Pillar to the Sky (50 page)

“We have the same amount next year as well if they see progress. You kept the long vigil, my friends. The whole world knows that—is proud of you—and I think for the first time in a couple of generations a ticker tape parade is waiting.”

“So now we are to leave it?” Singh asked. “Is that it?”

Victoria did not reply, just nodded her head, and learned as her father had that such a simple gesture in microgravity required hanging on to the table.

“We took a vote, Dr. Morgan, before you got here. Who better to man this station than us? We are not leaving!” Kevin said angrily, such a sudden shift from but minutes before, when he was all but tearful as he helped guide her to her father’s sacred bunk.

“Which, by the way, we are naming
Morgan Station
,” Jenna added.

“Those so-called astronauts you just brought up with you, tucked in like Spam in a can: Who selected them?” Kevin asked sharply.

“It was a combined decision of NASA and Pillar.”

Jenna snorted disdainfully.

“I looked at their profiles. Never heard of even one of them,” Jenna said.

“Two were training for the Aries project,” Victoria replied, immediately realizing that Jenna and Kevin had already put her on the defensive, justifying rather than directing. “The oldest, Captain Sanders, flew one of the last shuttle missions, so he’s proven his stuff. I can assure you, they
all
know their stuff. The third, she flew with the
Saturn Six
project until that went down.”

“Yeah, went down in a flaming wreck. Damn near put the private space industry out of business,” Jenna pointed out.

Victoria said nothing, understanding how they felt. She did wonder at that instant if Defoe should have written an addendum to his book, noting that a week after being “rescued,” Robinson Crusoe and Friday demanded that the ship turn around and take them back to their island, where in reality they were perfectly happy.

She suddenly realized she had a real “personnel management” problem on her hands and wondered if her mentor, Franklin Smith, had agreed to her going up on this launch for precisely this reason and was now down there on Kiribati, quietly laughing his butt off.

She looked from one to the other.

“They’ve been well trained. I think you know the change in my role in this entire project.” She regretted saying that the moment the words slipped out of her; it implied a threat that she was now “the boss,” like it or not. She fumbled for a moment, then continued. “I would not have gone along with their coming up here if I didn’t think they were the best. All have a thorough briefing on ribbon deployment.”

“Bull,” Kevin sneered. “Two years of working up here versus some simulation training? No way! I’ve racked up over two hundred EVAs, out there damn nearly every day, looking at every angle of how to deploy the ribbon. I’m the only one in the entire universe who has actually stitched two ribbons together while in space and not in some damn simulator. I should ask for a damn raise rather than agree to being sent back down.”

“Besides,” Singh said, her voice soft, appealing. “We are no longer part of earth. We are the next generation. Live or die, we are part of the stars, the way your father was…”

She paused.

“… and still is.”

Victoria stared intently at Singh.

“Would you mind saying that again, please?” Victoria asked, voice choking.

“Your parents and Franklin gave us the shot at a dream when most had turned their backs on the potentials of that dream. As kids we worshipped NASA, dreamed of working for it, saw it as the gateway to the future. At a time when the dream flickered and nearly died—while politicians like Proxley fought against it and demagogues like Garlin denounced it but offered nothing as a realistic alternative—we still believed.”

She paused, looking into Victoria’s eyes.

“And then we three, out of all humanity we three were given a chance to help fulfill the dream. Hell, you can tell Franklin he is a lousy negotiator. Rather than pay us, we’d’ve paid him for the chance to do this.”

Singh looked at her two comrades, who nodded.

“Though I do wonder what my 401(k) looks like now,” Jenna said with a smile, “and my savings? I haven’t spent a dime the entire time I’ve been up here other than to send flowers to my mom and dad each month.”

Victoria could not help but smile at that.

“We no longer belong below on earth,” Singh announced, and there was a forcefulness to her voice.

“Don’t you miss it at all?” Victoria asked.

Singh smiled.

“Sure, I miss the green; and remember, I am from India, and we have the most lush variations of green on the face of that good earth below us—though some Irish I know might argue with me,” she replied, with a smiling glance at Kevin.

“I miss my parents, and there was once a young man I still think of at times who I learned recently married someone else,” she added.

Another moment of silence.

Victoria did not say anything, though she did feel a bit of a stab.

“Long ago—a long, long time ago—adventurers, explorers from your Europe, set sail around the world on a journey that would take years. I know your closeness to a historian who is an adviser to this project,” Singh said. “I remember him from the day we first flew together.”

Victoria nodded, struggling to show no emotion, this time holding on to the edge of the table.

“He’ll tell you that for each who did return, a score, all but forgotten by history, did not. But they went, many for a journey of years, knowing that it might be for years—perhaps forever—and welcomed the challenge. Some came up on distant shores half a world away and decided, ‘Here is my place; here I shall stay.’ Some with self-serving, even evil intent, others for the most part idealistic. I want you to realize, Dr. Morgan, that we are the latter.

“We originally came up here on a mission of but six months. That was over two years ago. But in that time we have changed. We talked night after night—if you can define our time up here as night and day—about what we would do when you and this crew arrived.

“And we made our decision together.”

She looked at Kevin and Jenna, who were smiling—Kevin, of all people, with tears in his eyes, nodding.

“We no longer belong on earth. This is our place. This is our dream. This is our life’s work. We hoped it would be you personally who would come up so we could discuss it as we now do, and we are grateful that you have done so.”

She paused, then looked back at Victoria.

“We are staying here to see the job done, and, once done, we are staying anyhow. We are the first of a new generation of spacefarers, thanks to Pillar and now, with blessed gratitude, thanks to NASA, and here we shall stay.”

*   *   *

A half hour later Victoria finally opened the private comm link down to Kiribati, Houston, and Goddard. She was actually tempted to use the line “Houston, we have a problem here.” But in reality they didn’t. She forced a smile as she simply said, “Ground, this is
Station One
.”

She hesitated for a moment and then said it.

“Correction. Ground, this is
Morgan Station
. We have an interesting situation to discuss.”

The “other three” were finally welcomed aboard with a formal, slightly forced, but nevertheless semi-friendly greeting ceremony. Given the naval background of two of the seven, they observed the old ritual of first saluting an American flag decal applied to the aft bulkhead, then saluted “Commander Singh” and said, “Request permission to come aboard, sir.”

There had actually been no tension whatsoever on the part of what was supposed to be the replacement crew. Prior to launch, the flight psychologists at Houston had even anticipated this scenario, at least to a certain degree, and discussed how to handle it. For that, Victoria was indeed grateful to NASA.

The living arrangements were that the three “space settlers,” as one media source had already branded them, would continue to occupy their old bunks. Victoria would have the fourth, which had belonged to her father, and the other three, when not on duty rotation, would retire to their docked module and maintain their personal possessions there.

In a gesture of compromise, Kevin even offered two of his precious pizzas as the evening meal with half of his cannolis as dessert, and Captain Hurt, an ex–British Harrier pilot, provided a certain liquid “refreshment” that was absolutely against regulations but which Victoria thanked God he had smuggled aboard in his personal gear bag, even though he might have lost his flight slot if it had been discovered.

“A traditional gift of my Scot ancestors on my mother’s side,” he said with a smile when he opened the flight bag and pulled out its contents. It did more to “smooth the waters” between the two teams than any speeches or appeals, and by the end of the evening Kevin was embracing the Brit-Scot as a long-lost comrade and explaining the complexities of stitching ribbon together in zero g without cutting yourself in half.

Kevin was now eager to see the “stitching machine” the team had brought up in their cargo compartment and then trying it out on the next day’s EVA. They started unpacking gear. One of the precious oxygen scrubbers that had been stowed for quick access in the crew cabin of their ship was soon installed to handle the extra load of four more on board, and within the hour the original three were exclaiming how wonderful it was, while the four “newbies” were gasping, with watering eyes, and wondering how these three “old-timers” had stood it for so long. The place really did stink and would take some getting used to.

As Victoria settled herself into what had once been her father’s bunk, she smiled. It was obvious it was time for “the boss” to “take a hike” and leave the crews to get to know each other and merge into a single team. In a sense she would always be the “outsider,” but she had no regrets about that. Franklin in his mentoring had told her so often that she would have to take that role, almost like a monk or a nun, in much the same way that the original three in this station had done in order to survive.

The gift of Maury Hurt, the Brit-Scot, had done much to help in the bonding. Amazing, the human bonding rituals, she thought. Surely her beloved and much-missed Jason could give her scores of such examples from the past, of Irish and Chinese working side by side on the transcontinental railroad, perhaps ready to kill each other at first, but then most likely bonded by some of the same rituals, thanks to a hidden still using either rice or potatoes, and in short order willing to risk their lives for each other.

While they had celebrated, she wandered off on her own to examine the station, going over a detailed checklist given to her by a team at NASA.
Morgan Station
been aloft for over three years; it had been built around designs dating back to the 1970s. It was now fraught with perils. As for her “settlers,” they had been exposed to radiation from the sun for an extended period. By all rights and responsibilities she should order the three off the station and send them back down the next day while advising the three replacements to keep their EVA suits close at hand and, when not on duty, to spend every minute possible in their own ascent and descent ship.

But she could not. They, far better than she, knew the risks they were taking and had made clear their decision. They had no cause for complaint. She thought of how Robert Falcon Scott, the Antarctic explorer, had written those lines in his final diary entry. He had embarked on an adventure, things had played out against him, but his final words were for others to continue the dream. Such had been the spirit of the age of polar exploration, which preceded that of the sky above, and she prayed that the spirit of this age, which her father, mother, and Franklin had struggled to open up, was renewed again now.

There would be risks aplenty in the years to come as the ribbon became the first truly viable means to reach the heavens and at the same time a way to solve some of the environmental problems on an overcrowded and polluted earth. Her comrades aboard this smelly, aging craft, laughing one moment, talking serious business the next, were the forerunners of a new generation that would lead the way.

And she understood yet again that there were things in this life worth putting your life on the line for.

She gazed at the earth below.

This was no longer about just building a tower to get to geosynch, as her parents had dreamed. This was about saving the world below.

Content, she drifted off to sleep, barely hearing the laughing and singing just beyond her curtain, nor worried about the arguments she would have to counter from the people down below come dawn, explaining that now the station had seven on board and they damn well had to figure out how to double the shipment of supplies to keep them alive while the tower was being built.

22

The Ribbon Goes Down

In the four months since Victoria and the other three crew members had docked, so much had changed, in space and on earth. The team had merged together somewhat well, though when on the following day she had passed the word back to the mission controls in Kiribati and Houston that all seven were staying up for the time being, there had been howls of protest. The schedule was for the three veterans to undock and head back “for home” the day after the new team arrived.

It was a historic moment. The first mutiny in space! And inwardly Victoria rather enjoyed it, as Singh and Kevin articulated their position to the world in such a forceful manner that even the president, the head of NASA, and Franklin were forced to concede, even though it meant a doubling of resupply launches—at no small expense—with the caveat that there would be no more pizzas and they would be lucky to be eating Spam out of squeeze tubes, with showers rationed to one quart of water per week.

The delicate balance of personal relationships also went on edge. Kevin and Hurt bonded wonderfully. Hurt was the crew’s new expert on ribbon design, which had evolved significantly in the two years that the station had been cut off, while Kevin walked him through his own thoughts on deployment and stitching. The newer design did bear striking resemblance to old-fashioned movie film, with perforated edges to facilitate a stitching thread bonding them together, either side by side, or laminated one atop the other. Each thread carried a conductivity fiber to provide energy—not enough to fully power, but at least to augment spinners and the ascent or descent of a pod.