Far away behind him a telephone began to ring. The man blinked, slowly waking from his reverie. The phone rang again in the distance behind him. His eyes came into focus on the leaves dangling in front of him. A tiny drop of water dribbled from the tip of a leaf. The phone rang again, finally bringing him back to his body on earth. He turned around and began to walk back along the path by which he had come to the tree. He headed for the ringing telephone. The path led up over a hill. Finally he came to a wooden porch. The ringing came from inside the house. The man climbed up the porch steps and swung the screen door open. Once inside, he reached for the phone, but hesitated, his hand resting on the phone. A moment later he finally picked up. After a brief silence he heard the voice on the other end.
“Hello?” It was a female voice and he recognized it immediately.
“Hi.”
“Where were you?” her voice inquired. “What took you so long?”
“I was out by the lake getting some fresh air. I just heard the phone.”
“I knew you were there somewhere. It’s a good thing I stayed on the line so long. You always pick up eventually. How are you?”
Even over the phone he could feel her eyes trying to penetrate his skull and see his innermost thoughts, things he did not even know himself. “I’m fine. I’ve just been busy the past few days preparing. Sorry I didn’t call. They’ve got me training six days a week over there.”
“You don’t have to go, you know,” her voice pleaded with him. “It’s not too late, if you just told them you didn’t want to go, that you wanted to start a family and couldn’t risk it, they wouldn’t fault a man for that—.”
He cut her off. “It is too late. I am going. Besides, I’ll be back on earth in six years.”
“And what will happen then?”
He knew she was talking about their relationship, about spending the rest of their lives together. She was in love with him. “I don’t know." There was a long pause. She expected, needed something more from him. Inside his home, he turned and looked out the window. Clouds slowly crept through the twilit sky. “It’s so far away, who can say what will happen.” The answer was insufficient, but both knew that was all he would say.
“I’d like to see you soon,” finally escaped from him. “Tonight, even.”
She sighed. “Of course.” She forgave him his emotional blindness of her feelings. He did not see everything that is apparent to others. He clung stubbornly to an inner logic that made every moment a new, separate discovery. Like a child, she thought. “Just think about what I asked you. You’ve got to give me some idea of where this leaves us.”
“I will. You’re right. But I’ll see you tonight?”
“Yes, don’t worry.”
“Alright, I’ll be there soon.”
“Goodbye.”
“Bye. He clicked off and felt relieved. He remained standing by the window. Who can say why they do anything they do? he thought. As soon as you say it you realize those words actually mean nothing about your feeling.
The sun had already set. The man went outside to watch the moon and stars. He felt depressed by the man-made orange radiance.
2.
His name was... Alexei. Yes, that works nicely. His parents gave him a nice Russian name, like a bit of foreshadowing. When Alexei awoke his alarm had already been going off for several minutes. The clock read 5:21 and it was still dark out. He lay in bed for a little while longer, letting his body wake up and his mind prepare itself for the coming day. His bed was warm and comfortable. There had better be some purpose to his rising. He rose eventually and groped his way to the bathroom, where he undressed and climbed into the steaming shower. The hot water felt good as it washed over his bare skin. He put his head directly under the shower head and, with his eyes closed, let the water pour down his face. How many days had he done just this, disrupted his body from its natural rhythms to rise before the sun? Society's fast-paced, competitive spirit does not sleep and it does not share. How long had he been reaching for his goals, when was the last time his yearnings took a day off and allowed him some contentment? He could not even remember the first step that led him in the direction his life had taken. He supposed his first class in astrobiology had opened the door to this path, his first interest in books, his first breath. A myriad steps, whose exact succession only led down the path that was his life. In his childhood, a love for the abstraction of art was sprouted within him. In his undergraduate studies, a love for the abstraction of biological life with its endless mysteries grew alongside it. Then, in his post-graduate studies, the endless depths of space consumed him, key to the future of life and its past. His whole life was spent searching for answers to a few certain questions, but each potential answer, under closer scrutiny, turned out to lead to ever finer, ever subtler, ever more complex puzzles. Soon, he would look those accursed questions in the eye and see what they beheld.
The shampoo he had scrubbed onto his scalp was now rinsing down his face. The soap began to burn in his eyes until he blinked it out. He finished scrubbing his body, turned off the shower, and dried himself off with a clean towel. The bathroom was full of steam. Alexei wiped a streak down the middle with the palm of his hand. The mirror was still covered in condensation, leaving a warped and distorted reflection of his appearance. He felt comforted by this vague representation of himself. He was never satisfied by the clear and sharply-defined representation that appeared to everyone else. He opened the door and let the steam begin to escape. In his bedroom, the emerging dawn came in through the cracks between the blinds. He drew them in order to let the light creep into the room. The songs of the birds filtered in from outside. After dressing, Alexei sat down to eat breakfast - toast, eggs, juice - and read the news. He placed the electronic screen upright in front of him. The real-time headlines flashed across the screen. "Economists predict growth in domestic production, consumption", "Occupation of Switzerland leads to peaceful end to trade dispute", "Election result: National Monetarism Party earns 94.6% of vote, wins Congressional majority for 23rd consecutive term", "National standard of living remains atop international list", "Funding approved for tighter border security", and so on. He could not even stomach more than a glance at the shameless headlines, much less the articles themselves. At the touch of his finger the screen cycled through many pages, nothing worthwhile. He finished his breakfast.
At 6:12 a.m. he walked outside down the porch steps. The sun had barely risen above the horizon. He watched the exaggeratedly long shadows as he walked. He approached his dusty car, an early Saitama Chaser VI model, and it unlocked as the remote key in his pocket entered the vehicle's vicinity. Automatic doors receded in front of the empty cockpit. He sat down at the wheel, started the ignition, and the doors moved back into place.
He rolled down the gravel drive leading to his home and onto an empty lane. The road wound through wooded hills, his car riding low to the ground and easily taking the turns swiftly. At a crossroads, he turned west. The next five or six miles were spent on a desolate frontage road. He soon found himself on a county road. The scenery flew by.
The road he traveled soon began getting wider, accumulating traffic. What was the single-laned road that Alexei started on, now attracted more lanes, split off into more directions. Electronic signs that hovered above the road herded traffic into various lanes, through de-tours, onto overpasses, and into underpasses.
The lush landscape gave way to an inanimate concrete one. The weathered brick and stone of tall housing complexes surrounded. In no time at all, the whole world had transformed itself into a multi-tiered road deep within a vast urban city. Huge metal cranes sat motionless next to halfway constructed buildings that still looked like skeletons of themselves. The whole place was still asleep. The only thing that moved was the sprawling highway, whose surface seemed crawling with tiny ants, each alien to the rest, entirely absorbed by his own destination.
Alexei's own path eventually took him into a tunnel, blocking out the sun and making it seem like night. The orange lamps evenly distributed throughout the long tunnel slowly crept up and then flashed past, momentarily lighting up the dank tunnel. The engines of the many speeding cars revved continuously, their tires squealed and echoed eerily up and down the tunnel at a strange pitch. He finally saw a small opening up ahead.
When he came out into the sunlight again, Alexei exited off the highway onto a narrow sidestreet. He drove many blocks, stopping at many red traffic lights. He now drove along a very long one-storey building, surrounded by a high fence. Halfway along the building there was a driveway, protected by a gate in the fence. There was no sign anywhere. He braked and approached the gate, turning into the driveway. As he did so, the gate began to swing open, permitting him to enter. He parked in the lot and walked into the long building, identified only by the large letters on the front that read "CLARKE INTER-PLANETARY VOYAGES PRIVATE ENTERPRISES".
Inside the building, he checked himself in with the security guard behind the desk, who pointed him over toward the elevator. He waited for it to come, taking in the bare granite walls. The lobby was virtually plain and empty. A bell signaled the elevator's arrival and the shiny silver doors retracted. Inside the steel box there was a panel that diagramed zero levels above, 46 below, each with a highly specified designation. There were no buttons to correspond with the subterranean levels. When the doors shut, the elevator began descending to the massive underground cosmic training facilities.
So began 20 months of underwater, anti-gravity, extra-vehicular activity, electronics, and pilot training.
3.
Alexei pulled the collar of his jacket up as high as it would go as he strode through the rain. Puddles splashed under his feet. The sunlight was almost completely blocked out by the dripping clouds that covered the sky. A rabble of alien noises came from the hectic street. He turned off it into a building and found himself in a waiting room, in front of a seated female receptionist, surrounded by numerous other unknown guests.
“Name please, Sir?” she asked him without looking up.
“Alexei Bell.”
“Mmhmm… You can have a seat, please,” she said, still totally absorbed in something else.
He sat down without looking at any of the strangers and picked up a magazine like everyone else. He opened it up and looked at the words on the page. He saw them, his gaze totally transfixed, but his mind was hardly aware of its surroundings. His mind felt fully enclosed within his body and he was only conscious of his internal equilibrium. He was not aware of his senses but on a subliminal measure. Thoughts flooded his head. He wanted to get this over with. He was still partially soaked from the rain and the waiting room was stuffy. Every so often the receptionist called a name, someone stood up and headed down the corridor at the end of the waiting room. His body continued to perform the meaningless actions of flipping through the pages of the magazine like an automaton. Eventually he tossed the magazine aside, realising he had been holding it all this time. Instead he began to pick at his fingernail incessantly.
The receptionist began to say something faintly in the background, then the same dense silence. Her voice came once again, louder this time, and with an unhidden trace of annoyance.
“Mr. Bell?” the female receptionist said, “we’re ready for you now."
He was a little startled. He had almost forgotten what he was waiting for, or that he was waiting.
In that elusive corridor were several closed doors with names and titles posted on them in plaques. He walked up to the final door, stood with his hand on the knob, and took a breath. When he stepped inside, a man seated in a swiveling chair before a desk scattered with papers stood up and came forward to shake his hand.
“Alexei Bell, nice to meet you. I’m Dr. Boyle,” he said jovially.
“Nice to meet you, too.”
“Please, have a seat.” He motioned to a sofa behind a coffee table. He himself sat in an armchair across from Alexei. He held a clipboard in his lap. He just smiled and looked at Alexei for a moment. Then he said, “So, do you know why you’re here?”
“I know I have to pass a psych exam. You have to deem me mentally fit to go into space.”
“That’s right. Your unaided vision is 20/20 in both eyes, you are physically fit, your training is almost over. Now you have to have your mind examined. How do you feel about that?”
“I think—“, he hesitated. Should he toe the line? “It makes sense. I’ll be operating expensive machinery. My employer ought to take precautions.”
Boyle nodded and smiled in response to everything. He made a note on his clipboard. “Good answer. Now where in space are you going, what exactly is your mission?”
“My destination is a moon of Saturn… Don’t you already know this?”
“I would just like to hear you speak about it yourself. It’s a good place to start.”
“The moon is called Titan.”
“Ahh, the ice moon. Going to find any aliens?” he said sarcastically.
He was used to these kind of inane questions about space. “Maybe, but not like that. Only on a microscopic level. My mission is to land on Titan, to investigate its surface, and drill through the icy surface into the oceans underneath in search of any evidence of extra-terrestrial life."
“And do you expect to find what you’re looking for?”
“I’m not sure what I expect. I certainly don’t think it’s impossible.”
“It would be a major discovery, one that would challenge many peoples fundamental beliefs about the earth. Do you think we’re ready for that?”
“I think the world needs to have its beliefs challenged, its values challenged.”
“Why do you say that?”
“No reason. I just don’t think we’re perfect.”
Boyle scribbled quickly in his notes.
“What’s your educational background, Alexei?”
“I studied biology in college, then got my master’s degree in astrobiology.”
“Didn’t you also study art?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you mention that?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t think it was important. Clearly you already knew.”
“Is it not something you’re proud of?”
“I am proud of it. More proud than I am of anything else I’ve done. That’s why I like to keep it
to myself. Not many people understand why I did it.”
“Why did you do it?”
“I didn’t really choose it. It’s what felt most comfortable, what came easiest. It’s not something
I did, it’s who I am.”
“And who is that?”
Alexei sighed at where this was going. “An artist.”
“Not a scientist? Or an astronaut, or a biologist?”
“Those are secondary. Creation is my main purpose.”
“So why are you going into space then? A seventy-six month voyage is a long, long time.”
“To push the boundaries of human knowledge, scientific discovery, and aeronautics research.”
“That sounds like what Mr. Clarke tells his board of trustees.”
“Maybe I just want to provide the question that sparks the world to challenge its beliefs and values.”
“And what is that question?”
“I don’t know yet. Maybe it’s not there at all.”
Boyle’s ballpoint pen scratched against the paper on his clipboard as Alexei spoke.
“Are you married, Alexei?
“No.”
“Do you have a girlfriend? Any family that you’ll be leaving behind?”
“It’s mostly my parents. A girlfriend, too.”
“No brothers or sisters? Close friends?”
“Most of my friends have drifted away.”
“Do you ever feel guilty about leaving your parents and your girlfriend behind? Everyone else’s lives will be quite different in six years.”
Why did he need to answer these questions? What did they have to do with anything? It felt like an interrogation. “Of course I think about it. But the reality is they’ll move on with their lives. Like you said, they’re lives will be different. Nothing ever stays the same.”
“By yourself for six years, complete isolation—you don’t worry about loneliness, depression, mania…? Few manned space missions have had a longer duration than yours.”
“There will be ways for me to interact with earth. I’m prepared for it. It’s what I’ve studied to do for a long time.” Alexei looked at his watch. This whole thing had taken way longer than it should have and he was fed up with answering questions. He didn’t have to defend himself to anyone.
The man interrogating him noticed that he would probably not be receptive to answering further questions. He jotted down a final word on his clipboard. “Well, you seem to have your head on your shoulders”, he said. “It was a pleasure meeting you and I wish you good luck on your mission, should you be cleared to go.” He stood up to shake Alexei’s hand once more.
Alexei stood up, too. “You mean you haven’t made a decision yet?”
“Oh, the final decision’s not up to me. I just make a recommendation to Mr. Clarke”, Boyle said with a smile.
They shook hands and Alexei walked out the door, back into the corridor. He was happy it was over, but unsure if it was successful. He put his coat back on, pulled the collar up, and put his hands in his pockets. He said “Thank you” to the non-responsive receptionist as he walked out the door back into the rain.
4.
The room was dimly lit and smoke filtered through the air. Other people’s conversations mixed with each other, forming an intricate collage of shouts, yells, whoops, cries, and moans. Alexei sat by himself in front of an empty glass. His insides felt warm and excited. His thoughts swam mercurially around his head, like a group of synchronized ladies bathing elegantly, like overboard seamen writhing helplessly in the storm, like driftwood being carried by the tide. He had everything and nothing on his mind. He stared abstractedly down at his glass. It slowly began to transform before his eyes--elongating, sprouting fins on its sides and rocket boosters underneath. The rockets began to spew flames as it detatched from the launching pad alongside it and began to lift off the table, at an awkwardly slow pace. The spaceship sailed away in the bartender’s hand, only to come back refilled. Alexei emptied a gulp into his mouth, then set the glass back down on the moist ring it had already left on the bar. See, the spaceship departed, carried out its mission satisfactorily, and returned safely to its family on earth. But was it any different than when it spent its time here before its voyage? Had it learned anything useful? He stirred the ice around with his straw. It necessarily was different; every momentary feeling forever alters all future ones. It looked the same though. The glass had the same cold, smooth feeling in his hand, he already knew how the weight of it would feel when he lifted it to his mouth, how the liquid would taste in his mouth. Didn’t he? It is different now though, those last sips made my head feel even more fuzzy. Or perhaps this is clarity? Stop asking all these questions, they don’t get you anywhere. Stop doubting every thought, trying to refine its edges, removing every blemish. They might not even be blemishes, they are simply intricacies and possibilities. Can’t you do anything without reducing it to meaninglessness? You’re doing it perpetually, as we speak even. Yes, but how can you get closer to the truth by thinking less? What is truth anyway? Ach, It’s all rubbish anyway. Another drink to make life easier to swallow. The bartender came at Alexei’s beckon and refilled his glass. Better start a conversation with him to escape this nonsense. Hey Frank, turn the music up a bit, will ya? I like this song. Well, not really, but I’m trying to drown out my thoughts. No, it’s not working. Yeah, I’ve got some things on my mind. You won’t be seein’ me for a while, Frank. No, I’m not going to jail. Worse—outer space. Goin’ to ask the big man up above how there was light on the first day if he didn’t create the sun until the fourth day. You’re right, he probably won’t know any better than we do. Sure, I’ll ask him who killed Kennedy, probably those suspicious characters on the grassy knoll. My guess is it was a C.I.A. conspiracy plot. Don’t tell me you buy the single-bullet theory? No, I’m not insulting you. In fact, you’re probably right, the government always tells the truth… This conversation is going nowhere. That’s the problem when you talk to yourself. Too bad he didn’t actually know the bartender. He was too busy to stop and chat. Probably wouldn’t have wanted to anyway. People tended to notice by his demeanor that Alexei kept himself apart from others. Maybe that was why they kept their distance from him. He was too removed from social life, didn’t laugh when everyone else laughed. He just went on looking stone-faced. They called him arrogant. It wasn’t arrogance, but a kind of uncertainty. He had often tried to play the game, fake it until the fabricated personality imprinted over his real one, but he never could understand the mechanics of the game. He liked people, he just couldn’t figure out how to be himself in front of them. He didn’t know how to go out of his way to get to know others, so only the ones persistent enough to tolerate his seeming indifference caught a glimpse of his insides. That’s how Sofie got in. She saw that he was different, not himself, with others. Curiosity drove her to find out why. He tried not to, but he cared for her. He knew it would end poorly for her, that he wouldn’t ever be able to devote himself entirely to another person. And he was right. Here he was, running away in pursuit of his questions, his doubts, leaving her behind. Here he was, drunk so that he didn’t have to face the possibility that the answers resided on earth, around him all the time. But how could the answers be around him down here? Could they possibly be in these coarse faces, sloshing frothing drinks down their haphazard countenances? His own face was just as crudely and haphazardly made as the rest, a face doesn’t set one apart. Ech, can’t think these agonizing thoughts any longer. Another drink, please. It’s all enough to drive a man crazy, Frank. The bartender told the drunk man that his name isn’t Frank, it’s Teddy, you're in Teddy’s Tavern. Once you start talking to yourself I don’t sell you no more drinks. Time to go home, pal. Lemme call you a cab. How about you just give me one more for the road? The bartender shook his head. No way, pal. Alexei got up and staggered toward the exit. As he approached the door to the street, he turned back to to plead with the bartender one final time. But how can I go back home when I’ve still got these thoughts in my head?
5.
Inside the small, quaint house, the oven was on, and pleasant aromas wafted through the other rooms from the kitchen. The sound of jazz music came softly from an old radio. A Borzoi lay on a rug on the hearth. It looked just like the one they had in his youth, but he actually shared nothing with this one. Alexei sat down in an armchair in the living room of his childhood home. His parents kept standing eagerly, like children, in front of him.
“Welcome home, son. We’re so thankful you made it today”, his mother said.
“Thanks. It’s good to be here.”
“There was an article about your mission in the news last week”, his father said. “We showed it to all the neighbors.” They were both beaming.
“That’s great, Dad.”
“Why didn’t you bring Sofie along? She’s such a pretty young girl. You should have married that one before you went away for so long. You are going to marry her aren’t you?” his mother went on.
“I don’t know, Mom. I couldn’t marry her and then leave for six years.”
“She’d have waited for you, you know”, she said.
“Don’t pester him about it, Dear”, he said to his wife, then to his son, “Forgive your mother, she’s been looking forward to having grandchildren for a long time.”
“Well he’s old enough by now. He should have married her ages ago.”
“I’m proud that he’s been so focused on other things, dedicated to his career. That’s what has made him so successful. You’re much better off than we ever were, Son.” The two parents went on mostly with each other, talking about Alexei, excited by his company. Soon they sat down too, and asked him about all the details of his life—how had he been? what had he been doing? how was Sofie? why didn’t he come home more? After some time, they went to finish preparing dinner, leaving Alexei by himself.
He got up to look around at the house. It was very much like it was years ago when he was growing up. Some people, like his parents, are comfortable with a simple existence, and remain unaffected by the changes of the times. He went over to the hearth and knelt down to scratch the Borzoi’s ears. The borzoi of whom this one was a replica had been given to him by his parents when he was four, and it was the closest thing he had to a sibling. His name was Asher. He died when Alexei was eighteen.
He stood up and wandered down the hallway to his bedroom. He stopped to look at the pictures on the wall in the hallway. They were nearly all of him, or him and his parents. There was one of him as a baby; him on his fourth birthday with Asher as a puppy; him at eight, covered in paint, on his hands and knees before a painting; him outside looking at the sky through a telescope; him with his parents on either side of him at high school graduation. Many of the feelings of his childhood washed over him, stirred up by the photographs.
He continued to his old bedroom. It was mostly the same as when he had lived there, though it was clear that it had been vacant for years. All his old books were still on the shelves, his artwork still hung on the walls. Even the furniture was the same. It all reflected a time when he was happy and naïve. Everything was so certain then. As he got older he began to doubt everything, never sure of himself or the world. He sat down on his old bed. Was he the same person that used to sit here? he wondered. Years ago he learned to occupy himself for long periods of time. He would sit pouring over a book for hours and hours, long into the night after his parents had told him to go to bed, nourished by a world of ideas. Maybe he hadn’t changed that much in all these years after all. Just grown wearier.
On a shelf he found an old diary that he had kept in his adolescence. He opened the dusty cover, releasing particles that hadn’t been disturbed for years into the air around him. Inside were kept all of his hidden hopes and dreams, the things he wished for that he had never shared with anyone. He began to flip through the pages when his mother called to him from the kitchen.
“Alexei! Dinner’s ready!”
He closed the diary, but held on to it as he turned off the light in his old bedroom and walked out the door. He would keep it with him for a while.
“Mmm, smells good, Mom”, he said, back in the kitchen. His mother served the food onto the table.
“Would you like something to drink?” his father said. “A glass of wine?”
“Sure”, Alexei replied, and they all sat down to their first family meal in quite some time. They enjoyed light conversation as they ate.
After dinner, Alexei’s mother made a pot of coffee, and they continued to talk as they sat around the table and drank it.
“So, how soon exactly are you leaving?” his father asked.
“In about two weeks.”
“My, so soon already! You must be getting nervous”, his mother exclaimed.
“Not nervous exactly”, he said.
“Well, I’m nervous for you”, she replied. “We’ll be worried about you the whole time you’re gone.”
“I’ll be fine, Mom. Nothing can go wrong. Be glad that Clarke Enterprises is one of the leaders of technology in the whole industry. I’ll be safe in their machines.”
“Still, I’d be too scared to trust my life to machines so far away from other people. I like having my feet firmly on the ground, here on earth.”
“What will you do with all that time by yourself? It’s what, a few years until you even get into Saturn’s system?” his father asked.
“Much of the time I’ll be busy. In order to get to Saturn I’ll be flying very close to Mars and Jupiter, using their gravity to propel the ship deeper into space. I’ll be busy making calculations; my path has to be quite precise. Plus, Clarke wants me to make my own observations of those planets, as well.”
“I don’t know how you’ll fight the loneliness.”
“Well, I’ll be in constant communication with the base at Clarke Enterprises. I’ll make regular video calls to you two, and Sofie, too.”
“But we haven’t got a video camera that can do those kinds of things, Dear”, his mother reminded him.
“I know. I’ll get one for you from Clarke, though.”
“Well, Son, we know you’ll be fine up there”, his father said.
“Thanks, Dad.” Alexei drank the last of his coffee. “I’d better get home though. I’ve got to be up early tomorrow.” He stood up.
“Thank you so much for coming to see us, Dear”, his mother said. “Will we see you once more before you leave?”
“I’ll see what I can do. I don’t have much free time, but I’ll try and make it out here one more time.”
“We’ll be looking forward to it”, his father said. His parents stood up and each gave him a hug.
Alexei put his coat on and slipped his old diary into the pocket. His parents followed him to the door. He stepped outside toward his car.
“Drive safely, Dear”, his mother called to him from the doorway. “And bring Sofie with you next time!”
They remained standing there, waving to him as he drove away.
6.
The shuttle consisted of a hulking rust colored external fuel tank, two narrow solid rocket boosters that spanned three quarters the length of the fuel tank, and an orbiter, the size of a small commercial plane, the only part that would actually exit the atmosphere. The shuttle stood vertically, attatched to the launch pad, in the middle of an open field. The orbiter was a grey spaceplane with the Clarke Enterprises insignia down the side. Inside were the living quarters for one person, with enough provisions for nearly a decade. It was also the most complex technologically of the parts of the shuttle, designed to maneuver and withstand the harsh conditions of outer space. It was equipped with safety from the frigid physical and psychological effects. It held a sleeping cabin, a lavatory, a living cabin, and a cockpit. Hundreds of buttons, switches, levers, and diagrams were built into the cockpit around a clear window. From where Alexei sat strapped upside-down into the pilot’s seat, facing the sky, all he could see in the pre-dawn darkness were the lights from the ground control towers.
There was nothing for him to do now but wait. The shuttle was undergoing its final checks by the engineers; the weather was clear. In a moment, all controls would be given over to the spacecraft’s computers.
Suddenly the soft female voice that personified the computer came over through Alexei’s headset. “Auto-launch sequence initiated. Takeoff in T-minus three minutes.”
All on-board systems were now monitored by the computer, which would stop the countdown if it sensed a critical problem. The cockpit dashboard flashed and whirred as the many functions prepared for the intricate launch. Alexei tried to soak up his last moments on earth for years to come. He weighed what he was leaving behind against what was awaiting him. His family, his girlfriend, life. Cold, limitless, unknown depths. All that was out there was that which he brought with him.
“T-minus thirty-one seconds”, the feminine computer said.
The whole spacecraft began to vibrate as it prepared itself for liftoff. Each final second of the countdown came and went unfalteringly. Would he be enough for himself, alone out there?
“T-minus ten seconds.” Liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen were now being pumped from the huge external tank into the main engines.
“T-minus six-point-six seconds. Main engine ignition.” The three main conical engines on the back of the orbiter began to fire.
The last few seconds passed one after the other, almost too quickly for him to separate each moment. And soon they were gone forever.
“T-minus zero seconds. Solid rocket booster ignition.” Now the thin rockets, which provided the bulk of the initial thrust, ignited the fuel. A thick plume of fire and smoke swept out from underneath the rockets. At that moment, the rocket was committed to takeoff. The entire shuttle began to move upward and the launch pad released its hold. Unimaginably hot flames poured out behind the rockets and main engines, leaving a narrow line of smoke in the sky. In the pre-dawn darkness, all that could be seen from outside was a beautiful, blinding ball of light, ascending into the heavens. The shuttle accelerated as the external tank emptied of fuel and the craft’s mass decreased. Alexei could see the lights below getting smaller and smaller as he left the earth, and everyone he knew on it, behind.
“Goodbye”, he whispered to himself.
When he rose high enough in the sky, already traveling thousands of miles per hour, the solid rocket boosters detached from the external tank. They fell briefly before opening parachutes and floating gently down to the ocean, where they would be retrieved and reused. His spacecraft was rising high into the atmosphere, the velocity of the metal object caused a burning friction as it penetrated the dense atmosphere. Almost as it breached the boundary of the earth’s atmosphere, the orbiter spaceplane disengaged from the now empty fuel tank. The tank then burned up as it fell through the atmosphere, none of its remains reaching earth.
Just before the orbiter reached the vacuum of outer space, its main engines shut off. The ship then
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