Vessel

22

IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE launch, Cal was too busy to do anything other than monitor and keep in touch with the Sagittarius II crew. Aaron had stopped glaring at him every time Cal so much as cleared his throat. He commented to him privately that he was glad to see Cal focusing on the right things.

Most of his time was spent in Mission Control, keeping an eye on his people.

The fourth morning running, Leah Morrison started ribbing him. “Hey, Morganson, don’t you have anything better to do than hover? No home to go to, nothing?”

“I’d love to go home,” he said, “but somebody’s gotta keep an eye on you and make sure you fly that thing straight.”

Commander Duffy piped up, drawling. “Houston, can somebody take a look under Morganson’s chair and see if he’s got any eggs in his nest yet?”

Laughter rippled through Mission Control, and Cal took it good-naturedly. “All my chicks have flown far, far from the nest, John,” he shot back.

“They do that,” Duffy agreed. “You gotta let ’em go, momma hen.”

“Hey, if I hadn’t, y’all wouldn’t be out there.” Cal was hovering; he knew he was. And now that the crew had called him out on it, he’d have to stop.

It turned out to be harder than he expected.

He made himself stay away from Mission Control outside of his scheduled duty hours and tried to focus on the other work waiting for him. It slowly got easier to stop worrying about his crew. That, and he could keep reminding himself that whatever problems they were going to face, they wouldn’t happen on the trip out.

There was still plenty of data coming in from Sagittarius I, and as long as Cal didn’t focus too much attention on Catherine, he was well within his job parameters. He began looking again at the telemetry from the first mission, making comparisons between the Sagittarius I benchmarks and where Sagittarius II was.

Periodically, his attention was drawn back to the data he initially uncovered. The only way the Sagittarius I data from TRAPPIST-1f made sense was if two people had been alive on the ship. But he had no other information. He was trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle with no idea what the final picture would look like. And Aaron ultimately was right: the families of Sagittarius I didn’t deserve the pain of knowing that one of their loved ones had suffered terribly.

But then one of the lab techs called him. “Dr. Royer told us to call you when we had something new. We’ve got the first full set of data on Catherine Wells’s blood work. I can’t send it to you yet, but you can come down here. Trust me, you’re going to want to see this.” From the tone in the tech’s voice, he might have found something big.

On his way down to the lab, he saw David Wells in the hallway and stopped him. “Hey, I just wanted to find out how Catherine is doing.”

Catherine’s meltdown had been all anyone talked about in the days following the launch. Cal had missed the meeting where she’d supposedly been drunk, but he heard about it several times.

David gave him a somewhat surprised look. “And here I thought NASA lived on gossip,” he said. “I have no idea how she’s doing.”

“I’m sorry?”

“We split up. Before her… um, incident.”

Cal thought he saw a flicker of guilt cross David’s face. He knew about Maggie Bachman; everyone did. That was a particularly popular topic of gossip in the months after Catherine’s reappearance.

“I’m sorry,” Cal said again. “I hadn’t heard.”

“I wish I could tell you more.”

“Well, if you talk to her, let her know we’re thinking of her, all right?”

David looked grateful to be ending the conversation. “I will. Thanks.”

Huh. Cal shouldn’t be that surprised. The pressure that came with returning from a mission was enormous. And no astronaut had ever been under as much pressure as Catherine had. That had to be a contributing factor.

And some of that pressure was his fault. He wasn’t to blame for Catherine’s marriage falling apart, but…

When he got to the lab, the tech pulled him aside. “Tell me what you know about antibodies.”

“Uh… just the Biology 101 version. Part of the immune system. When your body detects bacteria or a virus or anything else that doesn’t belong there, the antibodies go after it and neutralize the threat.” He paused and looked at the tech as if to say, “Is that enough?”

“Right,” the tech said. “Each antibody is keyed to a specific antigen—the bacteria or virus. That’s often how we can diagnose a specific disease, or at least rule it out. If you have an antibody for a specific antigen, you’ve been exposed to it at some point. It’s why most people don’t get the chicken pox more than once.”

“Okay… so what did you find?”

“It’s buried in the prelim report. Probably no one will care much about it, but… Colonel Wells came back from TRAPPIST-1f with an antibody that matches no known antigen on Earth.”

Cal shook his head. “Sure, but we expected that. She was living on another planet; she was bound to come in contact with something if there was anything to come in contact with.”

“Except I’ve found one other person who carries that same antibody. Iris Addy.”

“You’re saying they were both exposed to the same antigen?” A sense of excitement, like he was on the brink of something big, was growing in Cal’s gut. “But… Addy didn’t go to TRAPPIST-1f. She never even left the ship.”

The tech shrugged. “I’m just telling you what I found.”

Cal’s thoughts were whirling. “When can you send me the full report?”

“We should have it written up in the next day or two.”

“Thank you, this could be a huge help.”

He headed to Aaron’s office for their regular meeting.

As soon as he settled in, Aaron said, “I wanted to congratulate you, first off. I’m glad to see you took my words to heart. You’re back on track, where I expect you to be, and the mission’s success so far reflects that.”

Cal pasted on a smile, still thinking about the new data. He had to tell Aaron, and just hope that Aaron wouldn’t get angry. “I owe it to my crew to give them my best,” he said. That wasn’t a lie, at least.

“Nobody could fault you for the job you’re doing,” Aaron said.

“Listen. I really did stop looking into Catherine, but the medical team gave me some data today that I think could be important. It might be a clue to the amnesia that Catherine and Iris Addy both developed.”

Aaron lifted his eyebrows, his gaze telling Cal the ice beneath him was getting thinner. “Cal, Addy’s medical workup has been gone over with a fine-toothed comb, and we can’t have that much information back on Catherine yet.”

“Addy’s records have been, yes, and it’ll be months before we’ve gotten final results on all of Wells’s tests, but today I got some of the initial results.” Cal wished he had the written report, but he had to make do with what he had. “We may have found something.”

Aaron gave him a small nod, a cautious one, and Cal felt a surge of relief. He was going to listen.

“The folks in the lab found an unrecognized antibody in Catherine’s system,” he began.

“Not a surprise; we already knew there was all sorts of life on TRAPPIST-1f.”

“Yes, but… Commander Addy has that same antibody. And as far as the lab can tell, it doesn’t match any known antigen on Earth. She never landed on TRAPPIST-1f.” Cal could see the skepticism growing in Aaron’s eyes, so he rushed ahead to his conclusion. “They both had to be exposed to the same thing out there. What if the amnesia and the erratic behavior have a biological component?”

“You may be onto something,” Aaron was forced to admit. “Whatever it is, it’s unlikely that it’s infectious, or we’d have had a problem before now.”

Cal nearly slumped in relief. Finally, Aaron was listening.

“That being said, you need to think about spending some time away from here.” He raised his hand to forestall Cal’s protest. “Now’s the best time. We can follow up on the antibody angle without you. Things should be quiet for a bit, and we’ve got a couple of months before the ship gets to the wormhole.”

“Shouldn’t I wait until they’re in before I take time off?” Cal countered. “They’ll be unreachable then so there won’t be anything we can do with them at all.”

“You’ll be taking time away then, too,” Aaron said. “We’ve got too many staff overstressed right now, but you and Wells are the ones I’m most worried about.”

Cal was fine. What was there to worry about? Catherine, though… “I heard about her and her husband. It’s a shame.”

“I’m not surprised, honestly.” Aaron could afford to be philosophical, as he had two failed marriages behind him himself. “It’s more than that, though. Have you talked to her at all lately?”

Cal shook his head, allowing himself a wry grin. “You told me to stay away from her.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m worried about her.”

“So you’re sending us both into time-out?”

Aaron shook his head, chuckling. “You know, most people don’t consider a few days off punishment. But yeah. Go to your room, Cal. Come back on Monday.”

“Yes, sir,” Cal sighed.

“I mean it. Pack up and clear out, starting right now. I don’t want to see your goofy-ass face until Monday.”

Cal didn’t do well with an excess of free time. The good thing was, he knew that about himself, and was planning ways to keep from going stir-crazy. It was too last minute for him to go on a trip, and he wouldn’t want to be too far away from Johnson anyway, in case something did go wrong. The only option that left him was going home to his folks, and he sure as hell didn’t want to do that.

And despite what Aaron said, he had every intention of looking into the first mission from home.

The second morning, though, he needed to get out of the house. And he needed to move.

The climbing gym that he and Nate favored was mostly empty on weekday mornings. The only people around were people off work for the day, like him, and folks who worked the night shift. Still, there were a few familiar faces, and it wasn’t hard to find a partner to climb with.

Climbing with Nate was better, Cal decided, when he was halfway up the wall. It wasn’t just that they knew each other’s habits, it was also that he was more fun. Get it together, he chided himself. It hadn’t even been two weeks since the launch. If he started missing Nate now, he’d never make it. Still, it was one thing to logically know his best friend would be out of touch for several years, but now the reality of it was starting to kick in.

It took until his second attempted climb for Cal to clear his mind. Things were so clean here, so simple: find the next handhold, keep moving. The steady rhythm of his heart and the sweat trickling down his face left his mind clear and empty.

Aaron had told him to take a break, but he couldn’t stop thinking about the strange Sagittarius readings. Which crew member had made it back onto the ship with Catherine? What had happened to that person?

Maybe following up on the new medical info might provide a way to unlock Catherine’s memories. But if Cal was honest with himself, it wasn’t just that. Before her discharge from NASA, Commander Addy wasn’t only erratic but had also had more than one violent outburst. It hadn’t happened with Catherine yet… but what if it did? What if it already happened, out there?

And what if that same antigen—virus, bacterium, whatever it was—infected the Sagittarius II crew?

It was a lot to think about. Something else to look into. Maybe it was the missing piece of the puzzle, or maybe it was the one maddening piece that wouldn’t seem to fit anywhere until the whole picture was almost complete.

Either way, having a new direction to go in lifted a weight off his shoulders. Cal took a deep breath and swung into action, reaching for the next handhold.