Schrödinger’s Spaceman
The stars blurred into curved lines of silver, crisscrossing the spaceman’s field of vision as he tumbled and spun. He flailed his arms and legs, his grasp searching for something, anything to arrest his motion. Which way is up, Henry Gallagher asked himself. There was no “up” in space, but when one is in a free fall, rationality takes a dive as well.
He awoke in that state, shaken by a floating piece of debris. A rock, or more possibly a torn-off hunk of satellite. The loud thud to the back of his helmet roused him from unconsciousness just as much as the spinning that immediately followed. Soon enough, his movement had slowed to what felt like stillness, his body having found its own orbit.
“Comms,” Henry called out weakly. The inner screen of his helmet came to life with icons and graphs.
“Find Altaire,” he stated. Even as his screen zoomed in on the station, he could barely see it. Space Habitat Altaire floated far beyond him, at the edge of the Earth’s horizon where much of Asia slowly disappeared from view.
The screen flashed a directional arrow and a number too big for him to comprehend.
“Holy fuck,” he muttered under his breath. “How did I get here?”
He got no response; apparently, the smart suits weren’t as smart as he’d been promised. All it told him was that it was Saturday, October 10, 2089. 5:53 p.m. station time.
He pulled up his vitals, which showed his oxygen saturation, his pulse and breathing rate, his blood pressure. All stable, all things considered. Most importantly, his tank had enough O2 for another three hours and change.
Henry knew that the Altaire orbited the globe about eighteen times in the span of a day, and he assured himself with this fact. The station would circle back around to where he was well before he ran out of air. He checked that his signal beacon was still transmitting, then pulled up his coordinates to see when this flyby would occur.
The display told him that he was 1,400 kilometers above sea level, on an orbit well below the Altaire’s. The station could float directly above him and he would still be too far to establish comm range.
Blind panic began to set in, but all was not lost. Henry reached for the control arms of his jetpack. All he needed to do was propel himself toward the Altaire’s orbit, close enough for its scanners to pick up his signal beacon. Cheered by the prospect of rescue, he held on and pressed the buttons on the jetpack controls, only to be deflated by the display on his screen.
“Fuck!” Henry screamed. As he did, a crick in his jaw radiated pain.
Instinctively, he raised a hand to feel his head. He’d been knocked around, and not by the slight piece of space junk that shook him awake. He’d sustained some sort of blunt force injury, and if he weren’t marooned in space, Henry might have been more afraid. As it was, the only emotion he could muster was confusion.
He checked his reflection in the glass and saw a reddish bruise on his left jaw. He saw, too, that instead of the standard base layer for an EVA suit, he wore a spread-collar button-down shirt and a black bow tie. Even his spacesuit was wrong. He was wearing a standard-issue silver-gray EVA suit with the Altaire logo. One of the station’s loaners. Why would he have this on? He had a custom designer suit—bright red, with racing stripes running down the sides.
Henry attributed the memory loss to a head injury, but he at least remembered his civilian aerospace training and all the math that it required. Having a computer helped too. Judging by his straight-line distance from the Altaire and his distance from the station’s orbit above him, Henry estimated that he’d been off the station for about an hour. The Altaire’s orbital speed was constant, and so was his; he may have gotten knocked around by debris, but the impact wasn’t too fast or too forceful to have changed his position by much. Looking back now, Henry thanked that piece of junk for having just the right size and velocity to wake him up without throwing him farther off course.
His angle was the bigger conundrum. To end up in an orbit well below the Altaire would have required sustained thrust—and someone intending to steer him into a trajectory that diverged from the station’s.
That explained the empty jetpack.
He was shunted off the station. He had to have been.
Henry drew some satisfaction in answering at least one of his questions. He’d get his answers soon enough, but for now he needed to focus on one: how to get back to the Altaire.
The station had light shuttles for this exact scenario. Regardless of how the brochures touted the safety of space tourism, there’d always be a risk that guests or crew might go overboard. Altaire Security would have been alerted the minute he left the station’s range, since his EVA suit would have been relaying his last known location until it lost contact. Once someone realized he was missing, a shuttle should have no trouble locating him. Untethered with no propellant and no means of communication, his best bet was to wait.
Yet Henry also knew that the Altaire wasn’t his only bet. He asked his suit to run a scan for nearby bodies: a probe, or a satellite, maybe another luxury orbital. If he came close enough, he might be able to communicate with it. If it were crewed, it could send rescue.
His own field of vision gave him nothing, and the screen indicated two weather probes below him, both farther than Altaire, and a satellite overhead. That last one had enough modules to be crewed. Henry asked the suit to identify the craft, but it had no information aside from its orbit, location, and speed. No information meant defense sat. In any case, it, too, was too far above him.
He patiently watched his screen as it scanned for other crafts. Space is crowded, he told himself, this small part of it at least. More crafts would come around as he transited around the planet. It was only a matter of time.
In the lull of waiting for a flyby, Henry’s consciousness reassembled the moments that led to his stranding. They came to him mostly as whispers of sense-memories, slowly cresting above the louder thoughts in his mind: calculations of elevation and distance, comm range, etc.; projections and readouts from his helmet. Underneath the data and the noise, the murmurings of his recent experiences made their presence known.
Like the spacewalk he’d taken that morning. The view of the sunrise, the feel of his husband’s gloved hand in his. They returned to him in flashes. The black bow tie too, the one he still wore now, and the feel of Nick’s hand as he adjusted it, made it straighter. Henry had never been able to tie one right the first time, and Nick always knew to check. He made sure the butterfly ends were level yet askew enough to evince an air of sprezzatura. He made sure it was tight. Henry felt that constriction now. The sense-memory suffocated him even as he stared at the loosened tie reflected on the glass of his helmet.
The world turned beneath him, and Henry found himself straddling the line that bisected the Earth between day and night. Half the planet basked in the glow of the sun and the other slumbered in shadow. The line was narrower than he remembered from prior spacewalks. Starker, with little gradation on either side. One moment an island was there, and the next it wasn’t, swallowed by the dark. As he hovered over that twilight meridian, Henry felt himself bisected too. Schrödinger’s spaceman: in the same moment both alive and dead.
His orbital path soon passed over to where the sunlight never reached, over an ocean that had been sapphire blue, but now was black as jet. Plunged into the darkness, Henry was overwhelmed by more sense-memories. He smelled the hickory of their suite’s fireplace. He felt the thrill of a hand under the warm waters of the Moon Pools, the rumble of the shuttle engine as they rocketed off the launchpad. He tasted champagne on his tongue, as when he toasted the Altaire’s captain over dinner. Then, above all these sensations, a melody. Cymbals and trumpets and strings.
Henry heard the sound so crisply he thought he was hallucinating. His consciousness chased after it, clutching at it, and once caught, Henry found it to be more than just a disordered cacophony in his jumbled mind. It was the opening notes to an overture. The sound began to swell into a song. He remembered now.
Summertime. The theater box.
His final moments aboard the Altaire.
Henry gasped as he realized what had happened. He gasped like someone who had just been brought back to life.
Then, from beneath his multilayered gloves, his fingertips tingled with a burning sensation. First on his left hand, then his right. This felt different from the blunt impact on his head. This felt like fire.
Henry knew it wasn’t external, not a tear in the suit. He didn’t need to see his hands to know what they looked like now. This was a sensation all too familiar. His palms throbbed violently, and he gritted his teeth as the heat flowed in his veins, like his own blood had transformed to acid, searing him from within. The pain moved up his arms, his shoulders, his neck. He caught his reflection in the glass and saw, through welling tears of agony, that his entire face had turned an alarming shade of red.
Arrivals
Tom Lazaro III was having a fitful flight. He couldn’t tell why, but he figured it was the disorientation from his view windows. The HLV Excelsior kept its portholes shielded, obstructing an outside view from the shuttle during its upward journey. As a substitute, the cabin system projected onto each window a “hyperrealistic” real-time view of space as seen from the shuttle’s exterior.
Laz groaned. He’d actually seen space. This filtered, panoramic projection was too sharp, too lifelike; it came back around to looking fake.
That was probably what made him feel queasy. It wasn’t zero-g; that had never been a problem for him before. He had the best drill times back in high school, and he’d maintained his training certifications since then. He had also racked up a handful of trips to other orbitals, though only for a day, and nowhere as grand as his current destination.
He didn’t want to admit it, but deep down he knew the cause of his unease: It was the reunion itself. The thought of reliving his days of youth pained him, knowing that things would never be as they were. That they would never be as good as they were.
His helmet’s comm announced their final approach toward the station. Instantly, his port screens opened. Muffled cheers came from passengers in the neighboring pods. Laz gaped in awe, his eyes wide at the sight of a space orbital larger and more majestic than he’d expected.
Space Habitat Altaire was shaped like an eight-point star ringed by a massive, glimmering torus. Some called it a ship’s wheel, but the comparison was a crude approximation of the orbital’s design. The central hub was also a torus, smaller but no less impressive, and it housed the station’s helm, staff and crew quarters, the medical bay, and all parts that made the Altaire function, including the shuttle ports that the Excelsior now approached. Along the docking bays, across a flat surface uninterrupted by windows or walls, two thick diagonals of brushed crimson steel converged at an angle. The painted lines spun with the rest of the station, like a compass head aimed at an ever-changing direction.
Each of the spokes that radiated from the hub were lined with solar arrays and acted as conduit between the hub and the shining halo of the upper torus. This outer ring contained the Altaire’s amenities, including a full-size theater, a shopping pavilion, bars, lounges, and restaurants. A tree-lined promenade ran alongside the entire length of this ring, which also contained all of the Altaire’s suites. Each had floor-to-ceiling windows with either a full view of the Earth beneath it or the starscape beyond.
Laz held his breath as the Excelsior approached its docking port in the hollow of the station’s central hub. The shuttle slowed, keeling to align itself as the Altaire rotated. Once it docked completely, the shuttle’s commander addressed the cabin with an inauthentic tone reminiscent of a weary tour guide.
“Rochford Institute Class of 2064, it’s my distinct pleasure to announce that we have arrived. Welcome to Prestige-Class Space Habitat Altaire.”
The cabin erupted in cheers and applause. Laz joined in, unable to help himself. As the other passengers did so, he unbuckled himself from his pod, rose from his seat, and took his helmet off. He craned his neck over the crowd in search of a familiar face and caught sight of an old friend, Henry Gallagher, beaming in breathless excitement. Henry waved at him, giving a winsome smile that hadn’t changed in decades. He weaved his way through the crowd and upon reaching Laz, he leaned in for a hug.
“Are you ready for an unforgettable weekend, Ambassador?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be,” Laz answered, returning the gesture effusively.
“Twenty-five years, man. I’m feeling my age; are you?”
“You don’t look a day over fifty,” Laz quipped, earning him a playful swat on the arm. In truth, Henry looked as vital and refreshed as he always had. Unlike some of their class who’d let their hair thin and their midsections thicken, Henry’s flaxen hair remained lush, and he cut a trim figure beneath his custom EVA suit.
“And you . . . you’re looking good too,” Henry said. “Chile agrees with you.”
“If only that were true,” Laz replied. He began to extol the cool climate of his current diplomatic posting, but quickly veered into a monologue about American interventionism and the political quagmires he often found himself in. Though his friend appeared rapt by his stories, Laz worried that he was boring Henry. A pang of fear returned to him like an echo from their boyhood days when he’d always been anxious for his friends’ approval. In due course, Laz wound down his tale, promising himself that the rest of the weekend wouldn’t see him quite so desperate.
“No plus-one?” Henry then asked. “What happened to that publicist I met at that wildlife benefit . . . Syll, was it? I thought she was lovely.”
“It didn’t last too long after that,” Laz replied, impressed at his friend’s memory. That had been almost three years ago.
Henry shrugged in commiseration. He turned back to his aisle and waved his husband to come join them. Laz took Nick’s arrival as a chance to change the subject. “Was that seriously the last time we saw each other?”
“Well, with you down in Santiago, yes, it was.”
“I jet up every so often.”
“I really should make more of an effort,” Henry replied. “It seems we only see each other every few years, and at stuffy galas and benefits too. We never have enough time to catch up.”
“This reunion weekend is just the thing, then,” Nick interjected, sliding an arm around Henry’s waist. “Thank you, Rochford.”
“And here I thought we were only here for the points,” Henry jested, giving Nick a peck on the cheek.
Every year since the Altaire had been built, the Rochford alumni committee threw a lavish bash at the station, all expenses paid. Not that any of the Institute’s students needed help in that respect—as far as boarding schools go, it was the best money could buy. These reunions were critical to cementing one’s status; countless deals and marriages had been brokered at other Rochford reunions. That alone was reason enough to go, but the greater enticement was the chance to advance one’s Mars applications.
Laz pretended, to others as much as to himself, that this reason was foremost in his mind. Well before his invitation arrived, he’d done a mental calculation of his MERIT score. A single trip to low-Earth orbit was worth three points. A weekend on the Altaire, with spacewalks and other extravehicular activity could give him as much as six points. On top of his advanced training, multiple degrees, and health background, this reunion all but ensured that he’d be granted Mars settlement rights. Laz suspected his classmates felt the same.
“Imagine,” he replied after a pause. “In a little over a year, we might all be having this conversation on Mars.”
“Fingers crossed,” Henry said, gesturing in earnest.
As soon as the Rochford class was cleared to go through the airlocks, everyone quickly queued up for the passenger lifts. No one put up the pretense of cool, Laz included. His heart raced as they waited to ascend from the Altaire’s hub to the upper torus. Unable to endure the anticipation, he finally turned to Henry and opened the subject.
“I don’t think I saw Ava on our flight, did you?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Henry said breezily. He turned to his husband, who shook his head. “Have you talked to her lately?”
“Not in a long time. You?”
“We do, once in a while,” Henry replied, clearing his throat. “The company does a lot of business with Khan-Powell Financial.”
“She’s been busy, that’s for certain.” Laz felt relieved that even the golden boy hadn’t heard much from Ava in a while, yet Laz still couldn’t shake off the distinct feeling that she had been specifically avoiding him.
Henry leaned in closer and swung an arm over his friend’s shoulder. In a low tone, he told Laz, “I know that look.”
“What look?”
Henry narrowed his eyes. “Come on, man. It’s me.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Yeah, I’m sure you haven’t heard of the divorce.”
The news of Ava Khan’s failed marriage reached Laz with barely enough time for him to get recertified for space travel. At the time, nothing had been finalized yet, but a friend of a friend told him that Ava’s wife Fallon had lawyered up and decamped to the couple’s Loire Valley chateau. The timing felt fortuitous. He immediately RSVP’d for the reunion, counting down the days until he could see Ava again.
“Fine, you got me,” Laz admitted. “Can’t blame a man for trying, right?”
“No, never.” Henry grinned, almost giddy. “I think this is sweet, for serious.”
“I’m keenly aware of what a massive cliché I am.”
“Cliché or not, I’m rooting for you,” Henry said tenderly. “I just . . . wouldn’t get my hopes up. You know how it is.” He gestured around them, at the queue of Rochfordians impatiently waiting for their turn at the lifts. “If she’s avoiding us, what are the chances she’ll want to see these people?”
“It’s been twenty-five years,” Laz argued. “Surely everyone’s moved on by now.”
“Have you?”
Their lift arrived. Laz stepped in, looking back at the rest of his classmates, wide-eyed and eager, absorbed in chatter. He began to remember how vicious they’d all been. How vicious they all could be, even now. Beneath the smiles and the childlike fascination in their surroundings, Laz understood, for the first time that weekend, that he was entering a nest of vipers.
Henry entered the Altaire’s reception lobby with the calm serenity of someone who belonged. From the moment he walked out the elevator doors, his peers turned toward him, greeting him with the warmth of their smiles. Henry never relished their esteem, and deserved though such esteem may have been, what truly gratified him was their acceptance. As long as he maintained them at arm’s length, privy only to the bullet points of his curriculum vitae, Henry felt secure that he would never be cast away.
Right beside him, his husband pranced into the atrium, basking in the attention. Nick was the plus-one but by the way he acted, one would think he shared the same Rochford pedigree as Henry. Nick nodded at those who waved and smiled, made noises of surprise or glee upon seeing passing acquaintances. Already he was enjoying himself, though Henry also knew that his husband’s eyes roved the crowd, searching for one person in particular.
“We need to talk to the Architect,” Nick said once outside everyone’s earshot. “Tonight.”
“We just got here, love. Can we enjoy this moment and save the scheming for later?”
“We don’t have the luxury of time, love. Arrangements need to be made.”
This had been Nick’s refrain ever since the UN Mars Settlement Agency announced that the first civilian habitats had been built. Applications were opening in six months, and he was determined to garner as many points as possible and submit their applications the second the online portals would let them. “Top points mean top chance,” he always said. “And first to file means first in line.” Of course, millions of people had the same plans, but Nick took every step to ensure that he and his husband would not be outclassed.
In fact, coming to the reunion had mostly been Nick’s idea. Sure, it was Henry’s high school reunion, but he might not have gone if not for Nick’s insistence. Rochford was best left in the past, and Henry wasn’t thrilled to revisit it. His husband, however, was relentless.
“It’s five MERIT points, each. Minimum. That’s more than any one thing you and I could achieve in a single weekend. Everything else we’ve been doing pales in comparison,” Nick had argued, and he was right. Besides, the couple needed to offset the “gay penalty,” and despite the many points accorded to two healthy, well-credentialed men, the system penalized them for their “inherent inability to produce offspring.”
“I have a plan,” Henry told his husband now, steering him by the arm. “But the more you press me, the more I’m gonna make you sweat.”
“You’re seriously going to make me suffer?”
“I’m gonna make you enjoy yourself,” he replied, patting Nick reassuringly. “Because I have no intention of making this weekend be all about business. Now stop thinking of the Architect. That’s an order.”
Henry understood that his husband’s anxiety came from the disparity in their individual MERIT scores, a detail that he’d learned to sidestep whenever the two of them discussed their plans. As an eminent neurosurgeon, Henry’s career was classified as a Tier A occupation. It didn’t matter that he barely spent any time in an operating room anymore, or that his duties as CEO of GDX Pharmaceuticals, the Gallagher family empire, occupied his days. A doctor was a doctor, and Mars could always use more of them. Meanwhile, Nick was in Tier C. Hollywood executives were not needed on a newly-settled planet, no matter how many record-breaking movies they worked on. Nick had other handicaps too: he didn’t graduate from an aerospace-affiliated school like Rochford, and compared to Henry, he only had a handful of shuttle flights under his belt.
The disparity stung Nick’s ego, but his larger concern was that the MERIT system weighed a married couple’s scores together. Nick couldn’t stand being the reason that the two of them might miss their opportunity at Mars, even though they both knew that, worst come to worst, if one of them stood to sink their joint application, it would be Henry.
Presently, a young Altaire crewmember weaved through the guests to approach the couple. He wore a navy-blue uniform, and though he was in his late-twenties at the most, already he had earned bars on his shoulders. A deck officer, with the stiff bearing to match.
“Mr. and Mr. Gallagher,” he said. “My name is Pio Asuncion, and I’ll be your personal liaison during your stay with us here at the Altaire.”
Henry’s brow knitted. A crewman as valet, and an officer no less; that seemed excessive. He shook the man’s hand and startled at his viselike grip. He looked at the valet’s name plate. Philippines. That’s the fourth one he’d seen so far. He wondered how many of them staffed the station.
“I’m sorry it took us a while to get here,” Henry said. “Got waylaid by small talk. And please, you can call us by our first names.”
“If that’s what you prefer,” the valet replied with evident discomfort. “May I take your bags?”
“Pio. Sounds like C-3PO,” Nick said, pronouncing the name with overextended vowels. He handed his satchel over. “That’ll be easy to remember.”
“Yes, exactly like the robot,” Pio replied with a solicitous laugh. “But I’m here for more than just protocol. Whatever you need to enjoy your stay, I’m your man.”
“We should head up to the suite,” Nick told his husband, then turned to Pio. “We’re on a bit of a schedule. Things to do, people to see . . .”
“Of course.” Pio promptly led them toward a receiving station and took out two thin metal boxes. Along their top edges ran an engraving of each guest’s name. Inside were a commu. . . We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...
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