Chapter 6:

Manufacturing Malfunction

The day of the mission came, and everything was set to proceed. Several crewmen dressed Marvelous in the various layers of his suit. He smiled and waved at Jake Jenkins who was undergoing the same preparations, should Marvelous be incapacitated at the last second. Jake Jenkins scowled and turned away, pretending to make necessary adjustments.

Aboard the craft, NASA ran Marvelous through the various system checks he’d memorized over the previous weeks. He sat, repeating his instructions back to command, flipping switches, tapping lights, and getting more and more nervous.

All systems go.

Countdown.

Launch.

Marvelous launched, flew, and landed on Lucifer 6 without a problem, exactly as planned. Not that it was nearly so quick. It took hours and hours, filled with tedium, occasional napping, and the dark wonder of space. But nothing deviated from the planned course as Nathan repeatedly noted readings of the various instruments back to command. There were no alarms, no strange unaccounted noises. Instead, everything went as expected.

Upon landing, Nathan set about his tasks. He checked and rechecked the various systems of the lander making sure nothing had failed on the long, boring flight. There was one malfunction of note: something was wrong with the network of external cameras. It was a programming problem, command was sure, but they had not identified the bug, and until they were able to locate the problem and write a quick patch, command was blind to the outside world.

Unable to do anything about the cameras, Nathan turned his attention to the bombs, readying the TIMs, discerning the routes and positions plotted by NASA for their dispersal—all while drinking Tang. He had to say, even a couple hundred thousand miles from Earth, Tang was nearly undrinkable.

Two short hours later, Nathan pulled the lone spacesuit over his body and exited the lander for the first time. Immediately, he checked the tether that held the ship to the asteroid. It wouldn’t do to have his craft drift into space while he was gone. The tether was secure.

Marvelous slid his feet along the rock, making sure not to bounce as he stepped, making sure all movement sent him along the surface of the asteroid and not soaring above it. If he walked normally, he might hop twenty, thirty feet up. If that should happen, he might not manage a landing. Then he might skip across the asteroid, and quite likely, off it. He did not want to go flying off into space, and so he made sure his steps were short and calculated.

The asteroid itself was a curious thing, elongated with two bulbous ends. Nathan thought it looked like Mr. Peanut, except no limbs, spectacle, or top hat. Even the craters dotting its surface looked like the pocked shell of a peanut; smooth and seemingly uniform. He thought it odd that a massive unshelled peanut threatened to end life as we know it. Who would have thought?

There were only two ways in which Lucifer 6 did not resemble the famous southern legume. First, it was not the requisite dunnish color, but a mix of grays and reds. Second, there was a canyon at one end as if notched with a giant blade, as if someone took a giant axe to Mr. Peanut’s head. But then, perhaps, that’s why he wore the top hat.

The canyon was not actually that large, except in respect to the size of the overall asteroid. The canyon was perhaps a hundred feet deep, but for an asteroid no more than three miles in circumference; this was a pretty big cut.

Nathan wondered at the canyon. What could create that? He had no idea. Neither did NASA. Should he finish his mission ahead of schedule, they’d ask him to explore it. However, he must first ensure the proper installation of the TIMs.

The size of the rock was a bit disappointing. Nathan had expected a mountain, something the size of Rainier or Pikes Peak at least, but Lucifer 6 was not nearly that great. It was about the size of Hyde Park joined with a neat waist to Kensington Gardens. Considering all the destruction it threatened to spill over the Old World, it didn’t seem very big at all. It was quite beguiling that such a small thing could cause so much damage.

“Pan left please,” command said. “Pan left—other left, please.”

He was on this peanut only two hours and his newfound sense of purpose was already asleep from lack of stimulation. The incessant voices in his ear wore him out. Command would not stop talking. Since all the external cameras had failed, they were asking him for visuals on everything. He must have stared at half a dozen craters as voices mumbled unendingly, “Interesting... interesting...” Despite their continuous affirmations, Marvelous did not find this interesting in the least.

Also, because of the vast distance between himself and command, he had to move very slowly to compensate for a lag in communications. All of his actions were deliberate and cumbersome, and seemed to lack any sort of progress. Marvelous never had any time to complete anything before command was demanding another report, another pan of his location, always adding, “Interesting... interesting…” Marvelous was inevitably distracted from his task while attempting to diagnose how successful he was in attempting the task in the first place. This vicious little spiral was siphoning all of Nathan’s spirit, and he could not see the asteroid for all the dust and rock that Houston found so fascinating. What did he see? What was he doing? Could he simply pan right, please. A little further... Right there, thank you. Oh, sorry, can you bring it a smidgen back to the left?... Nathan realized he’d never reach point B at the rate things were going, much less half the remaining distance. If only they could fix the external cameras. “How goes it with the software patch?” Nathan asked.

In the background, he heard someone yell, “It’s completely fuckered! God dammit, Costanza! What the fuck did you do?!”

A kind and patient voice of the operator cleared its throat, and simply said, “We’re working on it…”

Nathan would receive no relief from that quarter. The orders continued. It took thirteen or fourteen hours of incessant chatter before Nathan simply couldn’t stand it anymore. The voices were too much to bear. There were two things Marvelous figured he could do. One was beg command to please be quiet, just for a moment—which might actually work—for a moment. There was precedent, both for command shutting up, and for the silence being incredibly quick.

The other possibility was to destroy the communications itself. Command would be pissed if they found he did it on purpose—not that Nathan cared too much about that. He was on an asteroid just the other side of the moon’s orbit. It’s not like they’d drive here and scold him for it. Still, it would save him no end of trouble when he got home if command believed whatever happened to his camera was some sort of terrible accident...

For several minutes, Nathan thought about it—which in retrospect, wasn’t nearly enough time to consider the true nature of his dilemma—yet, considering the unending chatter, it was all the time he could bare. In the end, Marvelous literally threw himself into his solution, tripping over a convenient outcropping and smashing his helmet camera on the face of the asteroid. He found this to be the best available action, since he couldn’t simply ignore command any longer.

Nathan’s aim was true, and the camera crunched, totaled on impact. Command saw the ground rush forward, and then, nothing. The screens fuzzed for a split second before going black. Miraculously, the radio survived—sort of. Marvelous didn’t have to listen to command blather on and on about the possible elemental composition of Lucifer 6 anymore. Instead, he got electronic screeching with command ever-so-slight in the background.

Needless to say, this was not an improvement.

The subject matter at command had changed from light spectrum analysis to hysteria and religion. They were in full panic, and Marvelous was almost amused to hear one scientist shouting, “Oh my God! Oh my God!” But that wasn’t all Nathan heard. The speakers were unparalleled in quality, top of the line, nice and loud, as they screeched in high fidelity, “EiaieiaiaieieiEeiEIeAieieieaiaeeie!!”

This banshee yell, this death cry of modern technology, caused Nathan to cringe in pain and brought tears to his eyes. Nathan thought he could discern the individual sirens as they wailed away, driving him to madness, as he thought to himself, so this is what Odysseus suffered.

In an attempt to end this, Nathan kneeled on Lucifer 6 and smashed his helmet into the ground: once, twice, four, five times. With each crunch the sound changed, receding, increasing, changing pitch and quality until, finally there was a dead silence. He smashed the helmet three more times for good measure.

For several seconds, his ears continued to ring.

Nathan Marvelous breathed deep. He could hear himself breathing. The screaming was gone, and with it, the banal instructions and insipid status reports. There was nothing but Nathan, the rock, and the sound of his own breathing. There were no voices from the doomed blue world below.

Nathan sighed, contentedly. The status lights were all green except the ones that labeled, “communications”. Both “audio” and “video” were red.

Marvelous looked about the strange rock and listened to the tiny clicks of regulators in his suit. The Earth rose above him, blue and white and so very, very small. The Moon stared at him, taking up a good part of the night sky, though it was mostly dark. There was only a thin nail of light as he stared at the dark side of the Moon. Now that was interesting—even though he couldn’t really see it.

After a little time to himself, Nathan returned to the lander to report that all was okay.

“What happened?” Command demanded.

“I got tangled in a cable,” Nathan lied, showing the damage to his helmet.

“You’re lucky you didn’t break the face plate,” Command told him.

“Yes, quite lucky,” Nathan smiled. “Well, I guess I better get back to my work,” Nathan stated as he put his helmet back on. Rather pleased with himself, Nathan left the lander.

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