Gold Rush, page 32
First Contact
Dice swallows the lump in his throat. He looks at the various metrics on the inside of his helmet and ensures his camera is running. Whether anyone will ever see this is questionable, but he feels better knowing there’s a recording.
“Okay. This is it. This is First Contact.”
Dice opens the hatch. With a hiss of air equalizing the pressure, it swings open.
The Dragon was designed to be practical on Earth and in space. When in orbit, it’s primarily the center hatch at the top of the capsule that’s used when conducting spacewalks or docking with other craft. The hatch on the side is intended for ingress/egress on the ground. Normally, astronauts wear slim pressure suits, but they don’t wear life support backpacks. And if they are, these will be streamlined and intended only for transit. Dice, though, is wearing a bulky EVA suit.
On the launch pad, once an astronaut clambers inside a Dragon capsule, they connect the umbilical cords attached to the right thigh of their suits for air and electricity. The EVA suit Dice has on is considerably bigger and bulkier, with thicker padding and a larger life support pack. On Earth, when returning from orbit, astronauts have access to support divers after splashdown. Divers clamber onto the outside of the Dragon, ready to help astronauts as they await the recovery ship. Dice doesn’t have anyone. With the hatch open, he thinks about his options.
There’s no easy way to get out of the Dragon. He hoists one leg over the edge of the hatch and holds on to the rim above him, crouching his head down, bumping his helmet into the rim, and wriggling through, turning as he moves, wanting to avoid catching his backpack on the hatch.
Dice falls sideways, with one leg still inside the Dragon and the other sliding down the burnt outside of the craft. Dice bends his knee, working his other leg out through the hatch, and slides down to the black surface of what he assumes is an alien spacecraft. His backpack clips the rim of the hatch, knocking him forward, but he lands on his boots. Immediately, he holds out his arms, working to keep his balance. Like a gymnast at the Olympics, dismounting from the uneven bars, he uses his arms to keep himself from toppling over.
“Okay. I’m okay,” he says, swaying, feeling the weight of his backpack hanging heavy on his shoulders. To one side, a parachute billows, slowly settling. Clouds drift overhead. Like clouds on Earth, the underside is reasonably flat and dark, while white pillows of vapor curl upwards. If he were back in his home state of Montana, he’d be expecting rain.
Out of habit, Dice narrates his experience. “Ah, the surface is long, easily two hundred meters or so, while being at least fifty to sixty meters wide. Toward the edge, it seems to taper down. I—I feel like I’m standing on the deck of an aircraft carrier.”
Dice walks forward toward the man waiting patiently for him, but this isn’t a human, he reminds himself. It couldn’t be. No one can breathe in the Venusian atmosphere.
Being curious, Dice takes a quick look back at the capsule, wanting to see how the aliens have supported his Dragon. Thousands of tiny stems or perhaps roots have risen out of the surface of the alien vessel, catching and cushioning his capsule, holding it steady.
The alien atmospheric craft is jet black, but it appears as polished as a mirror, reflecting the clouds around him. With each step, his boot converges with its reflection. Looking down, Dice sees a dark astronaut staring back at him. Ruffles in the suit material flex and shift as he walks. His arms swing slightly beside his side. Even to his eye, he appears outsized, cocooned in his spacesuit. The wind swirls around him.
As Dice approaches the strange man, he raises his right hand beside his shoulder, offering what he hopes is a gesture of friendship and welcome. The alien repeats the gesture to him.
“I’m approaching the alien.”
Stating the obvious is a sign of nerves, and Dice wonders if this is what Neil felt stepping off the broad, circular pad of the Eagle into the soft lunar dust.
Over the scratchy radio, Neil Armstrong said, “That’s… one small step for man; one… giant leap… for mankind.” Neil sounded calm and composed, but his comment was ambiguous. “For man” could mean him or all of humanity.
Later, Neil clarified his statement, saying he said, “one small step for a man,” meaning himself. Audio analysis of the harsh recording suggests the softer, indefinite article, ‘a,’ was lost in the static, but was it nerves? Armstrong swore he said “a man,” and was surprised anyone doubted his intent. He’d come up with that historic phrase in the weeks leading up to the launch. He’d thought about what he would say when stepping out on the lunar surface dozens, possibly hundreds, of times, right up to the point he was standing on the metal pad at the base of the ladder. For years, Neil had dreamt of stepping from the foot of the Lunar Excursion Module onto the rugged surface of the Moon. And then he was there. Suddenly, all the training, simulations, space flights and procedures that took him to that moment were gone. They disappeared into the past. Reaching the Moon was no longer a goal; it was an accomplishment. The future of humanity lay in the dust before him. Standing there, he must have been thinking of a million different things, including the need to quickly grab a contingency sample in case they needed to lift off in a hurry due to a cabin leak or a problem with the fuel lines.
Like any professional astronaut, Neil’s focus was on the mission. And there it was—his opportunity to add a touch of himself to the moment. Did the weight of history cause his mind to race? Did the vast, sun-drenched, dusty landscape devoid of color overwhelm him for barely a millisecond as he uttered those words? Neil was stepping out onto an alien world. The sun shone high above him. Sunlight bleached the dust on the ground, and yet the sky was pitch black. Craters pockmarked the landscape. Desolation surrounded him. Nothing about that situation was normal. Neil was always cool under pressure, but even he could be forgiven for a lapse, for the rush of adrenaline blurring his thinking for a fraction of a second.
Standing there in front of an alien mimicking human form, Dice feels overwhelmed. Neil should be here, not him. Perhaps that errant ‘a’ was there all along; it was simply lost in the static, and Neil’s heart never skipped a beat. Dice feels his hands tremble within his gloves. He’s no Armstrong or Aldrin. He feels inadequate walking up to an ambassador from another star system, but he has to press on. He has to do his best. He has to honor all those who trained him for this moment.
As Dice walks over the slick, polished surface, his legs feel weak. His knees shake. Each step is a fight. After months in space, he’s not used to gravity. His heart struggles to pump blood, leaving him lightheaded. Black stars appear before his eyes. He focuses on his breathing, drawing in deeply, searching for oxygen, determined to press on.
Dice has to say something. History is being made. Two intelligent species separated by light years are about to meet for the first time. He settles on something similar to the inscription left on the Lunar surface after the crew of Apollo 11 departed from the Moon. It’s hardly original, but it is apt.
“I come in peace—on behalf of all of humanity.”
Dice holds out his gloved hand. The alien smiles and accepts, holding out its hand and squeezing his gloved fingers, but there’s something unusual about what should be an ordinary act.
Dice feels something peculiar, something unlike any handshake he’s ever felt before. A surge of warmth radiates from his wrist up his forearm, into his shoulder and neck before swamping his mind. His eyesight blurs. Pain rockets through his skull, coming from the base at the back of his neck and reaching over his head to his brow. His knees buckle, threatening to drop him to the polished floor. Blood pulsates through his eyeballs. His head feels as though it is being torn apart. The seams in the bones of his skull are separating. Every muscle in his body tenses. His head whips back within his helmet. His eyes stare up at the brilliant copper sky beyond the blinding white clouds.
Rocks and ice pelt him. Dust explodes on his visor. The rat-a-tat of noise is overwhelming, like hail on a tin roof. Dice is being pelted from all sides. His suit protects him, but the visor on his helmet shudders under the impacts, threatening to crack. One whole side of the Dragon is gone. The gaping hole reveals the pitch-dark of space. Long shadows stretch through the interior of his dead spacecraft. He’s screaming. Instinctively, Dice shields his visor, holding his arms up and blocking the bits of white ice ricocheting through the crushed cabin of his spacecraft. Ice fragments strike his helmet, making it impossible to think. The taste of iron fills his mouth. He’s bleeding. He’s bitten his tongue. Terror seizes his mind. He’s powerless, helpless, caught in the maelstrom of ice shards left in orbit around Venus as the comet broke up on approach.
Dice blinks. He’s still sitting in the seat of the Dragon, but the craft is whole. It’s clean. Pristine. The lights are on. The computer screen above him shows dozens of metrics, including a view of the rocket sitting on the pad with vapor drifting from its frozen fuel tank.
“Twenty seconds,” is said by someone—a man. His words are clipped, spoken with brevity. They’re harsh and clear.
“Godspeed, Vulcan.”
That voice. His heart races. Endorphines flood his mind. It’s Suzanne. Adrenaline surges through his body.
“No, wait,” he calls out, only his lips don’t move. Those two words never proceed beyond the confines of his mind. “No, stop,” he yells without yelling at all.
“Five, four—”
“Abort. Abort,” he screams, clenching every muscle in his body and shouting within the confines of his helmet, only his lips remain still.
There’s a rumble beneath him. Turbo-pumps spin. Engines ignite. Flames rush down, pushing him on. Clouds of steam billow around the rocket, bursting out over the concrete and then the grassy landscape of southern Florida. Birds take flight. The rocket lifts into the air. Dice is pushed back into his seat.
Over the radio, Suzanne says, “And you have cleared the tower… Looking good, Vulcan.”
“Nooo,” he yells into the darkness.
“What is it, honey?” Suzanne says, sitting up in bed beside him. She’s wearing a cotton nightie. Thin straps hang over her shoulders. She pushes her hair behind one ear and reaches for him. Her fingers rest on his bare shoulder. Dice sits up. Moonlight streams in through the lace curtains. Bullfrogs call in the still of night.
Dice is hyperventilating. The bedsheets are wet with sweat. His hair is damp and matted.
“It’s okay,” Suzanne says. “I’m here. Breathe. Just breathe.”
Dice takes her hand. “I—I.”
“It’s all right. You had a dream. That’s all. Just a bad dream.”
“I was there,” he says, looking deep into her eyes in the dead of night, not seeing her blue pupils normally so radiant with life, seeing only sepia tones in the dark. Her face is washed out. Dead. And yet she’s there. She’s alive.
“You were where?” she asks.
“On Venus.”
“It’s just a dream.”
“I was standing there—on Venus.”
“Honey, that’s impossible. You know that. You can’t stand on Venus. No one can. The heat. The pressure. It’s just a dream.”
Dice lowers his head. Being damp, he shivers in the cold. Suzanne pulls him in, wrapping her arms around him. He rests his head on her shoulder and breathes in, smelling the sweet scent of her body, picking up on notes of perfume, the hint of lavender and the sweet smell of roses. Her skin is soft and warm, comforting. He sobs.
Dice says, “It—it all seemed so real.”
“It’s okay to be nervous,” a male voice says, and Dice is confused. He blinks. Light flickers through the leaves of an oak tree. His father is sitting in a rocking chair on the porch of his home in the countryside. Sunlight warms the wooden deck. Dice has a beer in his hand. The glass is cold. Condensation forms droplets that roll down over his fingers. He raises the bottle to his lips and sips. The taste is bitter but welcoming.
“No one ever wants to admit they’re weak,” his father says, letting out a slight laugh. “As though that’s not a weakness in itself.”
Dice nods in agreement.
“You’re all right, son. I know you’ll do us proud.”
“Honestly,” Dice says, “it’s a little intimidating,” but he feels as though he’s reading from a script instead of speaking from the heart.
“You’ve earned this. You’ve got this,” his father says. “Just… be honest with yourself. Don’t hide behind a mask. People—men—think they’ve got to be tough. Got to be strong. Hard. Got to be perfect. Don’t you believe it. You’ve got to be yourself. And if being you means a few tears rolling down your cheek or opening up to someone you trust, be yourself. Don’t fall for all this macho crap of bottling shit up.”
“Yeah.”
“Me? I’ve done that. And it was wrong. Toxic. Poisonous. It doesn’t make you stronger—makes you weaker. It means you’re isolated and alone. Real strength comes from working together with those you love.”
“Yep.”
“Don’t let your ego isolate you. Don’t let pride talk you out of who you are. You don’t want that.”
“Nope.”
“Honesty,” his dad says, sipping his beer. “Few people are ever honest with themselves, so it should come as no surprise when they’re not honest with us either.” He laughs and points at a headline on the front page of the newspaper lying on the side table beside him. Dice tries to focus on the text, but he can’t. The words are all there, set in black type with letters two inches high, but he can’t read them. They might as well be hieroglyphics.
“Lies are like candy,” his dad says, “Sweet to taste, but they’ll rot your mind.”
Dice loves his dad. He’s in his seventies, and yet he’s as sharp as ever.
“I see shit like this and, damn,” his father says. “We’re our own worst goddamn enemy. We lie to ourselves all the time. And for one reason—for one very good reason.”
“What’s that, Dad?” Dice asks, realizing he’s asked questions like this of his father dozens of times over the years. Dice loves his dad. He respects him. Even when Dice knows the answer to something, he always wants to hear his father’s take. It’s not that he doesn’t think for himself. It’s that he knows his dad will have a fresh perspective.
“Comfort.”
“Comfort?” Dice says, genuinely surprised by his father’s answer.
“We want to be comfortable. We’ll take a bed of lies over a thicket of thorns even if that’s the truth.”
“Yep.”
“You gotta listen and learn in life.”
Dice thinks deeply about what his dad is saying, but he’s distracted. He was just thinking about something else. He remembers waking in the dead of night in a cold sweat. And there was something about a planet. Venus. Why would he be thinking about Venus? No one’s going to Venus. The Mars mission is all anyone is talking about. Dice is confused, distracted, but he wants to focus on now. He needs to be here with his dad. He replies, “Listening is in short supply, huh?”
“It is,” his dad says. “Twitter, X, Facebook, BlueSky, whatever, they’re all the same. People love yelling at each other. No one wants to listen. No one wants to reason anymore. They want to wave placards at a protest. Social media has been reduced to someone shouting at cars driving by at an intersection.”
Dice likes that comparison. He can picture it clearly in his mind.
“I guess we all just want to be heard,” Dice says. “It’s as though being heard is more important than being understood.”
“Now that, my boy—that is the truth. Three score and ten. That’s how long I’ve been on this Earth. That’s how long the good lord has given me, and I ain’t never seen anyone persuaded by an argument. Arguing with people only ever gets them to double down on their position.”
“Why?” Dice asks. “Why don’t people change their minds? I mean, it’s not logical to be stubborn.”
“It’s not about logic. It’s about what’s theirs. Ain’t no one taking their guns or their beliefs.” The old man laughs at himself. “No one wants to be wrong. Being wrong is more than they can bear to think about.”
Dice sips his beer. From inside the house, his mother calls out, “Dinner’s ready.”
The smell of roast turkey wafts out through the screen door. Steam rises from freshly cooked pumpkin. Butter melts on mashed potatoes.
“Well, what are you waiting for?” his mother says, opening the door and beckoning for the two men to come inside. “We’ve got a lot to be thankful for this year.”
“We do,” Dice says, getting to his feet, only just now realizing he’s wearing worn blue jeans, running shoes and a blue NASA t-shirt.
“And my boy’s gonna be an astronaut,” his mother says, beaming with pride.
“All right,” his older sister, Lisa, says, putting a plate of fresh bread rolls on the table. “Don’t put his head in orbit before the rocket launches.”
Dice laughs.
“It’s not funny,” a police officer says.
“It’s not funny at all,” his sister says, sitting to one side of an old wooden desk in the police station. Dice is wearing a t-shirt, but it no longer has the NASA logo, which confuses him. The hem of his shirt is cold and wet. His shorts are damp, but he was wearing jeans.
“I—I’m sorry,” he says, feeling disoriented and struggling to catch up to the moment.
“That’s better,” the officer says. The starched shirt, badge, shiny nametag, thick black belt with a black gun, a taser, a flashlight and a set of handcuffs is intimidating by design. Authority demands compliance. “Someone could have been seriously hurt or even killed.”
