Dare Mighty Things

by Heather Kaczynski

  DEDICATION

  To Rosie, who is my dream come true

  EPIGRAPH

  Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those timid spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.

  —THEODORE ROOSEVELT

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Acknowledgments

  Back Ad

  About the Author

  Books by Heather Kaczynski

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  ONE

  A MODERATELY INTELLIGENT robot could do my job. Obviously, letting a seventeen-year-old intern anywhere near actual rockets would be irresponsible, but still—NASA was vastly underutilizing my skills.

  Not that I was complaining. Because, come on—NASA. I’d mop the floors as long as they let me stay. I mean, this was where they built the rockets that took men to the moon. Not that you could tell by the bland cubicles, the water-stained ceiling tiles, and the dead insects collecting in the light fixtures of this fifty-year-old building. My dad, who was working two floors above, said that NASA’s glory days were behind it. But maybe one day there’d be funding and real history being made again. That was my hope, anyway.

  I’d grown up in Huntsville, a town nicknamed Rocket City, whose history was so entwined with spaceflight that the two were nearly inseparable. A life-size model of the rocket that took us to the moon jutted out of the landscape like a compass rose, a landmark visible all over town. I’d grown up believing the impossible was possible. There hadn’t been any other path for me but NASA.

  I’d worked hard to get here, beating out dozens of my fellow high school juniors desperate to pad their résumés. But “here” ended up being a cubicle in the legal department of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, doing mindless data entry for zero dollars an hour. Sure, I’d made it inside the building, but it was boring. And I hated being bored.

  To keep my brain from melting, I listened to Beethoven in one ear, memorizing his piano sonatas so I’d be prepared to kick ass at youth orchestra auditions come fall.

  “Hey, kid!” My coworker Andre, a paralegal who liked bossing me around because I was just a high school intern, came marching toward me. His features were all contorted, like he smelled something rotten. I braced myself. Andre didn’t exactly like me, not since that little incident where I’d corrected his math at a staff meeting. In front of our boss. And the whole department.

  He jabbed his thumb vaguely over his shoulder. “Big boss wants to see you. And you’d better take that thing out of your ear.”

  Hesitant, I slipped out of my chair and popped out my earbud, suspicious that maybe this was Andre’s idea of a prank. Still, it’d be an excuse to stretch my legs.

  I found Mr. Finley standing outside his office, shaking hands with a large man shaped like a refrigerator, surrounded by an entourage of serious-faced people in suits.

  The man had the air of a politician, but it wasn’t anybody I recognized. A younger guy, about my age, stood beside the man, dark blond hair gelled to perfection—comb marks still evident—wearing the same serious face as everyone else. I wondered if he was an intern, like me.

  Luckily Mr. Finley spotted me before I had the chance to stand awkwardly off to the side for too long. “Ah! Miss Gupta! Let me introduce you to Ambassador Otor Kereselidze, the Georgian ambassador to the United Nations. This is one of our most promising young interns, Miss Cassandra Gupta. Her father is in propulsion engineering.”

  The ambassador smiled broadly and offered his impressively large hand to shake. While my hand was engulfed in his, I smiled beatifically while mentally trying to place the country of Georgia on a map. The closest I got was “somewhere between Russia and Germany.”

  “Good, good, very good,” said the ambassador, his vaguely Russian accent thick but clear. He didn’t care who I was in the least; he was just being polite. He clapped a hand on the shoulder of the younger guy beside him. “This is my son, Luka. About the same age, yes? Interested in space as well.”

  The blond guy with the gelled hair surveyed me coolly and gave a nod. I did the same, wondering what this was all about.

  “Ambassador Kereselidze was just taking a brief tour of our facilities,” Mr. Finley explained to me. He turned back to the other man. “It was an honor to meet you, Ambassador.”

  “Please, the honor is all mine. My son is very passionate about space! I hope that one day, our countries can work together to return to the stars.” He gave a photo op–worthy smile.

  Luka didn’t. His eyes lingered on me with distaste, like he couldn’t understand why I was even there.

  The entourage filed out the door, and when they were gone Mr. Finley turned to me. “I’m glad you got a chance to meet him. Georgia doesn’t have a space program, of course, but it’s always smart to be on good terms with politicians, especially these days. Come on, let’s go to my office.”

  He led me down the hall and through the twisting cubicle maze while I mentally reviewed what he could possibly want to talk to me about. When we reached his office, he held open the door for me, ushered for me to sit, and closed the door behind us with a heavy, permanent-sounding thud. A walnut desk large enough for my whole family to eat dinner on filled the space between us. Framed degrees dotted the wall on the space above his head.

  I knotted my fingers together in my lap.

  Mr. Finley leaned his forearms onto the desk, peering at me through glasses that reflected a bar of light from the overhead fluorescent. “Sorry about taking you away from your work,” he said. “I’ll try to keep this short.”

  “It’s no problem,” I said, shaking my head a little too hard. He couldn’t know how grateful I was not to be back at my desk right now. “I can catch up pretty easily.”

  Too late, I realized how conceited that sounded. I started to correct myself, but Mr. Finley was laughing. “I know, believe me. Doing rote work for the legal department is below your skill set. But we all have to start somewhere.”

  I nodded vigorously, my face hot.

  “You will go on to do something remarkable, I’m sure,” Mr. Finley said. “Which is part of the reason I asked you here today.”

  Mr. Finley hesitated, fidgeting with a ring on his knuckle. “I’ll just get to the point. Our friends at JSC are hosting an . . . experimental program. It’s going to be kept under the radar for now, so don’t mention this to anyone but your parents.” He paused, leveling a gaze at me over his glasses. “This is a chance to go into space, Cassandra.”

  At Johnson Space Center? Where they trained astronauts? My chest contracted in nervous anticipation.

  “Most of the team has already been chosen, but for this particular expedition there is a need for someone younger than our current crop of astronauts. There is one slot for an exceptionally intelligent, intensely motivate
d, and physically fit young person. Nominations are awarded only through personal recommendation of NASA personnel. And I’d like to submit your name for consideration.” He peered at me over his glasses. “But first, I wanted to make sure this is something that you would be interested in.”

  “Are . . . are you joking with me, sir?”

  Mr. Finley restrained a smile. “No, I assure you I’m quite serious. But make no mistake. This is a competition; it will be difficult. My recommendation is no guarantee you’ll be accepted. And though the other competitors will be young people as well, you will be the youngest. You’ll turn eighteen on August first, isn’t that correct?” He picked up a file and squinted at it, checking his facts.

  I nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  “Then you’ll get in just under the wire. However, we’ll still need your parents to sign off on this before I can send in your recommendation.”

  I molded my expression into something I hoped was very mature and adultlike. “Yes, sir. I don’t believe my parents will object.”

  This couldn’t be real life. I peered at the calendar behind Mr. Finley’s head, just to make sure it wasn’t April Fools’. “Not to seem ungrateful, but aren’t there plenty of more experienced people? Air force pilots? Engineers? Adults?”

  “Of course they need people who actually know how to operate a spacecraft,” Mr. Finley said. “But the requirements for this mission are unique. I don’t know more than that, unfortunately—just that this competition is only open to gifted individuals between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five. I know you don’t turn eighteen until August—but they’ll make an exception, if you choose to go. And it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity. I won’t lie that your designer genetics play a part in this, though you certainly aren’t the only enhanced individual who will be there. But you are also very intelligent, very driven. Your résumé just to get this internship was quite impressive.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “I have to say I’m a little reluctant to even let you go, as I was hoping we could keep you around this office permanently. Our percentage of data entry errors has decreased dramatically since you’ve come aboard. Not to mention the money we’ve saved since you caught that payroll discrepancy.” Mr. Finley’s eyes twinkled.

  I shuddered. Working in the legal office full-time? Doing data entry? “What kind of mission is it?”

  He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. “All I know is that it is an unprecedented mission of exploration. I know you’re smart enough to understand that unprecedented means dangerous.”

  “It’s the best kind of dangerous, sir.” The chance to see something no human had ever seen? To go somewhere humans had never gone?

  He chuckled. “So, what do you say? I’d have to let them know by tomorrow.”

  I wanted to jump out of my chair and scream “Yes! Yes!” and shake him until his glasses fell off, but that would probably mean I’d be marked psychologically unfit for space. Instead I forced calm into my voice. “What would I have to do?”

  “Don’t feel like you have to make your decision right away. Sleep on it.”

  “No!” I said, too forcefully. “I mean, thank you, I don’t need to think about it. I accept. What do I need to do?”

  He smiled and leaned over the desk. “I know you’re athletic. Make sure you’re at the top of your game. If they accept you, of course, that means you’ll miss your senior year of high school. The first few months, at least, even if you aren’t selected. Are you going to be all right with that?”

  I felt a wide grin split my face and quickly tried to regain a nonchalant expression. “To be honest, I couldn’t think of anything I’d rather do more. Sir.”

  He stood. “Perfect. I’ll send a packet over to your department with information on how to get the paperwork started. They’ll need your parents’ signatures.” He held out his hand, and I shook it firmly. “Ms. Gupta, this will be a difficult competition. I wish you the best of luck.”

  “Thank you. Thank you so much.” I turned to go, and then a lingering question made me stop. “Sir, if you don’t mind me asking. I thought there was no more money for things like this. After Mars, we were done with sending humans to space. I know NASA has, like, the smallest budget in its history.”

  Mr. Finley’s pleasant expression changed subtly, but I couldn’t read why. “This is coming through different channels than our typical funding. It’s just how the government works. There’s always money; it’s just a matter of funneling it in the right direction.”

  I smiled. That sounded like something my dad would say. “Of course.”

  Like most couples, my parents had trouble conceiving. Unlike most people, though, they had the means to work around nature. When my mother, the geneticist, couldn’t get pregnant on her own, she turned to science. Genetic engineering used to be a moral gray area, but now that infertility was becoming a worldwide epidemic, and in vitro was performed almost as a matter of course, the laws had gone lax. Geneering was safe and effective, and if you were already paying a hefty price tag to have a baby—maybe the only one you’d ever have—might as well make sure it’s the best little embryo it could be.

  I was among the first major wave of “designer babies”—along with the standard screening for genetic defects, my genes were specifically chosen for traits of athleticism and intelligence. You still couldn’t screen for cosmetic markers, but anything that related to fitness of the embryo was allowed. So choosing a blue-eyed baby was out, but making sure she could outrun all the other kids on the track was practically a requirement. They’d gone through my DNA with a fine-tooth comb, weeding out any weak links. No genetic illnesses, no predispositions or structural anomalies. Maybe not the most beautiful, but strong and smart and healthy.

  It had its perks: better than average hearing, eyesight, endurance. I’d probably live longer than my parents’ generation. And I still had my dad’s medium-brown skin and my mom’s frizzy black hair.

  But my genes were expensive. I was an investment. By middle school, I spoke more languages than either of my parents. I was first-chair violin in orchestra and was the go-to piano accompanist for all the solo performances at my school, instrumental and choral. I was on track team, chess club, National Honor Society. My parents didn’t just expect perfect; they had paid for it.

  It used to bug me, their level of expectation. But not anymore. I wanted the same thing they did: to be the best.

  Being the youngest person in space, even with all the danger involved, was exactly the kind of thing they expected from all my years of lessons and classes and tutors.

  Unfortunately, my mom and I didn’t agree. “Cassandra Harita Gupta. You only learned to drive last year. So now you think you’re qualified to pilot a spacecraft?”

  I steeled myself for the debate of my life.

  My living room turned into a courtroom. Papa took my side. Mama was against. My uncle relaxed on the couch with a beer, a neutral spectator, watching like this was a game of cricket.

  Dadi—she was the key. She’d lived with us ever since my grandfather had died when I was six, being first-generation Indian American and still just traditional enough to expect to live with us until she died.

  Truth be told, she hadn’t much liked it when my dad married my nonIndian mom. But since her other son wasn’t about to get married and settle down anytime soon—and, in fact, also seemed content to live with us for the rest of his natural life—they were kind of forced to get along. Now they got along so well, they tended to take the same side of any family argument.

  Which didn’t bode well for me.

  Dadi, small and round and wrinkled but as imposing as a monument even in her pajamas, sat with perfectly upright posture in the center of the couch. Undecided. Unreadable.

  No way was I going to Houston without Dadi’s okay.

  “My car drives itself,” I muttered carefully under the range of human hearing.

  “This is your daughter’s dream.” My father
spoke over my head. He was still wearing his work clothes, the standard government-civilian uniform of a striped dress shirt, tie, and gray pants. I was sitting in a kitchen chair in the middle of the room, holding the permission forms in my lap. “She has a chance to do something great.”

  I was counting on my father. He’d turned away from his parents’ expectations to follow his dream. It was how he met my mom: in college, two nerds with big dreams. He’d forged his own path, just like I wanted to do.

  I only wished my mom could see how similar we were.

  “Something dangerous, you mean.” Mama’s crown of frizzy graying hair bounced as she shook her head, lines of worry creasing her eyes.

  “Aw, let her go,” said my uncle Gauresh. My dad’s younger brother had moved in with us shortly after Dadi. He was supposed to live with us only temporarily, but he never seemed terribly worried about either getting a job or his own place. The only time I’d seen him wear something other than jeans and flannel shirts was at my grandfather’s funeral. But since he helped out around the house, he had Dadi’s protection. Her word was as good as law around here. “You said it was a competition. Maybe she won’t even make it.”

  I shot him a wounded look. “Thanks for that.”

  He shrugged and gave me a lopsided grin. “Just trying to help, beti.”

  “Enough of this,” Dadi said, standing. “Old people need to sleep.”

  Dadi crossed the room and laid a sympathetic hand on Mama’s arm. “Your daughter works very hard. Give her a chance. She deserves it.”

  Whoa. The tide was turning unexpectedly in my favor.

  Mama sighed and surveyed the room. “I’m outnumbered.” Her eyes fell on me and hovered there. “Okay, fine. I know you’ll just hold it against me the rest of your life if I say no. Get me a pen.”

  I grinned and threw my arms around her shoulders. I felt her heavy sigh, what it cost her to say yes.

  She returned my embrace, reluctance radiating from her body. “Quick, before I change my mind.”

  The loud clicking of my suitcase wheels over the concourse floor went silent as I yanked my bag upright. Reluctantly I turned to greet my entourage of two. “We have to say good-bye here. You guys can’t come through security without a ticket.”