And eventually she fell asleep.
After a few days, Hunter knew Airin was avoiding him. He couldn’t blame her, but he wished like hell it didn’t have to be this way.
If only he hadn’t kissed her after the rainbow walk.
If only he’d kissed her again.
If only he hadn’t made this goddamn bargain with Dira.
His email tonight was pretty short. Just: Airin seems good. Her ribs are healing. She’s eating well. She’s enjoying her work with Val in the lab.
He hesitated before hitting Send. Then, instead, he moved his cursor above his sign-off and added, Is Airin in touch with you at all? If you’re getting this information from her, you don’t need me. We can dissolve our agreement, and you won’t owe me anything.
Send.
He answered an email from his aunt Rosemary and one from Caleb while he waited for Dira’s response. It came twenty minutes later.
Airin is hardly talking to me. A few texts to say she’s doing well and hopes I am, too. If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t know anything. We need to continue our arrangement.
She’d sent an attachment with the email—a prospectus detailing a proposed timeline for the DelAres mission to Mars.
He read it. Then he put his elbows on the desk and his head in his hands.
If she stayed on track, Dira really would beat NASA to Mars. Maybe not by five years, but by three at least.
He wanted a place on that crew. And, apparently, he was willing to talk to Dira behind Airin’s back to get it.
But maybe there was a way to balance the scales. He could help Airin get what she wanted.
In spite of the biosphere misfire, his working relationships at NASA were still good. He could start sounding people out about Airin’s situation, see what might be possible for someone with her medical history.
One way or another, he would do whatever he could to help Airin reach her dreams. In the end, that would be a lot more lasting than a relationship.
Romance was temporary. But becoming an astronaut, going into space—those were things no one could take away from you. That’s what counted. Not short-term gratification or emotional comfort, but dreams, goals, missions.
Things that lasted.
Chapter Seventeen
Hunter kept himself busy during the next few weeks. Airin was still avoiding him, and he let her keep her distance. He saw her at least a once a day, usually at breakfast or dinner, and he always asked how she was doing, how she was feeling, how her work with Val was going. Enough information to satisfy Dira, if not enough to satisfy him.
NASA was working him hard, which he appreciated. His various assignments gave him something to focus on besides Airin. During his fifth week as Jones’s replacement, they had him in the university simulator at least six hours a day, testing out flight scenarios for the long journey to Mars and what promised to be a hellishly difficult landing procedure.
“We’re fifteen years away from this mission,” he commented after a particularly long session, during which they’d killed him about forty different ways.
“And?” the project engineer asked, scribbling something down on a clipboard as Hunter emerged from the cockpit and stretched.
“And you’re acting like we’re heading for Mars in six weeks. They didn’t sim this much for the Apollo missions.”
Janelle glared at him over her glasses. “There’s one big difference between a flight to the moon and a flight to Mars. A twenty-six-minute difference, to be precise.”
There was virtually no communications delay between Earth and the moon. That meant if an emergency happened, the pilots in the spacecraft could communicate instantaneously with mission control. You might only be up there with two or three other people, but you had the resources of a thousand people—some of them the smartest on the planet—down there on the ground, working out problems on your behalf.
On a journey to Mars, you wouldn’t have that help. It could take between three and twenty-two minutes for signals to travel between Earth and Mars, meaning that six minutes was the bare minimum to get a reply from the other end after you asked a question. In the simulator right now, dealing with landing scenarios, they were working with a thirteen-minute delay each way. If something blew up on the spacecraft—literally or figuratively—the crew wouldn’t hear back from mission control for twenty-six minutes.
Crises tended to develop a lot more rapidly than that.
“That’s why simulations are so much more important with a Mars mission,” Janelle went on. “The name of the game for a Mars crew is—”
“Autonomy.” Hunter, like everyone else on the Mars teams, had heard that word a lot.
“Exactly.” She pointed at him. “You’re lucky, you know. Ten or twenty years ago, you wouldn’t have been such a hot property. While our missions were all low-Earth orbit or to the International Space Station, the selection folks weren’t as focused on independence and risk taking and creative problem solving. But now that we’re going to Mars, cowboys like you are back in style.”
He grinned. “Cowboys are always in style. And rugged individualists make great explorers.”
“The challenge is balancing independence with teamwork.”
“Those qualities aren’t mutually exclusive. I’m all about teamwork. And that’s what they’re studying in the biosphere, right? How different personality types work together? I’m sure NASA will figure it out.”
Janelle nodded thoughtfully. “I’m starting to hear some interesting things about the biosphere project.”
“Yeah? I thought the first report wasn’t due out till next week.”
“I’ve seen some of the preliminary data, and one thing stands out. All eight subjects are coping well with the isolation and close quarters and other restrictions, but the two couples are exceeding expectations. They’re operating with higher levels of emotional resilience and productivity.”
He remembered his conversation with Dira. “NASA will never send couples into space.”
“I used to think so, too. But a mission to Mars is different from anything NASA has planned before, and they wouldn’t have included couples in the biosphere study if they weren’t interested in how they’d perform.” She glanced at her watch. “Okay, break’s over. Time to let me kill you again.”
“That was just a break? I thought we were done for the day. Did I mention we’ve got fifteen years to get ready for this mission?”
“If we’re going to produce an autonomous crew in that time, we have to start training now. Fortune favors the prepared.” She gestured with her clipboard toward the simulator. “Anyway, you’re just cranky because we’re working your ass off instead of Jones’s. Stop complaining and let’s tackle the next scenario.”
“Whatever you say, ma’am. Like I said, I’m all about teamwork.”
An hour later, they finally finished for the night. As Hunter was driving home, he found himself thinking about the conversation with Janelle.
Would NASA really consider sending couples to Mars?
He hoped not. Adding built-in emotional baggage to a mission was a bad idea.
But for some reason, he kept picturing two astronauts in pilot couches, side by side, their helmets titled toward each other as they looked at telemetry data. One of the astronauts was him. The other one . . .
He shied away from identifying the second astronaut. Another image filled his mind’s eye instead: Airin as he’d seen her that morning. Her ribs had been declared fully healed by her doctor, and she and Val had been headed to the ocean for Airin’s first long swim since her injury. She’d been wearing a red bikini under a white cover-up that covered absolutely nothing up, and he’d wanted to follow her so bad he’d been like a dog lunging against his leash.
When he arrived at the house a few minutes later, Val was in her favorite spot on the living room couch, but Airin was out.
“How was the swim?” he asked, dropping his bag on the floor and going over to the refrigerator.
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br /> Val looked up from her laptop. “What?”
He grabbed a container of yogurt. “Your swim. This morning. How did Airin do?”
“She did great. She’s a monster in the water. Not faster than me, of course.”
“Of course.”
“But still good.”
He took his yogurt into the living room and sat down on the chair across from Val. “How is she doing otherwise? Did you guys do more work on carbon dioxide extraction today?”
Val studied him for a second. Then she closed her laptop with a slow, deliberate motion and set it down on the coffee table.
Shit. Val never closed her laptop, no matter how gripping a conversation or TV show or anything else going on around her might be.
She leaned back and folded her arms.
“For a month now I’ve been pretty patient with your questions. ‘How is Airin doing?’ ‘What is she thinking?’ ‘How is she feeling?’ ‘What do you talk about?’ ‘How are her ribs?’ ‘Is she working too hard?’”
“I—”
She spoke right past him. “I haven’t asked why you can’t ask her yourself, considering that you live in the same damn house. I haven’t asked why you’re avoiding her, either. The reason I haven’t asked is because it’s none of my business. Just like it’s none of my business that Airin does the exact same thing.”
“She does?”
“Yes, she does. She goes out of her way to avoid you, and then she asks me how you’re doing. Just like you do.”
He hadn’t been expecting that.
“She asks how I’m doing?”
Val didn’t answer. She just looked at him, her arms still folded.
He took it for about ten seconds. Then: “Okay, get it off your chest. What?”
“It’s time for you to work this out. You’re supposed to be a crew commander. Airin’s not part of our crew, exactly, but she’s part of our household. You need to handle this interpersonal shit, whatever it is. I can’t be your go-between anymore.”
As much as he hated to admit it, Val was right.
But this was different from any “interpersonal shit” he’d dealt with before. He’d never met a teamwork situation he couldn’t handle, which was one of the reasons he’d advanced in his chosen profession. “Plays well with others” was a critical skill in the military, just as it had always been one of the “desirable astronaut attributes.”
As Val had pointed out, Airin was a de facto part of his crew. She was working with Val. She was part of a shared living arrangement with other crew members. Functionally, the role she played in his life was as a colleague.
But he’d never felt about a crew member the way he felt about Airin.
He’d thought that avoiding her would weaken the attraction. He’d thought burying himself in work would distract him from it. And he’d thought that Val could be a kind of buffer. As she’d called herself, a go-between.
He thought about the body rescue hooks you find in any electrical safety area. The hook is nonconductive, and it’s used to save someone being shocked by an object they can’t release—because the electricity is contracting their hand muscles. If a would-be rescuer tries to pull the victim away, his muscles contract, too.
It felt like contact with Airin carried those same risks.
“You were my body rescue hook,” he muttered.
Val had worked in plenty of electrical safety areas, and she knew exactly what he meant.
“It’s like that, huh?”
He shrugged. And then the worst thing of all happened: pity came into her eyes.
“I’m sorry, Hunter. That’s messy. But you still have to fix it. You don’t think something like this could happen on a long-haul mission to Mars? May as well figure out how to deal with it now. Think of it as an analog simulation.”
He supposed she was right. But the truth was, he was getting pretty damn tired of thinking about everything in his life as an analog simulation.
The front door opened behind him, and when he turned his head, he saw Airin standing in the kitchen.
“Hey,” she said, looking at the two of them.
“Hey,” Val said.
Airin’s gaze fell on the container of yogurt he’d forgotten he was holding. “Is that the last yogurt?”
“Yeah.” He paused. “You want it?”
“No, you can have it.”
“No, that’s okay, you can—”
“Oh, for God’s sake.” Val leaned forward and grabbed the yogurt from him. “This one’s mine. Why don’t the two of you walk down to the market and buy some more?”
He and Airin looked at each other.
“What do you say?” he asked after a moment. “Are you up for a walk?”
She looked uncertain, and he was suddenly determined that she would go with him.
He surged to his feet and went over to her. He took her bag, dropped it on the kitchen floor beside his, and grabbed her hand.
“Let’s go.”
Once they were outside, Airin tugged at his hand, and he released her immediately. But she didn’t turn around and go back inside, so he took that as a win.
They started their walk without saying anything.
It was twilight, and the gray sky and growing shadows made everything feel vague and elusive and mysterious. Evening birdsong filled the air, along with the occasional car driving by, but behind all that was the waiting silence of night.
Airin was wearing a pair of khaki shorts, a blue NASA T-shirt, and a pair of flip-flops. Her hair was loose, rippling in coal-black waves down her back, and the memory of touching it was like phantom silk against his fingertips.
Airin had expanded her wardrobe quite a bit in the last month. It now included T-shirts and tank tops, jeans and shorts, sandals and flip-flops. It was a Hawaiian wardrobe, but even though her clothes matched her environment, Airin still stood out.
Whether she was wearing a silk dress or a T-shirt and cutoffs, Airin managed to be elegant. She was elegant like his favorite vintage airplane, the de Havilland Dragon Rapide of the 1930s. It was named for its dragonfly shape, created by two sets of wings, a long, graceful fuselage, and the connected cockpit windows that looked like dragonfly eyes.
But Airin’s elegance wasn’t only in her design. There was a sense of strength and speed and toughness to her, too, like the SR-71 Blackbird. The Blackbirds had been made of titanium and steel, and they could withstand sustained cruise speeds above Mach 3. They could outrun any enemy aircraft or missile, and though some had been destroyed in accidents, none had ever been lost to enemy fire.
They looked pretty damn cool, too. They’d been painted a dark blue, almost black, with touches of red here and there.
He could probably come up with a few more planes Airin reminded him of, but maybe he should actually talk to her instead. The only problem was, he couldn’t come up with a single icebreaker.
Then, thank God, Airin came up with one.
“I’ve decided what my field of study is going to be,” she said.
“Yeah? What?”
“Aerospace medicine.”
“Really? I would’ve thought you’d avoid anything to do with medicine because of your history.”
She glanced up at him with a quick smile, and he felt the electric pull he’d been trying so hard to overcome. It was the first time she’d smiled at him in weeks.
“I know what you mean. But I thought about what you said that night . . .”
She faltered suddenly. The words the night we kissed hung in the air, and he hoped she’d go right past them so they wouldn’t have to talk about it.
She did.
“What you said about, you know, studying something I’d enjoy that would also be useful in space. It’s hard to be poked and prodded and operated on when no one’s telling you what’s happening. It makes you feel out of control. That’s one of the issues astronauts deal with in space already, and I thought it would be helpful to have a flight surgeon on board who understands that. So I
’m going to focus on space psychology as well as space medicine. Even if I never make it to Mars, I’ll be able to help the people who do.” She paused. “I’m also going to study electrical engineering. It’s a useful field of knowledge on its own, and it also ties into medicine. The body has its own electrical systems, and doctors are starting to look at human physiology the way engineers do. I thought it might be good to have a crew member who can find engineering solutions and emotional solutions to a problem. Someone who can speak both languages.”
“That makes sense,” he said—and it did. As someone who only spoke one of those languages, he could probably use a translator now and again. “That’s going to be a hell of a lot of work, though.”
“I’m not afraid of hard work. I like hard work.”
“I get that. I like to work hard, too.”
She glanced up at him again. “But what are you working for?”
“What do you mean?”
She hesitated, but only for a moment. “I get the feeling that all your hard work serves a double purpose. It’s to achieve a goal, but it can also help you run away from something.”
He stared down at her for a second before turning his gaze back to the sidewalk stretching before them. They were at the midpoint of their journey: as far to their destination as it would be to go back home.
“If I am, why would I tell you about it? Or anyone?”
His tone was mildly aggressive—hopefully enough to shake her off this topic.
She didn’t seem shaken. “I was just asking a question. You made me think a lot about my own goals. What I want and why I want it. I wondered if you’ve ever asked yourself the same questions, or if you’re just on autopilot now. A path you started on years ago that you haven’t really questioned since.”
He felt irritation rising. “What are you getting at?”
“It just occurred to me that your mom and your dad both left you, in different ways. If you go to Mars, you’d be the one leaving. You’d be leaving the whole world behind.”
The air in his lungs felt thick and strange, like air from another planet.
“I guess you’re getting a head start on the psychology thing. What are you saying, exactly? That I’m messed up?”
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