IGMS - Issue 11 Page 6

  "Oh," said Trevor. "So, we'd be killed instantly. I guess ultimately it's no different than hitting Mars at a thousand miles an hour. Maybe a bit quicker."

  Nikolai nodded. "Probably."

  Gretchen looked up in surprise. "Probably? Nikolai, we'd be accelerating to over 100,000 miles per second almost instantaneously. I think it's safe to say we wouldn't make it."

  "Do you remember the vomit comet?" His two companions nodded that emphatically yes, they remembered the vomit comet. This KC135A jet obtained its name because it flew in a downward, parabolic trajectory that accelerated at the same speed as a falling object. This created a sense of weightlessness so that the astronaut trainees could feel what it was like to be in space. "How did you feel?" asked Nikolai.

  Gretchen shrugged. "Sick?"

  "Yeah," agreed Trevor, "we were calling you 'Retchin' for awhile."

  Nikolai ignored the remark. "What else?"

  "Weightless."

  "Exactly." When the airplane was moving downward at the same acceleration as gravity, we felt no force of acceleration on our bodies, even though we were accelerating at 9.9 meters per second, per second. Haven't you ever wondered about that? The reason we felt no acceleration is that even though we were accelerating in space, in space-time, we were not. Our energy was being conserved."

  "So," began Trevor, "if we accelerated from an effect of gravity -- from the black hole -- we wouldn't feel any acceleration?"

  "No, I don't think we would. Don't misunderstand me, the gravitational forces will be extreme and there's a high likelihood that the ship will be ripped to pieces, but I suppose it's all academic anyway. We won't live through the adventure one way or another. It would just be nice to see some of the galaxy before we got pulverized."

  "Well," said Gretchen, "I can't say I'm convinced, but I don't really see how it hurts anything. Why don't we split up into two groups. Those who want to can take the shuttle to Mars, the rest of us will stay on the station to do the . . . 'catapult thing.'"

  Nikolai nodded his assent. "That okay with you Trevor?"

  Trevor nodded. "I'll fly the shuttle if Hector doesn't want to, otherwise I'd like to stay with Gretchen. Plus, as ridiculous as the shuttle mission is, I think we need to give it the best chance of success possible. We don't have much food and water, so we're doing them a favor by staying behind. If more than three or four people go, they won't live long enough to crash."

  Gretchen gripped his hand. "I'd like to try the catapult thing, but only to prove to Nikolai that his theory is bullshit. I'll bet you five dollars we get squashed to pancakes."

  "Alright, you're on."

  The period of melancholy and sorrow that gripped the crew of the International Space Station was mercifully short-lived. Unlike their family and friends on Earth, they had a great deal to do. That none of their actions were likely to result in them actually surviving was not evidenced by their energetic preparations.

  The first order of business was dividing up the crews. Nikolai's plan to use the black hole's tremendous gravitational pull to fling the station across the galaxy was not met with a great deal of enthusiasm. It was a ride that Gretchen, Nikolai and Trevor would take by themselves. The physics of it triggered a ferocious debate among the scientists. Nikolai was heavily outnumbered by those who felt they'd be crushed outright. Trevor finally called for an end to the debate so that they could all get back to work.

  Hector's job was to pilot the shuttle and he was bringing three other crewmembers. By his attitude, he clearly didn't regard it as a suicide mission at all. He was very eager in his preparations and Trevor had the feeling that Hector actually thought he could land the shuttle on Mars. It was an impression that Trevor thought was clearly mistaken, but which he felt there was no reason to correct. The shuttle was stocked with all the food and supplies that would be required if the craft landed safely. Its crew had instructions to make their way to the landing sight that was being selected for the Russian and Chinese efforts.

  The balance of the station's crew decided to return to Earth on the Soyuz. It was questionable whether or not they would have time to see their families, but even if they didn't, the three astronauts had the poetic notion that once the black hole came, they would "be together" with their families in a very literal sense. "Nothing says togetherness like being crushed into a singularity," said Myrtle, when those crewmembers weren't around.

  However hard the Alpha Station crew worked, the men and women of mission control in Cape Canaveral worked even harder. That they were able to devise a plan for refueling the shuttle in space (something that had never been previously considered) and execute it in less than 72 hours was a feat of staggering ingenuity. Two plastic bladders were seamed into a cargo container in the Russian Progress cargo ship. Liquid hydrogen was pumped into one and liquid oxygen into the other. The container was then pressurized and cooled to preserve the fuel. A smaller container of hydrazine was also packed into the rocket to be used as fuel for the shuttle's orbital maneuvering system.

  The procedure for transferring the liquefied gasses to the Phoenix was bewilderingly complex, and required Trevor and Hector to spend almost five hours in EVA. The Hydrazine and some of the liquid O2 were pumped into the tanks for the maneuvering system. The rest of the cargo container was then removed from the Progress and placed into the shuttle's cargo hold with a hose running through the open shuttle bay doors into the inlet on the bottom of the craft. Before the Phoenix could attempt its landing, the astronauts would have to jettison the container and shut the doors.

  It was no less astonishing a feat of engineering when one of the NASA programmers produced a protocol for a modified landing telemetry that would take the shuttle in for an approach on the floor of the Cydonian Valley in the northern hemisphere of Mars. The navigation would key off of a beacon from a surveying probe that was close to the chosen landing location. The area was over 50 miles away from the sight chosen by the Russian and Chinese missions, but it offered a wide expanse of what appeared to be relatively level hardpan.

  In the final day before the impact of ISBH-147, the space station crew was guilty of a minor fraud. Both the plan to fling the station into the void and the return of some of the crew members to Earth was concealed. Instead, it was reported that the entire crew was traveling to Mars on the shuttle. The crew went so far as to release video of them all cramming into the shuttle and Trevor confidently predicting the success of the mission.

  The shuttle's bold endeavor may or may not have given hope to the mass of humanity on the planet beneath it, but the way that humans behaved in the final day before impact was a credit to the occasionally troubled history of mankind. The Earth was quiet. No looting, no rioting, no violence; and though many sought comfort from their gods, religious hysteria was missing from the mass candlelight ceremonies that grew spontaneously in the hearts of cities worldwide. Mostly people stayed with their families, taking euphoric pleasure in the simple comforts of life. Most unexpected was the sense of relief felt by so many. Every nonsensical aspect of human existence was rendered irrelevant. Jobs, difficult relationships, the daily stress of life. Suddenly, none of it mattered and much of the population found this heartening. Perhaps this is why the final days of Earth were remembered -- in the minds of very few -- as being strangely abundant in warmth and good cheer.

  With a hiss of compressed air escaping from a relief valve, the shuttle separated from Space Station Alpha. The shuttle then fired a tiny double-burst from its maneuvering rockets and began to inch slowly away from the station. It was followed next by a less cautious burst and the shuttle began to accelerate, appearing to those who remained on the station as if it were falling away beneath them.

  Hector wasted little time. A brilliant blast of orange light exploded from behind the shuttle, creating an oval of fire that fanned away from its engines. Never before had a shuttle fired so much thrust in the vacuum of space. For Trevor, Gretchen and Nikolai, it was a spectacular show, though one that was ee
rily silent. With their faces pressed to glass, they watched the shuttle grow tiny as it sped off into the darkness.

  Knowing they had very little time, they pulled themselves from the windows and went quickly to work inside of the control module. They were already wearing their pressure suits, minus the gloves and helmets. Gretchen sat herself in front of the monitor for the station's on-board telescope. By tracking the disappearance of stars as they were blotted out by the edges of the black hole's event horizon, she could constantly calibrate and re-calibrate the object's position and trajectory. After every new measurement she shouted out a string of numbers that Nikolai punched into his laptop. The spreadsheet that Nikolai had created took these numbers, along with an estimation of ISBH-147's mass calculated by astronomers back on Earth, and combined them with the station's natural orbit. The result was a target altitude which Nikolai relayed immediately to Trevor who was operating the station's control rockets.

  The hardest part of the whole operation was gauging the orbit of the station itself. As ISBH-147 approached, the space station was revolving continuously around the Earth. The black hole's tremendous speed made exact impact estimates tricky and Gretchen was constantly revising her figures. This was critical because the station's exact distance from the black hole depended on its revolutions around Earth.

  The rumbling drone of the station's maneuvering rockets came to a sudden and unexpected halt. Nikolai looked over at Trevor in surprise, but Gretchen continued shouting out numbers at a frantic pace.

  "Retchin!" interrupted Trevor. She looked up from her monitor, her face a pale, oily mask of sweat.

  "Gretch, we're out of gas."

  Her shoulders drooped and she looked over at Nikolai's downcast expression. "Are we far enough away?"

  The Russian shrugged his shoulders. "We did leave a safety margin in our figuring."

  "Well," said Trevor, "there's not much point in worrying about it. Let's strap ourselves in."

  The two astronauts and the cosmonaut used nylon straps with carabineers to clip their pressure suits to the hull of the station. After cinching the straps tight, they donned their helmets and gloves and fastened them in place. They hoped the suits would protect them in case the control module depressurized.

  "Nikolai, how much time do we have?" asked Trevor.

  The Russian looked at his watch. "Couple of minutes," he said.

  "Remember," said Gretchen, "if we get crushed, you owe me five bucks."

  "Bet's off, I think we're too close."

  The burn from the station's rockets had left it in a slow spin. The control module had only one small window and they watched as the Earth rotated past it -- giant, pale, blue. Moments after the planet left the small field of the window, they could see ISBH-147. Close now, its event horizon appeared almost as large as the moon and to the crew of Space Station Alpha it was visible only as a peculiar absence of stars.

  The station had never been so quiet. Most of the electronics and machinery were powered off. The inside of the control module looked like a storage unit because any items that might be of use had been moved inside of it. The hatches at either end, as well as every other portal in the station, had been sealed. Nikolai was concerned that even if the maneuver was successful, the immense gravitational forces would rip the station to pieces. In close proximity to a black hole, the difference in gravitational pull between one side of the station and the other might be enough to tear it in half. For Gretchen and Trevor, the point was moot because they were both certain they were about to be crushed.

  As they sat in the revolving, weightless quiet -- the only sound their breaths against their facemasks -- they momentarily forgot all about the black hole. Instead, their minds spun clips from a hundred film reels -- episodes of life with family and friends and lovers and places long forgotten. The station turned to the black hole one final time and now it filled most of the window. It was a solid black disk, but in their momentary glimpse the crew felt that somehow the interior of it was textured, as if it was squirming with the turmoil of a primal furnace, pitch black fire burning in a pitch black stove. Gretchen clenched her fists into a death grip. "I love you," said Trevor, referring to Gretchen, and his wife, and his family and his friends and his planet and everything else except the reckless indifference of the thing that hurtled toward them.

  Trevor saw the edge of the earth come into view. He would never be sure if it was a thing real or imagined, but for the rest of his life he would have a memory of the Earth's surface beginning to deform in the very last instant. In his mind's eye, he would forever be able to see it bulging upward like a young child reaching for its mother.

  When it happened, it happened with the anticlimactic, punctuated crunch of a car crash. The sound of tearing metal accompanied a bone-rattling jolt. Gretchen's poly-laminate face shield cracked open on the corner of an instrument console. Trevor's violent lunge ripped the buckle from one of his safety straps and Nikolai smashed open his laptop with the back of his helmet. During the event, the three of them all had a terrible sensation as if they were falling incredibly fast, yet they didn't feel as if they were moving in any particular direction. It was as if they were falling in place.

  It lasted only an instant. Trevor unbuckled his straps, checked a pressure gauge on the wall, took off his helmet and fought his way to Gretchen through a field of floating clutter. When he reached her, he pulled off her helmet and pulled back the neoprene hood, revealing a sweaty mess of brunette hair. Her expression was one of utter shock and he bent over her, planting a single, solid kiss on her alabaster cheeks. The light seemed to come back to her eyes and she embraced him.

  "I think it missed us," said Trevor, unsure of whether to be happy or disappointed. "Nikolai, I think you added wrong. I don't think we're moving, we must've been too far out."

  The Russian removed his helmet and gloves and pushed them aside. He lifted his finger and pointed to the window. Trevor and Gretchen looked at it and they once again felt as if they were falling. Stars streaked past the window.

  "We're, we're just spinning . . ." stammered Trevor.

  "No," said Gretchen, "I don't think we are." She unbuckled herself and moved to the telemetry readouts. The trajectory information was completely nonsensical but she could see that most of the station had been torn away. She figured the rest of the space station had been flung into its own journey, or possibly even been sucked into the black hole. All that remained of their section was the control module, the small windowed cupola connected to it on one side, and the wreckage of half the Destiny laboratory on the other. A gauge next to the door showed her that the cupola was still pressurized so she opened the hatch and went in. Trevor and Nikolai pulled themselves in after her. Constellations of burning stars whipped past the windows like meteorites.

  Soon, all three of them had their faces pressed to the glass like little kids looking out the window of a train. What they saw was a galaxy that was not merely black and white, but radiantly colorful. Gas clouds like giant blue pillars, nebulas that were reddish and purple -- shimmering with stars in frozen explosions that looked like burning magnesium. They passed through a field of sparsely scattered comets, many light years across, and watched in amazement as the tail of one of the smaller comets slipped past silently above them.

  Twenty minutes went by as they tried their utmost to absorb what they were seeing. In the back of their minds, they may have been aware that their lives could be snuffed out at any second, but for three people who'd dreamt of exploring the galaxy for their entire lives, the concern seemed remote in the face of their silent rapture.

  "I don't understand," Trevor said without removing his face from the glass. "How can we be moving so fast? Those black holes were traveling near light speed and they took hours to get across the solar system. We must be moving a thousand times faster than light right now."

  "No," said Nikolai. "We're not moving faster than light, it just seems like it because time for us is flowing very slowly."

>   Trevor pulled his head from the window and looked at his hands, as if expecting them to move about in slow motion. Gretchen smiled and said: "Speak slowly, he's a pilot."

  "Trevor," said Nikolai, "if you could somehow follow our progress from Earth . . ." Here, Nikolai stopped for a moment, then abruptly continued, "you would see us slowly inching our way across the galaxy. However, when things travel close to the speed of light, the flow of time slows down for them."

  "Special relativity."

  "Exactly. Since less time is elapsing for us, our velocity seems to be much higher than it would seem to a 'stationary' observer."

  Trevor's interest in physics quickly waned, and he contented himself with looking out the window. That none of them were overly-upset about the destruction of their home planet was solely due to their assumption that they would soon be following suit.

  At some point, they passed through the heart of a binary star system and came close enough to a planet to make out its outlines as an aqua-green disk, illuminated by its mother stars. It was the highlight of their voyage, but for Trevor it was also an unpleasant reminder that they were living on borrowed time. He found it amazing that they hadn't already been pulverized and wondered if their staggering speed was simply annihilating any debris in front of them with some sort of cosmic shock wave.

  He put his arm around Gretchen's waist and pulled her to him. It surprised her at first, but she caught the look in his eye and understood. She squeezed him and put her head on his shoulder, still gazing out the window. There was no reasonable way for either of them to verbalize how upset they were that their homes and all of their loved ones were gone. It was an emotional maelstrom that threatened to drown them both, but they took comfort that their feelings were understood, and they also took comfort in knowing that soon it wouldn't matter.