VIRTUAL SEASON 7.5

episode 34b

Something to Remember

Something to Remember
Penny Proctor

It was spring on the North American continent of the planet Earth, and there were many places a young cadet with a weekend pass could go to have a little fun. In Naomi Wildman's mind, the Cochrane Museum of Space Flight was not on the list. Unfortunately for her, it was on the top of the list of her two closest friends, Icheb Paris and Griff Harley.

"Aw, come on," Griff had wheedled. "The Phoenix Exhibit will only be open another six weeks. They're going to close it for maintenance for two whole years."

"Maybe we should come back then, when it's all fixed up," she had suggested reasonably.

"In two years, we may well be on training flights and unable to return," Icheb pointed out. "We should go while we have the opportunity. Don't you want to see the first warp ship developed by your people?"

"I've seen pictures," she said. "Since they aren't using engines that can't exceed warp 1 any more, I don't think I need much more than that."

"It'll be fun," Griff insisted.

"It's not even a major museum. If you want to see old stuff, why don't we go to the Museum of Federation History in Paris?"

"Because the Phoenix is in Montana." Icheb studied her for a moment. "If we go to the museum on Saturday, we can still go to Paris on Sunday."

She couldn't come up with a decent objection to that, and so here she was, wandering the aisles of a building filled with obsolete mechanical stuff from the twenty-first century. The building wasn't big, but it was crammed with old engines and engine parts and even cut-open sections of rockets. Rockets!

They were wandering on their own, although an elderly docent in a maroon vest had offered to show them around. The boys wanted to take everything in at their own pace. The place was arranged so that Phoenix itself was the culmination of the tour, with everything that Sloan and Cochrane did to develop the warp engine on display first. Griff and Icheb seemed determined to linger over every last little bit of scrap metal that was on display.

For five minutes, the boys stood in front of a two-meter cut-away section of some kind of torpedo. Five minutes. Naomi knew, because she timed them. Finally she said, "Uh, guys? Can we step it up? The Phoenix is waiting."

"Yeah, just a minute," Griff said without looking at her. He pointed to something in the rocket. "But they were still trying hypergolic fuel. See? That has to be the missing chamber."

"Icheb?"

"I thought they had switched to solid propellants," Icheb said.

Naomi frowned. "I'm going to faint now."

"I thought so, too, but how else do you explain-"

"Oh, never mind," Naomi said. Clearly, neither Icheb nor Griff were listening to her. And clearly, they weren't going to cooperate with her plan to move briskly through the exhibits. She shook her head and continued down the aisle.

An arched opening appeared suddenly on her right. It was unmarked and so small she almost missed it, and the room beyond was so dimly lit that she couldn't tell what it held. Still, it was open to the public. Curious, she turned and wandered inside.

The only light in the room was at the back wall. A banner stretched across it, deep blue with gold lettering. "Earth First Reaches for the Stars, 1957 - 2007," it read. Beneath it, something that looked like a cargo barrel made of thin metal sat on a pedestal, illuminated from below. A placard identified it as "Gemini Capsule." Darkened console screens waited for activation along another wall

Naomi frowned. She wasn't the least bit interested in that period. Early warp era was bad enough, but pre-warp space travel was too primitive to be relevant. Maybe an engineering historian-type would be interested, but she preferred the more complex technologies.

As she turned to go, she noticed that one wall was still in shadows. There was something on it, or more precisely, several somethings, but she couldn't tell what they were. Pictures? Wall monitors? Curiosity got the better of her, and she walked over.

She was only a meter from the wall before something finally activated. In the center of the wall, a large panel suddenly lit and became visible. In flowing golden letters, she read, "We know they did not safely return to Earth. We pray they made it safely home."

She had barely finished reading when the wall in front of her suddenly became alive. Beside the panel, a large portrait suddenly appeared, showing a woman with curling brown hair and a warm smile. Beneath the picture, the words "I touch the future, I teach," appeared, only to be replaced by "Christa McAuliffe, 1948-1986. Crew of the Space Shuttle Challenger."

The McAuliffe portrait faded, and another appeared on the other side. Another woman, wearing an orange flight suit. "Kalpana Chawla, 1961-2003. Crew of the Shuttle Columbia."

Then another face appeared, that of a young man trying to look older than his years. "Valentin Bondarenko. 1947 1961. Soviet 'Sochi Six' Cosmonaut. Test Chamber."

"Ah," said someone standing behind her, and Naomi jumped, startled. "Computer, pause display. I see you've found the Heroes' Wall."

Turning, Naomi saw she had been joined by the docent they had dismissed earlier. She was almost exactly the same height as Naomi, although her hunched shoulders gave the impression that she had once been taller. "We don't get many cadets wandering in here," the woman went on. "It's not very glamorous."

"It's hard to find," Naomi said. "I almost missed it."

The old woman nodded. "I know. It's just a small corner of history. In the grand scheme of things, fifty years is nothing. And yet " She turned around slowly, her arms taking in the entire room.. "In 1957, humankind had never left the planet. The steam engine had been around for only a hundred and fifty years or so, the combustion engine a little less than a century, and flight had been achieved exactly fifty-four years earlier. Walk around this room and consider everything they accomplished in just fifty years."

Naomi smiled, and touched the patch on her uniform. "Ex astris, scientia." It was the motto of Starfleet Academy,

"*From* the stars, knowledge." The docent regarded her soberly. "But back then, back when all this was new, the motto was 'Ad astra per aspera.' * To* the stars, through our endeavors." She paused, then added, "That's what this room is about - the endeavors that let us get to the stars in the first place. And that wall is about the people who paid the ultimate price to get us there."

"They died?" Naomi asked, turning back to the wall. It was still paused on the portrait of Valentin Bondarenko.

"Yes. This young man he was just 24 years old died when he was trapped in a fire in a test chamber. Although he himself never made it into space, his colleagues did--because of what was learned from his death.." The docent looked thoughtfully at the picture. "Each of them died in the active service of their space program. Some died on the ground, some overhead, but each of them died for the same reason they were reaching for the stars."

Then she gently touched the patch on Naomi's sleeve. "And because they did, you wear this motto without a second thought. You know, I think that would please them."

"They were three brave people," Naomi said quietly.

"Oh, my dear. There were more than three. Computer, resume display."

As Naomi turned, the image of Bondarenko faded and was replaced by an older, dark-haired man. "Virgil 'Gus' Grissom 1926-1967. Mercury 2. Gemini 3. Apollo 1."

One after another, the pictures appeared, then faded away. Michael Smith. Judith Resnick. William McCool. Viktor Patsayev. Francis Scobee. Roger Chaffee. Ronald McNair. Georgi Dobrovolsky. Laurel Clark.

Each name was associated with a mission. Apollo 1. Soyuz 1. Challenger. Soyuz 11. Columbia.

And still the pictures came. Edward White. Ellison Onizuka. Michael Anderson. Vladislav Volkov. David Brown. Gregory Jarvis. Vladamir Komarov. Rick Husband. Ilan Ramon.

The last image faded away, as did the central panel. After a moment's darkness, a final panel appeared in the center of the wall, with nothing but words.

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds -- and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of -- wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence.
Hov'ring there, I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long, delirious burning blue,
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew.
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untresspassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
RCAF Flight-Lieutenant John Gillespie Magee Jr. (1922-1941).

The words faded slowly, turning a soft gold before disappearing. It was only when she stood alone in the shadows that Naomi realized there were tears running down her cheeks. She wiped them away, and turned to speck to the docent, but discovered she was alone.

She looked around, but there was no sign of the docent. The room was again dark and still.

After a moment, Naomi walked through the archway back into the main room. Icheb and Griff had made it exactly one exhibit further than when she had left them. "Hey, guys," she called. "Come on down here."

"What did you find?" Griff asked, with a teasing grin. "The head?"

She shook her head. "No. It's it's something I think you should see. Something to remember."



-Written on February 1-2, 2002 and dedicated to the memory of the men and women of the Space Shuttle Columbia -