I checked Captain Hightower’s suture-tourniquet assembly and made sure Crimsy’s cooler remained tightly-moored and sealed before buckling myself back into my seat.
“The crew module will detach from the service module, re-position, and start descent,” Ryong said. “We will lose each other to ionization communication blackout for a few minutes, then JPL will pick up after. Parachutes deploy in sequence, and you’ll splash down gentle as a lamb.”
“We hope,” Hightower said.
He gave me a groggy thumbs up with the packaging from the second Vicodin in his gloved hand. I had no idea how he got it into his mouth under the helmet. He was an old hand at suiting up and down for space.
“Not looking forward to the Gs,” he said. It bothered me that he took the pill, but I couldn’t begrudge him the fix. I was more worried about his sutures holding under the stress of re-entry.
“You still can’t tell me where we’re going?” I asked Ryong.
“And risk mama hearing?” Ryong said. “It’s a safe place. Bill Marcum told me to tell you Sara Goode co-wrote your splashdown program with him. And Alonzo Cooper has guaranteed clear weather. Lots of tricky logistics.” We were in good hands, for sure. “Re-entry sequence initiated.”
We started moving in earnest, DSG gradually panoramic through the window. I reached up and pressed the manual launch sequence on the touch screen in front of me. We slowed.
“Orion, what’s going on?” Ryong said. “Over.”
“Manual launch sequence initiated,” I said. “Over.”
“Manual what?”
“Launch sequence. Over.”
“What are you doing?”
“Manual launch.”
“Manual nothing,” Ryong said. “Everything’s automated.”
“What’s up, Jen?” Gillory asked.
“Just doing what I’m supposed to.”
“You’re not supposed to do anything,” Ryong said. “We’ve got this, not you.”
The service module started pushing the Orion capsule in another direction. We weren’t headed toward Earth, like we had been, but apparently re-entering...at a different location? Must have been. I was supposed to initiate manual launch. I learned that. I knew it. Their questions baffled me.
“Jennifer—” Ryong said.
“What’s wrong?” Gillory said. “Why aren’t you separating from the service module?”
“Jennifer initiated a manual launch sequence.”
“Why?” Gillory asked.
Then mama intruded. “Proof of concept,” she said.
“What concept?” I said.
“You weren’t supposed to initiate anything,” Ryong said. “It’s that simple.”
“I don’t mean you,” I said.
“It’s your destiny,” mama said. “Going to Mars has always been your destiny.”
“Destiny, what?”
“Jen—I need you to put Orion back on auto-pilot. If you don’t do it now, you’ll be on your way into deep space.”
“Deep space,” Hightower said.
“Jennifer?” Gillory said. “Listen to him.”
“You can go to Mars with no food, no fear, no psychological breakdowns, and most importantly—no forward contamination,” mama said. “Two small explosions in the brake line and steering column. Did you hear those, Jennifer? Do you remember them?”
“Jennifer—you’ve got to return Orion to autopilot,” Ryong said. “You have to do it now.”
“We even fixed your ears,” mama exclaimed. “No need to ground you anymore.”
“Autopilot, Jen. It’s the switch marked AP-Engage.”
“Engage what? Them who done you wrong? Who killed your father and all but your heart, mind, and soul?” mama said. “Their quiet, unassuming, brilliant conduit into the most important scientific mission in history. You, dear Jennifer. Your destiny.”
“Shut up!” I said into my helmet, where everyone could hear me scream. “Leave me alone. Get away from me. You don’t know me. You don’t understand me.”
“Don’t understand you?” mama said. “I designed you.”
I panicked, wanting desperately to unbuckle myself, to run. “You killed my father?” I asked.
“Not me,” mama said. “Them.”
“Who?”
“Them,” she said again. “Them who made me.”
“Gonna be high as a kite by then,” I heard Hightower say wistfully. “I miss the Earth so much—” He was trying to sing.
“He’s not going to make it, if that’s what you’re worried about,” mama said. “Re-entry will rip that wound wide open and he’ll bleed to death. What were you and the love of his life thinking?”
“Mars ain’t the kind of place...to raise your kids...it’s cold as hell,” Hightower sang. And kept singing, in a happy stupor.
This song used to fill our house, my classic rock parents, and us. Dad and David would pick up his Lego thingamajigs and fly them around to it, up and down the stairs, out the front door, onto the porch and into the yard, sometimes at night, where they would silhouette the little red-and-white imaginings against the moon, the stars, and on those rare nights Mars was visible, the Red Planet, too. Whatever was clouding my vision started to clear. “I don’t believe you,” I told mama. “You’re fucking with my mind to sabotage this ship.”
“You’re gonna sabotage that ship, Jennifer,” Ryong said. “Auto-pilot. Goddamn it! Now!”
“Where?” I said. “What do I—”
“Upper left corner. Beneath the roll and bank controls. AP-Engage. Just like it says.”
“Don’t,” mama said. “They don’t deserve you.”
I couldn’t believe anything this voice was telling me, only that it was real and I was actually hearing it and not crazy. Killed my father? And what: Saved me, somehow, or made a new me, a carbon copy of the original? This Jennifer is the same Jennifer she’s always been. I breathed onto the visor and saw the same haze I’d always seen, on cold days against the windows in my bedroom, where I felt the same warmth, saw the same eyes and lips and nose looking back at me. Who was this voice? What was this voice, if not the herald of all the self doubt that had ever gripped me? Hightower not make it? Who said? We did a damn fine job sewing him up and I would be close enough to him to tighten the tourniquet, with a twist, if the G’s we encountered started the bleed again. I’d press my body against that wound myself if I had to. He was not going to die on my watch. And neither was Crimsy. It made no sense to me that I would have engaged any sort of manual override. I knew our return was programmed and automated. I knew that. I knew it.
“Is it too late?” I asked. “Over.”
“I can re-position you,” Ryong said. “But it has to be back on auto-pilot. Now.”
“They will destroy you,” mama said. “The minute you land. That’s what happens to the Randi’s of the world, who can’t complete their missions.”
“Mars is cold as hell,” I said, and pressed AP-Engage.
Hightower gave me a feeble-but-powerful thumbs up. He was so quiet: I wondered if he was resigned to my choice, whatever it might have been. I felt us turning around, turning back. The service module jettisoned modestly. I watched a corner of it slowly space out. We accelerated, as the capsule’s auxiliary jets positioned us for descent.
“Thank you,” Ryong said.
“And thank God,” Gillory added.
“Standing by for entry interface.”
“Be safe,” Gillory said. “Will catch up with you soon.”
“You have reached entry interface,” Ryong said.
I stared out the two windows, watching the pulsating glow of our heatwave, a shock wave that surrounds the heat shield by design, keeping the heat just in front of us but never quite touching.
“Ionization blackout in thirty seconds,” Ryong said. “All systems functioning properly. Rob, Jen: Like the lady said, be safe.”
It started to get warm, really warm, but not hot. Four thousand degrees Fahrenheit, twenty-two hundred degrees Celsius out there. In here, a day at the beach. Our heatwave was purplish-pink now, more a turbulent flame than a wave. I felt the G’s at thirty two thousand kilometers per hour, trying to keep an eye on Hightower, on Crimsy, but my eyes kept blinking and the terror kept building. He turned a little and it looked like he was trying to raise his hand. I struggled to raise my palm and eke it over to grasp his fingers. The capsule’s thrusters turned us around. We rotated again, me freaking out with every movement, afraid to look at first, closing my eyes and gritting my teeth and gripping the hell out of whatever I was gripping. Hanging on for three dear lives. I mustered the courage to blink my eyes open, awestruck by the exclusive—so exclusive—show brilliantly unfolding. The flames subsided, to a light yellow, giving way to blue and white Earth, and the Sun, a bright, distant point.
“MarsMicro: This is Mission Control. You are back online and we are rooting for you,” a new voice said. I squeezed Hightower’s fingers. “We have you at two hundred twenty kilometers to splashdown. Reaction control system jets are engaged.”
I tried to figure out where we were headed with what I saw out the window. But alas, it was just clouds and water. We rotated again a few times and then I saw nothing but blue with a few wispy clouds that were probably those noctilucent types Cooper had been monitoring for our weather window.
“Twenty kilometers to splashdown. Reaction control system preparing chutes.”
Where I was scared before, I was terrified now. What if we crashed? What if we exploded in midair? I felt so helpless, unable to move, only to stare, at this sweeping diorama of descent. Hightower must have sensed my angst because he turned and pushed his hand into mine and squeezed it in his palm. Real clouds now, white puffs soaring past. I looked at our speedometer on the control panel. We had dropped to about twelve hundred kilometers per hour. The sky was an intense, light blue. The darkness of space had fully receded.
“Standby for forward bay cover jettison.”
Three golden parachutes ripped away the top of the capsule to expose the landing chutes.
“Drogue parachutes deploy.”
I saw two, maybe three more parachutes, holding us steady and whipping in the wind.
“Four kilometers to splashdown. Standby for main chute deploy.”
The drogues detached and bolted toward the light and the main chutes, a colorful cacophony of reds and yellows and blues and whites and royal purples, unfurled over our heads. I watched them grab the sky and wave and flutter, slapping the wind until they settled and unfolded with poignant, flourishing dignity. Everything was calm now, and bright. I lay there, watching the chutes drift and flow, watching our destiny unfold.
“One kilometer to splashdown.”
The sky got hazy and cloudy and I counted the designs on the chutes and where the colors on their cords changed with different segments.
“Thirty meters to splashdown. All systems looking good, MarsMicro.”
That news merited a much tighter grip between Hightower and I. My eyes dropped to his wound, and I did not see any signs of bleeding, on his suit or anywhere around him.
“Splashdown. Splashdown is confirmed.”
Water covered the window and the impact jarred me and knocked my head against the helmet. I had to act quickly, to assure we wouldn’t sink and that the flotation buoys had deployed and that our landing crew was ready and to assure they knew about Rob Hightower’s injury and assure nothing happened to Crimsy and, and, and…
I touched the two main comm controls and spoke, but heard nothing back. No welcome home. No JPL cheer. It was unsettling, but we seemed to be okay and I was intent on keeping the faith. I started my post-flight check. Air pressure equalized. We’re not sinking: confirmed. The capsule is steady enough for me to unbuckle, take off my helmet, take off Rob’s helmet, open the side hatch. I looked out the window. It was so foggy, I thought we had landed on the other coast, in San Francisco Bay.
“That was a helluva trip,” Hightower said, as his head emerged and I set his helmet aside.
“I need to check this,” I said. I zipped away a side of his flight suit and raised his undershirt. His wound was oozing and poked out, but holding.
“Okay?”
“Looks like it,” I said. I looked at the hatch. “Ready?”
“Go for it.”
I opened the side hatch and air rushed in and Hightower breathed deeply. “Better than aged Texas rye,” he said.
He hadn’t taken a breath of fresh Earth air for a year, but for me, real air was just a faded memory. I breathed deeply and poked my head out. I saw sunlight peering through the fog. Water splashed against the flotation buoy that surrounded the capsule. I grasped the outside and felt something and pulled my hand back. Black soot covered my palm. I stuck my head back out and looked around. Orion was charred from stem to stern. What I could see of the bottom heat shield was pitted and fragmented, sacrificed to the heat of re-entry.
“We need to fire off the flare gun?” Hightower said.
“How many flares do we have?”
“Four or six, I think.”
“Okay.” I ducked back in, found the flare gun, loaded a flare.
“Careful with that thing,” he said. “They gotta know where we are. Where are we, by the way?”
“Somewhere those with ill intentions can’t find us,” I said.
“Ill intentions. Up there, out here. Boggles the mind.”
I headed back toward the hatch when a blast, loud but distant, stopped me.
“Sounds like a horn,” Rob said.
It blared again.
“It is a horn,” I said.
“Fog horn?”
“Ship, maybe.”
“Fire a flare.”
I stepped out onto the capsule and steadied myself along the side and shot the firework toward the sky. The horn grew steadily louder—and weirdly familiar. I fired another flare. The bow emerged first, two enormous anchors girding either side. Then a deck of windows along the bridge and rotating antennas and weather monitors. The horns blasted again, so loud now, so close, as the smokestack poked through the fog. Could I really be seeing this?
“They see us okay?” Hightower called to me.
I saw the first letters of the name on the side of the ship and I knew.
“It’s the Badger,” I whispered. “They sent the Badger.”
I peered into the hatch. “We’re on Lake Michigan,” I told Rob. “We splashed down on Lake Michigan.”
“Lake Michigan? How do you know?”
“Because the most famous ship on the lake is headed our way.”
I stood rocking back and forth on the water, the hurricane of tears finally coming ashore. I didn’t want Hightower to hear me for all kinds of reasons, so I buried my face in my sleeve. He kept talking and I heard him, but all I could think about was that they sent the Badger to save us and I tried to save Brian, and dad, and I wanted with an aching intensity I’ve never felt before to save mom. But I couldn’t. I just couldn’t, no matter how hard I tried. And still they sent the Badger for us, the SS Badger, an east-west ferry heading south.
“We’ve never splashed down on a lake,” Hightower said. “Russians did once. Caused problems.”
Soyuz 23 splashed down on frozen, windswept Lake Tengiz in Kazakhstan. But Lake Michigan was forty times larger, a veritable ocean in comparison.
“Aren’t you from around here somewhere?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said loudly. “Kenosha. Wisconsin. I grew up on this lake.”
The Badger’s horn blasted again and I fired a third flare. I could tell by now they were far enough to our side they wouldn’t collide with us, and since the ship was slowing, they knew we were here.
“MarsMicro, this is Mission Control. Over.”
Our comm system was back online.
“We’re okay, Mission Control,” Hightower said. “Great landing. Damn clever. Over.”
A momentary hesitation, then we heard the Mission Control cheer.
“Welcome Home.”
“Thanks for taking us back,” Rob said.
I shivered—with emotions, goosebumps, and lake spray as the Badger gradually pulled alongside, her Captain welcoming us by name from a speaker and instructing me to get back inside the capsule. The big steamship pulled forward through the sound of roaring turbines and alert whistles and waves beating and thrashing her hull. The gigantic steel sea gate across the stern—marked “A National Historic Landmark” above “SS Badger”—gradually raised to a waiting crane. Divers and pararescue crews dropped around us and floated up in a rubber dinghy. They attached what I knew were stabilization collars and winches and so-called “tending cables.” A diver poked his head in, gave us some instructions (stay belted into your seats until we have the capsule aboard) and the cables pulled us, bobbing and weaving, toward the ship. They attached the crane and up we went. The crane operator lowered the capsule into its special recovery cradle on the rear auto deck, just the latest unusual cargo the Badger had carried over the better part of a century. Crews dressed in hazmat gear marked with patches that said “Exploration Ground Systems, Landing and Recovery” helped secure the capsule aboard.
I stuck my feet and head out, to applause from more people in hazmat gear, one guy beside a waiting stretcher. I felt a hand squeeze my arm. I turned and saw Dr. Marcum, looking at me from behind a hazmat visor. And Dr. Shonstein, next to him. And another woman I recognized, but not completely. We hugged and there must have been more tears but I don’t remember.
“Fabulous. Just fabulous,” Marcum told me.
“I can’t believe you did this,” Shonstein said. “I can’t believe you pulled this off.” She just stared, at me, the capsule, the crew, moving everything around.
“We pulled it off,” I said.
Dr. Marcum introduced his friend, whose face looked like it was beaming behind her hazmat visor. “Sara Goode,” she said with the most wonderful Aussie accent. “I can’t believe I’m actually meeting you.”
My eyes got wide and I almost couldn’t speak. “I’m the amazed one,” I said. “Dr Marcum...”
“...is one of a kind,” she said. “I would steal him away, but he’d never have it.”
“Sara, Coop, and I worked feverishly to land you,” Marcum said. “No mean feat on a lake two hundred kilometers wide with unpredictable weather you obviously know well.”
I asked about everyone, if they knew how my mom and David were doing, if Dr. Hale and mom were back together, if Parada and Dr. Levitt had finally tied the knot, if everything was still cool between Dr. Brando and his ex, why Nathaniel Hawthorn wasn’t here, if Dr. Cooper was back at Harvard. As usual, everything and everyone was up in the air. They didn’t say much about mom, only that I could see her after we debriefed and quarantined in Chicago (Kenosha was ninety minutes north). Parada had come through the health scare that prompted Dr. Levitt to take family leave; Dr. Brando didn’t complain about family court and lawyers as much; and Dr. Shonstein’s hair had almost grown back. Nathaniel had been offered a job in other Washington—D.C. NASA was launching an investigation into the “sabotage” of this mission, Dr. Shonstein said sternly, and she thought Nathaniel’s new job a bit too “coincidental” (air quotes added for emphasis). I suddenly felt sad, snarky, sarcastic. I said I hoped the investigation would not become just another “charade.”
“Touché,” Dr. Marcum acknowledged.
Shonstein rushed to the cooler as it emerged from the capsule. She bent down and ran her fingers along the seals and looked everything over. She instructed the crews to handle not just with care, but O.C.D. care, as they prepared to escort our visitor to a temporary containment lab, where Crimsy later made a grand entrance, ebullient and unscathed.
Captain Hightower was last to pass through the crew module hatch, EMTs supporting him on either side. The cheers were deafening. They took him to the stretcher and as they secured him, he took our hands and felt the touches of other well wishers. The sea gate started down and Hightower looked beyond the stern across the water, clearer now beneath the lifting fog.
“Hell of a vision,” he said.
And it had only just begun.