Gemini: A Story of Brothers

Bedard Gemini

For Matt,

Run like hell.

Chapter 1: Reunion

Going home the long way wasn’t the plan.

The time it had taken me to reach the wormhole from Earth and then Io from the wormhole had felt like forever, and that had only been a couple of days at the most. Now we were talking five months. Two to get to Mars and another three to get back home.

At least it was sort of working in my favour. I’d always wanted to try a gravitational assist, or slingshot maneuver as some people liked to call it. It hadn’t been easy since…well, how the hell would I know exactly how to do the slingshot maneuver with Io? I was lucky to manage it at all or that we were even on the right side to cut the entire thing in half, let alone get it right the first time, but I guess at one point or another, advanced math actually becomes useful in life. Really, I was just thankful for how far space technology had come by the time this whole thing happened. If it had been thirty years ago and the shuttle wasn’t running on a Galileo-style engine, I’d be an old man be the time I made it back home.

Okay, I’d actually be twenty-seven, but you get it, right?

Once I’d gotten the shuttle far enough from Io, Cody finally woke up. He coughed a little bit, letting the sulfur dioxide from his helmet leak escape his lungs before he took in a few well-deserved heaves of oxygen.

Hey, sport. I said. You feelin’ alright?

Wha…Tom?

I couldn’t really blame him for not looking ecstatic to see me. We weren’t on bad terms or anything, but thanks to that last big fight I’d had with my parents, I hadn’t seen any of them in over a year. That wasn’t to say I hadn’t stayed in contact with him. We sent e-mails back and forth whenever we could, kind of helped by the fact that he was just as interested in my work as I was.

Well, as interested in my work as I was until I got booted out for several reasons. Impulsive, irresponsible, a danger to himself and his crewmates were the three I remembered most. Tell you the truth, everything would’ve been fine had I not wandered off the last time I was on the Moon, stumbled over a huge rock and cracked my visor. To be fair, though, that was probably the scariest thing that had ever happened to me at that point. Had my co-pilots not gotten the lander going and grabbed me, I probably would have been dead in a matter of minutes.

That had really been all Carlie needed to get the agency to suspend me for three years at the most, and when you’re an astronaut like me and you’re stuck on Earth and not even allowed to think about your job, you need to take up alcoholism to avoid going completely insane…really. Not joking. Earth is that boring.

How did you… Cody started, but coughed one more time and lost his train of thought. Never mind…where are we?

About two months from Mars. I said. And just for the record, you’re never going to space again.

I expected him to put up a fight, and he did, but it was almost like he agreed with me to some extent. Nearly losing one’s life to something one loves has that effect, I suppose.

Says you.

Yeah, says me. The guy who busted his ass flying through a wormhole to pick his little brother up off of freakin’ Io. Talk to Carlie. She’ll tell you the same thing.

Carlie. The reason I was even out of the agency to begin with, and also the reason I was able to get back in on such short notice. I don’t want to sound sour when talking about her, but life is harsh and so was she at some pretty inconvenient times, and she clearly felt the need to beat me over the head with it when her face flickered onto the monitor.

Tom. Status report. Do you have Cody?

He’s here. He’s a bit dazed, but he’ll be alright.

She nodded, and I could see her breathe a sigh of relief. I expected as much. The most irritating thing she’d ever said to me was that she cared more about Cody’s safety than I did.

Okay, good. she said. I’ll be sure to let the higher-ups know. They’re trying to cover up sending you alone to handle it.

Carlie had originally arranged for me to take a few other astronauts along to hopefully make things smoother, but the agency wasn’t willing to waste a ton of money on a rescue mission for a single missing person. Granted, that had been their fault in the first place, but that was beside the point.

Anyway, she said. Get back to the wormhole as fast as you can.

Uhh…funny story about that.

You missed it, didn’t you?

The wormhole that brought me here (and just so happened to be the reason Cody was this far from home) was Plan A for the return, but lo and behold. It had been steadily breaking down over the few days it took me to reach it from Earth and get through it. By the time I landed on Io and got Cody out, it had faded away as though it were never there at all. Where did it come from? Why had it lasted just long enough to go and dash my hopes of getting home faster?

The powers that be decided to have a laugh, I suppose. It is kind of ironic that I’m a theist and a scientist (to some extent), but one could accurately claim I believe in a god only when it’s convenient for me. Now was not one of those times.

Carlie turned her attention from me and smiled at Cody. I really couldn’t believe I was getting jealous of my younger brother at that moment, but there it was and here I was starting to regret being desperate for female attention a little while back.

Hey, Cody. How’re you doing?

Well…not sure I’m ever gonna go back to space again, but other than that, fine.

Carlie laughed and so did I, but I could tell he was serious. It wasn’t just him submitting to me, either. This had hands-down been the worst few weeks of his life, and the further he got from the source, the better. About that time, the control manager slid into view with a smile on his face.

Our man of the hour? he asked.

Yeah, Owen. said Carlie. This is Cody.

Good to meet you, Cody. I’m Owen Uldrin. I manage the control center…and, uh, for the sake of full disclosure, I advised against your brother being the one to get out there and save you. Feel free to like me a little less. He already does.

Cody shot me a look that everybody always gave me. It was the kind of look that made assumptions based on the fact that I was 6’2" and almost two hundred pounds. Being a scientist apparently didn’t prevent people from thinking I might have been a high school bully.

He didn’t stick you in the jaw, did he? Cody asked. Last time somebody told him he couldn’t go somewhere, he just about knocked the guy’s teeth out.

Nah. He still made time to threaten me, though.

I sighed. So it was a tag team now, was it? I guess I could give him credit for handing me a chance to apologize to him since I’d been wanting to after thinking it over.

Uhh…listen, Owen, about that…

Don’t worry about it. Familial concerns do that kind of thing to people. he said before he looked back at Cody with a strong show of interest. But to business. Cody, this is mainly so we can take necessary precautions for any future voyages, but could you tell me exactly what happened to you?

We sat back as interested as could be as he let it all out. Granted, we got no definitive answers as to what really happened, not like he’d have any, but hey. At least now we knew him getting stranded on Io was 75% his own fault. The other 25%? Everybody else for letting him go there in the first place.

We were getting out in a hurry because of these earthquakes that were going on. The other astronauts said it was because one of the volcanoes was about to go off and we didn’t wanna get caught in the blast radius. I went to the cargo hold to make sure it was secure, but I forgot to tell them where I was going, and then the ship started shaking and…well, y’know.

I see. And we narrowed the possible causes of the cargo hold’s separation to an EMP. You know what that is, right?

An electromagnetic pulse. Yeah, I’m familiar with them. But if it was an EMP, wouldn’t the entire rocket have shut down? I’m no expert, but that can’t be all there is to it. And it wouldn’t have torn a big chunk off of the ship, anyway, right?

Owen smiled like he’d just won the lottery, and so did I.

Kid knows his stuff. You’re on the right track. An EMP wouldn’t shut the rocket down. Tamper with it and maybe even cause a brief engine failure, but it otherwise wouldn’t do a lot to it. We really thought of everything when designing the shuttles.

Except losing the cargo hold with someone still inside, apparently. I muttered.

You. Carlie sighed. Zip it.

Cody and Owen laughed while I groaned in disgust. What was it with Carlie and making me look like a tool every three seconds? My anger was short-lived when Cody looked like he’d thought of something crazy. Looking up, his tongue pressed to his cheek, his forehead wrinkled. I’d seen it enough times to know what it meant, and it looked like Owen had the general gist of it, too.

What’s wrong, Cody? he asked.

You guys probably know more about this stuff than me, but…y’know, the wormhole, the EMP. Where’s an EMP supposed to come from on Io?

You’re thinking they’re both deliberate sabotage?

Cody shrugged. I guess even he thought it was ridiculous, but Owen had his hand raised to his mouth and his eyes full of curiosity.

You might be on to something there, Cody. he said. First off, yeah. Where’s an EMP supposed to come from on Io? And judging from one expertly removed piece of a top-of-the-line shuttle…yeah, deliberate sabotage wouldn’t be that bad of a theory. Who’s to say there isn’t life out there wanting to establish contact with us?

Carlie sighed with the trademark snarky look that she usually reserved for me (a condescending half-smile with a raised eyebrow) and said "Or your inner Star Wars fanboy has his talking head on.". I guess I wasn’t that special anymore, but at least I now wasn’t the only one to receive her special brand of scorn. Owen scratched at the back of his head, making the same conclusion that I did and deciding retaliation wasn’t worth it.

Well…yeah. Yeah, maybe…listen, I gotta check on some things. Tom, can you do a basic checkup on Cody and make sure he’s doing alright? We’ll see you when you get back.

Time for my sweet yet subtle revenge.

When or if?

When. What’s with the sudden self-doubt?

Hey, you haven’t exactly had a lot of faith in me, so…

Just do the damn checkup, please.

I smirked while Carlie shot me the trademark look and Owen walked off-screen. It was childish, but worth it just for those few seconds. I flicked out a flashlight and got Cody to follow it with his eyes, then grabbed a cuff to check his blood pressure, then tapped him on the back and listened for any possible fluid buildup in his lungs. He coughed again, this time sounding