“That actually is a big concern,” Owen says. “Have we given any thought to…I don’t know, policies for getting our needs met up there?”
“Well I’m not gonna take care of you, if that’s what you’re asking,” Shepard replies. “Maybe Buzz here…”
“Jesus! Oh my God!” the less friendly brunette exclaims.
“Christ,” I say.
“I’m not asking for my own benefit!” Owen clarifies. “And if I was, no offense to Buzz, but I would want to keep it all self-service. Still, we might want to think about privacy considerations, time schedules, things of that sort.”
I can’t believe we’re talking about this. “Whatever your needs, however you want to deal with them, I just don’t want to know about it.”
“Easy there, Buzz,” Shepard laughs. “Man’s got needs, he’s just trying to make sure his needs are met. Reminds me of the story about the barrel.”
“Good Lord.” We’ve all heard the one about the barrel too many times to count, and I’m getting a little tired of his shit.
“It is something to discuss,” Owen says.
I shake my head. “I had to deal with a roommate doing that crap when I was a cadet. No shame at all. Christ, we’re not…zoo animals.”
The women snicker. “Are you sure?” the blonde asks. “Manners-wise, you seem to be aping the apes.”
“You didn’t take your shot,” Shepard suddenly notices.
“I don’t remember asking to be on the receiving end of your shots,” she says saucily. “Here, you take it. If you’re man enough.”
“Don’t mind if I do.” He hoists it. “Raise a glass, whatever it is you’re drinking.”
She lifts what looks like a gin and tonic.
“I’m sorry if I was rude, my lady,” he says. “To what shall we drink?”
“To primates.”
“To our primacy among the primates,” Shepard says, and she gives him a look. “OK, to primates.” They clink glasses; he knocks his drink back while she sips hers. “You’ll never make a monkey out of me,” he adds.
She mumbles something under her breath. Then one of the brunettes whispers in the blonde’s ear, and she grins. She leans back and smiles like she’s heard a big and beautiful and terrible secret.
“There you go,” Shepard says. “See? We can all be friends.”
“You’re right, Captain Shepard, we can be friends,” she smiles. “And we should at least send you some friendly shots as well.”
“Please, call me Al!” he grins.
Again the waitress is summoned. The more attractive brunette speaks: “We’d like some…Sambuca, maybe?”
“Sambuca?” Shepard makes a face.
“Aren’t you man enough?” she smirks. Then, to the waitress: “White Sambuca. Six shots.”
She excuses herself to go to the bathroom. And Shepard and Garriott don’t notice, but she circles around and says something to the waitress, and slips the other woman some money. As the waitress returns to our group, I am watching her with the tray, and it looks like there’s something off with some of the shots, some variation in the viscosity of the liquor, in the way they slosh when she sets the tray down.
She hands out the shotglasses somewhat more deliberately and carefully than seems normal, and meanwhile the blonde leaves, and the brunette returns, and we all do our shots, and the brunette even grabs the extra one and pounds it, and I keep my eye on the server’s tray as she brings it back to the bar.
And here I get up to go to the bathroom, and when I pass the bar, I notice on the server’s tray that she’s spilled a little from the shots, and where the spillage had mixed, it looks milky and white.
On the way to the bathroom, I see the blonde coming back.
I stop her: “Your friends weren’t doing shots of Sambuca there. The brunette was drinking…”
“We have names, you know,” she says, somewhat saucily. “I’m Heather. She’s Anne.”
“Well…Heather. Your friend Anne was drinking water.”
She gives me a little look, then a laugh. “Guilty as charged. I try not to be dishonest these days, but I don’t drink anymore, and my friends aren’t really looking to get plastered. So…a white lie.”
“A white Sambuca lie,” I smile.
She chuckles: a blessed, beautiful chuckle.
“If it mixes with water, there’s this effect where the mixture turns a little milky. I noticed it on the tray, and I knew something was up. If you want to keep it up, maybe switch to vodka.”
Here she laughs. “Wait, you’re trying to help me out here? You and your boss…”
“We have a complicated relationship.”
Another brunette walks up, one that hadn’t been in our group; she looks familiar, but I don’t recognize her at first. Heather grins and says, “Hello! I didn’t know you were here already, too!”
“Yes, we…”
As soon as I hear the accent, I know. “Wait, you’re…”
“Orianna Falacci,” the new brunette says. “Good to see you again, Buzz.”
And to Heather: “So you’re all…”
“Journalists,” she smiles. “Modern liberated women.”
I’m truly flabbergasted. “I thought you were…”
“…horny astronaut groupies?” she grins.
Here I have nothing to say.
Back at the table, Shepard’s still holding court, though somewhat more inebriatedly; he’s explaining how close he’d been to beating Gagarin, how very close, only they’d launched the monkey one last time, just to be safe.
“How goes the war, Captain?” I ask.
“These are some tough customers we’re up against here, Buzz,” he opines.
“I bet they can drink you under the table.”
“Never. We need to get some more shots in them.”
“We’re standing right here,” Anne reminds him.
“If you get any more shots in you, you’ll get shot down,” the other one chuckles.
“Never!” Shepard says defiantly. “Another round!”
“How about vodka?” I suggest.
“Yes!” the one brunette echoes. “We’d like some shots of vodka.”
“Yes! In honor of our vanquished Russian adversaries!” Shepard exclaims.
The other brunette gets up as if to talk to the waitress again; I stop her, whisper in her ear: “It’s OK. I know what’s up. I’m on your side.”
The waitress heads off for the drinks. For the benefit of the group, I say, “Oh, wait. I was gonna get a chaser.” Then I dart after her and speak in her ear: “Five shots of water, one shot of vodka, which goes to Captain Shepard. I’ll pay you for six shots. And a Schlitz.”
The waitress grins and nods at the women: “You’ve defected?”
“Just for tonight.”
She goes on her way, and returns with a tray and a beer and six shots.
I whisper in Owen’s ear: “It’s water. Just play along.”
“To the Russkies,” Shepard says. “If they hadn’t beaten us to space, we might not have beaten them to the moon.” And everyone tosses back their shots, Owen and the girls exaggerating their effect, except Heather spills hers and runs off to the restroom instead.
I follow her, as discreetly as I can manage. “You OK?” I ask.
“Yeah, sorry. I really shouldn’t be doing this. I can’t afford to go back to that life. And that all seemed a little too much like Russian roulette.”
“Except with a tray instead of a revolver chamber.” I chuckle. “You’re funny.”
“You’re married,” she observes.
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Well, it’s just…the sense I get from you…”
“It’s been tough,” I sigh. “My marriage. I don’t know where it’s going. I’m…Joan wants to see a shrink, but my dad says…with my career, I mean…but I have been…things have been stressful at home. I was drinking too much, after the moon. I’ve been cutting back.”
>
“Cutting back?” She raises an eyebrow.
“Well, special occasions excepted. I really should quit. I got back on flight status to go on this Venus-Mars thing. I figured I just needed something new to do. A reason to get out of bed in the morning. I was depressed.”
“It doesn’t help with that,” she says, with a nod down at my beer. “At least in my experience. It seems like it does, but it doesn’t. But there’s no point talking about it now.”
She pulls out a notepad.
“Oh, Jesus, are you gonna write about this?”
She laughs. “No, no, no! This is all off the record. And this is more important than work.” She writes down a telephone number. “Here. If you still want to quit tomorrow, when you’re sober, call.”
“This is your number?”
She gives a little smile/smirk. “I can’t help you, Buzz. One or both of us might have mixed motives. This is a guy I know. A really good man. He’d be glad to talk to you.”
She turns and heads for the door.
I wander back to the table. Shepard’s pretty lit.
“You were saying about a barrel?” Anne asks.
I’ve heard the one about the barrel too many times to count, but I don’t stop him. (I don’t know if I want to hear it, or if I just want to see him fuck it up. Half the fun of watching Shepard tell a joke is seeing him bust a gut laughing before he even gets the punchline out.)
“Of course.” Shepard clears his throat. “So, this guy. Goes to work in Alaska, in a mining camp, back in the gold rush days. Camp’s so small, actually, there’s only…” (Shepard chuckles, then chokes it down.) “…there’s only three other guys. No women for miles around. And this guy…” (A longer chuckle escapes.) “…this guy, he’s a regular guy, he figures he just wants to earn some money, maybe spend it on whores or whatever, or whatever, but he’s…” (Shepard snickers, and recomposes himself.) “…he realizes this camp is way the hell out there, you know? Way out in the back country. So at the end of the first workday, he goes to the old timer there, and he’s like, ‘There’s no whores or nothin’ up here?’ And the old timer’s like…” (After more chuckles, Shepard takes a break, then gets back to it.) “…the old timer’s like, ‘Nope.’ So the young guy’s like, ‘Well, what do you do for…you know…’ And, I mean, he doesn’t want to whack off, he’s been swinging a pickaxe all day, his hands are all cramped up and blistered, last thing he wants to do is use his hands for THAT. And the old timer’s like, ‘Well, for the next few weeks, you can just fuck this wooden barrel.’” (Shepard chuckles; the brunettes give a look like “Who is this guy?”) “And he points to this barrel in the middle of the camp. Regular wooden barrel, with a hole, dick-high. And the young guy’s like, ‘A barrel? That sounds like, I mean…I don’t think that’d feel all that good, I mean, there’s…you could get splinters…’” (Shepard loses it, and starts laughing uncontrollably.)
“Jesus,” I interject. “Do I have to finish this?”
“No, I can, I just…” Again, Shepard melts down laughing.
I’m not nuts about this joke, but the notion of leaving things half-done appalls me, so I pick up where he left off. “OK. So the old man, he’s like, ‘No, no, no. This thing feels better than you can imagine.’ And the young guy tries it, and it’s just…amazing. Best thing he’s ever felt.” (The brunettes look at each other with some odd combination of curiosity and disgust. But I’m drunk, and it’s too late to stop, and I think the fact that they didn’t want me to keep going makes me want to keep going.) “Next thing you know, he’s going over to the barrel first thing in the morning, he’s sneaking back to camp on lunch, he’s getting in a quick one before dinner, he’s going over there when he wakes up in the middle of the night…”
“…with a woodie…” Shepard interrupts, then bursts out laughing again.
“That’s not the point of the joke,” I respond, then continue. “He goes to the barrel when he wakes up in the middle of the night…with a woodie.” (I nod to Shepard.) “Until one Sunday, he’s headed over there just…ready to go. And the old timer stops him and says, ‘Not today.’ And the…’”
“IT’S YOUR WEEK IN THE BARREL,” Shepard blurts out, half a sentence too soon. He doubles over laughing, red in the face.
“This guy clearly needs to get a little more drunk,” I say, and to the waitress: “Another round!” The waitress gives a look; I say in her ear, drunk but too loud: “Three shots of water, two shots of vodka. And a beer chaser for me.”
I look over at the brunettes for approval; they talk amongst themselves, then announce they’re headed to the bathroom. They never come back.
The waitress deposits all the shots; I motion for her to take the waters back, but Al catches it. He grabs one of the waters, tastes it. “The hell is going on here, Buzz?”
“I can explain,” I say, which I do. And I decide to get him drunk enough that he won’t remember the explanation.
•••
I start seeing snapshots.
I know there is racing in the night: Corvettes, long stretches of flat asphalt, ripping through forests of palmetto and pine, watching the headlights vacuum up the yellow dotted roadway line, finishing cans of beer and throwing the empties straight up so they get whisked away in the slipstream.
•••
Of course, we have work to do the next day. Reviewing pad procedures, talking to techs: a day in the Florida sun. We park our personal vehicles in the lot, where the duty van will be picking us up to take us out to 39A. Owen and I actually get there a few minutes early, and stand there waiting for our fearless commander.
Al shows up on time, wearing sunglasses.
I smile. “Good morning, sunshine!”
He glowers.
“Partly sunny, partly cloudy?” Owen says hopefully.
He removes his sunglasses, glares at us with bloodshot eyes, walks past us without saying a word, gets in the van, and slams the front door so hard I’m worried he’ll get written up for damaging government property.
“Stormy,” I observe.
VENUS MISSION
PART II: FLYBY
“Good morning, Explorer. It’s Thursday, July 13th, 1972, and by the time our words reach you, it’ll be 8:00 a.m. Houston time.” Bob Crippen’s Texas-tinted voice sounds surprisingly clear over the great cold distance. “And here’s the news from planet Earth.”
Over the past few months, the capcom’s radio newscast has become a valued part of our morning, a welcome connection to home and normalcy. Barring any minor emergencies in the night, it’s the first thing we hear from them each day. Today, as usual, it reaches us mid-breakfast; we arrange ourselves around the radio as if it were a fire on the hearth at home, as if those few feet of subtracted space make any kind of difference compared to the thousands we’re adding every second.
“Robert Kennedy formally secured the Democratic nomination for president yesterday at the party’s convention in Miami, capping a long and hard-fought battle with Vice President Hubert Humphrey. Observers credit Kennedy’s win to the Johnson administration’s inability to address the economic issues facing the country, including rising unemployment and inflation, and to the continuing instability in Vietnam. Kennedy promised to fight hard into November and beyond, to fulfill what he calls ‘The Great American Promise’ for all citizens. President Johnson, who skipped the convention and has been largely absent from the campaign trail thanks to his own abysmal polling numbers, had no official statement, while Humphrey urged rank-and-file Democrats to unite around the party’s nominee as he gets ready to face off against the presumptive Republican nominee, California Governor Ronald Reagan.”
“Son of a bitch, he pulled it off,” Shepard muses as the broadcast continues.
“Meanwhile, fighting erupted yesterday in South Vietnam between Republic of Vietnam forces and what appear to be North Vietnamese Army regulars. The clashes in the country’s central highlands mark the first large-scale violence since the latest cease-fi
re went into effect in early June. Should the cease-fire collapse, it will mark the third failed truce since the Johnson Administration started peace negotiations in 1968, and the second since the final withdrawal of American combat units in 1971.”
“Shit.” I shake my head.
“And in Northern Ireland, a cease-fire between British forces and the Irish Republican Army also apparently came to an end, as six civilians were shot by British troops. This phase of the ongoing conflict is now in its third year, and hopes for a settlement are…”
“Well I’m ready for sports already,” Shepard mutters over the broadcast.
“…and in baseball,” the capcom continues, “the Royals beat the Orioles 11 to 4, the Reds topped the Pirates, 6 to 3, the Padres edged out the Expos 6 to 5, the Mets shut out the Giants 4 to 0, the Dodgers beat the Phillies 9 to 5, the Cardinals shut out the Braves 7 to nothing, Boston held on against Oakland 7 to 6, the Twins pounded the Brewers 7 to 1, the Tigers beat the Rangers 3 to 1, the Yankees defeated the Angels 5 to nothing, the White Sox topped the Indians 5 to 4…” (Crippen pauses, saving the best for last) “…and the Astros shellacked the Cubs, 10 to 6.”
Shepard and I burst into a chorus of jeering laughter, to which Kerwin says, “I wouldn’t call that a shellacking.”
“…nding by for crew status and any updates,” Crippen is continuing, oblivious to our mirth. “Over.”
“Houston, Explorer. We are nearly done with breakfast. Everyone is well-rested and ready to start the day.” (It sounds like a conversation, but only for the moment. Given our trajectory, we’re almost 180 light-seconds from Earth now. So it took three minutes after transmission for the newscast to reach us, and it will take that long again for our words to slog their way through the vastness of space to get back to them. In other words, the normal back-and-forth has become a back-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------and-forth.) “Dosimeter readings as follows…Commander, 19379, CMP 18912, Science Pilot 19010. We’ve taken no medication.”
Island of Clouds: The Great 1972 Venus Flyby (Altered Space Book 3) Page 6