Jason Frost - Badlands

"How they hangin', Houston?"

Muffled laughter filtered through the speaker from Houston. "Got a little static here, guys. Better check out your end."

"Will do, Houston," Paige said, grinning. Christ, Steve was even stuffier than before. Meat and potatoes, high school football letter, degree in engineering from the navy. All he wanted from her is to be his little cheerleader, forever young in her miniskirt. Thing was, sometimes that seemed almost appealing. Almost.

She felt the slight stinging in the crease of her index finger where she'd burned herself a couple of nights ago. She'd decided to bake a cake. It was a ritual she performed every few months, an attempt to do something culturally feminine. It was her way of thumbing her nose at those, even within her own family, who said, "Sure you can orbit the earth, but why can't you keep a man?" By choice, was her answer. But sometimes she felt that guilt, that doubt, that longing to fulfill the role expected of her. Last March after her thirty-third birthday, she'd felt it even more. If she was ever going to have a child, she'd have to decide soon, while it was still safe. It made her feel a little like a time bomb.

In the meantime, she proved herself by cooking a fancy Chinese dish, making an apron, taking ballroom dancing. This time it was baking a cake. She'd never done it before, but how hard could it be? She'd opened the cookbook. German chocolate seemed easy enough. Maybe too easy. She'd make it with coconut-pecan frosting. She methodically lined up all the ingredients she would need: flour, sweet cooking chocolate, buttermilk, pecans, coconut, etc. Everything in a neat row. Not only would she bake the fucking cake, she wouldn't even make a mess doing it.

Three hours later it was done. Perfect. Just like the lemon chicken, the apron, her dancing. And the kitchen was neater than when she'd started. Except for the tiny blister on her finger where she'd touched the hot pan while stirring the frosting. It seemed every time she took on one of these projects she injured herself in some small way. Not enough to be bothersome, but kind of like a reminder. She shook it out of her head.

Maybe it was this mission that brought out those questions. Thinking about her father. Not that he'd been anything but encouraging to her. Still, with her mother dead for the past eight years, her father was all she had left of a family. Maybe that's what kept her thinking about starting her own family. It didn't matter. Right now, only the mission mattered.

"California here we come," Bart was singing. Only this time, he wasn't smiling.

"We're going down," Paige said.

Capt. Steve Connors and Dr. Bart Piedmont scrambled back to their seats. The two soldiers, Daryl Budd and Phil La Porte, had never left their seats, hadn't even unbuckled their belts.

"You guys don't know what you're missing," Bart said as he swam through the air toward his seat. He pursed his lips and puffed in and out like a fish.

So far everything had gone perfectly. NASA needed film to supply to the news programs to convince them of the routine aspect of the flight, so for half an hour they'd all looked busy and professional for the onboard cameras. Even Bart had kept his joking clean. Budd and La Porte had been kept in the background as much as possible, and would probably be edited out later anyway.

"What's that?" Bart said, pointing out the payload bay. They were flying upside-down, as usual, which made the payload bay the best view.

Thick ribbons of red and brown and white swirled on the earth below. "Dasht-e Kavir," Paige said. "Salt desert in Iran."

"It's magnificent."

Paige nodded. "My favorite too. Except for the Amazon when there are thunderstorms."

"I prefer the Bahamas," Steve said. "Greener than a jealous woman's eyes." He chuckled at his own wit.

"But not greener than our two friends here," Bart said.

The speakers crackled. "You guys ready to de-orbit?"

"Ready, Houston," Paige answered.

"Pressure suits secure?"

"Check."

"Biomedical sensors strapped on?"

"Check."

"Payload doors closed?"

Paige flipped the switch. "Check."

"Computers programmed for re-entry?"

"Check."

There was a pause. "Got your maps to the stars' homes?"

Paige laughed. "And tickets to the Tonight Show."

"Then you're ready. Good luck, Columbia."

"Thank you, Houston."

Paige began the process of bringing the craft down from its speed of almost twenty-five times the speed of sound. She fired the OMS engines to slow them down to less than three hundred feet per second and push them into an elliptical orbit the low point of which would be closer to the earth's surface. When the OMS burn was over, she pitched the ship over so it was in a forty-degree nose-up angle that would let the insulated underbelly deal with the atmosphere's heat.

They hit the atmosphere at Mach 24.5 after passing Guam. Immediately they lost radio contact with Houston since there were no tracking stations in that part of the Pacific. Also, the heat of re-entry would stifle any radio broadcasts for the next sixteen minutes.

Paige saw the blips of orange out of the corners of her eyes as the reaction-control jets fired. Five minutes after losing contact with Houston, they noticed the pinkish red glow as the thirty-one thousand chalklike square tiles made from pure Minnesota sand began to absorb the heat.

"Get those visors down," Paige commanded.

Everyone did.

The visors sealed the pressure suits so that they would automatically inflate if re-entry heat burned through the cabin and released the air.

"It doesn't feel hot in here," Bart said, amazement mixed with relief.

"It's not supposed to," Steve said.

"Here comes the tricky part," Paige announced.

They could see the dense huddle of gray clouds almost a thousand miles long just off the western coast of the United States. North America looked funny, not at all like the shape they all had etched in their memories. With California gone all the way from San Francisco to the Mexican Baja, North America now looked like a one-armed man. The clouds shrouding the island of California looked like an empty sleeve floating out to sea. They could even make out the tiny dots that were navy patrol boats preventing anyone from entering or exiting that fog.

"Christ," Steve Connors said. "You're the scientist, Bart. You sure we're going to be safe going through that thing? You've seen what it's done to the few who've gone through."

"Don't worry. We've got a special decontamination chamber onboard that should do the trick. Besides, the heat from re-entry should kill anything it touches."

"We've already gone over this, Steve," Paige said.

"Yeah, but that was sitting on our asses in Florida. I'm talking about a couple minutes from actually entering that crap. What happens when we take off again? We won't have that re-entry heat to protect us then?"

Bart sighed. "No, but we'll still have the decon chamber. The heat's just an extra bonus. So don't worry, you're perfectly safe." He paused. "Unless you've had sex within the last week."

"What?" Daryl Budd hollered.

"They didn't say nothing about that," Phil La Porte said.

"Sure they did, fellas. Told all us guys. Have sex and pass through the Halo, your dong drops off within the hour. Right, Dr. Lyons?"

Paige kept a straight face. "Absolutely, Dr. Piedmont."

"Penis shrivelitis is the technical term, I think," Bart continued.

"Knock it off, Bart," Steve said. "We've got work to do." He frowned at Paige. "Why do you encourage him?"

"I like him."

"Yeah, I bet you do."

Paige laughed. She'd forgotten Steve's ridiculous jealousy.

The computers had the shuttle doing rolls to slow it down as they slipped through the approach corridor. The thrusters were still firing. They did their last roll at Mach 2.6 and the thrusters stopped. They shifted to the all-aerodynamic mode.