“Yes, it’s such a relief.”
He cleared his throat and looked down. “I don’t suppose you know the status of Building 7A?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know.” That was the engineering department in Kansas City. Most of his colleagues would have been there. “How are you holding up?”
“Fine. Thanks.” He gave a watery smile. “Well … I just wanted to apologize.”
“Accepted.”
The door opened, as a slightly breathless Eugene held it for Myrtle. His flight suit was not zipped quite all the way to the top.
I used their arrival to make my escape and joined Helen at the table. My tray had canned peaches, dry toast, and a covered bowl.
“I don’t know if you’ll like this, but it is soft and mild.” Helen reached across and lifted the lid. Inside was a bowl of rice, which looked like runny risotto, and smelled of chicken broth and … something savory. “It’s called mwei, or sometimes congee.”
A moment later, Myrtle sat with us. She had a sheen of sweat at her temples and her cheeks were a little rosy.
“How was the debriefing?” I said innocently.
She wet her lips and stifled a smile. “Thorough.”
“Glad to hear it.” The tray sat on the table and I pulled it toward me. The back of my throat was closing and some of it was from knowing that Helen and Myrtle were watching. Both of them were trying not to, but … they cared. I lifted the bowl. “Spoon or fork?”
“Spoon.” Helen slid a wrapped foil packet to Myrtle. “I got a sandwich for you.”
“You are blessed.” Myrtle opened the packet and bit into the ham and cheese sandwich with a relish that I envied. “Eugene wants us to be first on the agenda.”
“Noted.” I dipped the spoon in the mwei and gave it a try. It was … palatable. The texture was creamy without being sticky. I nodded. I could eat this.
“Would you be willing to do it solo?”
I raised my brows. “You were EV1.”
She nodded. “I’m also his wife. I think it will look better if I fade back.”
I knew this dance and I hated it. The charges of nepotism. The belief that you advanced only because of who you were married to. For me, getting into the IAC, that had been true. They never would have let me in if I hadn’t been married to Kenneth.
But I had carried my own weight, hadn’t I.
“I think you should do it.” I scowled at the room. “The more you hang back, the less able people will think you are.”
Myrtle pursed her lips. “We talked about it and this was what we decided.”
“This was my entire life.” I reached for her arm. “Please don’t bury your own ambit—”
The door opened again and Halim entered, walking with an obvious limp. I don’t know who it was, but someone started applauding. A moment later the entire room was. Considering that he had defused an actual bomb, while all I did was turn on a radio, that seemed fair. Halim tried to wave the applause away, which only helped a little.
He had been hurt? Why didn’t anyone tell me he had been hurt? I turned to Myrtle to see if she had known and she was glaring at Eugene. Someone stood up and offered the chair across from me, which Halim took gratefully. It was clear that more than just his knee was injured.
I set my bowl down and leaned over to him. “What happened?”
Halim shrugged. “I was mauled by bears.”
“Jet pack?”
“Jet pack. One of the charges was accessible only with the jet pack.” He shrugged, blushing. “I never trained on it and should have waited for you to come back. But I figured if Curt had used it…”
Myrtle shook her head. “Pilots.”
“It was fine on the way up.”
“Everything is…” I grimaced. “You had a load on the way down, didn’t you.”
“The charge.” He nodded. “Who designed that?”
“Not a pilot.” I leaned back in my chair and picked up the bowl of mwei again. “Glad you aren’t dead.”
Eugene gathered the room’s attention again. “All right. We’ve dodged some potentially meteoric disasters and that’s all due to the men and women in this room and the support teams that you all work with. There’s still some ejecta we have to deal with. So we’re going to start with a debrief of the Earth contact team and move on to readjusting our plans for the next six months. Wargin?”
I looked at Myrtle. If she didn’t move, I would stand up and do the job, but it wasn’t right. She shrugged and tossed her sandwich on the table.
Standing, Myrtle said, “I was EV1 on this, so let me walk you through what we learned. Earth First had several people within the IAC. Specifically, they had someone in the computer department who sent up bad code that deorbited the satellites both around Earth and here. They took down the power grid in the area surrounding Kansas City and also ignited several fuel storage facilities on the IAC campus. Evacuation procedures meant that most people got out; however, not everyone did.” She swallowed and there was the face we wear when someone dies. “The death toll at the IAC is currently at fourteen with sixty-three unaccounted for.”
Someone in the room moaned and I was honestly surprised it was only one person.
“The spaceports in Brazil and Europe are unharmed and most of the operations are moving there to—”
“Who?” The voice came from the back, interrupting her in a way they would never have interrupted Eugene.
Myrtle shook her head. “We don’t have a list yet. The connection was spotty. I’m sorry.”
“I meant who did this? You said it was people within the IAC. We know about Frye. Who else?”
“What would you do with that information?” Myrtle stepped away from the board. “Is that the problem you want to solve tonight? Because we have only three ships that can do the Earth-Moon transfer and even with the spaceports open in Brazil and Europe, it’s not clear when the IAC will be able to launch more. So I ask you … do you want to spend time talking about a vengeance we cannot enact, or working for the future of our home here?”
There are times when I hear a song or read a poem or listen to a politician speak and find a resonance. Myrtle was not speaking to me directly, but words sprang into my head in response to her.
“Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us…” For a moment, Kenneth was sitting beside me so clearly I felt as if I could reach to my left and take his hand.
Forgive Curt? Hell, no. But myself, yes. I could work toward the future the way my husband had. The way I had before I … before I got lost. It wasn’t much, those words, but it felt like a guide star that I could use to navigate home.
* * *
One month, one week, and three days after Kenneth died, Eugene knocked on the door to the gallery. We had been back in touch with Earth for two weeks and the lunar colony had settled into something that looked normal.
“Busy?” He was carrying a clipboard in one hand and I was happy to see that neither hand had Band-Aids on the knuckles.
“Just looking at memorial designs.” I straightened the drawings I’d been going over and gestured to the bench opposite. “What’s up?”
He sat down facing me and the gallery light above his head burnished his hair with gold. “Ana Teresa tells me you’re doing better.”
“Regular meals, yes.” I sighed and looked at the ceiling, where the skylight let in the artificial light that filled the dome. “If you need to see it, Helen has the logbook, and I’ve been given to understand that I’ve gained weight.”
He shook his head. “And the arm is doing well?”
“Physical therapy is a miraculous pain.” I lifted my left hand and closed it into a fist. I felt the pull in the tendons at the base of my arm as I showed him that I could do nearly a hundred degrees of rotation. Ana Teresa said it was likely all I’d get without corrective surgery. I lowered my hand and regarded him with some suspicion. “What are you about to ask me to do?”
“We’re going to send the first ship
back to Earth in approximately three weeks. I want you to be on it, but—” He held up his hand. “But. Curt and Birgit are going to be on it. How would you feel about being on the same ship?”
I’d known it was coming, the return to Earth. Home. I loved the Moon, but if I were Eugene, I would have put me on the first ship back to Earth too. I shrugged. “Not thrilled, but okay.” I rubbed the slight bulge in my left wrist. Even to a layman, it was visible. The oddity delighted the medical community. “Thank you for giving me the option to say no.”
He sighed. “All right … Next question. Halim has requested you as copilot. Helen will be Nav/Comp. Clemons approved the request. Is three weeks enough time for you to be ready?”
My brain filled with a flat buzzing. All of my joints felt as if they were filled with liquid oxygen. “Did you just ask me to copilot?”
“Yes.” He held up his hands. “If you’re not up for it, there are other options.”
“That’s not—” I sat up, waving my hands as if I could pull the right words out of the air. I only needed to be able to turn my hand to ninety degrees to grip a controller. I could compensate by using my shoulder if I needed extra rotation. Most spaceflight was done with the right-hand controller. None of that was the question. “After all of … After my breakdown, why the hell would the IAC let me fly?”
“They don’t know.” He looked down, running his thumb along the edge of his clipboard. “I kept your personal difficulties out of the logs.”
“Halim knows. Ana Teresa knows.” I stared at him. “You know.”
“I also know that the crew making this flight will not have radio contact for the majority of the trip.” His brow creased as he spoke. The IAC had cobbled one radio dish together and we had communication with them only when Brazil pointed toward the Moon. Eugene lifted his head and met my gaze across the tiny gallery. “I know I need a crew that is experienced and damn good pilots. I know that the head astronaut requested you. And I know that if you aren’t up for this, you will tell me.”
It wasn’t one of the big rockets that launched from Earth. Under normal circumstances, it was a nursemaid transit from the Moon to Lunetta and one I’d done countless times. Was I up for this? Not my arm. Not my feet. But was I up for this? I looked at the small luna cotta in the corner and the yearning on her face. “I’m still crying randomly. Eating is sometimes a challenge, but I haven’t missed a meal since we made contact.” I turned my hand over as far as it would go, forcing the fingers apart. “I’d want to do a couple of check rides and some sims.”
“Already planning on it.”
“Three weeks?”
“Yes.”
I nodded. “Then yes. I’m stable enough.”
* * *
How many places do you call home? For me, it could mean my parents’ home in Detroit. Or an empty pied-à-terre in Kansas City. Or my bunk in Artemis Base.
Or the middle seat in the cockpit of a rocket ship.
I settled into the copilot seat with Helen in the Nav/Comp chair to my right and Halim in the commander chair to my left. The cockpit was cramped and gray with a view of a velvet black sky overhead. The sunlight that caught on the edges of the ports was the odd ruddy color of a blood moon. I’d been on the surface during a lunar eclipse with its hours of coronal display, but I’d never launched during one. I kept feeling as if there were a fire outside the window.
The window explodes in a shower of glass and flame. I grab Kenneth and spin him away …
I swallowed the memory and focused. In my lap was a clipboard with the checklists for launch. I’d done this so many times over the years I could probably have set the switches in my sleep, but we live and die by checklists, so I worked my way through as if this were the first time.
“Okay. Ascent feeds are open and shutoffs are closed.”
Over the comm, Myrtle’s voice was a soothing presence in the CAPCOM seat. “Roger.”
Halim flipped a switch at his position, “And I’ve got the cross feed on.”
“Trans-Earth Shuttle, Artemis, little less than ten minutes here. Everything looks good and we assume the steerable’s in track mode AUTO.”
I nodded, even though she couldn’t see me. “Roger. It is in track mode AUTO. And both ED batteries are Go.”
“Indeed.” Halim’s voice was on comm. “All nominal.”
Much of what I was doing, in fact, was reading the checklist for Halim to set the switches. We knew he could fly this solo, but I read the items aloud anyway. “ATT translation, four jets. Balance couple ON.”
He joined me in the litany. “Balance couple, ON.”
“TTCA jets, prop pushbutton reset, deadband, minimum. ATT Control to mode control; mode control auto, both.”
He nodded. “Reset. Auto, auto.”
“Trans-Earth Shuttle, Artemis. You are Go for launch. Repeat. You are Go for launch.”
Helen watched the clock, with her pencil poised. “Two minutes to launch, on my mark.”
“Roger.” Halim lifted his hands away from the controls. He toggled the mic for the people riding in the passenger compartment below us. “Two minutes downstairs. Please confirm you are secure and in launch position.”
Below us were some of the polio patients, but not all. Garnet would not survive the crushing g-forces of reentry to Earth. Someday, she might be well enough to go home, but for now, she was alive on the Moon and working as a computer with a pencil held in her mouth and a workboard positioned above her. Guillermo stayed behind, with a limp that did not interfere with his work, but he was afraid that if he went back to Earth they wouldn’t let him launch again. Eugene had talked Clemons into transferring Guillermo to the roster of long-timers.
“Mark.”
Halim replied, “Roger. Guidance steering in the AGS.”
I double-checked the indicators. Every call and response calmed me and brought me closer to peace. Eugene and Myrtle have their church. I have mine. “Master Arm on.”
“One minute downstairs.”
Downstairs, Curtis Frye was restrained in a launch couch. I had not spoken with him since Eugene and I questioned him. I was fine with that. I did not want to see his face again until he was in court and I was on the witness stand. And he was not my problem.
I turned to another page in the checklist. “DSKY blanks.”
Halim’s hands settled on the controllers. His touch was delicate, as if he were a violinist and the trans-Earth shuttle were a Stradivarius.
On my left, Helen watched the clock and counted us down. “Nine, eight, seven, six, five…”
The main engine ignited, utterly silent in the lunar vacuum, with only an indicator to tell us the ship was alive.
“Three, two, one…”
And we had liftoff. Gravity grabbed us, trying to keep us on the Moon. As we rose on a column of fire, g-forces dragged us back into the couches. I worked my panel. “Eight, eleven meters per second up. Be advised of the pitchover.”
The rocket rolled in silence as we adjusted our angle to slot into lunar orbit before our trans-Earth injection burn.
“Balance couple, OFF.” The light in the cabin shifted, and the cold gray metal went warm with the amber of a sunset. As we rolled, a corona of long red and gold streamers rose in the window. It formed a ring that glowed brightest where it brushed the paper-thin skin of atmosphere wrapped around our hidden planet. In the center of that shifting, ethereal halo lay a black velvet orb eclipsing the sun. Earth.
Home.
EPILOGUE
FIRST MAYOR OF LUNAR COLONY ADDRESSES UNITED NATIONS
ARTEMIS BASE, Moon, May 28, 1965—Today, Major Eugene Lindholm addressed the United Nations via telelink from the Moon after his historic win as the first mayor of Artemis Base. Major Lindholm, a handsome Negro man, has been serving for the past year as the International Aerospace Coalition’s administrator of the lunar colony but will step down to take on this new role. In his address, he thanked the United Nations for their vision in allowing the Moon to b
e a self-governing and independent world. He invited all nations and all peoples to think of the Moon as a new cradle for humanity. He was joined by his wife, Mrs. Lindholm, who wore a navy belted pantsuit, with a matching feathered cloche.
The ballroom was stifling as 250 guests circulated in a swirl of Kansas City’s social hierarchy. At the front of the room, on the stage where we held press conferences, a fantastic big band backed Ella Fitzgerald. I smiled at my guests as I moved among them with the cool stem of a martini glass in my right hand. Having learned from mistakes with Kenneth, this party was cocktails and hors d’oeuvres, but honestly, I think I could have thrown a twelve-course banquet and no one would have objected.
We were welcoming the First Mars Expedition home.
Even if you didn’t approve of the space program, these men and women were worldwide heroes. Each of the crewmembers who had made it home from Mars stood with a knot of people around them. On the far wall, I’d had them hang the official astronaut portraits of those we’d lost.
I spotted Nathaniel York trapped by Senator Mason from North Carolina, who had backed the man into a bouquet of gardenias. Nathaniel had one hand in the pocket of his tuxedo trousers, and nursed a martini while he looked past the senator to the press of people around Elma. He would be stuck there for hours.
I worked my way through the crowd in a swirl of robin’s egg taffeta. “Well, good evening, Senator. Dr. York.”
The senator turned, chest puffing over the cummerbund of his tuxedo. “Madame President. Such a pleasure to see you and such excellent timing. Dr. York and I were just discussing the budget constraints that the space program faces.”
Nathaniel, standing slightly behind the senator’s line of sight, mouthed, “Save me.”
“Now, Senator…” I put my left hand, clad in white kid glove, on the sleeve of his tuxedo to build rapport. “You know I will have those conversations with you at any time. In fact—you’re on my to-do list for next week. I want to sit down and look at a job creation program for North Carolina.”
His greedy little eyes gleamed. “That is mighty considerate of you, I must say. I am glad to hear you thinking about the interests of the states of this great nation.”
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