Dan Simmons - Phases of Gravity

'There it is,' said his father.

Baedecker looked up, following the pointing finger, and there in the dark gaps between the cold stars, impossibly bright, orange as the tip of his father's cigarette, moving west to east far too high and too fast to be an aircraft, moved the Sputnik too small to be seen.

Dave made chili, and they had a late dinner after they got back from Miz Callahan's, sitting in the long kitchen and listening to Bach on a portable cassette player. Kink Weltner dropped by and drank a beer while they ate. Dave and Kink talked about football while Baedecker tuned out, football being one of the few sports that bored him senseless. When they went outside to see Kink off, the full moon was rising, outlining rock outcroppings and pine trees on the ridgeline to the east.

'I want to show you something,' said Dave.

In a small back room on the first floor, there were mounds of books, a crude desk made of a door set on sawhorses, a typewriter, and several hundred sheets of manuscript stacked under a paperweight made from part of the abort switch from a Gemini spacecraft.

'How long have you been working on this?' asked Baedecker, thumbing through the first fifty pages or so.

'A couple of years,' said Dave. 'It's funny, but I only work out here in Lonerock. I have to drag my research stuff back and forth.'

'Going to work on it this weekend?'

'No, I'd like you to look at it if you would,' said Dave. 'I want your opinion. You're a writer.'

'Nuts,' said Baedecker. 'Some writer. I spent two years fiddling with that stupid book and never got past chapter four. It finally occurred to me that to write something you have to have something to say.'

'You're a writer,' repeated Dave. 'I'd appreciate your opinion of this.' He handed the rest of the stack to Baedecker.

Later, Baedecker lay on his bed and read for two hours. The book was unfinished — entire chapters existing only in outline form, a few scribbled notes — but what was there, fascinated Baedecker. The manuscript's working title was Forgotten Frontiers , and the opening segments dealt with the early exploration of both the Antarctic and the moon. Parallels were drawn. Some were as obvious as the races to plant the flag, the hunger to be first, taking precedence over any serious or systematic scientific programs. Other similarities were more subtle, such as the stark beauty of the south polar desert drawn in comparison to firsthand accounts of the moon. The information was drawn from diaries, notes, and recorded statements. With both Antarctica and the moon, the inadequate accounts — the descriptions of the Antarctic explorers being, by far, the better expressed — told of the mysterious clarity of desolation, the overwhelming beauty of a new place totally foreign to mankind's previous experience, and of the seductive attraction inherent in a place so inclement and so hostile as to be completely indifferent to human aspirations and frailties.

In addition to exploring the aesthetics of exploration, Dave had woven in minibiographies and psychological portraits of ten men — five Antarctic explorers and five space voyagers. The Antarctic profiles included Amundsen, Byrd, Ross, Shackleton, and Cherry-Ganard. For their modern-day counterparts, Dave had chosen four of the lesser-known Apollo astronauts, three of whom had walked on the moon and one who had — like Tom Gavin — remained in lunar orbit aboard the Command Module. He had also included one Russian, Pavel Belyayev. Baedecker had met Belyayev at the Paris Air Show in 1968, and he had been standing with Dave Muldorff and Michael Collins when Belyayev had said, 'Soon, perhaps, I will see first-hand what the backside of the moon looks like.' Now Baedecker was interested to read that, according to Dave's research, Belyayev had indeed been chosen to be the first cosmonaut to go on a circumlunar flight in a modified Zond spacecraft. The launch date was only a few months after Baedecker and the others had spoken to him in the spring of 1968. Instead, Apollo 8 became the first spacecraft to circle the moon that Christmas, the Soviet lunar program was quietly scrapped under the pretense they had never planned to go to the moon, Belyayev died a year later as a result of an operation for a bleeding ulcer, and — instead of becoming famous as the first man to see the backside of the moon in person — the luckless cosmonaut received the minor distinction of being the first dead Russian 'space hero' not to be buried in the Kremlin Wall. Baedecker thought of his father . . .'then everything falls to pieces and you're just waiting to die.'

The sections on the four American astronauts were — at best — only sketched in, although the direction these chapters would take was obvious enough. As with the portraits of the Antarctic explorers, the Apollo segments would deal with the astronauts' thoughts in the years following their missions, new perspectives they may have gained, old perspectives lost, and a discussion of any frustration they might feel at the impossibility of their ever returning to this particular frontier. Baedecker agreed with the choice of astronauts, he found himself very curious what they might say and share, but he felt that this would be the heart of the book when it was done . . . and by far the most difficult part to research and write.

He was thinking about this, standing at the window looking at the moonlight on the leaves of the lilac tree, when Dave knocked and entered.

'Still dressed, I see,' said Dave. 'Can't sleep?'

'Not yet,' said Baedecker.

'Me either,' said Dave and tossed him his cap. 'Want to go for a ride?'

Driving north on I-5 toward Tacoma, Baedecker thinks about Maggie's call the previous evening.

'Maggie?' he had said, surprised that she had gotten hold of him at the Muldorff's. He realized that it was almost one A.M. on the east coast. 'What's the matter, Maggie? Where are you?'

'Boston,' said Maggie. 'I got the number from Joan. I'm sorry about your friend, Richard.'

'Joan?' he said. The thought of Maggie Brown having talked to his ex-wife seemed unreal to Baedecker.

'I called about Scott,' said Maggie. 'Have you been in touch with him?'

'No,' said Baedecker. 'The last couple of months I've been trying. I cabled the old address in Poona and sent letters, but there was no response. I called out here to Oregon in November, but somebody at their ranch said they did-n't have Scott's name on their residents' list. Do you know where he is?'

'I'm pretty sure he's there,' said Maggie. 'In Oregon. At the ashram-ranch there. A friend of ours who was in India came back to B.U. a few days ago. He said that Scott came back to the States with him on the first of December. Bruce said that Scott had been pretty sick in India and that he'd spent several weeks in the hospital there — or at least in the infirmary that passes for a hospital there on the Master's farm outside of Poona.'

'Asthma?' said Baedecker.

'Yes,' said Maggie, 'and a bad case of dysentery.'

'Did Joan say Scott'd been in touch with her?'

'She said she hadn't heard from him since early November from Poona,' said Maggie. 'She gave me the Muldorffs' number. I wouldn't have called, Richard, but I didn't know where else to get in touch with you, and Bruce — my friend who came back from India — said that Scott's been pretty sick. He wasn't able to walk off the plane when they landed in Los Angeles. He's pretty sure that Scott's at the ranch in Oregon.'

'Thanks, Maggie,' said Baedecker. 'I'll call out there right away.'

'How are you, Richard?' Something in the tone of Maggie's voice changed, deepened.

'I'm all right,' he said.

'I'm so sorry about your friend Dave. I loved the stories you told me about him in Colorado. I'd hoped to meet him someday.'