Vectors by Ken Jenks Crew patches from every shuttle mission decorated the crowded conference room. The wall across from me held a static display of the manifests for all upcoming missions - all on hold now, pending the outcome here. A gavel looked out of place at the head of the oddly-shaped wooden table. The name tags at each seat were for the benefit of the visiting U.N. observer. We NASA folks all knew each other. Mine read "Victoria Griffith, M.T. (A.S.C.P), Ph.D. (I.E.), Astronaut." As if everyone didn't know that by now. It wasn't a court martial, but it felt like it to me. The evidence had been presented -comm loop transcripts, space shuttle flight plans, space station "increment" timelines, telemetry, console logs, DNA analysis, and that ghastly autopsy report. The question of the day was: how did it happen, and can it happen again? When the preliminary meeting mechanics were complete, the chairman asked me to tell the investigative committee what happened. I told the truth back then, but I left out some of my personal observations. Now, long after my retirement, I'll tell it all. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Is that a beer I see in that cooler?" I asked my fellow astronauts in the quarantine facility. "Close," said Kathy, "As close to beer as James will let us have, this close to a launch." She inclined her blonde head toward James, the lanky, sandy-haired man wearing sunglasses indoors at night, who was reclining indolently in an over-stuffed lounge chair. Shuttle commander James Shackelford waved a non-alcoholic can at me, "We can't have any hung-over Crawdads on the old Atlantis, now can we?" I agreed, grabbing a cold one. I was damned proud to be a Crawdad. The Class of '02 had chosen a good mascot - not like the Spiders of '00, or the old Dogs or even the Maggots. At least I could tell my friends about the tradition without blushing. James, Kathy and I were all wearing the crew's informal uniform - a "Pe-Te Cajun Bar B Que" shirt with jeans. James and Kathy had been on two previous missions together, along with Bear, who was nowhere to be seen. Kathy waved her near-beer toward the kitchen. "Bear's in there fixing us a Cajun surprise." "Yes, indeed," said a deep voice from the kitchen, "a delightful surprise!" Bear came into the room holding a large, steaming pot with two oven mitts. "A special Crawdaddy surprise!" Calling in the other astronauts, we gathered around the table and shared our last meal on earth. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Eight minutes after lift-off the space shuttle main engines cut off - weightlessness arrived. I distinctly remember a wavy strand of my short black hair floating inside my helmet. Unfastening straps, hoses and communication cables, we drifted out of our seats and started doffing our pressure suits. Bear and Kathy looked a little queasy and stiff-necked. They were minimizing their head movements - sure signs of early adaptation to microgravity. Despite my bad experiences on the Russian zero-gravity aircraft, I didn't feel any ill effects. "Hey, Bear," said Kathy, "Get your Cajun butt up to the flight deck so we ladies can change in peace." Her blonde hair floated around her head in waves. "Mais ouí, Madame," said Bear, smiling thinly. "But hurry, please. I'm afraid my diaper needs changing." I wrinkled my nose at the smell. After Kathy shooed Bear off the middeck, we stowed the seats and changed out of our suits in what little privacy Atlantis offered. I was secretly pleased that I hadn't used the diaper in my suit, but now I needed to use the infamous shuttle potty. When the potty flushed, Bear called down from the flight deck, "I'm next!" Bear was an old friend of mine. He was a Crawdad, too, and we'd been through training together. As astronauts, we had worked together on a medical experiment involving a new drug and exercise therapy to prevent bone loss during long-duration missions. The preliminary work using bed rest to simulate the physiologic effects of spaceflight was promising, but our animal studies were inconclusive. Bear and I had spent long hours working with the scientists and their human and animal subjects, and I was more than a little fond of him. I respected his strong marriage to Judith, his wife of eight years and mother of their four children, but I couldn't keep my heart from wondering how our friendship could have grown under different circumstances. Later on flight day 1, James brought Atlantis to a smooth docking with the space station. The video link showed whole crew of Calypso waiting around the airlock. Commander Trent Miller was the first to greet us. Hamming it up for the NASA TV audience, Trent called down through the open hatch. "Welcome, Crawdads, to the International Space Station Calypso!" James was careful not to obscure the video camera. "Hey, with all of you down here, who's flying this thing?" "Houston's got the con." I followed Kathy up through the airlock into Calypso. The station looked . . . odd. The colors were all subtly different from what I'd seen in simulators, VR, photos, and endless hours of video downlink. In the simulators, the floors were scuffed. Here, the yellow hand-rails were worn. Calypso was much louder than I expected. Calypso had been through many names as its design evolved. From the nameless dual-keel design, to the ill-fated Freedom, then to the design incorporating Russian, European, Japanese and American elements which was briefly called Alpha, the station had changed over the many years since von Braun's dreams. The final name, after Jacque Cousteau's famous research vessel, had been suggested by school children. The name met all of the criteria - historically meaningful, understandable over bad communication loops, and unembarassing in all major languages. I thought it very fitting. The moment I'd been longing for and dreading had arrived. There was Trent. When he saw me, he clasped his hands to his chest melodramatically. "Our savior! I've never needed a plumber so much in my life!" "Oh, no," I said with a grin, "I'll leave the plumbing to you. I'm just here to identify your cooties." Trent smiled. "With the way our life support system smells, you'll have plenty of cooties to play with." Our eyes met, but I wasn't sure what I saw in his. I wonder what showed in mine. Just then, the caution/warning system sounded a low priority alarm, and Trent rushed off to deal with some minor equipment problem. It was just as well; I had work to do, too. But I needed to know about him. About us. As the internationals went back to work, we Americans moved cargo through the narrow docking adapter. James and I ended up doing most of the work. By this time, Bear and Kathy were mostly incapacitated with space sickness, and the rest of the shuttle crew was busy configuring the Orbiter systems for its short stay at Calypso. After working for an hour or so, James and I took a rest break. Although I wasn't thirsty, I drank some water. I knew about the dangers of dehydration in space. "So," said James, hoisting a water bottle of his own, "when do you dive into the potty?" "Ah, boys," I sighed, rolling my eyes. "Always being gross." James was referring to one of my roles on Calypso: validating the bacteriologic models of the environmental control and life support system by sampling. "The other astronauts say it can smell pretty bad when they service some of those racks. The simulators never got too nasty." James shook his head, grinning, "I'll never understand why you got a Ph.D. in plumbing." I didn't need to remind him that my Ph.D. was in life support systems, not plumbing, really. He'd read my dissertation. I continued, "I'll have to unstow my equipment, and I'll get Trent to give me a tour . . .. I'll probably gather the first samples tomorrow. I understand it's one of his top priorities." James held his nose, then turned the gesture into a different joke by plunging feet-first through the docking adapter into Atlantis. Laughing, I held my nose and followed. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Because of the crew exchange, dinner that night was a special event. The combined crew of Calypso and Atlantis gathered in the American habitation module. Even Bear and Kathy attended, but with frequent trips to the head. When they both left the hab module at the same time, I raised a questioning eyebrow to James. He said, "Don't worry about them. It'll pass - probably overnight." Andreii Petrovich, the Russian commander, winked at me conspiratorially, adding, "We Russians discovered space sickness, you know." "Why, Andreii," said Trent, "I do believe you're proud of that!" They chuckled, but quieted as Kathy drifted back in. I noticed that James' face was quite puffy, and that his legs were looking decidedly thinner, like the rest of the Atlantis astronauts. These effects of fluid shifting in space were already apparent. Dinner was interrupted by a couple of minor equipment alarms, and a call from NASDA's control center dragged Li Chen away from the "table." The Russians passed around worn plastic squeeze bottles now full of vodka, and Andreii toasted "the Crawfish crew of the venerable Atlantis." I spent my first "night" in space attached to the wall on the middeck of Atlantis. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The wake-up music from Houston was last year's number one hit, "Gravity's Got Me Down," by EXO, a band I never liked. The morning e-mail contained minor updates to the flight plan and a couple of systems procedures for the shuttle crew, plus a note from my mother describing the launch as seen from Florida. Kathy was feeling better, but she still wasn't completely adapted to microgravity. Bear seemed even worse than the day before. Although listless and pale, he insisted on working anyway. I offered him a water bottle, saying, "Hey, Bear, drink some more water. It really does help." "Mercí, Victoria, but it just goes right through me." He grimaced, then smiled wryly. "I believe I've discovered a new method of human rocket propulsion." I wrinkled my nose and squirted him - just a little. Bear grabbed the water bottle and returned the favor. Laughing as I scooted up from the middeck to the flight deck, I saw Bear slurp down some of the floating water drops. That was good; he needed the fluids. I checked my timeline then got to work on the bacterial samples. The life support systems on Calypso are complicated. Each country had built their own life support system, coordinating their engineering effort through interface documents, teleconferences and rare face-to-face visits. Engineering by committee, with language barriers and more subtle cultural differences adding spice to the broth. Not surprisingly, there were differences between the as-designed capabilities of each life support system and the as-built hardware and software. Mathematical modeling of those systems was made even more difficult by the interaction between the American, Russian and European systems through the open hatches between the modules. The life scientists back in Houston needed to know the nature of the microscopic flora and fauna currently growing in the system. Biologic sampling had been done many times before, but this time we had the basic laboratory equipment for identifying organisms on-orbit. Before now, samples had to be returned to earth in shuttle or Soyuz flights for later analysis, and the preservation and transportation processes took their toll on the microorganisms. Two dirty, sweaty hours later, I had my first carefully labeled samples from the nooks and crannies of Calypso's environmental control and life support system. There was a little algae growing in the humidity separation system. I was disgusted to find fecal material on the air filters. To identify bacteria, I put some sample swabs in thioglycolate broth. To identify fungi, I streaked several different tubes of sabaraud dextrose agar. I also streaked several Petri dishes to identify any enteric pathogens. Once the media were in their incubators, I found the shower and did my best to clean up. Showering in microgravity was more difficult than I expected. Lunch was an individual affair, with most of the astronauts grabbing food, drink and a potty break whenever their work load permitted, which wasn't often. I spent some time in minor station maintenance chores, one of which was changing the inner protective panes on the cupola windows, which had a patina of small scratches from years of use. This gave me a perfect excuse to gaze at the passing earth for at least a few minutes before my mandatory exercise period. The earth is extraordinarily beautiful from space. Video, photos, and even IMAX 3 can't give you all the nuances of color, shading and shadow the naked eye can see - especially when the windows are clean. Sunset from orbit is about the most awesome thing I've ever seen, and it happened twice while I changed out all of the window panes. As we orbited the earth, I looked at the moon periodically to see if the old astronaut rumor was true. Veteran astronaut Janice Sheperd claimed that the crescent moon would grow a little fatter then shrink again as our orbit took us around the earth, changing the angle between our line of sight and the illuminated hemisphere of the moon. Some astronauts say they can see a larger crescent during the daylight portion of an orbit and a smaller crescent during orbital night. I couldn't detect any difference. The rest of that day passed pretty quickly. It was hard to sleep on Calypso. The schematics of a hundred subsystems flew past my mind's eye as I tried to relate my years of training in simulators and VR models with the living, humming, smelly space station. The simulators are almost always locked in a horizontal position, with a definite floor and ceiling. Up here, despite the fidelity of the simulators, I sometimes found myself lost in a very familiar setting. If that weren't enough, there was Trent. Was our encounter at the party just a fling? Or did it mean more than that to him? Or to me? Eventually, I gave up and went to the med kit for a sleeping pill. I saw Bear coming out of the head, going back to Atlantis. "Hey, Bear, are you still rocket propelled?" I grinned mischievously. "I'm afraid so," the Cajun sighed. "Isn't this supposed to clear up after a day?" I shrugged. "I hear a Congressman holds the record. He was sick from launch until a week after landing." Bear grunted. "This I don't need to hear. I'll be on Atlantis for another two weeks." Bear rubbed his jaw, looking uncomfortable. "I saw you and Trent after Mikhail's party in Houston." I looked at him, shocked. He stared steadfastly at the nearby caution-and-warning display, avoiding my eyes. "He's a good friend of mine, Trent is." I couldn't think of anything to say. Trent and I had also been friends for years. He was a pilot in the astronaut corps, and I was an Astronaut Candidate, pronounced "ass can." That's what they call you during the one-year "probationary period" after you've been accepted into the corps. At that party, we all drank way too much vodka, and Trent and I talked for hours. Although I'd been working with this quiet, handsome man for years, this was the first time I got to know him as a person instead of a pilot, astronaut, hero. At 0400, when we found ourselves alone, I guess the inevitable happened. We made love that night, and he went into quarantine the next day. With my training schedule, I didn't even have time to fly to Florida to see the launch. While I was working down there in Houston, he had passed overhead sixteen times each day, but I couldn't find a valid excuse to call him from Mission Control. "It's been a long time since that party, Bear." Almost two months. I thought about that stretch of time, filled with training, travel, more training, and precious little time for me to be myself. My coarse black hair barely stirred in the light breeze from life support. Bear chuckled. "Not for Trent. I had CAPCOM duties in Houston, and I got a chance to talk to him a few times on the phone instead of air-to-ground. The poor guy has the whole world hanging above his head, literally, and now you on his space station." I looked away. "Despite his best efforts, you mean." Trent had been campaigning to keep me from this mission. "I know he asked for Charlie instead of you, but the Powers That Be include more than just our friend Trent. You have more allies than you realize." I thought about the complicated political structure back in Houston, where the head of the Astronaut Office was only one of the people involved in assigning crew manifests for upcoming missions. I must have had some friends pulling strings to keep me assigned to this flight despite the long-distance objections of the station's commander. "Bear, I just can't understand what's happening with Trent. To my face, he's civil, but behind my back, he tried to sabotage my flight assignment!" Bear shrugged. "I can't know what's in his mind or his heart, but I know the man has a good soul." I pouted. "I just wish I knew what the score is." Bear shrugged again. "Good night, Mademoiselle." He pulled himself across the dim module toward his bunk on Atlantis. I drifted off to sleep, dreaming of plumbing diagrams and etouffe. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The next day, Atlantis departed to complete the rest of her mission, leaving Kathy and me on Calypso, while rotating two other astronauts back to earth. James, Bear and the rest of the Atlantis crew had a busy schedule, including a satellite deployment and several on-board experiments. I drifted into the cupola with Andreii and Chen to watch the departure. Seen from the outside, the ghostly spray cast off by the shuttle's maneuvering jets was even more dramatic, albeit without the sound effects. After Atlantis coasted out of sight, I returned to the lab and checked my cultures. Some were growing, others showed remarkably little change. One sample, on TCBS agar, had tiny yellow colonies. I rechecked the label on the slide. This sample was taken from Calypso's potty. An ill-defined suspicion made me look at the other media I used to culture that same sample, I saw iridescent green colonies on the chocolate agar. I put the data into the microbial pattern recognition system, but the results were inconclusive. After taking careful notes, I stained two slides from the colonies, then stored one for later analysis in Houston. I put the other slide under the microscope and adjusted my foot restraints. When I was comfortable, I focused in on the first slide, which I found covered with comma-shaped Gram negative rods. Puzzled, I prepared a wet mount from one of the small yellow colonies on the TCBS medium. Once I found my focal plane, I saw spiral shaped bacteria darting quickly across the field of view. I prompted the pattern recognition software, which analyzed the growth and stain characteristics, apparent shape and motion, then indicated that a Vibrio species was 85% likely, with no other species ranking above 5%. Most probable: V. cholerae. I leaned back in my foot restraints and stared at my experiment rack. The implications were enormous: A cholera outbreak in space. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ After I did my homework on cholera, I found Trent at one of Calypso's workstations. He and CAPCOM, down in Houston, were working through a procedure to re-route data around a failed multiplexor in Calypso's command and data handling system. I waited impatiently while they finished the procedure, then pulled Trent aside. His short brown hair waved slightly as he moved. I began earnestly, "Trent, you were right about the priority on real-time sampling of life support." Trent raised his eyebrows. "Oh? What did you find?" I squared my shoulders. "I want to confirm it with Houston, but I'm pretty sure it's cholera." Trent looked incredulous. "That's not possible. Cholera only happens in backwater countries. How could it get into space?" "I don't know, yet, but I'll certainly find out. However, cholera isn't confined to 'backwater countries,' although 'backwater' is usually the operative word. The on-line Bergey's Manual says that genus Vibrio organisms are found in surface and marine waters. Infection is usually spread by poor sanitary conditions, or by poorly cooked seafood." Trent rubbed his chin. "Well, we certainly have unique sanitary conditions here, but we have the world's most carefully cooked food, so that vector isn't likely." "The incubation period for cholera is about 48 hours, so it was probably brought up by the crew of Atlantis. The whole crew had crawfish the night before launch, but boiling kills the bacteria." I frowned thoughtfully. "The World Health Organization documents on the Internet say there have been only two cholera outbreaks in the U.S. in the last century. One was in 1978, in Louisiana, where Bear comes from. The other was in 1973, in Port LaVaca, Texas." "Bear? So maybe he wasn't just space sick." "Right. I wanted to talk to you before confirming this with Houston. But I think Bear's been having diarrhea, which is a symptom of cholera, not space sickness." "How sure are you of the results? Think about the implications if you're wrong." I could think of little else. If I were wrong, doubt would be raised about in-space biological testing, with suspicion transferred to other forms of wet chemistry in microgravity. If we had to evacuate an astronaut who turned out not to be very sick, my career as an astronaut would be a short one. And I could lose a good friend. No astronaut ever wants to be grounded. "Not one hundred percent. To completely identify the organism, I'd need antiserum specific to Vibrio cholerae bacteria, and we don't have any on board. But if Bear doesn't get rehydration therapy immediately, he may die." "What about infecting the rest of the crew?" I thought for a moment then replied, "I don't think that's a danger. The organism only lives in water, and it can only be spread by contact, not through the air." Trent looked guarded, thoughtful. "So we ought to quarantine him?" "First, Houston will probably start Bear on rehydration, which won't hurt him even if he doesn't have cholera. But it's definitely their call. Second, we need to find the infection vector. If it wasn't Bear, it may be Kathy, or even me. A quarantine would be good, if it's possible, but that may be even harder on Bear." Trent leaned back and gazed at me for a moment. "OK. Call Houston. But don't mention names. We've got to treat this as a private medical matter and respect Bear's privacy. There could be a lot of careers on the line here." "Agreed, but there is something else you should know. Cholera is an internationally reportable disease. Eventually, someone will have to tell the United Nations." Trent shook his head and rubbed his eyes. "I wouldn't want to be on that committee, but I probably will be. Document everything." I gave him a mock salute, "Yes, sir!" ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The flight surgeons in Houston took my input without comment. Then, twenty minutes later, I found myself on a private medical conference with Estelle Rogers, chief flight surgeon. Trent Miller listened silently from another headset on Calypso. "Dr. Griffith," began the surgeon, "we're reviewing your notes from your lab work, and our technicians had a few questions. As you know, if this had happened on earth, we'd send another sample out to an independent lab for confirmation. That's not possible here, so I hope your professional pride will withstand the intense scrutiny you'll be under." I cocked my head at the microphone, "What do you mean, Dr. Rogers?" "I mean that we'll have to ask you to walk through every step in your laboratory procedure, with live video downlink and a real-time teleconference, to confirm your procedures, since we can't confirm your results by any other method." I thought for a moment. "Dr. Rogers, I don't think we have time for that. If we have a person on board infected with Vibrio cholerae, that person may be dead within a few hours." "Indeed, Dr. Griffith. If. So far, we only know about a suspicious organism in the lavatory." I bit my lip. "I'll need to check with commander Miller about the video and telecon set-up." "Very good, Dr. Griffith. Please make haste." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ While I floated next to him, Trent called Atlantis on the phone. The only method of secure communication between Calypso and Atlantis, the satellite telephones hadn't been planned when Calypso was designed, but communication technology had continued to advance long after Calypso's design was frozen in the '90's. "Shackelford here," came the reply from the shuttle. "James, it's Trent. We've got some bad news, and we wanted to discuss it with you before you heard it from Houston." "Go ahead, Trent." "I'll let Victoria explain it." He handed me the phone. I summarized the situation. There was a moment of silence, then James replied, "What does Houston say?" "I'm working with them on confirmation. In the meantime, I wanted to talk to Bear about what I've found." There was another brief pause. "I'll get him to the phone. We'll call you back." He disconnected. A few minutes later, the phone chirped, and Trent motioned for me to answer it. "Griffith." "Victoria, my friend," said Bear, "how - where - when would I get this third-world cootie, this cholera disease?" I winced. "I don't know, Bear. I'm not even sure you have it. But if you do, you're in grave danger." "I know I feel terrible, but it's just space sickness, n'est pas?" "I don't think so, Bear. Space adaptation syndrome doesn't usually include diarrhea. You have been having loose stools, haven't you?" "Yes, but it's probably just nerves. I sometimes get this way when I'm under stress." I frowned thoughtfully. "Well, let's run through everything you've done over the last week, and we'll see if we can figure out what happened." "But, my dear, as you know well, I've been confined to quarantine with the rest of the astronauts for the last week! And before that, our delightful 'Health Stabilization Program.' What could have happened to me?" "Cholera can be spread by seafood. Did anything unusual happen when you were cooking dinner before launch?" "Non, I don't think . . . wait, I did prick my thumb on a crawdad claw." I paused. "That's probably not it. Cholera is an enteric disease, which means that you can only get it by ingestion. If cholerae got into your bloodstream, your white blood cells would kill it. Boiling kills it, too. Were any of those mudpuppies undercooked?" "I swear, Victoria, I made them Holy Crawdads." I blinked. "Holy?" "Ouí, I boiled the Hell out of them!" I grimaced at the phone, then continued seriously, "Bear, let's go over all of the details and see if we can find out what happened. In the meantime, Houston is working out our options. We'll also go over my lab procedures to make sure I didn't make a mistake." "Victoria," said Bear, "I hope you won't take this the wrong way, but I fervently hope that your laboratory technique stinks." "Thank you, Bear," I said with a thin smile, "I hope so too." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Kathy stopped me in the hab module. "Can I talk to you for a minute?" "Sure, Kathy. What's up?" Kathy grimaced at the old space joke. "I've been having . . . diarrhea, so I got on a private medical conference with Houston. Dr. Rogers said you may have found cholera in the potty." I nodded, adding, "I haven't confirmed it, yet, but it looks pretty likely. What are your other symptoms?" "I'm nauseous, I'm always thirsty, my sinuses are full, I have a headache, and I get dizzy if I move my head suddenly. Oh, and I've been perspiring quite a lot." "That sounds like a cross between space sickness and cholera. What did Rogers tell you to do?" "She told me to drink plenty of fluids, and to get lots of rest. She also said that if it gets worse, she'll have you start me on a zero-G I.V." "I've been thinking about that," I said. "The normal adaptation to microgravity has a dehydrating effect anyway, and cholera would make it even worse. I'm not sure if we can keep enough fluid in you in microgravity." Kathy looked stunned. "Dr. Rogers didn't say anything about that!" I sighed. "No, I guess she wouldn't, until everything is confirmed in triplicate. But I'll bet everybody in Houston is trying to figure out what to do if you have to be evacuated." "The hell with that!" Kathy stormed. "I'm nowhere near sick enough to abort this mission." "Kathy, I'm just trying . . ." "I don't care what you're trying! I'm not going to evacuate. I've worked my whole life for this, and I'm not giving it up for a little stomach flu! I'm going to Trent right away. Don't even think about going around me to your boyfriend. This is private medical business, and you're not my doctor!" "But . . ." Kathy yanked herself away and flew quickly through the hab module, barely touching the worn yellow hand rails. I sighed in exasperation. Boyfriend, indeed. The laboratory walk-through was a fiasco. From Houston, Dr. Rogers was the moderator, but she didn't intervene. The medical technologists in Houston argued, the flight surgeons argued, the people from the Centers for Disease Control argued. Because laboratory techniques in space were necessarily different from those on earth, I expected some of the dispute, but no two laboratory technicians seemed to agree what "good streaking technique" was, exactly, and the colors of the Gram stains and the colonies didn't look the same over the video link. There was some foul-up in Houston, trying to find the duplicate culture media from the same lot for verification. The time delay in the air-to-ground communication system made the interchange more difficult. They kept "stepping on" each other's voices. When all the technical issues were finally on the table, Dr. Rogers took control of the proceedings. "Dr. Griffith," she called, "during your laboratory work, did you ever see an actual example of Vibrio cholerae from a patient?" "No," I admitted, "but I did see several other Vibrio species, and I am confident in my technique." "I'm sure you are, Dr. Griffith. I understand that you worked in the flight medicine laboratory here in Houston. In your laboratory work, would you characterize the patients whose specimens you examined to be relatively healthy or relatively unwell?" I thought for a moment before I hit the push-to-talk switch. What was she driving at? "I'd say they were about the healthiest group of patients ever. They were astronauts and their dependents." Dr. Rogers paused, longer than the communication delay warranted. "In the light of that, do you feel that we would be justified in taking emergency action on-board the spacecraft, with only your samples and your analysis to go on?" I was spared from answering that question by the intervention of CAPCOM. "Calypso, Houston, we're about to lose you off the east satellite. We'll pick you up off the west in about nine minutes." I acknowledged. After a grueling hour, I welcomed the mandatory break imposed by a gap in the satellite TV coverage. A spacecraft is never silent, but the hiatus was a quiet relief. I took a few minutes to look in on Kathy. Although she had been forcing fluids, with salt tablets, her explosive diarrhea continued unchecked. She complained of being dizzy, nauseous, and very shaky. I cornered Trent in the node. "Trent, Kathy's sick, too." "I know," said Trent. "Houston just called." I heard the exasperation in my own voice. "She's getting worse, and those jerks in Houston aren't helping a bit." Trent nodded sympathetically. "While you were being raked over the medical coals, I talked to the Operations Director. Ops said we have three options. One, Kathy stays here on Calypso, and we try to ride this thing out. Two, we evacuate Kathy on a Soyuz, and thump her down within an hour. Or three, we re-dock with Atlantis and they put off the Newton deployment for another flight." I bit my lip. "I'm not sure if she can take the G forces of a Soyuz entry profile." Trent nodded. "Roger, that. Their thump down is pretty damned hard, and there's the resupply schedule to think about." "What does Shackelford say about evacuating her on Atlantis?" "I haven't asked him yet. They're undoubtedly having a similar debate about Bear. I think Houston is telling James their side of the story now. He won't be happy to have his mission cut short. Weather has Edwards and the Cape socked in, and a landing at White Sands is marginal, so if they have to land soon, it'll be messy. Did you and Bear have any luck figuring out an infection vector?" "None at all. He's been safe from swamps and seafood for well over a week. And we don't have a clue how Kathy got it." Trent looked pained. "This medical privacy is fine for normal stuff like blurry vision, funny heartbeats and a bad day on the treadmill, but until we can find that vector, the safety of the whole crew is at stake here. I'm going to call a meeting and tell the everybody about it." "I'll talk to Kathy first," I volunteered, frowning. "I hope she'll understand." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The meeting went reasonably well. Although Kathy was still sulking, the crew of Calypso discussed the situation calmly and seriously. With the history of infectious diseases in the space program, and the known negative effects of microgravity on the human immune system, space station astronauts had always been prepared for the possibility of disease. When the meeting was over, Trent called the commanders of the Russian, European and Japanese modules together for a private discussion, but that was interrupted when Houston called. Bear was dead. I found myself crying over my chocolate chip cookies as I took a break from my lab work. I used a napkin to mop up the spheres of drifting tears. A few wayward cookie crumbs floated on the soft breeze. Trent came in from the node, closed the door, and pulled himself toward me using the station's hand-rails. "Victoria, I need to talk to you about Kathy." I sniffed into my napkin. "How's she doing?" "Not well," replied Trent, "She took Bear's death pretty hard. Houston says she's not responding to the rehydration, just as you expected." I nodded. "Sometimes I hate being right." "We'll have to drop her down via Soyuz. Probably within an hour." "What about Atlantis?" Trent shook his head gently. "There's a hole in the weather. They're landing at Edwards in about two hours. Shackelford is sick, so they'll use the autoland sequence. We can't risk having them dock with Calypso again." I nodded, then tilted my head as I saw Trent biting his lip uncomfortably. "There's one more thing," said Trent. "You will deorbit with Kathy on the Soyuz." Seeing my outrage growing, Trent touched my arm. "As the only other crewmember . . ." "Hell, no!" I interrupted. "Don't you dare try to get rid of me that way. Ever since that night in Houston, first you tried to keep me grounded, now you grab the first excuse to send me down. You egotistical, self-serving, two-faced . . ." "Now wait a minute," he yelled. "I didn't try to ground you!" "It sure looked like that from Houston," I fumed. "What else could it mean: you asked for Charlie instead of me." "That's not what I meant!" He shifted his grip on the hand rail. I'm sure the other astronauts were getting an earful. There is no privacy in space. "So what the hell did you mean? First you screwed me, then you screwed me!" "I've been doing my damnedest to keep myself impartial, and it's tearing me up inside! This is my first command. I didn't want to spend all of my time worrying about you or fighting this stinking battle not to play favorites with the crew. They all know how I feel about you." I waved my free hand to encompass the station. "So if they all know how you feel, how about letting me in on it?" He swallowed, miserable. The jerk. "I love you." "This is a hell of a way to show it, you creep!" "I spent the last six weeks thinking about you and little else. I can't get you out of my head. I keep reliving our night together, and planning how to make it happen again. How can I run a space station if I can't keep my mind on the job?" "I don't know why NASA picked you to begin with! I don't know why I did, either!" "I just wanted to keep our relationship separate from this job," he said. "I didn't want to be your boss, with all the baggage that carries. I wanted to ask you out, to court you properly, to treat you as a human being . . ." "Instead of treating me as an astronaut and a woman? Dammit, Trent, I am an astronaut, and a damned good one, too. If you can't deal with that, you can't deal with me." He slumped, cowed. I squared my shoulders and looked at him, feeling flushed, feeling victorious, feeling lost. "All right, Trent," I said. "Call Houston and tell them I'll thump down with Kathy." He looked at me again, puzzled. "Someone needs to go with her, and I'm the best damned astronaut for the job." He was speechless. I pried him loose from his handhold and tossed him lightly down the length of the hab module. He caught a hand hold and turned back to me, but I interrupted again. "Trent, there's one more thing." "What is it?" He sounded amazingly meek. "I love you, too, you jerk." I pushed off for the limited privacy of my bunk, trailing cookie crumbs as I flew. Inside my cubicle, I started to close the door, watching the teardrops and crumbs float away from me. Suddenly, my mouth flew open and I shrieked. "What happened?" yelled Trent from the other end of the module. "The vector!" I scrambled out of my cubicle, down to the hab module's life support rack and opened it. Trent came up behind me. There were cookie crumbs on the air filters, and as I watched, a tiny, fractured teardrop drifted off the filter and into the humidity separator. I moved aside slightly to show Trent. "Look! Explosive diarrhea in space makes tiny droplets of semisolid fecal material. I remember smelling Bear's soiled diaper, which means there were particles in the air. Some of it drifted through the air system, only to be trapped on the filter. A little of the liquid probably got through, and I'll bet the water in the humidity separator is swarming with cholerae. It's not transmitted via air on earth, but in space, contaminated water particles can be ingested or inspired much more easily." Trent nodded pensively. "That's the best explanation yet." He paused. "But even if that checks out, and you're not an infection vector, we still have to send someone back to earth with Kathy." I nodded. "And I'm still the best one for that job. But it sure would be nice to solve this thing before I leave." I closed the life support rack and checked the latches. Trent checked his watch. "You have less than an hour before you have to be in that Soyuz." I kissed him and scurried back to work. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Soyuz capsule thumped down within 100 meters of the Russian recovery team. Kathy gave me a weak thumbs-up as her stretcher slid into the waiting ambulance. After a brief, multilingual argument with the Russians, I declined the proffered stretcher and walked from the capsule to the recovery van. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ That sums up the story of cholera on Calypso, the story I told the official NASA investigative panel. The decontamination of the space station was relatively simple. Disinfectant in the humidity separator killed all of the V. cholerae. We were lucky more people didn't get infected. The U.N. World Health Organization reports that cholera is down worldwide, in part due to better sanitation and medical care, and in part due to increased public awareness. After my presentation to the General Assembly in New York, I received a nice note from the Secretary General thanking me for my contribution. There is one more personal matter I'd like to relate . . .. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Calypso, Houston, for Trent," I called from the control center. Now, I had plenty of reasons to use the air-to-ground loops. Trent and I had been using the comm loops and the satellite telephone quite a lot lately. It's really hard having a love affair with an astronaut. Real-time video downlink from the station was on the big screen at the front of the busy room. Trent looked good, as usual. "Go ahead, Houston. Sounds like a familiar voice down there." Trent's voice was distorted by the archaic digital audio loop. I smiled. "Roger, Calypso. I have some words on the infection vector. Bear mentioned that he pricked his thumb while fixing crawfish. The best guess down here is that he put his thumb in his mouth." "We copy, Houston," was Trent's terse reply. Typical. I continued. "Our updated bacteriologic models confirm that aerosol contamination probably led to Kathy's infection." "That's good to know, lady. How's she doing?" "She'll be in the hospital for a while longer, but she'll be fine. The flight surgeons finally gave me a clean bill of health." "Well, we still need a plumber up here. The air system still smells like disinfectant." "I'll take you up on that job as soon as I can. I'm on tap to give the briefing to the U.N. next month." "That should be fun." "As much fun as a root canal." There was a pause, longer than the usual one imposed by the delay in the comm loop. "Victoria Griffith," said Trent, "my friends down there in Houston have helped me out a little. I'd like to ask you a question." This is odd, I thought. "Go ahead, Calypso." Just then, James and Kelly came into the room wearing blue flight suits. They both looked a little pale and thin, but they were grinning like fools. James got down on his knee and offered me a tiny box. Trent was kneeling in front of the camera. "Victoria Griffith," said Trent from space, "will you marry me?" Every face in the room was looking at me. I knew I'd be on the evening news again. I started crying anyway. "Yes, sir, commander!" Everyone started clapping. Kelly gave me a big hug, then James did, too. On the big screen, the other astronauts crowded around Trent, shaking his hand. When the noise died down a little, I sniffed away a few happy tears, then keyed the microphone again. "On one condition, Trent." There was a brief delay as Trent found his mike. "What's that, dear?" "I get to choose the time and place." "Roger that, Houston." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Gulfstream was a few minutes early, landing at Ellington Field in Houston. Trent had come back with the crew of STS-143. The EFD tower reported 31 C, but it felt a lot hotter than that out on the asphalt. A huge crowd awaited the returning astronauts. There were more reporters than I'd ever seen at a NASA event. When the airplane came to a stop, an Air Force honor guard escorted the portable stairs up to the door. The were all friends of Trent, from his active duty days. As the door opened on the side of the NASA aircraft, the Air Force band started up behind us with the new NASA theme song. It really stirs the soul. Shuttle commander Steve Jackson deferred his traditional honor of being the first one down the stairs to a surprised, confused Trent Miller. He blinked in the Houston sun and held tight onto the hand rail as he climbed down the steps. When he got to the bottom, smiling that lovable, goofy grin of his, the band came to an orderly halt on the NASA theme and started with Mendellson. The crowd parted, and my dad escorted me down the aisle. I was sweltering in my white, lacy wedding gown, but I didn't care. It had all come together, and Trent didn't have a clue. Trent's minister met us at the base of the steps. We both sat down for the ceremony. I didn't want to take any chances on a hot day with a big surprise and a husband who was still readapting to one G. No fainting allowed. We did stand up for the "kiss the bride" part. The reception at hangar 904 was short but fun. Instead of a limousine, Trent's brother loaned me his Cessna 310 painted with a water-soluble "Just Married" banner. I flew my new husband down to Galveston for our wedding night at the San Luis hotel. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ By the time I flew on Calypso again, Trent and I had moved into a new house in Friendswood, Texas, about 20 minutes from NASA. We are still coming to terms on how to work together, live together and love together, all at once. In 2024, I retired from the astronaut corps to teach at the University of Houston. But in all the years since Bear died, I never ate crawfish again.