The Calculating Stars (Lady Astronaut, #1)(110)

When the ground crew pulled the hose away from the engine, Parker resumed his litany. “Battery switch checks out. Good start.”

We went through the pre-taxi checks and nav checks with the same call-and-response. Then we got to “Time to pull the canopy and seat pins.”

“Canopy and seat pins pulled.” The bright orange plastic came out easily. I lifted them both over my head to demonstrate that I’d done it before stowing them in the pocket by my left knee.

“Chocks clear.” Outside, the crew followed his hand signals.

We began to taxi.

A plane on the ground is an ungainly thing. It jostled me against my shoulder straps, but I followed along with Parker as we went through the rest of the nav and comm checklists during taxi.

“Arms clear.” He lowered the canopies and cut off the breeze from the outside.

My God. Even in the rear seat, the plane had such a wide field of vision. What must it have been like in front?

The tower came across our radio. “Talon One One, Tower. You are cleared for takeoff.”

Parker’s helmet turned a little, as if he could look over his shoulder to see me. “You ready?”

“Confirmed, ready.”

He nodded and replied to the tower. “Talon One One. Cleared for takeoff.”

Parker brought the jet up to full military power and lit the afterburner. The jet jolted like someone had kicked me in the pants. He released the brakes and popped the burners.

The engine whine rose in pitch as the jet rolled forward, forcing me back into my seat. It wasn’t like a prop plane, where the force is almost gentle. This thundered through me, dragging my back into the seat.

She lifted off the runway so smoothly, I almost clapped as the ground fell away. But this was a training flight, not a tourist ride, so my delight stayed inside.

I watched the gauges and the world outside. It was like the air had become liquid and flowed around us. How can you feel heavy and light at the same time? The G-force of takeoff pressed me into my seat, but the air held me up.

God. This was a beautiful plane. My love for it probably broke all the rules about worshipping graven images.

“York.” Parker banked to the south and pressed me farther into my seat.

“Sir?” He wasn’t going to offer to let me take the stick, was he? Not yet.

“I … have a problem and I need a favor.”

“Come again?”

“You heard me.” The asshole Parker returned for a moment and then he sighed. There’s an intimacy to the sound of another pilot in your ear. “Look … Look. You and Malouf are the only two who know about the thing with my leg.”

“I…” Where was this going? “I haven’t told anyone.”

“I know.” He sighed again. “Thank you.”

“What…” Everything about this conversation confused me. He couldn’t have said this on the ground? For that matter, why hadn’t Malouf reported him? “May I ask what’s going on?”

Above the canopy, the clouds sank toward us, changing from a featureless expanse of silver gray to crenellations of cotton. Parker took us up into them and the wisps brushed past, feathering away as we ripped through.

The jet punched out of the upper level of clouds into blue sky.

“God.”

It was not profanity. It had been so long since I had seen clear blue … It ached, that blue. The unobscured sun flared across the clouds and brought tears to my eyes, even with my visor.

“Yeah…” Parker sighed again. “This? This is amazing, but space … I need to see a doctor. My leg goes pins and needles and then randomly, just stops working. They’ll ground me if they even suspect something is wrong.”

“So go to a doctor who’s not a flight surgeon.”

Parker gave the bitterest laugh I’d heard from him. “You think I haven’t tried. I’m the first man into space. I can’t go anywhere without reporters following me. I can’t sneeze, I can’t play ball with my sons, I can’t even visit my—”

He stopped talking, leaving only the hiss of oxygen, the sound of my own breathing, and the rush of air around us.

“Can’t visit your…?”

“Can’t visit my doctor.” Pretty sure that hadn’t been what he was going to say. “If I certify you on the T-38, will you let me use the flights to mask my visits to a doctor?”

I asked questions to buy time. “How will that work, exactly? I mean … you’re not going to let me go up on my own.”

“No. But there’s a clinic. We land near it. I go in. I come back out. We keep flying.”

“Just the T-38? You’re not offering me a seat on a rocket?”

“Can’t.” His helmet turned as if he wanted to look back at me. “I get some say in that, but not the final word. If I did, gotta be honest, there wouldn’t be any women in the program at all. Not yet.”

“You know I’ve logged more flight hours than you, right?”

“Yes. And I know about the Messerschmitts and the target practice and all the other things you WASPs did. None of that matches what a test pilot does, and it sure as hell doesn’t match what we do up there.”

“Well, we can’t know that, can we? Besides, how hard can it be if you can do it with a bum leg?”