Keith realized that he could actually identify a handful of constellations now and, even in his state of increasingly perpetual self-pity, the fact filled him with some sense of pride. He had added the rest of Ursa Major to the less-distinguished pot of the Big Dipper and could find Cepheus between Polaris and Cassiopeia, all the while Peter patiently spooning him information. Names of stars that, when repeated the following night, had begun to achieve a sense of familiarity in Keith’s mind so that he had just begun to understand that the mass of stars and nebulae and galaxies and perhaps universes, all of which spun above him on the axis of Polaris which was the axis of Earth itself, could be comprehended, that the whole of it had order even if it did not have rationale, even though he knew that he was not looking at a flat plane of stars but rather a three- and even four-dimensional space that moved far beyond them all and into the ever-retreating and isotropic distances that far outstripped the mechanical eyes of any telescope. Whole universes out there in the deeper luminous black beyond. And he had seen them. At the end of the robotic arm he had seen into that distance and it had gone on forever and would never stop. Everything out there fractal, infinite, beautiful.
Sometimes he thought of Peter’s résumé, but only when he was out on the sofa in the dark, listening to Peter explain the story behind the discovery of some feature of the night sky. He had long since come to the conclusion that Peter was indeed an intelligent man, too intelligent to be working at Target, and he knew he could at least send the résumé to someone who might read it, someone at NASA or at one of the many independent scientific organizations he had worked with. But when he was inside during the day he did not think about the résumé at all. The pages remained on the kitchen island, buried now amidst the pile of bills and a variety of unopened mail. Looking at it would mean he would need to call NASA and he did not want to do so. Not yet in any case. Perhaps he was afraid of what they would tell him about his own future. Perhaps he was afraid that what he had already decided about that future was true. That it was over.
His phone rang when it was still early, a JSC number. He flipped the phone open and said, “Hello,” and as he did so the sound of a truck came from the front of the house, a loud, rumbling that shook the windows and sent a huge, low-frequency sound wave through the room so that even the milk in his cereal bowl burst into concentric rings. Whatever voice came from the other end of the line he could not hear apart from a sharp tinny sound. “Hang on,” he yelled into the tiny grill. He could hear the sound of air brakes, the squeak and hiss, the windows actually shaking as the engine outside sputtered for a moment and then roared again and moved past the front of his house at last, the rumble fading then to a hum that continued but was at least quiet enough for him to hear the voice on the phone now.
“Hello? Hello?”
“What’s going on over there?”
“No idea,” he said. “Who’s calling?”
“Forgot the sound of my voice already?”
“Eriksson,” Keith said.
“Your friendly mission commander.”
“I didn’t recognize the number.”
“Yeah, I’m in a different office.”
“You’re at JSC?”
“Yeah, the paperwork never stops. Just wait until you’re a mission commander. The paperwork will kill you.”
“I’m sure,” he said. The rumble faded to a dull hum that continued somewhere out toward the end of the cul-de-sac near the empty lot.
“So how are you doing?”
“OK.”
“Getting through it?” Eriksson said.
“Yeah, I’m getting through it,” Keith said. He stood from the increasingly rickety kitchen table and set his cereal bowl in the sink. He could still hear the hum of the truck down at the end of the cul-de-sac. A delivery truck perhaps. Dropping off a package for someone. Not for him.
“Barb?”
“Long gone.”
“Damn. Sorry to hear that, buddy.”
“Yeah, well. She’s filling my in-box with angry e-mails. That’s something to look forward to.”
“I’m sure.”
“How’s the family?”
“All good. Little guy is in swimming lessons. Boring to watch but fun anyway.”
“That’s good then.”
“So you’re doing OK?”
“Yeah, fine.”
“Seeing the doctor and all that?”
“Yeah I’m seeing the doctor and all that.”
“Psych doing anything for you?”
“Not really,” he said. “So this is a checkup call?”
“Come on, Chip. We’ve logged a lot of time together. Can’t I call to find out how you’re doing?”
“You can,” he said, “but that’s not what this is.”
“That is what this is.”
“OK.”
“You can really be a pain in the ass,” Eriksson said.
“What do you want me to say?” Keith said.
“I don’t want you to say anything. I’m just asking how you’re doing.”
“I don’t know how I’m doing. I wake up, get a cup of coffee, wander around town. At night I sit around with my Ukrainian neighbor and drink beer. That’s all.”
“All right,” Eriksson said. “Look, buddy, I’m worried about you. That’s all.”
“Yeah, I appreciate that.”
They were both silent then and in the gap Keith thought that, if he could find the words to do so, he would tell Eriksson exactly how he was actually doing because Eriksson was perhaps the only substantial friend he had. They had spent so much time together, training and working and then the mission itself. After Quinn was dead and Barb was gone, it had been Eriksson who had kept him working when he could work and had cleared the schedule when he could not. That had meant everything. Without it he did not know what he would have done. And so he thought that he would tell him that there was no end to the equation in which he now found himself and that he did not know what he should be doing anymore or what velocity he would need to reach to escape whatever orbit he was in.
But then Eriksson said, “Look, let’s switch gears on this,” and Keith said nothing, only listening as Eriksson continued and the moment was gone: “There are some people here with me and we’re trying to figure something out and you’re the only guy I know who might know the answer.”
“OK.”
“You’re gonna laugh,” Eriksson said. “We can’t figure out the code for the MSS arm files.”
“The access code?”
“Yeah. We should have it on file here somewhere but we can’t find it.”
“Oh,” he said. “That’s what you need to know?”
“That’s it.”
“What do you need those for?”
“We don’t really. But IT is doing an audit here and it came up as something that needs to be in the backups.”
“I have it backed up and it’s probably on the mainframe too.”
A pause. “Yeah … well, look, we still have to have access to it.”
“Sure, the backups don’t have password protection so you can run them from there into the main server.”
“I don’t think you’re quite hearing me, Chip.”
“I don’t think you’re asking me the right question.”
“You’re going to make this hard.”
“Am I?” A second low rumble. The windows shaking. “Christ,” he said. “Hang on.” The voice on the other end of the phone speaking but what words were being said lost in the volume outside on the street. “Hang on. Hang on,” he repeated, the rumble fading to a hum that pulsed in heavy waves outside past the house. He could hear Eriksson’s voice continuing somewhere in the din. “Hold on,” Keith said. “There was a truck. What did you say?”