Terrence Holt - In the Valley of the Kings - Stories

Years later, in school I learned about specific gravity, the opposing forces of air and water, how the nature of air is to rise, how any solid body, even if of rock, can reach its equilibrium and float — in air, if need be, if air be dense enough. And I thought: This is why I like science; and I felt once more the possibility of rising. But going into space taught me again. I unlearned, and science is a consolation only to the ignorant.

CONSIDER THE NAMES of the ships: Mercury, Gemini, Apollo; Ares, where I earned my wings, and now Prometheus. Think how the missions lived up to their names: Mercury, an aery theft of thunder from the Soviets; Apollo, to a chaste sister giving sacrifice by fire; Ares, and the terror it brought us to. God save the man who rides on Kronos.

THE COMPUTER IS my timekeeper, it is my courier and my library. It stores in its memory the pages I call up on the screen. For my collection I chose Shakespeare, Melville, the old myths. My crewmates left their libraries with me: Stern loved mysteries; Peterson was more a western man.

I spend hours at the screen now, and though I am grateful for the machine, it leaves me skeptical. I wish often for the weight, or at least the solidity, of a book, instead of the image of words on glass. The transience of the picture worries me, and I have caught myself calling back earlier pages, comparing them to my own memory to see if the text has been altered by the computer’s traffic with so much other information. Sometimes, I am tantalized by a suspicion — surely that word was not noses, but something starting with a g; and that was cave, not save; not screen, but — I catch myself, and read on.

MISSION CONTROL WANTS me to look at the communications antenna, which is a paraboloidal dish big enough for a man to lie in. Servomotors aim it constantly toward mission control, so the dish faces back the way I’ve come, my Janus. They sound more worried than usual back in Houston, and although it could easily be an act, put on for reasons I may no longer guess, it seems they really are having trouble understanding. Somewhere in the system something’s wrong, but at their end or mine no one can tell: they want me to go outside and see if, perhaps, something grossly physical (and therefore beyond their power to control) has come unhinged. They sound desperate.

I switch on the aft external video and eye the dish. It eyes me back, pointed steadily at Earth, which is a white star off to port and well astern. The dish looks fine to me, I tell them, and wait. No, they insist, someone there believes a meteor may have knocked the antenna off focus: I must go see for myself. Without waiting for my reply, they begin to outline the procedure, the tools I will need, the complicated route along the ship’s back, how I must unhook my tether to clear the dish. Under Houston’s control, the inner airlock door slowly opens to receive me.

I listen as the voice clips through the cockpit speakers, each syllable enunciated so sharply it stands alone. They are giving me instructions. I am not paying attention. Jupiter has crept into the forward section of the windshield, striped and swirling, closer, and suddenly the pattern I have watched for weeks snaps, and as if a picture has jumped off a printed page and rolled into my lap I see the planet’s marblings turn, and turn into clouds, winds: weather. It is a place, not a pattern. The red spot stands dead center, a catseye blinking back at me. I feel exposed.

“Wait a minute.” I speak before I can catch myself. “This isn’t—” The airlock door waits, open like a mouth. I know now where I have heard all this before. My breath is taken away by the stupidity of the ploy. Do they think because I am out here I cannot remember old movies? Is no one back there capable of original thought?

Am I?

IN THE FORTY minutes before they could respond, I watched Jupiter turn ahead: the red spot lay obliquely now; sleepily askance, it eyed the insertion point for the orbit I must assume if mission control’s plan to rescue the ship is to succeed. But it was the opening of the airlock door that reminded me: they can fire the engines for the braking maneuver just as well from Houston as I can here; better. How much better? How have they calculated my unreliability by now? How large is that factor in their equations? How does it balance with the safety of the ship?

I know how to balance an equation.

I ponder now how much of their talk has been of rescuing the ship, not me. Did they think an omission like that would pass me by?

I ask the computer: Is there enough fuel left to shake me from the dish and still save the ship at Jupiter? The computer gives the figures: fuel for the braking burn and some to spare. I stare at the screen, wondering if the answers are reliable, wondering if even now mission control is feeding me false data. Time elapsed from last transmission stands at 08:20, 21, 22. I am safe for thirty-one more minutes. And then? How much longer before they think up some subtler stratagem? If they grow desperate enough, will they simply open the outer airlock door?

The voice of mission control courses on, urging me to check the seals on my cuffs. Hurrying, I pull the spacesuit from its locker. High in my chest I feel the seconds ticking.

EMPTY SPACE. STARS swarming in: I heard them humming in my headphones. I closed my eyes: darkness, stars shining through. I put my hands to my eyes, but the gloves fell flat on my faceplate. My head afloat in its helmet, sweat stung my eyes; I leaned my skull against the globe and through the glass heard nothing. No: there, between Castor and Capella, something flashed, faded, flashed again. Something whispered in my ear. Something reflected the sun as it tumbled. “Peterson,” I whispered, and it flashed. I watched, and the light neither grew nor faded, nor moved against the stars. It was following.

I turned and held hard to the ship, and though I felt the light flash behind me, counting its rhythm against my pulse I crawled along the hull. I passed portholes through which I saw the cabin, lighted and calm, where objects waited as if left by someone else. I reached the knot where I had spliced Peterson’s tether to mine. I passed over lettering painted on the hull: signs and insignias lay like shells on the seafloor, like fossils in rock. I waited for one of them to move.

When I reached the dish I turned to look. There was the lander hovering, there was Peterson’s mummified face pressed close to mine, gibbering in his helmet — for a moment every direction was down.

Then there was nothing, just my tether trailing back to the open hatchway, and the slow revolution of stars.

The dish was fine. I crawled around it, gripping the tripod that held the antenna at its focus, and my shadow fell across its face. Radio traffic was passing through my body, my computer talking to theirs, and probably them talking to me, spinning out their story; static. I gripped the antenna boom and stared at it: instructions for removal, the NASA insignia, but no clue, no hard fact explaining what was going wrong between us: nothing.

Nothing: I had come to the end of my tether and found — I turned and faced the flashing following me: nothing. Only the on and off of it, on and off. Static; and in my helmet, my breath, and the sound of swallowing.

I reached for the antenna to tear it off, to do away with mission control and their instructions. Fools or liars, I can no longer tell the difference: everything they say sounds false, devoid of sense; or in this void of sense, nothing they can say will help. It does not matter. But as I reached up I looked and saw the flash, fade, and flash again.

“No,” I said, and it vanished. No: and it never reappeared.