Chapter 1

Part 1

I remember watching my lover die. If my plan fails, I may get to join him. I’m not sure what I’m hoping for more – success or failure.

I remember watching Raj stepping up onto the metal staircase leading into the vacuum chamber. At the top, he turned to look at me. “My place after the lab?” he asked, knowing the answer. “Study for the test?”

I felt my face flush. Trainees were discouraged from dating each other. “Sure thing, study buddy,” I replied. We’d done many things at his place, but studying wasn’t one of them.

We were partners for this exercise, and responsible for each other’s safety. Even though we were still on Earth, vacuum could kill. It was only the second time we’d worn a spacesuit in a real vacuum.

The vacuum chamber was a windowless concrete room, lit with industrial fluorescent light and studded with video cameras. As soon as we were inside, one of the instructors pulled the heavy steel door shut. With the alarms sounding and the yellow warning light flashing, the huge vacuum pumps quickly sucked the damp Florida air out of the space.

“Commence exercise, commence exercise,” one of the instructors said, his voice harsh and crackling in our earpieces.

This was supposed to be a simple exercise, designed more to build our confidence in our spacesuits then anything else. Still, training time was valuable, so somebody had incorporated some basic Damage Control drills into the mix, involved finding and patching a simulated hull leak.

The biggest problem with a small leak in space was finding the damn thing, or so our instructors said. Even now, ships were lost due to their crew’s inability to find and fix small holes. So, a crude mockup of a ship’s hull had been set up in the middle of the chamber. When the instructor hit a button, smoke, simulating somebody using a smoke candle, would be let out of tiny pinholes for us to find and patch.

“Found the hole,” I said. “Pass me the sealsprayer, Raj.”

He didn’t respond, and I repeated myself. He’d been acting dumb since the exercise started, and I was getting a little bit tired of it. “Damnit Raj,” I said, “let’s get with the program here.” There was no response, and so I turned sideways. Where the hell was he, I thought. This was no time to goof off.

Space suits are clumsy and awkward at best, and not designed for a one G environment, so just turning around took a bit of doing. I finally located him, all the way behind me, and as I watched he sat down in the middle of the floor. I ran to him as quickly as I could, and looked at Raj’s face in the helmet. Blood was streaming down from his nose, and he was moaning, patting his helmet with his hands.

Feeling suddenly sick with fear, I hit my suit control panel on my forearm and toggled to the emergency frequency. “Man down! Man down! Loss of suit pressure!” I screamed into the mike.

All of the safety instructors converged on me. One of them pulled me clear, and two more bent down to work on Raj.

“We need emergency pressure now!” I shouted over the radio, nearly hysteric. “Why don’t we have pressure?”

“Emergency pressurization system failure,” said a mechanical voice. One of the safety instructors barked, “Use the secondary evac door!”

I struggled free of the instructor holding me, and helped lift Raj up. Three of us carried his limp body to a side door in the compartment, and shoved him into a small airlock. Two instructors got in with him, and I slammed the metal door on them. As I did, one of the instructors, Ribilisi I think, pulled me aside.

“Didn’t you monitor him?” He said, his voice harsh over the radio link. “That was your responsibility!”

I don’t think I responded. By the time they got Raj up to a safe pressure, he was dead.

**********

“There will be an investigation, of course,” the Safety Director said.

We were sitting in the Safety Director’s office. I was in coveralls, my hair still matted and sweaty from the suit helmet. The carved wood nameplate on her desk, out of place in the plain, almost generic office, said read Alison Hill. “Florida law requires a coroner’s inquest in these cases, and NASA safety regulations require an investigation after every major training mishap. I’m sure you’ll have to testify.”

Raj was dead, and she called it a “mishap?” “Should I get a lawyer?” I heard myself ask. It seemed like I was dreaming.

“I would for the inquest,” the Director said. “NASA’s mishap investigation is confidential and can’t be legally used against you.”

“Thank you for you advice,” I said. “Can I go home now?”

“Unfortunately not, Ms. Pilgrim. You should meet with the mishap team. It’s best if these interviews are conducted as soon after the incident as possible.”

I have only a vague recollection of the next few hours. It seems I spoke to three or four different people, all asking the same questions. Did I notice that Raj was not responding normally? Did I check the hose connections from his backpack to his helmet? The training exercise had started at 1830, and it was nearly midnight before the lead investigator, a kindly, gray-haired old man, finally told me to go home. “You should eat something,” he said as I left. The thought of food sickened me, and I involuntarily made a face. “Report to me here at 0930 tomorrow.”

I was staying on Academy grounds, but my studio apartment was miles from the training center. To get back and forth we had to ride a rickety old monorail system. I lucked out, and got a car nearly to myself. The Academy sprawled over miles of Florida swampland, but it was still like a small town, and word got around. I don’t think I could have taken the sympathetic looks of my classmates right about then.

“Home” in this case meant the “Carlos X. Montoya Memorial Housing Unit”, on the south end of campus. Whoever Carlos was, I don’t think he would have been impressed. The unit consisted of a number of two story cinder block buildings arranged around a couple of hot and dusty squares of grass and mud. My unit was a tiny one-bedroom apartment on the second floor of Building 30. The main door opened onto a sagging concrete walkway, open to the air, which was the common access for all the other units. My unit was closest to the east stairway, so people were always walking by my windows at all hours of the day and night.

The apartment, number 3022, had a small living room combined with an eat-in kitchen barely big enough for a small, cheap dinette set. The bedroom was barely big enough for the built-in bed, and the tiny, moldy bathroom had a shower only. Everything was manual. Manual doors, manual stove in the kitchen (apparently nobody ever heard of an auto-cook before) and one phone display, in the living room.

I rattled around the place in a daze for a bit, and finally found myself sitting at the dinette, staring at a plate of beans and rice. To this day I don’t remember heating it up, but steam was coming off of the plate, so I guess I had. I ate mechanically, surprised to find out that I really was hungry. I left the plate on the table and went back to take a shower.

I got as far as the bed when the tears came. I think it was Raj’s shirt, crumpled up in a ball on the floor next to my bed, which set me off. We’d been together last night, and after we’d finished lovemaking, we’d talked for hours.

**********

We’d met the first week of school, right after the “Ship Security and You” seminar. I smile as I write this. My current situation makes me an expert on the subject, unlike the old windbag of an instructor.

“Hey, Blondie,” he’d said as I walked out of the auditorium, “Wait up.”

I’d turned and shot him an exasperated look. “What did you call me?”

“Blondie. Worked, didn’t it?” My smart-alecky classmate was a tall, dark and handsome young man. He had a warm smile, and held out his hands disarmingly. Definitely a hottie. My irritation faded under his gaze.

“My name’s Janet. And yours?”

“Raj.” He fell in next to me as we started to walk down the hall. “What didja think of Doctor Doom in there?”

I suppressed a snicker. “Every time he said the word ‘pirates’ I kept picturing somebody with a peg leg singing ‘Yo Ho Ho’.”

“Now here, young Miss, that was serious stuff,” he said, a stern look on his face.

“I suppose so,” I said mildly. Doctor Doom had told several stories of actual and attempted shipjackings.

“Good, then,” he continued. “Glad to see some of this valuable information is sinking in then.”

I busted out laughing at his parody. Doctor Doom had said the exact same words at least a dozen times in his short presentation. Raj was jerking my chain.

Raj mock-glared at me for a second, then lost it, and roared with laughter.

“You hungry, Janet?” He’d asked when he’d gotten his breath back.

“I could eat.”

“Great. I know this great little place that serves the best Indian food. You like Indian?”

Raj’s “great little place” turned out to be his off-campus apartment. Unlike my Academy-provided dump, his had a pool and air conditioning that really worked. He was a surprisingly good cook, and went easy on the spices out of respect for my palate. I ended up spending the night at his place, where he became my first lover.

I know what you’re thinking – I’m some kind of loose woman. I mean, it’s not like in great-grandpa’s day, when people had sex all the time. To hear some of the stories from that time, you wonder how they had time to do anything else but have sex. Grandpa Pilgrim had a half brother, who was born when great Grandma Pilgrim was only 15, and nobody even said much about it.

Things were different at school. It wasn’t just that everybody was away from their parents, although that helped. We were, after all, learning a “dangerous trade” and, more to the point, one that would keep us away from friends and loved ones for months if not years at a time. There was a “get it now while you can” mentality.

Although Raj was certainly easy on the eyes, our mutual attraction wasn’t just physical. We were both people with a plan, and the United States Merchant Astronaut Academy was just a way station. We were both looking to be “one hop and out” astronauts. Raj’s plan had ended on a cold concrete floor that February night.

Chapter 2 contents

I called my parents early the next morning and told them what had happened. When they appeared on the phone’s tiny screen they were still in their housecoats.

“I’m just glad it wasn’t you,” Dad finally said. He ran a hand through his thinning hair, unruly from sleep. “Do you have money to get home?”

It wasn’t like he had any to spare. If it wasn’t for Mr. Afeef, I’d be working construction already.

“I still have to testify at the inquest,” I said.

“Tiger is hiring,” Mom said.

“Mom, Dad, I need to go,” I said. I was too tired to argue. Besides, depending on the investigation, I might have had to go home and work for Tiger. At the time, I’d rather have died then done that, or so I thought.

**********

My Dad is a dreamer, and always has a sure-fire get-rich-quick scheme going. His latest grand plan had involved him becoming a sales rep for a liquor wholesaler. After all, he liked bars and knew well the products he was selling. But there was a problem. With my dad, there is always a problem. Dad wasn't selling, or at least not selling enough to make any money. He'd had the sales job for about a year, and his boss had been making noises about "shaping up or shipping out" for months.

It was a tough time for us. Dad got a small allowance from the company, but the bulk of his money was supposed to come from commissions. Few sales meant few commissions. Most months he didn’t even break the “floor” or minimum sales requirements, and so didn’t even get the commissions for what little he had sold. Mom had been carrying the full cost of living for months, but her wages just covered the necessities of life.

We had a nice townhouse in the Printer’s Row area of Chicago, and everything was expensive. I was a high school senior at an expensive private school, and doing my part to add to the overhead. Christmas 2070 was not a very merry one at the Pilgrim house.

One day in early January, I came back from school to see Dad in the living room, staring blankly out the front window. It was a typical winter day in Chicago – the wind was blowing off of the lake, kicking up little swirls of old snow and de-icing compound from the streets. I had ran in the front door, and tossed by coat on the couch.

There was a drink on the table, and I remember the soft clinking of the ice as he held it. The coffee table was covered in ominous-looking legal papers. The room lights were low, and the orange light from the sim-fireplace, flickering from its recess, colored Dad’s face. Dad sat down on the couch, and held his drink in front of him, his hand resting on his belly.

“Janet,” he said, “I’ve got bad news for you.”

I sat down. “You’ve been fired,” I said. He was always surprised when he got fired, or one of his schemes collapsed, but I had figured it out long ago.

He nodded, then launched into his usual explanation of why it wasn’t his fault. He was winding down when Mom came in, shedding her coat with one hand and holding her lunch bucket in the other. Her jeans were gray with drywall dust, and flecks of it were in her hair, blonde like mine. She was wearing a tan shirt under her coat, with a gray patch proclaiming “Tiger Electric” and “Linda” all in red embroidery. She leaned over the couch, pecked Dad on the cheek, and set her lunch bucket on the table.

“How was work, honey?” Dad asked.

“Sucked. That damn idiot Sylvia’s got us in pulling the wiring, Juan’s crew is in finishing up some drywall and Nick is putting down tile. We were literally stepping on each other!” She turned and revealed a dusty footprint from somebody’s work boot on her butt.

Dad chuckled, then got up and gave her a hug. “Looks like you had a rough day, dear. Let me get you a drink.” He walked into the kitchen, where I could hear the glass tinkling.

Mom looked at my face, and said in a low voice, “he’s been fired.” It wasn’t a question.

“Like it’s a surprise?” I said in the same volume. I love Mom, but I don’t understand what she sees in Dad. I had asked her once, and she had been unable to explain it to me. It’s not like living with him had been easy. Dad had gone through dozens of schemes and jobs, and even when Mom got really cranked at him, she always came back. Maybe Raj and I would have had the same thing.

Dad returned, and handed Mom a drink. “I hear your day was worse then mine,” she said, in a tone reserved for misbehaving children.

“I was fired,” Dad said. He opened his mouth as if to explain, but Mom’s harsh expression silenced him. There was a long and uncomfortable silence, which Mom broke.

“Anything else I should know?” she said, gesturing at the pile of papers on the coffee table.

He stared into the fire, embarrassed. “We’re being forced into bankruptcy.”

“Bankruptcy?” Mom took a sip of her drink, her face flushed. “Well, at least we’ll keep the house.”

Dad looked like he’d swallowed sour milk. “I’m not so sure about that, Linda.”

She glared at him suddenly. “You did file those homestead exception papers like I told you to.”

“Not really,” Dad said.

It took some time to extract any details at all, but apparently Dad had committed all our savings (not that we had much) and pledged the house as collateral in some investment opportunity with Grandpa Szymanski. The scheme had gone south, and taken our savings with it. It didn’t dawn on me for a while as to exactly how bad things were.

**********

I walked out of the apartment at my usual time, and headed down to the monorail station. The conversation there was muted, and I felt like I was being avoided, like I had some contagious disease, and if they got too close, it would rub off on them. The seats in the monorail were benches, two people wide, and I got an entire bench to myself. I called up a newsfeed on my PDA, and I pretended to read during the ride. I got out at the main campus, and walked to the Administration building. I ended up outside the Admin building way early, just before 0900, and sat down on a concrete bench overlooking a grassy quad.

“At least you’re early,” a gruff voice growled behind me, startling me. I stood up and turned.

“Mr. Afeef? What are you doing here?”

“Trying to protect my investment, of course.” He handed me a cup of coffee and gestured at the bench. “So, sit down and tell me what happened.”

Junaid Afeef was my sponsor at the Academy. If I graduated, I would be a paid crewmember on one of his company’s ships. He was, in short, my ticket to college.

He already knew most of what had happened, of course, so he was primarily interested in my version. After I finished, he sat silently for a minute. “Did any of the instructors notice his problems?” He finally said.

“Not as far as I could tell.”

“Reilly’s doing the investigation?” Junaid asked. I nodded affirmatively.

“Are they going to kick me out?” I asked. Raj and I were “safety buddies” and that meant that I was supposed to be looking out for him. If I couldn’t handle a simple B-level simulation, who would trust me on a spaceship?

“Depends on the exact cause of the accident,” Junaid said. “But Doc Reilly’s a good man, so you’ll get a fair shake.”

I wasn’t entirely sure that I wanted to stay. While I was waiting, I found myself thinking about home again. It had only been a few weeks since I’d been a typical high school senior. Sitting on that hard concrete bench, it felt like a lifetime.

**********

The evening after Dad had been served with the legal papers (only lawyers still sent people physical paper anymore) we went to visit “Grandpa Nearby” – my Mom’s family, the Szymanskis, who lived out in the suburbs – Oak Brook to be exact.

I remembered pulling up into the driveway at Grandpa’s house. It gets dark early in Chicago in winter, and by the time we got out to Grandpa’s it was full night. His house was a two-story brick affair, on a quiet and dark cul-de-sac. Although you couldn’t see in the dark, it was tan, with a green copper roof. The back of the house opened on to a golf course, now buried under a foot of snow. More snow was coming down, or rather blowing in, on a sharp and biting wind. “Ah, the joys of Chicago – sideways snow,” my Dad muttered as we climbed out of the car and briskly walked up to the front door. The door was opening as we arrived, and the yellow light spilling out was very inviting.

Grandma was just inside the door, standing on the marble-slabbed foyer, hands out to take our coats. She was dressed in a smart blue dress, with brass buttons down the front. Her hair, blonde like Moms’, was up in a bun. Her blue eyes twinkled, and she was smiling. It looked like she had gotten another skin treatment, because there were less wrinkles then when I had last seen her.

“I got rid of Jeeves, dears, so you’ll have to help me with your coats,” she said. When I was a little girl, they had had a real butler – a man named Alberto – who lived with them all the time. He had left – I don’t know why – and they had gotten a mechanical butler they called Jeeves. He wasn’t much smarter then a dog, and required a lot of training. He was constantly in the shop for repairs, and I guess they had gotten tired of having him fixed.

We went inside the house, and into the main living room, a two-story affair with cathedral ceilings. It was a study in beige – beige carpet, walls, and furniture. Grandpa was standing beside the sim-fireplace, a drink in one hand and the control unit for the fireplace in the other. He was fiddling with the controls, and the simulated orange flames kept changing from a low flicker up to a roar. I could tell he was also adjusting the heat output, because the temperature display – a bar of colored lights, from blue to red - was up on the glass front of the sim-fireplace. As we entered, he sat his drink down and came over to hug and kiss us.

Dinner was a simple affair. The Szymanski’s auto-cook was an older model, and not able to handle complicated dishes. Dinner was winding down when Mom said “You know Janet is graduating in May. She’s been accepted to Brown. We were going to look at the dorms next month.”

“Yes, well perhaps you should consider, postponing, that trip,” Grandpa said.

“How so?” Mom asked.

“Well, considering our financial situation...” Grandpa said.

“I thought you set up a trust fund for Janet’s college?” Mom asked.

“Yes, Linda of course we did. However, trust funds are normally invested, and in this case...”

Mom glared at her father. “I hope you’re not going to say what I think you are.”

Grandpa looked down at his plate. “I am the trustee for the fund, and as trustee I make the investment decisions. Based on the information available to me, I put some of the money into Mr. Simpson’s deal. It seemed wise at the time.”

Mom continued to glare at him. “Dammit, Dad, couldn’t you just once not screw things up?”

This was my money they were talking about! Valerie and I were to be roommates and we were picking out classes, for Pete’s sake.

“Just how much money do I have?” I asked.

“Well, technically it’s still in the trust,” Grandpa said.

“Just answer the damn question,” Mom said. “She deserves an answer.”

“Certainly not enough to go to a 4-year college,” Grandpa said nervously. “Perhaps a junior college, maybe College of Cook, for a few years. After all, many teachers started out there.”

Not any good ones – certainly none of my teachers! College of Cook County was no better then going to public high school. I couldn’t possibly accept that. As the discussion continued, I became convinced that even junior college would be a stretch. Dad was talking about moving us in with my grandparents! I couldn’t imagine a more embarrassing fate.

The ride home from Grandpa Szymanski’s after we found out about my disappearing college trust fund was deathly quiet. Mom’s temper had gotten the better of her, and harsh words were said all around. I decided that I would just have to find another way to go to college.

CHRIS GERRIB