Gwendy’s Final Task

4

AT THE TOP OF the gantry there’s a large white room where the space travelers stand, arms raised and doing slow pirouettes, as a disinfecting spray that smells suspiciously like bleach wafts over them. It’s their last cleansing.

Not long ago there was another room in here, a small one, with a sign on the door reading WELCOME TO THE LAST TOILET ON EARTH, but Eagle Heavy is a luxury liner equipped with its own bathroom. Which, like the three cabins, is actually little more than a capsule. One of the private cabins is Gareth Winston’s. Gwendy reckons he deserves it; he paid enough for it. The second is Gwendy’s. Under other circumstances she might have protested this special treatment, U.S. Senator or not, but considering her main reason for being on this trip, she agreed. Mission Control Director Eileen Braddock suggested that the six members of the crew without flight responsibilities (Ops Commander Kathy Lundgren and Second Ops Sam Drinkwater) draw straws for the remaining cabin, but the crew voted unanimously to give it to Adesh Patel, the entomologist. His live specimens have already been loaded. Adesh will sleep in a cramped bunk surrounded by bugs and spiders. Including (oh, ag, Gwendy thinks) a tarantula named Olivia and a scorpion named Boris.

The lavatory belongs to all, and no one is any happier about that than their mission commander. “No more diapers,” Kathy Lundgren told Gwendy during quarantine. “That, my dear Senator, is what I call one giant leap for mankind. Not to mention womankind.”

“Ingress,” the loudspeakers on Mission Control boom. “T minutes two hours and fifteen minutes. Green across the board.”

Kathy Lundgren and Second Ops Sam Drinkwater face the other members of the crew. Kathy, her auburn hair sparkling with tiny jewels of disinfectant mist, addresses all eight, but it seems to Gwendy that she pays special attention to the Senator and the billionaire.

“Before we begin our final prep, I’ll summarize our mission’s timeline. You all know it, but I am required by TetCorp to do this once more prior to entry. We will achieve earth orbit in eight minutes and twenty seconds. We will circle the earth for two days, making either 32 or 33 complete circumnavigations, the orbits varying slightly to create a Christmas bow shape. Sam and I will be charting space junk for disposal on a later mission. Senator Peterson—Gwendy—will begin her weather monitoring activities. Adesh will no doubt be playing with his bugs.”

General laughter at this. David Graves, the mission’s statistician and IT specialist, says, “And if any of them get free, out the hatch they go, Adesh. Along with you.” This provokes more laughter. To Gwendy they sound pretty loosey-goosey. She hopes she sounds that way herself.

“On Day Three, we’ll dock with Many Flags, which just now is pretty much deserted except for a Chinese enclave—”

“Spooky,” Winston says, and makes an ooo-OOOO sound.

Kathy gives him a flat look and continues. “The Chinese keep to themselves in Spoke 9. We’re in Spokes 1, 2, and 3. Spokes 4 to 8 are currently not occupied. If you see the Chinese at all, it will be while they’re running the outer ring. They do a lot of that. You’ll have plenty of room to spread. We’re going to be up there for an additional 19 days, and room to spread is an incredible luxury. Especially after 48 hours in Eagle Heavy.

“Now here comes the important part, so listen to me carefully. Bern Stapleton is a veteran of two previous trips. Dave Graves has made one. Sam, my second in command, has made five and I’ve made seven. The rest of you are newbies, and I’ll tell you what I tell all newbies: This is your final chance to turn around. If you have even the slightest doubt about your ability to pull your weight from ingress to final egress, you must say so now.”

Nobody speaks up.

Kathy nods. “Outstanding. Let’s get this show on the road.”

One by one they cross the access arm and are helped into the spacecraft by a quartet of white-suited (and disinfected) service personnel. Lundgren, Drinkwater, and Graves—who’ll be overseeing the flight from a bank of touch screens—go first.

Below them, on the second level, Dr. Dale Glen, physicist Reggie Black, and biologist Bern Stapleton seat themselves in a row.

On the third and widest level, where eventually more paying passengers will sit (or so TetCorp hopes) are Jafari Bankole, the astronomer who’ll have little to do until they’re in the MF station, entomologist Adesh Patel, passenger Gareth Winston, and last but not least, the Junior Senator from Maine, Gwendy Peterson.