Chapter 1

In the softly spreading shiny warmth of the morning sun of southern Greece, she saw the size of the men and women decrease while the distance increased.

Jennifer looked at her wristwatch and saw that it was 7:10AM. Only ten minutes had passed since the last time she’d looked at her watch.

Irritated by the fact that she had had to wake up atleast an hour earlier than her usual time in order to be at the jogging track and carry out the assessment assignment, she questioned the discipline of the trainees being woken up so early.

     Silently berating herself for losing her focus from the task at hand, she directed her complete attention to the jogging men and women who would one day graduate to become sparrow class astronauts. Jennifer saw the trainee ahead of all in the group of half a dozen people, stare intently for a few beats at where she was standing by the waist high white railing which ran along the jogging track, a four digit serial number starting with the alphabet ‘B’ was printed in large and bold lettering in black colour on his light blue t-shirt. Jennifer quickly found the corresponding number under ‘B’s on the assessment sheet clipped on her black clipboard. ‘Jonathan Boyd’, she read to herself. One situation where actually paper was still being used was the thought that erupted in her head. She stared back at Mr.Boyd wondering what he was looking at. It was then she realised that the trainees were aware that they were being assessed and wondered if any trainee had ever tried to butter up an assessor. Shaking her head she focussed again at the jogging figures trying to read their body language. A tall female trainee, moved ahead of Jonathan Boyd, he looked alarmed at the sudden loss of his lead and quickened his pace to regain the top position. Once back in top position on the track, he glanced back at the trainee who had overtaken him with a look of intense irritation on his face and then gritting his teeth, he increased his jogging pace. ‘Aggressively competitive and check for possible gender prejudice’, noted Jennifer on the assessment sheet. Pondering what this particular ostrich class astronaut wanted, she chuckled at the vernacular of the place. She wondered who had thought of the slang term. Ostriches, Ostrich class astronauts. She had learned why the term ostriches had been given to the trainees since just like ostriches were incapable of flying the trainees also would never leave the surface of the planet.

Jennifer shifted her weight from one foot to the other, exhaled at length and went back to looking at the trainees and jotting notes on the sheet.

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In another part of the sprawling USO headquarters complex, Rahul Gupta woke at sharp 7:15 am annoyed from the incessant beeping of his wrist watch. He stared at the blank ceiling idly for a minute, then sat up on the bed. He looked at his electronic timekeeper kept on the side table, which had stopped its noisy pleas to wake up its owner. 7:16:39am the ever rushing bold black digits proclaimed. Aware that his new job began from today, he hurriedly did a few exercises of his neck and shoulders while sitting on the bed, and then pushed himself towards the bathroom in the modestly furnished three bedroom apartment allotted to him which he shared with two more bachelors.

Just a little over an hour later, he was eating breakfast in the main cafeteria. He marvelled at the place and turned in his seat to look all around. A huge number of technicians were milling about, trainees were gulping down their food hurriedly as if they had been kept hungry for ages, and the seasoned astronauts were sitting in a relaxed manner. The trainees huddled in one part of the cafeteria, giving sneaky looks at their seniors. Their seniors, from time to time, glanced at them with slight condescension. Rahul observed that they tended to stick to their kind, then congratulated himself inwardly at making to this one of a kind place on the planet.

He looked at the huge murals on the high walls, which were of amazing feats accomplished by the human race. The huge logo of the United Space Organisation, the coming together of many nations for space exploration, the first manned landing on Mars, the first manned landings on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, the first Unity space ship, and the logos of the astronaut ranks.

One side of the cafeteria had fixed glass panes from the floor to double the height of an average door, through which were visible sprawling grassy green gardens with wide stone pathways for pedestrians, with a scattering of tall trees which were swaying lightly in the gentle breeze, and in the distance, the soaring multi-storey apartment buildings in which a large part of the USO staff were given residences. For a moment Rahul tried to focus and recognise the balcony of his apartment, but smirked at his own silliness knowing that the apartments were a good 5 minutes walk away, and they all had a light brown sandstone facade which made singling out a particular apartment almost impossible.

 He thought of his ironic situation where even though he was going to work in the organisation which had become the de-facto agency of the entire world for all space exploration and all astronautical matters, he himself would never leave the confines of Earth’s gravity, except only as a tourist on a highly structured and draconically monitored short duration space flight and that too in a low earth orbit.

He was shaken out of his reverie by a soft tap on his shoulder. He jerked his head around and saw that a woman was staring at him.

“Is that seat occupied?”, she asked pointing with her tray to the seat opposite him.

Rahul just stared, dumbfounded at the sudden intrusion.

“Huh?” he said. “No, it isn’t. I mean, it’s free, you can…”.

The woman had already reached the empty chair. “Thanks,” she said quickly.

Rahul blinked and then coyly looked at the table for a second. He looked at her. She was definitely of Indian origin with big dark brown eyes, shiny jet black hair, but her complexion was quite fair. She was wolfing down the contents of her crammed tray with such great gusto that she did not notice his eyeing of her. He saw the USO identity badge clipped on her shirt and tried to read her name from it.

All of a sudden she saw his ogling. “Do you want something,” she mumbled, and immediately choked, her mouth being full of diced apple. Rahul was almost out of his chair, but she held up her hand. “I am ok,” she sputtered.

“Here, you need this,” said Rahul, offering his glass of water across the plain dull white table.

“Thanks,” she said and gulped it down.

Both looked at each other for a second. “You are new here, I’m guessing,” said Rahul.

She nodded. He saw that she was now staring at his own ID badge which he kept clipped to his shirt pocket. “Which department?” she asked.

“Control and Command Technician,” said Rahul. He had left out the ‘Junior Assistant’ part.

“Oh, computers, electronics, and communications,” she said.

“And you?” he asked.

“Psychological Assessment and Monitoring”.

“Hi,” said Rahul, extending his hand across the table. “I am Rahul Gupta," he said.

She gently shook his outstretched hand. “Hi, I am Jennifer Patel, Assistant Psychological Analyst.”

“So you decide who goes up and who stays here.”

Jennifer gave a small laugh. “Not really, I am just one of the analysts, and I am still an intern. Just been here for three months.”

“Longer than my time then,” replied Rahul. “Been here for only two months and two weeks. The training ended last Saturday and my job officially starts today.”

“Can I ask, where exactly will you be working?”

“Centralised Operations Control Centre,” he said proudly.

“Oh! The COCC, so you will be seeing who is doing what up there,” she said enthusiastically.  

“Hardly,” he replied. “I am just one of the many techs, and I am just an assistant tech. Why do you ask specifically?”

“There are just so many technicians here. And there are so many departments that they work in”, said Jennifer, “even in the training department, there are loads of technicians, like those working with the space simulations. There must be a few hundred alone on the space ship orientation and familiarization team. The trainees always feel as if hundreds of eyes are watching their every breath, makes some of them terribly edgy”.

Rahul laughed. “Now you are really exaggerating.”

“No, I am not”, she said and shook her head.

“Well,” he said, “haven’t you heard that in a movie, we see only the actors but never the large teams behind them. The astros are like those actors. The public at large does not realise just how many people are behind every single astro and behind each mission.”

“Astros and not astronauts”, she said with grin, “you have picked up the lingo of the USO quickly”.

“Hey”, he replied, looking slightly offended, “that’s what everyone calls them”.

“I am just joking”, she replied, “Yeah, I guess you are right, it really is a big team effort”. “Just look around, it’s incredible. So many nationalities, so much diversity”.

Both of them turned in their seats and gazed at the mass of humanity assembled around them in the colossal cafeteria, which by now was overflowing. The lines for taking food from the multiple serving counters were growing longer by the second and there were many people standing holding laden trays and were looking impatiently all around for an empty seat. There was a soaring din in the huge room, with all the astros, trainees, and technicians chatting within their respective groups. The scene looked more like a carefree college campus rather than a large organisation which was engaged in very serious matters of space.

“It’s so ethnically diverse, this crowd,” said Jennifer.

“It’s so big,” said Rahul.

“Everything about this place makes you feel a part of something that is just so… big,” he said.

“Yeah, it’s immense. Humans like to do such things, its part of the human psyche”, she said, “This place emits a sense of belonging. Humans need it,”

He looked at her quizzically.

“It’s the psychologist in me,” she sighed.

“So do big places like this have to make a make short-form of every phrase”, Rahul asked jokingly.

Just then the alarm of his wristwatch beeped. He saw that the time was 8:30am.

“Time to go?” asked Jennifer, “the cock, wow”, she pronounced the short-form of the C.O.C.C. teasingly.

“Yes, I better,” he said, suddenly looking afraid.

“What happened, are you ok?” she asked seeing his face.

A very annoyed looking man had approached their table. “I have been looking all over for you Mr. Gupta,” he hissed. “We are supposed to be in the C.O.C.C. in fifteen minutes and we have to walk till there, you know how big this place is.”

“Yes I know,” said Rahul. “This is my training buddy, Mike Liang,” he introduced him to Jennifer.

She looked at the newcomer. He had a US accent and was clearly of oriental origin. She tried to judge whether he was Chinese or Korean or Vietnamese. She immediately scolded herself silently on her compulsiveness of trying to assess everyone she met and took a deep breath.   

“We have to go now,” Mike said irritably, “have you forgotten that today is our first day?”

Rahul wordlessly got up from the table, “Nice to meet you,” he said over his shoulder as the duo briskly walked away.

“It was nice to meet…” replied Jennifer, but they were already lost in the multi-ethnic crowd.

The hubbub of the room engulfing her, she gazed thoughtfully at the crowd. She marvelled at the diverse crowd which contained people from all continents and of numerous nationalities. ‘Russians, Americans, Brazilians, Indians…South Indians’, she grinned as a dark brown complexioned wirily built man passed by her. Awed by the fact that men and women from far and wide were all working together with harmony and understanding, her attention was swept away by the emotion. Suddenly a shrill voice rang out, “It’s time to be in office Jennifer, no day dreaming”, she quickly looked at her wristwatch remembering that it was her own voice alarm, and immediately got up shaking her head at her own silly reveries, then dumped her tray which was full of used wrappers and napkins in the nearest bin, and headed out of the cafeteria.

Chapter 2

            At the same time, at a distance of over a billion and two hundred million kilometres from Earth, Thomas looked out of the window. From his vantage point through the window of Unity 3, he looked at the extravagant, heavenly vista spread before him. Countless stars, unblinking, in varied colours, just for him. He felt like a god gazing thoughtfully upon his creations.

     A soft chime broke his reverie. He looked at his wrist watch and kicked gently on the floor. He loved floating in the zero gravity environment, he had loved it the first time as a trainee and his fondness for the sensation had grown with the passage of time.

     It occurred to him as he floated towards the middle of the crew chambers of the nearly jumbo jet airplane sized spaceship that the time for his complete freedom was going to come soon.

He glanced at the slightly misted windows of the hibernation capsules as he floated past them, the sleeping faces of the crew were visible fuzzily through the square window fixed in each of the cylinders and the thin swirling mist inside. How they revered him, Thomas William Basset, captain of the Unity 3 space ship, and the preferred choice for promotion to the Albatross class. Warmth dawned in him as he knew that once he achieved the highest rank, he would truly become his own master and would not have to take orders from anyone anymore. From his breast pocket he took out a gold chain with a small pendant, which he always carried with him and gazed lovingly at the small photo lodged in the oval shaped gold pendant. The photo was of his deceased wife Marilyn. Lovingly he gazed at the photo, and thought if only she had been alive he would have convinced her to come along with him. Ruefully he put the pendant back in his pocket and floated away to the cargo section.

Half an hour later, Thomas was back in the cockpit of Unity 3, and had started the reverse hibernation procedure, jokingly called the wake-up call. He looked at the nine hibernation capsules on the right wall of the crew chambers, from which four other crew members and five visiting astronauts were going to wake-up from their sleep of close to two and a half months. Many times, the visitors weren’t astros per-se. They were scientists, many of them with mind boggling PhDs and super-specialties with expertise in the numerous sub-fields of astronomy and of many other sciences. Many a times, the ship carried engineers and technicians, and occasionally observers or assessors specially assigned by the various administration and management councils of the USO for specific tasks.

     Thomas pondered over the point that out of the five visitors which he was carrying, only one had shown the suitability for... “beep…programmed hibernation restoring in 45 seconds…beep”, a sharp automated voice and beeping broke his chain of thoughts, he turned and looked at the control panel built into the wall besides the hibernation capsules, which was studded with a few buttons and a large cell phone like touch screen, where half the screen was flashing bright orange. In one swift move he swivelled his chair around and kicked on the floor, reaching the flashing screen and quickly punching the ‘manual override’ button, the shrill beeping ended and he saw the satisfactory output on the luminescent screen.

     He calculated mentally that it was going to take them nearly three hours to wake up, and then practically another hour for complete biological stability and normalization. He smiled to himself at the perfect timing of his own waking up done beforehand and the tasks executed by him with finesse. With alacrity, he floated back to the pilot’s seat. Settling himself back into the seat he saw the well lit interiors of his beloved ship. With all the separating curtains withdrawn he could see part of the maroon coloured hatch of the cargo section which was unlike the other round hatches on the ship and was almost the size of a standard door but had rounded edges. The maroon hatch stood out against the mostly lacklustre white interior of the spaceship. Thomas quickly set a new alarm for two and a half hours later on his ultra-tough touch screen wrist watch, then without looking at the heavenly view which the windows presented, he focussed his entire attention at one of the many luminescent screens in front of him and settled in to read the what he had procured three months ago from Earth.