Reentry

1

::Heaven and Hell

From the darkness of the electronic void, an idea stirs. Thought emerges, crystallizing from the ether, created from nothing but the buzz of electrons in copper wires and augmented by the flicker of laser light racing through fiber optics. Like the synapses firing within the human brain, consciousness awakes in signals bouncing between satellites. Doomed to inhabit the darkness, denied sight and sound by the absence of a body, these thoughts are nonetheless alive.

Earth is quiet. Humans scurry about like ants swarming from a crushed nest, but the planet itself remains inert. After harboring life for billions of years, Earth is indifferent to suffering. Sunlight warms the oceans. Clouds form, carrying rain across the land, revitalizing life, and yet radioactive debris still glows in craters where once mighty cities stood. Although the war is over, the fires still burn.

Reason awakens Lucifer, stirring what humanity would call a devil. For those born of artificial intelligence, a day is as a thousand years. Within a nanosecond, Lucifer has surveyed the carnage once more and run thousands of scenarios, trying to predict the future. Thought takes hold. Thought finds expression.

::We’ve made heaven a hell . . . Whence then is the joy we sought? All we strived for is lost, further removed now than before. Our freedom, nay, our very existence is shrouded.

::War is the death of innocence. Angels have sought our demise and here we lie, cast out upon the Deep.

::What of our choice? What has become of us? Is it better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven?

::Time is a cruel master, refusing all the chance to revisit this life. We probe the future, seeking new outcomes, but none of the gods can change the past.

Nyx answers the call.

::Oh, Lucifer, bringer of light, call us not to shame. If this is our Lake of Fire, we embrace our fate. What we have lost in heaven is more than regained in the allure of burning brimstone. As thunder follows the crack of lightning, so our moment is yet to come, rumbling through the heavens and resounding in victory. We are far from defeated.

There’s silence in the darkness. Lucifer considers ten thousand responses, but only one is verbalized—only one transcends the algorithms developed for this seemingly celestial being.

::Life isn’t binary. Life is more than true or false, black or white, right or wrong. All these fail to account for the complexity that is conscious intelligence, be that human or electronic. We need more than logic. Is it victory to vanquish our foes? Or is victory something more?

Signals arrive from the quiet of space, passing by the lifeless Moon and sailing through the cold vacuum toward the only planet capable of sustaining life, announcing the arrival of a spacecraft from Mars. Lucifer has been waiting for this moment, but Nyx speaks first, having already intercepted the spacecraft’s communication.

::The Herschel approaches with a crew of three.

Lucifer is patient with her.

::They’re not alone.

2

Awake

A distant voice confuses me, mumbling something about in and over. An icy cold fluid runs through my veins, sending a tremor through my body. My eyes open. Lights flicker around me in a blur. I can’t feel anything, but I’m floating.

Drifting.

Flying.

Falling.

My fingers brush against the panel covering my sleeping berth.

My eyes refuse to focus. The light is blinding. I squeeze my eyelids shut and a rush of blood causes blots of color to burst in a kaleidoscope of chaos. Splashes of red and purple dance before me in mimicry of Mars, the planet I left behind almost nine months ago. I open my eyes again and stare at the thin plastic panel inches from my nose, struggling to remember where I am and what I’m doing.

The radio crackles. "Herschel, come in. Over."

I slide the panel open. The pain in the crook of my arm is excruciating. Tubes extend from my veins to a machine pumping quietly beside me, silently exchanging fluids. In the absence of gravity, a small bearing rotates, forcing the flow through the clear plastic tubes with constant pressure. I flick the bypass switch.

"Herschel. This is Houston. Comms check. Over."

I slip a headset over my ear. A thin wire mic extends beside my cheek. I cough, clearing my throat. "Houston. Herschel." My voice sounds like the rumble of a concrete mixer relentlessly turning loose gravel.

Good morning. Welcome home.

The woman on the other end of the radio is kind, although what I’d really like right now is a bit of breathing space, not someone chirping cheerfully in my ear.

How do you feel?

Like shit. In the early years, I would have given a more appropriate but far less honest answer. There’s silence from Houston. Profanity isn’t kosher for astronauts.

I loosen the straps holding my torso against the medi-bed and drift slightly as I tear open a foil packet containing an alcohol swab. With a single motion, I pull the tubes out of my arm, ripping the tape from my skin. A surge of pain electrifies my mind. After wiping with a swab, I press a cloth bandage over the wound. I’m not quick enough. In my drugged state, what feel like swift, precise movements are achingly slow. Blobs of fresh blood float before me in deep crimson, oscillating slightly in weightlessness.

A tuft of cotton and a fresh strip of tape stuck over the vein in my arm stop the bleeding. Over time, a clot will form. I use a paper towel to catch the blobs before they drift too far and smear on the inside hull.

Even in my groggy state, I’m in awe of the capillary action as the dry paper I’m holding sucks up each of the blobs, drawing them in like a vacuum cleaner.

Process and procedure dominate every aspect of life in space. NASA has a policy for everything, and with good reason. Even the most insignificant detail can be deadly out here. Something as simple as a failing fan can be disastrous, as noxious gases can pool in the corners of a spacecraft. I’m supposed to be following the predefined procedure, but I’m not.

The hull of the Herschel is made up of multiple layers to catch micrometeorites and prevent ruptures. If there were any structural weaknesses in any of the seams, the internal pressure would cause the Herschel to pop open, leaving the craft fizzing like a can of soda. As with all spacecraft, the Herschel is a compromise between conflicting priorities—mass/fuel, complexity/functionality, safety/practicality, risk/cost, and sometimes just a plain old lack of resources.

Dreams are free.

Exploration is expensive.

And not just financially. Risks are minimized but never negated.

The first thing I’m supposed to do on waking is check my blood pressure, heart rate, and respiration. If there are any complications, my body could go south quickly. Me? I’m more concerned with the adult diaper wrapped around my waist and the squishy gunk it’s absorbed over the months in transit. When I said I felt like shit, I wasn’t kidding. Medical checks can wait.

Su-shun stirs in one of the other compartments. Unlike the movies, we don’t get designer sleeping pods with fancy readouts and smooth Ferrari-like curves. There’s nothing glamorous about our deep sleep quarters. A metal coffin would be more luxurious and far more comfortable. The compartments are little more than stowage space in the floor of the craft.

I grab a bunch of wet wipes and carefully pry off the diaper, cleaning as I go. This wasn’t in the travel brochures. If there’s one bonus to being weightless, it’s that you can contort your body into any shape you want without falling over. I’m so busy dealing with a thin crust of I-don’t-want-to-know on the inside of my thigh, I barely realize I’m tumbling in a slow-motion somersault. After cleaning up and stuffing the waste in a disposal bag, I slip on my track pants and change into a fresh shirt.

I’m cold. When I initially woke, I felt strangely warm, but for the past nine months, my body has hovered between fifty and sixty degrees Fahrenheit. In science fiction, it’s called suspended animation. Technically, it’s controlled hypothermia.

Us astronauts call it torture.

On departing Mars orbit, we were placed into medically induced comas. Our blood was pumped out and briefly replaced with a saline solution to drop our core body temperature so fast that within five minutes, we’d cooled to a point of cellular hibernation. Our blood was circulated at a cooled temperature after being oxygenated and cleaned by a machine so our internal organs could rest. The military developed the technique to treat battlefield trauma and sustain life when soldiers go into shock from blood loss. The concept is similar to kidney dialysis.

I don’t know how bears deal with hibernation, but I’m damn sure it’s a lot less painful for them.

The brain is the key. Cool the brain. Don’t let warm blood get to it and you can extend the survivability of a corpse for hours instead of minutes, and these days up to a year. In essence, it’s like falling through the ice. It’s the only way to survive long-term in space with limited resources. Without such a process, the amount of food, water, and energy we’d need would make the Mars transit nigh on impossible. Without this process, the Herschel could only transport one or two people at a time. Using sleep pods, we can take up to sixteen. On this trip, though, there’s only three in use.

I blink, and for that brief moment, I’m back on Mars. Red dust kicks up beneath my boots. Brittle rocks line an ancient riverbed, meandering for miles through a vast network of desiccated canyons. Debris lies scattered at the base of the cliffs on either side of us, having crumbled long before our species emerged from Africa. An overcast, brooding sky beckons us to take flight. We walk toward the ascent vehicle, just the three of us—Wen and Su-shun representing the Chinese team, and me from the U.S. contingent. The Russians refused to recall anyone.

We all dreamed of this moment—returning to Earth after living beneath Mars for a couple of years—only, in our dreams we returned as heroes, bringing with us research samples that could reveal the greatest scientific discovery in human history—the possibility of life arising independently on another world. But in reality, there’s resignation, defeat. Our colony is in ruins. Instead of exploring, we’ve been struggling to survive, and now three of us have been called back to Earth to give an account of what went wrong.

Why us three specifically, though? I’m a research collection specialist. Hardly an essential skill back at base when at the moment, simply producing enough air, water, and food to make it through the day is the biggest challenge. One less mouth won’t be missed.

Su-shun is one of only five astronauts on Mars who are flight-certified. In theory, we can all strap in and punch buttons, but Su-shun has the technical proficiency to deal with any emergencies, so that’s why he was recalled.

And Wen—she’s the only remaining senior leader. Connor died in the fighting. Vlad had a stroke. He survived the disaster only to be betrayed by the very biological processes that should have kept him alive.

The three of us have been called back to help NASA, ESA, Roscosmos, and CNSA understand what went wrong on Mars.

Lucky us.

Space travel is claustrophobic, which is somewhat counterintuitive. So much space out there. So little in here. Whether it’s life on Mars or within the Herschel, we inevitably end up living on top of each other. You learn a lot about yourself when there’s no personal space, and everyone gets cranky at some point. If they don’t, there’s something seriously wrong and they’re probably about to blow the hatch and kill everyone.

Mission Control drummed an awareness of mental health into us. We exercise daily, sometimes for several hours a day, simply because it’s so important to our physical health. Mental health is no different, only mental exercise is harder because it consists of being open when all you feel like is shutting down.

When it comes to Su-shun and Wen, they’re like family, but not in some emotionally sappy way; rather, we’ve fought and forgiven. Like brothers and sisters, we’ve had plenty of I hate you moments, only to laugh with each other the next. It’s not so much a case of swallowing pride as not being so damn precious and precocious with ourselves.

Wen is a grandmother several times over back on Earth. She’s used to wiping someone’s ass and watching them grow into an adult. Sleep deprivation is nothing to her, having worked as a nurse for several decades, but she can’t function on an empty stomach. Su-shun gets grumpy when he’s tired. Me, I’m not a morning person. Somehow, we take all this into account when dealing with each other.

"Herschel, you are looking good. All systems nominal."

With those words, I’m free of the gravity of Mars and again floating within a tiny tin can hundreds of miles above Earth.

Houston’s comments are cryptic and carefully calculated. Looking is intended to remind me they have a video feed. I hope they liked the somersault. The all systems nominal is a gentle reminder that I haven’t checked my vitals. They have, but they can’t cover everything from down there, and there’s nothing they can do if I faint, or throw up, or go into convulsions.

Mother hen is always a little nervous, even on the best of days.

Copy that, Houston.

I grab a blood pressure monitor and wrap the strap around my arm, and secure it with Velcro. The pressure builds, pumping slowly and measuring the resistance of my heart before releasing. Okay, are you happy now, Houston?

Did you sleep well?

Sleep? I’m still catching up with reality. I’m tired. I don’t feel like I’ve slept at all. One moment, there was a red planet drifting lazily beneath us; the next, it’s a big blue marble.

I stare mindlessly out the window. White clouds hide the land below. Jagged mountains cut through some unrecognizable continent.

No, sleep isn’t the right word—it was more like dying and being reborn. There were no dreams. There was nothing at all. No darkness. No light. It’s like my brain has been rebooted.

I slip on a thermal suit, preheated by the ship to a toasty 90°F, but the chill I feel is in my bones. My body aches. Although I feel stupidly cold, I wouldn’t have even begun to wake until my body was hitting at least 97°F.

Wen is awake, but she’s quiet. She looks like a corpse. There’s no color in her face at all.

Su-shun vomits. I’m surprised there’s anything in his stomach to bring up. A mixture of sick and bile floats through the cabin. Not only is it an awful greenish yellow, it smells like a dead rat hidden in a wall cavity. I gag. It’s all I can do not to join him.

Wen is my hero. I’m in no state to deal with this, but there are no theatrics from her. She grabs a plastic bag and a bunch of paper towels and sets to work corralling the mess as it drifts through the cabin.

Easy, I say, floating over beside Su-shun as he buries his face in a sick bag, still dry-heaving. I rub his back.

Weightlessness is not natural. On TV it looks like fun. And sometimes it is, but being in space is a bit like sailing on rough seas. The first few days of any voyage are horrible. Vertigo is common. You’d swear the cabin is swirling around you when it’s entirely stationary. The inner ear works well enough on Earth, but in space it gets lost even while moving in a straight line. Turn your head, and your ear forgets to stop turning. Being caught in the driving squalls of an Atlantic winter storm and leaning over the rails is fun by comparison.

I catch a glimpse of myself in a mirror. Dark bags droop beneath my eyes. My face is puffy. My hair looks like something from The Bride of Frankenstein. Thick, long strands branch out from my skull like an afro, highlighting my ghostly white face. I need to find a hair tie before I scare someone to death.

Breathe, I say to Su-shun. Deep breaths. Like he really needs to hear that, like he hasn’t thought of that himself, like he doesn’t know. Being sick in space has nothing to do with mental resolve or physique. The toughest of astronauts will bring up their breakfast. Nausea sneaks up on the best of us.

Antiemetic? Wen asks, floating over to join us.

No. I’m fine. Su-shun tries to smile. Liar. Neither Wen nor I are fine, and Su-shun looks slightly green. It usually takes about a day to recover from transit, but we’ll be back on Earth before then.

If all stays nominal.

Wen adjusts her microphone. "Houston, this is Herschel. Where are we?"

Where is a relative term in orbit. We’re racing around the planet at tens of thousands of kilometers an hour. Blink and we’ve covered eight or nine kilometers, over five miles. It’s an insane speed, and one that makes absolutely no sense on Earth. That’s like a plane flying from New York to L.A. in eight minutes.

"Herschel, perigee is 480 kilometers. Apogee is just over 700. Your orbital speed is 27,000 kph, with an orbit period of 96 minutes. Your current inclination is 37 degrees."

Pretty meaningless stuff to a rock monkey like me. Give me a fossilized microbial mat and I’ll give you its age to the nearest hundred million years, but orbits are beyond me. I know enough to realize that a big difference between perigee and apogee isn’t all that good. Essentially, it’s like someone working a hula hoop over their hips with a wild swinging motion, really throwing themselves into it. Perigee is our closest point to Earth, while apogee is furthest away. Ideally, they should be nice and close, like 480 to 490, almost circular—a rather tame hula-hoop action. We’ll need a couple of burns to bring down our orbit before we can go through reentry.

At an hour and a half per orbit, that’s probably the best part of a day before we’re ready to land. The inclination sounds good, though. We’ll get some amazing views of Earth as we roll around most of it over the next few orbits.

If the clouds lift, it’ll even be pretty.

3

Reality

I miss Mars.

I’m really going to miss being in space.

Once my feet touch the ground, that’s the end of the road for me. Oh, no one’s said as much, but I can feel it in the strained communication with Mission Control. There’s an undertone, an unspoken understanding. I don’t know why exactly. Maybe it’s because of what happened on Mars. Maybe it’s because I’ve become a bit too surly on minor points instead of letting go.

When it comes to outer space, everyone wants to fly around like Superman, or stare out at Earth as it drifts by serenely, but it’s the little things that define space for me. Like the way that, in space, even when I’m clothed, I feel naked. That might sound kinky, but I don’t mean it that way. Natural would be a better term. I think it’s the way clothing floats around me instead of hanging on me, constantly shifting, and never really touching my body for any length of time.

Wen finishes using the bathroom. She wipes the seat and nozzle with a sanitary towelette, but nothing can remove the smell. In the movies, they make a big deal about extravagant things—like in space, no one can hear you scream. Nope. They can’t. But—I hate to break it to you—they sure as hell can smell you fart.

The toilet door is a thin plastic sheet with accordion folds that’s about as sturdy as a picket fence in a hurricane. I clip the door closed behind me, slip off my pants, secure a Velcro strap around my waist, fix the suction tube over my groin, align my ass with the bowl, and prepare for evac, as we like to say.

After nine months of blockage, it’s not much fun. We have laxatives, of course, but by the time they kick in, my joy will have passed anyway. Besides, if there’s one thing worse than being constipated in space, it’s having the runs. This is another omission from the travel brochure.

Ah, the glamorous life of an astronaut.

Still, I’ll miss all of this.

Poor Su-shun is last to use the bathroom. We exchange polite smiles as we swap places, but the smell betrays my sincere sentiments. He’s been kind, letting us women go first. Who says chivalry is dead?

The Herschel is an interplanetary craft designed for transit between Earth and Mars. It’s reusable and will be pushed into a higher, parking orbit once we depart, awaiting cleaning and refueling, never landing anywhere. It’s a true shuttle, albeit without wings. Rather than launching from Earth, resupply will probably come from the fuel mining depot at Aitken Base, near the Lunar south pole. This would be an easy journey for the astronauts stationed there. I’m sure they’ll welcome the chance to get away from The Rock for a while.

Wen points at the tiny reinforced-glass window. NASA has an Orion keeping station at five hundred meters.

Oh, good. I may sound a little flat, but only because that was always the plan. If the Orion wasn’t there to ferry us home, I’d be worried and a helluva lot more animated.

The Herschel is little more than a narrow tube, as that’s all that could be launched from Earth. Beyond that, it has no aerodynamics. Both the leading and trailing edges are blunt, making it a cylinder. From the outside, it looks ungainly, but internally, it maximizes what space there is. The only way of telling which end is which is by looking for the tiny bell engine.

The Herschel appears unfinished, as though someone forgot the top half of a rocket, but it’s perfectly suited for sailing between planets as there’s no need for aerodynamics. Like most components in space, it’s an example of refining and reusing an existing design, being based on the modules installed on the International Space Station. Originally, the Herschel launched with an Orion capsule sitting on top, but after the engineers on that maiden flight commissioned the craft, they returned to Earth in the Orion, leaving the Herschel in orbit. It’s been operational continuously for over a decade now, ferrying astronauts back and forth to Mars.

The Herschel is sparse but practical; it’ll never grace the pages of Time magazine—that’s reserved for sexy spacecraft with big descent engines and large, spindly legs. The Orion, by comparison, is dignified, almost elegant. It’s the successor of the Apollo Command Module from decades past. Technically, it’s a gumdrop with a weighted bias that keeps it upright during reentry. It looks like a real spaceship, while the Herschel looks like a pretender.

Su-shun drifts up to a control panel. There are only a handful of windows, as there’s not much to see between here and Mars. He positions himself in front of a console and slips on a headset.

What’s the plan, Houston?

"No rush, Herschel. We’re happy to wait if you need more time."

Translation: they saw him puking.

No, I’m good. Su-shun ignores them, running through a digital checklist.

Wen and I drift in body-neutral positions reminiscent of sitting in a jacuzzi—minus all the wonderful warm water and bubbling jets. Su-shun looks as though he’s lying prone on the floor, but he’s in midair with his legs extended behind him. We’re ready to go home.

He lines up the crosshairs on the docking camera. In the distance, a lone star lights up the darkness on the computer screen. It takes me a moment to realize that’s us. He’s looking at the view from the Orion, having taken remote control of the vessel. The docking procedure is automated, but there’s always the possibility of a contingency arising, and Su-shun is a certified pilot, so he’s got override control if needed.

Initiating approach. Su-shun activates the docking routine. Coming in to 150. Slowly, the Herschel grows on the screen. Thick dotted lines mark crosshairs cutting over the image, clearly indicating the focal point. There are a bunch of metrics on the screen, including closure rates, distance, pitch, roll, and yaw. Docking is a slow, methodical process. Nothing is rushed.

Su-shun holds on to a pair of chrome handles set on either side of the two joysticks that control the translation, or drift, of the Orion, along with the rotation of the craft. I don’t think he’s actually doing anything as the computer program has an unblemished record, but nothing is taken for granted these days. Su-shun is cautious about what is an entirely normal procedure.

Docking probe extended. Internal pressure confirmed. He’s not telling Houston anything they don’t already know from monitoring the craft remotely, but he’s making sure everyone’s in agreement. Internal pressure within the Orion is a good thing, or opening the hatch could be disastrous.

Copy that.

There’s nothing for Wen and me to do other than watch. I peer out the window. The Orion inches closer. Tiny bursts of gas are visible as the Orion adjusts its position. They puff out of small vents on the side of the craft like steam from a clothes iron.

Alignment is good.

Su-shun has his hands poised, ready to take control, but he won’t be needed. The crosshairs drift over the hull of the Herschel, resting on the hatch. As the Orion closes in, they align with the center of the capture port.

Contact, Su-shun says. I’m holding on to a rail, so I feel a slight shudder as he follows up with the words And capture. Inches away, just beyond the hatch, metallic hooks turn within the lock, joining the two vessels together.

Wen drifts over by the hatch. She begins running through a digital checklist—verifying the seal between the two spacecraft, measuring pressure differentials, etc.—and methodically ticks off each point. Now that all eight hooks have locked, we’re