Light from Other Stars Read online

  This book is dedicated to the Hubble Space Telescope, which opened the universe to me. It is also dedicated to the teachers who did not believe a fifth-grade girl could speak knowledgeably about the Hubble Space Telescope. You remain embarrassingly wrong.

  BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  The Book of Speculation

  Contents

  Aboard Chawla

  1986: Seven

  1986: Fabrication and Loss

  Crucible

  1986: Mico Argentatus

  Dilation and Paradox

  1986: Entropy

  1986: The Dogs

  1986: Bruise and Tape

  Aboard Chawla

  1986: Dawning

  1986: Grove and Light

  Aboard Chawla

  1986: Firecracker Dance

  Protraction

  1986: The Thread

  1986: Into the Mouth

  Aboard Chawla

  1986: Oscillation

  Potential

  1986: Kinetic

  1986: Child and Man

  Aboard Chawla

  1986: The Dead

  1986: Pete McIntyre

  Aboard Chawla

  1986: Books

  Protraction

  1986: Infancy and Age

  Aboard Chawla

  1986: Mr. Pete’s House

  Aboard Chawla

  1986: Electromagnet

  1986: The Town

  1986: Sequence

  1986: Assemble

  Aboard Chawla

  The Break

  Revelation

  299,792,458 m/s

  And After

  1989: Amadeus

  Chawla

  Fall and Rise

  Acknowledgments

  A Note on the Author

  Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth

  And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

  Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

  Of sun-split clouds,—and done a hundred things

  You have not dreamed of—wheeled and soared and swung

  High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,

  I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung

  My eager craft through footless halls of air …

  Up, up the long, delirious burning blue

  I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace

  Where never lark, or ever eagle flew—

  And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod

  The high untrespassed sanctity of space,

  Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

  —JOHN GILLESPIE MAGEE JR., “HIGH FLIGHT”

  Aboard Chawla

  Nedda Papas rose to birdsong, the sharp, rasping call of a dusky seaside sparrow against a backdrop of waves—a reminder of home and things she’d never see again. When she was asked what music she preferred to wake to, she could think of nothing. Her selections had to be considerate of her crewmates, a task made difficult by the decades-long void in her music knowledge. Evgeni preferred a Russian pop group, which made Thursday mornings excruciating. Birds were the least offensive thing she could think of. Everywhere had birds. Only she knew that a NASA intern had dug through decaying audio archives from the Florida Museum of Natural History to find the call of a species that had been extinct since 1987. She opened her eyes to a holographic sea rolling against a shore of pixels that stood in for crushed shells and glass.

  She rolled over to face the window and the black. In the acclimatizing weeks on the International Space Station, she’d watched Earth and waited for nostalgia to hit. The psychologists insisted it would. Viewing Earth from such a distance produced homesickness that masqueraded as introspection, or dangerous elation that preceded violent drops in mood. It happened to her crewmates. For her, the melancholy had waited until they were aboard the module.

  There were numerous papers on homesickness in astronauts that Nedda refused to read; comparing herself to a study was disconcerting. She’d adapted to homesickness before and viewing Earth from above didn’t move her. Her home wasn’t a distance; it was time and a sparrow.

  Space was more welcoming than looking behind. She told Dr. Stein, the crew psychologist, this during mandatory video call sessions. To Nedda, psychology and gynecology were similar in that a doctor saw more of your most intimate parts than you did.

  Every week Dr. Stein asked, “What do you see out the window?” Her stylus was never on camera, but Nedda could hear it sliding across a tablet.

  It was difficult to explain what she saw, harder still to parse its meaning. Space between stars made for easy misery, contemplating how small you were when faced with the universe. Though he was mission commander, Amit Singh looked out as little as possible, preferring star maps, feeds from the telescopes, and data from the probes and terraformers. He remained intent on viewing himself as a person and not a single cell in an organism the size of the universe. Nedda liked feeling small.

  “Endless space is endless potential,” she’d told Dr. Stein. It was good to sound hopeful. It was trickier to explain that she was looking for light, picking it apart, trying to sense the different wavelengths, searching for the familiar. There was light in the black, on its way to and from distant planets, light from stars crashing into one another, meeting in the space between. Light carried thoughts and hopes, the essence of what made everyone. She had to limit such thoughts or she’d miss the morning video call, fall behind on her work with the plants, and find the printer in her cabin had spit out an antidepressant. Thinking of antidepressants caused a flurry of psychiatric drug names to roll through her mind, everything Louisa Marcanta, their on-board physician, had easy access to, and the things that weren’t prescribed any longer. She dwelled on ketamine’s structure, a beautiful molecule that made her think of the male and female symbols holding hands.

  “Papas? No sleeping in.” Marcanta’s voice shook her loose.

  The hologram flickered out, Chawla’s cold white wall replacing the beach.

  Morning call to Mission Control was uneventful. Chawla’s crew of four crowded the central living quarters to speak to Houston, negotiating signal delays and bureaucracy. Today Marcanta received a video greeting from her niece, whose birthday it was. The girl grinned around missing teeth and clung to a stuffed octopus her aunt Louisa had sent.

  Marcanta had automated deliveries for years. Smart. Singh was mad he hadn’t thought of it himself. In these moments, there was little difference between being out of the country and being off world. Eyes down, Nedda sorted her notes. Close as they were all forced to live, it remained uncomfortable to witness someone else’s personal message. It was more revealing than being naked; it was below the skin, seeing the people they’d never touch again.

  Evgeni made a quick report on the module’s systems; then they listened to data from on planet. The rovers and bots were making good progress on the platform and dome builds—on pace for arrival. Un and Trio, two of the rovers, were leveling the ground for a landing pad and digging a trench to help direct the steam Chawla would create on landing. Dué’s soil composition data was within expected range. Nedda reported on hydroponics—they were beginning the first steps of sustaining themselves. There were useable seeds ready for a new cycle, the building blocks they’d need as colonists.

  Evgeni’s eyesight had grown worse, but he didn’t mention it, nor did Marcanta. Nedda and Singh followed suit. It was progressive astigmatism due to lack of gravity, which led to flattened corneas and pressure on the optic nerve from cerebrospinal fluid. Their brains were drowning their eyes. Gravity would eventually fix it, but there were three years left before arrival. The on-board printer generated corrective lenses, but changes were constant and diffi
cult to keep up with. There came a point when vision was beyond correction. Evgeni was nearing it.

  Nedda was beginning to suffer the effects. She’d started sleeping with pressure goggles on, though the effort was likely in vain. Thirty-two percent of Earth’s gravity awaited them. Even less than Mars. Some sight would be restored, but likely not the 20/20 they’d all tested at. It was a known risk. Evgeni was just unlucky in the speed at which it progressed. Failing sight was a bad break for a module’s engineer.

  “We’ve noticed some energy spikes from Amadeus,” Evgeni said to the monitor. The life support system ran on its own power, a radioisotope thermoelectric generator, called Amadeus, that was separate from the engines. Amadeus would continue to run on planet, powering the module when it served as shelter.

  “Has it damaged anything?” The question came from one of the young people from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab. A bright red tattoo decorated the side of her scalp. Kato, Jennifer Kato. The tattoo made her easier to remember among the many faces.

  “Trajectory and pace are still fine,” Nedda said. “Everything is operational. We’re just dumping the radiation into our landing water for now.” It was less than ideal. The water designated for the steam jets they’d use to soften Chawla’s final descent would be radioactive. They’d be landing hot. “The sooner we can fix it the better. We need to minimize atmospheric impacts.”

  “I’d like the generator development specifics,” Evgeni said. “There’s something off.”

  “Just forward your data to us. We’ll analyze it and go from there,” Kato said.

  “Humor me, please. It helps me to know how it came about,” Evgeni said.

  “Fine, Mr. Sokolov. It’ll be in your reader by end of call. If the water cushion’s handling the overload, just leave it until we can pin down a precise cause.”

  When the call ended, Evgeni pressed his hands to his eyes. Squint lines dug into his face. Stout and pale to begin with, space had further rounded Evgeni, making him appear almost mischievous. When he smiled, he resembled a child with a secret.

  They put pressure goggles on. The crew was required wear them for four hours a day, but they found it easier to conduct video calls without them. The goggles felt like yet another layer of distance between the crew and Earth. Marcanta looked effortlessly mysterious in hers, like a European model. Nedda didn’t wonder about her own appearance; nothing ever worsened or improved her variety of plain.

  “How are your eyes? Better, worse, or the same? I can try you on beta blockers to see if that changes your pressures,” Marcanta said.

  “The same, but also better,” Evgeni said. “The lenses help somewhat. The directors look good, like Monet. Maybe Renoir.”

  “And here you are bugging them for reading material,” Nedda said.

  “Like you, I’m a glutton for punishment,” he said, poking her in the ribs.

  Morning calls were followed by two and a half hours of exercise to combat muscle atrophy. The medical team on the ground had added a half hour to the standard amount due to the length of their journey. Marcanta grumbled about it, but Nedda didn’t mind; for her the treadmill was release. Had there been no clocks, she might have run for days. There was a screen for videos to simulate running along beaches or through woods. It was preloaded with a trail through the Enchanted Forest in Titusville, not far from where she’d grown up. Dr. Stein thought she should have a reminder of home. The trail base was lined with coffee plants; their waxy purple berries made her think of Denny, and made her miss him. She ran the trail once before deleting the file. Now she faced the window and ran into the black.

  Amit Singh clapped a hand on her shoulder. Nedda liked the shape of his fingernails: perfect pink-brown ovals. As good a reason as any to like a person.

  “My turn. You all right?” Singh was blinking, still groggy from his last sleep cycle, his hair sticking out like dandelion fluff. He had moon face from fluids stuck in his tissues. The pressure suits did nothing to help their faces. It made Singh look kind. Nedda knew she looked like a drunk.

  “Never better. They’re sending Evgeni info on the life support drive. Check in with him later, would you? He’s not going to admit it, but he probably needs your eyeballs.”

  She cleaned up from her run and spent the next hours with plants in the lab, bent over slides, checking cell structures, bombarding them with radiation, logging and sending data back to the Mars station. She’d thought about moving her sleep sack to the hydro lab to escape Evgeni’s music. As a child, she’d slept in a lab many times. There was a picture of her as a baby, swaddled and sleeping in a file drawer in her father’s desk. But sleeping in the lab would cause the printer to spit out a cycle of antidepressants, trigger more bloodwork, and more sessions with Dr. Stein. So, no sleeping in labs.

  At dinner, they ate the first cucumbers from Hydro after Nedda had carefully deseeded them. The lack of gravity had wreaked havoc on their structure, and they looked like small watermelons.

  “They’re watery,” Nedda said. “I can try to tweak that in the next generation.”

  “Watery is good,” Singh said. “Hydration is good, we’re all water.”

  “They’re pretty flavorless.”

  “That’s the taste of promise,” Evgeni said between crunching mouthfuls.

  During evening call, Singh discussed making a short video on relativity for students. Un had been knocked out in a sandstorm. Evgeni sent a message to Fiver to fix it. Fiver was a slow-moving bot, and work would suffer until Un was repaired. Still, they were well within their arrival window.

  There was no report on eyesight. Evgeni called the files they’d sent on Amadeus interesting. “I was not expecting you to send an entire library,” he said. “It’s a month of reading at least.”

  “You requested development specifics, Mr. Sokolov,” Kato replied. “The files we sent contain everything JPL has from Amadeus’s prototype blueprint to 3D modeling of what you’re running. We like to be thorough.”

  “My fault for asking,” he said. “I suppose it’s better to have too much information than too little.”

  At the call’s end, Dr. Stein said someone had arranged for a private video call with Nedda.

  The crew left during the transmission delay in the call transfer.

  The appearance of Betheen’s face shocked Nedda. The crepe-paper skin of age had at last taken hold. Her mother’s hair was loose and now so blonde it was hard to distinguish where color ended and white began. So different from Nedda’s own dishwater blonde. In her youth, Betheen had been painfully beautiful, but decades had softened her to more pearl than diamond. Nedda wished she could see her in her office, at her desk. Betheen looked uncomfortable in the gray call booth.

  Nedda held her breath.

  “Hi, honey.”

  Her mother’s voice could still make her shiver. A signal wasn’t like touching her, and yet it was. The room smelled like home, like oranges, which was impossible, because Nedda hadn’t started grafting them; the lab couldn’t support tree cultivars yet. Her skin goosebumped. She began to cry—flat waterfalls instead of proper drops.

  “Oh, honey, don’t cry. You haven’t even said hello yet.”

  “Hi, Mom.”

  “Hi,” Betheen said. And then she cried too, which made them both laugh.

  “Not that I’m not happy to see you, Mom, but how’d you get the private line again so soon?”

  “Desmond Prater died.”

  Nedda hadn’t heard his name in ages, but it made her stomach clench. “How is Denny taking it?”

  “He’s selling the grove.”

  “That’s why you’re calling.”

  “I thought you should know.”

  She remembered: running between rows of orange trees, bare feet against rough soil, the dusky yellow dirt, crabgrass where the trimmers couldn’t reach, flies. “You’d think Denny would tell me himself.”

  “It’s not easy to get a slot to talk with you, and there are things he may still have a hard tim
e talking about. You can understand that.”

  But she couldn’t. There were parts of Denny’s memory she’d never be privy to. And yet. They were tied by the grove and what had happened, a bond formed as much by trauma as friendship. A frayed rope stretched too taut by time and space. He hadn’t spoken to her since she’d left, not even when she was on the ISS, before Mars, when it would have been easy. But she couldn’t explain why she’d had to leave any more than he could explain what he remembered. “How are you, Mom?”

  “I miss you.”

  Obvious words, but no less painful for it. “You too.”

  She wanted to ask about work, about Betheen’s promotion at the lab, how she liked leading a study, about weather, about anything to keep her mother talking, just to hear her voice. But the words built up and wouldn’t come out. They watched light play across each other’s faces.

  “You’re round,” her mother said. “It looks like you’re finally eating.”

  Nedda laughed. “If I couldn’t get fat on your food, I won’t get fat on the stuff we eat. It’s just space. It does this.”

  “All I meant is that you look good. Beautiful.”

  “Don’t lie, Mom.”

  Betheen bent close to the camera. The lens distorted her, made her eyes doll-like. “Are you happy?”

  “I’m fine.”

  Years hadn’t changed her mother’s sigh or the way it could shame her.

  “Your father understood, Nedda. You have to know that. We did what we had to do. You’re doing what you have to do.”

  “I know.” Silence was different in space, stretched tenuously over distance and time, a pristine thing Nedda hesitated to break. “I love you,” she said.

  “I love you too.”

  “Are you seeing people, Mom? Are you getting out?”

  “All anyone does is ask about you. I practically have to hide. I kept the lab door locked all last week. It was heaven.” A quirk of her lips. That too was beautiful.

  When the call ended, Nedda scrubbed her face. Desmond Prater was dead. It had been years coming. And part of her had always wondered if she’d feel relief when he finally passed. But Denny was left with the fallout—the grove and his mother. He’d have to do what Desmond had, keep the grove going. Life had an awful way of turning you into your parents.