Текст книги "Orbit"

Автор книги: John Nance

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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

Chapter 24

DENVER INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, COLORADO, MAY 18, 4:20 P.M. PACIFIC/5:20 P.M. MOUNTAIN

A stunning young woman with shoulder-length, blond hair has been watching him for the past ten minutes. Jerrod Dawson assumes it’s his uniform, because he certainly isn’t exuding anything but gloom.

She can’t be more than twenty-five, he figures, with a modest, tight-fitting suede skirt and an achingly feminine, well-filled frilly white blouse set off by calf-length high heel boots. Normally, he would be falling in lust. After all, the women at the academy are untouchable. His opportunities for any intimate female companionship these days are severely limited.

But the copy of USA Todayin his lap with the headline about his father’s perilous situation has numbed and deflated all that’s normal, leaving him awash with guilt as he waits for his Houston-bound flight to board and tries to keep unbidden tears from showing.

Why he’s even going to Houston isn’t clear, and even as they were granting the emergency leave orders and helping arrange a military fare, he felt reluctant about going there at all, except to see his sister and two half-sisters. The thought of Sharon in the role of his mother is infuriating. He can barely be civil to her. While he likes Sharon’s father, Big Mike, he can’t believe he is actually, voluntarily, going to put himself in Sharon’s presence again—and in Houston, to boot! He couldn’t believe it when he found out Sharon had left his father and run back to her daddy in Houston.

And, of course, there’s the small matter of Sharon never liking him. He loathes her for what she’s done to his father, roping him into having two more children. As if they hadn’t already been a family.

Not that he doesn’t blame his dad, too.

The cute blonde is smiling at him now, making eye contact, the sort of thing that would thrill to him no end if he wasn’t so completely torn up. She’s on her feet and moving toward him like a beautiful wave, a whiff of expensive perfume preceding her as she leans toward him. He knows an encyclopedia of pickup lines, but nothing comes to mind, and he actually wishes she’d go away.

“Hi! Are you from the Air Force Academy?”

“Yes, ma’am.” His response is flat.

“My brother is a senior this year. Maybe you know him? Bob Reinertsen?”

He does, but he’s not going to admit it. Reinertsen is a pompous ass who ragged on him terribly in his doolie year—the label for the freshman hell-in-residence period at Doolittle Hall.

“No, ma’am. I don’t believe I recognize the name.”

“Really?” She slides into the seat next to him. “Bobby’s a cadet colonel. Oh, well. Where are you headed?”

Oh, I don’t know, babe… how about Houston, since that’s where our flight is going?

He’s shocked that he has no desire whatsoever to take this golden opportunity. Sex suddenly seems cheap compared to the responsibilities he’ll now have to shoulder. Especially if his dad doesn’t make it.

“I’m going to my… folks’ house. I’ve got a family emergency.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.”

“And… I’m sorry to be rude. I really am. But… I’d just like some time alone, if you don’t mind.”

She gets to her feet, patting his arm. “Well, if you need to talk to a sympathetic ear, I’ll be around.”

The one I need to talk to is three hundred ten miles above the planet and stuck there.

He fights back tears again and resumes the struggle to hide them.

JOHNSON SPACEFLIGHT CENTER, HOUSTON, TEXAS, 5:00 P.M. PACIFIC/7:00 P.M. CENTRAL

“Ever hear of someone named Dorothy Sheehan?”

Griggs Hopewell’s voice is too recognizable for John Kent to need even a cursory introduction, and the calls between the two of them have been accelerating during the day.

“Should I, Griggs? Who is she?”

“Well, she’s from headquarters, as far as I can tell. But I’m wondering just exactly what she’s been sent down here to do.”

“I don’t recognize the name, but is she causing problems?”

“Twice today I’ve had safety stops declared out of the blue by people who would normally never pull the emergency brake, and she’s the only new kid in town.”

“I’m not following. Are you connecting dots between her and headquarters safety concerns, or are you just being your usual paranoid self?”

“John, you, better than anyone, know they really are out to get me. I’m a principled, purposeful paranoid.”

“You also ramble a lot, Griggs. So answer my question, please.”

“I’m just suspicious of who she is and what she’s doing here.”

“What’s her security clearance?”

“Total. She can go sit in the cockpit and honk the horn if she wants.”

“Shouldn’t be hard to find out who she works for.”

“I already checked. She’s a low-level safety compliance officer under Dick Whitehead in D.C. A long way down the food chain from our esteemed admini-shredder.”

“So, aside from that, any other show stoppers yet?”

“I love the confidence inherent in your use of the word ‘yet,’ John. No. So far as we know at this moment we will be able to get our bird off the pad in three days. We’ll set the launch window formally in a few hours. You should already have all the parameters.”

“Yes, I do. And our guys should already be there.”

“Your three T-38s arrived in the dark of night some two hours ago. No, my only big worry, John, is that someone’s waiting in the weeds to pull a safety stop at the very last second, and we’ll lose it. The window is very tight, and the long range on the weather is not encouraging.”

“By the way, Griggs, you are aware of what’s happening with that live transmission from the ASA craft?”

“Haven’t seen it but I’m aware of it. The passenger’s the only one left, correct?”

“Yes. Bill’s gone.”

“Instantly, I hope.”

“I’m sure.”

“What’s the guy up there talking about?”

“Personal stuff. He doesn’t know anyone is, ah, watching, or reading, or whatever. But it’s a real weeper and it’s leaching away manpower here. Every woman in the place is glued to CNN.”

There’s a chuckle. “The foxes aren’t watching Fox?”

“All the news outlets are broadcasting it live by now, and I’ve got a few of our number watching in case he says anything that could help us. Also, I’m ignoring your politically incorrect comment.”

“John, find out some more about Miss Fem-de-Dorothy for me, will you? She worries me.”

ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE, EN ROUTE TO WASHINGTON, D.C., 5:35 P.M. PACIFIC/8:35 P.M. EASTERN

“You wanted to see me, sir?”

The chief master sergeant in charge of communications aboard the presidential jet is holding on to the doorjamb as the President looks up from disassembling a ballpoint pen.

“Yes! Jose, come in a sec.”

He does so, standing ramrod straight in an impeccably pressed uniform and smiling as the commander in chief loses control of the parts he’s fiddling with, loosing a small spring which soars past the chief into the passageway.

“Shit!”

“I’ll get it, sir.”

“Spring has sprung, you might say,” the President adds, delighted at the pained reaction.

“I would never say that, sir,” the chief replies, handing over the recaptured spring. “I could get you a few hundred workable pens, Mr. President.”

“Naw. I just wanted to change the innards and keep the shell. I’ve had this one for a very long time.”

“Yes, sir.”

The President scoops the pieces together and slides them into an envelope.

“Okay, I need an update on the coverage of that stranded space passenger’s message.”

“Kip Dawson?”

“You’ve been monitoring, right?”

“I’m piping it live through the plane on Channel Three.”

“And everyone but me knows his name?”

“The coverage is exploding, Mr. President. The cable news outlets were carrying it live, but now all three major networks are on and have it as a crawl across the bottom of the screen. They’ve all got air time to fill. ABC, for instance, put on a panel of people to kind of read between the lines. They’re reporting on Dawson’s background, his life, his marriages, family, and anything else they can bring into it. It’s pretty much the same all over the planet.”

“What’s Mr. Dawson saying?”

There’s an unexpected smile from the chief. “Well, let’s say that any of us who are male went through the same female-chasing phases he’s been recalling in… ah… rather vivid detail.”

“Really? Names, too?”

“ Ohyeah! Names and dates and where they were parked and whether they used a condom. I mean, he writes well for a guy trapped in space who believes he’s dead, but I mean I’m only thirty-six and I can relate to what he’s saying.”

“I’m not following that.”

“Mr. President, this guy sounds like all of us working stiffs. He’s Mr. Everyman, with… with a sometimes unappreciative wife and the programming to be a good husband and father and provider and forget about anything else. I mean, I haven’t read everything he’s said but he’s already won me over.”

“Won you over?”

“Yes, sir. On an ‘I can sure relate to you, bro!’ basis. You know, the ‘been there, felt that,’ thing where you think you’re the only guy in the world who’s ever had those thoughts and, wow, here’s someone else who’s fought the same mountain lion.”

“I gotta read this!”

“Channel Three, sir. Let me…”

The President’s hand is up in a stop gesture as he swivels around and turns on the flat screen TV monitor.

“I might not be able to fix a ballpoint but I can turn on a TV.”

“Yes, sir. Anything else, sir?”

“No, Jose. Thank you very much for the insight.”

“Would you like a printout of everything he’s sent up to now, sir? Because this is live.”

“Live?” The President looks around, catching Jose eyes. “This… I didn’t understand that, I guess. He’s typing and we’re watching?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Yes. I would very much like that printout.”

From your description,the President thinks, I’ll probably relate to this guy myself.

GEORGE BUSH HOUSTON INTERCONTINENTAL AIRPORT, TEXAS, MAY 18, 5:53 P.M. PACIFIC/7:53 P.M. CENTRAL

Jerrod leaves the jetway and scans the overhead signs for the way to baggage claim before recalling that he isn’t carrying more than his roll-on. He starts down the concourse trying to shake off the troubled sleep that carried him here, the takeoff and landing a vague blur and the drinks and peanuts a completely missed experience.

He hasn’t enough cash for a fifty-dollar cab ride, so he’s had to call Big Mike’s house for a pickup, but fortunately Mike himself answered and volunteered to send someone.

He sees large TV monitors broadcasting live coverage from CNN but he pays no attention, knowing that the story of his dad’s plight will be in his face if he does. But there’s a signboard with a newscrawl mounted over the concourse ahead he can’t ignore, and he wonders why it’s stopping so many passengers in their tracks, a logjam of standing people almost blocking the way.

A familiar arrangement of letters catches his attention and he, too, stops, wondering why the name Jerrod Dawson is moving across in front of him.

He turns to a tired-looking man in a business suit next to him who looks less shocked than the others.

“What’s going on? What is that?”

The man barely glances away long enough to discern where the question originated and resumes watching the evolving words.

“That’s a message coming down from that poor guy trapped in space. He’s got an angry young son in the Air Force Academy and he’s talking about how much his son’s rejection and anger have hurt him.”

Jerrod stands stunned and immobile as the man slowly looks back at him.

“Say, you’re from the academy, too, right?”

He can barely nod.

“You know this cadet, Jerrod Dawson?”

The sound of his roll-on slipping from his hand and clattering to the floor behind him doesn’t register, his eyes transfixed on the moving words.

What I wouldn’t give to be able to hug my boy again without the barrier of that anger. What I wouldn’t give to have my little boy back, my firstborn. I’ve prayed myself dry that one day he’d realize that his mother’s accident was not my doing, and that I couldn’t save her, and that I wasn’t rejecting her memory by remarrying. Now, of course, any hope of that grace dies with me in, what, five days.

The businessman next to him is trying again.

“I was asking if you knew his son, Jerrod Dawson? Hey, are you all right?”

Jerrod is sinking to the floor, on his knees, sobbing, and he can’t do anything to stop himself—or hide the name tag that the man is now reading as he turns and leans down to take the distraught young cadet by the shoulders and try to help.

“Oh my God in heaven! You areJerrod Dawson!”

Chapter 25

ASA HEADQUARTERS, MOJAVE, CALIFORNIA, MAY 18, 5:40 P.M. PACIFIC

“I have neither the time nor the patience to deal with this right now,” Diana is saying with fury into her cell phone. “I’m not overdue, my bill is paid, this is the worst possible moment, and I swear if you bother me again, I’ll find a lawyer and sue your ass. Good-bye!”

She snaps the phone closed and rolls her eyes before motioning to the startled young woman standing in the office doorway and holding a pair of shopping bags.

“Is this a bad time?” Deirdre asks.

“Come on in. You get dunning calls from New Delhi much?”

“India?”

“No, Iowa. Of course, India. Where all our call centers and jobs seem to be going. Half the time I can’t understand what they’re saying, and they never have anyone in charge to complain to.”

Deirdre walks into the room tentatively with one eye on the door, as if she’ll need to run back out.

“What am I, dangerous? Bring that here, please. Did you get everything?”

“I think so. All your hair stuff and dryer, curling iron, the clothes you wanted, and a change of lingerie… and those Atkins breakfast bars, which, in my humble opinion, you’re about the last person to need.”

“I like them. They like me.”

“I worry about you.”

“What else?”

“Everything on your list. And Mr. DiFazio’s bathroom and shower are yours when you’re ready.”

“Thanks. I feel like I’ve been camping for a week in the same clothes.”

“Diana, has something new happened? It’s been a shock per hour around here.”

Diana sighs. “Richard and the team in Mission Control are fielding requests now from the Russians, NASA, the Chinese, and the Japanese about how to enter Intrepidand get our poor passenger out without killing him. We don’t have a compatible docking system, so it’s a big problem.”

“Wait, fourof them? Which one is actually going up?”

“Would you believe all four say they are?”

“That’s nuts!”

“The Russians won’t back down, nor will the White House.”

“Well, that’s good, right?”

“Maybe. As long as we get someoneup there to get him, yes. But at this rate they’re going to need to send a space-suited traffic cop as well.”

“I’ll get back out on the phones. You won’t believe it, but they’re even feeding Kip Dawson’s transmission over that moving sign at the bank.”

“No!”

“It’s everywhere, Diana. Every radio station has someone reading it. I’ve never experienced anything like this.”

“None of us has. And the media are shifting now to Kip’s background, intimate details we can’t answer. I’d tell you I’ve lost control of this story, but I never for a moment had it.”

The intercom feature is ringing again with a relayed call, and she answers, shaking her head.

“Tell Oprah’s producer thank you, but I cannot fly to Chicago at this… Oprah herself? Well… sure. Put her on.”

ABOARD INTREPID, 5:50 P.M. PACIFIC

The cereal bars are beginning to get tiresome, and Kip wonders if there isn’t at least one freeze-dried version of a real meal for his last.

Even condemned serial killers get something better than cereal bars!

It’s one of the few thoughts he hasn’t entered in the computer. So little time, so much to say.

I had no idea I was so… so verbose.

The pause to munch another bar and drain more water has brought him back to the present. He has to live here for a few more days, but the hours he’s just spent wandering through his past have been therapeutic. He’s been back there reliving his teen years and jumping around from good memory to better, whole hours spent ignoring the inevitability of CO ₂scrubber saturation. But for the time it’s taken him to eat something and use the relief tube again, reality has claimed him, and he feels the almost desperate need to start typing again.

Kip looks up, taking note of another brilliant sunset, the price for which is realizing how few are left. Better to tackle his adult life. Not just the good parts… he’s been doing that. But he needs to track how he got to age forty-four with such feelings of worthlessness.

No, not worthlessness,he corrects himself. Hopelessness. Disinterest. Terminal apathy.

He takes one more squirt of water, stows the bottle, and resumes the keyboard.

I didn’t have to get married at twenty-two, but I was told it was the right thing to do. Lucy was an orphan who’d raised herself, and I came from a straight-laced family. And it just seemed that she was the logical one to marry. We agreed on that. We discussed it, like my father would have done. We agreed we were probably sexually compatible. We enjoyed each other’s company in a passive sort of way, plus we both wanted two-point-three children and two cars in the garage and the great Middle-American lifestyle. In other words we agreed to marry our middle-aged selves at age twenty-two and twenty-three. How pathetic it seems now, not that I didn’t love her and grow to love her more, because I did. But that we did the practical thing and decided that waiting to fall in love with someone was a silly waste of time, because, undoubtedly, you’d eventually fall out of love, and then what do you have? So, we just bypassed the passion and fast forwarded to rocking on the front porch.

And life? It took one look, rolled its eyes, and moved on, leaving us there.

Jerrod and Julie would hate to “hear” me say this about their mother, but the truth does sometimes hurt. She was a wonderful mom (despite battling the depression she tried valiantly to hide). But neither of my kids grew up witnessing parents with the kind of passion for life I see all around me now at forty-four… guys and gals who, despite being married or just together, love being spontaneous and can still hold decent jobs and professions. Lucy and I were incapable of just doingsomething on the spur of the moment. And yet, isn’t that where life gets fun? When it’s not so meticulously planned? Why didn’t someone tell me? Where did I get the wrong instruction manual?

And of course the answer is: I was reading my dad’s book. That doesn’t mean it’s his fault. I just followed the wrong plan, and I’m responsible. Boy, am I responsible!

Chapter 26

ASA MISSION CONTROL, MOJAVE, CALIFORNIA, MAY 19, 7:02 A.M. PACIFIC

“Diana, exactly when did I lose control of this control room to you?”

Arleigh Kerr has his hands on his hips, but there’s no anger in his voice. Merely deep fatigue.

It’s just past 7 A.M. and only three of the control room staff are present, all watching the multiple television signals their public relations director has been assembling on the screen that covers the entire front of the room. Where normally an orbital map would compete with lists and graphs and a live shot or two at different times in a launch and return mission, TV morning shows are in progress, every one devoting their coverage to the phenomenon of a public transfixed by the journaling of a man about to die.

Kip has been “silent” for more than an hour, the live transmission still flashing the last words of the last sentence he wrote before, presumably, going to sleep.

Diana straightens up from one of the consoles and smiles an equally tired and tolerant smile at their flight director. “Am I interrupting any other work here, Arleigh?”

He pauses and shakes his head. “Naw. I guess I’m just pulling your chain. It’s just… with a bird still up there…”

“I know. It feels all wrong. Just like my complete inability to control even the smallest part of this story feels all wrong.”

“What are they yammering about?” Arleigh asks, gesturing irritably to the silent TV images, each of which has the now-stalled crawl of Kip’s writings across the bottom of each screen.

She punches up the audio from NBC and adjusts the volume, then punches it off again.

“I’m not a sociologist, Arleigh, but this is fascinating. I grew up in broadcasting, and I think you’re looking at the beginnings of a kind of phase two. Phase one was a passenger trapped in space and facing death, and they’re largely still on that phase. In phase two, the story becomes this unprecedented situation of his writing so freely without knowing the world is reading along with him.”

“And phase three?”

“If I’m right… and I’m just guessing… phase three will be when the story becomes whathe’s saying. The substance of his thoughts and how they relate to all of us, not just the fact that he’s writing them.”

Arleigh is looking at her quizzically.

“What?”

“Diana, doesn’t this feel a little… sordid? You know… I mean I’m just a technical guy, but doesn’t the word voyeuristic come to mind?”

“A prying observer seeking the sordid or scandalous?”

“Yes. Exactly.”

“Doesn’t that more or less describe us as a people? Certainly the networks and cable companies think so, paying gazillions of dollars to bevoyeurs. I mean, Arleigh, look at it. It’s everywhere! From that thoroughly idiotic ‘O. J. Low-Speed Chase’ that none of us could turn off, through that murderer’s trial before the world’s stupidest jury, through the plague of reality shows and the unbelievable things now broadcast on cable.”

“Not a good commentary on humanity, I agree.”

“And it’s not just us. We’ve taught the world to be voyeurs and they’ve gleefully joined us.”

Arleigh gestures to the multiple images. “But this just feels dirty, Diana.”

“I know this guy, Arleigh.”

“Personally?”

“We’ve talked. But I knew from the first moment I met Kip that his level of enthusiasm for what we do was very special. You should have seen his eyes light up when he was on Good Morning America, talking about how this was the dream of a lifetime. I’d already suggested that he’d be a great public relations icon for us when he got back.”

“I was getting the feeling you had a special concern.”

“I do feel protective of him, not that I can do anything.”

Arleigh smiles and cocks his head. “You’re not dating the customers are you, Diana?”

She feels her face redden. “Arleigh! That’s beneath you.”

“Sorry.” He has both hands up in apology and she nods, embarrassed that he’s identified exactly what she’d been thinking the night before, that Kip Dawson was a man she could get interested in.

Diana clears her throat, more like a short growl of terminated disgust.

“The point I was getting ready to make, Arleigh, is that one reason the public is already resonating with him is that he’s an average Joe, a good guy from Middle America, who knows for an absolute fact in his mind that he’s dead in a few more days.”

“That is incredible.”

“How would either of us feel? And how would we react? His thoughts are uncontaminated by hopes of rescue, contact with the ground, anything. So what we’re reading has a quality about it… and there’s a word I’m searching for…”

“Eloquence?”

She nods, tearing up slightly. “Yeah. Eloquence. That’s exactly it. Even if his writing isn’t brilliant, what he’s saying, how he’s dying, is eloquent. If that makes us voyeurs, dying along with him, then so be it.”

“You… don’t think he’s going to make it, then?” Arleigh asks, looking deathly pale, as if she’s got the key.

“Do you?” she asks, equally off balance. They stare at each other for a few seconds like microwave antennae transmitting volumes of unseen information for which no vocal narration is needed. There is hope of rescue, but their passenger doesn’t know it, and neither of them has enough faith that it can be done.

“Can you turn the sound back on?” Arleigh says, yanking them both away from the subject.

“Sure.”

She punches up NBC’s Todayagain, catching the host in mid-sentence.

“…excerpts we just showed you coming down from the private spacecraft Intrepid,many very personal stories have already been told, some with the names of friends and lovers he hasn’t seen since his teen years. In one passage, Dawson writes about his first love, a girl named Linda Hammel, wondering where she is now. This story is so deep and personal that we felt someone should search out people such as Linda, and amazingly we found her living right here in New York City. She was gracious enough to join us this morning to give us some insight into this remarkable man. Linda, good morning.”

Diana shakes her head and punches up Good Morning Americajust as the host comes on.

“In the broadcast business when there is what we call a breaking story, we refer to what we do as ‘continuing coverage,’ but this is an extraordinary story that plows new ground. So, while asking you to bear with us as we try to figure out the best way to report what is clearly an evolvingstory… and while it’s continuously writing itself across the bottom of your screen… we’re going to spend the next hour giving you as much background as we can on who Kip Dawson is, as a man, a husband, a father, a salesman, a friend. All this would normally seem invasive. But considering that most of us have eagerly been reading his words as they come down on a radio link to the Internet from orbit raises the question of whether we should have been doing so in the first place.

This morning we’ll talk again with Kip’s wife, Sharon, from her family home in the Houston area, but first we go to a gentleman who’s worked with Kip Dawson for many years in the pharmaceutical sales business, Dell Rogers, who joins us from our ABC affiliate in Phoenix.”

Diana kills the volume and brings up a succession of other network shows, each struggling to craft their own portrait of Kip, before switching the sound off again and gaining the attention of the three staffers sitting one tier in front of her.

“I’ve got the various audio tracks on the comm switcher, so you can listen to whatever you want.”

“Diana,” Arleigh interjects, his eyes on the screen.

“Yes?”

“He’s awake.”

“Sorry?”

“Kip’s typing again.”

ABOARD INTREPID, 7:22 A.M. PACIFIC

There’s apparently no choice now about growing a beard. One doesn’t pack a shaver on a three-hour tour.

Kip rubs his hand over the stubble threatening to morph into something he’s sworn he would never wear. It itches, and he itches, pretty much all over, and even though he’s already stripped once and sponged himself off, he thinks a hot shower would be a good substitute for a last meal.

The dream he’s awakened from has ended again with a falling sequence. But the fact that he’s remembering his dreams is extraordinary, and he hurries to write this one down, knowing how ridiculous it will look to his future reader if he doesn’t explain it.

He shakes his head to clear the fog and takes some more water, deciding to save the next delectable cereal bar for a few hours from now. There will still be cereal bars and water when there’s no air left.

The shroud of sadness that is his companion greets his awakening. He’s getting used to it, like learning to relax and play a few rounds of poker with the grim reaper during a five-day hiatus in his morbid duties, even though he knows he’s the next client on his list. The waking sequence is like a fast-forwarded version of his first day up here: a bolt of terror and startled uncertainty, denial, struggle, and anger, and then acceptance that his fate is a done deal, his demise a matter of a few days.

And then he remembers the keyboard, and for some reason he can’t fathom, he’s developing a feeling of responsibility toward that future reader, the man or woman ten or fifty or a hundred years hence who first reads the words he’s writing.

Responsibility! If I could have a tombstone, maybe that should be the inscription: Here lies a really,really responsible man!

The phrase “three-hour tour” keeps rolling around in his head, a direct product of the dream, and he wonders how many even remember the old campy TV show that spawned that oft-repeated warning: “Never, ever, go on a three-hour tour.” The entire dream was about the S.S. Minnowand Bob Denver’s Gilligan’s Island, with some emphasis on Ginger—of the long evening gown and killer body—standing with him on the beach with a shovel having a debate about digging for hidden passages back to Honolulu.

Must be the cereal bars,he concludes, though he’s eager to escape back into the process and, at least for a while, leave Intrepidto orbit by itself.

I grew up feeling guilty. I think maybe most of us did, and that seems a sad commentary on the process of growing up American. My Mom was Lutheran, and thus had a long-standing knowledge of guilt and precisely what to do about it. My Dad was Southern Baptist, and guilt in his view seemed to trigger outrage—at himself and anyone else not towing the line. I loved my folks—I think I said that before—and I kind of feared my Dad’s anger and definitely was terrified of disappointing him. That kind of fear is probably needed to keep the boundaries in place and keep a kid out of trouble. But what I didn’t need—and got in spades—was an Atlas-sized load of institutional guilt for almost everything else.

A sudden beeping courses through the spacecraft, bringing Kip’s attention to the front panel. Lacking the experience to scan the complicated array of instruments and see an anomalous indication instantly, his eyes dart back and forth looking for a blinking light or an indication in motion or something.

The beeping continues unabated. Kip, trying to zero in on the source of the sound, slowly works past the echoes around him and finds himself laughing almost uncontrollably for a few seconds.

He reaches out and cancels the alarm he set himself on a sophisticated little clock on the forward panel and looks up in time to catch the next sunrise before turning back to the keyboard.

Where was I? Oh yes. Guilt. I was supposed to feel guilty, especially about any sexual feelings, let alone my doing anything about them. I was a teenage boy awash in testosterone driving me to find a girl to couple with, and I’m told that my feelings are dirty and bad. Sex, they taught me, was just barely tolerable in private in the dark and in shame, even within marriage. What a crime, the concept of using “sin” to describe the most beautiful act in life. In my family, original sin was a concept humans earned all the time, and every instance of failure of mine—whether grades or conduct or thought-crime—would engender reminders not that I was merely human and thus fatally flawed, but that I should pity myself because of those flaws. I was supposed to grow up on my knees—not worshipping my Maker, but apologizing to Him for His own act of making me imperfect. Talk about confused! No wonder we spend so much money and time as a people on psychological analysis.