Space Camp

“What time is it?

“No time in space, mate”

Kian rolled his eyes and turned from the cockpit to face Cassius.

“I know that,” he said with exasperation. I mean on Earth. I want to see if I can get a last radio transmission out to the kids before they get to sleep. We’ll be out of range by the time they get up for school.”

Kian yanked on the bar above him and floated out of his seat in the rear of the cabin. He floated forward, as though swimming, to a console between the cockpit and cabin, the electronics glowing blue and orange.

“Looks like it’s 21:22.”

“I don’t have long. Can you start the private comms system, I think we’re still on frequency with the ISS. I don’t think NASA and Roscosmos really want to hear another person saying goodnight to the wife and kids just because they forgot to swap bands.”

“I thought they made a policy against that?”

      “Only if you interfere with their ground station.”

“Still.”

           Cassius opened a drawer under the radio system and pulled out a wired headset.

           “Kian!”

           He threw the headset to Kian and it rotated in slow motion towards the cockpit. Kian plucked it from the air without taking his eyes off the black expanse before him. One white, gloved hand was still on the controls. Despite flying this route since he was 9, he was still scared of letting his attention waver, especially as they drew close to the Belt. He always thought he might miss the Beacon and they’d end up on the wrong asteroid. Or worse, just miss the whole Belt entirely.

           Cassius pushed himself back to the main cabin as Kian adjusted the headset to fit over his ears.

           “God, this spacesuit sucks.”

           “I know. When you were asleep I finally got to talk to Haley, and five minutes in my head was hurting.”

           “I wish they kept the old collar. Why did they even change it?”

           “Policy, probably. Everything is policy. But hurry and say goodnight, you’ll miss them.” He floated himself back to the cabin, and picked up a book, adjusting the suit skin around his ankles. He regretted not getting the new one tailored. It was going to be awful in the boots.   

           In the cockpit, Kian adjusted the headset to help take the weight off the collar one last time.

           “Hey, Miranda, you there?”

           “Kian! I was getting concerned, the kids have been waiting.”

           There was a rustle in the background and the voices of three young kids all erupting at once came through, so loud it became static.

           “Hi dad!”

           “Hi, you all being nice to your mom.”

           A unison of yesses followed.

           “What’s space like?” asked one of them.

           “It’s great, but how about we save the stories for when I get back?”

           There was a second unison of yesses. Kian smiled to himself.

           “Alright, well get some sleep. I love you all.”

           “Love you too, dad!”

           “I love you Kian. Be safe.”

           “Always. Talk to you in a week. I’ll send radio signals out to let you know how things are going. And make sure you tell Leda to study for her calculus exam.”

           “I know. See you in a week.” Miranda replied warmly.

           The radio transmission ended. They passed Mars.

           “Are you and Haley going to start a family?” Kian asked. It was, undoubtedly, the most fulfilling part of his life.

           “I want to, but Haley says we aren’t ready. She wants to wait for another few years.” There was some doubt in his voice.

           “Truthfully, I don’t think she ever wants kids. Just wish she’d have told me before we got married. I just wish she’d tell me at all.”

           Silence filled the cabin, except for the periodic systems check beeps. It would seem unbearable to have the constant noise on Earth, but with only two travelling in the massive void of space, there would be an eerie, intolerable silence . without them.

           “We’re getting close. Anxious yet?” Cassius asked Kian.

           Kian was always anxious being so far from home. He’d not yet recovered from nearly losing Maia on the Moon a month ago, and was questioning ever bringing his girls on a trip again.

           He shook his head at the memory. Him and Miranda were so close to letting her wander out the space lock. It took not even ten seconds of her being out of their sight. Earth was far safer. But then again he was a year younger than Maia when him and his grandfather had come to Ceres the first time. And with far worse equipment. No wonder his mother thought her dad was psychotic.

           As they approached the Asteroid Belt, Kian watched for the Beacon. It was an orbit leaping spacecraft that kept its position relative to Ceres so travelers would know when to engage the thrusters to divert from the straightaway to Jupiter.

           Finally, in the distance, he saw it. He flipped on a series of switches in the cockpit overhead. The empty co-pilot seat now needed to be occupied.

           “Cassius!” Kian called back.

           “It’s time already?” asked Cassius, who was staring out the window facing back towards Earth.

           “It’s time.”

           Cassius smiled, took his spot next to Kian, and they started the auto-calculations for the thruster angles. A scramble of quaternions ran down the configuration screen in front of them, the GPS and antenna information calculated their exact position in space.

           “I can’t believe your grandfather got you here without auto-nav.”

           “Not like there wasn’t the technology. He just liked proving to everyone he was smart.”

           Kian didn’t like admitting he was impressed, so he looked to Cassius for a brief moment, a smirk on his face, one eyebrow up, mocking his grandfather.

           “You kids, don’t even know how to make the software that lets you camp, and you call it rugged.”

           Cassius laughed as the trajectory was locked in, and the thrusters aligned themselves.

           “Ready?”

           “Ready.”

           Kian counted down, each of their hands on a golden key in front of them.

           “Three. Two. One.”

           They turned their keys at the same moment, and the thrusters engaged. It was the worst part of the trip. Kian always vomited. At least he knew and kept a receptacle on hand. It didn’t stop Cassius from mocking him for it every time.

           When they slowed and Ceres was in sight, and the two felt the nausea fade, Cassius turned to Kian, quite serious.

           “If this were two hundred years ago and you had to do that with a helmet on, you’d be screwed, mate.”

           “Well yeah. Lucky this isn’t 200 years ago, and I don’t need a helmet, or to know how to write the flight software. Although, I suppose we should start suiting up. Don’t want to land without gear.”

           “You or me first?”

           “I’ll get ready first. Keep an eye on the controls. Last time we lost auto-pilot and I had to get us to the surface without it.”

           “Don’t remind me.” Cassius said, clearly disturbed.

           Kian unbuckled from the seat and used the armrests to push himself up out of the chair, careful to keep his feet from knocking the steering, or his head from touching the command module. 

           “You want a snack?”

           “I just watched you vomit. I’m good.” 

           Kian reached the intermediary of the ship, and stowed the headset. Behind his ears was killing him. The collar was made of metal, like a woman’s choker. Or one of those ancient Egyptian mummies. He liked his neck the length it was. He cursed the Global Agency for Astronautics. He wished they’d let them leave Earth with their old skin suits.

           He adjusted the clinging fabric as best he could, and realigned the belt around his waist. He opened a drawer in the console and removed his space suit. It was bulky, and weighed 170 pounds on Earth, without the helmet. Although, the pressure regulator did seem to take the weight off once it was operational. 

           He slid into the suit as if it were one-piece pajamas and interlocked it with the skin suit at the collar and belt. The leg and arm openings were metal rings which interlocked with the gloves and boots. He stepped into the boots and leaned over to twist the rings tight. Then the gloves. It was always the hardest part. He had no trouble with the first one, but his hands lost so much mobility from the gloves it was difficult to click the second one into place.

He opened a cabinet and saw his reflection staring back at him in the lens of his helmet. It was disproportional, like a man in a sumo suit. His blonde hair was already growing back, having been buzzed for the trip.

“You almost done?” shouted Cassius

“Yeah, just the helmet left.”

He took the helmet from the cabinet, careful to only touch the back half that didn’t have the lens, and placed it over his head, securing it with the same twist lock. He took a deep breath and rotated the heavy ring. The whole inside of the suit isolated, he could finally turn on all the regulators, and air valves. The suit inflated slightly, and he pulled out his oxygen tanks from a final drawer, guiding them towards the space lock for use once they landed.

“Your turn.” He said to Cassius, sitting back in the primary pilot seat. Ceres was only thirty minutes away. He stared intently out the window as the thrusters disengaged and they caught the dwarf’s orbit.

“I set the coordinates to get us to Rao, but I think we’re going to end up closer to Kokopelli,” he said.

“Well that’s okay, we haven’t stayed there yet. Remember last time we wished we’d gone a couple more degrees north.” Cassius replied, his voice getting slightly muffled with the helmet.

Kian nodded, turning on his helmet’s local radio.

“Is this too loud?” he asked Cassius.

It came over as barely more than white noise on Cassius’s helmet.

“Too quiet, actually.”

           Kian adjusted the settings.

           “HOW ABOUT NOW?”

           “No! No. Too much. Definitely too much” Cassius, instinctively reached to cover his ears despite them being trapped by the helmet.

           Kian made the final adjustments.

           “You ready? Let’s land this thing.”

           Cassius rejoined Kian.

           “You know the drill. Once the command module says we’re orthogonal with the ground, launch the landing sequence.”

           They stretched to reach a different duo of keys. The command module beeped with a blue light, and they turned them in unison.

           The spacecraft started its descent directly downwards until they were just hovering over the surface. And then they were grounded. They stared out at the crater expanding before them, a couple other spacecraft landed along its rim, and finally let their excitement show.

           “Hell yeah. Let’s get out there.”

           Kian and Cassius gathered backpacks of items, fixed one another’s oxygen tanks to their backs, and clicked the space lock button. Inside the vestibule, they engaged the air circulation in their suits, making sure they could breathe, and then waited for the chamber to depressurize. The door opened in front of them. In the opposite direction Jupiter hung low in the sky, rising like the Moon.

           “Did you remember the camera, Cass?”

           “Obviously.”

           They walked a few paces from the ship and laid down their gear, pitching their dome. They’d only sleep in it a night out of the three there were here because of oxygen limits, but Kian was more interested in the larger domes that were further along the rim of the crater.

           “While this inflates, let’s go check out the other domes. I want to see how they’ve kept their plants alive.”

           “I thought you said you didn’t bring any this time? Remember, yours kept dying?”

           Kian glanced at Cassius with a mischievous grin on his face.

           “There’s no harm in trying, Cass.”

           “You took space up for plants? Again?”

           “Relax, I only brought a few. I figure one of the permanent botanists can watch them after we leave. And the dome has better UV protection than last time. It should filter out some of the radiation that was burning the leaves off the oaks.”

           “I thought you said we were going to explore, not experiment.”

           “There’s nothing to explore. Just some rocky land and craters you don’t want to fall into.”

           “We could try to find an entrance to the mantle. I really want to be the person to finally prove the existence of the underground ocean.” Cassius sounded as if he were begging.

           Kian gawked.

           “You’re really comparing getting lost underground to me bringing a few foot-tall trees? I thought we were just going to look at the stars and take pictures. Maybe see if we could catch Earth on the telescope. Not get ourselves killed.”

           “We won’t get ourselves killed. Besides, you have to admit that sitting around for three days is going to be painfully boring.”

           Kian groaned. He did want to find the underwater cavern. Him and his grandfather spent a week every summer looking for it. But the only entrance to the sublayers of Ceres were in cryovolcanoes. It was way beyond the threshold of their suit ranges. Their blood would freeze.

           Cassius knew all of this. Kian had reminded him on a number of occasions and Cassius knew it was a losing battle.

           “I suppose we could figure out how to plant your stupid trees,” Cassius said, rolling his eyes.

           “I figure,” Kian said as they started leaping towards the larger domes, lazy as can be to preserve oxygen, “if I can get the trees to live, we could get some pretty good terraforming plots going. With enough oxygen and permanence here, maybe we actually could find your underwater ocean.”

           “Don’t pretend like you don’t have a nursery at home with another hundred experiments with your plants, Kian. Don’t pretend like you’re doing this for me.”

           “I’m a bioengineer, what do you expect? Anyways, I want to find the caverns too. Just, I don’t want to be so rash about it. No one else comes here. We’re not racing to explore. Or, just bring a drone next time.”

           They reached the first dome. It was greener than Kian had expected. They approached the space lock and a woman tending to a small patch of grass near the inner door, looked up. She grinned, wide-mouthed, and stood, rubbing the grey dust from her gloves. Sunglasses blocked the radiation, but Cassius was certain they weren’t protecting her vision the way she needed them to, even with the dome shielding.

           She looked as if she were tending a regular garden on Earth. He saw her face, and regret immediately filling him with a sick feeling, fell in love.

           She opened the space lock and waited as they stepped inside and the vestibule re-pressurized. Before opening the main lock, she asked their identities.

           “You two look familiar.”

           “Yeah, it’s Kian. I pestered you last year about your growing methods.”

           A look of recognition spread across her face.

           “Ohhh, I remember you. But not him. You were with someone different, no?”

           “Another of my friends.”

           Her voice sounded like honey. She welcomed the two of them into the dome. They turned the oxygen feed off and let natural air fill their suits. It was thin certainly, but the dome was beautiful. Somehow, in the middle of the void of space, this little dwarf was green and livable.

           “I have all your basic crops growing pretty well now,” said the woman. “Grain, lettuce, even grapes. I’m working on grass to increase the oxygen levels, but it takes a lot of water. Hard to get it to grow without taking trips to the ice caps often. I worry for when they melt in the solar maximum that is upcoming.”

           “You do all this by yourself?” asked Cassius, fishing. He felt as though he were betraying Haley, but he knew Haley didn’t love him the way he wished she would.

           “No.”

Cassius felt instant disappointment. It was odd he was so attached to her and yet he’d only met her. He thought he wanted to return to Earth but it didn’t stop him from staring at her, at the blue of her eyes, enamored. He reasoned he could get to know her for a few days, convince her to return to Earth with him. It was, of course, entirely unreasonable.

           But the dome was beautiful. And did he really want to return to such an unsatisfying life? Kian had a family. What did he have but a crappy job and wife who didn’t love him.

           “Do you need any help?” he asked.

           “My sister helps. Though it’s a lot.”

           “Just you two?”

           “Yeah.”

           “Care to make it three?”

           The woman looked at him like he was crazy.

           “Trust me, you don’t want to stay here.”

           Kian looked at him like he was even more crazy.

           “You know it takes two to pilot the ship right?”

           “Well, then I shall return next trip, and when I do, I shall stay.”

           The woman smiled.

           “We’ll see.”

Three months later, Kian, Cassius, and another friend returned to Ceres. Cassius had resolved to live there permanently. He had divorced Haley. He was, for the first time in years, optimistic.

When they landed near Kokopelli, Kian knew something was wrong. The domes looked different. Cassius, who had dreamt of returning Daria since they left, was the first to run aimlessly to the dome when they landed. Kian and Auden didn’t need to run. They knew what had happened. What had so often happened to those who tried to terraform.

They reached the dome. It wasn’t green or lush. The crops were withered. The air lock was wide open. Daria’s body was huddled next to her sister’s, on the ground and motionless near the entrance of the sub-dome where they slept. The polar caps had melted and vanished. The two girls were dead.