“Ha! You are the only person I know who would say that unironically.”
I pushed the pillow up so I could stick my tongue out at him. “Any idea how long before we hear back?”
He shook his head and lifted my foot a little higher. “Not my area. I’m more concerned with the health and morale…” Nathaniel bent down so his hair fell across his forehead, and took my big toe into his mouth. His teeth nibbled the tip, and my back arched as he withdrew his mouth. “… of specific candidates.”
“I see.” Pulling my foot back, I slid it down his chest to nestle into the place where his thighs met. “And what is your candidate criteria? Besides an ability to handle being placed in a centrifuge chair, of course.”
Nathaniel’s hips flexed to match my pressure, and, for a moment, his eyes flickered closed. A lazy smile ghosted across his face as he leaned forward. “Well … Clearly the centrifuge indicates an ability to work with compromised blood flow, which is … ah … necessary for a pilot.”
“Is that why women are able to handle higher G-forces than men?” I traced a line up the inside of his thigh. “What other qualifications does your candidate possess?”
The bed creaked beneath me as Nathaniel shifted to his knees. “It’s critical that suitable candidates have experience with rocketry.”
“What type of experience? Should I demonstrate my experience ensuring that the rocket is topped up and ready for launch?” Beneath my hands, his body seemed super-charged with heat. His shirt bunched under my touch as I found my way to his belt.
Nathaniel leaned down, his breath hot against my cheek. “That would be acceptable.”
“Acceptable!” I wrapped my legs around his waist and pulled him down against me. “I plan on being excellent.”
THIRTY-ONE
DR. KING TO LEAD ANTI-BIAS TREK
15,000 Southern Negroes Going to Capital to Observe 4th Year of School Decree
MONTGOMERY, AL, May 18, 1957—Next week, a young Negro minister will lead a pilgrimage to the Meteor Memorial in Kansas City to mark the fourth anniversary of the Supreme Court’s school desegregation order.
Saturday morning we all went to synagogue together. Several times during the service, I had to press my handkerchief to my eyes because I would look at Aunt Esther beside me and half-expect to see Grandma on her other side, or Mama and Daddy behind me. I was so very glad to have her back, but she brought ghosts with her.
Nathaniel hadn’t been able to join us because it was a launch day. Ever since the Orion 27 disaster, he wouldn’t miss a launch. Rockets still blew up occasionally when they were being tested, but those were just data points.
That evening, we all went over to Mission Control to watch the launch. It was a manned craft, heading for the orbital platform. I say “platform,” but it was more donut-shaped than flat, rotating to create a limp artificial gravity.
The night was warm and banks of clouds bounced the lights of the launch tower back down to the Earth in a sodium-orange haze. Baffles gave some shelter to the rooftop, but wind snuck past it and cooled the sweat from the back of my neck. I still hadn’t gotten used to being warm outside again.
The loudspeakers punctuated our conversation with the countdown.
The public affairs officer on duty kept up a running commentary for the spectators both at the IAC and listening via the radio. “Four minutes, fifteen seconds. The Test Supervisor now has informed the Launch Vehicle Test Conductor that they are Go for launch.”
Perhaps with the weather warming, folks would start coming to the roof earlier for launches. We tended to wait until T-minus four minutes because it was too cold, even in the summer.
“Three minutes, forty-five seconds and counting. In the final abort checks between several key members of the crew here in the control center and the astronauts. Launch Operations Manager wished the crew, ‘Good luck and Godspeed. ’”
Aunt Esther had produced a painted fan from somewhere and created a miniature breeze of her own.
I smiled at her. “What a lovely fan.”
Aunt Esther preened, waving it in a lopsided circle. “Rose gave it to me. I hadn’t thought to grab my own when we left home, but she always had one in her bag.”
“Three minutes, twenty-five seconds and counting; we’re still Go at this time. We’ll be coming up on the automatic sequence about ten or fifteen seconds from now. All still Go at this time.”
“Really?” Memories of sitting on the front porch with lemonade, and Grandma stirring the air with her fan, tickled the back of my mind. “It’s beautiful.”
“She got it in Spain!”
“T-minus two minutes, forty-five seconds and counting. The members of the launch team here in the control center are monitoring a number of what we call red-line values.”
Hershel had gone ahead with Tommy and leaned against the railing at the far side of the roof. Downstairs, my nephew had met Benkoski’s son, Max, with whom I’d made tinfoil rockets. They were becoming fast friends.
I smiled at my aunt, unsure if this was a true story or her spotty memory. “Grandma … Grandma went to Spain?”
“She and your grandfather went for their honeymoon.”
It had never occurred to me that they must have had a honeymoon. Granddaddy died before I was born, and Grandma had seemed eternal. “I had no idea. Did you ever—”
“T-minus one minute twenty-five seconds and counting. Our status board indicates the third stage is completely pressurized.”
Things would start moving quickly now, and I didn’t want her to miss a thing. Night launches were spectacular.
“There are some seats over here.” I beckoned Aunt Esther to the folding chairs set up on the roof.
“T-minus sixty seconds and counting. Randy Cleary just reported back: ‘It’s been a very smooth countdown.’ We’ve passed the fifty-second mark. Power transfer is complete—we’re on internal power with the launch vehicle at this time. Forty seconds away from liftoff. All the second-stage tanks are now pressurized. Thirty-five seconds and counting. We are still Go with thirty seconds and counting. Astronauts report, ‘It feels good.’ T-minus twenty-five seconds.”
Aunt Esther’s cheeks blossomed with roses, and she settled into her chair like an eager child. Truly, she wasn’t much bigger than one. She had been a small women my entire life, but I swear she was a good four inches shorter than before the Meteor.
“Twenty seconds and counting. T-minus fifteen seconds, guidance is internal. Twelve, eleven, ten, nine, ignition sequence starts…”
“… eight, seven, six…” We joined in the countdown with everyone else on the roof and my stomach knit itself into a tight ball.
“… five, four, three…”
Every time we launched, I worried that this one would fail. That we would watch three astronauts lost in a massive explosion.
“… two, one, zero, all engines running.”
In the distance, the base of the rocket sprouted the vivid yellow-white fire of a successful ignition. In silence, it rose on this cushion of flame. The night around us lit up like day.
“Liftoff. We have liftoff.”
Beside me, Aunt Esther rose to her feet, hands clasped in front of her chest. The light of the rocket reflected off her bright eyes as if the fire of her soul were coming out to push the rocket into the sky.
Then the sound hit us, a heavy rumble that you felt more than heard. The force of the waves beat against my chest. What must it be like to ride that sound and fury? I held my breath, praying for the rocket to keep going. The blaze of fire pushed it faster and higher into the air until it disappeared into the cloud cover and left us with just a traveling glow that faded back into the night.
Aunt Esther turned to me and grasped both of my hands. “Thank you.”
“For?”
“I never thought I would see such a thing. I didn’t know why you’d want to be an astronaut, or even really what one was, but now…” She looked up to the clouds, where all trace of the rocke
t had vanished. “You must.”
* * *
After my family left, it was back to the grind of computing. That makes it sound like I didn’t enjoy it, when I did. It’s just that, having spent a month preparing for those tests and then five days immersed in the potentiality of becoming an astronaut, it was hard to go back to something mundane.
It’s true that I was still helping the program, but I wanted to go into space. The fact that Helen hadn’t gotten in also rankled. She had bounced back to her usual cheer on the surface, but she, Ida, and Imogene had stopped coming to the 99s. They were using their free time to rack up jet engine hours.
The really absurd thing about that requirement was that astronauts barely flew anything. Sure, they had to go into outer space, but there was a reason that Chuck Yeager called it being “spam in a can.” Most of the systems were automated.
It would be different on the way to the moon, but even that would be nothing like flying a jet.
Meanwhile, the Sirius rocket that Bubbles had designed was ready for a launch test. All the static firings in the world wouldn’t count until we actually sent it into the air.
I tapped the trajectory pages together into a stack and tucked them into a folder. “Be right back. I’m going to run this down to Bubbles.”
Basira looked up from her desk with a pout. “Oh … let him come for them. He’s so adorable.”
“You should ask him out on a date.” I slid my chair back and stood.
She barked a laugh. “I’m pretty sure he’s supposed to ask me.”
“That would involve him realizing that the computers are women.”
“A man who asks for a ‘computress’ doesn’t know that?” She snorted and turned back to her pages. “Please. I just think he doesn’t know what to do with us.”
“Which is why you should ask him out…” I winked and headed for the door. “Should I tell him you asked about him?”
“Don’t you dare!” She flung a wadded-up piece of paper after me, and hit Myrtle by mistake. Which set the whole room to giggling.
Still laughing, I headed down the hall to the engineering wing. The practical labs, which is where Bubbles usually worked, were in a different building from us, because they tended to blow things up. Thank heavens for the “gerbil tubes” that connected our buildings. Otherwise, I would have to step into the heat to run the report over.
I opened the door to the stairwell up to the sky bridge.
Down a floor, a conversation cut off. “. … told you, I’m fine—Sh.”
That hush echoed up the stairwell. It took a second to identify the voice, only because I’d never heard Stetson Parker sound stressed. Not even when there was a bomber on the IAC campus.
I leaned over the railing and looked down. He sat on the bottom step with one leg stretched out in front of him. Halim Malouf stood over him, hands on his hips.
“Y’all need any help?”
At the sound of my voice, Parker’s head jerked up and around. “Everything is fine.”
“Are you sure?” It was tempting to leave him, but the lines of his face were drawn tight. “I can get a medic.”
“No!” His voice echoed up to the top of the stairwell and back down again. Parker closed his eyes and let out a slow breath. “No. Thank you. That won’t be necessary.”
“I think maybe it is.” Malouf rubbed the back of his neck. “Stetson … it’s been getting worse.”
“Don’t you say another word.” Parker jabbed a finger up at him, then glared at me. “And you. I don’t want to hear a peep about this from you.”
Pulled down the stairs by their gravity, my heels clicked against the concrete steps. “If there’s nothing wrong, then there’s nothing for me to tell.”
“You really like pushing things, don’t you, York?” Parker grabbed the railing and hauled himself upright. His left leg hung loose under him.
“What happened?” I stopped on the stairs, clutching the trajectory folder as a shield between us.
“Nothing happened. I just slipped on the stairs, that’s all.” He took a limping step away from the stairs and his left leg buckled under him.
“Oh, hell!” Malouf caught him, easing Parker to the ground.
I ran down the stairs to try to help. “Are you okay?”
“Yes. I’m fine.”
“You can’t stand!”
“I fucking know that!” Parker pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes shut. He held his breath for a moment. Then he blew it out and lowered his hand. “York. I’m going to ask you as a favor. One pilot to another. Please don’t say anything. You have the power, right now, to have me grounded. Please, please don’t.”
“Well … I’m sympathetic to fears of being grounded.”
“Please.”
I took another step closer. As much as I might have dreamed about Parker begging me for something, this wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted to be better than him. Winning because he was sick? No thank you. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know. If I go to the flight surgeon, he’ll ground me.”
As well he should. A leg like that could jeopardize a mission. And for that matter, why hadn’t Malouf told anyone already? Maybe it was recent. My thoughts went to stories my parents told about when Hershel got sick. It had started with a weakness in his leg. “Have you had a fever?”
“It’s not polio.”
I pulled back, a little startled that his thoughts went there too. “How do you—”
“I know what polio looks like. All right?” He scowled at me. “Why are you still here, anyway? Shouldn’t you be scampering off to report this to the newspaper?”
Behind his back, Malouf made a subtle shooing motion, but not unkindly. “I think everything is under control, Dr. York.”
“Of course.” I started up the stairs and stopped at the next landing. Even if Parker were grounded, that wouldn’t keep him from having a say in who got selected. “I won’t tell anyone, but you should see a doctor. Just, maybe, not the flight surgeon.”
I almost offered to take him, but I wasn’t that big of a person.
* * *
On launch days, there’s usually nothing for a computer to do until after liftoff. We’ve already done the calculations about alternate launch windows or adjusted trajectories for rendezvous so that Clemons and the launch director can make decisions based on known information if there’s a delay.
But we still have to come in to Mission Control with the rest of our team. Helen was playing chess with Reynard Carmouche, while I was looking at the places where it was possible to abort the moon mission if something went wrong.
That thing we say about how engineers create problems and computers solve them? Yeah … Nathaniel had given the computer department a list of possible failure points, and then asked how we could get the astronauts home under these varying conditions.
To put this into perspective … The Sirius has 5,600,000 parts and close to a million systems, subsystems, and assemblies. Even if everything was 99.9 percent reliable, that would still be 5,600 defects. It wasn’t a question of if something would go wrong on the way to the moon, it was a question of when and what.
And when that failure occurred, it would occur in a spacecraft that was traveling at twenty-five thousand miles per hour. We weren’t going to have time to run calculations then, so the idea was to create a library of possible answers so we could access a month’s worth of work in a few minutes.
Tonight, with three hours of waiting time before ignition, the failure state calculations were a pleasant way to pass the time. And yes, I’m aware that I’m odd. I wasn’t alone, however.
At his station, Nathaniel had a pile of reports and was gnawing his way through a pencil. Bubbles had a similar binder in front of him—though, given that it was his baby we were about to launch, that wasn’t surprising.
Not everyone was working, of course. Parker was up in the skybox with Clemons, hobnobbing with the journalists. Tod
ay, he didn’t have a trace of a limp.
What the hell had it been? Not polio, for certain. Mama would have known what it was, but I didn’t have anyone I could ask without it getting back to him. Maybe I could inquire with the doctor when I went in to see him for my Miltown refill.
“Again?!” Carmouche leaned back in his chair with a groan. “Someday … I swear that someday I will win.”
Helen crossed her arms and smirked at him. “It is only check. You still have a chance.”
He harrumphed and leaned forward to stare at the board.
I lowered my pencil. “If you just want to win, you could play against me.”
Shaking his head, Carmouche continued to glare at the board. He reached forward for a pawn, glanced at Helen, and pulled his hand back. Under his breath, he muttered in French about either Helen’s parentage or the options for play. Either way, it sounded irritable.
“Est-ce qu’elle vous bat de nouveau?” Parker walked up behind me and I flinched in my seat. I swear he did that on purpose.
“Oui. Il est l’ordre naturel, je pense.” Carmouche sighed and tapped his fingers on the edge of the board.
“Il n’y a rien de naturel.” Parker looked down at me. “York. Clemons wants you.”
“And he sent you down all those stairs for little ol’ me?” I am, at times, a complete idiot. Antagonizing him was the last thing I needed to do. I pushed back my chair, aware that Helen and Carmouche were staring at us. “Thank you.”
I followed him across the floor of Mission Control. Across the room, Nathaniel had his head buried in reports, and didn’t look up. “Any idea why?”
Parker pulled the door open, but did not hold it for me. I caught it, following him into the stairwell. He bounded up the stairs two at a time, as if he had something to prove.
“Feeling better, I see.” I chased him up the stairs, grateful for the time I’d spent preparing for the astronaut tests. Even in a skirt and heels, I could run up a flight of stairs without getting winded.
The Calculating Stars Page 28