Rubbing her forehead, Kamilah’s smile faded. “I’m more worried about this history of Parker’s. That did not come up in any of the medical meetings.”
“He was acquitted. None of the women would testify.” I dumped some of the pepper into the egg mixture, watching the black specks swirl through the yellow like sunspots. “Except me.”
She gave a low whistle. “Holy hell. Forgive me, but why the hell did they staff the two of you on the same ship?”
That, at least, I had an answer for. “We make good publicity together.”
* * *
Even in space, there is something very satisfying about setting a table. This is one of the ways that you can tell that I am my mother’s daughter. She had taken great pride in having an elegantly set table. Especially for Shabbat dinner.
In space, there was no day of rest. Letting a day go by without helping maintain the ship would put all of our lives in jeopardy, so the rabbis had ruled that Jewish astronauts were allowed to do necessary work on the Sabbath. Or at least my rabbi did. There were still debates, as I understood it.
But I did try to observe as much as I could. When my rotation came up for the kitchen, I made potato kugel. I baked challah—and let me tell you, getting the consistency right with dehydrated eggs was a challenge. I enjoyed the challenge of Shabbat in space.
Or maybe it was just that when I cooked a good meal, even Parker was nicer.
He was laughing at something that Leonard had just said in Latin. “That is my new favorite Latin sentence. ‘Utinam barbari spatium proprium tuum invadant.’”
Leonard grinned. “Mine, too!” He glanced at the rest of us. “English translation: May barbarians invade your personal space!”
Slapping his hand against the table, Parker sat forward over his plate. “Okay: this is mission critical. We need a broader range of swears for dealing with Mission Control. Help me out, here.”
“Oh, beloved MC.” Terrazas rolled his eyes and waved a forkful of radish salad. “Try this one: ‘pollas en vinagre.’ Cocks in vinegar.”
“Pickled dicks!” Parker clapped his hands, grinning. “That’s perfect.”
Across the table, Rafael leaned forward. “How about ‘Vai pentear macacos.’ Go away and comb monkeys.”
“No. No.” Kamilah pointed a piece of challah at Rafael. “That is too nice for MC. You have no idea how many blood draws I have saved you from. MC is kos omak yom el khamees.”
I had no idea what she’d said, so I glanced at Parker, who mouthed the words, and then burst out laughing.
Kamilah wrinkled her nose and translated for the rest of us. “Your mother’s vagina on Thursday.”
“You have a wicked mouth.”
“Said the girl to the soldier.” Kamilah winked, and the room filled with laughter, like life-giving oxygen.
Wiping his eyes with his napkin, Parker turned to me. “How about it, York? Got something Yiddish for me?”
“For you? Or for Mission Control?”
“Whichever is more blistering.” He grinned, and I think it was even sincere. “So, something for me.”
I laughed and tapped my finger against my lips to think for a second. Truly, I didn’t really speak Yiddish—or, at least, I only had a child’s grasp of it from talking to my grandmother. “How about this … ‘Ale tseyn zoln dir aroysfaln, nor eyner zol dir blaybn af tsonveytik.’”
Parker’s eyes widened. “Say that again? Slower?”
“Ale tseyn zoln dir aroysfaln…” I waited until he nodded, eyes intent like he was docking at Lunetta. “Nor eyner zol dir blaybn af tsonveytik.”
“I … I don’t know any of those words.” He pushed his chair back. “Terrazas. Change seats with me.”
Laughing, Terrazas pushed his chair back and grabbed his plate as he stood. “What happened to mission critical?”
“There is a language I don’t know, man. Must conquer.” Parker raised his hands, fingers curled together like a wizard summoning a demon. “Must! Conquer!”
Sweat started crawling down the back of my neck. Parker had done this before, where he’d seemed nice only to smack me down later. I mean, not about language, but other moments where he seemed like he was over his hatred for me, only to have the bitterness jump back up.
I wiped my hands on my napkin as Parker rounded the table and plopped into the chair that Terrazas had vacated. He was smiling like a kid with a new toy. “What does it mean?”
“May all your teeth fall out, except one to give you a toothache.”
“Oh, that’s good … Give it to me again? Slow as you can.”
I enunciated each word, pausing between them. “Ale tseyn zoln dir aroysfaln, nor eyner zol dir blaybn af tsonveytik.”
Parker mouthed the words along with me almost as if he were tasting them. “Tseyn … Tsonveytik. Tooth and toothache?”
I shouldn’t have been surprised. “Exactly so.”
“Show-off!” Leonard wadded up his napkin and tossed it at Parker. It bounced off his head and landed on the table.
“I got two words! That’s it.” Parker snatched up the napkin and threw it back. “Supprime tuum stultiloquium!”
The main speakers crackled and all movement in the room stopped. “Niña 1, Kansas.”
Parker jumped out of his chair and ran to the microphone built into the wall. “Kansas, Niña 1. Go ahead.”
Mission Control could always use the systemwide ship speakers, but to date they had only done it for tests of the system. In sims, it meant something had gone wrong. I pushed my chair back and started grabbing dishes from the table. If we had to do any hard maneuvering, everything needed to be secured.
Five seconds later, Mission Control’s response made it to us from Earth. Malouf’s voice was as calm as if he were discussing what a pleasant day it was for a picnic. “Niña 1, there’s a report of a fire on the Pinta.”
SIXTEEN
ANNOUNCER: The American Broadcasting Company presents Headline Edition with Taylor Grant. November 9th, 1962.
GRANT: Today marks the fifth anniversary of the founding of the United Nations lunar colony. From a temporary outpost with six inhabitants to a thriving small town of three hundred people, the Artemis Base represents a combined global effort. To commemorate the occasion, the inhabitants have created a memorial rock garden, the centerpiece of which is a glass obelisk inscribed with the date and time of the Meteor’s strike nearly ten years ago.
Before Mission Control got to the second part of the sentence, the entire crew was already in motion. To look at us, it would seem to be nothing more than an orderly cleanup of dinner, as we slid into the roles we had rehearsed in various sims before departure. Fire was a constant concern in space. To keep costs down and to make EVAs easier, the ships ran at 4.9 psi with a 70 percent oxygen atmosphere to deliver the necessary partial pressure of O2 to the lungs. But it meant that fires burned hotter and faster than if we had an Earth normal atmosphere with 21 percent O2.
So those simple words, “report of a fire” meant a disaster.
“Prepare for possible rendezvous. Crew report to these stations: Terrazas and Avelino to BusyBee to prep for evac procedures. Shamoun to medical bay in case of incoming wounded. York and Parker to the CM.”
“Kansas, confirmed. All crew is going to positions now.” We were already in motion by the time Parker turned from the wall. I had my foot on the bottom of the ladder leading up to the spindle.
The weird thing is that my heart rate had dropped from when Parker was quizzing me about Yiddish. A fire was bad, but it was a problem I could work. He wasn’t.
Leonard said, “You want us in medical or the hangar?”
Below me, Parker shook his head, even as he grabbed the ladder up to the spindle. “You and Grey secure the kitchen. I don’t want anything floating around if we have to maneuver. York, don’t make me push you up this ladder.”
I scrambled away from the centrifugal force until I could start to fly. As my weight dropped away, I kicked upward, stre
tching out my arms to slap against a rung above me and push even higher. Emerging in the spindle, I grabbed a guide rail to change my vector. Behind me, Parker popped out of the ladder tube, and the two of us flew up the spindle to the CM like superheroes in one of Hershel’s comic books.
As soon as we swung in, Parker slapped the switch so we could listen to the Pinta’s comm. Benkoski’s voice was steady across the void between us. “… in sleeping quarters. We’ve sealed bulkheads four and five.”
“Pinta 1, Kansas: Confirmed that bulkheads four and five are sealed. You are Go to purge oxygen.” Malouf’s tone could have belonged to an accountant discussing an audit.
I slid into my seat and leaned toward the window to spot the Pinta. The lights on her outside and the glow from her windows popped her out of the ever-present night sky. “Visual range looks about 1.5 kilometers off.”
Over the speakers, Benkoski said, “Confirmed. Beginning purge sequence. Attention, all crew, secure yourself for oxygen purge.”
With the sextant, I sighted on the line of positioning indicator lights that circled the Pinta’s girth. That angle, calculated with her known size, gave me a precise distance. “1.37 kilometers.”
“Copy. 1.37 kilometers.” Parker had strapped into the pilot’s seat and was checking his gauges. “If we have to get closer, I’m going to want to approach from ahead of them in case of any debris fields.”
“Confirmed. Plotting course, unless you want to fly seat of the pa—Whoa!” Outside my window, the Pinta vented oxygen, which crystalized into a spray of stars.
Over the speakers, DeBeer reported. “Kansas, Pinta 1. Venting completed. Indicators are reading a vacuum in the gymnasium.”
Five seconds later, Mission Control said, “Confirmed, Pinta 1. Indicators here read the same.”
Behind Malouf, very faint amid the murmur of Mission Control, I heard my husband’s voice say, “Tell them to wait for half an hour before repressurizing to make sure everything is cold. Don’t want atmosphere in there if something can reignite.”
It was like an ion particle had shot through my heart and left a blazing line between me and the Earth. The longing pressed a breath out of me.
Parker reached over and put a hand on my shoulder. He gave it a single squeeze and then returned his hand to the instrument panel. “Get those coordinates for me, okay?”
I’ve seen him do this with other people under his command, that touch, and the moment of sensitive understanding. It’s part of what makes him so frustrating, because he can clearly read people well enough to know exactly which buttons to push to get what he wants. And sometimes what he wants is to be cruel.
But right now, that touch, and the understanding that it was hard to hear Nathaniel and be unable to respond to him, was exactly what I needed to steady me. I pulled my NavComp pad out of its slot on my chair and flipped to a clean worksheet. “On it. Do you want to keep the option of docking the ships together, or just for evac purposes?”
“Evac only. We’ll—”
“Niña 1, Kansas. The emergency is contained, so you can all stand down.” Malouf sighed into his microphone. “But expect a new protocol next week about cleaning the dryer lint.”
I lifted my head from my worksheet. “You are kidding me.”
Parker laughed, shaking his head. “Who was on laundry duty this week?”
“Graeham Stewman,” Malouf said. “And he left the machine while it was running. Expect that protocol to change too. I’m surprised you couldn’t hear Ruby giving him what-for even through the vacuum.”
I grinned at the image. Ruby Donaldson, the Pinta’s medic, was at the very bottom limit of astronaut height and wore her blond hair in pigtails. It would be like having Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz tear into you. “I do not envy him.”
“Hell, no.” Parker chuckled, which marked one of the few times I’d ever made him laugh. “Tell Clemons that this is exactly why we should have put the laundry on the women’s duty roster. If you’re going to send them into space, at least take advantage of their areas of expertise.”
Right. He was an asshole. I closed my NavComp book and slid it back into the slot. “I assume that means I am Go to head back to the kitchen? Where I belong.”
Parker rolled his eyes and toggled off the mic to Mission Control. “It was a joke, York. Lighten up.”
I saluted. “Confirmed lightening up.”
As I turned to leave the CM, Parker sighed behind me. “Someday, I hope you get that stick out of your ass long enough to stop being such a bitch.”
I caught myself on the door to the CM before I could float out of it. “Me? You’re the one who keeps making belittling comments.”
“It was a joke.”
“Do you see me laughing?”
“That would require a sense of humor.” Parker unbuckled his harness. “Try it sometime, laughter. It makes everything go a lot smoother.”
“It’s easier to laugh when one isn’t the butt of the joke.”
“‘When one isn’t…’ Do you ever listen to yourself?” He shoved himself out of his seat and used the momentum to swing toward the door. “You are such a princess.”
“Lovely. Now you’re adding anti-Semitism to your repertoire.”
He caught himself on the door and turned to face me, so there was barely an armsbreadth between us. “My wife is Jewish.”
“That would carry more weight if you weren’t so clearly ashamed of her.”
His fist raised and for a moment I thought he was going to punch me. Parker was many things, but he was not violent. He set his jaw, and veins bulged at the side of his neck. “My wife is the bravest and best woman I know.”
I should have apologized, or at least backed down. I didn’t. I could blame the adrenaline still racing through my body from the emergency on Pinta—all that energy summoned up with nowhere to go. I tilted my head and met Parker’s gaze. “And yet, you keep her hidden away like something that is unclean.”
“She’s in a fucking iron lung!” Parker caught himself and then leaned in, closing the space between us. His voice was low, pitched to a razor edge of control. “I told you once that she was off-limits. Needle me on anything else your petty, little vindictive heart desires, but not her, or so help me, I will end you.”
He grabbed the sides of the doorframe and hurled himself down the length of the spindle. I floated, adrift, in the CM, staring after him as dozens of little pieces clicked into place from the years that I had known him. His ease with Hershel’s leg braces. His pain when saying that his wife had encouraged him to go. God. As difficult as the conversation that Nathaniel and I had had about the mission, what must it have been like for her? Miriam. I knew her name from the death sim.
The apology I should have offered before was right there, making me queasy with the words jammed in my throat.
An iron lung. My brother’s polio was normal for me. It had happened before I was born. Hershel wasn’t brave or inspiring because he wore braces. He was just Hershel. But … but the disease remained a specter that had haunted my childhood with an awareness that it could have been so much worse.
I followed Parker down the spindle, slower, hoping he’d have time to cool down a little before I caught up with him. Hoping I’d have time to calm down myself. Rafael and Terrazas floated up the length of it, bantering in Spanish about something.
Terrazas saw me and grinned. “I’m going to ask Parker to redistribute the duty roster to take men off laundry. For the good of the mission.”
Giving Terrazas a shove, Rafael floated in the equal and opposite direction. “I am quite capable of doing my own laundry.”
“Thank you, Rafael. I’m glad someone recognizes that anyone can do laundry, with proper training.” I twisted in the air to aim my feet toward the ladder. Grabbing the side rails, I pulled myself down until the artificial gravity caught me like water getting sucked down a bathtub.
Kamilah stood not far from the bottom of the ladder, doubled over with laughter.
Parker had his hand over his face. “Why? Why do I have this crew?”
“Why, massa. I’se done wha yew sed!” Across the spotless kitchen, Florence had folded a coffee filter and stuck it in her hair as an improvised maid’s cap. “Ain’t we done good, massa?”
Behind me, Terrazas and Rafael landed with a thump. Rafael laughed. “What?”
Leonard sat at the table, shaking his head. “I had nothing to do with this.”
“All right, Grey. What’s with the maid act?” Parker lowered his hand. “Did I insult you by having a woman do the cleanup or something? Flannery was here too.”
She dropped the mincing routine and put her hands on her hips. “And what do we have in common?”
Parker looked from Florence’s pale brown skin to Leonard’s deeper tan. “Oh, for crying out loud. You know that’s not it. You know this room had to be secured. You know the other stations were covered.”
“Yes. And I also know that Flannery is better at EVAs than Avelino or Terrazas, so ask yourself why Mission Control left both of us off the assignment list.” She snatched the coffee filter out of her hair. “Sir.”
They glared at each other for a moment longer before Parker turned to me. “York. Did you make a dessert?”
“Chocolate chess pie.” My apology would have to wait until we weren’t in a room full of people. But whatever else was going on, I was reasonably certain that we’d have heard about it if Parker had forced himself on Florence.
* * *
The code that Nathaniel and I had come up with for the teletype was fairly simple. Before and after each transmission through space, there was some garbage generated while the machines were connecting. If you wrote something that looked like garbage, then anyone on the receiving end would assume that the message simply hadn’t started yet, unless they knew what to look for.
We used a keyed Caesar, but shifted the key with each transmission, just in case. I’d played with encryption in college, but Nathaniel had gotten very interested in it during the war. As I understood it, he was a coin toss away from winding up in the intelligence department, doing encryption work during the war.
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