Countdown

by Julie Cannon

  “And go to work at Spacely Sprockets,” Beth added excitedly. “God. Watching Saturday-morning cartoons was one of best parts of the good old days, wasn’t it?”

  “Jesus, Beth. You’re not even forty. You sound like your life is over.”

  “With a husband of seventeen years, three kids, one of which has yet to sleep through the night, a mortgage, a minivan, two dogs, and four hamsters, sometimes I feel like it is.”

  Andrea knew Beth loved her family and was only talking smack. “I told you not to buy that minivan. It just screams b-o-r-i-n-g.”

  “What am I supposed to drive to haul the kids, their friends, and all their crap to and from everywhere? They certainly wouldn’t fit in Ken’s Camry.”

  “A Suburban.”

  “A suburban what?” Beth asked before taking a bite of her spaghetti.

  “A Chevy Suburban or a Ford Expedition,” she added as an afterthought. “Something that will hold a Scout troop and make you look like a bad-ass-mother…what?” Andrea asked as if she didn’t know what the expression on Beth’s face meant. “That’s all I was going to say, a bad-ass mother.” She was lying.

  “Well, it’s too late now. I’m stuck with it for thirty-eight more payments.”

  “Are you really happy, Beth? I mean really happy?” Andrea asked.

  Where did that question come from? They never talked about this kind of personal stuff. Beth obviously thought the same thing because her fork stopped halfway to her mouth before she put it back down on her plate. She wiped her mouth on her napkin.

  “Yes, Andi, I am happy. Very happy,” she said seriously. “I wouldn’t trade my life for anything. Why do you ask?”

  “Just curious,” Andrea said, knowing she never should have asked the question.

  “Bullshit, what’s going on, Andi?” Beth was the only one she allowed to call her Andi.

  Beth was one of the few people who understood her probably better than anyone, including herself. And she was her best friend. “Just wondered, that’s all.” It was a lame excuse, but it was all she had. She had no idea why she’d asked.

  “Uh-huh,” Beth said, obviously not convinced. “Are you seeing anyone?”

  Beth’s question caught her off guard. She certainly wasn’t expecting that one. “Not at the moment,” she replied evasively. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a date, and sex was a vague memory. “As you so accurately pointed out from Wikipedia, I have been a little busy lately.”

  “That’s a convenient excuse.”

  “Excuse me?” Beth’s statement flabbergasted Andrea. “I have the lives of seven crew members on my shoulders, plus the success of a very important mission to the moon, and you think that’s an excuse for not dating?”

  “Of course not. But when was the last time you had sex?”

  Andrea choked on a piece of bread that suddenly got stuck in her throat. “What?”

  “Sex, you know…get naked, bodies touching, lots of rubbing, touching, hand and tongues in and on hard, wet body parts. If you do it right your head blows off. Sex.”

  Andrea was shocked at Beth’s very descriptive definition. She didn’t know what to say.

  “That long, huh? Okay, when was the last time you had a date?” When Andrea didn’t answer she went on. “Well, how about flirted with someone?” When she still didn’t answer Beth said, “Andi, you need to get a life. Or at least get laid once in a while. It does wonders for the disposition.”

  Finally Andrea was able to speak. “Holy shit, Beth. All I did was ask you if you were happy. How did this turn into me?”

  “Because I love you. The whole family loves you, and we just want you to be happy.”

  “I am happy,” Andrea replied.

  “We want to see you with someone, Andi.” Beth emphasized the word with. Someone to share your life with, care about you, make you smile, make you blush when you think of her. That kind of happy.”

  “Not everyone needs your kind of happiness, Beth.”

  “I’m not talking about a minivan and three kids. I’m talking about a warm body to wake up to, a pair of strong arms to hold you, someone to share your life with.”

  She’d expected the topics of the conversation to be benign and familial, but somehow it had turned serious in the blink of one question. She didn’t want to discuss this subject. She was on the verge of professional success and couldn’t afford any distractions.

  “I appreciate your concern, Beth, but I’m fine. Really,” she added to assuage the look of skepticism on her sister’s face. “Now tell me about that nephew of mine. What sport’s draining your wallet now?”

  Chapter Three

  T-minus 00:00:01:08

  “Flight, we have confirmation three main engines ready for ignition.”

  “Confirmed,” Andrea replied into her headset at the status check from the booster-systems engineer. He monitored and evaluated performance of propulsion-related aspects during prelaunch and descent. He had the power to send an abort command to the spacecraft.

  Her voice was steady but her heart was racing. The digital readout to her left read one minute to liftoff. The tension in her shoulders increased. Her team had trained for this for countless months, and she had prepared herself for this moment for years. But the actuality of what was about to happen under her command was almost overwhelming.

  “Space shuttle now on internal power,” the voice said. “Solid rocket-booster flight-data recorders are activated. Confirm handoff to Explorer on-board computers. Explorer is now in control of the countdown.”

  “Confirmed, Explorer in control,” Andrea said, repeating the line she’d practiced hundreds of times in simulation. But this was no simulation.

  She glanced around the room, taking in the status of every position that would monitor this mission for the next nine days. All she could see was the back of everyone’s head, as their attention switched from the screen in front of them to the large video display at the front of the large room. The lights were low to enable a better view of the screen, each workstation having its own desktop lighting. With the exception of a few technicians tapping commands on their keyboards, the room was quiet.

  “Firing chain is armed. T minus ten, nine, eight…”

  Andrea counted down in her head along with everyone in the room. As the seconds decreased, Andrea’s pulse rate increased. She swallowed and took several deep breaths.

  “Three, two, one. Liftoff. We have liftoff of STS 1742 and shuttle Explorer, the first mission to land a man on the moon since Apollo 17 in 1972. A new generation of space exploration has begun.”

  Andrea breathed a sigh of relief. The first of many, many major hurdles had been successful. The shuttle and its main booster rockets had cleared the tower.

  The sight of the five-million-pound man-made machine lifting off in a cloud of flame and smoke never ceased to leave her breathless. The close-up shot of the main engine exhaust showed the mammoth machine slowly lifting off the launch platform, struggling to break the earth’s gravitational pull. Seven million pounds of thrust pulled the shuttle and its engines off the ground as the seconds ticked by.

  Andrea knew the intricate complexity of the pipes, pumps, engines, wiring, programming, welds, nuts, and bolts that made this sight a reality. Even if she didn’t, the sight was and would forever be nothing short of awesome. “Thirty seconds into the flight, Explorer two miles in altitude, traveling five hundred miles per hour, carrying four-and-a-half-million pounds of hardware, eight minutes to orbit,” the voice said in her ear.

  Her eyes were open, but Andrea visualized everything her crew was doing at this stage of the flight. Commander Jason Albert and co-pilot Tony Douglas were checking the numerous control panels that indicated the status of every system in the multimillion-dollar taxi. Mission specialists Molly Tremain, William Daniel, Jonathon Franklin, Kathleen Martinez, and LeAnna Wethersfield were seated behind them, and each had their own set of panels to keep an eye on.

  Andrea was bette
r acquainted with her crew than anyone else on this mission. She knew what the crew was doing at this moment but not what they were feeling. She wondered what their families were going through as they watched their husbands, fathers, wives, sisters, and sons blast into space at over two thousand miles an hour.

  At one time, like most children, she had dreamed of being an astronaut. Except she was the only girl who had that dream, or at least the only one who admitted it. Her girlfriends at school had ticked off the standard professions such as doctor, lawyer, mom, and the requisite one—teacher. Her what-do-you-want-to-be-when-you-grow-up had been more consistent with that of the boys in her class. Policeman, fireman, cowboy, and astronaut. She was headed down the path of her dreams, but in addition to her awful vision, she had developed a severe case of claustrophobia that had derailed that dream. She handled one with contacts and the other with meditation, but both washed her out of any chance she had to walk on the moon.

  “Three good fuel cells, Flight.” Booster spoke confidently. Andrea glanced at the mission clock, then quickly to the screen. Everyone in the room held their breath as Explorer passed the seventy-three-second mark. This was the exact time when an O-ring failure on the right solid booster rocket had made the shuttle Challenger a household name and the worst disaster in NASA history.

  “One minute, fifty seconds away from solid rocket separation.”

  Andrea scanned the heads in the room for any sign of trouble or issue with their readouts. Everything and everyone looked exactly as they had rehearsed. She started to relax.

  “Two minutes into the flight and we have solid rocket booster separation. Explorer is thirty-four miles in altitude and traveling approximately thirty-two hundred miles per hour.”

  The external mounted camera on booster number two showed a flawless separation, and the Explorer floated away from its taxi into space.

  “Explorer, we are at the four-minute mark. Negative return.”

  “We copy, Houston. Explorer negative return.” The reception was scratchy as Commander Albert’s voice confirmed that the Explorer was too far away from where it had lifted off and at too high of an altitude to return to the Kennedy Space Center.

  Two minutes later, Capcom announced, “Six minutes into flight at an altitude of sixty-six miles, traveling at over eleven thousand miles per hour. All systems performing normally. On course, on track for preliminary orbit in fifty-eight seconds. Standing by for main engine cutoff.”

  “Roger, Capcom,” Andrea said, relaxing the strangling grip she held on her pen. She opened and closed her hand a few times to make the circulation move again.

  “Confirm external tank separation. Congratulations, Explorer, a flawless flight into orbit.” And it was all Andrea could do to not collapse into her chair in relief. The next milestone was landing on the moon.

  *

  Andrea watched in awe as Mission Specialist Molly Tremain stepped out of the shuttle and onto the surface of the moon. Her pulse raced when Molly activated her body camera and gave everyone a front-row seat to history. The scene was eerily like the first moon walk when astronaut Neil Armstrong hopped down from the ladder on the lunar module and kicked up moon dust. Tremain’s heavy boots did the same, but in this case the picture was not fuzzy but crystal clear, and her words were clipped and concise. “Houston, Explorer has arrived.”

  Every minute for the next three hours, Andrea watched as Tremain and three of her crew mates unloaded their tools and experiments from the cargo bay of the shuttle. Gravity on the moon was less than twenty percent that of the earth, and the crew bounced around the surface, reminding her of a balloon being batted around a room. The picture was a bit fuzzy but at least ten dozen times clearer than anything ever seen on previous moon walks. Several times Andrea felt her body sway, almost mimicking the movements of the crew as they bounded across the surface.

  The next five days went exactly as they had trained, with no deviation in the timeline, procedure, or protocol. The crew finished their experiments on the surface, gathered up their samples, and reentered the shuttle to secure their bounty. All that was left was to lift off and begin their journey home.

  Chapter Four

  T-minus 13:03:42:08

  “Houston, we have a problem.”

  Andrea dropped her pencil and sat up straighter in her chair, touching the earpiece in her left ear. She tilted her head to the side as if that would improve reception with the crew over a quarter of a million miles away.

  “Explorer, this is Houston. Say again.”

  “Houston, Explorer, I repeat, we have a problem. The main engine ignition switch is red. I repeat, the main engine ignition light is red. Switching to secondary switch number one.” The voice of Mission Commander Albert was calm.

  Andrea’s heart raced, and she immediately looked at the console in front of her. One red light at the upper left-hand corner of the screen winked at her. Up to this point the mission had been flawless.

  The shuttle had landed within inches of the designated landing area, and the crew had completed the experiments and exploration of the moon as rehearsed. Now, four days later, it was time to come home.

  “Copy that, Explorer. Switch to secondary ignition switch.”

  Andrea held her breath as she waited for the indication that the shuttle engines had fired.

  “Houston, this is Explorer. Secondary ignition switch is red. I repeat, secondary ignition switch is red. Switching to ignition switch number three.”

  “Copy that, Explorer, switch to ignition switch number three,” Capcom repeated.

  Suddenly a sea of flashing red lights blinked at her, signaling nothing short of a major disaster. Quickly she scanned the room as twenty-seven mission specialists anxiously checked and double-checked their data. The constant murmur in the room that had been her companion for the past eight days was now increasing in volume as they fired questions and status reports back and forth across the room. As if on cue, every head in the room turned and looked at her. The expressions on their faces left little doubt as to the severity of the situation.

  Suzanne Westfield, Andrea’s second in command, spoke first without being asked. “We have failure to ignite on main engines one, two, and three.” Suzanne’s voice was calm, but Andrea detected a slight tremor of anxiety that only she could hear.

  She nodded and turned her attention to Harrison Street, a thirty-eight year NASA veteran manning the Propulsion station, the station whose job it was to monitor the engine performance. Harrison shook his head almost imperceptibly, and Andrea’s stomach dropped.

  This couldn’t be happening. Dread, fear, and panic were just a few of the words to describe the churning in her gut. Her brain, always operating at top capacity, had stalled to the point that she wasn’t sure if she even remembered her own name. Instinct and training kicked in a split second later, and a calmness she had perfected over the years settled over her. She’d worked and trained her entire life for this mission. Failure was not an option.

  The phone beside her started to ring. She and the other thirty-eight people in the room had no doubt who was on the other end. She gritted her teeth and remained calm. This was not going to happen on her watch.

  Chapter Five

  T-minus 10:22:48:17

  “Don’t answer that, baby.”

  The woman under her grabbed Kenner tightly and pulled her down for another searing kiss. It was good. No, it was better than good, but when had the voice of the mystery woman turned from sultry to irritating? It must have been the fourth or fifth cocktail that had changed Kenner’s sense of hearing. The words of a country song floated through her head—something about how all the girls get prettier at closing time. It was obviously true that the same could be said about the number of cocktails. But that was hours ago and both had worn off.

  In one respect, Kenner didn’t want to get up and find her pants and phone. The opportunity to silence the woman either with her own mouth or put the woman’s mouth to other uses was tempting. She d
efinitely knew what to do with her lips and tongue and even her teeth, and Kenner’s clit started throbbing again just thinking about it. But answering the call would give her an excellent exit opportunity. The night and this woman had turned out exactly how she’d envisioned it. But it was time to go.

  “I’m sorry, Cheri. I have to. I don’t have a choice,” Kenner replied in fluid French. Digging her phone out of her back pocket, she glanced at the readout. It was a U.S. area code, but she didn’t recognize the number.

  “Kenner,” she said abruptly, her standard greeting.

  “Kenner Hutchings?”

  The sound on the other end of the line had some static, but it was coming from halfway around the world. “Yes,” she replied. She wanted to add “and who’s this” but thought it might thwart her ability use the call as a means to escape.

  “Ms. Hutchings, my name is Andrea Finley. I’m the flight director at NASA for the space shuttle Explorer.”

  Kenner shook her head, trying to encourage the wheels of recognition of what the woman said to start turning. Several things the woman said were familiar, but she was having a hard time lining them all up in the right order.

  “How did you get this number?”

  “Ms. Hutchings, that doesn’t matter right now.”

  “Yes, it does, and unless you tell me right now where you got this number, I’m hanging up and will not pick up again.” Kenner heard what she could only describe as an exasperated sigh. What did she say her name was again? Mandy? What the hell. It didn’t matter.

  “Roosevelt Poplar.”

  Kenner didn’t know if she should be surprised or pissed. Her boss at the Quantum Group liked to name-drop and used every opportunity to flaunt the brains inside his organization. Kenner couldn’t stand the politics and politicking that went on at his level. Obviously Rooster, as his employees called him—though only behind his back—had dropped her name in a circle she didn’t socialize in.