There's not a hollow cave or lurking-place,
No vast obscurity or misty vale,
Where bloody murder or detested rape
Can couch for fear but I will find them out;
And in their ears tell them my dreadful name--
Revenge, which makes the foul offender quake.
-- William Shakespeare
The Rape of Lucerene
Falling again.
A brief instant of light and thunder, a dreadful tumbling, and then the meteoric drop from the sky. A disembodied voice calmly reported the descent.
"All systems nominal," the man's voice said. "We are Go at breakup."
Falling, falling. Toward Kennedy this time. Toward the Space Center. Toward the marshy tidelands. Toward Pad 39A.
"We are Go for death," the voice said as levelly as any CapCom would report altitude, downrange distance, and velocity. "You are dead, Judy. You are dead, Mike. You are dead, Christa. You are dead, Ellison..."
She struggled against her chest restraints as the voice droned through the crew list. A voice behind her shouted with brave finality: "Give me your hand!"
She kicked and flailed but could not break free. The straps tore through her clothes, cut into her skin, grated against her ribs. She hung there, pressed against the restraints by the hideous deceleration.
Pad 39A grew visible in terrifying detail: the gantry, the water cannon, the dark exhaust shaft that seemed to disappear deep into the earth. She fell straight toward the darkness. It consumed her.
"You're dead, Tammy."
Her entire body spasmed into waking. The restraints still held her tightly, all but her arms. Her eyes jerked open. She struggled for breath, only to see a pair of dark eyes gazing at her a few inches away.
She flailed her arms about, but two strong hands quickly seized them to prevent her from hitting her sleeping crewmates.
"Tammy," the voice of Ludlow Woolsey whispered calmly. "You had a nightmare. Everything's all right. You're safe."
"Oh God," was all she could say for a moment. She took a deep breath and looked around. She floated inside her sleep restraint. The others still slept, suspended in their bags, arms floating halfway out from their bodies like zombies in cocoons. The sight in the semi-darkness always teased some primordial fear in her. After the dream she just had, the image did nothing to soothe her.
She gazed back at the man holding her arms. "Sorry," she whispered.
"I can't sleep either," Woolsey said, gently releasing his hold. "Is there a way to get coffee around here?"
"Sure." She undid the Velcro seals as quietly as she could and pulled herself out. Floating over to the galley, she produced two bags of coffee from a compartment and filled them with hot water from a gun-shaped injector.
"Let's drink in the flight deck," she said, "so we don't wake anyone."
Woolsey nodded and carefully followed her through the shaftway. He watched as she floated upward -- or was it sideways? or down? -- into the white plastic and metal passage. Her black hair floated around her head like a corona of lovely dark waves. Her shoulders, athletically broad and strong, accentuated the fascinating way her breasts behaved in free fall. Beneath the utilitarian blue flight suit, they moved in a manner that was not a jiggle, but more accurately a demonstration of the laws of inertia: when she kicked off a bulkhead to move forward, they shifted ever so slightly lower on her chest; when she stopped suddenly, they continued to drift, attaining a youthful high-breasted appearance. Woolsey -- despite his earlier bout of space sickness -- noted the effect from the first moment he saw her move. She was not merely the only woman for at least two hundred miles around, she was someone with whom he felt a connection going back years, back to a time that he possessed dreams of his own, dreams long abandoned to practicality.
She had followed her dreams with firm consistency and had achieved them. He longed to taste such joy, such energy, such drive.
Her slim, athletic waist disappeared into the passage, followed by her narrow hips and a pair of glutes, Woolsey noted with growing interest, that made the smooth muscular transition to thighs that only skaters and certain other physical types possessed. Even the thoracic blood-pooling that weightlessness induced could not suck the firm beauty from her legs.
"How's the stomach?" she asked when they reached the flight deck, making certain that the congressman aligned himself with the local vertical of the cockpit. Through the overhead window hung a bright blue-and-white beauty of the Pacific. Soon they would approach the terminator and pass over the night side of the world.
"I'm pretty much over the nausea," he said, floating near the pilot's seat. He eyed her with the keen gaze of a man trained to size up others. He squeezed the coffee bag and sucked on the spigot. "Lukewarm," he muttered.
Tammy shrugged. "Best we can do. Sorry."
"No problem." He let the bag float in front of him, watched it with a smile for a moment, then looked at Tammy and asked, "What sort of a nightmare were you having?"
She said nothing.
"Come on," Woolsey said. "It's just you and me, your old supervisor."
She inclined her head toward a corner of the flight deck. "You and me and Houston." A red light glowed beneath a lens. "Video monitors. I'm not sure whether they keep the mics open all the time, but I don't discuss personal matters."
"They're watching us everywhere?" he asked, looking around at several other minicams that covered every angle of view.
She nodded. "Everywhere except the toilet and shower. We insisted on that. Anyway, there may not be anyone staring at a screen every minute, but it's all being taped. The psychologists love it. And you should see the tape someone made once called Space Bloopers. They--"
"I think I saw it once. Funny stuff." Woolsey suddenly looked embarrassed. "You reminded me -- I've... had a problem with the toilet. I haven't... gone... since we got into orbit."
"You trained on the simulator, right?"
The congressman nodded.
"You don't get thirsty in Space -- are you drinking enough water?"
He nodded again. "I feel somewhat self-conscious about this. Do you think you could sort of talk me through it?"
His discomfiture seemed genuine and not a little urgent to her. "Well," she said, "I am the commander, and one of my duties, if necessary, is to assist crew members in the jettison of cargo. So let's go. Quietly."
The Space Shuttle Waste Management System cost a cool 23 million to produce and still could not overcome the problem inherent in defecation: that it is a gravity-dependent bodily function. Negative air pressure in the bowl and aftward-directed jets of air attempted to duplicate the method of separation that -- on Earth -- was easily accomplished by the 32 ft/sec² acceleration of gravity.
Space Shuttle Commander Tammy Reis floated outside the drawn curtain of the toilet imparting to The Honorable Ludlow Woolsey IV the benefit of her extensive spaceflight experience.
"Now bounce a couple of times against the seat. That helps the air jets."
From inside the cramped booth came a thumping sound.
"That's got it," he said. "Thanks."
There was a long period of silence. Tammy allowed him long enough to clean up, but when several minutes had passed, she whispered, "Lud?"
There was no answer.
She asked again and heard nothing. Hurriedly, she threw the curtain aside, which caused her legs to fly backward and her head forward into the enclosure.
She stared in shock at the congressman -- flight suit doffed and floating beside him -- holding onto the toilet seat grip with one hand and nursing an erection with the other.
"Oh, shit," she said, pulling back and reaching toward the curtain.
"No -- wait!" he whispered urgently. "Let's do it here. Out of camera range!" His hand shot out to seize Tammy's wrist. "I've always wondered what it was like in free fall. Show me everything."
"Go fuck yourself," she snarled. Bracing one leg and her free hand against the side of the toilet, she had the leverage she needed to break free of his grip. He shot to the top of the chamber and hit his head. The surprise and pain resulted in a rapid detumescence that, because his crotch drifted to Reis's eye level, was plainly obvious to her.
"I'd rather fuck you," he said, pushing toward her face. "You know I wanted to back when you were thirteen?" He grinned conspiratorially, whispering, "Actually, even when you were ten." His congressional member again swelled halfway toward full.
Until it met Tammy's backhand.
The force of her blow propelled her backward, out of the way of his crumpling body.
"Two things you learn in Space," she said, loudly enough to rouse the others. "One: Never assault the ship's commander. Two: Never assault anyone whose favorite sport is squash."
"Tammy?" Jon Franck was the first to awaken and fly to her aid.
She nodded toward the congressman balled up in the overhead of toilet clutching his groin. "Lud there has misconceptions about Shuttle etiquette."
"Houston -- we've got a problem."
Boyd floated before the flight deck communicator. In front of him and slightly below him hung Reis. Flanking her were Kayanja and Franck. They all stared with cold anger toward the videocam built into the instrument panel.
"Copy, Constitution ," crackled the voice of Dan Cunningham, CapCom at the Johnson Manned Spacecraft Center in Texas. "What's wrong?"
"This is a private conversation," Boyd said. "Please take the transmission off public feed and encrypt it."
"Roger, Constitution. One moment."
Reis glanced at Boyd. He nodded agreement.
"Ready to copy, Constitution."
Reis cleared her throat. "Get Bryan on the line please, Dan. Over."
"I'm here, Tammy." The deep voice of NASA Administrator Bryan Kirk at KSC cut through the static. "What's up?"
Jon muttered to Federico, "Nothing of Woolsey's, that's for sure."
"It's the congressman, Bryan. He's acting in a manner that jeopardizes the safety of the crew."
There was a silence of several seconds before Kirk spoke. "Can you elaborate?"
"Not at this time," Reis answered.
Federico cut in, his dark eyes glowering, his voice no less harsh despite his gentle Kenyan accent. "He tried to rape her, Bryan, all right? What sort of pig did you send up with us?"
Reis tried to interrupt. "Fred--"
Kayanja shook his head and continued to speak. "He came on to her in the toilet. She whacked him in the balls and that was the end of it. Need more detail, man?"
Another period of silence. Kirk's voice, when he responded, carried a tone of cautious dread.
"And where is the congressman now?"
"Check your monitors," Boyd said. "He's in the mid-deck. I ordered him to stay there."
"You ord--?" They heard Kirk take a deep breath and release it.
"I am shuttle pilot, Bryan. I can issue orders if the orbiter's safety or the safety of the crew is endangered."
"I know, Scott, I know. And you know that he's chairman of the Subcommittee on Space, Science and Technology."
Reis's tone grew chilly. "He wanted freefall sex, Bryan."
Another gap of silence. After several moments, Kirk said in a weary tone, "I'm going to talk to him on the mid-deck. Privately. Out."
"Roger, Bryan," Reis said, switching off the radio link. She glanced around at the other three. They all wondered about the final outcome. Whatever it would be, they knew that politicians could hold long grudges.
The next several days moved at the usual hectic pace. Kayanja and Franck deployed and tested the Space Station Unity solar cells, encountering several glitches along the way. When the panel finally extended fully from the rear of the cargo bay, though, it glittered like the great black wing of some mythical giant bird.
Boyd and Reis worked in the South American Laboratory for Space Agriculture, a hydroponic module that occupied the forward three-fourths of the shuttle cargo bay. More spacious than the flight deck and mid-deck combined, Reis found it a perfect refuge from the insanity of the previous day.
The Honorable Ludlow Woolsey IV sequestered himself on the flight deck, watching the view out the window and even participating in interviews with c-span and the networks. His demeanor gave no hint of the turmoil he had created onboard Constitution.
Night was signaled by a message from Houston after dinner. Weary from the day's effort, the crew sealed themselves up in their sky blue sleeping bags.
"Where's the ballast?" Franck asked Reis. She shrugged.
Boyd looked toward her. "He's strapped into your seat. I think he's going to sleep there tonight."
Tammy ran a hand through her drifting nebula of jet hair. "Remind me to scrub it down in the morning."