Vessel

by Lisa A. Nichols

  “You bet.” Cal kept smiling, and kept the worry off his face. I hope I will.

  * * *

  Mission Control buzzed with activity as Aaron and Cal entered the last planned hold of the countdown. Once the clock started again, if all went well, in nine minutes the ship would launch, and the Sagittarius II mission would be underway. Cal tried to focus on his job, tried not to think about how his friends were sitting on top of a giant explosive device, and that this was the biggest moment of his career so far. He’d never sat in one of the flight-controller desks in Mission Control before, and here he was, at the Flight Activities Officer desk, a few minutes away from his first launch. He focused on the display in front of him, determined to do this right.

  “Two, stand by for go/no go.” Catherine’s voice came through his headset. She was seated next to Aaron at the CAPCOM desk.

  “Roger, Houston, standing by.” Commander Duffy was terse, no doubt focused on the next nine minutes.

  Cal hadn’t argued against using her as CAPCOM for the launch. But he didn’t like it, and from the tension he felt radiating against his back, it seemed she wasn’t exactly at ease either.

  “Attention Sagittarius II flight controllers.” Aaron sounded as calm as ever, but then this wasn’t his first launch. “Give me a go/no go for launch . . . FIDO?”

  “Go,” the flight dynamics officer replied.

  “RENDEZVOUS?”

  “Go.”

  Cal listened to the check, his heart in his throat. If they passed this check, the only thing that would stop the launch now would be a major emergency. This was the last real hurdle to clear.

  “FAO?” Aaron’s voice in his ear.

  If Cal said “no go” the countdown would remain stopped. He could stall things. Maybe halt them. But despite his reservations, despite everything he’d been worried about, he had no real proof. Aaron had shown him that much. Cal had no real other option. “Go.”

  “PAYLOAD?”

  “We’re a go.”

  Aaron cycled through the entire Mission Control team, finally reaching Catherine. “CAPCOM?”

  “Go.”

  Did she have some of the same doubts he did? Cal wondered. She didn’t seem to be at one hundred percent these days. Her skin was sallow and she had dark circles under her eyes. She sat slumped over her desk, her lips drawn in a tight frown.

  “Launch Control, this is Houston,” Aaron said. “We are go for launch.”

  “Roger, Houston!”

  Launch Control took over, going through their own checks. Cal kept his focus on the displays in front of him, looking for any sign of trouble. From the intercom overhead, he could hear the public affairs officer, sometimes called the Voice of NASA, continuing the countdown for the benefit of the observers gathered around the complex. Each time a launch position was called, Cal couldn’t help the small hope that someone would call a no go, but no one did.

  “Start the clock,” Aaron said.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, we are nine minutes and counting,” the PAO said as the clock started.

  At T-5 minutes, Launch Control armed the rockets that would carry Sagittarius away from Earth and activated the auxiliary power. Cal could barely breathe, certain his heart was loud enough for the flight controller next to him to hear.

  At T-2 minutes, the crew closed their visors and sealed up their suits. Cal felt as if he might throw up.

  At T-31 seconds, the launch autosequencer started. Everything was out of his hands at this point. Normally that would be maddening, but right now things were so far out of his hands that even he was able to let go. Cal felt a strange, sudden sense of calm.

  At T-15 seconds, the PAO started counting down over the intercom. Cal felt as if he were floating, weightless in space himself.

  “. . . Ten, nine, eight, seven, six. Ignition sequence starts. Three, two, one. Ignition.”

  Then the calm broke and the tension in the room heightened. Eighteen flight controllers and Aaron, not to mention the world watching outside, held their breath as the rockets under Sagittarius bloomed orange and the massive launch structure began to separate, allowing Sagittarius to leave the ground.

  “The clock is running,” Commander Duffy confirmed.

  “We have liftoff!” the PAO told the crowd outside, and Cal could hear faint cheering over the Launch Control comm loop. No one in Mission Control was celebrating, not yet. They still had work to do, but they did allow themselves the luxury of glancing around and exchanging smiles. Cal grinned at Aaron, and then Catherine smiled at him, wary but friendly.

  Cal couldn’t bring himself to smile back. He now had six years of anxious waiting to get through before his crew came back safely, and he still didn’t trust that Catherine had told him everything he needed to know to bring them home.

  19

  “I SAW YOU on TV talking about the launch. You looked great, Mom.”

  Aimee and Catherine were putting away groceries in Catherine’s new apartment. It was small and dim compared to the bright, airy house she’d left behind in Clear Lake, but, Catherine told herself, it was all hers. And it was in the complex Aimee had picked out for her, close to David’s house. It was odd how easy it was to think of it as David’s and not hers already. Aimee had come over for the weekend, ostensibly to help Catherine unpack and get organized, but Catherine got the feeling that her daughter was checking up on her.

  That was fair enough. Catherine would have been worried, too.

  “Thanks.” She smiled faintly as she tried to figure out which tiny cabinet should serve as a pantry. “Paul finally managed to talk me into it, so now I’m NASA’s go-to for all things Sagittarius these days.”

  “That’s good, though, right?” Aimee was on her knees on the tile floor, rearranging the refrigerator, what little there was in it. If Aimee noticed the many bottles of wine in the fridge and cupboard, she didn’t comment. Catherine had finally figured out the exact amount of alcohol it took throughout the day to maintain the silence in her head. It wasn’t as much as she feared, and she was able to keep from actively drinking during working hours. She hadn’t heard Tom’s voice since the launch.

  “Yeah. Yeah, it’s a good thing.” NASA was pretty much all she had these days. Cal Morganson hadn’t confronted her directly again. But there was still that strange moment after the launch, when he just stared at her instead of smiling. He didn’t talk to her afterward, either, as the flight controllers offered each other congratulations. She got the feeling that while he wasn’t actively antagonistic toward her anymore, he was still keeping a close watch on her. “How are things going for your big move?”

  “It’s okay.” She grinned up at Catherine. “You know me, I have lists on top of lists and then a list of all my lists. You’re still planning to come help me move in, right?”

  “Of course. I wouldn’t miss it for anything.”

  Aimee was quiet for a few minutes and then asked, “Even if Dad comes, too?” She stood and dusted off her knees.

  “Of course.” Catherine sensed something behind that, some bigger topic of conversation, and she wasn’t sure she was ready for that just yet.

  “Mom, are you two ever going to talk to each other again?”

  She and David hadn’t spoken much, beyond what was required for joint parenting and for occasionally working together. “So what classes are you taking this fall?” Catherine deflected.

  Aimee sighed but went along with the new subject. “Yeah. Calculus, for sure. It’s probably going to kick my ass, but I need it as a prereq for pretty much everything.”

  “Didn’t you take AP Calculus in high school? Why do you have to take it again?”

  Aimee gathered up the empty grocery bags. “This is more advanced stuff. I actually got to skip a couple of the intro classes thanks to my AP credits.”

  “Well . . . there’re tutors, right? Don’t forget to ask for help if you need it.”

  “You’re one to talk.”

  There was a chill in those wor
ds, and Catherine stopped rummaging through the pile of take-out menus she’d already collected and looked at Aimee more closely. “What do you mean?”

  “Dad.” Aimee closed the refrigerator door with more force than necessary, and Catherine could see the tension rippling through her as she fought to hold back. “Don’t think I didn’t notice you dodging my question. Did you ask for any sort of help at all to fix things with him? Do you ever ask for help?”

  “Aims . . . I don’t know if I’m ready to talk about this yet.”

  “You can’t avoid it forever.”

  “I’m not avoiding it. It’s just— none of this has been easy, with the launch, and your grandma, and then moving—”

  “Just tell me this.” Aimee angrily shoved the paper bags into the recycling bin. “Did you even try? You guys were fine! We were a family! One little fight and you just walk out on us again?”

  Ready or not, it looked like they were having this conversation right now. Catherine leaned her hip against the kitchen counter and folded her arms. “Honey, your dad and I . . . we did try. But we were apart for almost ten years, and . . . in that time, we both changed. Your father moved on.”

  “But you were married for almost twenty years!” Aimee’s hurt was written all over her face, and it broke Catherine’s heart.

  “I know, sweetheart. But we spent half of that time apart.” Catherine hated like hell that Aimee was learning that loving someone wasn’t always enough to make a relationship work.

  “So, you just gave up on us.”

  “Aimee. Aimee, no, I will never, ever give up on you. No matter what happens between your father and me, you are my daughter and I will always be here for you.”

  “Sure, the way you’ve always been here. Except for that one time, for nine years.” Aimee walked out of the kitchen and Catherine followed her.

  “Aimee—”

  “You and Dad are both adults, and if the two of you can’t fix a relationship after being apart for so long, how am I supposed to be able to? How am I ever going to be able to trust that you’re really my mom again?”

  Catherine paused in the kitchen doorway, searching for the answer. “It’s . . . it’s a different relationship, Aimee. I’m always going to be your mom.” It was a weak answer, but it was all she had.

  “You know, this is supposed to be the most exciting time of my life. I’m going to college! It’s scary and fun and everything’s new—and instead of focusing on that, I’m stuck dealing with this shit.” Aimee crossed her arms over her chest. “I don’t know why I came here. You don’t need me.”

  “I’m not supposed to need you!” Catherine snapped. “That’s not how this works!”

  “You don’t need anybody. You never have, have you?”

  Aimee was parroting David’s words back to her. Had he been talking to her about Catherine? “Did you hear that from your father?”

  “No! Mom, I’m not a child anymore. I can see things for myself.”

  “That’s not fair—”

  “Why did you come home if you were just going to leave again? It was easier when you were dead. Why didn’t you just die?”

  Catherine smacked Aimee across the face. It was like watching it from outside herself, watching her hand fly up and back and not being able to stop it.

  Aimee stared at her with wide eyes for a moment, and Catherine stared back, the stinging of her hand and the red mark on Aimee’s cheek the only evidence of what had happened.

  “Aimee—”

  “I’m going home.” Aimee snatched up her purse and headed for the door.

  “Please, no, wait—” Catherine reached for her and Aimee whirled.

  “Don’t touch me.”

  For a frightened moment, Catherine didn’t know the girl in front of her, and thought she might strike back. Aimee turned and left without another word, leaving Catherine to stare at the closed apartment door.

  Oh God, what have I done?

  She sank onto the couch, horrified at herself, at her loss of control. At the way she’d hurt the one person she was trying not to hurt. David. I have to call him.

  She scrambled for her cell phone and dialed David’s number. It went straight to voice mail, and she realized he was probably already talking to Aimee. “David, it’s Catherine. Aimee and I had a fight; she’s coming over there now. Please take care of her. And . . . and if she’ll listen, please tell her how sorry I am.” She hung up, too ashamed to tell him what she’d done.

  You’re just terrible at relationships in general, aren’t you?

  Catherine froze. Tom. “Leave me alone!”

  I mean, I thought it was just me, but no. Now I see it wasn’t me at all. It was you, Catherine. It’s always been you. You’re the fuckup.

  Without thinking, she found herself in the kitchen, grabbing a glass and the open bottle of chardonnay in the refrigerator. She filled the glass and went back to the battered secondhand couch in the living room, her hand flexing against the fading sting. One glass helped a bit. Two, and she felt a little more in control of herself. By the time she’d finished the bottle and started a second one, Tom was quiet, dinner forgotten, and she’d ignored three phone calls. As she stared blankly at some sitcom on her tiny television, there was nothing in her mind but a soft, blissful hum.

  20

  AFTER THE FIGHT with Aimee, Catherine stopped sleeping almost entirely. The wine wasn’t always enough to keep the nightmares and Tom’s voice at bay.

  She stayed up and watched bad TV, drinking until she either passed out on the couch or fell asleep from sheer exhaustion. Sleep brought an increasingly unpleasant selection of dreams: slapping Aimee; Aimee telling everyone at her funeral she was glad Catherine was dead; killing the entire crew of Sagittarius I, laughing the entire time.

  Last night, she’d dreamed about Tom. He was sitting on one of the acceleration couches on board Sagittarius. He was dead, his eyes filmed over, his skin pale and faintly green. There were burns down one side of his face.

  When he turned to look at her, the burns glinted in the light.

  “It’s always been your fault,” he whispered. “Why did you leave us all to die?”

  “I didn’t mean to,” she whispered, stricken.

  “You should have let me out.” He stood up and reached for her. “You should have died with us.”

  Catherine jerked awake before he touched her, and stared blindly up at her ceiling until it was time to go to work.

  The hours she spent at JSC were a special form of hell. She’d managed to keep her drinking confined to her off-hours, sometimes sneaking a glass or two of wine with lunch. But as time went on, that stopped working. She started hearing Tom’s voice again, yelling for her to let him out, accusing her of leaving him to die.

  Maybe it was inevitable that one morning she filled her travel mug with something other than coffee. Wine wasn’t concentrated enough to get her through the day in an easily portable form, so she filled it with vodka instead.

  She promised herself she’d drink it only if she absolutely needed it.

  It was a rough day. Her office was too quiet. With the launch well past, there wasn’t anything to help her keep focused. By noon, the mug was half-empty. Catherine idly sorted and cleaned out her email inbox, feeling the pleasant, warm glow of the vodka. She should drink this more often at home. It felt so much more soothing than the wine.

  The fuzzy, blank feeling was interrupted by her phone buzzing to remind her of a mission-status meeting for Sag II staff. Shit, shit, shit. How could she have forgotten it?

  She stood up, and things stayed relatively steady. All right. She could do this. It shouldn’t be a long meeting. She could just sit in the back and sneak out when it was over. And stop drinking for the afternoon, Cath. Seriously.

  The huge conference room was crowded with all the engineers, admin staff—everyone with a hand in Sagittarius II at all. David would be around here somewhere. His department had worked on some of the communications systems. Catherine
ducked down in her seat to avoid seeing him.

  Aaron Llewellyn entered and went to the portable lectern at the front of the room. Stragglers found seats, and Catherine put her most attentive face on.

  “All right, I’ll try to keep this brief,” Aaron said into the mic. “Everything is A-okay with the crew. They’re on schedule to hit their planned arrival at ERB Prime.”

  A small cheer went around the room. Aaron went on, checking in with various department heads. Catherine fought to stay awake.

  She started when she heard her name. “As some of you may not have heard,” Aaron was saying, “Catherine has been our expert spokesperson for Sagittarius II, and has already made several media appearances to try to make the mission more relatable to the general public.” He smiled at her, and Catherine had a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach. “I hate to put you on the spot like this, but why don’t you give us a quick rundown of how it’s going?”

  This was like that old nightmare of showing up at school naked. Oh God, she was much too drunk for this. What the hell had she been thinking? She stood and dropped her forgotten notebook, scrambling to pick it up as one of the AV techs handed her a mic. Everyone swiveled to look at her.

  “Um. Good. It’s going good.” Was she slurring? She tried speaking very carefully. “After the— Right after the launch the major networks all wanted news—I mean, they wanted interviews. More information. It’s slowed down. Wo-once the ship reaches the bridge, it’ll get busy again.” Catherine couldn’t judge how well she was doing from anyone’s face. Couldn’t tell if she’d faked her way through it or not. Had she said enough? That was probably enough. She handed the mic back to the tech and sat down, her face on fire.

  “Uh, thank you for the update,” Aaron said with a frown, and Catherine realized she’d blown it.

  She spent the rest of the meeting swallowed up with dread, the anxiety making her more sober by the minute. When the meeting ended, she fled to the refuge of her office. The travel mug sat on her desk, mocking her.

  Later that afternoon she got the knock on her door she’d been expecting since the meeting.