Helianthus

HELIANTHUS

  a Helium Quest story

  by Peter Schnake

  copyright Peter Schnake 2015

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  HELIANTHUS

  The following is the final transmission from the Helianthus, released now on its twentieth anniversary. Because the solar winds broke up much of the audio and all of the video, I have faithfully endeavored to reproduce what remained, except where First Lieutenant Rivera’s remarks, though common in his day, were deemed too racist. -P.S.

  We were only supposed to go as far as Mercury. But if a God tells you to disobey a direct command from Stonewall, you disobey said direct command from Stonewall. That’s about the best defense I can think of. And I need you to understand because I will not have my name go down in the history books as a traitor or a crazy or...I don’t know.

  (There is a crackling as if Lieutenant Rivera is sighing into the microphone.)

  I pressed all the buttons and it’s still giving me error messages. I don’t know. Is it recording? Are you recording, little LAMB? Doesn’t matter, does it? No one will get it, will they? I haven’t gotten a communication from Earth in...

  Are you still alive down there? Back there, I mean? Have you gone and blown yourselves up? Has the war gotten so bad that you can’t return my calls? Good riddance. That’s what I have to say. I don’t feel like getting you helium anyway.

  I wasn’t alive when the reservoirs dried, but my grandmother told me it was the worst news of the decade. She was a young woman during the Riots. Her first husband was in jail. I don’t think the two were related. Though, they could be. It’s been a long time since I’ve heard the story.

  My grandmother was even old enough to know real helium balloons. She kept a picture on the house tablet. She was four, I think, in one of those summer dresses that immediately takes you back to the olden days, hair in braids, holding a yellow balloon, and it floated above her head on a string. Can you imagine that? It floated!

  So that’s what our ancestors wasted helium on. And I had to watch my grandmother valiantly try to hide her pain while the brain tumor ravaged her mind. What she wouldn’t have given to have that balloon back to feed into an MRI machine. What I wouldn’t give to have a balloon’s worth just to put me into suspended animation for a year, a month. Hell, I’d take a week.

  She and I would play hide and seek. Once, when I was the finder, I found her crying in the front hall closet.

  “Found you!” I said.

  “Am I free?” she said.

  “You have to find me now,” I said.

  “Oh. They haven’t come for me?” she said.

  “Who?”

  “The police. I thought they finally came to take me.”

  “Just count to ten, I’m going to hide.”

  She never came to find me. I eventually got bored of hiding and found her watching Titus Ad Larem in the kitchen while my mother mopped the floor. I don’t know why I remember this but she was at the part where Titus is stuck with the two thieves, Pennance and Tremble, in this boat which is only big enough for two of them but all three are squished in there and it starts to leak. I wish they had loaded that one on the consoles.

  “Grandma, I was hiding.”

  She shushed me. And when the boat sank she let out the loudest howl.

  “Grandma! You never found me.”

  “I’m sorry, Sky. I’ll remember next time.”

  Sky was her nickname for me. I wonder if that’s why I became an astronaut.

  “I had a really great spot, too,” I said. “And I don’t mind telling you because I know you’ll forget. It was in the reeds at the river.”

  “Hyland Rothko, that’s not fair,” my mom said. She dunked the mop in the bucket and rung it out. The scents of stale water and pine filled the air. “You know Grandma can’t go outside. Be a good boy and pick a place in the house next time.”

  Grandma turned from the TV and stood on shaking legs. “The river? The river?! Don’t you dare go down to the river again! Bad things happen at the river! You hear me, Sky?”

  I nodded.

  Grandma wasn’t related to me by blood, so don’t start panicking as if I’m going to get a brain tumor out here or go crazy. I had a dozen DNA tests before selection. I’m horse healthy.

  (Rivera then goes into a rather lengthy and slanted history of the Helium Race, disparaging our Chinese allies.)

  They were looking for young people, eager for adventure, patriotic and heroic. I signed up straight out of high school.

  Training was a joke. I mean, sure they taught us the basics of living zero-g and warned us about hull damage, but as far as the rest...after a DNA test and a personality test, I was shaking General Stonewall’s hand while he congratulated me on being selected for the mission.

  That’s how I met Zeph. The computer told us we were compatible.

  I had just shaken his hand and introduced myself when Basil Blankenship pulled us into the conference room and started lowering the shades. He had trouble with this. I don’t know, for someone who designs spacecraft for a living, window blinds should not be a problem. Is he still around? I’d hope so, but who knows? I’ve always expected to hear in the weekly briefs he had a heart attack. Zeph took the cord from his hand and with a wink to me, ushered Basil to a chair. Once we were all seated, Basil rolled the end of his tie halfway up before shouting out that any forceful movements in the cabin could cause the Helianthus to veer off course.

  “Blankenship, calm down,” I remember saying. “I’ve done the training.”

  He let out a stream of coffee breath and threw up his hands as if any second I’d get the joke.

  Zeph chuckled and picked at his knuckles.

  I think my confidence fled as Basil Blankenship, blushing and rolling his tie, explained that the engineers had designed an extra fuel tank, which they nicknamed appropriately Texas, so that after a certain period of “strenuous repeated motion” we could course correct. He went on to explain that he and the others had calculated the farthest we could veer from a single act of SRP, and multiplied by how much fuel each correction required and then divided into how big Texas was. They had afforded us enough fuel to have SRP once a week. Twice if neither of us lasted long.

  At first that number was a relief. You probably don’t understand. I’d tell you to ask Blankenship, but I have this feeling everyone I knew there is gone, so check a web archive or something. Zeph is an astronaut, not a supermodel. I wasn’t exactly thrilled to be paired with him in the first place.

  The Stella Scandal came about because...Okay. There were protests when Zeph and I were announced as the Helianthus crew. Women’s rights groups were upset we weren’t a man and a women. Or two women. Stella was a good guy. I mean yes he wrote the memo about how they could not afford another Phoebe Price incident, which I don’t think he intended as sexist in any way, but there you have it. I’m sure they’re telling it different down there now anyway. He was just a good guy sacrificed to an angry society. But economically it was easier to send the two of us.

  Not everyone was pacified. There were protests at the launch. All the groups were there, even save-the-earth groups. I didn’t understand that. I thought that’s what we were doing—saving the earth. We were going to bring back helium so that we could cure the sick and build stronger buildings and, and, hey if we have enough, start some novelty balloon stores.

  And before I could wrap my head around my dreams, the rocket took off and my guts became soup. Cream of bile. Zeph defied the forces crushing our livers and took my hand.

  It was a couple y
ears ago—we had just grav-assisted with Venus—I had my first breakdown. And it was then that I knew the ‘rigorous’ psychological tests they gave us were boloney. As was the compatibility test they gave us. The only reason—the only reason!—they sent me up here was because my grandfather was Reverend Appleseed. They used my name—his name—to play to public opinion to get a favorable response to our launch.

  Maybe I’ve got a chip on my shoulder, but I’ve never understood why people have venerated him they way they do. Sure his work sparked the Third Great Revival, but other than that, and all the hogwash that came out of it, what, he planted the Sourapple Highway that goes all of three hundred miles from Nebraska to some hick town in Missouri. What trees actually did bear fruit weren’t good for nothing but pressing into cider.

  And Zeph, well, he’s...reliable, that’s the best word for it. You can always count on him, but there were smarter cookies training with us and they didn’t get sent up here—out here. Zephaniah Cass. What better hope to give the American people than to send the grandson of a preacher and a kid named after a prophet to go on a quest to save the earth? The brass knew what they were doing. They knew we weren’t coming back. They knew America would be groveling...(this portion has been deleted for belittling the accomplishments of the Chinese space program, to whom we are so very grateful for setting up helium collection on the moon.)...and so they