David Brin: Earth

While Mark rambled, Teresa scanned overhead, checking that fuel cell number two wasn’t about to act up again. Station rendezvous always made her nervous. All the more so when she was flying a model-one shuttle. The noises Pleiades made — its creaking aluminum bones, the swish of coolant in old-style heat-transfer lines, the squidgy sound of hydraulic fluid swiveling pitted thrusters — these were like the sighs of a one-time champion who still competed, but only because the powers-that-be found that less expensive than replacing her.

Newer shuttles were simpler, designed for narrower purposes. Teresa figured Pleiades was perhaps the most complex machine ever made. And the way things were going, nothing like it would ever be built again.

A glitter over near Sagittarius caught her eye. Teresa identified it without having to check: the old international Mars mission — scavenged for components, and the remnants parked in high orbit when that last bold venture had been canceled, back when she was still in grade school. The new rule for harder times was simple — space had to pay for itself with near-term rewards. No pie in the sky. No investment in maybes. Not when starvation remained an all too likely prospect for such a large portion of humanity.

“… checked our trajectory three different ways, folks, and Captain Tikhana has declared that all’s well. Physics has not broken down…”

Overlaid across the constellations were multicolored graphics displaying the vessel’s orbital parameters. Also in the forward window, Teresa saw her own reflection. A smudge had taken residence on her cheek, near where a curl of dark brown hair escaped her launch cap… probably a grease speck from adjusting a passenger’s seat before launch. Rubbing just smeared it out, however, overaccentuating her strong cheekbones.

Great. Just the thing to make Jason think I’m losing sleep over him . Teresa didn’t need any more aggravation, not when she was about to see her husband for the first time in two months.

In contrast, Mark Randall’s reflection looked boyish, carefree. His pale face — demarcated from the white of his spacesuit by the anodized helmet ring — showed none of the radiation stigmata that now scarred Jason’s cheeks… the so-called “Rio tan,” acquired working outside through the sleeting hell of the South Atlantic magnetic anomaly. That escapade, a year ago, had won Jason both a promotion and a month’s hospitalization for anticancer treatments. It was also about when troubles in their marriage had surfaced.

Teresa resented Mark’s smooth complexion. It should have been a confirmed bachelor like him who volunteered to go out and save the peepers’ beloved spy-eye, instead of Jason I’m-married-but-what-the-heck Stempell.

It also should have been some bachelor who signed up to work cheek by jowl with that blonde temptress June Morgan. But once again, guess who raised his hand?

Easy, girl. Don’t get your blood up. The objective is reconciliation, not confrontation.

Mark was still regaling the Air Force men below. “… remind me to tell you how one time she an’ her old man smuggled a homemade sextant on a mission. Now any other married couple might’ve chosen something more useful, such as…”

With her right hand, Teresa made a gesture whose meaning had changed little since the days of Crazy Horse. Spacer sign-talk for cut the crap .

“Um, but I guess we’ll save that story for another day. Please remain strapped in as we make our last burn before station rendezvous.” Randall switched off the intercom. “Sorry, boss. Got a little carried away there.”

Teresa knew he was unrepentant. Anyway, that episode with the sextant wasn’t much compared to the tall tales told about some astronauts. None of that mattered. What was important was that you lived, the ship lived, the mission got done, and you were asked to fly again.

“Burn in five seconds,” she said, counting down. “… three, two, one…”

A deep-throated growl filled the cabin as hypergolic motors ignited, adding to their forward velocity. Since they were at orbital apogee, this meant Pleiades’ perigee would rise. Ironically, that in turn would slow them down, allowing their destination, the space station, to catch up from behind them.

The station’s beacons showed on radar as a neat row of blips strung along a slender string, pointing Earthward. The lowermost dot was their target, Nearpoint, where they’d offload cargo and passengers.

Next came the cluster of pinpoints standing for the Central Complex, twenty kilometers farther out, where scientific and development work took place in free-fall conditions. The final, topmost blip represented a cluster of facilities tethered even higher — the Farpoint research lab, where Jason worked. They had agreed to meet at the halfway lounge, if offloading went well at her end and if his experiments let him get away.

They had a lot to talk about.

All motors shut off as a sequencer by her knee shone zero. The faint pressure on her backrest departed again. What replaced it wasn’t “zero-g.” After all, there was plenty of gravity, pervading space all around them. Teresa preferred the classic term “free fall.” An orbit, after all, is just a plummet that keeps missing .

Unfortunately, even benign falling isn’t always fun. Teresa had never suffered spacesickness, but by now half the passengers were probably feeling queasy. Hell, even peepers were people.

“Commence yaw and roll maneuver,” she said, as a formality. The computers were managing fine so far. Thrusters in the shuttle’s nose and tail — smaller than the OMS brutes — gave pulsing kicks to set the horizon turning in a complex, two-axis rotation. They fired again to stabilize on a new direction.

“That’s my baby,” Mark said softly to the ship. “You may be gettin’ on in years, but you’re still my favorite.”

Many astronauts romanticized the last Columbia-class shuttle. Before boarding they would pat the seven stars painted by the shuttle’s entry hatch. And, while it went unspoken, some clearly thought beneficent ghosts rode Pleiades , protecting her every flight.

Maybe they were right. Pleiades had so far escaped the scrapyard fate of Discovery and Endeavor , or the embarrassing end that had befallen old Atlantis .

Privately, though, Teresa thought it a pity the old crate hadn’t been replaced long ago — not by another prissy model-three job, either, but by something newer, better. Pleiades wasn’t a true spaceship, after all. Only a bus. A local, at that.

And despite all the so-called romance of her profession, Teresa knew she was little more than a bus driver.

“Maneuver completed. Switching to hook-rendezvous program.”

“Yo,” Teresa acknowledged. She toggled the Ku band downlink. “MCC Colorado Springs, this is Pleiades . We’ve finished siphoning external tank residuals to recovery cells and jettisoned the ET. Circularization completed. Request update for approach to Ere—” Teresa stopped, recalling she was talking to Air Force. ” — for approach to Reagan Station.”

The controller’s tinny voice filled her earphones.

“Roger, Pleiades . Target range check, ninety-one kilometers… mark.”

“Yes?” Randall interrupted with a weak smirk. It was a stale joke, which, fortunately, control didn’t hear.

“Doppler twenty-one meters per second… mark. Tangential v, five point two mps… mark.”

Teresa did a quick scan. “Verified, control. We agree.”

“An’ thar she blows,” said Mark, peering through the overhead window. “Erehwon, right on schedule.”

“Ixnay, Mark. Open mike.”