The Gravity of the Moment
by C. H. Russellson
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Table of Contents, parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 |
part 3
The short stint spent as Grayson’s roommate upon my arrival at Titan had been marked by mostly sleepless nights. We had set up a worthless partition in the small singles apartment that did nothing to muffle his coughing, snoring, loud breathing and talking. But here, in the tiny cubicle Cherie had directed us to, he hardly made a sound.
Two narrow cots separated by mere centimeters and a wall shared with the galley made for little sleep especially when at least three of the crew decided to have a good time talking and laughing for a couple of hours in the galley. Even after that, I heard Grayson turn over and sigh several times. I didn’t think it was the accommodations or nervousness about the test flight that were bothering him.
I managed about two hours of sleep before Grayson jumped up and headed for the facilities. I made a cup of coffee and sat in the galley waiting for my turn when Cherie came out of the connector tube yawning as she headed toward the coffee dispenser. “Oh, hi, Ian. Did you sleep okay?”
“Yeah, except for the rowdy neighbors.” We both laughed.
“Oh, sorry about that. We’re not used to having visitors.” She prepared two mugs hurriedly and started back toward the tube. “See you in the ready room.” she said with a smile.
A minute later Grayson came into the galley all business. “The shower’s good for only three minutes. You need to get moving.”
An hour later, we were standing at our lockers in the ready room. Someone had jokingly placed a handwritten label over the one that said “Mannfred” with “Brock” looking as if it had been written by a four-year old. Or maybe it wasn’t a joke.
I checked the tag on the suit showing it had been cleaned and inspected, so at least I wouldn’t be trapped in a suit with Fredo sweat. I noticed the suit was rated Class 5, supposedly the highest rating against radiation. Cherie came in quietly and suited up, using the bench behind us.
After suit and radio checks, we walked into the control room where Vanderver stood behind a console. The sign above the door into the bay changed from PRESSURIZED to STANDBY, and an alarm whooped three times as we walked through. It was going to take a while to evacuate the bay, so we decided to do the pre-flight run-through on Cronus. We stepped up onto the launch pallet that the lander had been craned over to and performed an unnecessary but traditional walk-around while Cherie tended to other business.
I followed Grayson into the tiny cabin where he was powering up what little there was to power up. There was an old expression, probably from twentieth-century Earth that seemed to apply here: “bare bones.” A small shelf was attached to the wall just under the pilot’s window that held a thrust and attitude control module. A small work pad was mounted next to the window to give the pilot a heads-up view of pertinent data.
Grayson saw me looking at the data pad mounted at the co-pilot’s station. He turned it on and, after entering a command into his pad, arcs appeared on my screen. “Okay, you just need to let me know if we start drifting toward the limits here and here,” he said, pointing to the two white arcs, wide apart at the bottom and impossibly close together at the top. It looked like one half of an arch. “You can zoom in and re-center as needed. Once we launch, a red arc will appear representing Cronus. Oh, and then as we approach the apex, a blue arc will show up, that’s the target.”
“Seems simple enough.”
“Yeah, for eleven hundred solari, I should think so.” About that eleven hundred, I was beginning to think I got chumped into taking a smaller fee, but I was feeling good about it because I had gotten him to up it a little. Grayson was probably willing to pay Mannfred two thousand. Typical Grayson.
“You guys about ready?” Cherie asked over the radio. I had forgotten she was on our circuit.
“Yeah, everything looks okay. Fuel, electronics, guidance, radar, all green,” Grayson said after referring to his pad. “All set.”
By now, the bay was evacuated and the service door rolled up as Cherie appeared with a controller in hand. The launch pallet lurched as she expertly guided it out of the bay toward the launch area. Once we were in position, she rotated the sub-pallet to line up Cronus with markings on the tarmac. She waved to me and then Grayson, who ignored her. She stood there with her hands on her hips as if saying, Don’t be like that until he finally offered a nonchalant wave. She walked back to the service bay without a further sign.
Grayson pointed to the horizon ahead of us. “We missed the depot this go-round.” I caught sight of a bright object with a smaller and dimmer star in tow just before they dipped below the remarkably close horizon. “Sit tight a few minutes.”
Except we weren’t sitting. I slipped my booted feet into the stirrups and tried to relax. Grayson wasn’t talkative, and I didn’t want to ask dumb questions, not knowing who all was on the circuit.
Finally, Vanderver’s voice broke the silence. “Three minutes. Repeat, three minutes.” At this, Grayson toggled something on the archaic thrust control, and I immediately felt a slight vibration through my handholds. “Starting test recording.”
After a final warning at the ten-second mark, Cronus sprang from the pallet. My knees bent a little as the acceleration brought a fleeting half-g before tapering off. As we started to pitch over, the window in front of me brought a view of the icy surface below with occasional splotches of exposed rock.
Grayson tapped me on the shoulder to remind me why he was paying me. I quickly looked down at the data pad to see the red arc dead-center in the prescribed track, albeit quite forgiving at this juncture. I gave him a thumbs-up as we had decided to keep verbal communication to a minimum.
Near the halfway point, I zoomed in to see the red arc trending toward the upper limit. I held out my gloved hand palm down and slowly lowered it, repeating the gesture to make sure Grayson caught it. He nodded best he could in his pressure suit.
After that, it was right down the middle. As the limits narrowed, Grayson kept Cronus on track toward the blue arc that came into view at the top of the pad. “Shut down in five,” he said, speaking for the first time since launch.
Sudden weightlessness, all I could see was the frozen moon surface below until Grayson rotated the lander fifty degrees metric. There, maybe thirty meters away, was the rental trailing the Cage by about a kilometer.
Grayson fumbled around in one of his suit pockets and pulled out a small remote. He pushed a button a couple of times, but I couldn’t see any results. He jockeyed the lander a little closer and tried again. This time, the doors opened, revealing a lit storage bay filled with tanks, presumably oxygen, but with a void oddly shaped like the profile of Cronus.
While Grayson moved the lander toward the bay, I took a closer look at the ship. I was certain it was the leased unit but, somehow, it seemed different. Stanchions had been added around the periphery with a set near the stern and another near the bow while some sort of propulsion unit was attached to the nose bulkhead. On the flank of the craft in the same Gothic font written on the lander was the word VAGABOND. Maybe Grayson had worked out a deal to purchase the ship outright. Otherwise, it was not a good way to treat something you were leasing.
I thought I heard Grayson say something unpleasant under his breath as he moved the lander away from Vagabond a few meters. He stared at the thrust controller for a few seconds before pushing an unmarked button and toggling a switch next to it. Through the floor of the cabin, I felt something mechanical going on and realized Grayson had just then remembered to fold up the landing legs.
Grayson resumed the maneuver, carefully bringing the lander closer to the open bay. One more rotation of twenty-five metric lined up the two Pearson clamps, one on the base and the other mounted on Grayson’s side of the cabin. One last gentle push from the maneuvering jets brought Cronus into the receivers. A green glow let us know the cabin receiver had captured successfully. Grayson seemed to relax and let go of the thrust controls. “Ascent and capture routine completed. Pause recording,” Grayson said.
“Affirmative, Cronus. Test record paused,” Vanderver replied.
“Okay, Ian. Let’s switch places. I’ve got to check something,” Grayson said as he turned off the thrust control. “This’ll only take a minute.”
I moved over to the pilot’s position, placing my feet in the stirrups, while Grayson opened the cabin door. I instinctively grabbed onto the shelf holding the thrust control, fearing I would fall out the door to the icy moon’s surface below. The sensation quickly passed, and I was glad Grayson was looking away.
He casually swung himself out of the cabin without a tether or even handholds, using only whatever presented itself for leverage. It was a tight fit, but he negotiated between the lander’s cabin and the various tanks and other items stowed in the ship’s hold until he reached the airlock. Satisfied the airlock could be reached from the lander, he reversed his course and was back at the controls in no time.
He left the door open and went about preparing the lander for the descent, which amounted to no more than powering up the thrust control. He was testing me. I floated to the door jamb and held on tight with my left hand as I reached out, stretching with my right hand to the door handle, and pulled it closed. I felt his eyes on me and was sure he had that irritating grin.
Grayson unlocked the Pearson receivers with the remote and then gently pulled the lander away from the hold about thirty meters and turned Cronus around. “Okay, Rhea Control, this is Cronus. Restart test record for descent phase. Give us a two-minute heads-up.”
“Affirmative, Cronus.” This time it was Cherie. “Starting descent phase recording.” It didn’t take long to orbit Rhea. While we were waiting, I motioned toward my data pad, and Grayson pointed at his screen at eye level. He was using a pre-programmed descent regimen labeled RHEA DESCENT that the thrust control unit was able to follow.
My work was done until it came to me that the landing legs were still folded. I pointed toward the switch and button. Grayson gave me a thumbs-up as if to say Good catch. We didn’t want to land on the engine bell. Glad I could still be of use.
The descent to the surface went okay, and we set down within sight of the service center. We did a quick excursion walking around the rocky ice ball for about five minutes. There wasn’t much to see, but it certainly was different from Titan. Saturn was a magnificent crescent near the horizon with the rings always a stunning spectacle.
Grayson seemed intent on going through the paces of using the lander for common tasks, kind of like a farm tractor back on Earth. I started to suggest hangers or clips for hoes and rakes but the attempt at humor might’ve been lost on Neal Grayson’s moody state.
We climbed back aboard the lander, and Grayson lifted us up on low power and flew us back onto the launch pallet where the whole exercise had started. We walked back to the airlock leaving Cronus for someone else to bring back inside. It would require a good once-over and evaluation of performance, but Grayson didn’t seem too concerned about how it flew.
After so little sleep and the amount of adrenaline spent on the flight, we both decided to grab some grub and then retire to our cubicle. We were so exhausted I don’t think the natives could’ve made enough noise to bother us. But midway through the tube to the galley, Cherie caught up to us. “Hey, guys. Good work with the lander. Something’s come up and I need you both in the infirmary.”
“Cherie, we’re beat,” Grayson said, not hiding his irritation. “We just want to eat and get some sleep. Can it wait?”
“Okay, meet me there in two hours.”
“Three.”
“Fine,” she said and turned back the other way. “Don’t be late,” she added over her shoulder.
The powdered eggs and toast were passable while the tiny cot was blissful. The time in bed went quickly and, before I knew it, a fully dressed Grayson was standing over me. “Let’s go, Ian,” he said, shaking my shoulder. I rolled over and caught a glimpse of Vanderver, who then quickly vanished.
“Okay, okay.” I followed Grayson to a room marked MEDICAL. Cherie came in through another door. “Thanks for coming, guys. We shouldn’t have waited the three hours for this, but your jaunt on the surface may have driven up your radiation numbers a little high. Of course, SEA monitors these things; they watch everything. So, we’re required to administer something to deal with that. It won’t have ill affects other than possible increased appetite, but unlikely.”
“Wait, I thought we were using Class 5 suits,” I said.
“Yes, that’s true,” Cherie said, loading a syringe. “But you were in an unprotected craft. The elapsed time was enough to reach the exposure limit. Okay, Neal, you’re first. It’s just a precaution.”
Grayson sat down in one of the chairs and rolled up his sleeve, looking away.
“There you go. Okay, Ian.”
I sat down while Cherie prepared another dose. Usually, Grayson would be hollering about overreach and how we needed to fight the crushing bureaucrats, et cetera, but he was very docile around Cherie. Once we got back to our normal life back at Sanders, I would have to ask him the real story.
The injection was no big deal, just a part of dome life. I started to rise from the chair, but Cherie pushed me back down and gave me one of those irresistible smiles. I distinctly remember being lost in her winking eyes.
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Copyright © 2026 by C. H. Russellson
