Now that time was running again, I felt a familiar queasiness in my stomach.
What if I screwed up?
Nat Geo had commissioned me to cover the launch of the Sagan. They’d paid for me to fly to the Cape, put me up in the best hotel, authorized whatever I wanted for expenses, and a fat ten-thousand-dollar fee. Twice my usual commission.
They wanted this cover badly. So did every other publication. The people on this spaceship were going to meet the aliens on the far side of the moon.
That still sounded so foreign. Aliens. Everyone on Earth knew they were there, but nobody had even the most basic information about them. We didn’t know what they looked like, what they sounded like, if they were living creatures or some kind of machines sent from their home planet. For that matter, we had no idea where their home planet was.
All we knew was that these five astronauts were taking the first step to find them.
This launch reminded everyone of the first voyage of Christopher Columbus leaving Spain to discover the New World.
And somehow, I was lucky enough to be one of the primary photographers.
I smiled, knowing my photos would end up in the history books.
Unless I screwed it up.
My fingers were shaking.
“Take a deep breath,” I told myself. I followed my own instruction and it helped.
2 minutes 43 seconds to launch.
“Good luck, Karen. God bless.” I felt a melancholy pitch in my stomach as I thought of her.
There was some commotion in the distance as some utility vehicles moved farther away from the launch pad.
I looked through the telephoto lens for about the thousandth time to be sure the Sagan was centered. Looking through the camera, the rocket was slim, tall, majestic.
I clicked some practice photos. You never know when pre-launch pictures might be useful.
Before I knew it, I heard, “T minus 30 seconds” booming throughout the area. There were a half-dozen other photographers at the official viewing area, all scattered about. I knew most of them from other projects.
Just then my phone beeped, scaring the crap out of me, which I did not need right at that time. A text message. I ignored it. Whoever it was would have to wait.
“Ten… nine…”
“Game time.”
The countdown continued and then the horizon was smeared out by a blazing explosion that seemed to be as bright as a nuclear blast. Even expected, it still shook me, like the entire launch pad had been destroyed.
When I saw the spaceship rising from the ground and thrusting into space, I realized I had been holding my breath.
Fortunately, my professional reflexes kicked in, and I had already clicked a dozen images by the time my mind clued into things.
Three months earlier, I’d done a photo shoot of the NASA control room. There were thirty men and women monitoring their stations, simulating the launch. That shoot had sold to Discover and was one of my favorites. I was able to capture the tension on the technicians’ faces as they all thought, “What if I screw up?”
At least that’s what I believe they were thinking. Right then, I was hoping they were paying attention to whatever data signals were being routed to them.
That’s when the shock wave hit.
The ground shook, as if a magnitude-6 earthquake was rolling over the area. My tripod shook slightly, but it didn’t matter. The Canon was top of the line, with anti-shake technology that allowed it to continue to focus on the rocket, ignoring the tremors.
What I felt at that point could never be adequately expressed with a camera, but the writer who covered the story later wrote that the immense shock wave from the launch was the most brutal and forceful display of American force she’d ever seen.
I liked that description.
Karen and the other astronauts must have been going through absolute hell as the g-forces crushed them into their seats, while the shock waves made them feel like they were in a blender.
Click, click, click.
“This is NASA Control. The spacecraft Carl Sagan has successfully achieved liftoff and will shortly be injected into Earth orbit.”
I took some last snaps of the diminishing contrails left behind by the ship. It was only a few minutes before the Sagan was out of sight, already a hundred miles offshore over the Atlantic Ocean.
My finger was still clicking, but there was nothing more to see, so I forced myself to stop. The launch had been amazing. I glanced at the counter on the camera to see that I’d taken 153 photos in that tiny period of time.
“I have the best job in the world,” I said. I absolutely believed it.
Sometimes I wished I could be an astronaut, but knew I didn’t have what it takes. This group of five was the best of the best. They had to be, in order to have been chosen as the first group of alien hunters.
A woman named Lucy Tyler was sitting in the Control Room in Houston, probably madly scribbling down notes and impressions of the launch. She would be writing the story my photos would accompany.
Within the next few days, we’d have to merge our perspectives, so that I picked the very best photos to bring out her words.
One more in a long string of great days.
I thought of calling somebody to go for a celebratory drink, but wanted to head home and load the pictures onto my Mac and start working on the storyboards.
That’s when I remembered how badly I needed to pee.
I grinned and loaded my equipment back into my two-year-old silver Toyota Camry, then ran over to the closest building. There were several scattered on the grounds nearby, and I knew this one was primarily an old storage area. There was a bathroom inside.
After relieving myself, I remembered the text that had popped into my iPhone during the launch. I clicked it open.
Please come. Now. It’s time.
I stared at the screen and the euphoria of the day fell off me like icicles melting on the first warm spring day.
It was from my grandmother. My heart sank, knowing exactly what the text signified.
Chapter 2
A hundred miles above David Abelman, The Sagan orbited the Earth, once every ninety minutes.
Karen Anderson was both afraid and ecstatic. It still seemed impossible that she could be flying in a spaceship. A year earlier, she’d been working in her lab, trying to decipher something—anything—from the radio waves emitted on the far side of the moon.
After the ship had entered orbit, she’d released herself from her crash belt and had been floating free in zero gravity for the past hour. Although the sensation was amazing, it was also oddly sickening. Her stomach felt like she was continually in an elevator whose cables had snapped. She’d been told that the ship in orbit was basically falling non-stop around the Earth, but she hadn’t really understood that until now.
The captain, Murray Thomson, and the other NASA crew members on the flight all had duties assigned. They were ignoring her, which was also very much expected.
Karen would have little to do for the next four months. She’d become accustomed to the Skywheel, while more crew arrived and they worked together to assemble the ship to carry Karen and the rest of the crew to the moon.
I’m going to the moon, she thought in awe. How cool is that?
She pushed herself to a window and could see the Earth shining brightly below.
David was down there. Somewhere.