Second Honeymoon

But if the claim that Nathaniel was depressed in those days must be viewed with some skepticism, so too must the later claims that he was possessed of a new burning vision, that he believed he had found the key to mankind's ultimate destiny. If a fire was burning inside him, the only warmth that escaped to merit the attention of his friends and colleagues was the kind of quiet warm glow that comes from being well-fed and well-loved. He seemed happy, contented, and decidedly unambitious, at this late stage of his career.

If a date can be selected when things began to change, it would probably have to be a chilly Tuesday in October, 2007, when he chanced to read, in the latest issue of Scientific American, an excruciatingly detailed and painful review of the utter failure of his colleagues at NASA, over the last few decades, to produce a coherent plan for long-term human habitation of space. "Beyond the Blue Bottle" -- a title that used the astronauts' derisive nickname to refer to NASA's first and only financially profitable venture, a cramped but exclusive luxury hotel in space -- painted a stark picture of the enormous roadblock that stood between Man and the stars.

"Long term studies of the Soviet astronauts who spent so long in space during the 70's and 80's leave little cause for optimism. Muscle tissue that deteriorated during orbit never fully recovered, and the extent of permanent damage appears directly correlated to the duration of the astronauts' stay in space. Worse still, each month in space appears to approximately double one's lifetime cancer risk, presumably due to the relatively unshielded exposure to solar radiation. The more man has learned about the effects of space travel, the more we have come to realize that man will probably never be able to live permanently outside the fragile protective boundaries of the Earth. Robots may some day mine raw materials from the asteroids, and newlyweds will no doubt continue to spend brief and expensive vacations watching the sun set again and again from NASA's orbiting hotel, but the serious colonization of space seems today a less likely prospect than it did even when the idea of a manned landing on the moon was regarded as a silly fiction."

It was a pessimistic article, to be sure, but for the most part it was simply a lucid review, for the general scientific reader, of facts with which the NASA scientists were all too familiar. But for some reason, it seems to have struck a nerve with Nathaniel. His copy of the magazine, now a part of the Smithsonian collection in Washington, appears to have been read repeatedly, creased from being carried numerous times in his pocket, with the remnants of at least three separate meals detectable in a microscopic analysis of its paper. Somehow, that relatively non-technical article sparked in Nathaniel's mind one of those inscrutable chains of reasoning that brings new ideas out of the juxtaposition of old ones, that brings innovation, hope, and confusion where previously there was only grim certainty. In short, that magazine appears to have given Nathaniel an idea.

Or rather, it appears to have been one factor among many. Certainly the slow unwinding of his biological clock, the growing symptoms of advancing middle age, and the burgeoning awareness of the inevitable indignity of growing old must have played a role as well. It is surely no coincidence that the article resonated in Nathaniel's brain less than a year after his youngest child graduated from college, and as the thirtieth anniversary of his marriage approached. It is the time of life when a man may well come to feel that he can either settle down to a routine that will last approximately until his death, or he can strike out boldly, restructuring his life wildly in the attempt, if not to forestall the end, at least to try to ensure that his dying thought would not be one of regret.

Whatever the cause, it is known that the first tangible action in the chain of events that was to be so long remembered was taken a month after the Scientific American article appeared, when Nathaniel told his secretary that he was going to the moon.

"Morgan, we'll need two seats for a weekend in the Blue Bottle," he told her with a smile. "No, better make it two week nights, it'll be cheaper but just as good." And as she stared at him, incredulous at this apparently whimsical departure from routine and common sense alike, he winked jovially and said, in a stage whisper, "please don't tell my wife. It's a second honeymoon trip, for our thirtieth anniversary, and I want it to be a surprise."

The secretary's surprise was understandable, given the cost of such a journey in the early years of the twenty-first century. The two tickets, even traveling economy class during non-peak times, cost the equivalent of three years' salary for even a high-level bureaucrat like Nathaniel. And, as it later turned out, he had to sell everything he owned, even down to his wife's stamp collection, to raise the money. He cashed in his life insurance, took a lump sum payment in lieu of his retirement pension, and, in the last few days before the trip, even borrowed the last fifteen thousand dollars from a bank that was unaware of how he had disposed of his various other assets. But in the end, the tickets were paid for, and the two of them boarded the Ariane IX shuttle right on schedule on June 24, 2008, their thirtieth anniversary.

Most of the details of the hijacking are well-known to every school child. Everyone knows, for example, how Nathaniel gained control of the shuttle using the empty threat of activating a non-existent "Trojan horse" program in the life-support software on the space hotel. It was so startling to see a senior NASA scientist trying to hijack a spaceship that it would have been hard not to believe that he could have planned and planted such a software weapon years before. So, too, everyone knows how careful Nathaniel and Trina were to see that noone would be hurt, that all the passengers were left safely in the hotel where they could be picked up a few days later by the next shuttle. And who was alive back then who could forget the ecstatic statement Nathaniel read, a few days later, to a stunned television audience on Earth?

"People of Earth," Nathaniel began, "we mean you no harm by our actions. We deeply regret the theft of the shuttle, and we promise that it will be returned eventually. For now, however, we must make real a dream we hope will someday be shared by millions of those who come after us.

"We are leaving you, for now. You are helpless to bring us back, but we are nonetheless at your mercy. Should you so decide, you could easily shoot us down with your Earth-based weapons. Moreover, without assistance from you, we will starve to death in approximately six months. We are prepared to die up here, but we would rather seek an arrangement that will be of great mutual benefit.

"You have been told that space is not for human habitation. This is not true. Space is not, it is true, the Garden of Eden. Many of us who choose to live here will die of cancer, but some will survive. Those who stay for too long will never have the muscular strength to walk on Earth again, but some will not much want to. The lesson of the first few years of the space age is not, as many have claimed, that man must remain on Earth. The lesson is that he must choose. Those who remain will remain, and those who leave must be prepared never to return to Earth's ungrateful and unforgiving gravity.

"Trina and I will remain in space until we die. During the time that remains to us, we will explore, together, the untold wonders of our solar system. We will gladly send back, to you who remain, all of the data we collect in our explorations. Whether our journey lasts a few months or a few years is entirely in your hands; we have left ourselves at your mercy. If you see fit to send us occasional supply rockets (I have calculated that once a year would suffice, if carefully packed), we will be your eyes and ears in space for decades to come. Or, you can let us starve. The choice is yours. We beg for your mercy and assistance."

For the more than two decades that followed, Nathaniel and Trina lived a quiet life together, arguing occasionally as the cramped quarters and weightlessness worsened Trina's claustrophobia and Nathaniel's bouts of dizziness. Mostly, though, they lived the fabled life of happy peasants, poor in material things but free of the busy schedule and endless demands that clutter the lives of the well-to-do. True to their word, they sent back data that kept Earthbound scientists happy for years to come. They even managed to send back some samples of Saturn's rings in one of the used supply rockets, which arched lazily on a seventy-year journey back to Earth, the fastest the few remaining cups of fuel could move it along.

But though the data they sent back were invaluable, far more important to the future of Earth was the way they caught the imagination of the people they left behind. Within a decade, the United Nations had set up a sanctioned program by which a few lucky couples (those with extremely stable personality profiles, no dependent children, and a host of other qualifications) could someday hope to move permanently into space themselves. New ships were designed specifically for the purpose, with nearly self-sufficient ecosystems that could go seven or eight years without being resupplied. And even among those who stayed, the genial old couple in the sky were an eternal source of discussion, humor, and even inspiration.

As the years went by, the couple gathered less and less data, and functioned instead as the unofficial artists-in-residence of the cosmos. Nathaniel's poetry, bad though it was by any technical standard, was read all over the planet by Earthlings eager to share his view of the infinite cosmos. Using his programming skills, which were less imaginary than his poetic genius, Nathaniel built for Trina a suite of holographic drawing software that allowed her to use the navigational computer to compose haunting stylized paintings of their serene and solitary universe.

They were beyond Pluto, at least a decade's travel away even from their nearest spacefaring companions, when the first symptoms became apparent. Predictably, Trina minimized her condition until very near the end, but they both knew what was happening. Twenty-four years in space had taken their toll, and the progress of the cancer was swift and certain.

Not long before her seventy-sixth birthday, they both knew the end was approaching. For once in her life, Trina was suddenly filled with regrets. "I don't want to leave you alone," she said quietly. "We should never have come. I can't bear to think of you all alone out here."

"You know I won't be," Nathaniel told her quietly, opening the first aid kit and removing from it the two tablets he had packed with grim certainty so many years ago. Before she could protest, he swallowed one of them, and offered the other to her.

"Well, you're not going anywhere without me," she said weakly as she swallowed it.

Nathaniel kissed her gently, and then helped her on with her space suit. "Where are we going?" asked Trina. "I didn't think we had any pressing social engagements." But Nathaniel said nothing as he set the automatic pilot to return the ship to Earth for reuse, and then led Trina out the airlock and into the void.

They floated arm in arm through their space suits as Nathaniel carefully aimed the reaction jet and set them gently drifting in the direction of Earth. He timed the jet's thrust precisely, then let it drift away from them. "The last computer program I ever wrote was the one to calculate that thrust," he explained. "If it worked right, our great-great-grandchildren should see us as falling stars on our hundredth anniversary."

Trina smiled, but was silent, searching for words. "Maybe we did wrong," she finally said. "If we'd stayed on Earth, you'd finally be free now to chase those pretty young blondes you were always staring at."

"And such a prize I'd be, too, at seventy-six," he laughed. Then, after a pause: "It was worth anything, just not to have to go on without you," he replied.

They were silent for a long time, the numberless stars bright and inscrutable all around them. Trina was so still, so quiet, that Nathaniel thought she had gone without him after all, but at last she spoke. "I wish we had made love one last time," she said.

Nathaniel looked at the spaceship, now only faintly visible in the distance as it sped past them to reach Earth long before their own lifeless bodies would arrive. Beyond it, he imagined he could tell which of the many points of light was the home they would never see again. On it, he knew, were thousands of couples in love, dreaming of the kind of life he and Trina had shown them.

"We never stopped," he told her, holding her so tightly that she could feel it even through five layers of kelvar fabric. "We never stopped."