the room, one of the women controllers began to cry softly.

“Houston, I’m approaching entry interface.” It was a shock to hear Luther’s cheery voice suddenly crackle on the comm. “I’d greatly appreciate it if you’d have someone meet me on the ground, ‘cause I’m gonna need help getting out of this EMU.” No one responded. No one had the heart to.

“Houston?” said Luther, after a moment of silence. “Hey, you guys still there?” At last Capcom managed to reply, in an uneven voice, “Uh, roger, CRV . We’ll have the beer keg waiting for you, Luther of’ buddy. Dancing girls. The whole works .”

“Geez, you guys have loosened up since we last spoke. Okay, looks like I’m bout ready for LOS. You keep that beer cold, and I—” There was a loud burst of static. Then the transmission went dead.

The blip on the front screen exploded into a shocking sunburst of fragments, scattering into delicate pixels of dust.

Woody Ellis crumpled into his chair and dropped his head in his hands.

“Securing air-to-ground loop,” said Capcom. “Stand by, ISS.”

“Talk to me, Jack . Please talk to me, Emma pleaded silently as she floated in the hab’s semidarkness. With the circulation fans shut down, the module was so quiet she could hear the whoosh of her own pulse, the movement of air rushing in and out of her lungs.

She was startled when Capcom’s voice suddenly said, “Air-to-ground secure. You may proceed to PFC.”

“Jack?” she said.

“I’m here. I’m right here, sweetheart.”

“He was clean! I told them he was clean—”

“We tried to stop it! The order came straight from the White House. They didn’t want to take any chances.”

“It’s my fault.” Her exhaustion suddenly gave way to tears. She was alone and scared. And haunted by her catastrophically wrong decision. “I thought they’d let him come back. I thought it was best chance of staying alive.”

“Why did you stay behind, Emma?”

“I had to.” She took a deep breath and said, “I’m infected.”

“You were exposed. That doesn’t mean you’re infected.”

“I just ran my own blood tests, Jack. My amylase level is rising.”

He said nothing.

“I’m now eight hours postexposure. I should have another twenty-four to forty-eight hours before I … can no longer function.” Her voice had steadied. She sounded strangely calm now, as though she were talking about a patient’s impending death. Not her own. “That’s enough time to get a few things in order. Jettison bodies. Change out some of the filters, and get the fans working again. It should make cleanup easier for the next crew. If there is a next crew…” Jack still hadn’t spoken.

“As for my own remains…” Her voice had steadied to numb dispassion, all emotions suppressed. “When the time comes, I think the best thing I can do, for the good of the station, is to go EVA. Where I can’t contaminate anything after I die. After my body…”

She paused. “The Orlan is easy enough to get into without assistance. I have Valium and narcotics on hand. Enough to put me under. So I’ll be asleep when my air runs out. You know, Jack, it’s not such a bad way to go, when you think about it. Floating outside. Looking at the earth, the stars. And just drifting off to sleep.” She heard him then. He was crying.

“Jack,” she said softly. “I love you. I don’t know why things apart between us. I know some of it had to be my fault.”

He drew in a shuddering breath. “Emma, don’t.”

“It’s so stupid that I waited this long to tell you. You probably think I’m only saying it now because I’m going to die. But, Jack, honest-to-God truth is—”

“You’re not going to die.” He said it again, with anger. “You not going to die.”

“You’ve heard Dr. Roman’s results. Nothing has worked.”

“The hyperbaric chamber has.”

“They can’t get a chamber up here in time. And without a lifeboat, I can’t get home. Even if they’d let me return.”

“There’s got to be a way. Something you can do to reproduce the chamber’s effect. It’s working on infected mice. It’s keeping them alive, so it’s doing something. They’re the only ones who’ve survived.” No, she suddenly realized. Not the only ones.

Slowly, she turned and stared at the hatchway leading into Node 1. The mouse, she thought. Is the mouse still alive?

“Emma?”

“Stand by. I’m going to check something in the lab.” She swam through Node I, into the U.S. lab. The stench of dried blood was just as strong in here, and even in the gloom, could see the dark splatters on the walls. She floated across to animal habitat, pulled out the mouse enclosure, and shone a flashlight inside.

The beam captured a pitiful sight. The bloated mouse was in its agonal throes, limbs thrashing out, mouth open, drawing in gulps of air.

You can’t be dying, she thought. You’re the survivor, the exception to the rule. The proof that there’s still hope for me.

The mouse twisted, body corkscrewing in agony. A thread of blood curled out from between the hind legs, broke off into droplets. Emma knew what would come next, the final flurry of seizures as the brain dissolved into a soup of digested proteins. saw a fresh pulse of blood stain the white fur of the hindquarters.

And then she saw something else, something pink, protruding between the legs.

It was moving.

The mouse thrashed again.

The pink thing slid all the way out, writhing and hairless.

Tethered to its abdomen was a single glistening strand. An cord.

“Jack,” she whispered. “Jack!”

“I’m here.”

“The mouse—the female—”

“What about it?”

“These last three weeks, she’s been exposed again and again to Chimera, and she hasn’t gotten sick. She’s the only one who’s survived.”

“She’s still alive?”

“Yes. And I think I know why. She was pregnant.” The mouse began to writhe again. Another pup slid out in a glistening veil of blood and mucus.

“It must have happened that night when Kenichi put her with the males,” she said. “I haven’t been handling her. I never realized…”

“Why would pregnancy make a difference? Why should it be protective?” Emma floated in the gloom, struggling to come up with an answer. The recent EVA and the shock of Luther’s death had left her physically drained. She knew that Jack was just as exhausted.

Two tired brains, working against the ticking time bomb of her infection.

“Okay. Okay, let’s think about pregnancy,” she said. “It’s a complex physiological condition. It’s more than just the gestation of a fetus. It’s an altered metabolic state.”

“Hormones. Pregnant animals are chemically high on hormones. If we can mimic that state, maybe we can reproduce what’s happened in that mouse.” Hormone therapy. She thought of all the different chemicals circulating in a pregnant woman’s body. Estrogen. Progesterone. Prolactin. Human chorionic gonadotropin.

“Birth control pills,” said Jack. “You could mimic pregnancy with contraceptive hormones.”

“We have nothing like that on board. It’s not part of the medical kit.”

“Have you checked Diana’s personal locker?”

“She wouldn’t take contraceptives without my knowledge. I’m the medical officer. I’d know about it.”

“Check it anyway. Do it, Emma.” She shot out of the lab. In the Russian service module, she quickly pulled open the drawers in Diana’s locker.

It felt wrong, be pawing through another woman’s private possessions.

Even dead woman’s. Among the neatly folded clothes she uncovered a private stash of candy. She hadn’t known that Diana loved sweets, there was so much about Diana she would never know. In another drawer she found shampoo and toothpaste and tampons. No birth control pills.

She slammed the drawer shut. “There’s nothing on this station I can use!”

“If we launched the shuttle tomorrow—if we got the hormones up to you—”

“They won’t launch! And even if you could send up a whole damn pharmacy, it’d still take three days to get to me!” In three days, she would most likely be dead.