“I can’t remember the last time I was happy to see the paper.”
“Oh, you’ll like this one.” She held up her free hand as if framing an imaginary headline. “Front page: DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING AWARDED NOBEL PEACE PRIZE.”
“Mazel tov!” I clapped my hands together. “I’m so glad they recognized his work.”
“That’s great.” Parker left his seat by the whiteboard and came to stand behind Florence so he could read over her shoulder. “Was he the first?”
Florence shook her head, not asking what he meant by “first.” Heck, even I knew what he meant, and was glad he’d asked. I’d wondered, but didn’t want to reduce Dr. King to his race. I was curious, though.
“Nah. That was Ralph Johnson Bunche.” She handed Parker half the papers. “Elma, you got mail. I swear I didn’t read it, but you tell your husband that if he keeps writing notes like this, the steam is going to damage my machine.”
“And you say you didn’t read it.” A blush heated my cheeks, but it faded as I took the page from her. She had neatly trimmed the paper so that the “garbage” was removed.
It made sense, but the garbage always contained the best parts of letters from my husband. Still. It was a letter from Nathaniel. I took it to the table and sat down, waiting for the rest of the team.
Dear Elma,
I cannot wait to show you our new apartment. As requested, it has green—in fact, it faces onto a courtyard that has apple trees, azaleas, and a privet hedge. Our bedroom is on the first floor, tucked behind the trees, so that we can have the curtains open and still have privacy. I am looking forward to showing you the morning light here.
Florence thought this was steamy? She should see the garbage.
Kamilah slid down the ladder and into the kitchen as Terrazas and Rafael jogged in from the tube leading to the gym.
With grabby hands, like a small child, Kamilah staggered toward the counter. “Coffee.”
“Weren’t you the one talking about its toxicity?” Florence peered over the rim of her own cup.
“Nothing is as toxic as me without coffee.” She poured a steaming cup with a little moan.
Parker snorted. “Where’s Flannery?”
“Here.” He dropped down the tube into the kitchen. “Sorry. I was sciencing.”
“I will admit that English is not my first language, but is that a word?” Terrazas swung a leg over the bench opposite me, folding his long frame to hunch over his cup.
“Absolutely.” Leonard made a beeline for the coffee. “I can conjugate it for you.”
Parker swung back to the whiteboard and wrote a hasty list next to his agenda. “I science. You science. He/She/It sciences…”
The juxtaposition of words on the board made an accidental sentence, and a laugh escaped me. Pointing at the board, I read aloud. “I science duty rotation. You science Mars. He/She/It sciences waste disposal.”
“Incorrect, York.” Parker pointed at himself. “I science duty rotation. According to which … you science kitchen.”
Florence clapped. “I love it when Elma sciences the kitchen. Will you science your chess pie?”
“I will science the heck out of that.” I saluted, and a little frisson of pleasure ran up my spine. Am I Southern? Yes, I am. And if someone compliments my chess pie, I will bake them pies until the end of the universe.
“Good.” Parker grinned. “You are also sciencing the calculations for our midpoint course correction.”
“Terrazas and Avelino are sciencing the oxygen units and system checks on the BusyBees. Shamoun, you are sciencing the water reclamation here and over on the Pinta.” Parker was grinning as he went down the checklist. “Flannery, you science the waste disposal. Grey sciences laundry and comms.”
Funny how a simple word can change your perspective. Sure, Leonard and Florence had mentioned that they got only cleaning duty, but throwing the word “science” into the mix made it clear that Leonard wasn’t doing anything but cleaning. All of his lab work happened on his leisure time.
I opened my mouth to point that out, but I could preemptively hear Parker tell me that it was a joke. Coward that I am, I just didn’t have the energy to be the focus of his scorn at that moment. Besides, Leonard and Florence had asked me not to try to fix this.
But, really, it was just cowardice and exhaustion.
I closed my mouth and sank a little onto the bench. Across the table, Rafael nudged Terrazas, who straightened and cleared his throat.
“Can I swap with Leonard on the oxygen units?” He tapped his nose. “Got a sinus thing. Don’t want to put a mask on.”
Parker lowered his clipboard. “And that won’t be a problem with the BusyBee? You’ll be in zero-g.”
“Um.” Terrazas darted a look at Kamilah, who was still hunched over her coffee. “Well. It’s just that Leonard trained on the oxygen units and not on the BusyBee, so … swapping that would be easier? I mean. If Leonard doesn’t mind.”
“Fine by me.” Leonard gave a restrained nod that only barely hid his grin.
Parker looked between the three men and then back down at his clipboard. He cleared his throat. “No.” He set the clipboard aside and leaned forward to rest his weight on the table. “Because I want them to forget that Flannery is on the ship until we get to Mars, because I need him there. Anything goes wrong and his fingerprints are on it? What do you think Mission Control will do with that?”
“Come on.” Terrazas shook his head. “We all make mistakes.”
The grin had drained out of Leonard’s face, along with, seemingly, all the joy in the room. “I don’t get to make any.” He sighed. “I’ll stick with waste disposal.”
Parker pushed back up and shook his head. “You’ve got better chops with the oxygen systems than Terrazas, and I know it.” He sighed and shoved his hand over his close-cropped hair, coming to a rest with his palm covering the bald spot in back. “But I’m sorry. Mission Control’s duty roster stands.”
TWENTY-THREE
HALFWAY TO MARS
Special to The National Times
March 28, 1963—Even in an era when technical and scientific wonders crowd close on one another, there was a special quality to yesterday’s teletype from the First Mars Expedition as it sped through the void roughly halfway to our sister planet. These astronauts are pioneers voyaging in a realm where, so far as men know, there has never been life of any kind. The human organism is an evolutionary product that has been molded over millions of years by the special conditions of this planet—the force of gravity, the constitution of the atmosphere, the nature of the Earth’s seas and lands. But in space, gravity is neutralized to produce what is called weightlessness, and there is no oxygen to breathe, no land to walk on, no water to swim in. Yet in this bizarre environment astronauts can live and function because their spaceship is a cocoon that reproduces the essential elements of this planet’s ambiance. The day will come—and many younger people now alive may well live to see it—when space liners will take off daily for Mars as routinely as airplanes now depart for Chicago or London or Tokyo. When that time comes, no doubt human beings will be as blasé about that miracle as they are now about crossing the Atlantic overnight. But for the moment, while the first transMars crossing is still in progress, and courageous men are doing and seeing things no humans have done or seen before, one must be dull indeed not to be overcome by a sense of wonder.
Strapped into my seat on the bridge, I stared out at space as if the marker for the halfway point would be visible. It seemed as if being one hundred and sixty days away from both Earth and Mars ought to come with a golden gateway or some other extravagant signal. Instead, what I had was a sheet of printouts from Earth and a sextant.
Parker appeared to be calibrating his right-hand controller, methodically moving it through its range of motion, his strong jaw clenching as he worked. “I need those set points to update our navigation state.”
“Give me a second to make a trunnion bias determination.�
� Over the past three months, the tension between us had faded to low-level background radiation, which somehow vanished when we were working. I’ll take the small blessings. I sighted my sextant on the stars that Mission Control had specified. The individual lights in the sky had become familiar over the course of the trip. I no longer needed to “Arc to Arcturus” or “Speed on to Spica.” The blue-white of Spica shone with an unblinking gaze at me.
Noting the angle, I moved the trunnion off a couple of degrees and came back to take a second reading—I needed two consecutive measurements that were within 0.003 degrees. Then I referred to the printout that Mission Control had sent up.
Their predicted numbers matched mine. “By the numbers we’re looking for, roll 8.37, pitch 61.33, and yaw 339.87.”
“Confirmed. Roll 8.37, pitch 61.33, and yaw 339.87.” He paused for a moment in the ritual call and response.
A moment later, Florence’s voice crackled over the intercom from the comm module. “Confirmed. Roll 8.37, pitch 61.33, and yaw 339.87.”
She was copying everything down on the teletype and sending the numbers back to Earth. The delay meant we were running more or less on our own, but Mission Control still wanted to double-check everything.
Parker continued setting up the ship for the burn. “Go ahead and give me the full correction, York.”
“Okay … SPS/G&N; 63059; plus 0.97, minus 0.20.” Even as I was rattling off a string of numbers and phrases, a part of my brain was laughing at what gobbledygook it sounded like. “GET ignition 026:44:57.92; plus 0011.8, minus 0000.3, plus 0017.7; roll, 277, 355, 015; Delta-VT 0021.3, 00:3, 0016.8.”
My job was to figure out the Niña’s velocities as well as its local vertical and horizontal position with respect to Earth. Later in the voyage, I would start using Mars as our reference point.
Parker and Terrazas alternated between jotting down numbers on their own sheets and flipping switches on the control panel. Florence repeated that long string back. I paused to let them all catch up with me.
As I did, the line from the Pinta lit up with a question from their NavComp desk. Heidi’s Swiss-German accent crackled across space. “Niña, what stars did you use?”
“For the GDC align, Vega and Deneb. You?”
“That’s what Mission Control recommended, but I’m having trouble getting a clean reading.”
I nodded, suddenly grateful that I had struggled so much and so recently with sighting on star fields so I could help her out. “What’s your shaft and trunnion reading?”
“Shaft, 331.2, and trunnion, 35.85. I see Vega, but Deneb is not showing up in my sights.”
I leaned forward and looked out the window toward the Pinta. The other ship caught the thin light of the sun and shimmered against a backdrop of stars. Like us, their command module faced inward, toward us, and with a view of the Santa Maria, where she sailed between and behind us. Their problem was immediately obvious, but it was also clear why it wouldn’t be to them. “Looks like y’all need to roll, or sight on different stars. I think the Santa Maria is in your way.”
A moment later, Heidi came back on the comm with the sort of steady calm that betrays an astronaut who has just been cursing off-mike. “Thank you, Niña. I did not see her.”
“From your angle, you’ve only got the shade side of her. Practically invisible.”
To my side, I could feel Parker and Terrazas watching me. Neither of them interrupted as I talked with Heidi, but Parker’s fingers flexed as if he were itching to do the next thing. And I owed him more numbers. Turning off my mic, I turned back to them. “Roll align 007, 144, 068.”
As he worked, Parker glanced out the window. “Looks like our heads will be pointed roughly toward Earth on this burn.”
Now that Parker had everything ready, we had to wait. Despite the time delay, Mission Control had to confirm my numbers, and only then could Parker fire the engines. Over on the Pinta, they’d be waiting for the same thing, but with a different CAPCOM and a different set of computers.
Who would be on duty in Mission Control now? There had to be a team of computers going over the calculations. Maybe Katherine Johnson, and perhaps my old deskmate, Basira. Helen was still in the astronaut corps, so she wouldn’t be doing the math for this, though she might be in Mission Control watching. Or maybe she was avoiding news of us.
Nathaniel would be there. I tilted my head toward the window as if that would allow me to see him somehow. The austere sky with its unblinking stars stared back.
Florence’s voice floated into the command module. “Mission Control says, ‘Niña, you are go for mid-course correction burn. Confirmed Go and Godspeed.’”
Parker nodded, settling his hands on the controls. He blew out a quick breath, almost as if he were nervous, and my breath caught in anticipation as he did. “Terrazas, let the crew know that we’ve got a twenty-one-second burn coming up.”
“Roger.” Terrazas picked up the mic, and his voice suddenly went all Buck Rogers. “Ladies and gentlemen, in this thrilling installment, Captain Stetson Parker and his intrepid crew brace themselves for a twenty-one-second burn. The ‘burning’ question is, did the whole crew secure themselves when ordered, or were some of them scrambling even as his finger inched closer to the ignition? Closer. Cloooooser.”
“Payaso.” Shaking his head but grinning, Parker said, “On my mark, in five, four, three, two, one—mark.”
The Niña shuddered. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 … The low roar of the engines vibrated through the metal and plastic and fiberglass of the ship … 10, 11, 12, 13 … The stars wheeled to the side in time with our prescribed roll and I clenched my pencil until its hexagonal edges bit into my knuckles … 16, 17 … My seat slapped against my rump as the main engines pushed us forward … 18, 19, 20, 21.
The silence hit as the engines cut off, and I was flung against my shoulder straps. Parker pulled his hands away from the controls. “Report?”
Terrazas looked at the velocity and relative position gauges amid a great wall of instrumentation. “Right on target.”
With a sigh, Parker tilted his head back and smiled. “Look up.”
Above our heads, a tiny blue pea floated in a sea of ink. And somewhere on that little ball, my husband would have to wait another fifteen minutes to know that everything was okay.
* * *
You’d think that passing the halfway point would bring about some change on the ship, but we just went about our work. Duty rotations shifted us to different responsibilities, but the sky outside continued to be the same inky black. I had pulled my favorite duty rotation, the garden module, this week. Oh, I liked kitchen duty, but being in the green and humid air of the garden module made tension bleed out of my veins.
Leaning over one of the radish beds, I pulled a small red globe from the dirt. Soil granules clung to the thready white roots and raised a scent of earth. I tapped the radish to release the dirt back into the bed. Once I would have objected to the bits that got caught under my fingernails and turned the tips of my fingers dark.
Kamilah had her feet up on the bench in the middle of the module with a book in her lap. “Can I borrow you after this?”
“Sure. For what?”
“I think it’s time to press the raisins, and I want a second opinion.” She stretched, lifting her arms over her head. “You’ve actually made this stuff before.”
I shook a finger, coated with dirt. “Uh-uh. Myrtle made the raisin wine. I just sampled her wares.”
“Still. You’ve got the closest thing to direct experience.”
“I should never have told you that story.” I wrinkled my nose against the memory of the tart, harsh liquor. “Myrtle’s raisin wine wasn’t good. It was just alcohol. And you don’t drink.”
“This is medicinal. And … I have a secret weapon that she did not.”
I laid another radish in the basket and paused to look at Kamilah. Her face had a smug beatific expression, her lips pressed together and her brows raised. “Oh?”
&nbs
p; “I have a lab. And, specifically, I have a still.”
“So … you’re going to make it worse by concentrating it?” The brandy that they’d made from the raisin wine on the moon had been … challenging.
Kamilah shook her head, shutting her book and setting her feet on the ground. “I can make vodka. And there are juniper berries in the spice drawer. And citrus.”
I stared at her, still not seeing what she was getting at.
“I can make gin.”
Laughter bubbled out of me. Gin. Did we have any olives on the ship? “You are a genius, and—”
“What the hell, York.” Florence stalked into the garden module with a wad of papers in her grip. “I had started to like you. I almost felt sorry for you. You piece of shit.”
I dropped the radish, which bounced off the edge of the raised bed and rolled down the aisle. My heart tightened. “What?”
“This.” She slapped the paper down on the radish bed, crushing some of the leafy greens.
Kamilah jumped to her feet. “Hey. Watch it.”
Of course. She was worried about the radishes, but didn’t defend me at all. I swallowed, trying to clear my throat so I could breathe. Florence stood too close, jaw clenched so hard that it looked like it hurt. Her gaze had the narrow focus of a laser.
3.14159 …
I dragged my gaze down to the papers that she’d carried in so I didn’t have to look that hatred in the face. It was a letter from Nathaniel. My rib cage locked around my lungs. Pencil marks marched above the lines of garbage. She’d decoded it.
… 26535897 …
“I—” I coughed, trying to break the cage that held my breath. It only drove the air out, and I wheezed as I inhaled.
Kamilah stepped past Florence and grabbed my arm. “Elma. Breathe. Slow breath. Count it: 1, 2, 3, and hold…”
“Oh, don’t baby her.” Florence jabbed the paper. “She’s been spying on us. Sending coded messages.”
The Fated Sky Page 22
