Hearts in Darkness
Analog Science Fiction & Fact, March 2002
Note: contains adult content!
So we’ll go no more a-roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.– G. N. Gordon
Chapter 1
“Valentina is wearing makeup.”
Stone stoically watched the needle jab his arm, sending dusky blood spurting into a red-stoppered glass tube. The cardiologist locked his feet against a low horizontal rod welded to the U.S. Laboratory Module’s side, then coldly shrugged. “So?”
Morita slid the needle from Stone’s vein and pressed an alcohol pad against it, grabbing his crewmate’s arm to keep from floating away. The biologist smirked, “You should see her. All dolled up and dressed like a Victoria’s Secret model. A wet dream come true.”
Stone frowned. “Boris might not appreciate you talking about her like that.”
“I think he likes it when somebody ogles Vali. Isn’t that what a trophy wife’s for? To show off what you get to screw?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Too bad.” Morita poked the needle into a sugar cube-sized Styrofoam block. He pushed off from the “floor” and darted toward the sample centrifuge-analyzer rack at the other end of the cylindrical module, shaggy black hair trailing behind him like a Shuttle’s exhaust trail.
Keeping his feet secure, Stone briefly applied pressure to the venipuncture site, discarded the crimson alcohol pad properly into a plastic waste bag, then rolled down his gray jumpsuit’s sleeve. Stretching his lean, nearly two-meter tall frame toward a nearby laptop, he tried studying graphs comparing his five crewmates’ muscle mass and bone densiometry measurements to his own during these last four months on the station. But he kept wondering who Vali was getting “dolled up” for.
She shouldn’t even be here. It was unusual for someone’s first trip into space to be a six-month tour on the International Space Station. It was unheard of for anyone to join a crew they’d never trained with on Earth – and for good reason.
Maybe it was just another symptom of how sick the Russians’ space program was. For over twenty years they’d extorted most of the cash to build their modules and keep Progress supply ships coming to the station from NASA and the other partners. Now the Russian Space Agency even threatened to withdraw from the ISS and SPLISH-SPLASH if they didn’t get more bribe money. They didn’t realize nobody needed them anymore –
“I’m downloading your results.”
Morita floated over, his sallow ferret-like face peering over Stone’s shoulder at the data scrolling onto the laptop’s screen. “Looks like you’re a successful lab rat. Wish my serum calcium and phosphorus were as good as yours. At least you won’t topple over and break a leg when we go home.”
Stone ignored him, fingering one of the paired form-fitting devices hooked behind his ears. The icy steel-gray metal vibrated as its microgyros sent pulses through his mastoid bone to his vestibular nerve. To medical researchers in Houston, he was merely “Subject № 6” in their Dedicated Universal Countermeasures to Microgravity experiment designed to keep his body anatomically and physiologically similar to its “normal” state in 1g.
Those “vestibular stabilizers” he wore supplemented signals from his inner ears’ semicircular canals and otholith system so, whenever he turned his head or moved, his brain received the same body orientation and position information it was used to getting on Earth. Thin, lightweight, microprocessor-controlled negative-pressure “trousers” over his jumpsuit kept body fluids from shifting from his lower to upper body – preventing the facial puffiness and nasal congestion that plagued his unenhanced colleagues. His “special” diet included potassium citrate, antioxidants, and equally delicious nutritional supplements.
And there were those delightful injectable medicines. Erythropoietin, to keep red blood cell mass from failing. The latest cysteamine derivative and other radioprotectants, to reduce cell damage from higher levels of radiation than any terrestrial worker faced. New genetically-engineered osteoblast-stimulating factors and “myocyte stabilizers,” to keep gravity-deprived lower-extremity bones from demineralizing and weakening, and muscles from atrophying.
On Earth, he hated to take aspirin. In space, he was the poster boy for polypharmacy.
Morita squinted at the musculoskeletal data graphs. “Hell, your numbers aren’t any different from when we launched! Hmm … I still have the second-best readings. But poor Boris! At the rate he’s losing bone and muscle mass, he’ll wind up a 99-pound weakling. Must be doing … other things besides exercising.”
“He spends as much time on the bicycle and treadmill as you.”
“Yeah, but he’s nearly twice as old as me. Maybe he needs to exercise twice as long, too. At his age, it must take a lot longer and more effort to do everything.”
Morita tensed his bare biceps in a Charles Atlas pose. “Do you think Vali prefers men with big muscles?”
Stone’s glare seemed to physically push the biologist away. Morita blinked and disappeared through the far hatch. “If you don’t need me, I’m going to TransHab for a snack.”
“I don’t need you.”
Now truly alone in the dimly-lit Destiny lab module, Stone didn’t try concentrating on his regular duties. Maybe he was worrying about Boris and Vali for nothing. Maybe his suspicions were paranoid fantasies generated by a mind isolated too long.
Or maybe they were real, and the station was an orbiting time bomb. He might be the only person on board who realized how dangerous the problem was – or even recognized it as a problem.
The problem of sex in space.
Chapter 2
Stone grit his teeth. No choice but to discuss it with LeBeau. As commander, he was ultimately responsible for everyone on the station.
The physician disengaged his feet from the restraining bar, and cautiously pulled himself several meters into the adjoining Unity node. But despite moving carefully, the empty module spun nauseatingly around him.
He quickly locked his feet through another bar, and waited for his surroundings and stomach to settle down. Stupid VSs! His crewmates’ neurovestibular systems adapted long ago to microgravity. They could somersault, float, or swim like dolphins with impunity.
But if he tried any acrobatics, his unadapted brain suddenly thought it was whirling on a manic merry-go-round. Right now, it didn’t help that – theoretically – he wouldn’t have the problems standing and walking they’d have readjusting to Earth’s gravity after landing. Still – if his misery showed the VSs could help prevent the first person setting foot on Mars from unheroically falling on his or her face on worldwide TV after months of “weightlessness,” it was worth it.
The small observation window beside him showed the station was moving back into Earth’s shadow. As he watched the tediously familiar scene, a last glint of sunlight disappeared behind the planet’s edge – plunging it back into night. Like the opening of 2001 in reverse, though several days shy of twenty years too late. His mind played a fragment of Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra – its rumbling chords and rising trumpet exultantly proclaiming the birth of the Übermensch, and the death of God.
Stone’s haggard face reflected faintly in the window. His stubbly beard was more salt than pepper, and his utilitarian Mercury Seven-style crewcut accentuated the gray metastasizing through his thinning brown hair. Reminders he was in his mid-forties – and the best years of his life were past.
He sighed. What do you do after your dreams come true? Was getting into space worth all those years of work – or sacrificing all his other needs and those of the people he loved? Right now, instead of drifting like a lonely island in the uncaring void, dealing with diseased attitudes and behaviors that were probably incurable, he could be doing something easier. Like standing in a busy ICU saving the life of somebody with an acute MI.
Stone shook himself. Remember those lectures you give astronaut trainees about bow common depression and feelings of isolation are toward the end of a half-year tour on the station? Physician, heal thyself!
Still nauseated, he pulled himself into the jug-shaped TransHab module’s central tunnel. “Down” past the deserted Crew Health Care Area, its treadmill and stationary bicycle standing unused. Down through its middle section, with the equally empty seven small compartments of the crew quarters.
As he descended into the galley at the module’s far end, Stone heard two men snickering.
“– should hang a sign on the hatch to Zvezda. ‘When the module’s rocking, don’t come knocking.’”
“The last time they sealed it off, you could hear her moaning all the way to Unity! Maybe she should change her name to ‘Polly Orgasmic’.”
“The way she’s made up, she must really be hot. If Boris can’t get it up, one of us young studs might get lucky –”
As Stone emerged into the dark galley it went silent. Morita and Newkirk floated near the expansive table that dominated the module, each clutching a long protein bar. They grinned sheepishly at him – like two junior high students caught thumbing through a contraband girlie magazine by the school principal. Stone glared, “Where’s LeBeau?”
Morita wadded his food wrapper into a ball and let it float beside him like a tide-locked satellite. “Beats me. Why don’t you raise him on the intercom?”
“I need to talk to him – in private.”
Newkirk raised bushy raccoonlike eyebrows. “About what?”
“I said, it’s private!”
Morita yawned. “He’s probably in the ESA lab.”
Stone snatched Morita’s discarded food wrapper and placed it in a disposal unit. The other two men silently floated away to the opposite side of the galley, the cylindrical module’s central tunnel separating them from his sight. He heard them whispering and snickering. His cars picked out the word “stone” from their otherwise unintelligible babble. Then Newkirk starting humming an old Simon and Garfunkel tune off-key – I Am A Rock. More laughter.
Stone peered out an observation window at the night-shrouded Earth. Won’t it ever be day again? He gazed longingly at one of the station’s two Crew Return Vehicles, shaped liked a miniature version of the Shuttle with its wings’ tips bent up, docked tantalizingly close by. A set of solar arrays, functionally useless now in Earth’s shadow, seemed to waft and cool the small white vehicle like a huge fan. He wished he were in it – preparing to go home and escape from his worries.
Disgusted and sick, Stone climbed back to the Unity node. He dragged himself once again through the Destiny lab module, opened the hatch to its connecting node, and crawled into the ESA’s Columbus Laboratory module.
LeBeau looked up from a crystallography experiment – his face first flashing a leer, then disappointment. “Oh, it’s you.”
“Do you have a minute?”
“No – well, what do you want?”
Stone moistened his lips. “I’m worried about Vali.”
“Why? Is she ill?”
“No, she’s very healthy. I’m worried about the effect she’s having on the rest of the crew’s morale – and maybe, their safety.”
The muscular Frenchman tossed back a leonine mane of blond hair, and squinted suspiciously. “Explain.”
“She shouldn’t be here. It’s standard procedure for crews to train with each other for months before going into space. That way everyone learns to work as a team to complete mission objectives – and, just as important, they see how well they get along together. If there are any serious personality clashes among the crew – if they find they hate each other’s guts – better to find out before they leave Earth so interpersonal conflicts can be resolved or crew rosters changed, than after they get up here!”
“I’ve seen no problems. Except for Vali, the rest of us have known each other for years. We’ve all been on Shuttle missions with each other before being selected for the station.”
Stone frowned. “Yes, five of us have worked together long enough to smooth out any psychological ‘rough edges’ we might’ve had at first. Same with Golda Verchinski, who was supposed to come up with you and Boris last month – instead of a freshly-trained novice.”
“Are you saying Vali isn’t qualified to be here?”
“From what I’ve seen of her work, she seems reasonably competent. Medically, including all the times I’ve checked her, she’s in excellent health. But that doesn’t explain why she was ‘promoted’ over considerably more experienced cosmonauts we’ve already worked with.”
LeBeau snickered. “It’s elementary, my dear doctor. Vali slept her way to the top.”
Chapter 3
Stone suddenly felt dizzy – then realized his feet had worked free of the restraining bar he’d reflexively secured himself with upon entering the lab module. He grabbed one of the experiment racks lining the module and rooted himself back to its side, resisting an urge to vomit. A pink-eyed albino mouse examined him curiously from its enclosed plastic cage inside the rack – wondering what all the fuss was about.
Pale and sweating, Stone muttered, “You’re kidding. Not even the Russians would sink that low!”
The commander grinned. “She bedhopped through dozens of low-level bureaucrats in their space agency. When they finished with her, thev introduced her to their bosses. Then those middle managers opened doors for her to meet their superiors – until she got ‘access’ to the cosmonauts themselves.
“I’m surprised Boris married her. Why buy the cow when you’re getting the milk for free? What Vali got was her doting husband pulling strings for permission to bring her along with him.”
LeBeau smirked. “And Boris still gets his milk. Have you noticed Vali showers in TransHab every other day, instead of weekly like the rest of us? She’s very adept at slathering soap and water over her entire body, then suctioning them from her bare skin. Then she puts on a negligee and makeup for a rendezvous with Boris in one of the Russian modules.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“I hope you’re not shocked, doctor. I’ve noticed some Americans seem puritanical about such matters. At least officially, or when they don’t have the opportunity – or courage – to freely express themselves sexually. We Europeans tend to be more sophisticated, more adult in these areas.”
Stone hardened. “I’ve been a physician for twenty years. Nothing dealing with human biology – including sexual activity – shocks or offends me any more. I’m not interested in making moral judgments about what other people do – or acting as censor over their personal lives. If we were on Earth, this wouldn’t be an issue except to Boris and Vali.
“But we’re not on Earth. All six of us are locked up on this station. We can’t get away from each other – or our problems. Still, I am bothered when people do stupid things. And when those stupid things might endanger the health and safety of the crew, I have to make it my business!”
The commander chuckled. “Are you saying it’s unhealthy for Boris and Vali to make love?”
“No. Based on their medical records and the exams I’ve given them, there’s no obvious health risk to it. I’m a bit concerned Boris’s exercise tolerance has dropped lower than expected recently. But he’s still better conditioned than most terrestrial sixty-two-year-old men – and should be up to the relatively mild physical demands of having sex.
“And Vali’s very fit – as you’d expect in someone twenty-nine years old with excellent preflight health. The chance of her becoming pregnant – which would be a major health hazard in space, both for her and the embryo – is infinitesimal. Boris had a vasectomy when he was forty. Interestingly, she had a tubal ligation three years ago. She’s nulliparous, and didn’t have any medical reason for it – except, from what you’ve told me, the obvious one.”
Stone frowned. “It’s not like they’re the first people who’ve done it in space. NASA’s kept a ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ wrap on this for years. The last thing they needed was another proposal to slash their budget from hypocritical demagogues in Congress demanding to know why billions were being spent on ‘hanky-panky in the high frontier.’
“But there are anecdotal reports in the files. Problem is, even if those experiences felt good for the participants, scientifically they’re worthless. No way to control for their natural tendency to exaggerate the successes – and downplay the failures. With more men and women staying off Earth for longer times, we need to conduct formal studies of how effective and safe sex is in space, just as we’ve done for every other aspect of human biology. Until then, the unofficial policy is still ‘Be careful, be discreet’ – and don’t get too distracted and injure yourself or a partner by floating into an instrument rack and hitting your head.”
LeBeau snorted. “When they approve those studies, sign me up! But if Boris and Vali are careful, why do you say it’s a problem?”
“It’s not just them I’m worried about. Because Morita and Newkirk haven’t trained or worked with Vali before, they might see her more as a potential sexual partner than a colleague. It’s impossible to maintain conventional levels of modesty on the station, and they’ve had plenty of opportunities to see she’s very … attractive. Plus, they’re both in their early thirties, heterosexual – and have been forced to remain celibate for over four months. You don’t need a medical degree to see they might be pretty horny by now!”
“How serious you make it sound! Those stirrings are perfectly natural. As long as they don’t rape her, it’s none of my business – or yours! – even if she decides to ‘relieve’ them.”
Stone glared at him frigidly. “That’s exactly what I’m afraid of. You know about that incident here two years ago. That crew didn’t have any ‘problems’ either, until Stevens caught his wife practicing zero-gee sexual gymnastics with their commander. He was lucky Stevens only managed to slash his thighs with a knife before the others stopped him. just think what a PR nightmare it would’ve been if he’d cut off the parts of Lecoque’s body he was aiming for – and forced an emergency evacuation to Earth for medical treatment! I don’t want Boris going on a rampage against Morita or Newkirk as the cuckolded husband – or, even if he just thinks one of them is getting it on with his wife, re-enacting the starring role in Othello!”
The commander smiled smugly. “Perhaps you’re citing the wrong play. Boris might be like the husband in Mandragola. But I don’t suppose you know what I’m talking about.”
Stone stiffened. “Just because I’m a physician doesn’t mean I read only medical literature. I’m familiar with Machiavelli – especially his nonfiction. My opinion of human nature is as realistic as his.”
“Oh? I noticed you didn’t mention you’ve been on the station as long as Morita and Newkirk – and are just as sexually ‘deprived.’ With all those physicals you give us, you see Vali naked more often than Boris! A psychiatrist might think you’re projecting your own repressed lusts for her onto them. Or perhaps you’re an Alceste – a self-righteous hater of humanity and their weaknesses. Though I doubt you’re well-read enough to understand that allusion!”
Stone stared frostily at LeBeau. “Let’s not get personal. You’re the commander, and I’ve reported a potential crew problem to you. It’s your responsibility to do something about it.”
“To me, there is no problem. If you still think so, talk to Boris yourself before you confront anyone else – especially Vali. That’s all I have to say on the matter – doctor.”
“If you won’t, I’ll speak to Boris. And believe me, for everyone’s sake I hope I’m wrong about this!”
As Stone crawled “up” the lab’s side like a poisoned ant, he sneered back over his shoulder, “By the way, I’ve read Molière – and I’m not a misanthrope!”
Chapter 4
Disgusted with himself, Stone pulled himself toward the Russian end of the station. LeBeau acts like a pompous pseudointellectual jerk – and do you keep your cool and act professionally? No, you act like a bigger jerk!
No point waiting to talk with Boris. Somebody had to take responsibility. Just wish it wasn’t me.
As he passed back through the Unity module, Stone peered again through the observation window. Some 400 kilometers below, Europe and northern Africa lay cloudless in sable night. He gazed wistfully at Cairo – wondering if Naseer had made it home to his family.
Strange how one’s perception of people can change. When they’d started training together eighteen months ago, the station’s pudgy previous commander seemed stern and unsociable. But, while working together here over the last three months of the Egyptian’s tour, they’d discovered a surprising number of common interests. Like a passion for classical literature and music.
Rose and Edith, the other veterans of the prior crew, provided more than intellectual companionship. The two grandmothers – charter and sole members of the Shannon Lucid Fan Club – had taken the three “youngsters” under their wings when the Shuttle brought them up four months ago. They’d nursed Morita and Newkirk, suffering from bad cases of Space Adaptation Syndrome, during the pair’s first miserable days on the station. Fellow physician Edith – a pulmonologist, and DUCM “Subject № 5” – was a special mentor to him, using her experiences to help him cope with his tribulations as the project’s latest guinea pig.
He’d rarely felt lonely those first three months on the station. The exhilaration of finally living here and a time-absorbing work schedule kept his mind healthily occupied. And whenever he felt himself missing his wife and kids, he could commiserate with Naseer, Rose, or Edith. They’d been married even longer than he had, with many children (and grandchildren) of their own to miss.
When the Shuttle came to take his three friends home a month ago, the four of them had a private party in the brightly-decorated Destiny module. Ignoring his vertigo, he’d danced a whirling microgravity tarantella with Rose and Edith while Naseer incongruously piped the Preludio from Bach’s Partita № 3 in E Major, BWV 1006, on his soprano recorder. Rose invited him to her granddaughter’s Maryellen’s confirmation in five months – followed by a family feast showcasing her special homemade lasagna, a recipe handed down through generations of Sicilian ancestors. Not to be outdone, Edith extracted his promise to attend her oldest grandson’s bar mitzvah “And,” she said, “if your VSs keep making you sick, take this medicine.” He’d laughed at the label on the tube of food paste she’d handed him.
Chicken soup.
Chapter 5
Cloistered in the gloomy module, Stone heard muffled voices drift up from the depths of TransHab. Two simpering male ones – and a single tittering female. Grimly hoping Boris wasn’t “down” there, he opened the hatch to the Zarya module.
The first of the station’s components to reach orbit was now little used – and grossly misnamed. Only tiny warning lights illuminated its musty interior. Stuttering air circulation fans uselessly cooled the racks along its walls holding, like tombstones, dead electronic equipment from long-defunct experiments.
Then, through another hatch, into the equally dark, empty Zvezda module. Scattered display panels glowed dimly with faint signs of electrical life. The amount of scientific work the Russians still supported here and in their research modules was pathetic. As much as he and the others grumbled about how their work had been scaled back to fund SPLISH-SPLASH, this was far worse.
Preparing to penetrate deeper into this technological graveyard, Stone grimly wished Virgil was here to guide him. As he headed back toward the opening leading to the two Russian research modules, he heard a sharp clank and several rumbling curses in Russian behind the closed entrance to the CRV attached to the far end of Zvezda.
What’s he doing in there? Stone rapped politely on the metal hatch.
It flung open. Boris boomed, “Some company! Come in, my friend!”
Grabbing the physician’s arm, Boris yanked him into the nine-meter-long CRV. Dizzy again, Stone tried focusing his eyes on the tangled rainbow- colored wires floating like a hydra’s tentacles from the craft’s large instrument console.
Boris grinned. “Don’t mind the mess. The communication system failed when Newkirk tested it last shift. He asked me to fix it.”
He pointed to a chunk of electronic components rotating uncomfortably close to Stone’s head. It reminded him of the install-it-yourself car stereo system he’d tried – unsuccessfully – to put in his old ’13 Ford minivan.
“Uh – Boris, I thought only Newkirk and LeBeau were certified to repair the CRVs.”
The Russian twisted two bare wires together – then cursed as a jolt of electricity lanced his fingertips. “They are. But, with little else to do, I’ve reviewed the repair manuals, and had them teach me everything they know. When I was on Mir long ago, it was a slow shift if we didn’t have several repairs like this. Another few hours’ work, and this craft will be better than new.”
He slapped Stone on the back – rocking the doctor back and forth from where he’d secured his feet like his son’s old Bernie the Dinosaur punching bag toy. “Don’t worry, my friend. If we must leave the station before then, there’s still the other vehicle. And as long as the automatic navigation system is working, who needs to communicate with Earth during a descent? Besides, there’s never been an emergency evacuation.”
First time for everything. Stone shivered, remembering when his main parachute didn’t deploy properly during a training jump last year. As reliable as these pale wide-bodied successors to the venerable X-38 were supposed to be, the idea of trusting his life to a parafoil wasn’t appetizing. They didn’t have a dependable reserve chute to prevent you from splattering into fertilizer when you hit the ground instead of limping away with only bruises.
As Boris wound gobs of electrical tape around a power cable, Stone hesitated. Doctors shouldn’t be at a loss for words with patients. But this problem needed a friend’s help – and he doubted Boris really considered him “my friend.”
Stone rasped, “I need to talk to you about something.”
“Please talk.”
“It’s about your wife.”
Boris convulsed as if a cattle prod had shocked his privates. “Is she hurt?”
“No, it’s about … are there any problems between you and Vali? Anything I can help with?”
The Russian’s face sagged into a melancholy smile. “No. Nothing you or I – can do.”
He sighed. “Do you think Vali is – attractive? Sexy?”
Stone stammered, “She’s very … nice. A fine scientist, and great asset to the station. You’re lucky to be married to her.”
And, a nasty voice whispered, her teeth are really straight too. Great interview skills, doctor!
Boris nodded. “She is attractive. Too attractive for me.”
Stone winced as the Russian’s eyes burned into him. “Look at me, my friend. Once I was young and handsome. The best MiG pilot in Afghanistan. A Hero of the USSR. The prettiest women in the Motherland had to ‘take a number’ for my favors. Even in the dark years after those fiends Gorbachev and Yeltsin betrayed our country, my good looks still brought me as many women as I could undress. The night I returned from my first tour on Mir, before rising from my bed I serviced three so young they were almost virgins. But later, for too many years women only ‘respected’ me as a space hero and I almost always slept alone.”
The Russian’s lined face seemed to cave in. “Look at me – and see why. I’m over sixty. My jowls sag, my eyes are baggy. See my wrinkled forehead – the whiskers that make me look like Father Frost! Despite all the exercise I do, my strength is failing. The only reason I’m here is because young, virile cosmonauts have no use for this old ‘trash can.’ No, they are the lions in their prime – clawing their way to be selected to build the first permanent base on Luna, your ‘South Polar Lunar Ice Sustained Habitation.’ They will extract water from regolith to create more liquid oxygen and hydrogen fuel for their rocket. They will pilot your foolishly-named ‘Staged Prototype Luna-to-Ares Shuttle and Habitation’ on to Mars.
“Let the old men – the used-up men – have this orbiting relic for their home, and grave!”
Boris grinned like a death’s-head. “Lucky to be married to Vali? Lucky to have someone less than half my age – so beautiful, so passionate – for a wife? Lucky, yes. But cursed too.”
He laid a bearlike hand on the physician’s shoulder. “Thank you, my friend. There’s nothing you can tell me I don’t already know. Whatever Vali does with other men, I will endure – and enjoy whatever happiness she chooses to give me.”
“Isn’t there anything I can do to help?”
“No. Except … perhaps as a doctor.”
Boris pointed to the center of his chest. “I had pain here the last time I exercised on the treadmill. Maybe you can give me a pill for it?”
“What kind of pain?”
“Just a pain. A pulled muscle.”
Finally dealing with something he was comfortable with, Stone answered, “It might be something else. Is it a sharp pain? Dull? Pressure?”
“Yes, it’s a – never mind. It’s not that bad.”
“Boris, I need to know. It’s probably nothing serious, but you better come back with me to the Health Care Area so I can check you over.”
“Later, my friend. After I finish my work here, I’ll let you do doctor things to me.”
After more fruitless cajoling of his suddenly taciturn crewmate, Stone gave up. Trying to get Boris to cooperate when he didn’t want to was as futile as making the bankrupt, ever-shrinking Russian Federation into a world power again.
“If you need anything, call me on the intercom.”
Boris nodded.
Chapter 6
Retracing his path, Stone paused in the Unity module to let his stomach catch up with the rest of him. Below, deep in TransHab, a third male voice – bubbling in lascivious French – elicited tinkling feminine laughter.
Why am I not surprised.
Disgusted in spite of himself, the doctor crawled back to the gloomy Destiny lab module, closed its hatch, and opened the small locker protecting his tiny stash of books, music chips, and other personal effects. Ignoring his pocket edition of Byron’s poetry and miniature copies of Cicero’s On Moral Duties and Seneca’s Apocolocyntosis, Stone removed a player and attached it to his waist. Careful not to disturb his VSs, he placed a flimsy headset over his cars and shuffled through his meager music collection.
Mahler’s Seventh Symphony? Too bombastic. A Haydn “Sun” quartet? Not even the C Major could brighten his spirits.
Mozart. Nobody can stay depressed listening to Mozart. He hesitated over a chip containing several serenades – № 6 in D Major, K. 239, and № 13 in G Major, K. 525. No, his mood was dark enough already.
Die Zauberflöte wound up in the player. At least it has a happy ending.
But even the opera’s sprightly overture couldn’t dispel his disenchantment with his crewmates. If it didn’t bother Boris whether one of the others seduced Vali – or vice versa – and there were no medical issues involved, it was none of his business what happened between consenting adults.
Still – the monumental stupidity of it all irritated him. A marriage of convenience like Boris and Vali had wasn’t really a marriage at all – merely a business agreement between two independent contractors that included sex as one of the terms. There might he a modicum of mutual caring – but no real love, or desire to truly share their lives, pleasures, and pains together.
And what about the others? He’d met LeBeau’s wife and their doll-like five-old twin daughters last year. At least Morita and Newkirk – each married about a year – didn’t have any kids to be potential innocent victims of adultery and divorce. Did they think that if their “loved” ones didn’t discover what happened, it didn’t happen? That being here in space – cut off from the rest of humanity – made nothing they did here “real”?
Maybe that explained why those two felt no shame treating Vali like first prize in an emotionally-bankrupt sexual competition. Or maybe they shared LeBeau’s “sophisticated” attitudes about sex. There was nothing sophisticated about using another person as just a thing to satisfy your own pleasure. It was the unbridled self-centeredness of the three-year-old – the blind unthinking hormonal insanity of adolescence – coupled with the power and ability to rationalize of an adult.
Loving another person meant caring about them for their sake, not just as a vehicle for your own selfish gratification. Love was hard.
But sex without that kind of love was easy. Anybody with the proper anatomy and hormones could do that. No thought, no brain required – except to figure out how to get the belusted into bed. Using one’s reasoning powers, not as arbiter of the passions, but their slave.
Humean, all-too-Humean.
No, he felt sorry for people whose desires stopped at such a shallow, superficial level. They wouldn’t understand that sex with someone you truly loved – someone you’d committed your life to unreservedly – was far more pleasurable than sex with just another person’s body, no matter how physically attractive.
Explaining the difference would he like describing Bach’s Mass in B Minor to someone deaf from birth. Some things you could only understand by having felt and experienced them. Even trying to explain what real love was would probably shut their minds tighter against the idea. It’d sound like he was preaching at them. And nobody likes to be preached at – even if the sermon’s a good one.
Chapter 7
As “Der Vogelfänger bin ich ja” warbled in his ears, Stone extracted a well-worn photograph from his locker. An accommodating passerby had snapped the four of them with the White House as background during their family vacation last spring. Donna’s gleaming smile beamed back at him from the glorious sunshine of that long-ago day. His wife’s arm was wrapped warm and close around his waist – always supporting him with her love.
Mary, their thirteen-year-old, looked glowingly back at him with her own special affection. She was blossoming into a lovely young woman, with honey-brown hair like her mother’s. Soon he’d be supplanted as the most important man in her life. Before leaving Earth, he’d lost count of the times “Johnny” – the boy she called her “angel” – had telephoned his daughter. Without meaning to, he’d metamorphosed into the comically overprotective father of ancient sitcoms.
Eleven-year-old Jeff’s eyes were bright with mischief. Sometimes the boy was exasperating – especially on school nights when homework that should’ve taken thirty minutes stretched to four hours of constant cajoling. But it was still nice being a parent. Was it only eight months ago he’d been proudly introduced to a classroom of awestruck fifth-graders as “My Dad, the Astronaut?
Tenderly holding his family in his hands, Stone cursed himself. He was guilty of worse infidelity than the extramarital quickies the others might be contemplating. He’d betrayed his wife by selfishly pursuing the one dream they didn’t share.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Before they’d married right after graduating from medical school together, he and Donna agreed how they’d start their life. After she finished her paediatrics residency and he his cardiology fellowship together in Houston, they’d go into private practice and start their family. Everything went according to plan – until one of their visits to the nearby Johnson Space Center when, partly as a joke, he’d picked up and mailed in an application form for astronaut training.
He wasn’t accepted – not yet – but they, wrote back encouraging him to enrol in their newest program training physicians as specialists in space medicine. It meant more years of study, less money than private practice when he finished – and many arguments with Donna. But finally, after convincing her this was really what he wanted to do, she’d shown her love by sacrificing her own needs for his.
And so, as his wife’s paediatric practice became busier and the kids were born, gradually he’d stepped closer to living his boyhood fantasy. While Donna often functioned as a single parent during his long hours at JSC and trips away from home, he’d acted as medical consultant for Shuttle missions, taught astronauts and finally became one himself. Especially this year, preparing for this tour on the ISS, he’d only been moonlighting as a husband and father.
Even now a parasitic part of his psyche clung to the hope he’d be selected for SPLISH-SPLASH. Though he wouldn’t be the first person to set foot on Mars, being the twentieth would be good enough. Except – it’d mean more precious, vanishing time away from those who needed him. Even if Donna agreed to that too, was it right for him to keep their marriage an afterthought in his fife? Was living out his private dream worth die price?
Meanwhile, a bullet-sized meteoroid flashed out of the void unnoticed. It missed his lonely module by several meters before plunging toward the darkened world below, and ending its consold W as a transcendental streak of light across the starlit night sky.
Chapter 8
Stone jerked as if he’d been struck – twisting away from the unexpected pressure on his left shoulder, He tore off his headphones, leaving them floating beside him as they played a tinny, version of “Alles fühlt der Liebe Freuden”.
“I didn’t mean to startle you!”
She was a phantom of angelic delight, gently wafting before his bedazzled sight. Her supple legs were bound tightly in black fishnet stockings, their warmth palpable this near him. The frilled edge of a radiantly raven-hued diaphanous negligee fluttered just beneath her slim waist. Its silk and satin molded her upper body into a thrilling landscape of taut flesh, gentle curves, and rounded breasts constrained and accented by the fabric’s sensuous embrace.
Valentina smiled at him invitingly with full vermilion lips, parted to reveal a hint of brilliant white teeth. Her cheeks were delicately dusted with rouge to bring out their natural vitality. Green-tinted eyes shone like scintillating twin suns, surrounded by a dark corona of finely-tapered eyelashes. A slow descent of blue-blushed eyelids sent them into brief eclipse, only to shine again in torrid glory. Cascading ebony hair was tamed and woven into a complex braid coiled behind her head.
Lithely floating in front of him, Vali caressed his damp forehead with the soft sure tips of a pianist’s fingers. “I’ve been looking for you.”
Stone vibrated in sympathy with her dulcet soprano tones. “I’ve been … thinking.”
An autumnal sadness shaded her face “You must be lonely here.”
“I manage.”
Her bright eyes pored deep into his, as if reading the diary of his soul. “It’s wrong for you to be so alone. Deprived of warmth and light, like a monk in a dirty cell.”
Vali gently squeezed his clammy hand. “Come with me, and let me heal you.”
Stone gazed back at her – stunned to see his own loneliness reflected in her eyes. The exquisitely enticing perfume she wore flooded his senses, a springtime blend of lilacs and honeysuckle. His face prickled with the summer heat of her body gliding so close to his. Her mouth melted into a coaxing smile. With a sweep of his arms he could thrust her against him – scar his frozen wintery body against her fiery heart, and quench so many pains in an incandescent moment of passion.
But his feet stayed fixed in the module’s metal rungs – resisting Vali’s butterfly-delicate tug. Too much of him recoiled in bittersweet horror.
It’s me she wants!
“No.”
Instantly the spell shattered like crystal. Vali stared at him with innocent wonder. Then she noticed the picture clutched tightly like a talisman in his hands. She gazed wistfully at it. “Is that your family?”
“Yes.”
“Your wife seems very – nice.”
Stone glanced down at the frumpy, bespectacled middle-aged woman in the photograph. An overweight matron of average height, dressed unattractively in shorts and a plain white blouse, with dirt-colored brown hair beginning to streak with grey.
“She is.”
“You’re very lucky.”
Floating free, Vali arched her back, flexed her knees and let her thighs fall to either side. “If you change your mind, I’ll be waiting for you in TransHab.”
Stone didn’t move.
Long after she glided out of the module her perfume lingered in his nostrils. Eventually it dissipated enough for his mind to clear. A terrible pressure filled his chest and groin as he put that family picture away. Still trembling, he placed the headphones floating nearby back on his ears. The florid coloratura aria “Der Höfle Rache” pierced his brain.
Stone savagely stabbed the player’s “Stop” button. He’d had enough of the Queen of the Night already. An exchange of chips brought the opening strains of another opera – Fidelio.
Outside, Earth lay cold and still in unending darkness.
Chapter 9
Much later, in the stillness of the first faint trumpet call announcing the arrival of Don Fernando at the prison-fortress, Stone heard a muffled voice over the intercom. He removed his headphones.
“– need you! Stone, come here!”
He pushed a button. “What do you want?”
“It’s Boris! He’s sick! We need you in the galley now!”
“On my way.”
The nausea returned as Stone hurriedly pulled himself through the intervening passages. Ashen and sweating, he plunged down into TransHab
And fell into a Hieronymous Bosch painting. Faceless naked bodies tumbled chaotically around him in semidarkness. The acrid smell of sweat and other body odors overwhelmed him. For a disorienting moment he didn’t know where he was or what was happening.
Gradually his brain created order from this nightmare. The blurred faces focused into those of his five crewmates – their clothing scattered like drifting clouds around the claustrophobic module. Vali’s wadded-up negligeé brushed his arm. Then its owner, dressed only in shredded fishnet stockings, floated forward to face him. Again his senses reeled, stunned by the Praxitelean beauty of her flawless figure.
Another instant and that compartment of his mind crashed shut like a bulkhead. Instead of the man’s desire to touch and kiss those roseate nipples nearly touching his face, the physician saw only two suspended masses of glandular adipose tissue.
Lipstick smeared over her cheeks, hair braid half-unknotted, Vali motioned him toward the elderly grimacing figure hunched over the zero-gee toilet. Boris was pale, diaphoretic, and gasping for air. His bricklike fist was pressed against his sternum.
“Boris, what’s the matter?”
The Russian looked up at Stone miserably. “There’s a terrible pressure in my chest. It won’t go away!”
“When did it start?”
“About ten minutes ago, right after my turn with– ”
Vali hovered close to Stone, a worried expression darkening her face. A loose strand of her hair tickled his cheek. The doctor coldly nudged her away with a flick of his shoulder – sending her gliding away from him and his patient.
His eyes tracked down Newkirk, drifting nude nearby. “Get the portable oxygen setup!” Then he turned and glared at Morita, who’d snatched his underpants from midair and was struggling back into them.
“Get over here!”
The station’s other Crew Medical Officer gave up on redressing and obeyed, his twisted undergarment hanging around his left ankle like a white flag.
Stone shouted, “We’ve got to get Boris to the Health Care Area. Get the backboard.”
“Can’t we just float him there now?”
“Don’t want to risk it. Once he’s wrapped on the backboard, we won’t have to worry if he starts fighting us.”
Stone checked Boris’s radial pulse, and frowned. The Russian looked at him pleadingly. “Is it something serious, my friend?”
“I don’t know. I hope not. But I’m not taking any chances.”
Morita stood the long backboard upright, and Boris painfully stretched himself out to help then~ position him against it. Long cloth flaps enfolded most of his body, secured by Velcro straps. Newkirk returned with a clear plastic mask and tubing connected to a small oxygen tank. Stone positioned the mask on Boris’s face and turned the oxygen flow to four liters/minute. After several breaths the latter said, “I feel better.”
“Good.”
As Stone opened his mouth to tell the others to start moving Boris, something wet splattered against his cheek. He wiped it away, then rubbed the viscous droplets with his fingertips until he realized what it was.
Semen. More globules floated nearby.
He gritted his teeth at LeBeau, cowering silently at the far end of the module. “Get a handvac and suck that stuff up before somebody chokes on it!”
Stone watched grimly as Morita and Newkirk pulled Boris “up” two levels to TransHab’s medical suite. They secured the backboard to a wall, leaving his arms free and accessible. As Morita reconnected the mask to a larger oxygen supply from a wall outlet, Stone clipped a pulse oximeter to Boris’s left index finger and wound a crackling blood pressure cuff around his upper right arm.
The Russian winced as Morita shaved mounds of grey hair off his chest and applied sticky white electrode patches to its raw skin, and each arm and leg. He watched Stone frown at the flaming red numbers a nearby screen displayed. “What do they mean, my friend?”
Blood pressure 115/60. Heart rate 110. Respirations 20. 02 saturation 96%. Nothing critical – but not entirely normal either.
“Don’t talk. I need to listen to your lungs and heart.”
Thirty seconds later Stone removed the stethoscope from his cars. Lungs clear. No murmurs or gallops, but many irregular beats. He barked at Morita, “Get him hooked up to the monitor!”
The latter hurriedly attached the last wire to the electrode patches. A rapid high-pitched “beep, beep” echoed in the module in time with a bouncing green line on an LCD screen. Stone’s forehead furrowed. Lots of PVCs.
“Get an EKG. Then start an IV with D5NS at KV0.”
Morita pushed a button on the console, then wrapped a tourniquet around Boris’s left arm. Stone watched a twelve-lead electrocardiogram displaying the electrical activity of the Russian’s heart play out on the screen. He scowled, “That doesn’t look right. Check the leads.”
Morita pressed the electrode patches and jiggled the wires stuck to Boris’s skin. “Seems OK to me.”
“Print a hard copy.”
Glossy paper divided into tiny pink boxes rolled slowly out from a printer. Stone snatched the paper, stared in disbelief at the pattern of blue squiggles on it – and felt sick. He released the EKG, letting the Russian’s potential death warrant drift away. “Get that IV in now!”
Morita swabbed Boris’s forearm with an alcohol pad and jabbed a plump vein with a needle. He grunted with satisfaction as a bead of ruddy blood formed at its free end, slipped a short plastic catheter over the needle into the vein, and connected it to the clear IV tubing and bag suspended beside him.
Stone rummaged through a drawer of medical supplies and yelled at Morita, “Pump the pressure bag up! That fluid’s not going to flow without gravity!”
The latter squeezed a black rubber bulb repeatedly, sending air into a sealed bladder surrounding the bag of IV fluids. It compressed the bag – forcing the dextrose and saline solution into Boris’s bloodstream.
Stone turned to Newkirk. “Patch me through to a flight surgeon!”
Kicking his naked legs, the other man disappeared as he headed toward a communication console. Boris winced as Stone ripped several electrode patches from his chest, slapped on two considerably larger ones in their place, and reapplied the smaller patches around them. “Is your chest still hurting, Boris?”
“Some.”
“Open your mouth.”
Stone placed a tiny white tablet under the Russian’s tongue.
The latter grimaced. “That pill burned.”
“It’s supposed to! Now chew this aspirin tablet.”
Boris massaged his chest – wondering how mere aspirin could ease the terrible pain there.
Newkirk’s voice boomed at Stone from the intercom. “JSC’s on the line. They’ll patch Mina Osler through to you in a minute.”
“Good, she’s an internist.”
As Stone connected a cable between the two large patches on Boris’s chest and the defibrillator, Vali floated into the module. She’d dressed back into standard-issue blue top and shorts. Stone deliberately ignored her as he reached for an ampule of morphine. She glided beside her husband, and stroked his grizzled cheek with wifely concern. ”Feeling better?”
Boris grinned weakly. “Don’t worry, my love. Dr. Stone’s taking good care of me. I’m feeling fine now … ”
His eyes rolled back, lower jaw slack. The shrill alarm tones from the EKG monitor made every conscious eye in the room twist toward it.
“Get away from him!” Vali cringed at Stone’s order, but moved away as he hastily set the defibrillator to 200 joules. He shouted at Morita, “Check his carotid!”
The defibrillator squealed as Stone stabbed the “Charge” button.
Morita’s fingers kneaded the side of Boris’s neck. “I can’t feel any pulse!”
“Then get back!”
Morita pushed off the module’s side, grabbing Vali’s arm as he went and dragging her away with his momentum. “What’s wrong?” she stammered.
Stone rechecked the monitor, making sure the jagged chaotic complexes racing across it were unchanged. Though the others were well away from Boris, he reflexively recited, “I’m clear, you’re clear, everybody’s clear!” Then lie pushed the defibrillator buttons.
Boris’s body convulsed as the electric current arced through his chest – arms flailing upward in a gesture of supplication, and staying there. Stone sighed thankfully as sinus rhythm reappeared on the monitor. His fingers moved to the Russian’s neck, then his other hand started a blood pressure measurement.
“Good pulse. Looks like he’s breathing OK.”
Morita moved back towards Stone. “Should we intubate him?”
“Not yet. 02 sat looks all right. Let’s see if he wakes up.”
Boris snorted. “Did I fall asleep?” He winced at Stone. “The skin on my chest feels like it’s on fire.”
“I’ll give you something for it.”
Vali tentatively floated back toward them. “What did you do to Boris?”
Stone sneered at her. What kind of medical training did they give you?
Newkirk’s voice returned over the intercom. “Osler’s on the line.”
“Stone here. Mina, are you there?”
“Yes, what’s going on?”
“Boris developed angina about twenty minutes ago. We moved him to the Health Care Area and got an EKG. I’m transmitting it now.”
Seconds later Osler exclaimed, “Holy Mother of God! How’s he doing?”
“He’s alert, vital signs are OK. We’ll set up the full telemedicine link with you so you can get our readings.”
“What have you given him so far?”
“One sublingual nitroglycerin and a chewable aspirin tablet. He just went into VT at a rate of about 300 and lost his pulse, but came out of it with one shock. I’ll load him with amiodarone.”
“What about giving him tenecteplase?”
“I don’t know yet. Let’s get another EKG and see if his ST segments are coming down before we decide on thrombolytics. Based on how he does, we’ll have to think about evacuating him.”
Osler groaned. “Don’t even mention that right now. We’ve got to stabilize him first! I can’t believe this is even happening. There was nothing in the medical records the Russians sent us to indicate Boris was having any problems preflight. Was he doing anything unusual before it happened?”
Stone glared at Morita and Vali – coldly reading the fear and pleading on their faces. Yes, he and the rest of these so-called professionals were having an orgy!
“He was – performing a moderate level of exertion. Maybe 5 METs.”
He pressed a button. “Here’s the next EKG.”
Stone’s heartbeat slowed a bit as he studied the paper the printer spat out. Osler said, “Looks better – no more ‘tombstoning’ – but he’s still got nearly 2 mm ST elevations in V1 through V5.”
“Hs heart rate and blood pressure are still good enough for morphine and atenolol. Let’s try them before we go with tenecteplase.”
“OK. I’ll contact the Russians to see how they want him treated – and about evacuating him.”
“Fine.”
As Morita finished administering the medications Stone ordered, Vali said, “What’s wrong with Boris?”
The cardiologist ignored her. “Is your chest pain better, Boris?”
“Yes. But what is wrong with me?”
“You’re having a myocardial infarction – a heart attack. Your EKGs indicate a blood clot’s blocking the artery that supplies blood to the front of your heart. That’s why you’ve had chest pain, and went into that abnormal heart rhythm – ventricular tachycardia – we had to shock you out of.”
“How could that be, with all the exams and tests you and the other doctors have done on me?”
The Russian paled. “Could … what we were doing a little while ago have caused it?”
Morita and Vali cringed as Stone sneered at them, his voice like ice. “What do you think?”
Then, to Boris, “We’re trying to decide which medications are best for you. One of them might dissolve the clot. But it’ll also increase your chance of bleeding elsewhere in your body – and our supply of blood substitute is limited. If we were at a hospital on Earth, you’d be getting a cardiac catheterization right now instead. I’d thread a thin tube through an arm or leg artery up to your heart – and open the blocked heart artery by inflating a tiny balloon inside it. Then I’d insert a small tube – a stent – to keep the artery open.”
Vali whispered, “Will he be all right if he doesn’t have that done?”
Stone focused on his patient. “I’ll do the best I can with everything I have here. I hope it’s enough.”
Chapter 10
Stabilize and transfer. That medical mantra was scarred into Stone’s memories. Ages ago, during his cardiology training, he’d spend countless weekends moonlighting in ERs at small community hospitals in rural Texas. Patching together and pumping medications into mangled auto accident victims barely clinging to life, until they were stable enough to survive the airlift to an urban medical center, with the specialists and equipment needed to give them definitive treatment – and save their lives.
Stabilize and transfer. A fine principle – usually. But when reaching that life-saving care meant a fiery descent from orbit, and suddenly thrusting a fragile heart back into the stress of 1g – maybe it was better to leave bad enough alone.
Osler returned and finished her update. “Everybody down here – including the Russians – agree you should give Boris tenecteplase and enoxaparin and then, if he’s reasonably stable, get him down here to JSC right away. We can have him at St. Luke’s forty minutes after you land.”
It might be the lesser of two evils to keep him here. “If he has more VT or goes into cardiogenic shock while we’re deorbiting– ”
“I know. But if he stays on the station, you don’t have all the medicines and equipment you need to treat those problems there either! Still – you’re in the best position to see how he’s doing. I’m afraid you get the final call about when – or if – we try getting him home. I’ll sign off and get everything ready here, in case you do decide to bring him down.”
Stone sighed. Not that I want that responsibility. “OK.”
Vali held her husband’s hand as Morita drew the blood samples Stone ordered. After the biologist left to analyze the specimens, the physician injected several more medicines into his patient. Finally he said, “Boris, we have to decide now. If we keep you here, and a couple hours from now you have more chest pain, or even– ”
“Die?”
Stone nodded. “if that happened, we’ll wish we’d evacuated you. But if we send you down on the CRV, and you have problems en route– ”
“Then, my friend, you’ll curse yourself for doing that.”
The Russian shrugged resignedly. “You’re the doctor. Tell me what you think is best, and I’ll do it.”
“Medically, it’s too close to call. If we get you safely to a hospital on Earth, your chances of getting through this will be better than they are now. But that’s a big ‘if’. And it’s your life at stake, so I need to know what you want to try.”
Boris placed a hand on the doctor’s shoulder. “If you think it’s better for me to go to Earth, then that’s where we must go.”
As Stone began “That’s not what I said–,” an unexpected voice interrupted him.
“Newkirk’s getting the CRV ready.”
LeBeau, attired in a fresh jumpsuit, had recovered his usual jauntiness. “He said it’ll take at least four hours to finish repairing the communication system Boris was working on, so you’ll use the other vehicle.”
“I still haven’t decided whether Boris should be evacuated.”
“Well, decide now. You’ll need to leave the station in thirty minutes to be in the best position to deorbit and land at JSC. If not, you’ll have to wait another orbit before you’re in prime position to leave again- ”
Stone hesitated. During his career he’d had to make many quick life-and-death decisions on critically ill patients when there wasn’t enough information to tell him what the best one was. The scientist in him hated extrapolating beyond the data points. But sometimes you had to make a leap of faith – and go with what your instincts told you was right.
Finally he said, “Let’s do it.”
“Good. I talked Houston out of having all of us leave the station. You only need one person to go with you and Boris, to pilot the CRV.”
“Morita can’t go. With me gone, he’s your only fully-trained CMO.”
“And I, as mission commander, should stay too.”
“Then Newkirk’s the logical choice– ”
“No!”
Vali and Boris shouted the word simultaneously. The latter said, “I want her with me, otherwise I won’t go!”
“Stone turned to LeBeau. “Newkirk’s better qualified. If we have any major problems with our systems in-flight, he’s fully trained to make repairs. She isn’t.”
Vali Protested, “But Boris needs me with him! I’m his wife!”
“Yes, I won’t go without her!”
Stone snorted. How touching. Such a devoted couple. “Whatever. She can come along for the ride – if Newkirk comes too.”
The commander stroked his chin. “There’s no need for four people to leave. I’m more familiar with Vali’s training than you. I believe she’s perfectly qualified to pilot the CRV. And I understand why she wants to go.”
“My first concern is getting my patient safely back to Earth. Let’s see what JSC says – ”
LeBeau waved his hand impatiently. “There’s no time for that. I am in charge here. We’ll do it my way!”
Stone swallowed his rage and forced himself to think. He glanced at the monitor, then at Boris – the innocent victim caught in the middle of this senseless argument. Fighting LeBeau’s pigheaded idea would waste too much time. Appealing to JSC might also take too long – even if they agreed with him, the first opportunity to deorbit might be lost. And if Boris took a turn for the worse during those precious minutes before their next chance to evacuate him –
The doctor shouted, “Have it your way! Let’s get Boris to the CRV now!”
Chapter 11
The hatch above Stone clanked shut. Though the dimly-lit CRV held only three of the seven people it was designed to accommodate, he still felt claustrophobic – like they’d just sealed his tomb.
Boris was strapped into one of the four seats forming the back row of the vehicle. Its nearly five-meter-wide interior was a comforting hospital-white. Special compartments and attachments in the CRV’s rear held the medical supplies and portable equipment needed to support his patient on the way down.
Stone increased the infusion rate of Boris’s D5NS, and checked the wires and tubes tethering the Russian to a monitor and defibrillator plugged into the craft’s power system. Vital signs look good, EKG’s almost back to normal. No Q waves yet. So far – so good.
Boris smiled at him. “Don’t worry, my friend. We’ll all be fine.”
Wish I could believe that. “The way things are looking, the tenecteplase you got might’ve at least partially dissolved the blood clot blocking your heart artery.”
“And I feel almost well enough to go back on duty! Maybe we don’t need to leave –”
“It’s not that simple. For the next twenty-four hours, even with the amiodarone you’re getting, that abnormal heart rhythm we shocked you for has a good chance of recurring. And for the next couple days there’s another serious risk. Probably you had a small blockage – a plaque – in your left anterior descending artery that was too mild to show up on routine tests. It ruptured, and blood clotted over that injured area.”
“Like it does on your skin, when you cut yourself.”
“Something like that. But because your ruptured plaque still hasn’t healed, until it does, another blood clot could form there – giving you more chest pain and heart damage.”
“So I could still die.”
“Not if I can help it.”
Stone withdrew a liter bottle of Astroade from a supply chest and pulled himself dizzily toward the front of the CRV.
“Drink this.”
Vali, strapped into the middle of the three front row seats, frowned at the computer screens and data displays on the instrument console before her. “In a minute. I need to study these readings – ”
Stone thrust the bottle at her. “Take it!”
“But why – ”
“You lost about a liter of fluid from your bloodstream – after entering microgravity. Some of the remaining fluid shifted from your lower to upper body. If you don’t replenish it, after we land Earth’s gravity will pull too much blood back to your legs when you stand. Then your brain won’t get enough blood – and you might pass out.”
Vali took the bottle, and pressed her lipstick-smeared mouth around its nozzle. She squeezed it, and lingeringly gulped down its contents. “Why aren’t you drinking any?”
Stone scowled, and patted his upper thigh. “Because my body’s still adapted to 1g. The negative-pressure trousers I’m wearing kept me from losing that fluid. I’ll just have to neutralize the pressure after we deorbit.”
In a shadowy recess of his mind a shrill voice sneered, I wasn’t anything special to you! You wanted the others too!
From the console, LeBeau’s voice crackled, “Two minutes till disengagement.”
Stone strapped himself in beside Boris, leaving Vali alone in the front row. As the seconds ticked by, shame at his thoughts and behavior seeped into his mind – melting some of his anger. Of course it didn’t matter whether Newkirk or Vali came. The CRV’s re-entry sequence was fully computer-controlled and automatic. Its inertial navigation system used data from Global Positioning System satellites or transmitted from the ground to direct the craft to the right place in orbit, fire the Deorbit Propulsion Stage’s engines to slow it for re-entry, then jettison the DPS.
Their unpowered vehicle would glide down like a Shuttle until, at an altitude of about five kilometers, it deployed two secondary parachutes and a large parafoil to slow it down. Then the Navigation Guidance and Control System would guide the parafoil autonomously – turning it as needed to keep them on course to JSC. Finally they’d slide to a soft pinpoint touchdown on the craft’s retractable landing skids.
All routine, all perfectly safe. Because the electronic systems in CRVs never failed. And parachutes always deployed properly.
“One minute to disengagement.”
Stone wriggled in his seat – trying to think happy thoughts. In another hour, he’d be home. Hopefully the family liaison people at JSC knew where to reach Donna to tell her what was happening. She and the kids, halfway through their Christmas vacation, were out of town in Cincinnati visiting her parents.
But maybe it was better if she didn’t hear he was returning early. During their telephone link several days ago, Donna said a blizzard had made the city’s Christmas all too white. Knowing her, no matter how bad or dangerous the weather was, she’d try flying – or, if the airport was shut down, maybe even driving back to Houston to be with him. Her chance of getting hurt or killed in an accident on the way there might be more than his.
Think something happier. Shortly after they landed, Boris would be tucked safely into an ICU bed at St. Luke’s. There he’d have all the doctors, nurses, and state-of-the-art medical care he needed to get well – and wouldn’t be only his responsibility any more.
Except – this was Boris’s farewell to space. Whatever caused his MI, they’d never clear him to fly again.
And – maybe – it was his farewell too. Back home with his family after these long months, this time he might not be able rationalize leaving them again. Maybe it was finally time to renounce Luna, his harsh mistress.
A melody from Dr. Zhivago waltzed through his mind as the CRV silently separated from the ISS. A small LCD on the wall beside him showed a shielded minicamera’s view of their windowless craft moving slowly away from the huge, dark, spider-like structure.
Stone saw Boris stare transfixed at the screen. A tear trickled down the burly Russian’s cheek as he murmured, “Farewell.”
Vali turned around to look at her husband. Her eyes misted over. “I’m sorry, my love!”
Squirming uncomfortably, Stone studied the monitor showing his patient’s vital signs and EKG. For many minutes a profound quiet enveloped the cabin, punctuated only by the faint chatter Vali kept up with JSC, and gentle vibrations as thrusters fired and manoeuvred the CRV into position for its deorbit burn. The ISS dwindled in size, then disappeared from the screen. Now it was just the three of them – alone in a lifeboat bobbing in the vast black ocean of space. The cardiologist chuckled grimly at his memory of Alfred Hitchcock’s cameo in a newspaper weight-loss ad.
Vali murmured, “Deorbit burn in ten seconds.”
Stone glanced worriedly at Boris. In theory, the deceleration forces during the DPS’s big bum should put little additional strain on the Russian’s cardiovascular system. Neither should the slightly more than 1g they’d experience during re-entry itself. But, in his present condition, even what would normally be a trivial stress might prove life-threatening.
“Five seconds … two, one … ”
Stone braced himself for a rumble and shove that never came. Instead he heard a sharp SNAP! – and the lights went out.
Chapter 12
In the terrifying darkness Stone reflexively placed his palm over his heart – checking if he was still alive. The curses in Russian bellowed beside him, the “beeps” and dimly lit screens and displays of his medical equipment – now the CRV’s only illumination – finally reassured him of his continued existence.
At least for now.
Vali was first to shout what they all recognized. “Total power failure!”
Stone felt Boris try to lunge forward before being stopped by his seat restraint. The Russian roared, “There is a flashlight in that compartment on the left side of the console!”
After long seconds of metallic clanking from the CRV’s front, Vali exclaimed, “I found it!”
Boris yelled back at the wavering light that clicked on in front of him, “Check the batteries!”
Then Stone smelled it. An acrid smell – like burnt insulation. Not a good sign.
Next it was Vali’s turn to spit curses in Russian. “The batteries – they all look charred, like they shorted out!”
Boris called back, “All of them? Impossible!”
“I must see them!”
Stone squelched his flashback of scenes from Apollo 13 when the shadowy figure beside him tried to tear off the tubes and wires attached to his body. “Boris, stop it! If you don’t lie still you could die!”
“If we don’t get power back, doctor, we’re all going to die!”
Suppressing his medical reflexes, Stone grumbled, “All right. But let me disconnect you the right way. If you yank out your IV lines we’ll he swimming in blood – your blood!”
The Russian waited impatiently until the physician finished, then rocketed forward. Stone shut off his medical equipment, the glowing lines and numbers on their displays now meaningless with no patient attached, and followed more cautiously – guided by the flashlight darting frantically in front of him.
Boris moaned, “This is bad.”
Stone dimly saw him attach a multimeter to different sections of the craft’s bank of batteries. Then Boris pronounced his diagnosis.
“They’re all dead.”
Then so are we. With a clinical detachment that surprised even him, Stone pictured himself dead. Dealing with death and dying for so long as a doctor numbed some of the regret he felt for himself.
But he grieved for those he loved. Having a dead “hero” for their husband and father might bring them some consolation. But what about all the “might-have-beens” – the birthdays, holidays, even the experiences most taken for granted, like feeling his wife pressed warmly against him on a leisurely Sunday morning after they’d made love, that he wouldn’t be there to share with them?
Vali whispered, Is there anything we can do?”
Her husband murmured, “We have one chance – ”
His flashlight flailed wildly in the dark ness for a while. Then he yelped, “Good! The spare battery modules are fully charged! Vali, help me replace these bad ones!”
Stone sighed. Thank goodness for NASA’s insistence on redundancy – even for components that no one realistically expected to fail completely.
Except – he was a doctor, not an engineer, but he vaguely recalled something from those basic courses on the CR-V even he’d had to take.
“Boris, do we have enough spare batteries to replace all the ones that are dead?”
A pause. “No. Only two of them.”
“Do we have enough power for the systems we need to get down in one piece?”
“That’s what we must talk about … ”
Chapter 13
In the near-darkness, clustered around the glowing flashlight like teenage campers telling ghost stories, the three of them floated in the center of the CRV and – almost literally – put their heads together.
Boris began, “I’m not sure, but I think we have just enough battery capacity to reach Earth – if we’re careful how we use it. We have to fire the DPS, we have to use our navigation system to plot our location – and the computer has to release the parachutes at the right time.”
Vali nodded. “You and I trained to maneuver the parafoil with manual controls if the NGCS failed. That would save a little power.”
Stone added, “The life-support system. Normally we’d have enough sup plies and power for nine hours with full crew. With only three of us, our oxgen supply will last longer. But, without an operating thermal control system, over the next few hours it’ll get uncomfortably hot and cold in here.”
Boris laughed. “I don’t intend to be up here a few hours from now! I estimate we’ll be in the right orbital position to try another deorbit burn in about one hour.”
Vali frowned. “What about communications? Shouldn’t we try to contact the space center, or the station? They could give us advice.”
Her husband shook his head. “If we had enough power to spare, I would. But we don’t – and I doubt they could help us anyway.”
“What about returning to the station?”
Boris looked at Stone, and sighed. “All this time, our orbit has been slowly decaying. I fear we’re too far away from and below the station now to rendezvous with it. And it’d do no good if they came to us in the other CRV. These craft are not designed to dock together – and we don’t have the suits for an EVA!”
Stone shrugged. “At least now we have a plan.”
“Except … I wonder if –”
Both men turned their heads in Vali’s direction.
“Doctor, didn’t you say a blood clot blocked an artery in Boris’s heart, and deprived it of blood?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that reminds me of how our batteries suddenly failed, and shut down our power.”
“I suppose, but –”
“Don’t you see? Maybe, just as that blocked artery damaged Boris’s heart, whatever destroyed our batteries – perhaps a short circuit, Boris? – also damaged a computer or other system we need to get home. Or maybe your giving medicines that partly dissolved the clot is like us using these replacement batteries.”
Boris nodded. “Do you understand what she’s saying, my friend? You said the same problem that blocked my artery could happen again. And if whatever damaged the original batteries destroys these replacement ones too … ”
Stone said nothing. There was nothing to say.
Chapter 14
Stone watched anxiously as his two crewmates, sitting beside him in the front row of seats, applied power just long enough to run diagnostics on each of the craft’s critical systems. As each computer and display flared briefly to life and Boris murmured approvingly, the doctor breathed another sigh of relief. If any critical system didn’t work – couldn’t be repaired – well, it would take only one weak link in the chain to kill them.
As he waited for their last flicker of hope to be extinguished, Stone remembered something the Machiavelli-reading LeBeau said. Newkirk’s getting the CRV ready. Now he wondered if that preparation included sabotage. How convenient, if the one person who might squeal about their extracurricular sexual activities suffocated in space –
Boris’s forehead beaded with sweat. “Now for the last test – our navigation system.”
Stone shivered – but not simply from fear. With their heaters not working, he could see Boris’s breath. Based on how cold the cabin was, they must’ve been in Earth’s shadow for a while.
But he felt warmer when Vali exclaimed, “It works!”
Her husband kissed her cheek, then whooped as numbers flashed on the console’s screen. “The GPS is showing our position! At least now we know where we’re lost – ”
Vali’s fingers flew over a small keyboard. She exclaimed, “In sixteen minutes, we’ll be in the right place to fire our engines!”
“Now we know everything we need to!”
Boris flicked a switch, and the cabin went dark again until Vali turned on their flashlight. “We’ll reactivate these systems three minutes before we reach our deorbit point. That will – I hope – give us enough time to make sure everything’s still working and update our readings, while wasting as little precious power as possible.”
Stone interjected, “How far away are we from the terminator?”
“We’ve already passed it. Though we cannot see it, the Sun is shining on us!”
“Good. Then it should start warming up in here soon.”
“Let’s hope it does not get too warm. If our deorbit engines don’t fire properly, or we re-enter the atmosphere at the wrong speed or angle – ”
Stone completed the sentence silently. We burn up.
He said, “Boris, let me hook you back up to the monitor and defibrillator.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that, my friend. I may need to move around quickly to recheck the batteries if anything goes wrong during our descent. I cannot have your medical devices weighing me down like anchors!”
“But your body’s going to be stressed during deceleration and re-entry. If I can’t monitor your blood pressure, EKG, and other data, I won’t be able to treat you effectively!”
The Russian shrugged. “I must take that chance. Your medicines have done a wonderful job. I feel fine now!”
“Feeling fine doesn’t necessarily mean you are fine. Back on the station you were ‘feeling fine’ just before you went into VT! If we hadn’t already connected you to the defibrillator and shocked you immediately – ”
Boris shrugged. “I suppose I’d be dead now. Perhaps it would have been better if I’d died on the station. At least then Vali and you would still be there – and safe.”
In the darkness Stone heard Vali, seated to his left, lean away from him toward her husband. He only heard the kiss she gave him. “Don’t say that, my love!”
Boris murmured soothingly to her, then raised his voice. “There’s something you can do for me, doctor.”
He angled the flashlight so it gently illuminated Valentina’s face. Her makeup was nearly rubbed off, and her hair was a tangled mess floating haphazardly behind her. The grimy jumpsuit she wore flattened and neutered her figure.
Stone went rigid as Boris continued. “I know, my friend, you’ve been angry at Vali. You don’t approve of certain ways she’s chosen to live her life. Not because, as that fool LeBeau thinks, you have no human feelings. No, though you hide it well beneath that hard doctorly crust, you care very much about people – perhaps too much. It hurts, even angers you when they do things to themselves you think are harmful – or that won’t make them as happy and healthy as they could be. And it frustrates you when you can’t help them see, or do what you believe could bring them much greater joy and fulfilment.
“Perhaps Vali and I have sacrificed things we shouldn’t have – like a warm, loving home, with children scurrying about. Perhaps the ways we choose to soothe quench our loneliness aren’t the best. But, if we are to pursue our greatest love, we must be faithful only to it.”
Boris delicately nudged Vali’s cheek away from him, until she was looking at Stone. “Tell him, my beloved. Tell him why you made love to me, and all those others on Earth.”
Stone stiffened as the woman beside him hesitated. Then she murmured, “Because I had to. It was the only way I could get into space. When I was a little girl growing up near Kursk, I’d go out on cloudless nights and look up at the round bright Moon hanging over the wheat fields. I’d dream about being the first Russian, the first woman to stand on it – to look back at the tiny Earth hanging suspended in velvet, and see how far I’d come, how much I’d achieved!”
Her eves shimmered with starlight, and the vast wondrous expanses of the universe. They reminded Stone of a seven-year-old boy squinting through the blurry eyepiece of a rickety department store telescope – straining beneath a cold night sky to glimpse the canals of Mars. Boris smiled.
“You see, my friend, we all have something more in common than sharing this predicament. And if we survive this, I want you to do something for me.”
“What?”
“Don’t do or say anything that will keep Vali from living her dream! There will be questions about what everyone was doing when my heart failed me. If you tell them the truth, it will cause a scandal, with shame and disgrace for the rest of us. Perhaps their space agencies will eventually forgive our three absent ‘friends’ on the station, and let them go back into space – if only for missions no one else wants.
“My government will not be so understanding. It doesn’t matter what happens to me. My body has failed me, and I cannot fly again. But it would break whatever is left of my heart if Vali were, as you say, ‘blackballed’. For her to stay bound to Earth for the rest of her life would be death by lingering, perpetual torture.”
Boris chuckled dryly, and pressed his fist over his breastbone. “Humor a dying man. Grant his last request – promise me you won’t say or do anything that could hurt Vali!”
Stone hesitated. “There are other issues involved, Boris. Lying about what happened might make things worse.”
“I am not asking you to lie, but merely be … discrete about what you say.”
“I’II – do the best I can.”
Boris sighed. “I suppose that is the most any of us can be asked to do.”
Chapter 15
Minutes later, at Boris’s signal, Vali flicked the first switch. One after another, a firecracker cascade of glowing computer screens and readouts illumined the console.
Although, like everyone assigned to the ISS, he’d been trained to operate the CRV, Stone let the two Russians do it. Watching them work, Boris – and yes, Vali too – clearly knew what they were doing. His efforts were better directed observing Boris – alert for the first sign his patient was taking a turn for the worse.
Vali murmured, “Deorbit burn in thirty seconds.”
We hope. Stone watched Boris point to a vertical bar meter on the console. “We all must watch this meter very carefully. See how it’s glowing just a little into the yellow area? Even now you see it creeping down toward the red, as we deplete our batteries’ power. To conserve it, we must shut off each system as soon as it has done its job, and is no longer needed, For if this meter stops glowing before we reach the ground –”
Splat. As he leaned back, Stone felt like he was in a dentist’s chair. A flashback of that family vacation to Yellowstone two years ago made him squirm more. Driving at night through a lonely stretch of Wyoming, he’d shaken off his highway hypnosis to realize the minivan’s gas gauge was pointing perilously close to “E”. With no artificial lights behind or ahead of them under that cold starry sky, he could only hope – or pray – there was a gas station just beyond the black horizon. And while the kids slept in back, he and Donna discovered their cell phone’s battery was dead – with no replacement or way to recharge it.
Whether divine providence or merely luck, they’d made it to that lonely ramshackle station driving only on fumes and will power. Even paying four dollars a gallon beat being stranded in the middle of nowhere – with slim prospects of rescue. Maybe his idea of wiring the cell phone directly to the car’s battery with jumper cables might’ve worked. More likely the phone would’ve just been fried –
“Five seconds … two, one … ” Stone braced himself for the console to go dark again. But instead an invisible mattress pressed him back into his seat. The craft rumbled around them like a runaway vibrating bed as Vali recited, “Deorbit burn 25% complete … 50% … 75% … complete!”
The mattress vanished. Boris muttered, “Now let us pray this clever computer jettisons our engines.”
As if in answer, the craft jerked forward slightly, and a green light lit on the console. As Boris blurted “Thank you, dear God!”, Vali flipped several switches and reported, “Everything is shut down except the navigation system.”
Her husband frowned at the meter. “Perhaps I thanked the Almighty too soon. We’re deeper into the red than I hoped.”
As the CRV performed its preprogrammed turn and plunged into the atmosphere, three pairs of eyes anxiously stared at the solitary lit display on the console. Watching their altitude and distance to the landing site decrease, seeing the meter dim – and hoping the thin lifeline they clung to wouldn’t snap.
Stone listened as Vali slowly counted out numbers. “Altitude 100 kilometers … 90 … ” Then he glanced at Boris – and his own heart skipped a beat. The other man was pale and diaphoretic. His breath came in gasps, and his fist rested on his chest.
“Boris, what’s wrong?”
The Russian exhaled a huge sigh. “We did our best. But – ”
His moist finger stroked the meter. Only a sliver of red at the bottom warmed his fingertip.
Vali stopped counting and clutched her husband’s hand as he said, “The batteries will probably be exhausted about the time our parafoil must deploy. If they fail before it does –”
Stone interrupted. “The parafoil won’t deploy, and – no pun intended – we drop like a stone. of course, if we’re lucky, they fail after the parafoil’s out. Except – with no navigation system to tell us our location, we’ll be flying blind . Not that it’d matter anyway – with no electricity for the automatic or manual systems, we can’t steer the parafoil and control where we land. Let’s hope we don’t take out a chunk of downtown Houston with us.”
The two Russians’ eyes widened at their crewmate. The doctor sighed. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
Boris groaned. “But it is the truth.”
Vali brushed perspiration from her husband’s forehead “If we only had another battery –”
Boris didn’t reply. His face was ashen – and it seemed he might not live long enough to matter how he reached the ground. Stone grimaced, thinking it wouldn’t have made any difference if he’d talked his patient into hooking him back up to the defibrillator –
Suddenly he shouted, “Wait, we do have more batteries!”
Vali screamed “What?”, followed instantly by Boris’s “Where?”
Stone replied, “I use portable medical equipment so much, I take for granted they have backup power systems inside them for when they aren’t plugged in! Your monitor and defibrillator – they have good-sized batteries inside them!”
Doubt shaded the new-found hope on Vali’s face. “But are they the right kind Of batteries? Will they work?”
Suddenly rejuvenated, Boris replied grimly, “I’II make them work!”
As Vali resumed her countdown (“Altitude 50 kilometers … 40 … ”), Stone unstrapped himself and followed Boris to the back of the CRV. That end of the craft now was – and felt – tilted downward as Earth’s gravity brought weight back to their bodies. As Stone held the increasingly heavy devices, Boris unscrewed their back panels and ripped out their small but powerful batteries.
Struggling “up” to the front of the craft, Boris laid on the floor beside the left side of the console and braced himself against a wall. Stone held the precious batteries while the other man fumbled for cables and tools. As he watched Boris’s hands flying inside the tight compartment, pausing only to snatch another battery from him, he seemed to catch fleeting images of Mir in his crewmate’s eyes.
Vali’s murmured “Altitude 20 kilometers … ” was interrupted by a thundering voice below her. “Any change on the meter?”
A pause. “No. Ten kilometers
Boris cursed, and jiggled a cable. “Now is it changing?”
“No … wait, the reading’s higher!”
Stone glanced up too. There was more red showing – but not much.
Boris wiped his brow and accepted the doctor’s helping hand to pull him up. “Nothing more we can do. Let’s hope it is enough.”
They strapped themselves in on either side of Vali. She murmured, “Six kilometers … ”
Stone felt himself jerked upward as the CRV rocked. Vali shouted, “Drogue chutes deployed –”
A bigger lurch turned his stomach upside down. Through his nausea he heard Vali cry, “Parafoil out!”
A weak voice on the opposite side of the cabin answered, “Shut down the automatic guidance system and use manual controls. They need less power.”
Vali obeyed, using their position display to guide her as she steered the parafoil to keep them on course. She whispered, “Ten kilometers from target … nine … eight … ”
Stone pictured the huge fluorescent orange parachute unfurled above them – hopefully carrying their dead weight safely down to Ellington Field. Belatedly he wondered if JSC knew they were coming in. They’d been out of communication for nearly two hours
A groan interrupted his reverie. Boris was lying back in his seat, eyes closed. “Boris, are you all right?”
No response.
Not now! As Stone struggled free of his seat’s restraints in the bobbing craft, Vali’s concentration wavered from her task. “What are you doing?”
“I have to help Boris!”
Feet spread wide for balance, the doctor twisted around and beliffid the row of seats – using their backs for support as he struggled to reach his patient. Falling back, pulling himself forward in the swaying ship with Sisyphean tenacity, he stretched to get close enough to see if Boris was breathing – if he still had a pulse.
But what if he didn’t? Doing CPR was impossible when he couldn’t even get a stable foothold! There was no monitor to guide his treatment, no medicines to give, no defibrillator to shock the Russian out of VT –!
Stripped of his technology, skills, and reason, Stone grabbed Boris with both hands and shook him violently. Drowning out Vali’s quiet “Five hundred meters … 100 … ”, the doctor screamed, “Damn it, Boris, don’t you dare die on me now! Vali needs you! You’ve got to stay alive for her!”
Then a terrible crash sent Stone spiralling forward – and the lights went out again.
Chapter 16
Some time later the doctor’s head stopped spinning. Alone in the still, silent darkness, he wiggled his toes and fingers to see if they moved – and tried to figure out what was pressing on his neck and back.
A flashlight beamed in Stone’s direction – showing him he was wedged into the CRVs nose.
Vali called, “Are you all right, doctor?' Bruised and battered, Stone rolled free of the tight space and stood up shakily. “I’m fine, I have to get to Boris –!”
Then he heard a weak but clear voice – speaking words he’d heard ad nauseam from the back of the minivan on so many family trips. Boris said, “Are we there yet?”
Stone lurched toward the other man – then realized the CRV didn’t seem to be moving. “I guess we are.”
“Vali, could you hand the good doctor your flashlight? I want him to check why we lost power when our landing skids hit. I mustn’t have done a good job wiring the batteries, and one of my cables broke loose.”
His wife whispered, “You did a wonderful job, my love.”
She smiled. “Listen! Do you hear them?”
Still woozy, Stone dimly heard voices and a siren outside the craft. Wobbling forward, he released the CRV’s side hatch.
Dry tepid air and the stabbing beam of a searchlight cutting through the ebbing twilight greeted him as the door came free. The first person he recognized sprinting toward the vehicle, white coat flapping, was Mina Osler. Surprisingly spry for a sixty-five-year-old grandmother, she grinned at him and said, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?”
Ignoring the welcoming brown hand she extended, Stone waved toward the interior of the vehicle. “Boris needs help right away. We had to cannibalize our equipment getting down here, and he’s not even hooked up to a defibriliator!”
Mina’s face instantly turned as grimly professional as his. She called behind her, “Get that stretcher over here now!”
Feeling much too dizzy to help, Stone stepped tentatively outside to the runway to let the paramedics have more room to work inside the craft. He watched them load Boris onto the stretcher and, under Mina’s careful scrutiny, hook him back up to a battery of life-support equipment and IVs.
Vali stepped out of the CRV and stood close beside him. Her thin lips formed a grateful smile.
“Thank you,” she said, “for everything you did to help Boris. And for being our friend.”
A smile flitted across Stone’s face before dying stillborn. He shrugged. “You’re welcome.”
The stretcher clanked against the side of the CRVs hatch as the paramedics carried Boris outside. As they passed, he grinned and waved at Stone. “Thank you, my friend. And remember what we talked about on the way down!”
Vali held her husband’s hand as she walked beside the rolling stretcher toward the waiting life-support vehicle.
Stone started to stagger after them until Mina’s voice stopped him.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“I have to ride to the hospital with Boris.”
“No, you don’t. He’s not your patient anymore. In fact, ever since you landed, you’ve been mine!”
Her chuckle died as she looked more closely at him in the fading dusk. “You don’t look so good.”
As the world spun dizzyingly around him, Stone slumped to the concrete and stretched out supine on its comforting coolness. “I don’t feel so good. Better tell the DUCM people they still have some work to do on their readaptation experiment.”
Mina’s moonlike face – the dusky shade of a penumbral eclipse – bobbed in front of him. “Here’s what’s wrong!”
She ripped off the long-forgotten VSs from behind his ears, then fiddled with a valve at his waist. “You were supposed to remove these and turn off your negative-pressure trousers when you deorbited! Keeping them on in 1g was making you orthostatic and a neurovestibular mess!”
“Sorry. I got distracted.”
As Mina called for another stretcher, Stone saw the nearly full Moon rising brightly above the eastern horizon. AS he watched, the silvery orb seemed to recede into the blackening sky and vanish from his grasp. But though he mourned its loss, like Antaeus reborn he felt the Earth’s strength flow back into him.
For better or worse, he was home to stay.
Chapter 17
Stone lay alone and shivering on his lumpy bed at the hospital – staring up through blackness at the unseen ceiling. The door to his small room was slightly ajar. Only the faintest hint of fluorescent light filtered through from the empty silent corridor outside. On a nightstand, “6:28 a.m.” glowed in fiery red.
He’d probably used this room year ago when he was on call as a resident here at St. Luke’s. But he didn’t remember it. And right now, enveloped in a cold black nothingness he hoped would last forever, he didn’t want to remember anything.
Minutes later the clock radio came to life. Faint symphonic music from a local FM station assaulted his cars.
Sounds late Romantic. Tchaikovski?
He sighed. Doesn’t matter. Nothing matters anymore.
The door creaked halfway open. The dim light from the corridor created the shadowy outline of a chair beside his bed. A tiny window behind the chair showed only darkest night.
A somber figure entered, and sat in the chair. As the music played softly in the background, Vali spoke.
“I can’t believe he’s dead.”
Stiffly, painfully, Stone sat up on the side of the bed, and faced her. “I’m sorry. We’re all sorry it happened.”
“He was laughing and joking in the ambulance.”
“All the doctors who treated him are experts. They did everything it was humanly and medically possible to do before calling the code.”
“He was still smiling when they put him in his hospital bed. I was sitting beside him, stroking his cheek when –”
Vali sighed. “After everything we went through – Boris still died.”
“We all talked about this late last night, after it happened. Sometimes you do the best you can – and it’s still not enough.”
“If you’d been here, maybe you could have done something to save him.”
Stone shook his head. “Even if I’d argued Mina into letting me come here sooner from the JSC infirmary when we heard Boris was doing worse, it wouldn’t have mattered.”
They sat silently, oblivious to the tumultuous orchestral score whirling quietly from the radio.
Vali whispered, “What will you do now?”
“Learn to live without doing everything I wanted to do with my life. Devote my full time and love to where it should have been all along – with my wife and kids. I’ve said my farewell to space too.”
Her voice turned icy. “That’s not what I meant! What will you tell your superiors about what we were doing on the station when Boris had his heart attack?”
Stone hesitated. “The truth. They need to know everything that happened.”
“Why? Boris asked you not to! All it will do is ruin his reputation, hurt the others’ careers – and punish me!”
“I don’t want anybody to be hurt. But this goes beyond our personal concerns. On Earth, the chance of someone as fit as Boris having an MI during sex is maybe one in a million. And yet – on the station, it did happen! Maybe – no, probably it was a coincidence, and would’ve happened even if he hadn’t been doing it, or under such stressful conditions for him.
“But I don’t know that – because there’s no good data on how risky sex in space actually is. That’s something we need to know, to protect all the men and women who’ll travel there in the future. Maybe, if what happened to Boris can teach us how to keep them safe – maybe his death will have some meaning. I wouldn’t be doing my duty as a doctor if I kept back any facts that could be medically relevant – that might prevent someone else from dying!”
Vali’s words dripped acid. “Don’t preach at me! All I know is you’re destroying my life! You still have your family, your career as a doctor. I’ve sacrificed everything else to go into space – and you’re tearing it away from me!”
Stone shook his head desperately. “I don’t want that to happen! I realize now how much you’ve given up – that you need and deserve to go back to space more than I do! But I have to do the right thing.”
“And you’re sure it’s the right thing to do.”
A terrible weight pressed on Stone’s chest. “No, I’m not sure. It’s just – as best I can tell – what I have to do. Believe me, Vali, I don’t want to do it!”
Valentina rose from the chair and stood in front of him, her face scarlet and ugly with rage. She hissed, “All you care about is your ‘duty’! If you were a real man, with any human feelings, you would have made love to me with everyone else. Maybe, if you’d been in TransHab when Boris became sick, you could have begun treating him sooner – and he’d still be alive!”
Her palm swung like a scythe and slapped his cheek viciously. She laughed at the thread of blood trickling from his mouth. “See, you don’t even react! You are a rock – a stone!”
Vali made a tight fist, drew it back to strike his other cheek –
And tumbled back into the chair like a broken puppet.
“How dare you hit my husband!”
Stone looked up to see his wife towering menacingly over Vali – ready to shove her again if she dared to rise.
Vali stared at the other woman’s face for a moment before recognizing it. She pointed an accusing finger at Stone. “He killed my husband!”
Donna sat down beside Stone, and wrapped a supportive arm around his waist. Her voice was low and firm. “No, I he didn’t. I don’t know everything that happened on the station. But I know my husband cares about other people. He always tries his best to help them, no matter how much it hurts or costs him. He’s the most loving man I’ve ever known – and if you don’t see that too, you don’t understand him at all!”
Vali gazed at the two lovers sitting close together on the bed – and began to weep. Her heartrending sobs faded away as she ran from the room, into the darkness without.
No one noticed the music on the radio end with a whirlwind of crashing cymbals, blaring brass, and thundering timpani. The announcer’s words (“That was Tchaikovsky’s tone poem, Francesca da Rimini. Now we hear Haydn’s String Quartet in B-flat Major, op. 76, no. 4.”) went unheard.
Donna whispered, “I flew down as soon as they told me what was happening and the airport reopened. The kids wanted to come with me, but I thought it’d be better if they weren’t here if … something happened to you –”
Stone crumbled into his wife’s embrace, desperately warming himself with her love. His cheek, still stinging from the blow he’d taken, pressed soothingly against Donna’s. A tear trickled from the corner of his eye, and met one of hers.
“I did the best I could, Donna.”
“I know you did, Alex. I know.”
As the soulful opening melody of the “Sunrise” quartet shimmered in the room, the first rays of dawn filtered through its tiny window. Their golden glow enfolded two broken hearts beating again as one, caressed by light.
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