Тим Пауэрс - Free Stories 2018

Walt just nodded.

“I can see why… but think of it… there’s nothing more you and anybody else can do in this building. The training… procedures… all been checked and re-checked, eh?”

“Damn right.”

He flopped a hand. “Then it’s up to the X factor… Eh? The one part of everything that can’t really be tested to the core…”

Walt was going to ask him what he meant, when the speaker came to life again. The second faint voice, still nearly buried in static: “ Eagle , this is Columbia . You’re go for PDI and they recommend you yaw right 10 degrees and try the high gain again.”

A wait. “ Eagle , you read Columbia ?”

A third man’s voice: “ Columbia , Roger, we read you.”

Walt realized his sweated-out shirt had to be shrinking, because it was oh so very tight against his chest. The old man gently tapped his cane up and down.

“Mr. Morrow, you know, we could—”

“Please, call me Oscar.”

“Oscar, you could be someplace else besides here, you know. You could see a lot of what’s going on.”

He shook his head. “With these eyes? Be a waste of time.”

“But we could hook you up with earpieces, so you could hear everything that’s going on, not just from the public comm.”

Oscar smiled, his teeth the glaring white of dentures. “Nope, just satisfied to be sitting with an eager young pup like you, hearing just the minimum, just enough to visualize what’s going on out there.” A pause. “But I do thank you and your bosses, for allowing me here, for you to escort me.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Ah, no, you’re not thinking that for real, are you. I know you, what you want… you’d rather be out there with your folks, the ones you worked twelve hour days with, six or seven days a week… instead of babysitting an old fart like me. Am I right?”

It was like he was back in school again. The glare of the eyes, the sharp voice, the confidence that came from knowing what was going through a student’s mind.

“Sorry, yes, I wish I was out there,” Walt admitted. “That’s where I belong.”

More voices were exchanged over the speaker, and Walt listened to the LM pilot rattling off items from the descent checklist: “DECA Gimbal AC, closed. Circuit breaker. Command override, off. Gimbal enable. Rate scale, 25.”

“True,” Oscar said. “And I admire you for it. Coming to work every day, dodging the war protesters, trying to ignore those that say the money’s being wasted… saying money spent here should go for housing and the poor and everything else… hell, most of your generation probably don’t even look up at the Moon any more, they’re too –--“

Walt twisted his M.I.T. ring even more. “They’re too stupid, that’s all. They don’t understand.”

The old man gently smiled. “Understand what, son?”

Walt hesitated, but went ahead, knowing he could trust revealing what he believed to Oscar. “We can’t stay earthbound forever. We’ve got to get out into space.”

“They say it’s too expensive just to go out and explore,” he said quietly, repeating the old arguments. “There’s other priorities. The poor, ending the war, civil rights…”

“I’m not talking about exploring!” Walt said, voice sharp, the ring moist in his fingers. “We’ve got to get out there, so we can survive. War, environmental collapse, even a passing asteroid… we could go the way of the dinosaurs, all in a blink of an eye. This is our one chance.”

Oscar moved the cane around, slowly nodded. “That’s the problem with chances. They’re like fog. One moment it’s before you, another moment, it’s gone…”

More crackling from the plain speaker.

A few moments later, the Eagle’s commander simply said: “Ignition.”

And the LM pilot quickly acknowledged: “Ignition. Thrust at 10 percent.”

Walt nodded to his guest. “They’re off.”

“So they are,” Oscar replied, shifting some in his wheelchair. “Godspeed, and then some.”

Walt leaned forward, feeling like his shirt was going to split apart at the seems, his legs still trembling, and he was glad the old man couldn’t see them shake. He said, “What did you mean back there, about the X factor? What factor is that?”

“The X factor…” The old man’s voice faltered, his breathing labored, rattling. “The X factor…”

The old man suddenly coughed, hacked loudly and sharply, his pale wrinkly face suddenly turning red. Walt panicked, sitting up straight, thinking Oscar was going to have a heart attack and die right here and now in front of him. Holy Christ… and with a flash of a hard decision, he knew that if the man croaked in the next few seconds, he wouldn’t call for help. Not until the Eagle had safely landed. If Oscar was dead, so be it. Walt wasn’t going to miss the next few minutes of his life, of history.

There was a series of deep, rattling breaths, and then Oscar settled back against his wheelchair, his chest rising up and down rapidly, like he had just finished a 100-meter sprint.

“That’s your X factor… the body… the pilot… always been the weak point, hasn’t it…” A line of drool started down the left side of his lip. “You and me… the engineers, right from the beginning, designed and tested and re-tested all the gear we shot up into space, even before we knew what kind of hostile environment existed up there. The testing… with the telemetry, you could see what piece of equipment worked, what other piece of equipment failed. So you re-worked that failed piece, tried and tested again.”

Oscar slapped at his gaunt chest. “But this… this has always been the weak point, eh?”

Walt just nodded, glum. “We sometimes call it the G Factor.”

“I’ve heard that,” and the old man cackled. “We engineers, we always have our special codes and words, eh?”

Walt didn’t reply.

On this historic day, he wasn’t an engineer.

He was just a goddamn babysitter.

What a story to tell his yet-to-be-born kids, years from now.

In his years of flying and testing after getting his degree from M.I.T., Walt had been in some tight scrapes before, had felt that bone-crunch of pressure on his shoulders, had gotten scared when a piece of equipment had unexpectedly failed or an engine on an aircraft he had been a passenger on had flamed-out, but nothing seemed to frighten him as much as what he was hearing over the speaker, with the old man staring calmly across from him, like he was visualizing himself being with the crew of the Eagle . Every now and then Walt shivered, and another phrase from his aunt came to him: “A goose walking across your grave.”

Pretty goddamn heavy and persistent goose.

“ Eagle , this is Houston. We’ve got you now. It’s looking good. Over.”

The LM pilot crisply talked to the commander, voice a bit high pitched. “Okay, rate of descent looks good.”

Oscar’s eyes were closed. Had the old man fallen asleep? Even now?

Walt wondered what he should do. Oscar stirred, opened his eyes. “Sorry… drifted off there for a moment… did I miss anything?”

“Still descending. Still looks nominal.”

A nod from the old man. “Just minutes to go. Hard to believe. Just minutes.”

Walt was going to say something, but the speaker burst out again with static and voices: “ Eagle , this is Houston. Roger. You are go. You are go to continue powered descent. You are go to continue powered descent.”

Oscar nodded with satisfaction. “So close. Maybe they’ll make it, eh?”

Then it all went wrong.