John Sandford - Saturn Run

By lunchtime the earth that slid past the window was shrunken, the curvature of the horizon more pronounced. The Nixon was on its third expanding spiral orbit about the earth and the status monitor showed that it had lost about a third of a kilometer per second of velocity, but picked up more than five hundred kilometers of altitude. By dinnertime, the view of Earth, now three thousand, six hundred kilometers below, was dramatically different.

Sandy and Fiorella were doing two-minute squirts of commentary, every half hour. In their cameras, which ran continuously, the earth looked much smaller than it had at the start.

“Man, a freaking year with no surf. I think I want off,” Sandy said.

“I don’t know, Earth might not be a safe place for us,” Fiorella said.

“What?”

“We might have made Fang-Castro look a little too good.”

“Ah, bullshit,” Sandy said.

“Hell hath no fury like a president upstaged.”

Sandy grinned. “You know, FC did look pretty good. And when I left the command deck, I thought she looked a little smug.”

“It’s funny now, but…”

By breakfast the next morning, the Nixon had completed seven ever-expanding circuits of the earth. The planet, nineteen thousand kilometers away, was fully visible as a ball. The Nixon had lost almost half its speed, but no one could doubt that it was leaving the earth behind. The day before, the crew had been jubilant, hyper. By the next morning, everyone was simply subdued. For the next year, for better or for worse, the Nixon would be their entire world.

They were stuck with each other. No chance for second thoughts, no opportunity to back out.

John Clover finished his usual breakfast of pancakes, tofu sausage, and orange juice, looked at Becca and asked, “What?”

“Nothing. I’ve been up here for weeks, never a thought about it—the separation. Now I’m thinking about it.” She pushed an egg around her plate, nibbled at a piece of toast.

“Well, stop thinking about it.”

“Not always that easy.” She looked past him, at the shrinking Earth out the window, and at the altitude display, which was steadily clicking off kilometers like a second hand, each clock-tick marking their increasing separation from home.

“No, but you’ll get used to it,” Clover said.

“How do you know that? Maybe I’ll fabricate a hatchet and run screaming through the ship…”

“First, don’t let Crow hear you say that. Second, tens of thousands of people are sent to prison in the United States every year. Conditions are not good, but the vast majority manage to survive long periods inside when they are effectively as contained as we are. Many times, brutally contained, without access to any society at all. We, on the other hand, are all quite comfortable, well-tended, and engaged in one of the most prestigious adventures in the history of the world. We’ll all be famous in our various professions. You already are.”

“I couldn’t handle prison, either,” Becca said.

“Sure you could. In fact, if you were telling the truth about your last job, you were in a kind of prison—at least, a little green man from Mars couldn’t have told the difference. You woke up in one building, went to another building, spent the entire day there, until late at night, then went back to the first building, where you went to sleep. Here, you wake up in one building, take an elevator to the engineering department, work all day, and come back here to sleep. Same exact thing that you had been doing.”

“But back home, I could go out when I wanted to.”

“But you didn’t. Not often.”

“But if I poked a hole in the wall of my apartment, or a hole in the wall of a prison, the world would be outside. Apple trees and birds. Poke a hole in one of our walls, and there’s nothing out there but a giant void. Nothing but a black, airless hole and meaningless death.”

Clover smiled and said, “Take a pill. No, wait—don’t take a pill. Pull your shorts up and go back to work. You’re in an office building. Don’t worry about it.”

After a little more chat, Becca checked the time and said, “I like talking to you, John. I’m in an office building. I’m going to work. Nothing to worry about. And now, I gotta go to work.”

As she walked away, Clover leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes: poke a hole in one of our walls, and there’s nothing out there but a giant void. Nothing but a black, airless hole and meaningless death.

Oh, Jesus Christ, he thought. What have I done?

By lunchtime, the Nixon ’s altitude had almost doubled, by dinnertime, nearly tripled. The earth was more than fifty thousand kilometers away. Still the most impressive object in the sky, thirty times the size of the full moon, the big blue marble was diminishing with each hour.

The Nixon was more than halfway through its eighth outward-bound loop around the earth, but it would never complete the orbit. Shortly before eight o’clock, Sandy walked through the Commons room and found Clover staring at the earth as it swept past with the rotation of the spacecraft. He was not alone. Everyone who wasn’t on duty seemed mesmerized by the shrinking Earth, sliding past the window, hypnotic as a stage magician’s swinging watch.

The PA system pinged. “This is Captain Fang-Castro. Our altitude is sixty-eight thousand kilometers and our velocity is three-point-three kilometers per second. We are now on an escape trajectory. Our next stop is Saturn. This will be the last status report of the day. Everyone have a good night.”

Clover sighed and smiled at Sandy. “On our way. Thank God. Life gets easier when there aren’t any choices, you know what I mean?”

“Yeah, exactly.”

“Less than a day and we’ll be out past the moon,” Clover said. “Hope we don’t hit it.”

Sandy laughed and said, “That’d embarrass the shit out of the orbit guys, huh?” He watched for another minute, then said, “I’m heading for the gym. Stink the place up a little, so it’s more like home.”

Clover said, “Good idea. I’ll catch you there.”

Sandy left and Clover turned back to the view screen. Even if the engines cut off this very second, they’d never return to Earth. They’d just coast through the solar system forever. Gravity no longer bound them to home and they were heading into deep space.

In an office building, Clover thought. In an office building with his faithful cat.

“Good morning, this is NPR and you’re listening to a special edition of Science Friday . I’m Flora Lichtman and today we have a first: a live broadcast from an interplanetary mission. With us is Dr. Rebecca Johansson, who is the senior power engineer aboard the U.S.’s spaceship to Saturn, the Richard M. Nixon , which launched two days ago. The Nixon is already approaching the moon’s orbit, so there’ll be about a three-second light-speed delay between my questions and Dr. Johansson’s replies.

“First, Becca, thanks for taking the time to talk to our listeners—we know you’ve a busy schedule.”

BECCA:That’s an understatement, but it’s my pleasure to be here. I’m a big fan of the show.

FLORA:Becca, you’re a nuclear power plant engineer, not a rocket scientist. Why are you part of this mission?

BECCA:The propulsion system for the Nixon isn’t a conventional nuclear rocket like the Chinese are using—it is, in large part, an electric power plant. That’s where my primary responsibilities lie.

FLORA:Can you explain the difference in the engines on the two ships?