The Calculating Stars (Lady Astronaut, #1)(101)

“All right, everyone!” Clemons bellowed from the doorway. “We’ve got a rocket to launch. Back to stations.”

I could not stop smiling. Neither Clemons, nor Parker, nor a gaggle of reporters could take this away from me. I was an astronaut. I pulled the numbers for the calculations I’d been doing in front of me, and kept losing my place on the page. I was an astronaut.

Across the table, Carmouche suddenly threw his hands into the air and shouted. “La victoire est la mienne!”

Helen folded her hands in her lap. “Congratulations, Reynard.”

“You won?”

“Finally!” He got up and did the most ridiculous victory dance I have ever seen, involving elbows and hips moving in unlikely ways. “Finally, I have won!”

“Good game.” Helen pushed her chair back and stood. She bowed to him. “Please excuse me.”

My friend, the champion chess player, walked to the ladies’ room, with her head high and her shoulders back. Do I sound self-important to think that there was a correlation between my news and Helen losing a game?

I was an astronaut. Helen wasn’t.

And that needed to change.





THIRTY-TWO

TEMPERATURE ON UPGRADE BUT FALLS SHORT OF ’51 HIGH





CHICAGO, IL, June 25, 1957—At 12:55 p.m. yesterday, the temperature reached 87.7 degrees and the Weather Man, sweltering among his gadgets at Navy Pier, announced that it was heading toward the highest level since the Meteor.


I suppose I should report that the Sirius flight went flawlessly. Bubbles was thrilled. Nathaniel was as well, since this would reduce costs for moon runs significantly. Not that we’d landed an astronaut on the moon yet, but it was just a matter of time.

And by God, I was going to be one of them.

When we left the IAC campus, close to dawn, the excitement still had me floating. I looped my arm through Nathaniel’s and anticipated another successful “rocket launch” when we got home. We walked out with the other folks, heading across the parking lot for the gates of the IAC.

“There she is!” Flashbulb. “Dr. York!” Flash. “Elma!” Past the gates, a horde of reporters lay in wait. “Over here, ma’am!”

My stomach clenched. Nathaniel turned us around, which is a good thing, because I was moving toward them like a moth to the flame. Or a lemming to the cliff, more like.

He rested his hand on mine and pulled me closer. “We’ll have the company send us home in a car.”

“I didn’t think.”

“Parker should have. Hell. If I’d thought about what happened with him and the rest, I should have.”

I don’t think that Parker knew about my anxiety. In fact, I’m sure he didn’t, or he would have used it to keep me out of the astronauts. But he couldn’t have ambushed me better if he’d planned it.

One of the UN drivers assigned to the IAC took us home, but when we got to our block, he didn’t turn.

Nathaniel leaned forward and looked out the window. “Damn it.”

Huddled inside my coat, I shivered in the dark of the back seat. He sat back and put his arm around me. “Let’s stay at the Aladdin tonight, to celebrate.”

“They have our apartment staked out?”

“Yeah…” He squeezed me tighter, but my trembling didn’t stop. Nathaniel rubbed up and down my arm as if he could chafe the blood back into my veins. “We’ll send someone round to get our clothes.”

“My prescription is in the apartment.” It wouldn’t make the reporters go away, but it would put a haze between us.

“Got it. What do you want to wear tomorrow?”

Clothes? I was supposed to think about clothes, instead of the wall of reporters waiting to talk to me? On some level, I knew this was coming. I’d seen what had happened when the Artemis Seven were announced. But after months of being “the Lady Astronaut,” I thought the level of attention would remain the same.

Of course there would be a difference. I’d just gone from being a wannabe astronaut to the real thing. As the first woman that they announced, it made sense that the reporters would all want a piece of me.

I tucked my head into Nathaniel’s shoulder and let the wool of his coat block out the streetlights.

“Sir?” Our driver turned the car down another street. “Is there a different hotel you could choose?”

Against my cheek, Nathaniel’s chest moved in a sigh. “Let’s head to the suburbs. Just pick the first hotel you spot that doesn’t have reporters.”

*

After Nathaniel and I spent the night at a Holiday Inn off the interstate, he called Clemons and explained the situation. I was told to avoid the IAC while the reporters were still there, and that Mrs. Rogers had accepted my resignation with many congratulations.

They hadn’t even let me say goodbye to the other computers.

I wept. Took a Miltown. Burrowed under the covers. And when the first Miltown wore off, I took another.

Nathaniel stayed in the hotel with me while a UN guard sat outside the door. That was probably a good choice.

In the afternoon, our phone started to ring. I don’t know how they’d tracked us down, but they had.

*

I was not an astronaut. That was made very, very clear on Day One.