Velocity

by Steve Worland

  Judd ducks down, inches along the balcony - and then he hears it. Wafting towards him like pollen on a breeze. The Doobie Brothers. Rhonda loves the Doobies. She always listens to seventies West Coast yacht rock when she wants to relax. And unwind. And, he remembers sourly, get busy.

  Judd leaves the tubby guy behind and edges towards the third and final balcony. ‘What A Fool Believes’ grows louder. He reaches the last balcony and looks inside the apartment. The lights are low and the glass doors are open. A long black leather sofa blocks his view of the living room. He can’t see what’s happening but he can hear faint voices over Michael McDonald.

  A laugh. Her laugh. The laugh he fell in love with. The sound jars. It’s strange to hear it when he isn’t the one making it happen. Rhonda’s a serious woman, not humourless but, well, earnest much of the time. She doesn’t just laugh at any old thing. You have to work at it, so when she does laugh it means something. When was the last time he made her laugh like that? He doesn’t remember but it was a long while ago.

  He grabs hold of the balcony’s railing and pulls himself up. His feet slip on the grass but his arms take the weight and he peeks over the railing. He can see her hand, draped across the back of the sofa, the white-gold ring he gave her visible on her finger. He can’t see anything else. The back of the sofa is too high. Leather creaks. Something’s happening on the sofa.

  Adrenaline takes over. Judd pulls himself up and over the railing, drops quietly to the balcony, crouches low, the back of the sofa providing cover, and edges forward. What is this feeling in the pit of his stomach? Fear, at the thought of losing the woman he loves. He stands, to reveal his presence and learn the truth.

  Rhonda lies on the leather sofa, head and shoulders propped up by a pillow. She’s alone, reading a report. She shifts and the leather creaks. In front of her the coffee table is a mess of paperwork.

  Will Thompkins is in the kitchen, his back to her and Judd. They’re in the middle of a conversation. ‘Think so?’

  Rhonda doesn’t look up from the report. ‘Worth investigating.’

  ‘It just adds so much weight.’

  ‘— it might be the trade-off we need to make. There must be a lighter compound in the works that could do it. If it had the right elasticity it could be an option —’

  Judd ducks down behind the sofa, unseen. Christ! There’s nothing untoward going on. From the tone of Rhonda’s voice she’s deep in work mode. That’s why she’s been distant. She’s been busy doing her job! But then why are they at Thompkins’ place?

  As if on cue Rhonda speaks: ‘Thanks for doing this. I’m sorry about the conference room being double-booked this week.’

  ‘Not your fault.’

  ‘I’ll get going in fifteen. Judd’s cooking and I don’t want to be late. We’ll have to pick this up after the mission. I won’t have time before that.’

  ‘No problem.’

  Judd again feels fear, but this time it’s about whether he can find a way out of this. He’s made a huge mistake, except it’s neither a mistake nor huge until somebody finds out about it.

  He hears Will walk from the kitchen and sit on the sofa. Good. It means they’re both facing away from him. Judd backs up until his left heel touches the balcony’s railing. He stands and climbs over it in one swift, silent movement, lowers himself to the ground below, his arms taking the strain. His feet touch the ground and he holds the railing tight; doesn’t want to take an inadvertent trip down the hill. He waits a moment. No movement at the sofa. They didn’t hear him. He’s going to get out of this! He turns to go, then stops dead.

  The tubby guy is now standing on the next balcony, still naked from the waist down. He sways from the effect of the Corona in his right hand as he looks out at the twinkling lights of Houston and takes a monster leak over his railing, making exuberant figure eights in the air with the stream.

  Judd draws himself into the shadow of Thompkins’ balcony as the leak goes on. What’s the saying? You don’t buy beer, you just rent it for an hour. Tubby finally runs dry, puts the Corona down on top of the railing and makes to zip up his pants. Shocked to find he’s not wearing any, he turns and walks unsteadily into the apartment, presumably to find them.

  Judd breathes out and edges his way past Tubby’s balcony. Halfway along and everything’s going swimmingly. In his mind he’s already navigated the balconies, vaulted back onto the walkway, hot-footed it to the DeLorean, high-tailed it home and plated dinner —

  ‘Who the hell are you?’

  Tubby has pulled on a pair of Y-fronts, albeit back to front, and returned to the balcony to retrieve the half-full Corona from the railing. He glares at Judd. ‘What the hell you doing down there?’ The sentence is shouted in a toneless slur, like he’s speaking while listening to music on headphones.

  Judd glances back at Will’s balcony, hopes they didn’t hear enough over the music to prompt a trip onto the balcony. No one emerges. Thank God for the Doobie Brothers. He gets moving.

  Tubby doesn’t like it. ‘You’re trying to rob me!’ His voice is very loud.

  ‘I’m not robbing anyone.’ Judd keeps his low.

  ‘This man’s a-robbing me!’ Now the guy is shouting.

  ‘Shhh.’

  ‘Don’t shush me!’

  Judd keeps moving. There’s no greater waste of time than arguing with a drunk. You’ll never change their mind, and even if you do they won’t remember it in the morning.

  ‘Nobody shushes me!’ Tubby lunges at Judd, grabs a handful of collar. Judd karate chops his wrist and the guy lets out a yelp that’d make a schoolgirl blush. ‘Don’t let him get away!’ He shouts it as if to a crowd.

  Judd moves fast. He wants to put as much distance between himself and Tubby as quickly as possible. Unfortunately he can’t move too fast, the ground is slippery.

  ‘What going on?’ Christ, that’s Thompkins’ voice.

  ‘He’s robbing us!’

  Judd ups his pace, reaches the last balcony.

  ‘Call the police.’ Oh, man. That’s Rhonda. Her voice cuts through him like a knife. He instinctively ducks his head.

  ‘I’m on it.’ That’s Thompkins.

  ‘Fast, h-he’s getting away.’

  Judd shuffles along the last balcony. He’s ten steps from the camouflage of those big-leafed plants. Seven steps. Five. Almost there —

  He feels a sharp pain in the fleshy area where his neck meets his skull, then darkness envelops his vision and his legs give out from underneath him.

  ‘Nobody shushes me!’ is the last thing he hears.

  **

  Rhonda’s impressed. The drunk guy is almost too loaded to stand yet he throws the half-empty Corona bottle with pinpoint accuracy. It connects with the back of the robber’s head and he crumples to the ground, then begins a slow slide down the incline, head first. He travels a good twenty metres in this position then comes to a halt as his head conks into the large tree at the bottom of the slope. Quite clearly he should never have shushed the drunk guy in the back-to-front Y-fronts.

  Rhonda studies the man, then looks closer. Will walks onto the balcony, portable phone to his ear. ‘Cops. I’m on hold —’

  She takes the phone from him and hangs up.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  She doesn’t answer, just dials a number.

  Da Da Da - Da Da - Da Da Da - Da Da.

  The sound emanates from the man. It’s the theme from Terminator 2, Judd’s favourite movie. She remembers the day he bought the ring tone. She hangs up and the theme cuts off. She stares at the man who is, in fact, her man. But is he? It’s like she doesn’t know him.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  Rhonda doesn’t look at Will. ‘It’s Judd.’

  ‘It’s - what?’

  She’s not embarrassed. She’s not even angry. She’s flabbergasted. She’s never liked the word, always felt it fake, made up, a word that didn’t represent a genuine emotion
she’d ever experienced, but damn if she didn’t feel it now.

  **

  The sun has almost set, throws a pale-orange sheen across the garden and the unconscious Judson Bell. Rhonda kneels beside him, lightly pats his face. ‘Judd.’ He doesn’t rouse. She pats him a little harder. ‘Judd!’ Nothing.

  Flabbergast finally gives way to anger. ‘Wake up!’ She tees off and slaps him across the cheek. Judd’s eyes blink open. She won’t let herself be worried about his concussion, or the likely contusion on the back of his head from the Corona bottle, until she knows what’s going on. ‘What are you doing here?’

  He stares at her. ‘I - I needed to see you.’

  Hope. Maybe this whole thing is just an innocent misunderstanding. Maybe there’s been an emergency and he needed to find her but her phone has been turned off and he didn’t know Will’s number so he came to his home. It’s a long shot but it’s possible.

  ‘Why did you need to see me?’

  Judd looks at her and says nothing. He can’t tell her he thought she was having an affair with Will Thompkins but then he doesn’t need to. She works it out on her own. He sees it happen, watches the change, first in her eyes, then in her expression, as she processes the truth.

  She stands, turns and walks up the incline.

  ‘Rhonda —’

  ‘Don’t.’

  ‘But I —’

  ‘No.’ She doesn’t look back.

  **

  6

  They haven’t spoken since ‘the night of the quarters’. That’s what Judd’s been calling it. Rhonda moved out that evening and hadn’t answered a call or replied to a text or email in the three days since.

  Judd tilts the T-38 into a tight bank over the Indian River. He’d picked up this ‘B’ variant at Ellington Field in Houston and is minutes away from wheels down at Patrick Air Force Base, just a stone’s throw from Cape Canaveral. He looks left, to Kennedy Space Center, then launch pad 39A. On it stands Atlantis. The early-afternoon sun glints off the white solid rocket boosters, burnishes the rust-coloured external tank to a bright orange, illuminates the stubby shuttle.

  His eyes flick right, to the towering box that is the Vehicle Assembly Building, big enough to fit four Empire State Buildings inside. He remembers being in it on one particularly humid day, watching as Discovery was joined to its external tank two months before his flight. As impressive as the shuttle external tank mating ritual was, the spacecraft hoisted high by a crane then gently wedded to the ET, what he remembers most about that day were the clouds that formed on the VAB’s ceiling, then the light mist that wet his face as it rained inside the building. It was so big it formed its own weather system.

  The VAB is his destination today. It’s where he’ll see her again.

  Judd brings the T-38 down onto runway 2B at Patrick with a minimum of fuss. He parks the jet, completes the relevant paperwork then finds his silver BMW 2002 quietly rusting in the parking lot.

  The old Beemer is the car he drives in Florida. It’s seen better days, its forty-year-old body putting up a valiant if futile attempt to ward off the humid, salty air of the Cape. He’s more than happy to leave it in the Patrick car park for the extended periods he’s away because he can’t imagine anyone would want to steal it.

  He wheels the Beemer out of the car park, heads towards Kennedy Space Center and wonders what Rhonda’s expression will be when she sees him. He’s scheduled to work the White Room for Rhonda’s flight and tonight is their first Terminal Countdown Demonstration Test. It simulates the final hours of a countdown and serves as a rehearsal for launch day procedures, culminating in a simulated ignition of the shuttle’s main engines. During the evening the ground staff will also run a tanking test. That involves filling the external tank with liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen propellants and evaluating how all systems perform under cryoload. Even after decades of service the shuttle is still an experimental vehicle that is continually tested and assessed.

  The launch is tentatively scheduled for late next week if everything goes smoothly and the weather cooperates. Judd enjoys White Room duty because, even if he isn’t able to fly the shuttle, even if the damn thing scares him, he still wants to be close to it. Like Rhonda. He’s a little scared of her too, mainly because of how unsentimental she is. He’s seen her erase people from her life before, has consoled surprised ex-friends who found themselves cut out of the loop after a single misstep. He just never imagined it’d happen to him. Yes, he did royally screw up but it was an anomaly. He’s never done anything like it before. She didn’t care, wasn’t interested in hearing his reasons, excuses or apologies and instantly pulled the pin on a ten-year relationship.

  ‘Christ.’ It hits him. The ‘night of the quarters’ isn’t the reason she moved out. It was the trigger, of course, but not the reason - he’s sure of it. He just doesn’t know what the reason is.

  He turns into the Kennedy car park, parks the Beemer as close as he can to the VAB and tells himself to stop thinking about her. He needs to concentrate on the job ahead.

  **

  The elevator opens and Judd steps into the hallway. A tap on his shoulder. His chest tingles. Rhonda? He turns.

  It’s Severson Burke. ‘Hey.’

  ‘Hey yourself.’

  ‘Could you look any more disappointed?’

  ‘What? Disappointed? Who?’

  Severson studies Judd, left eyebrow arched. He knows all about Judd’s excursion to Thompkins’ place. Judd had confessed all in a late-night call.

  ‘Right, like you haven’t been thinking about her.’

  ‘Not for the last seven minutes, I haven’t.’

  Severson fastens Judd with a steady gaze. ‘You’ve already dropped the ball twice this week. Make sure it doesn’t happen again.’

  Judd knows Severson has good reason for not wanting any trouble in the White Room tonight. The ex-astronaut, who had graciously agreed to accompany Judd on his last simulator run, is launch director for this test. That means it is his responsibility. The last thing he needs is Judd’s personal issues gumming up the works.

  Judd nods. ‘Of course.’ They walk on, reach Briefing Room Three and enter.

  Rhonda’s the first person Judd sees sitting at the large oval table. She looks right through him, like he doesn’t exist. She’s in full ‘blank mode’. Judd knows it well, has witnessed her use it on many a hapless individual in the past. Essentially, she blanks people she’s not interested in interacting with and pretends they don’t exist. Though it sounds like a strategy that wouldn’t even work in a kindergarten playground, it proved to be a surprisingly successful tool for navigating the byzantine NASA bureaucracy.

  Judd finds a seat as far from her as possible. He works hard to keep his eyes on Severson as the launch director addresses the thirty-strong crowd from the head of the table. The only positive to come out of ‘the night of the quarters’ is that Thompkins and the tubby guy hadn’t filed any complaints against him. Judd guessed that Rhonda had asked Thompkins to keep it quiet and Thompkins had asked the tubby guy to do the same. Surely she didn’t want to go through the embarrassment of an official hearing into his conduct where she would be the star witness.

  Not having a hearing won’t change anything for Judd, though. When Thompkins surely, inevitably, took over the Astronaut Office, Judd’s certain the guy who stalked his home won’t be at the top of Thompkins’ list when he decides the next round of crew assignments.

  Judd steals a look at Rhonda, takes in the heart-shaped face, the blonde hair flecked with golden highlights, the ski-jump nose with the little bump at the top, the result of a mountain-biking accident years ago. She’s as breathtaking as the day they met.

  **

  Rhonda ignores Judd. Commanding Atlantis is a crucial step towards being first so she must not be distracted by personal issues, no matter how difficult that might be, and she’s been finding it very difficult. Not just leaving the relationship but leaving t
he house had been —

  Stop it. She can’t think about that now. She must stay focused on the job ahead. She cannot make any mistakes tonight. If Judd’s career has taught her anything it’s that you cannot afford mistakes. They don’t let people who make mistakes be first.

  First. First is her goal. At the age of thirty-nine, having already piloted one shuttle mission and about to command her second, Rhonda is perfectly positioned to be first.

  First on Mars.

  With the shuttle fleet set to be mothballed within two years, NASA planned to send a manned mission to Mars within fifteen. Of course no launch date had been set and there wasn’t funding in place, but she was working towards the goal as if it were set in stone.