by Ian Sales
Ginny is having her own problems imagining a world for her stories. Perhaps that’s why she’s having so little success selling them, the world in which they’re set is the real world, more or less. It’s not the Mars of Northwest Smith, nor Ursula’s Ekumen. Take this one she’s currently working on, about a flight to the Moon which turns into disaster when the spacecraft runs out of fuel and in a decaying orbit. It’s an Apollo spacecraft—the astronauts aboard it are on their way to a Moon base, although she suspects there will never be a Moon base, the cancellation of all the flights after Apollo 17 has seen to that. But who knows what the future will bring? Despite this, she has set her story in 1985. Fifteen years into the future. Perhaps space flight will be routine by then—or rather, more routine than the press seems to be treating Apollo 14.
After nearly five years in Houston as an astronaut wife—the AWC meetings for coffee and cake at the Lakewood Yacht Club ended before Apollo 11 launched—but Louise Shepard is someone Ginny barely knows at all. She’s an Original Seven wife, and a Boston Brahmin, and she moves in completely different circles. The Shepards don’t even live in Nassau Bay, El Lago or Timber Cove, but in River Oaks. Al Shepard, a man Walden respects but does not like, is going to walk on the Moon, and everyone knows he trod on plenty of people to get there. Ginny watches the Apollo 14 EVA on television, just like the rest of America, marvelling at the colour footage broadcast direct from the lunar surface.
Yet for all the realness of the television pictures, in stark contrast to the blurred black-and-white of the Apollo 11 landing—and the picture quality for Apollo 14 is not that good, a bit blurry, the picture occasionally breaking up—but there’s a seriousness to the way Al and Ed go about their activities on the lunar surface, and to Ginny it’s like something is missing… the excitement, the wonder, the fun.
So she rises from the sofa, turns her back on the television, and goes into the yard. The sky is clear but it’s only mid-morning and she can’t see the Moon, not even a ghostly presentiment of it, the temperature is in the mid-fifties and the air is still. She hugs her torso and she shivers as she realises only a few months and Walden will be up there, a quarter of a million miles away. She thinks about the cost of the Apollo program, the deaths and broken marriages, and her own loneliness for much of that time. With Ramstein and Edwards, it has been a mostly lonely life since she left SDSU, just Walden and herself, her science fiction pen pals, the handful of wives she’s become friends with, in USAF and NASA…
And via some chain of thought she cannot explain, she wonders if it was wrong to deny Walden, to deny herself, children. She was sensible about it, she prided herself on her good sense, and she was grateful their childlessness allowed her to live her own life… of sorts. But Walden has been away so much since he joined NASA, and even more so these last two years after being assigned to Apollo 15, and she wonders now if she made a mistake.
No, damn it. If she has dreams, they’re of visiting other planets, not of diapers and pacifiers. She turns on her heel and re-enters the house. Apollo 14 is still on the television, but she ignores it. She stalks to the bedroom, takes the typewriter and paper from the closet, her folder of stories from her dressing table, and sets herself up at the dining table. She flicks through the stories she has written, and finds the one about the spacecraft in the decaying lunar orbit.
And to the sounds of Al Shepard and Ed Mitchell setting up experiments in the Fra Mauro Highlands on the Moon, she tries to inject some excitement, some wonder, some fun into her story, although truth be told there’s not much fun in having to escape a spacecraft before it impacts the lunar surface and then floating around in lunar orbit for hours until rescue is possible…
#
#
Whatever Ginny did, it worked. Evelyn buys ‘Pericynthion’ for Galaxy within days of receiving it, and in her letter writes she really likes the idea of women astronauts, presented as if it were a perfectly normal and natural thing, and she especially admires Ginny’s decision to mention no men at all in the story. Ginny knows her three year drought is finally over, so she rewrites the story about the astronaut who finds ancient alien ruins on Mars, but this time she gives her protagonist a family and that provides the motive to overcome disaster. Ginny retitles the story ‘The Secret of Cydonia’, a reference to one of Leigh’s novels, and because Ginny likes the sound of the name “Cydonia”.
And that one sells too—Kay takes it for Astounding, and she wants more like it. But Ginny now has bigger plans, a novella set on the Moon; but it’s Apollo 15, Walden’s flight, first, so on the second year anniversary of the first landing on the Moon, Ginny catches a commercial flight to Orlando, reading her July issue of Galaxy, which arrived only a couple of days before, and there’s her name on the contents page, alongside Raccoona Sheldon and Joanna Russ and Joan Patricia Basch; but when the air hostess comes round, Ginny swaps the magazine for a copy of Cosmopolitan, although she’s not looking at the fashion spreads she’s thinking about Galaxy and she’s thinking about Apollo 15.
#
The Saturn V slowly rises from Launch Pad 39A on its 8.5 million pounds of thrust, the roar of its engines crashing and breaking across the Florida swamps, a tidal wave of sound inundating the watchers on the stand, who have all risen to their feet. Fire pours from the F1 rocket engines, a small and dazzlingly bright sun on which the rocket is precariously balanced, and Ginny raises a hand to shade her eyes even though she is wearing sunglasses. She is over a mile away but the sheer physicality of the liftoff overwhelms her. The noise! The brightness! That slim pencil of black and white rising slowly up the sky on an infernal pillar. This is no science fiction spaceship launch, this is the real thing. There are very few examples she can recall from movies, Hollywood has yet to embrace science fiction, despite such 1920s classics as Metropolis and Frau im Mond. It is a subject, they have discovered, best avoided. “Women’s pictures” are one thing, but there is not a large enough audience with sufficient money to spend to justify making “sci fi” movies. Horror movies, yes, young men like them; and beach movies, too. But not science fiction.
This, however, the Saturn V, oh the flame and thunder!, spearing up into the sky, and now it’s pitching over and seems to be travelling almost horizontal to the ground, heading for orbit, and thence to the Moon. Ginny’s heart is in her mouth, she puts up a hand as if to prevent it escaping. She knows how perilous a mission this is, though the previous four Apollo flights have all gone pretty much as planned, at least up until the actual trip to the Moon…
She imagines Walden in his spacesuit sitting in the command module, that wide grey expanse of instrument panel above him shaking, she imagines him on the surface of the Moon, skipping across a sea of grey regolith. Godspeed, she tells him under her breath, though the religious sentiment means nothing to her. And she thinks about the novella she plans to start when she returns to Houston. She can almost see the first few lines:
Some days, when it feels like the end of the world yet again, Vanessa Peterson, goes out onto the surface and gazes up at what they have lost.
In the grey gunpowder dust, she stands in the pose so familiar from televised missions. She leans forward to counterbalance the weight of the PLSS on her back; the A7LB’s inflated bladder pushes her arms out from her sides. And she stares up at that grey-white marble fixed mockingly above the horizon. She listens to the whirr of the pumps, her own breath an amniotic susurrus within the confines of her helmet. The noises reassure her--sound itself she finds comforting in this magnificent desolation.
Ginny turns to Lurton, and she wishes Pam were here to see this but it’s been two years since the divorce; and Ginny is surprised Lurton’s face does not echo her own expression of wonder, but then Ginny remembers she has a different view of the space program to the other wives, and it’s a view she has never shared with them. So she turns back to watch the Saturn V as it slowly fades from view, though the roar of its launch seems to echo still across the inlets and scrub, and Ginny is b
riefly amused by the Saturn V’s phallic symbolism, although that’s been a staple of science fiction since its beginnings—and what does that say about the women who call themselves fans!—but this rocket, Wernher von Braun’s Saturn V, is to Ginny emphatically not one of those symbolic images, because she’s aware of the engineering that has gone into it. When people see a LM, they think of it as ugly but strangely functional in appearance; but Ginny, she thinks about its incredibly thin walls, all those switches and buttons, the guidance computer and its programs, all the engineering it embodies. And she thinks about standing inside the LM, a hand gripping each hand controller, peering through the triangular window before her at the surface of the Moon—but the real lunar surface, not a simulated one.
She feels wetness on her cheek and, surprised, reaches up to remove her sunglasses and dislodge a tear leaking from one eye.
Primly stable, whispers Lurton.
An older woman, the wife of a senator, Ginny thinks, Hart, something like that, she touches Ginny comfortingly on the shoulder and says, He’ll be fine, dear. You’ll see. You’re married to a proper hero.
The comment prompts a wan smile. Walden, a hero. She guesses he is, the way he risks his life for science and engineering on a daily basis; but Ginny and Lurton, they’re heroes too, because there’s always the possibility of that knock on the door, the neighbour come round to keep them company until some grim-faced male colleague turns up. And there’s keeping the home together, pretending they’re as confident about the mission as the men, presenting a model marriage and family to NASA and the world. Because Ginny knows about the hardware, she knows that those first fifteen seconds, as the Saturn V rises to clear the gantry, those are the most dangerous—because if one of the five F1 rocket engines fails, there’s still so much fuel aboard the other four wouldn’t be able to lift the rocket’s weight. Ginny knows this, and she’s pretty sure the others on the stand don’t.
Yet, despite everything she knows about the Saturn V and the Apollo command module and lunar module, despite everything Walden has explained to her, the guys at the Cape and back in Houston have explained to her, and she has read in the manuals and press kits, despite all this she knows Walden will come back home safely. She is convinced of that.
No, Ginny is not crying because she is worried she might never see her husband again. She is crying because she so badly wants to be in his place, to be crammed into that tiny command module heading for the Moon.
She is crying because she is watching her husband live her dream. She thinks of the years ahead, the nights she will spend sleeping beside, making love to, a man who has walked on the Moon. Her only way to cope is to take something she loves and refashion it so she can lay her impossible dream to rest within it. She will continue to rewrite the space program in science fiction as an entirely female enterprise because it is all she can do.
But no matter how audacious, it will never be a substitute—and she knows the pain of it will never fade.
#
NOTES
- Galaxy table of contents adapted from Galaxy Magazine, February 1968, Vol 26 No. 3
- neither Virginia Leith, Grace Kelly nor Suzy Parker starred in more than a dozen feature films each. Some are definitely worth seeing. Virginia Leith: VIOLENT SATURDAY (1955), ON THE THRESHOLD OF SPACE (1956), A KISS BEFORE DYING (1956), TOWARD THE UNKNOWN (1956), THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN’T DIE (1962). Grace Kelly: HIGH NOON (1952), MOGAMBO (1953), DIAL M FOR MURDER (1954), REAR WINDOW (1954), THE BRIDGES AT TOKO-RI (1954), THE COUNTRY GIRL (1954), GREEN FIRE (1954), TO CATCH A THIEF (1955), THE SWAN (1956), HIGH SOCIETY (1956). Suzy Parker: KISS THEM FOR ME (1957), TEN NORTH FREDERICK (1958), THE BEST OF EVERYTHING (1959), A CIRCLE OF DECEPTION (1960), THE INTERNS (1962), FLIGHT FROM ASHIYA (1964).
- NASA Group 6 news release adapted from NASA news release 66-022: www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/news/releases/1966_1968/
- artwork for ‘The Spaceships Men Don’t See’ by Ian Sales
- LM Crew Compartment Familiarization Phase I A taken from LUNAR MODULE ORIENTATION GUIDE & COMPARTMENT FAMILIARIZATION, Robert Godwin (20019, Apogee Books, 978-1-926592-11-4)
- Galaxy LOC inspired by real letters in Galaxy Magazine, February 1975, Vol. 36, No. 2
- the Judith Merril story is, of course, ‘The Lady Was a Tramp’, although the real version has the genders reversed as described here
- Lunar Module (LM) insert taken from Apollo 15 press kit: http://history.nasa.gov/alsj/a15/A15_PressKit.pdf
- Wal Eckhardt Wikipedia entry adapted from the Wikipedia entry on James B Irwin, and used under Creative Commons licence
- table of A7L materials taken from Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum web site: http://airandspace.si.edu/explore-and-learn/multimedia/detail.cfm?id=5219
- Apollo 11 EVA transcript excerpt taken from Apollo 11 Lunar Surface Journal
- Apollo 15 Launch NASA news release adapted from Apollo 15 press kit: http://history.nasa.gov/alsj/a15/A15_PressKit.pdf
- Hadley-Apennine Landing Site excerpt take from Apollo 15 press kit: http://history.nasa.gov/alsj/a15/A15_PressKit.pdf
- SF Encyclopedia entry on VG Parker: layout used by kind permission, and editorial assistance, of the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, www.sf-encyclopedia.com
YOU HAVE BEEN READING ABOUT…
writers and editors
Joan Patricia Basch (published 1966 to 1967)
Faye Beslow (published 1952 to 1953)
Doris Pitkin Buck (published 1952 to 1975)
Jane Beauclerk (AKA MJ Engh, published 1964 to 1995)
Leigh Brackett (published 1940 to 1976)
Betsy Curtis (published 1950 to 1973)
Miriam Allen deFord (published 1946 to 1974)
Gertrude Friedberg (published 1958 to 1972)
Alice Eleanor Jones (published 1955)
Cele Goldsmith (editor, 1957 to 1965)
Clare Winger Harris (published 1926 to 1930)
Hazel Heald (published 1932 to 1935)
Zenna Henderson (published 1951 to 1982)
Ursula K Le Guin (published 1961 to present)
June Lurie (published 1946 to 1953)
Linda Marlowe (published 1967)
Anne McCaffrey (published 1953 to 2011)
Judith Merril (published 1948 to 1985)
CL ‘Catherine’ Moore (published 1930 to 1958)
Andre ‘Alice’ Norton (published 1939 to 2004)
Evelyn Paige (editor, 1951 to 1956)
Doris Piserchia (published 1966 to 1983)
Kit Reed (published 1958 to present)
Joanna Russ (published 1959 to 1996)
Josephine Saxton (published 1965 to 1992)
Monica Sterba (AKA Frances Oliver, published 1964 to 2010)
Francis Stevens (AKA Gertrude Burrows Bennett, published 1904 to 1923)
Leslie F Stone (published 1929 to 1940)
Kay Tarrant (editor, 1942 to 1972)
James Tiptree Jr (AKA Alice B ‘Ali’ Sheldon, Raccoona Sheldon, published 1968 to 1987)
Susan Trott (published 1967)
Sydney J Van Scyoc (published 1962 to 2005)
Kate Wilhelm (published 1956 to 2012)
astronaut wives club
Joan Aldrin (Fourteen)
Valerie Anders (Fourteen)
Janet Armstrong (New Nine)
Jeannie Bassett (Fourteen)
Sue Bean (Fourteen)
Susan Borman (New Nine)
Joan Brand (Original Nineteen)
Nancy Bull (Original Nineteen)
Rene Carpenter (Original Seven)
JoAnn Carr (Original Nineteen)
Barbara Cernan (Fourteen)
Martha Chaffee (Fourteen)
Pat Collins (Fourteen)
Jane Conrad (New Nine)
Trudy Cooper (Original Seven)
Loella Cunningham (Fourteen)
Dotty Duke (Original Nineteen)
Harriet Eisele (Fourteen)
Mary Engle (Original Nineteen)
&nb
sp; Jan Evans (Original Nineteen)
Faith Freeman (Fourteen)
Ada Givens (Original Nineteen)
Barbara Gordon (Fourteen)
Betty Grissom (Original Seven)
Mary Haise (Original Nineteen)
Kathleen Lind (Original Nineteen)
Grati Lousma (Original Nineteen)
Marilyn Lovell (New Nine)
Liz Mattingly (Original Nineteen)
Bernice McCandless (Original Nineteen)
Pat McDivitt (New Nine)
Louise Mitchell (Original Nineteen)
Wanita Pogue (Original Nineteen)
Joan Roosa (Original Nineteen)
Jo Schirra (Original Seven)
Clare Schweikart (Fourteen)
Lurton Scott (Fourteen)
Marilyn See (New Nine)
Louise Shepard (Original Seven)
Marge Slayton (Original Seven)
Faye Stafford (New Nine)
Susan Weitz (Original Nineteen)
Pat White (New Nine)
Beth Williams (Fourteen)
Pam Worden (Original Nineteen)
Barbara Young (New Nine)
… and Mary Irwin (Original Nineteen)
astronauts
Buzz Aldrin, USAF (Gemini 12, Apollo 11 LMP)
Bill Anders, USAF (Apollo 8 LMP)
Neil Armstrong, civ (Gemini 8, Apollo 11 commander)
Charlie Bassett, USAF (died during training)
Al Bean, USN (Apollo 12 LMP)
Frank Borman, USAF (Gemini 7, Apollo 8 commander)
Scott Carpenter, USN (Aurora 7)
Gene Cernan, USN (Gemini 9A, Apollo 10 LMP, Apollo 17 commander)
Roger Chaffee, USN (died Apollo 1 fire)
Pete Conrad, USN (Gemini 5, Gemini 11, Apollo 12 commander)
Michael Collins, USAF (Gemini 10, Apollo 11 CMP)
Gordo Cooper, USAF (Faith 7, Gemini 5)
Walter Cunningham, USMC (Apollo 7 LMP)
Charlie Duke, USAF (Apollo 16 LMP)
Donn Eisele, USAF (Apollo 7 CMP)
Joe Engle, USAF (did not fly in Apollo program)