Part 3 (1/2)

”Why?”

”You want another Challenger?”

”Oh.” Tessa shut off the camera. She understood him perfectly. The biggest catastrophe with the Challenger, in terms of the s.p.a.ce program as a whole, was not that it blew up, but that millions of people watched it blow up. NASA had never really recovered from that. If the whole world saw the Spirit of Hope kill its crew, it could destroy any renewed interest in s.p.a.ce they had managed to create as well.

”It's too late,” Tessa told him. ”They already know what killed us.”

But even as she said it, the walls grew distinct again. Yos.h.i.+ko stopped struggling into her suit, and Rick simply stared at the metal walls that once again enclosed them.

”Hope, what is your status?” Gregor asked.

”It's back,” Rick said. ”The s.h.i.+p is solid again.”

”What happened? Do you know what caused it?”

”Negative, negative. It just faded out, then came right back.”

”Did you do anything that might have influenced it?”

Rick looked at Tessa, then at Yos.h.i.+ko. Both women shook their heads. ”Hard to tell,” Rick said. ”We screamed. We scrambled for s.p.a.cesuits. Tessa shut off the camera.”

”We all realized we were going to die,” Tessa added, and when Rick frowned at her she said, ”Well, we're dealing with a ghost here. Maybe that's important.”

”Maybe so,” Rick admitted.

Gregor said, ”Do you have any abnormal indications now?”

Rick scanned the controls for any other clues, but there were none. No pressure loss, no power drain, nothing. ”Negative, Kaliningrad,” he said. ”According to the dashboard, we've got a green bird up here.”

Gregor laughed a strained, harsh laugh. ”I begin to regret my hasty decision to oversee this mission. Never fear! I will not desert you. But this is troubling.

Should I consult the engineers, or a medium?”

”Why don't you try both?” Rick said.

Gregor paused a moment, then said, ”Yes, of course. You are absolutely right. We will get right to work on it.”

The astronauts sat still for a moment, letting their breath and heart rates fall back toward normal. Rick looked over at his two companions: Yos.h.i.+ko half into her s.p.a.cesuit, Tesssa holding the TV camera as if it were a bomb that might explode at any moment. Yos.h.i.+ko reached out and touched the control panel, rea.s.suring herself that it was solid again, then she turned up the cabin temperature. ”I'm cold,” she said.

Rick chuckled. ”That's not surprising. Ghosts are supposed to make people feel cold.”

Tessa narrowed her eyes.

”What?”

”I was just thinking. Ghosts make people feel cold. They repeat themselves. What else do they do? If we can figure out the rules, maybe we can keep this one from disappearing on us again until we get home.”

Maybe it was just relief at still being alive after their scare, but the intense look in Tessa's eyes was kind of a turn-on. All the same, Rick tried to pay attention to what she was saying. They did need to understand the rules. ”Well,”

he said, ”they sometimes make wailing noises.”

Tessa nodded. ”And they leave slime all over everything.”

Rick wiped at the edge of his couch. Bare metal and rough nylon webbing. No slime. ”I don't think we're dealing with that kind of ghost,” he said.

Yos.h.i.+ko asked, ”Aren't ghosts supposed to be the result of unfilfilled destiny?”

”Yeah,” Rick said. ”I think that's pretty clear in this case, anyway.”

”You mean Neil Armstrong, right?”

”Who else?”

”I don't know. Armstrong doesn't make sense. He already made it to the Moon. If this was his unfilfilled destiny, I'd think it would be a Mars s.h.i.+p, or a s.p.a.ce station or something.”

”Good point,” Tessa said. ”But if it isn't Armstrong's ghost, then whose is it?”

Rick snorted. ”Well, NASA thinks it's theirs. Maybe the organization is really dead, and we just don't know it.”

”Was there another budget cut in Congress?” Tessa asked facetiously.

Rick laughed, but Yos.h.i.+ko shook her head vigorously. ”No, no, I think you have it!”

”What, it's NASA's ghost?”

”In a sense, yes. What if it's the ghost of your entire s.p.a.ce program? When Neil Armstrong died, so did the dreams of s.p.a.ce enthusiasts all over your nation.

Maybe all over the world. It reminded them that you had once gone to the Moon, but no longer could. Maybe the unfulfilled dreams of all those people created this s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p.”

Rick looked out his tiny triangular window at the Earth again. Could he be riding in some kind of global wish-fulfillment fantasy? ”No,” he said. ”That can't be. Ghosts are individual things. Murder victims. People lost in storms.”

”s.h.i.+pwrecks,” Tessa said. ”They can be communal.”

”Okay,” Rick admitted, ”but they need some kind of focus. An observer. They don't just pop into being all by themselves.”

Tessa's hair drifted out in front of her face; she pushed it back behind her ears and said, ”How do you know? If a ghost wails in the forest...”

”Yeah, yeah. But something made it fade out just now, and come back again a minute later. That seems like an individual sort of phenomenon to me, not some nebulous gestalt.”

Yos.h.i.+ko was nodding wildly. ”What?” Rick asked her.

”I think you're right. And if so, then I know whose ghost this is.”

”Whose?”

”It's yours.”