“I don’t think I’ll be going anywhere else for a while,” he adds, thanking them.
“We’ll be right out here, sir.”
“Let us know if you need anything, sir.”
“This area back here is for the walk-outs,” Dick says to me, holding his badge over the scanner by a drab entrance that couldn’t be more thrilling. “When you’ve suited up and are headed out in the astrovan, you’ll walk out these doors,” he opens them, gray metal, scuffed up and windowless. “I’ve done it a few times in my pumpkin suit,” he adds with a trace of a wistful smile.
I try to imagine how I’m going to feel at oh-dark-hundred when I’m doing the same thing, heading out in a launch-entry pressure suit. Only mine will be blue, not orange, and there won’t be crowds of adoring NASA employees to greet me as I emerge from the building, walking to the awaiting van.
There won’t be journalists, television news crews or the usual police escorts on the ground and in the air, hardly anyone knowing about the top secret mission before or after the fact.
39
DICK KEYS the elevator to the third floor, an open area thoughtfully appointed to put astronauts in the right frame of mind before launch time.
Walls are filled with big posters of eye-popping space art. There are whiteboards for announcements and other information including which astronaut is assigned to which room. The only names written in Magic Marker are ours, nobody else staying here.
Dick is in room 1, I’m in 12C, and we head down a long corridor filled with Peanuts comic strip art. Snoopy as the Red Baron encourages All Systems Are Go! Wearing a spacesuit, he has his Eyes on the Stars, and there are the expected group pictures of previous astronaut classes and crews, photos that won’t include me going forward.
Chances are there won’t be crews of 7 astronauts quarantined in here together as there were during the Space Shuttle’s glory days. As space technologies and travel are increasingly about national security and the survival of our planet, there will be more stealth missions conducted by astronauts untraditionally trained like me to be fighters and spies.
Passing break rooms, we turn down another hallway where a sign warns to Report All Symptoms of Illness. Where I’m staying is at the end on the right, and Dick opens the door, my quarters reminding me of barracks I’ve lived in before, small but functional and civilized.
The bed is queen size, neatly made with a creamy spread that has a floral medallion in the center. There’s a bedside table, a built-in desk, and a wood-framed mirror. The carpet and walls are gray, and there are no windows because you’re not supposed to know if it’s morning, noon or night.
Sleep patterns are shifted depending on the launch window, in my case scheduled at 4:00 a.m., some 12 hours from now. Dropping my bags on the bed, I check out the bathroom. A sink, a toilet and a shower, and on the counter is a water glass, a wrapped bar of soap, bottles of magnesium citrate and a box of enemas.
“Looks like I have a lot to look forward to,” I comment, returning to the bedroom.
“Get yourself settled,” Dick is glued to his phone, his jaw muscles clenching the way they do when he doesn’t like what he’s seeing. “Make calls, do what you need,” he heads out the door.
The gym sounds like a fine idea, I decide, unzipping my duffel bag, changing into sweatpants, a T-shirt, sneakers. Out the door, I head back in the direction of the dining room, following the carpeted corridor with its astronaut art, inspiring photographs and cartoonish whimsy. Inside the gym, I start out in a gentle jog on a treadmill, and ART alerts me that Mom’s on the line.
“I understand you were impressive this morning,” she says in my earpiece, and I assume she means the White House briefing. “A little birdie told me you held your own just fine in the ladies’ room.”
Obviously, she’s talking about Neva Rong, and the little birdie would be Dick. He must have filled in Mom about the encounter, and I have a feeling this phone call is about more than her checking on me as I think of the look on his face while leaving my room a few minutes ago.
“I hope you don’t mind if we talk while I’m on the treadmill,” I increase the incline and the speed. “I thought it a good idea to move around while I can. Since you saw me last, all I’ve been doing is sitting.”
“I won’t be coy with you,” Mom’s unflappable voice. “Just as it’s very likely she knew you and Dick would be at the briefing this morning, there’s a chance she knows other things,” and she’s talking about Neva.
“If you’re referring to the launch,” I reply, running faster, “it’s in the news that there’s one in the morning.”
“Exactly. And the launch time is on the internet if you look, publicized as a new weather satellite that’s supposed to be helpful tracking wildfires.”
As she tells me this, ART shows me news feeds about it. But nothing hints that there’s anything unusual about the launch, just another private company sending up an expensive satellite in an expensive rocket.
“It’s not like you can hide it when the rocket is on the pad as big as life,” I tell her over the fast thudding of my shoes on the belt. “Besides, Pandora has a facility here at Kennedy, a huge new building near Blue Origin and Boeing. There’s no way Neva wouldn’t know what’s launching. But she won’t necessarily know the payload is a spaceplane, and there’s no reason she should have a clue I’m here.”
“Don’t you think something must have crossed her mind when she saw you at the White House?” Mom makes a good point. “Calli, you were attending a briefing in the Situation Room.”
She’s right that Neva running into us blew our cover even if Dick hasn’t admitted it. I don’t think it’s accidental or a coincidence that she was there this morning to meet with the president of Uganda. Neva was tipped off by someone, maybe the secretary of state whom she had lunch with in the mess hall. It could be anybody, and it makes my blood run cold to consider that she might know exactly what we’re planning.
“I just wanted you to know I’m thinking about you,” Mom’s voice catches, and there are very few times I’ve known her to cry.
Usually it was over Carme, most memorably when Dad made friends with a traveling stunt pilot I wish he’d never met. Fortunately, there won’t be the same outcome with Lex. He’s not a bad seed. But he could be if someone like Neva ever got her hooks in him, and I ask Mom if she’s heard how he’s doing.