As I walked through the door into the sparkling room, Ana Teresa wheeled on me with a small saw in her hands. “Come. My X-ray machine is working again. I want to see your arm.”
“And hello to you, too.” I packed my internal tirade away for later use. It’s not that I had forgotten that my arm was broken, but I had become accustomed to it. The ache had muted and become part of the background with my feet. I settled on the stool she had set out for me and propped my arm on the counter.
“I thought X-rays could see through plaster.”
Setting the saw to my cast, she raised her voice over the buzzing. “Clearer image without it.”
“Ah.” I nodded. “Right. For posterity. First broken bone and all that.”
Ana Teresa scowled. “The second break confuses everything. Also, your bone density.”
“Well. Sorry to be a disappointment.”
She snorted. “You are an astronaut. I expect nothing les—”
The lights went out.
A moment later the emergency lights snapped on. Ana Teresa set down her saw with a huff, as if it were a personal affront. “This is maddening.”
“Just wait.” I stared at the ceiling, as if I could see whatever was causing the outage. “It’ll be back on in sixteen minutes.”
She snatched a terrifyingly industrial pair of scissors off a supply cart and pointed them at me. “If I had people on life support … Tell the administrator that this is dangerous at my patients.”
“Speaking of.” Looking around sickbay, with its empty beds, I raised my eyebrows and tried to ignore the jarring crunches of the shears as she cracked through the rest of my cast. “Where is everyone?”
“Mm.” She nodded toward Midtown as she worked. “The open space is better for recovery, so I am keeping only the worst cases here.”
“But…” I looked around the room again. “The beds are empty.”
“Yes…” She set down the shears and peeled the sides of the cast off my arm. “Eugene rearranged facilities here during the repairs to create a quarters for some of the long-term patients. They’re down the hall.”
“Who?”
“Currently Major Lindholm has asked me to house Curtis, Birgit, Ruben, Garnet, and the LCA.”
Ana Teresa grabbed a smaller pair of scissors to remove the gauze. Without the fans, sickbay was eerily quiet. I could hear the metal blades of the scissors brushing past each other.
The gauze dropped away. My wrist had atrophied in the cast, and had a bulge on the side that I didn’t remember.
Ana Teresa huffed looking at it and put her hands on her hips. “Turn your palm up, slowly.”
Muscles that had not turned in weeks protested, and I could feel the stretch down the side of my forearm as I began the turn. When my thumb was not quite pointing to the ceiling, my wrist stopped. A low ache throbbed in the center of the bone.
I frowned, straining to turn it. It wasn’t that pain stopped it, my wrist just wouldn’t rotate farther.
“That’s not…” I swallowed, letting it relax back down to the table. My palm didn’t rest flat. Concentrating, I tried rotating again. Forty-five degrees of rotation. Maybe. “I’m … I’m having some trouble.”
Ana Teresa slid two of her fingers into the palm of my hand. “Grip.”
My fingers moved, but it was almost as if the cast were still there, impeding their range. “It’s just … This is just atrophy, right?”
“This is a textbo—” The lights came on. In the harsh light, Ana Teresa’s frown was deeper than before. She stepped back. “Let’s get you on the X-ray and see how bad it is.”
“Will physical therapy help?” What had I done? I tried gripping again, as if I were holding a controller. My fingers responded, but with too small a movement. “Will I be able to fly?”
“Let’s take the X-ray. Then we’ll talk.”
* * *
I am very good at denial. Some days it is the only thing that keeps me going. Some days, it is the only thing I can control. Some days, I tell myself that my problem is the solution.
I caught Eugene Thursday morning. He was eating breakfast at his desk in Frisch’s office and had a report in front of him. He balanced a fork of scrambled eggs in one hand, keeping his place on the page with the other. I stopped in the open doorway to watch him and he had no idea I was there.
He looked really dragged out. Lines I didn’t remember on his brow and darkened circles under his eyes. He was slumping into the desk, frowning as he read.
I leaned against the doorway. “What time did you start this morning?”
He jumped, eggs tumbling to the desktop. “Jesus, Wargin.” Grabbing his napkin, he wiped the eggs off the report. “Six? I couldn’t sleep.”
“Hm…” I chewed my lower lip, watching him. “May I offer a word of advice?”
“You’re going to anyway.” He tossed the napkin onto his tray. “Shoo—ure.” His voice twisted in a desperate attempt to turn “shoot” into “sure.”
It took me a moment to realize that he’d thought saying “shoot” would remind me of Kenneth. It wouldn’t have, but the deflection did.
“Kenneth got more done when he stopped doing working breakfasts.” Granted, he did that to make sure I ate at least one meal a day, but the results were the same. “Trust me … Don’t set a pace you can’t sustain.”
Eugene watched me, drumming his fingers on the desk. He closed the report and turned his chair to face me. “How are you doing?”
There is a sincerity and an earnestness with which people ask that question after a tragedy that is kind and exhausting all at the same time. “In the cast for another two weeks. Weeping less. Eating more. Bored.” I crossed my arms over my chest and braced for a fight. “I want to talk to Curt.”
He narrowed his eyes. “About?”
“Flying.” I braced myself for pity. “I have a permanent loss of rotation in my left arm. From the break. It’s not polio, but it gives me a different angle to approach him with. And then see what happens.”
Eugene shook his head. “That’s not going to work.”
I sighed, resenting having to spell this out. “Common ground can usually build a rapport that you can exploit. In this case, we’ve both lost fl—”
The lights went out.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake.” I threw my hands out to the side just as the emergency lights flickered on. “Again?”
Eugene turned in his chair to look at the dim bulb. “That was less than twenty-four hours since the last one.”
“Yes…” Three this week. What would that do to Helen’s statistical analysis? “That’s concerning.”
“Indeed. I don’t like that the frequency is increasing.”
Nor did I. It felt like we were building to something. “This is part of why I want to talk to Curt.”
Eugene turned back to me and folded his hands together. There was a subtle shift in his posture, in the line of his neck and the set of his jaw, that said he was shifting from speaking as my friend to pure business. “I’m going to deny that request. You’re not firing on all cylinders yet.”
I clenched my hands, knowing that the fresh cast was not what kept my left hand from closing into a fist. “I am not going to collapse in front of him.”
He sighed. “No. But you’ve forgotten that in your eulogy, you talked openly about sabotage. If Curt is Icarus, he will be completely on guard the moment you walk into the room.” Eugene leaned forward, holding me with his gaze. “If we talk to him, it has to be a straight-up interrogation.”
“All right … That’s a good point. So let’s set that up.”
“If you had walked in and proposed that, sure. I’d set it up.” Eugene shook his head. “You’re not well and it would be a bad choice— Hold that response. Sit on it … You know I’m right.”
I did. Damn it. I am good at denial, but not that good. I looked at the scuffs on the floor and my eyes were stinging. My cheeks were hot with embarrassment. I nodded, not quite trusting m
y voice.
“Look…” His chair creaked as he spun and papers shuffled on his desk. “It would help me if you’d go through the technical manual for the base. See if there’s any vulnerability they’re exploiting.”
I nodded again and took the binder he held out. If there was even a chance this would be useful, I’d do it, but I know busywork when I see it.
* * *
I spent Friday in the gallery. I’ve made myself familiar with every technical manual since we established the first lunar base. But my eyes ached reading the tiny print and kept drooping. People will talk about the training astronauts go through, but honestly, the hardest thing about our job is staying awake while reading sentences like …
Regulation of the array output voltage is required because of the performance characteristics of PV cells; that is, output voltage is a function of the load placed on the cells, and this results in a varying power source, which the SSU accomplishes by receiving power directly from the PV array and maintaining output voltage within a specified range of 130 to 173 V dc (normally 160 V dc that is referred to as “primary power voltage”).
Please note, that is a single sentence within a 222-page document, twenty-four pages of which are just a glossary of acronyms. Some of which I used every day and had forgotten what the letters stood for, like PGNCS, which somehow is pronounced “pings.” Primary Guidance, Navigation, and Something Something. Others were more opaque. Consider …
Secondary power originates in a DDCU and is then distributed through a network of ORUs called secondary power distribution assemblies (SPDAs) and remote power distribution assemblies (RPDAs), in which modality SPDAs and RPDAs are essentially housings that contain one or more RPCMs.
My personal favorite appeared to contain no actual nouns.
“Once the permanent ETCS becomes operational, the EETCS is deactivated, at which point portions of the EETCS are used as components on PVTCS.”
I hoped I would find something useful.
I did not.
But we lost power two more times.
THIRTY-NINE
IAC CHIEF ROCKET SCIENTIST REFUTES CLAIM THAT GOVERNOR WARGIN TRIED TO POISON HIM
KANSAS CITY, May 24, 1963—(AP)—Information leaked from President Denley’s office shows that the late Governor Wargin was under investigation for the poisoning of the International Aerospace Coalition’s chief rocket scientist, Dr. Nathaniel York. The materials suggest that the governor was jealous of Dr. York, who he suspected of having an affair with his wife.
Dr. York, whose wife is a part of the First Mars Expedition, refutes this claim as “insulting,” saying that he and Governor Wargin were longtime friends. He went on to say, “It’s an attempt by the Administration to sully the reputation of Mrs. Wargin. I’d like to ask anyone to do the calculations on the timing. Why do that to a widow, now? Why are they trying to obscure the investigation into Earth First’s efforts to disable the space program?”
By Friday night, I had a splitting headache from reading print that was too small. I don’t remember the font being so tiny when I started at the IAC. Halim caught me rubbing the bridge of my nose over dinner—and yes, I had a companion for every meal now.
He cleared his throat. “Reading glasses.”
I stabbed a piece of sweet potato. “I’m not old.”
“Calendrically, I am younger than you, but I’ve used reading glasses for the past two years.” He shrugged and sliced his rabbit. “They haven’t grounded me, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
Even though I know perfectly well many astronauts wind up using them because of the changes that occur in our eyes in microgravity, most of them were men. For reasons that remained a mystery to the flight surgeons, women’s eyes adapted better to space. So the fact that I needed reading glasses was not space related. I just didn’t want to remind the IAC that I was “old hat.”
Not that it likely mattered. At this point, I was fairly certain I would be permanently grounded the moment I set foot on Earth.
* * *
Saturday morning, I gave up and went to sickbay to ask Ana Teresa for some readers. I’d finished with the current lunar base manual and decided to start on the iteration before, just in case there was a legacy system. It felt like busywork, but I was damned if I was going to dive into self-pity and become more of a burden on my crewmates. I trusted Eugene not to give me something completely useless.
But my eyes still hated me.
When I opened the door to sickbay, Ana Teresa was just visible through a gap in a curtain around the examining table. She said something to her patient about missing her flowers—I don’t remember the specifics. I just had to turn around and walk out of the room.
All that trouble and worry about Kenneth’s heart and none of it had mattered. I pressed my forehead against the rubber wall, leaning on it as if I were keeping the regolith that buried us from collapsing. My throat was tight and hot with each breath I forced through it. Seventeen days without him in the world. I stared at the rubber wall until my breathing steadied, wiped my face, and went back in.
The curtain had been pulled back and I realized Ana Teresa’s patient was Curt. She looked around and their conversation faltered to a halt with my second appearance.
Curt rolled his head toward me, brows turned up in concern. “You okay?”
My eyes were probably red, but I couldn’t do anything about that. “Yep. I just didn’t want to barge in when she was working with you.” I kept my smile calibrated to be approachable but not cheery. Eugene had told me not to question him, and I wouldn’t, but I was here now and running away seemed pointless. “Privacy is important.”
Curt laid a hand against his forehead in mock anguish. “Oh, the shame if anyone should accidentally learn I have polio.” He lowered his hand and gave a small, earnest smile. “Seriously, though, I’m glad you’re feeling better.”
For a moment, I looked at Ana Teresa with a brief panic that she had told Curt about the anorexia and then realized he only meant that my husband was dead. Eyes stinging, I straightened the curtains as if they needed that. “Has the cramping been as bad?”
“No. It’s pretty much stopped.” He gestured toward his legs. “Wait until you see my spiffy new braces.”
“That’s exciting.” I turned, with an expression of curiosity, and my breath caught in my throat. In the two weeks since I had seen him, Curt’s legs had atrophied visibly. I had entertained the idea he might be faking the severity of the disease, and that idea got crossed off my list. Each leg had a brace, crafted from aluminum and strapped down with equipment tethers. “Wow. Nice work. Who made those?”
“Actual rocket scientists!” His voice sounded upbeat, but he was staring at the ceiling, blinking a little too rapidly. “The right foot was starting to twist, and hopefully this will stop it.”
Ana Teresa rested her hand on Curt’s shoulder. “It will be better when we can get you home.”
“Joy.” He rolled his head to look at the doctor. “Here, maybe I can support myself with these if I keep working at it. On Earth? I’ll be in a chair and that’ll be that.”
That surprised me. If I were Icarus, I would not tip my hand about having some mobility. “A chair didn’t stop Roosevelt.” Having said that, I also knew Franklin went to great lengths to hide his disability from the public. The press had a gentlemen’s agreement never to photograph him in it. No one reported on what it cost him to get to a lectern and speak from a standing position. “You can do anything you want to when you get back.”
“Not fly.”
He wasn’t wrong. If Eugene had agreed with my plan, it would have been an opening.
Ana Teresa rolled a wheeled chair over—it was an unholy alliance of a launch couch and an office chair. With it, Curt would be able to sit up and be moved about but completely at the mercy of someone else. With an easy efficiency I envied, Ana Teresa transferred Curt to the wheelchair.
The doctor got behind the chair. “Give me a moment and I�
�ll be right with you.”
“Thanks. I’m just in for reading glasses.”
“Ah. Certainly. I’ll set the eye chart up whe—”
The lights went out.
Blink and the emergency lights popped on. I looked at my watch, even though I knew it would be another sixteen minutes. I did not like how much the frequency of these had increased.
Ana Teresa was scowling at the lights. Curt twisted his head to look at her. “Hey, doc, why don’t you let Nicole take me back to the polio ward? That’ll give you time to set up.”
Adrenaline flooded my body and I stayed in a neutral posture. Why would Curt want to get me alone? He couldn’t stand, so I was reasonably confident he didn’t want to attack me. “Sure! That’ll give us time for the power to come back on.”
Ana Teresa shook her head, looking at my cast. “You can’t transfer him to the bed.”
Curt waved a hand. “I actually want to sit up for a while. The ceiling is getting old.”
Before the doctor could object more, I got behind Curt’s chair and pushed him to the door. “Back in a minute.”
Getting the chair over the threshold of the door took a little effort. My cast dug into the web of my thumb as I tipped the chair back to get the wheels over the lip, but I managed to get Curt into the hall without Ana Teresa chasing us to help.
The moment we were out the door, Curt leaned his head back, trying to see me. “How long do the batteries on the emergency lights last?”
Hot and cold chased along the length of my spine. We were in lunar night right now and the colony got a significant amount of its power from the sun. On my giant list of things, I had not thought about running the emergency batteries down. If something happened to take out the main power plant, it would be another week before we saw the sun. “That’s a good question…”
“Stop the chair for a second, would you?”
I did, curious about where he was headed but also conscious that Eugene was right. I was not firing on all cylinders. “What’s up?”
The Relentless Moon Page 36
