Delta-v, page 5
“There’s almost nothing at Camp 4.”
“We’ll be closer to the surface.”
“What does that matter? Camp 4 is a dead end. The rising water could trap us.”
Tighe’s helmet-cam turned to face Chang. “There’s the HeyPhone.”
“Richard’s old magnetic induction radio? How do we know anyone’s listening? Or that the thing even works?”
“Because he tested it. Richard always had backups. We can put our faith in Richard.”
Tighe stopped the video. He noticed that the files from his helmet-cam shared a three-digit suffix—possibly the camera number. He filtered out the files from other helmet-cams and now saw a much shorter listing.
He clicked somewhere in the middle of the list.
The video opened on the calm, leathery face of Richard Oberhaus, his gray hair meticulously trimmed. There was laughing and music somewhere in the background. The helmet-cam did indeed belong to Tighe. He recalled this moment. Oberhaus was cleaning a Riegl laser scanning rig as some sort of Zen exercise at the edge of one of the underground camps. There were no campfires underground, only LEDs, chem lights, and candles.
In his late fifties, Oberhaus was exceptionally fit. An osteopathic surgeon from Hanover, Germany, he was partially retired with two adult children, and yet, instead of golfing, he was one of the most respected and courageous cave divers in the world. He’d taught Tighe everything he knew.
Oberhaus glanced up at the camera and with his slight German accent said, “There is a small party?”
Tighe heard his own voice. “Lei brought a few spliffs down, if you can believe it. They’re sparking up. You want to join us?”
Oberhaus lowered the Riegl and looked at him sternly. “There comes a time, J.T., when you realize you’re the oldest one at the party.”
Tighe’s camera held Oberhaus’s gaze.
Oberhaus eventually looked back down and kept cleaning the Riegl.
Tighe closed the video. He sat for several minutes in his airplane seat. Oberhaus’s words reverberated in his head. Should he continue searching for this clip? Would he even be able to watch it?
After a long while he picked up the phone again and scrolled down, clicking another video.
The screen opened on an underwater passage perhaps 30 meters high and 20 wide. The water was clear as air while the camera followed 5 meters behind Oberhaus, who wore a Viking dry suit, with dual Se7en series rebreathers, one on his back and another on his chest for emergencies. Oberhaus was piloting an electric diver propulsion vehicle—or DPV—which was a motorized submersible scooter that a diver held on to to move along at a speed of 1 meter per second. Strapped beneath it were eight bottles of “working gas”—heliox, a helium-oxygen mixture, for use at depth. With a range of 30 kilometers, the DPVs made impossible traverses of long, deep sumps possible.
This was the clip Tighe was looking for—viewed from his own helmet-cam.
The target that day was a sump called Turkey Leg in Tian Xing.
Tighe was kitted out just like Oberhaus, piloting his own DPV, and glancing behind him he confirmed that Christen Lykke, the third diver, was following as well.
Beams of light from the aquaflash lamps on their helmets revealed house-sized boulders jumbled below them. They still had the squared edges of relatively recent limestone breaks—from the last hundred thousand years or so.
Suddenly the passage turned 90 degrees downward and Oberhaus came to a halt over the void. He shined a bright lamp down, but it dissolved into the depths.
Over the radio link, Tighe heard Oberhaus’s calm voice. “Careful of the line, J.T. . . .” Their full face masks allowed them to speak over radios while underwater—making it much easier for teams to work together.
Tighe’s helmet-cam glanced at the dive computer on his wrist. It showed they were at 32 meters’ depth and breathing 30 percent nitrox—a mix of nitrogen and oxygen intended to stave off rapture of the deep (the layman’s term for nitrogen narcosis), a false euphoria that could blunt a diver’s awareness and lead to death.
Under Oberhaus’s mentorship, Tighe had learned the critical role that pressure played in the human body’s ability to metabolize various gases. Even with a modern rebreather system that maintained safe partial pressure of oxygen, Oberhaus had taught Tighe to always know what his gas mix was, and why—because machines could fail.
In the helmet-cam the three divers convened above the deep hole of Turkey Leg sump—apparently named by someone who was not Chinese.
Oberhaus’s voice came over the radio link. “This is where we leave you, Christen.”
Lykke’s voice. “Sicher zurückkehren. Safe journey to you both.”
In Tighe’s helmet-cam, Oberhaus turned downward, following an existing guide rope and comms line run by the previous diving expedition. Tighe accelerated his DPV, motor whirring as he fell in behind and above Oberhaus. At 40 meters’ depth they passed a decompression station, with its cluster of a dozen reserve gas bottles tied off on the line for use on their way back up.
Tighe paused the video and took a calming breath. He then fast-forwarded, searching for something he knew was coming. As he did so, Oberhaus’s on-screen form continued to descend, finally pausing at a depth of 57 meters to confirm their dive computers had switched them to heliox-14—a mix of 86 percent helium and 14 percent oxygen.
Generally, the greater the portion of helium a diver could function with, the more clear-headed they’d be at depth. But the problem with breathing a lot of helium was its thermal conductivity—twenty times that of normal air; a diver lost body heat much faster while breathing helium. Tighe watched the screen as he and Oberhaus partially inflated their dry suits with argon gas to insulate them.
Soon they were descending again. Down to 70 meters. Then 80 meters. Still following the old rope line, they reached 90 meters’ depth.
Tighe stopped fast-forwarding. The video resumed normal playback.
He wasn’t sure he remembered the event correctly. But the moment he heard the sound in his earphones, it spiked his adrenaline all over again.
A rumble deeper than anything he’d ever heard.
The shock wave passed through them in the water and was picked up by his comm microphone.
They both came to a stop. Breathing this much helium, Oberhaus sounded like a munchkin as he said, “What is that?”
They floated, swaying with the unpredictable movements of the water around them in the middle of the shaft. Somehow they were being shoved around, as if by a current.
Oberhaus and Tighe exchanged searching looks through their face masks. Then there was a piercing crack somewhere. They both knew what it was.
Oberhaus motioned with a gloved hand and squeaked, “Collapse! Get beneath that overhang.”
The water was still rolling them around. Tighe’s helmet-cam looked back as Oberhaus guided his DPV beneath an overhang of rock. His own helium voice replied, “I think it’s an earthquake!”
More booming and cracks came to their ears through the water, and they were getting closer.
“One leads to the other. Get to cover!”
Before they made it to the shelter of the overhang, Tighe’s view turned upward to see a collection of massive boulders dropping from above, bouncing off one another and both walls as they came, and trailing along with them finer rocks and sediment.
His munchkin voice shouted, “Rockfall!”
Tighe’s helmet-cam looked to see Oberhaus reach the cover of the overhang as car-sized and larger boulders rained down from above, booming as they sank.
One large rock tore Tighe’s DPV from his grip and nearly dragged him down by his tether before it snapped.
Tighe’s helmet-cam showed him swimming the last stretch through a rain of massive boulders, their suction clawing at him. When he got to the safety of the overhang, Oberhaus hauled him in.
“Against the wall!”
Looking down at the continued shower of debris, Tighe realized his DPV was gone for good—its headlamps extinguished. Then he spotted the reflective flag of their decompression station, falling along with it.
Oberhaus’s helium voice: “Our deco gas. The collapse swept it away.”
Tighe’s helmet-cam looked toward Oberhaus, then went to check his dive computer.
A gloved hand came into view, grabbing Tighe’s wrist.
“Your current supply is not the issue. We cannot breathe heliox all the way up to 30 meters.”
“I’ll try to contact Christen. He can bring his DPV down to us.” A pause, and then Tighe’s voice speaking via their wired phone line. “Christen! Christen, do you copy?”
No answer.
Oberhaus tried to hail Lykke as well—unaware of what Tighe sitting here in the present now knew: all their comm lines had been severed. Lykke had retreated when the sump entrance collapsed, nearly sucking him down with it.
Oberhaus finally gave up on the comm link. “We must abort the dive. There will be aftershocks.” He turned to Tighe. “We need to change to a 30 percent nitrox mixture for decompression starting at 40 meters, then compressed air to 21 meters, then pure oxygen from 9 meters until the surface.” Oberhaus checked his own dive computer. “Without that deco station, there’s not enough gas for the two of us, James.”
Tighe’s helmet-cam looked up to Oberhaus. “We can make it work.”
Oberhaus tapped at his dive computer, calm as always, while he made adjustments. When next he spoke, his voice was no longer tinny with helium. It was his normal baritone. “Yes, we can make it work. But not for both of us. One of us is not going to make it back this time.”
In the moment, Tighe hadn’t noticed the change in Oberhaus’s voice. But now, watching the video, he could see that Oberhaus had already made his decision. Already thought it through. In turning down his helium, he had already killed himself—and done so in order for Tighe to hear what he was saying, to hear his mentor’s voice.
Tighe, still unaware, said, “You go, Richard. I’ll stay.” Tighe saw his hands begin to unsling air bottles.
Again the gloved hand on his wrist. “We must be rational about this, James.”
Tighe tried to press an air bottle into Oberhaus’s hand.
Oberhaus pushed it away. “I have lived twenty-two years longer than you. My children are grown. You have so much of life ahead of you.”
Tighe’s helmet cam shook vigorously, side to side. His voice, still squeaking from helium: “You said it yourself: you have a wife and children.”
“And you should have a chance for the same.”
“I refuse to go.”
Oberhaus was unslinging all his oxygen and nitrox canisters. “There is no gas to spare discussing this. Leave now and you may have enough to survive decompression. You are in better physical shape than me, James. You’ve always been better able to withstand nitrogen narcosis than I. Between the two of us, you stand the better chance of making it.”
Tighe’s helmet-cam remained focused on Oberhaus’s face.
“I will not remain conscious for much longer. Go.”
Sitting in the airplane seat watching the video, Tighe was gripped by grief. Staring into the face of the man who’d been a father to him. Those calm eyes, reassuring him.
“We do not have the luxury of a long good-bye. Say good-bye to me, James.”
Tighe heard his voice squeak, “Good-bye.” His gloved hand accepted the gas canisters. He then embraced Oberhaus.
Oberhaus’s voice, weaker now. “Go!”
Tighe grabbed the controls of Oberhaus’s DPV and accelerated away, and upward.
After a few moments, Tighe’s helmet-cam turned back to see Oberhaus’s aquaflash lights illuminating him. Oberhaus nodded as he receded into the gloom, and then the lights went out. Oberhaus had extinguished them purposely—so that Tighe could not look back.
In his airplane seat, Tighe surreptitiously wiped tears from his face. He turned off the video with trembling hands and nursed his private grief.
CHAPTER 4
Ascension
After nearly ten hours in the air, James Tighe exited the windowless Boeing 787 into daylight, shielding his eyes against a blustery wind. Outside it was cloudy but still warm.
He followed the other candidates down an old-fashioned aircraft gangway as they gazed at their surroundings. They’d arrived at a small airport terminal on a rocky coastline. There was nonetheless a broad tarmac and a long runway. Several gray military cargo planes with RAF and US markings stood in a line some ways off, but smaller civilian craft were closer at hand.
The terrain was austere, almost alien, with volcanic cinder cones of reddish grit devoid of plant life. The summit of the nearest one was studded with antennas and microwave transmitters. A few kilometers away a mountain rose a thousand meters, covered in greenery and partially masked in clouds. The lowlands around the airport consisted of fanned-out lava flows scattered with tufts of hardy green plants.
Tighe followed the other candidates, crossing the tarmac in a silent single-file line, headed toward a distant terminal building. Male and female security personnel in gray fatigues and red berets motioned for them to keep moving. The runway was quiet. No other aircraft had arrived or departed since they landed.
As the line of candidates approached the small terminal building, Tighe noticed above the doorway a blue-and-red-striped sign with a bird silhouette that read: “Welcome to Ascension Island Base.” Nearby letters stenciled onto a cinder-block wall proclaimed this to be Wideawake Field.
Several dozen candidates crowded around the entrance to the terminal while a woman in a polo shirt and cap—emblazoned with the compass-like logo of a company named Polestar—motioned for them to gather around.
She spoke with a British accent as she shouted above the wind. “Welcome to Ascension Island. You are in the South Atlantic. This island is a British territory and this airfield part of the air bridge between Saint Helena and the Falkland Islands. We will be escorting you through customs. Afterward, you will board buses for the drive to our private training facility. There you will receive further instructions. Form up, please, and have your passports at the ready.”
After waiting in line for more than an hour, with the light waning to early afternoon, Tighe reached the front of the line and stepped up to a woman and two men, all wearing Polestar polo shirts and holding computer tablets.
The woman held out her hand without looking up. “Passport, please.”
Tighe complied.
“Mr. James Tighe.” She looked up from his photo. “Is that correct?”
Tighe nodded.
One of the men held an iris scanner up to Tighe’s face. The moment it beeped approval the woman handed Tighe’s passport to the other man, who motioned for Tighe to follow.
After getting Tighe’s passport stamped by a weary-looking British official in an olive-drab shirt and peaked hat, the Polestar rep led Tighe toward a line of three unmarked blue electric buses, where another female rep was waiting. She marked Tighe off on a digital list and pointed him toward the second bus. “We’ll be leaving shortly.”
Tighe nodded and climbed the steps. He found an aisle seat halfway down the length of the bus and spotted more surveillance camera domes on the ceiling as he sat down. Apparently management was observing them here, too.
Soon the bus was full, and a Polestar rep stood at the front. “We will now be departing for Devil’s Ashpit Camp.”
Murmurs and a few chuckles spread through the bus.
“We call it DAC for short. If you are lucky, DAC will be your home for the next three months. There, you will undergo a battery of physical and psychological tests to determine your suitability for further training with our commercial space client, Catalyst Corporation. It’s a short drive—just 15 kilometers—but we’ll be gaining 1,200 meters’ altitude on switchback roads. So hopefully none of you get carsick.”
There was a smattering of laughter among the passengers. Spirits were high.
Moments later they were under way. The buses seemed to be headed toward the big green mountain in the distance, which was rounded and more lush than anything else in sight.
After traversing volcanic lowlands for several kilometers and passing no other automobile traffic, the electric buses began climbing narrow switchbacks. As they gained altitude, the landscape became simultaneously more austere and yet in some ways greener—with sparse grasses sprinkled across stark scoria slopes of black volcanic grit. Gazing out across the Atlantic, which stretched to the horizon in all directions like hammered steel, Tighe got the full measure of their isolation.
Up ahead a newly constructed checkpoint blocked the road, with razor wire perimeter fencing stretching out in both directions. Behind it stood a facility with twin massive white antenna dishes aimed straight upward and dozens of modern prefab buildings spread around them. Signage at the entrance gate warned: “Restricted Area. Authorized Personnel Only.”
As the buses passed through the checkpoint, Tighe noticed it was manned by serious-looking security guards in gray camouflage military fatigues, with red berets and sidearms on their belts.
The buses continued down a smooth blacktop road past metal barracks buildings before entering a central parking lot in front of a large single-story concrete structure. Here, a dozen camp staff with computer tablets and an equal number of security personnel stood near folding tables.
Tighe’s bus halted with a hiss. The doors opened, and a male Polestar employee entered.
“Welcome to DAC. Let me remind you that from this point onward your candidate selection contract is in force. All your activities at this facility are subject to surveillance. Please exit the bus and wait for your name to be called.”
Tighe stood in the bus aisle with the other candidates and eventually descended the steps, where he was halted by two security guards. One raised a handheld iris scanner to Tighe’s eye, checking the display as it beeped.
“We’ll be closer to the surface.”
“What does that matter? Camp 4 is a dead end. The rising water could trap us.”
Tighe’s helmet-cam turned to face Chang. “There’s the HeyPhone.”
“Richard’s old magnetic induction radio? How do we know anyone’s listening? Or that the thing even works?”
“Because he tested it. Richard always had backups. We can put our faith in Richard.”
Tighe stopped the video. He noticed that the files from his helmet-cam shared a three-digit suffix—possibly the camera number. He filtered out the files from other helmet-cams and now saw a much shorter listing.
He clicked somewhere in the middle of the list.
The video opened on the calm, leathery face of Richard Oberhaus, his gray hair meticulously trimmed. There was laughing and music somewhere in the background. The helmet-cam did indeed belong to Tighe. He recalled this moment. Oberhaus was cleaning a Riegl laser scanning rig as some sort of Zen exercise at the edge of one of the underground camps. There were no campfires underground, only LEDs, chem lights, and candles.
In his late fifties, Oberhaus was exceptionally fit. An osteopathic surgeon from Hanover, Germany, he was partially retired with two adult children, and yet, instead of golfing, he was one of the most respected and courageous cave divers in the world. He’d taught Tighe everything he knew.
Oberhaus glanced up at the camera and with his slight German accent said, “There is a small party?”
Tighe heard his own voice. “Lei brought a few spliffs down, if you can believe it. They’re sparking up. You want to join us?”
Oberhaus lowered the Riegl and looked at him sternly. “There comes a time, J.T., when you realize you’re the oldest one at the party.”
Tighe’s camera held Oberhaus’s gaze.
Oberhaus eventually looked back down and kept cleaning the Riegl.
Tighe closed the video. He sat for several minutes in his airplane seat. Oberhaus’s words reverberated in his head. Should he continue searching for this clip? Would he even be able to watch it?
After a long while he picked up the phone again and scrolled down, clicking another video.
The screen opened on an underwater passage perhaps 30 meters high and 20 wide. The water was clear as air while the camera followed 5 meters behind Oberhaus, who wore a Viking dry suit, with dual Se7en series rebreathers, one on his back and another on his chest for emergencies. Oberhaus was piloting an electric diver propulsion vehicle—or DPV—which was a motorized submersible scooter that a diver held on to to move along at a speed of 1 meter per second. Strapped beneath it were eight bottles of “working gas”—heliox, a helium-oxygen mixture, for use at depth. With a range of 30 kilometers, the DPVs made impossible traverses of long, deep sumps possible.
This was the clip Tighe was looking for—viewed from his own helmet-cam.
The target that day was a sump called Turkey Leg in Tian Xing.
Tighe was kitted out just like Oberhaus, piloting his own DPV, and glancing behind him he confirmed that Christen Lykke, the third diver, was following as well.
Beams of light from the aquaflash lamps on their helmets revealed house-sized boulders jumbled below them. They still had the squared edges of relatively recent limestone breaks—from the last hundred thousand years or so.
Suddenly the passage turned 90 degrees downward and Oberhaus came to a halt over the void. He shined a bright lamp down, but it dissolved into the depths.
Over the radio link, Tighe heard Oberhaus’s calm voice. “Careful of the line, J.T. . . .” Their full face masks allowed them to speak over radios while underwater—making it much easier for teams to work together.
Tighe’s helmet-cam glanced at the dive computer on his wrist. It showed they were at 32 meters’ depth and breathing 30 percent nitrox—a mix of nitrogen and oxygen intended to stave off rapture of the deep (the layman’s term for nitrogen narcosis), a false euphoria that could blunt a diver’s awareness and lead to death.
Under Oberhaus’s mentorship, Tighe had learned the critical role that pressure played in the human body’s ability to metabolize various gases. Even with a modern rebreather system that maintained safe partial pressure of oxygen, Oberhaus had taught Tighe to always know what his gas mix was, and why—because machines could fail.
In the helmet-cam the three divers convened above the deep hole of Turkey Leg sump—apparently named by someone who was not Chinese.
Oberhaus’s voice came over the radio link. “This is where we leave you, Christen.”
Lykke’s voice. “Sicher zurückkehren. Safe journey to you both.”
In Tighe’s helmet-cam, Oberhaus turned downward, following an existing guide rope and comms line run by the previous diving expedition. Tighe accelerated his DPV, motor whirring as he fell in behind and above Oberhaus. At 40 meters’ depth they passed a decompression station, with its cluster of a dozen reserve gas bottles tied off on the line for use on their way back up.
Tighe paused the video and took a calming breath. He then fast-forwarded, searching for something he knew was coming. As he did so, Oberhaus’s on-screen form continued to descend, finally pausing at a depth of 57 meters to confirm their dive computers had switched them to heliox-14—a mix of 86 percent helium and 14 percent oxygen.
Generally, the greater the portion of helium a diver could function with, the more clear-headed they’d be at depth. But the problem with breathing a lot of helium was its thermal conductivity—twenty times that of normal air; a diver lost body heat much faster while breathing helium. Tighe watched the screen as he and Oberhaus partially inflated their dry suits with argon gas to insulate them.
Soon they were descending again. Down to 70 meters. Then 80 meters. Still following the old rope line, they reached 90 meters’ depth.
Tighe stopped fast-forwarding. The video resumed normal playback.
He wasn’t sure he remembered the event correctly. But the moment he heard the sound in his earphones, it spiked his adrenaline all over again.
A rumble deeper than anything he’d ever heard.
The shock wave passed through them in the water and was picked up by his comm microphone.
They both came to a stop. Breathing this much helium, Oberhaus sounded like a munchkin as he said, “What is that?”
They floated, swaying with the unpredictable movements of the water around them in the middle of the shaft. Somehow they were being shoved around, as if by a current.
Oberhaus and Tighe exchanged searching looks through their face masks. Then there was a piercing crack somewhere. They both knew what it was.
Oberhaus motioned with a gloved hand and squeaked, “Collapse! Get beneath that overhang.”
The water was still rolling them around. Tighe’s helmet-cam looked back as Oberhaus guided his DPV beneath an overhang of rock. His own helium voice replied, “I think it’s an earthquake!”
More booming and cracks came to their ears through the water, and they were getting closer.
“One leads to the other. Get to cover!”
Before they made it to the shelter of the overhang, Tighe’s view turned upward to see a collection of massive boulders dropping from above, bouncing off one another and both walls as they came, and trailing along with them finer rocks and sediment.
His munchkin voice shouted, “Rockfall!”
Tighe’s helmet-cam looked to see Oberhaus reach the cover of the overhang as car-sized and larger boulders rained down from above, booming as they sank.
One large rock tore Tighe’s DPV from his grip and nearly dragged him down by his tether before it snapped.
Tighe’s helmet-cam showed him swimming the last stretch through a rain of massive boulders, their suction clawing at him. When he got to the safety of the overhang, Oberhaus hauled him in.
“Against the wall!”
Looking down at the continued shower of debris, Tighe realized his DPV was gone for good—its headlamps extinguished. Then he spotted the reflective flag of their decompression station, falling along with it.
Oberhaus’s helium voice: “Our deco gas. The collapse swept it away.”
Tighe’s helmet-cam looked toward Oberhaus, then went to check his dive computer.
A gloved hand came into view, grabbing Tighe’s wrist.
“Your current supply is not the issue. We cannot breathe heliox all the way up to 30 meters.”
“I’ll try to contact Christen. He can bring his DPV down to us.” A pause, and then Tighe’s voice speaking via their wired phone line. “Christen! Christen, do you copy?”
No answer.
Oberhaus tried to hail Lykke as well—unaware of what Tighe sitting here in the present now knew: all their comm lines had been severed. Lykke had retreated when the sump entrance collapsed, nearly sucking him down with it.
Oberhaus finally gave up on the comm link. “We must abort the dive. There will be aftershocks.” He turned to Tighe. “We need to change to a 30 percent nitrox mixture for decompression starting at 40 meters, then compressed air to 21 meters, then pure oxygen from 9 meters until the surface.” Oberhaus checked his own dive computer. “Without that deco station, there’s not enough gas for the two of us, James.”
Tighe’s helmet-cam looked up to Oberhaus. “We can make it work.”
Oberhaus tapped at his dive computer, calm as always, while he made adjustments. When next he spoke, his voice was no longer tinny with helium. It was his normal baritone. “Yes, we can make it work. But not for both of us. One of us is not going to make it back this time.”
In the moment, Tighe hadn’t noticed the change in Oberhaus’s voice. But now, watching the video, he could see that Oberhaus had already made his decision. Already thought it through. In turning down his helium, he had already killed himself—and done so in order for Tighe to hear what he was saying, to hear his mentor’s voice.
Tighe, still unaware, said, “You go, Richard. I’ll stay.” Tighe saw his hands begin to unsling air bottles.
Again the gloved hand on his wrist. “We must be rational about this, James.”
Tighe tried to press an air bottle into Oberhaus’s hand.
Oberhaus pushed it away. “I have lived twenty-two years longer than you. My children are grown. You have so much of life ahead of you.”
Tighe’s helmet cam shook vigorously, side to side. His voice, still squeaking from helium: “You said it yourself: you have a wife and children.”
“And you should have a chance for the same.”
“I refuse to go.”
Oberhaus was unslinging all his oxygen and nitrox canisters. “There is no gas to spare discussing this. Leave now and you may have enough to survive decompression. You are in better physical shape than me, James. You’ve always been better able to withstand nitrogen narcosis than I. Between the two of us, you stand the better chance of making it.”
Tighe’s helmet-cam remained focused on Oberhaus’s face.
“I will not remain conscious for much longer. Go.”
Sitting in the airplane seat watching the video, Tighe was gripped by grief. Staring into the face of the man who’d been a father to him. Those calm eyes, reassuring him.
“We do not have the luxury of a long good-bye. Say good-bye to me, James.”
Tighe heard his voice squeak, “Good-bye.” His gloved hand accepted the gas canisters. He then embraced Oberhaus.
Oberhaus’s voice, weaker now. “Go!”
Tighe grabbed the controls of Oberhaus’s DPV and accelerated away, and upward.
After a few moments, Tighe’s helmet-cam turned back to see Oberhaus’s aquaflash lights illuminating him. Oberhaus nodded as he receded into the gloom, and then the lights went out. Oberhaus had extinguished them purposely—so that Tighe could not look back.
In his airplane seat, Tighe surreptitiously wiped tears from his face. He turned off the video with trembling hands and nursed his private grief.
CHAPTER 4
Ascension
After nearly ten hours in the air, James Tighe exited the windowless Boeing 787 into daylight, shielding his eyes against a blustery wind. Outside it was cloudy but still warm.
He followed the other candidates down an old-fashioned aircraft gangway as they gazed at their surroundings. They’d arrived at a small airport terminal on a rocky coastline. There was nonetheless a broad tarmac and a long runway. Several gray military cargo planes with RAF and US markings stood in a line some ways off, but smaller civilian craft were closer at hand.
The terrain was austere, almost alien, with volcanic cinder cones of reddish grit devoid of plant life. The summit of the nearest one was studded with antennas and microwave transmitters. A few kilometers away a mountain rose a thousand meters, covered in greenery and partially masked in clouds. The lowlands around the airport consisted of fanned-out lava flows scattered with tufts of hardy green plants.
Tighe followed the other candidates, crossing the tarmac in a silent single-file line, headed toward a distant terminal building. Male and female security personnel in gray fatigues and red berets motioned for them to keep moving. The runway was quiet. No other aircraft had arrived or departed since they landed.
As the line of candidates approached the small terminal building, Tighe noticed above the doorway a blue-and-red-striped sign with a bird silhouette that read: “Welcome to Ascension Island Base.” Nearby letters stenciled onto a cinder-block wall proclaimed this to be Wideawake Field.
Several dozen candidates crowded around the entrance to the terminal while a woman in a polo shirt and cap—emblazoned with the compass-like logo of a company named Polestar—motioned for them to gather around.
She spoke with a British accent as she shouted above the wind. “Welcome to Ascension Island. You are in the South Atlantic. This island is a British territory and this airfield part of the air bridge between Saint Helena and the Falkland Islands. We will be escorting you through customs. Afterward, you will board buses for the drive to our private training facility. There you will receive further instructions. Form up, please, and have your passports at the ready.”
After waiting in line for more than an hour, with the light waning to early afternoon, Tighe reached the front of the line and stepped up to a woman and two men, all wearing Polestar polo shirts and holding computer tablets.
The woman held out her hand without looking up. “Passport, please.”
Tighe complied.
“Mr. James Tighe.” She looked up from his photo. “Is that correct?”
Tighe nodded.
One of the men held an iris scanner up to Tighe’s face. The moment it beeped approval the woman handed Tighe’s passport to the other man, who motioned for Tighe to follow.
After getting Tighe’s passport stamped by a weary-looking British official in an olive-drab shirt and peaked hat, the Polestar rep led Tighe toward a line of three unmarked blue electric buses, where another female rep was waiting. She marked Tighe off on a digital list and pointed him toward the second bus. “We’ll be leaving shortly.”
Tighe nodded and climbed the steps. He found an aisle seat halfway down the length of the bus and spotted more surveillance camera domes on the ceiling as he sat down. Apparently management was observing them here, too.
Soon the bus was full, and a Polestar rep stood at the front. “We will now be departing for Devil’s Ashpit Camp.”
Murmurs and a few chuckles spread through the bus.
“We call it DAC for short. If you are lucky, DAC will be your home for the next three months. There, you will undergo a battery of physical and psychological tests to determine your suitability for further training with our commercial space client, Catalyst Corporation. It’s a short drive—just 15 kilometers—but we’ll be gaining 1,200 meters’ altitude on switchback roads. So hopefully none of you get carsick.”
There was a smattering of laughter among the passengers. Spirits were high.
Moments later they were under way. The buses seemed to be headed toward the big green mountain in the distance, which was rounded and more lush than anything else in sight.
After traversing volcanic lowlands for several kilometers and passing no other automobile traffic, the electric buses began climbing narrow switchbacks. As they gained altitude, the landscape became simultaneously more austere and yet in some ways greener—with sparse grasses sprinkled across stark scoria slopes of black volcanic grit. Gazing out across the Atlantic, which stretched to the horizon in all directions like hammered steel, Tighe got the full measure of their isolation.
Up ahead a newly constructed checkpoint blocked the road, with razor wire perimeter fencing stretching out in both directions. Behind it stood a facility with twin massive white antenna dishes aimed straight upward and dozens of modern prefab buildings spread around them. Signage at the entrance gate warned: “Restricted Area. Authorized Personnel Only.”
As the buses passed through the checkpoint, Tighe noticed it was manned by serious-looking security guards in gray camouflage military fatigues, with red berets and sidearms on their belts.
The buses continued down a smooth blacktop road past metal barracks buildings before entering a central parking lot in front of a large single-story concrete structure. Here, a dozen camp staff with computer tablets and an equal number of security personnel stood near folding tables.
Tighe’s bus halted with a hiss. The doors opened, and a male Polestar employee entered.
“Welcome to DAC. Let me remind you that from this point onward your candidate selection contract is in force. All your activities at this facility are subject to surveillance. Please exit the bus and wait for your name to be called.”
Tighe stood in the bus aisle with the other candidates and eventually descended the steps, where he was halted by two security guards. One raised a handheld iris scanner to Tighe’s eye, checking the display as it beeped.
