Skyfall

44

“Air speed three hundred knots,” Decosta said.

“Looks good,” Cooke said. “I'm making the last turn into the glide path now. Drop the landing gear.”

Decosta threw the switch and watched silently until the green light flicked on. “Gear down and locked.”

There had been clouds over the entire East coast, with Florida socked in solid. They had watched it from space, seen the clouds grow closer and closer as they were dropped back into the atmosphere, until they were in them and flying blind. It made no difference to their flight plan since that was controlled by the computer. There was an invisible highway in the sky they had to follow, a trace on the screen that told them just what to do, just where to be. When the Orbiter broke through the low-hanging clouds the rain-washed length of the runway stretched out before them. Cooke handled the wheel with a light touch, squinting through the tendrils of steam above the nose as the rain vaporized when it struck the silica tiles that covered the hull. Tiles still radiant hot after the 2,400 degree temperatures they had withstood during reentry.

“Down,” Cooke said as the heavy tires impacted the wet concrete. Decosta took off his belt and stood up.

“I'm going to look after our passengers,” he said.

“Give me a report, soonest.”

Decosta climbed down through the access hatch to the mid deck below and opened the inner hatch of the airlock, leaving it open as he opened the other hatch into the blackness of the cargo bay. One of the pressure-suited figures was sitting up, looking in his direction, hands on helmet.

Coretta twisted, pulled at the helmet, tore it off and took in breath after breath of the damp air.

“I can smell the sea,” she said, then raised her hand. “And you can take that damn light out of my eyes.”

“Sorry. Everything all right?”

“It will be when we get their helmets off. Give me a hand.”

The Orbiter slowed, rocked as its brakes were applied, then eased to a stop. As soon as his helmet was off Patrick pressed his hands to the bandages over his eyes, then sat up and turned in Nadya's direction. But he was silent; there seemed to be nothing for any of them to say.

“Be right back,” Decosta said, turning away.

“Hey, leave the light,” Coretta called out. “Or can you turn on the lights in here?”

“There aren't any. Why don't we all go into mid deck compartment.” The floor moved as the tractor hooked on and began to tow them slowly from the runway.

They were clumsy after their stay in free fall and willing to be helped by the pilot. The pressure suits were hot and cumbersome and they took them off before going into the compartment. The numbness persisted; they said nothing, just sat there and waited until they finally stopped and the outer door was opened.

Only when they heard the wild cheering did they realize that the voyage was over at last.

“There, in the middle of your screen, ladies and gentlemen, you can see them coming out, three figures, small at this distance though giants in the history of mankind. The ambulance is drawn up and they are entering it, no wait, they're stopping. Turning. Dr. Coretta Samuel is saying something, we can't hear it, there's no microphone up there. Now she's turning and following the others inside the ambulance and the door is closing. So this epic adventure is over at last. In a moment we will be talking to Major Cooke and Captain Decosta, the pilots of the rescue mission….”

One by one the consoles in Mission Control were shut down, the lights flickered off, the needles on the meters dropped to zero. The big screen showed a commercial TV channel now with a picture of the crew of Prometheus entering an ambulance, the announcer's voice echoing hollowly in the silence of the hall. Flax looked up at the screen, then down at the big cigar clutched in his hand. The victory cigar. Light up and smoke when the mission was successful. He closed his fingers slowly and the cigar broke, flaked, rained down in crumbled pieces to the floor.

Three of them were back, that was something. Grabbed from the fire at the last moment. But two of them pilots, good pilots, with bandages on their eyes and maybe they would never see again. But the greater disaster of a crash had been averted. Prometheus would not be plowing into San Francisco. The Russian had been good, really good.

Flax's thoughts rambled in exhausted circles, fatigue washed through his limbs, the ball of fire that had been growing steadily in his stomach spread out as though to fill his entire chest, his body.

He slumped forward, very slowly, his head dropping to the cold plastic of the console, his arms slipping off and flopping at his sides. Gravity asserted itself more and more as he slid to the floor and lay there. Motionless.

“Oh my God!” one of the technicians shouted. “It's Flax. Get the doctor!”

They straightened his great form out on the tiled floor, opened his collar wide, loosened his yards-long belt. There were running footsteps and they parted to let the doctor through.

“Is he dead, Doc?” someone asked. “A heart attack?” The doctor ignored him, feeling for a pulse in the thick wrist, pushing down hard with his stethoscope on Flax's chest, trying to make out a heartbeat through the layers of fat. The doctor finally lifted one heavy eyelid, then closed it again, before climbing slowly to his feet.

“Dead. .?” a voice asked, weakly. The doctor shook his head.

“Asleep,” he said. “This man's exhausted, totally exhausted. Call down for a stretcher. I want him in bed as soon as possible.”

It took six men to lift Flax onto the stretcher — and four to carry it. They went out in solemn procession. If not in a victory procession at least not in total defeat.

The engineer at the communications console was the only one left. He shut down his circuits one by one until he came to the last. He switched this to his headphones and rang it one final time.

“Mr. Dillwater,” he said.

“Yes, thank you very much. Goodbye,” Simon Dillwater dropped the phone and rose. He felt dizzy; it had been a long, long time.

“If you're going I can drop you off,” Grodzinski said, standing as well and stretching broadly, yawning. “I gotta car waiting.”

“That's very kind.”

“Please don't go yet, Simon,” Dr. Schlochter said. “The President would like to see you. You and General Banner-man.”

“I am not so sure that I want to see him.”

“You do, Simon. Believe me. I have had a long and heart-to-heart talk with him and I think he understands your position. “

Bannerman looked at them, then turned away and went to the bar. He still stamped hard when he walked and his spurs clinked metallically. It had been one bitch of a time and he was tired. One more large drink was in order. He poured a half glass of whiskey, dropped two ice cubes into it and swished it around. He looked up as the door opened and Bandin entered. He had shaved and changed and the TV makeup hid the blackness under his eyes. He looked fresh as a daisy compared to the others, though he felt the same inside.

“I have a few minutes before I address the nation,” he said, in his most dignified manner, the speaking-to-the nation tones already in his voice. “Therefore I will take this opportunity to inform you both about certain decisions that I have made. First, General, I wish to tell you that Operation PEEKABOO is being shut down---”

“We can't do that, not after what's gone into it,” Bannerman said angrily.

“I am afraid that we can. That we must. The operation has been compromised and too many people know about it. If we shut it down now it will be as though it never existed. If there are rumors later we can deny everything.”

“Canceling PEEKABOO will jeopardize the fate, the very future of this great nation, Mr. President.”

“One bomb less?” Dillwater said. He knew he should not speak out, but his fatigue hampered his control. “This country and the Soviets have the capacity between them to destroy the world eight times over with atomic bombs. I should think that that would be enough.”

“And we will be destroyed if people like you have their way,” Bannerman roared out. “We can only stop communist aggression by being prepared, by being stronger, by being one jump ahead of them at all times.”

“I am sorry for you,” Dillwater said, his quiet voice in striking contrast to the General's angry one. “With your archaic boots and spurs and even more ancient jingoistic mind. You are not aware that your kind is as dead as the dodo, extinct but without the brains to lie down and die. Mankind now has the chance to wipe itself out, your course, General, or cooperate and try for a future. We must cooperate to husband the limited resources of our plundered planet and see that they are shared out equally. We must cooperate or die. Perhaps that is something that you will never understand.” He turned his back on Bannerman, abruptly, rudely. “I welcome your decision, Mr. President.”

“I thought you would,” Bandin said. “I've been talking with Polyarni and we're going ahead full steam from space. And we both want you to go on heading the project. Okay?”

“I have been thinking of nothing else, Mr. President. My resignation still stands — unless I have the final authority on the project.”

“You always have…”

“No. I beg your pardon, but I have not. There have been too many political decisions overruling the technical ones. I believe the catastrophe of Prometheus One was caused by the rush to launch, the pressure, the lack of time from political not engineering reasons. If I have the final authority on all matters I will go ahead with the work.”

“You're asking a goddamned lot, Dillwater.”

“I'm promising a goddamned lot, Mr. President. We will get the first of the power flowing, if all goes well, within the year.” He smiled slightly. “So I might be promising you the next election.”

Bandin hesitated, looked at the Secretary of State. Dr. Schlochter nodded.

“All right then,” Bandin said. “You have the job---”

“And your promise in writing of course, Mr. President.” Bandin took a deep breath, glared at Dillwater, turned and slammed out. Simon Dillwater left as well and General Bannerman was alone.

He raised his drink, glared at it, then downed it.

“Well maybe PEEKABOO is dead,” he said as he tightened his belt and pulled down his jacket. “But NANCY JANE is almost out of the planning stage and at least that bastard Dillwater doesn't know about that one yet.”

His nostrils flared like a war horse going into battle as he stamped, jingling, from the room.

Cooper tapped the figures into his hand calculator and watched the little red numbers flicker and change. And come up with the same solution each time. If the Gazette-Times had upped their circulation because of his stories on Prometheus, then at the end of the year they would have added to their profits $850,000, more if the additional advertising revenue were taken into consideration, but that was good for a rough picture. Or an additional profit of $16,346.15 a week. While he had a twenty-dollar raise, or about one eighth of one percent of the profits his brilliant writing had earned them. Not only that but, after taxes, the raise would be about seven bucks a week and if you considered the growing inflation his annual income would be down about thirteen percent by the end of the year. He clicked off the calculator and.threw it into the drawer in his desk. A copy boy dropped an envelope onto his typewriter.

From the editor! Things weren't going to be as black as he thought. He tore it open and took out the boldly typed sheet inside.

NOT REALLY SATISFIED THIS STORY OF YOURS. WEAK PUNCH. GET SOMETHING NEW. WHAT ABOUT CHROMIUM POISONING IN JAPAN? COULD IT HAPPEN HERE? COPY SOONEST.

There was fine beading of sweat along Cooper's receding hairline as he groped down his copy of Annual Abstracts,

Chemical Contents of Industrial Waste.

“You can't go in there, nurse,” the MP said. “There's a debriefing going on.”

Coretta stopped and looked at him scornfully, lifting one eyebrow high. “Look again, soldier,” she said. “I'm a doctor not a nurse. And if you look a little closer you might even recognize me.”

The man started to smile until he saw the look in her eyes. He snapped to attention.

“I'm sorry, Dr. Samuel. But I have my orders.”

“Not in a hospital, sonny. Don't try to get between a doctor and Tier patient. Now move.”

He moved and she threw the door wide. The four officers grouped around Patrick's bed looked up, startled.

“What is the meaning of your presence here?” she asked.

“Just talking to the Major, Dr. Samuel,” the colonel holding the tape recorder said. “A de-briefing. Dr. Jurgens said it would be perfectly all right.”

“This is my patient, Colonel, not Major Jurgens'. I insist you leave at once.”

“This will not take much longer….”

“You're dead right. Just about as long as it takes you all to walk out the door.”

Senior officers in the Army are not used to being addressed in this manner and the situation was rapidly approaching an impasse when Patrick spoke.

“I called for the doctor, just before you arrived,” he said. “It's an injection, the pain, I thought we might be able to finish, but…”

“We understand, Major, of course. Dr. Jurgens will advise us when we can return.”

They exited in order of seniority, honor saved, and Coretta closed the door behind them and turned to Patrick.

“Is there really pain?” she asked, worried. He shook his head and smiled in her direction.

“No, none at all now, I just wanted to get rid of them.” The smile vanished as he touched the bandages. “What do the eye people say?”

“Just what they told you earlier, too early for a prognosis. But I have been talking with them and they're guarded, but seem to feel that if the retina damage is not too widespread then a measure of function will return.”

“Meaning?”

“You'll be able to see, but not too well. Glasses like the bottoms of bottles, you know the drill.”

“Well at least they won't be black glasses with a tin cup. Where is Nadya?”

“Just down the hall.”

Patrick threw off the blankets and swung his feet over the side of the bed. “Help me, will you,” he said. “My robe, somewhere in here. And take me to her room.”

“Be happy to. Here, put it on.”

The MP was still there when they came out, looking frightened, not knowing what to do. Coretta felt sorry for him. “Don't you worry,” she said. “We're not going far. Right there. You come with us and stand outside the door and you'll still be on the job.”

Nadya was sitting up in bed when they came in, wearing a white hospital nightgown.

“Who is it? “she asked.

“Coretta. I have Patrick with me.”

“Come in if you like.” Her voice was tired, empty of any emotion.

“I'll leave you two now,” Coretta said.

“Whatever you wish,” Nadya said.

“No you won't,” Patrick told her. “Close the door. We were all in that thing together. We're still together.”

He felt his way to the edge of the bed and sat on it. When he did Nadya shifted away from him so he would not touch her; only Coretta could see this. She looked at the blind faces and stiff bodies and wanted to weep.

“Listen,” she said. “I have something for you, for both of you.” She reached into her pocket and took out the two bundles and handed them over.

“What is it?” Patrick asked, feeling the paper edges.

“The first-day covers. You people forgot all about them. That comes from having military minds. You're too used to having people take care of you. But Coretta can't get out of the habit of looking after number one. And her friends. When we suited up, the first time when there was a chance of getting out of this in one chunk, I took a hundred of them and put them in my suit pocket. That should be enough. Scarcity is value in the stamp business, or so I am told. Twenty-five for each of us.” Her smile vanished then, but they couldn't see that, so she tried to keep her feelings out of her voice.

“Well Gregor won't be needing his now. I've divided the rest. Thirty-three for each of you, thirty-four for me, the extra one being my commission. I'm sure these things will be very valuable. Saved from the burning spaceship at the risk of life and limb, the ends of the envelopes still brown from the flame….”

“What flame?” Patrick asked.

“The one where I used a match to singe them just a little bit. I'll bet that adds a hundred bucks to the price of each one!”

Nadya looked puzzled, but Patrick burst out laughing.

“Coretta, I'd make you my business manager if you weren't my doctor already. I doubt if there'll be much piloting in my future so maybe I better think about going into business. How about that, Nadya, you want to go into the stamp business with us?”

“I know nothing about that. In Russia.. ”

“Don't go back to Russia. Stay here with me.”

He moved his hand over the covers until he found hers, capturing it before she could move it away. He held it in both of his and spoke, hoarsely. This was what he had wanted to say since he came into the room, had been looking for some way to say. He was not experienced at this sort of thing.

“I'll leave you alone now,” Coretta said, standing.

“No, please don't leave,” Patrick said. “There's no secret here, we've all been too close for that. Nadya, don't go back. I mean stay here with me. Or let me go back with you. About all I can offer is a military pension — and Coretta's stamps.”

“Patrick. .” She looked up towards him, blind eyes straining to see.

“Look, I love you. I've loved you a long time. Now you can throw me out. But I just wanted to get it on record.”

Seconds ticked by before Nadya spoke. “That is a very kind offer. You may leave now.”

“Well what the hell!” He was shocked, unbelieving. “Is that all you can say?”

“Just what do you expect me to say? Oh, thank you sir for your kind offer. When a man speaks as you do any woman should be swept off her feet happy to rush and say yes and look forward to a lifetime of darning socks and raising children. You are asking a lot.”

“Not of a woman. Not much at all. But maybe too much for a flying officer and test pilot….”

“Shut up!” Coretta shouted. “Before you say too much and go too far and can't get back. Listen to the doctor. Patrick, just because you love her — and neither of us doubts it — that doesn't mean that Nadya stops being what she is and forgets everything and is ready for the rose-covered cottage.”

“I know that — ”

“Maybe you know it — but you don't feel it. She is still the person she always was and you mustn't ever forget that. And you, Nadya, it's no crime to think like a woman, feel like a woman. Sensuality can be very, very good. Do you understand?”

Nadya nodded. Her voice was very quiet now, strained. “I really do not find it easy to talk about these things. It is perhaps my training. Romantic love has always been something in the cinema, not in the life of a test pilot or a cosmonaut. Perhaps I learned to play a role — but it is a role that works and whenever I step out of it I find that I can be hurt---”

“Are you talking about that time — you and I, in Texas?”

“Yes… I think lam.”

“Try to understand me. I suppose I was acting like an oversexed male chauvinist, arid I'm sorry. But I did mean it too, what I felt towards you, and I mean it now. Will you marry me, Nadya — “

“No.”

“Will you at least think about it — “

“Yes, of course, and more than that. When you are like this and trying to understand how I feel, then I want very much to be with you. Then I want to stay with you. Stay together, get married perhaps, perhaps not. But at least find out. Be patient with me, Patrick. It's not easy.”

“I will. If you'll be patient with me.” This time when he sought her hand in blindness he found it immediately. It was a beginning.

Coretta took one last look at them, lifted her hand in a little wave that they could not see, then slipped quietly out the door and closed it behind her.

“The Major, is he…” the MP said.

“Don't worry, Corporal. The Major is doing fine, just fine. He's safe and sound in there so you just let him be.”

Then she turned and walked briskly down the corridor and around the corner and was gone.

Above the hospital, above Cape Canaveral and the shrouding clouds, high above the atmosphere the sun shone as it always did. The solar storms raged across its surface and radiated their energy into space. Light streamed from the solar disc, light and radiation spread profligate in all directions. A small portion fell on the Earth, warmed it, made it habitable to man.

Ceaselessly, timelessly, the sun shone. One day, soon, another gleaming speck would soar through the thin atmosphere of Earth and into space, where it would spread its silvery net to capture more of that abundant energy before it disappeared in the eternal interstellar night.

Then — yet — another — spark —. -. -. - And — another — . -. -.