In Ascension by Martin MacInnes

Author:Martin MacInnes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atlantic Books

THREE

We were about to begin the first of the animal trials, feeding the primary algal strain to rats in China Lake. The plan from there, assuming there were no ill-effects, no abnormal behaviours or signs of diminishing health, was to escalate it, first by applying higher doses, then by moving onto larger mammals: rhesus monkeys, beagles, ultimately chimpanzees. The process couldn’t be rushed: experimental foods had to be trialled for at least a year before we could consider human consumption. It was a pivotal moment, one we’d been working towards from my first day at China Lake, and as it happened I wasn’t going to be there to oversee it.

In retrospect, this was probably for the best. I would have been a wreck, watching on impatiently as a crucial new phase began, one in which I had absolutely no control. Instead, after signing off on the algae cuttings, securing them in storage and leaving firm instructions to Lin and James, I rushed to make my flight to Texas. A full year into training, I was finally going to work with a replica of the ship, practising and performing programmed manoeuvres with my crewmates.

Given everything I’d experienced so far, everything that had led me indirectly to ICORS and the mission, it should have been no surprise that this new phase of training took place underwater. The neutral buoyancy pool was over 200 feet long, 100 feet wide, 40 feet deep. In Texas, I averaged significantly more time underwater than I ever had on Endeavour. I examined my red skin in the hotel bathroom at night, my hands ancient, bloated and insensate. I imagined time was accelerating, that I was ageing prematurely, that as my mother regressed in our childhood home I was possessed of an age and experience I could scarcely conceive of. For this whole unreal period – two blurry months underwater – various prohibitions were in place: we weren’t allowed to drive, to handle knives, to drink from glasses. We were ushered carefully out of the pool after sixteen hours straight, checked by the doctors, questioned by our nutritionists, then driven to our rooms exhausted.

At this stage our suits were standard wet-wear, nothing like the full EVAs that Amy’s team would later fit us with, descendants of the bodysuits we had worn on Endeavour, developed from high-altitude pressure suits and scubas. Wherever I went, whatever I did, it seemed Endeavour was pursuing me. It was reassuring to think that Amy guided it, that the suit we’d transition to later in training went back through her to the days we’d spent in the mid-Atlantic.

Gradually the drowned cabin became more elaborate, until we were swimming through a full-scale ship replica. We were given bigger suits with helmets, and for twelve to sixteen hours daily we crawled through the narrow spaces of the simulated spacecraft, spinning and pirouetting and trying to accommodate in our imagination not just the ship, not just the bulky EVAs, but our altered skin and bone. I confounded the engineers by perfecting exits, beating Tyler by seventeen seconds.

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