Vessel

8

“YOU’D THINK BY this point we’d have managed to do every sort of low-gravity experiment known to man,” Zach Navarro complained.

The crew of Sagittarius II was crowded into Cal’s office, perched on a couple of borrowed chairs, Cal’s desk, the windowsill.

“That’s the point,” Kevin Park was saying. “Experiments are supposed to be repeatable. So, we repeat them.”

“Again and again and again,” Navarro said.

“Trust me, you’ll be glad to have something to do.” Cal was in his office chair, his feet up on the desk. “You’re going to be stuck in that ship for over two years on the trip out. Plus, you’re going to be on TRAPPIST-1f for less time than Sagittarius I was, so we’ve got to fit in as much prep work as possible on the trip there.”

“Did we ever find out why Colonel Wells took so much longer to get home?” Kevin asked.

“Initial analysis of the ship’s trajectory suggests she was just… wandering for a while before she reentered the wormhole,” Cal said. “She may have had navigation problems on her own. We won’t know unless she remembers. But you”—he changed his tone to something more upbeat—“won’t have to worry about that. Because we hired Duffy for his excellent sense of direction.”

The tension broke with a chuckle that went around the room, and they went back to studying Cal’s planned itinerary. Cal kept his expression light, but the mention of Catherine sent him into what was now a familiar thought spiral. He kept thinking about finding her in the archives, about the odd look on her face, confusion mixed with fear mixed with a strong sense of guilt. Guilt about what?

“Why does Nate get a pass on some of the experiments?” Kowalski looked up from the initial version of the schedule Cal had put together. She didn’t sound put out, just genuinely curious. “I don’t see him listed as often as the rest of us.”

“Perks of being the FAO’s best friend.” Nate grinned and nudged Cal with his foot.

“Come on, seriously?” Navarro still wasn’t good at recognizing a joke.

Commander Duffy spoke up from his seat on the windowsill. “No, not seriously, Zach. I’m guessing Dr. Royer here is going to be doing all sorts of experiments on us.”

“Extended artificial gravity followed by a year in a low-gravity setting; the physiological possibilities are a dream,” Nate agreed.

“Wait a minute,” Leah Morrison said. “Y’all aren’t planning to use any of us as some kind of control to see who winds up all weak and messed up when we land, are you?”

“Nah, it’d compromise mission efficiency,” Nate said, straight-faced.

He got the response he was looking for. “ ‘Mission efficiency!’ What the hell, man?” Morrison looked appalled.

Nate waved a hand. “Plus, there’s that whole ethics issue around human experimentation.”

Duffy cracked first and snickered.

“Yeah, yeah, very funny,” Morrison muttered, folding her arms.

“But I will be collecting data and doing analyses on how y’all are doing,” Nate said, dropping the act. “And if need be, altering the physical conditioning routines you’re each going to be following if it turns out we underestimated the performance drop. There’s no point in doing all the training now if you’re going to lose it on the trip there.”

“In a very real sense, maintaining your health and well-being is the central purpose of the entire mission,” Cal said. “We need to know if TRAPPIST-1f can support human life adequately. And for all our theorizing and testing and probing, the only way to confirm that is to send humans there and see. You’ve got one sort of bonus—you’re not the first. Whatever happened to Sagittarius I, it doesn’t seem like it was a direct result of the planet’s environment.

“I need you guys to understand something. If I think anything is going to endanger you—aside from normal mission risks—I will do everything in my power to fix it or stop the mission. You know me. I don’t back down when I know I’m right.”

Nate grinned. “You don’t back down when you’re wrong either, man.”

The rest of them laughed, and even Cal had to grin. “Then you know you’re in good hands.”

The meeting broke up shortly after that, but Nate hung back.

“You mean it?” Nate asked him once the office held just the two of them. “You really think everything’s kosher for us?”

Hating himself a little, Cal lied to his best friend. “I haven’t seen anything that proves otherwise. And believe me, I’m looking out for it.” He paused. “But… I’m glad you stayed behind. I need to pick your brain.”

“My brain is yours,” Nate said with a smile, and settled back onto the couch in Cal’s office, a battered old thing that had seen Cal through far too many late nights.

“I’m chasing something. It might be nothing.”

Nate rolled his eyes and folded his arms. “Oh brother, here we go again.”

“Nate. Humor me, okay? The doctors are assuming that Catherine Wells’s amnesia is the result of psychological trauma. What if it isn’t? What if it has a biological component? What sorts of things could cause that?”

Nate frowned. “No one’s considered this yet?”

“Not that I’ve heard.”

“Well, there are a lot of possibilities. Brain damage is the most likely,” Nate said first thing. “Lack of oxygen, dementia, a brain tumor…” He paused. “Doesn’t her mother have Alzheimer’s? I thought I heard that in the gossip mill.”

“Yeah, early-onset, too,” Cal said, “but Catherine’s not showing any other signs, and memory loss with Alzheimer’s doesn’t act this way. She’s had every scan imaginable, so we can rule out a brain tumor. Any other sorts of diseases?”

“Anything that causes inflammation in the brain. Any sort of encephalitis. We’re seeing fungal infections more often these days…”

“So it’s possible.”

“What are the guys analyzing the data saying?”

Cal had the grace to look sheepish. “I haven’t really talked to them. Aaron gave me a pretty stern warning to stay away from Wells, at least as far as investigating her goes.”

“And yet here you are.”

“Nate… she’s lying about something. I can feel it. Her story has holes in some places, but is too ironclad in others. I have to find out what it is.” He leaned across his desk, needing to make Nate, of all people, understand. “If it turns out that something she’s keeping from us is the very thing that can keep you guys alive…”

“I get it.” Nate didn’t seem like he was about to start making jokes about Cal and his paranoia. “I’ll tell you what. I’m not under orders to stay away from Wells and her info. I have every reason, as the crew’s doctor, to want to see the medical records from the previous mission. If I find anything, I’ll let you know.”

Cal hesitated, despite the urge to jump on the offer. “Don’t get yourself in hot water over something that might be me seeing volcanoes again.”

“I’m a big boy. And you know I’ll tell you if you’re going off the deep end.”

“Thanks. I just… want you guys to be okay.”

Nate stood up. “Yeah, I know. That’s your job. And we’re counting on your sorry ass.” He grinned and headed out the door. “Climbing gym tonight?”

“Yeah. Seven sound good?”

“You bet.”

After Nate left, Cal debated with himself for a long time whether he should talk to Aaron. With Catherine’s visit to the archives… his instincts were screaming. Sure it was possible she had access and Cal didn’t know about it, but she was acting much too guilty.

He headed for Aaron’s office.

“How’d it go with the crew?” Aaron said by way of greeting.

“We’re good, I think. Morale’s been high lately. They’re getting excited.” Cal shut the door behind him and sat down in front of Aaron’s desk.

“Of course. With Catherine back safe and sound, everybody is relieved.”

“That’s… what I wanted to talk to you about.” Cal figured Aaron opened that door, so he was going to march right through it.

“Cal.” That tone didn’t bode well. “Please tell me you’re not coming in here with more conspiracy theories about Catherine Wells.”

“I am absolutely not coming in here with more conspiracy theories about Catherine Wells,” Cal answered. “I have nothing but what I’ve seen and heard myself.”

Aaron leaned back in his chair, rubbing his face with his hands.

“Aaron, I’m not trying to start shit. I swear.”

“All right. Let’s talk this through. Suppose whatever it is you have is something worth worrying about.” Aaron sat forward, his elbows landing on his desk. He pointed at Cal. “You come up with something. We postpone or even cancel Sagittarius II. What happens then?”

“Well—”

“Unless you were about to say ‘a political and public-relations clusterfuck, Aaron,’ you’re wrong. After we lost contact with Sagittarius I, we damn near lost the program. You weren’t here for that. I was.”

This was not going quite the way Cal had planned. “I know the history,” he started.

“I lived the history, Cal.” Aaron stood up, pacing to his window. “Without Paul Lindholm schmoozing his ass off on Capitol Hill, neither of us would have a job right now. The days after we lost that signal were some pretty fucking dark days. There was so much outrage, there was worry that NASA would lose most of its funding for its projects. Paul saved us all.”

Paul Lindholm was a rarity: a former astronaut who’d made it into the NASA administrator’s chair. He exuded an air of hail-fellow-well-met with bright-blue eyes and graying blond hair, and smiled too much for Cal’s liking. On Capitol Hill, though, he inspired confidence and had won funding for NASA even in some of the bleakest situations. Cal trusted him about as much as he trusted any politician: not much.

“But how much worse will it be if we wind up losing a second mission, and it comes out later that we had the information to prevent that?”

Aaron sighed and folded his arms. “All right. No promises, but what have you got?”

“Does Wells have access to the archives on B2?”

“She hasn’t asked for access, so no. Why would she need it? None of her records are down there, as far as I know.”

“I found her down there yesterday. The day she joined us on the TRAPPIST simulation.”

“Well, she might’ve—” Aaron stopped. There was nothing else down on that level, and certainly nothing Catherine might need. Cal knew—he had checked already. “What did she say?”

“That she’d been in the archives doing research,” Cal said. “But she hesitated and her cheeks were flushed, like she was lying.”

“Maybe she got lost, and just felt embarrassed about it.”

“How could she be lost? She was at NASA for years before she left.”

“I know, but with the memory loss she’s experienced, it could happen. And that would certainly make for an embarrassing situation.”

“She didn’t look embarrassed,” Cal insisted. “She looked guilty.”

“Guilty or not, this isn’t the sort of thing that warrants postponing an entire mission. Any longer than two weeks and we’ll miss the launch window. The next one might not be for months.” NASA’s engineers had carefully calculated the Earth’s rotation and position around the sun to come up with the optimum launch window. Anything outside that window ran the risk of Sagittarius running low on fuel too soon. They were already cutting it close. Finding another window could take months, possibly years.

“I’m not saying postpone. Not yet.” Cal debated telling him about the automatic way she told part of her story, and how false that felt to him. Feelings, though, weren’t going to get through to Aaron.

Aaron fell silent for a time, going back to his desk and sitting down. He was thinking it through, and that was a hell of a lot further than Cal had expected to get today. “This program is Paul Lindholm’s baby. It was his initial idea; he’s set all our benchmarks. He’s not going to sit by and let us play with timelines and mission schedules because you’ve got a feeling.”

“If it turns out that I’m right, it’s not gonna be just a feeling.” He took a quick, discreet look at his notes. “Look. Catherine’s memory loss is worse than Commander Addy’s was. Say it was caused by something out there, something we don’t know about. Commander Addy may be our best-case scenario instead of the worst, and I know nobody wants that.”

“Cal, if Sagittarius II goes down, it doesn’t mean just your career, or my career.” He pinned Cal to his seat with a dark-eyed look. “As hard as Lindholm fought to keep our funding after Sagittarius I, and the promises he made to Congress about the program’s potential, if we go down, we might drag the rest of NASA down with us.”

Paul Lindholm, Cal thought, was either a fool or the single most optimistic man on the planet.

“All the more reason to make sure we’re not sending our crew into a bad situation,” Cal insisted. “We can’t put them at risk.”

Aaron laughed harshly. “I’m sorry, did you just say that we shouldn’t put the people who signed up to let us strap explosives to their asses and launch them trillions of miles from home at risk? Risk is what they signed up for, Cal. We minimize what we can, but the Sagittarius program is about more than just individual people; it’s about the greater good. The crew of Sagittarius I paid the price for that, but they knew they might.”

“I know what the normal operational risks are; you know I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about the risks that the crew didn’t sign up for. The ones they don’t know about.”

“Oh, come on,” Aaron said. “You know there’re plenty of risks they never know about. If they knew everything, they’d never have signed up. We talked about the Longbow Protocol, remember? You didn’t argue against it. And you, in fact, argued that we should keep the information from everyone on board Sagittarius except for the commander.”

“That’s different.” Longbow was a thing Cal didn’t let himself think about too often. “We designed Longbow in case Sagittarius’s return put the entire planet at risk. Longbow is about protecting the planet from alien infection or radiation. If—God forbid—we ever trigger it, we’ll be sacrificing six people in order to save billions. You won’t balk at that, but you’re hesitating at stopping and taking a second look?”

“So what are you suggesting we do?”

“I don’t know. Stop the mission clock until we’ve got this figured out. Look, we’re talking about sending six people into an unknown situation, one where things have already been spectacularly fucked up, on the off chance that it won’t happen again, so that maybe we’ll find a planet to colonize.” Common sense was taking a close look at the storm brewing on Aaron’s face and telling him to shut up, but Cal and common sense didn’t always see eye to eye. He pushed on. “Sending Sagittarius II without more information could mean sacrificing six people so you can cover your ass with Lindholm.”

Sometimes the only way Cal could see the line was when he looked behind him to see if he’d crossed it. Judging by the look on Aaron’s face, he’d cleared it by several feet.

“Let it go. I’m not postponing an entire mission because you think a traumatized woman is acting weird. If I’d gone through what she has, I’d be acting weird, too.”

“But—”

“We’re done. Humanity has to find another home. Now, before there’s an emergency threatening Earth. Sagittarius is moving forward. Let this go.”

“Yes sir.” Cal managed to keep any trace of sullenness out of his voice as he rose from the chair, dismissed.

He thought of Nate and the rest of the crew, how they’d all looked to him. He had no intention of letting anything go.