Encounter With Tiber Page 9

  4

  I GUESS YOU COULD say the next few years kind of flew by. I don’t remember much about them. I try not to.

  I remember my parents yelling at each other a lot, but I suppose lots of people have similar memories. There was a story or two I heard later; Mom mentioned that she completed her on-camera interview with Sig, really, by eleven in the morning—he was extremely efficient and covered what was needed quickly—and then found herself having lunch with him. By that time there weren’t cameramen, per se; for interviews they used the double-track, a digital recorder that kept a camera focused on each of the people involved and recorded a complete sound track. So somehow or other at lunch, he canceled the rest of the day’s appointments, and she told the network she would be going long—

  And I have the tape of the afternoon interview. Sig talked a long time about his vision of the future, including quoting the Brautigan poem about machines of loving grace and all that. He went on about the potential for a world where everything dangerous or dirty was done “out in the safe vacuum.” He talked about what he called the Planetary Park.

  Mom always said that she thinks she fell in love with him that afternoon. There’s not one romantic word on that tape, nor anything about love or home or family, nothing that isn’t about space industrialization. I never did quite get around to asking Mom how she fell in love with him that afternoon; it’s just one of those mysterious things, I guess.

  Anyway, Mom also says they had no more contact except for three more interviews, and they all were like that—until the day she and Dad announced their divorce, and it was in the press. Then Sig waited exactly six months, to the day, and called her. They met for coffee, then they took off someplace for a weekend, then—less than a year after her divorce from Dad—they got married. It lasted right up to 2058, when Sig died, a fifty-three-year marriage, and even now I don’t really understand much about it except that the minute they met, they seemed to have been destined for each other. Stuff like that still happens, even nowadays, I guess.

  Probably it was a good thing, all things considered. Dad wasn’t somebody to stay married to. Understand me, I loved my father, and there were some things I got from him that are absolutely precious to me, but the truth was he wasn’t such a great husband, and he never really did understand people very well.

  I didn’t have much of a handle on what all the yelling was about, and then later, when I was twelve and he had died and all the scandals started coming out, I understood that the basic problem was that as Dad became more famous, he got all kinds of attention, and being the basically arrogant guy he was, he felt he deserved that. I think my mother always respected him—at least his abilities and intelligence—but what he wanted, or at least what he got used to on the road, was more the kind of admiration that you only get from strangers, when you’re famous. Most especially the kind you get from young women.

  By then Dad had sort of graduated from the NASA speaking circuit; he was still an active astronaut getting ready for missions, but NASA was no longer putting him on the road. Partly this was because the President’s Space Initiative had already passed, and mostly it was because his attack on commercialization and the military had offended a lot of people. NASA certainly knew who paid the bills and why there was interest, and the “pure science” views he was espousing were embarrassing.

  That was probably the reason so many college campuses invited him; he pretty well assured them of controversy, which meant that his speech would get covered by the press—and every college speaker series wants that. And it was really a something-for-everyone show, because he’d talk at great length about the scientific wonders that were possible to discover out there, then ferociously attack the whole idea of commercialization and privatization, and then, because some student always would ask the setup question, he would get to explain why even though he had some deep disagreements he was still staying with NASA and he was still proud to be an astronaut—and that strong expression of loyalty would be a real tear-jerker. I have no doubt he meant every word, too. I don’t think Chris Terence ever spoke a sentence that he didn’t mean.

  It just happened that old-fashioned loyalty plus complete sincerity was a formula that would appeal to almost anyone, and especially to college students.

  After the lectures, for which he was well paid, would come the receptions, and at the reception there would usually be a couple of pretty, polite young women who talked to Chris—or rather listened to him talk—with deep, intense sincerity, as if they found him fascinating. He would ask them questions about themselves, and they would stammer out very simple replies, usually adding that they didn’t think they were very interesting people, and after a while there would be just one of them left. Dad would keep circulating, and the young woman would stay close to him as he chatted with faculty and allowed administrators to say things to him that (they would later claim to others) “impressed him very much.” Finally there would be just a few people left, and they would all go to a bar for a couple of drinks, and then Dad would go back to his hotel room from the bar with the young woman, who would be the sole survivor of the process.

  By the time that the divorce happened, Dad had managed to make himself fairly famous (while never admitting that he enjoyed the fame and attention, and always telling Mom and me that he wished he could spend more time with us), so naturally the tabloids had a field day, and more so because, as everyone noticed after a while, the young women he was taking back to his room looked a lot like college pictures of his wife. I have always been a little glad that I was too young to understand how humiliating the whole thing was for Mom, and I truly have to give both her and Sig credit; neither of them ever really said a harsh word about Dad in my presence.

  Anyway, there was a minor custody problem, but nobody ever forced me to take sides; both of them wanted me, neither of them had as much time to spend on me as they would have liked, and therefore they were each trying to insure that I got enough time with the other. Nonetheless it was confusing and upsetting; eventually I ended up with Dad for a while because Mom was off on her honeymoon with Sig.

  It was perfectly clear that Dad hated Sig, but he wouldn’t let me say anything bad about the stranger who, as far as I could tell, had bewitched and kidnapped my mother. Dad spent a lot of time just sitting outside and staring up at the sky; now and then he’d have a date with somebody way too young to ever be my mother, who always talked to me as if I were three even though I was almost eight. I hated those nights a lot; many times I thought that if Dad had any sense he’d have taken the baby-sitter, who was often my Aunt Lori, out for a date, and left the girl he was dating here to take care of me.

  I mentioned it to him once, and he said that nothing between him and Lori would ever have worked out, but that was all he said. All I knew was, he often came back from his dates very depressed and sometimes angry, and sat outside and stared at the sky; usually I had a great time with Lori playing games with me and reading me stories until bedtime. Even then I guess I knew the world got more complicated for adults.

  After a while Mom and Sig got back, but since they were going to be moving to Washington, D.C., in a year or so, I stayed with Dad and visited over there. I understood that there was a lot of excitement going on because now the Skygrazers were flying regularly, and people were pouring in to buy chances for them and for the later Starbirds and Star-bird/Luna trips.

  Christmas of 2005 was almost okay. By that time I’d gotten sort of adjusted, and I was used to my room in Dad’s apartment; I sort of had three sets of parents, because Dad had me during the week, Mom and Sig had me on weekends, and a lot of times if there was any problem with handing me over—like Dad being out of town on Friday and Mom not getting in till Saturday—I would just stay with Aunt Lori. It wasn’t as nice as if everyone had been getting along, but I was pretty sure there would always be somebody around if I needed anything.

  For the holiday, I got up Christmas morning at Dad’s, and Aunt Lori dropped by with a
couple of her friends, which pretty much made up for Dad having Allison over (she was a college student with bright red hair; she wore way too much lipstick and began every sentence with “like”; that’s all I remember of that one). Allison gave me the kind of stuffed animal that a girl, or a much smaller boy, would get, Dad gave me some books and some science kits, and Aunt Lori gave me an incredibly wonderful kit for building a flying scale model of a Starbird. Dad looked kind of surprised, but since I was so thrilled, he was happy, too. Aunt Lori promised that sometime soon she and I would put it together, and there was a big lot out behind her house where we could try flying it.

  Then I went over to Mom and Sig’s place in the afternoon, and Dad agreed to come in and have a drink with Sig when he dropped me off, and they were both very polite to each other, which was nice. After a while Dad left and they got out the presents.

  Mom had given me a lot of clothes, some music, and some videos of classic movies; I think she was trying to make me cultured.

  For a minute as I was unwrapping Sig’s gift to me, my heart sank—the box looked just like the one from the Starbird model Aunt Lori had given me, and I was trying to think of how I could be polite. But then I saw that it wasn’t a flying Starbird model—it was a Starbooster/Skygrazer combination. Better still, the Starbooster was designed to go with the Starbird I already had, so that I could fly the booster with either the Starbird or Skygrazer.

  I looked up at Sig and he winked. “I didn’t know what would be cool enough,” he said, “so I called up your Aunt Lori and asked her. Was I right?”

  “Oh, yeah. Or Aunt Lori was. I think she’s always right.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Sig said gravely.

  The next week, between Christmas and New Year’s, Mom and Sig were off skiing and Dad had a conference he was addressing someplace, so I stayed with Lori, and we put the models together—she was one of those rare grownups that can let you do it while still helping you do it right. Both the Skygrazer and the Starbird flew beautifully with the Starbooster, and I realized that I now had something really impressive to show off when I got back to school in a few days.

  While Aunt Lori and I were sitting and watching the news, the phone rang; I could tell from the way she answered that it was Dad, and that the news was mixed. She came back and sat down next to me, putting an arm around me. I knew right then that something was up, and even if Aunt Lori was there with me, it was still going to be some kind of bad news. I asked her, “What is it? And why didn’t Dad talk to me?”

  “Well, he only had a minute,” she said, “and he will talk to you tomorrow, and he didn’t think I should tell you until he was sure, tomorrow. But I think this is something you should know about, and pretty soon. So will you not tell your Dad I told you?”

  I nodded solemnly and leaned closer to her.

  “Well,” she said, “it looks like your Dad, and probably me, are going to get another mission. He was at a big meeting of the University Space Research Associates, who are the people who have a special experiment they want him to do for them, and if NASA agrees then your dad will go up to the ISS to do that. That means you’ll probably have to go stay with Sig and your mother in D.C., at least for a while, because they’re moving there real soon. And if your Dad goes, it’s a three-month mission, so with training time and everything he won’t be back till school’s out.”

  “Will you be back sooner?”

  “Unh-hunh. Probably I’ll just be at training for a while, about as long as your dad, and then I’ll come back ten days or so after we fly. When I get back I’ll come and visit you in Washington, if you want me to.”

  “Sure.” I was holding onto her hard, but she didn’t try to make me release my grip. “It’ll be great if you can come and see me.”

  Like I said, Christmas that year was almost okay.

  The funny thing is the longer I spend going over the family records, getting things in order for Clio, the more confusing some things get. There was the Chris Terence who I knew as “Dad,” and he was kind of inconsistent, moody and a little scatterbrained; there was the Chris Terence who was Mom’s first husband, brilliant and fascinating but arrogant and sometimes a plain old jerk; there was the Chris Terence of the nightly news and of dozens of academic conferences, a powerful, clear, articulate voice for space science; and there was the Chris Terence of the NASA records, which I finally got on the fiftieth anniversary of his death—an efficient, dedicated, highly regarded astronaut whom other astronauts liked to work with. But for what it was like to be him … well, that’s one of those questions sons never know about fathers.

  He had been active for a long time in the University Space Research Associates. It was an outgrowth of half a dozen older projects and cooperative organizations, and he’d been part of those, too. Everyone knew that if there was ever going to be a voice for pure science in the space program, it would have to come from the university research community. The idea was simply that the various large college departments of space science, astronautics, astronautical engineering, planetary science, and astronomy—where so much of the real basic research into space-related subjects was done—should get together in a consortium, pooling part of their funds, raising some for the consortium itself directly, and come up with a long-term program of pure scientific research which they could do cooperatively with NASA, ESA, and any other space agency that would let them. One of the first fruits of this was the Far Side Radio Telescope (FSRT), the experiment that Dad would be working with up at ISS.

  The basic idea of the FSRT was simple. What we can know of objects out in space is what comes to us as electromagnetic radiation: radio waves, microwaves, infrared, visible light, ultraviolet, X-rays, and cosmic rays. Several of these had really only become available for study once there were platforms in space—ultraviolet and infrared don’t penetrate the atmosphere well, and X-rays and cosmic rays scatter so much in the atmosphere that it’s all but impossible to tell, from a ground-based station, where they came from. Thus it was not until orbiting satellites were able to get above Earth’s atmosphere that we even began to have any idea where most of these kinds of radiation came from, or how much any given object in the sky was putting out.

  Visible light, of course, had been one of the basic tools for studying the cosmos since people first looked up into the night sky, more so since the invention of the telescope in the seventeenth century. But here, too, space had made a major improvement, because air blurred the light coming in (the same phenomenon that made stars twinkle) and dimmed it as well; hence, with a mirror only a fraction the size of the large telescope mirrors on Earth, the Hubble Telescope had been able to see very far, deep, and accurately into the universe.

  At first glance, since radio waves are relatively unaffected by passage through ordinary air, it might seem that radio astronomy would suffer far fewer problems from the Earth’s blanket of air, and thus radio astronomers would benefit far less from space exploration than any other kind of astronomer. So far that had been true, but the University Space Research Associates was out to change that, in their first big project together.

  The problem was not that the air blocked, scattered, or distorted radio waves; it did those things only to a minor extent. The problem was that about the time that radio astronomy was developing in the 1920s—as scientists came to realize that the hiss and crackle of “static,” which could be heard over any radio, partly originated from sources not on this planet—the world had begun to fill up with radio broadcasting stations. (It was natural enough; radio had to be invented before anyone would know about radio telescopes, but once radio was invented there were bound to be stations on the air.) The Heaviside layer in the upper atmosphere bounced radio waves around the world; if an astronomer wanted to listen for a given frequency from some star, no matter how carefully he might point his antenna at that star and no other, the more sensitive his detector, the more likely he was to get a college station from Fargo or the farm report from Chile. Further, the E
arth’s atmosphere is alive with electrical storms, and our strong magnetic field creates vivid auroras at the poles, and both of these are also powerful sources of radio waves, creating vast amounts of noise through which the astronomer must try to hear the faint signals from beyond. In fact, coming in only behind the Sun (a blazing nuclear fusion reactor) and mighty Jupiter (with the solar system’s most intense magnetic field), the Earth is the third largest source of radio noise in the solar system.

  Merely to have put a radio telescope in orbit would not have done much good. It not only would remain close to the noisy Earth, but it would be in a straight line from many of the noise sources; the only advantage was that since it would be far above the Heaviside layer, fewer stray signals might scatter into its directional antenna. Thus there had been relatively little work with radio telescopy above the atmosphere, because the advantage to be gained was slight compared with what could be gained in most of the rest of the electromagnetic spectrum.

  However, better launch vehicles and tools had come along, and now there was a new possibility, one that the University Space Research Associates wanted to exploit. The Moon, with only a very weak magnetic field, does not put out much radio, and one side of the Moon is forever turned away from the Earth. Furthermore, 50 percent of the time the side that is turned away from the Earth also faces away from the Sun. And finally, because Jupiter goes around the Sun in about twelve, years, matters worked out so that 5/12ths of that fifty percent—or 5/24ths in all, just over a fifth—of the time, the Moon would also shield a radio telescope on its far side from Jupiter.

  At such times, with almost all the noise of the solar system screened out, a very delicate detector could be used. It meant a real possibility of seeing deeper into the universe in the radio spectrum than we had ever done before, and of getting back results with far greater certainty.