The Calculating Stars (Lady Astronaut, #1)(111)

He put the plane into a roll, as if that proved some sort of point.

I laughed—giggled, really. “Sorry—wait. I wasn’t laughing at you. It’s just—the plane is beautiful.”

“She really is.” He leveled the T-38 out and left us nearly floating in our seats. “So will you do it?”

“You still hate me?”

“Yep.” He sighed again, which was such an odd sound coming from him. It was as if he had to let his ego leak out before he could keep talking. “But I acknowledge that you will keep your word and are principled.”

“And you aren’t worried that those principles will lead me to report you?”

“I am.”

“The problem is that you’re asking me to risk lives and jeopardize the program.”

“I’ve kept myself off crew lists. But there’s a difference between deferring missions and being grounded.”

“And now they want you to go to the moon.” The thing that was tempting about his proposition wasn’t the T-38. It was the chance to finally be in his good graces, even if he resented me for it. I don’t know. Maybe before I’d been in the program, I would have been able to take him up on the deal … but now? Now I knew exactly how fit you had to be as an astronaut. To say nothing of what would happen if I got caught colluding. “I won’t tell anyone, but … I’m sorry. I can’t help you hide it.”

The air hissed past in our silence.

“Well … you’re honest, I’ll give you that. Okay.” Parker’s head dipped forward and then lifted. “I know about the Miltown.”





THIRTY-FIVE

HURRICANE DATA SOUGHT





3 UN Planes Detailed for Research Work


PARIS, Nov. 3, 1957—Three United Nations planes will be detailed for special hurricane research work next summer and fall, officials said today. The United States Air Force will supply the United Nations with two B-50 Superforts and a B-47 Stratojet for the project. They will fly the Atlantic, Caribbean, and the Gulf of Mexico as part of an ongoing effort to understand how weather patterns have shifted since the Meteor strike in 1952.

How do you tell your husband that you’re being blackmailed? Over dinner? “Say, sweetie, a funny thing happened to me today. Pass the salad?”

Maybe in bed, while distracting him with sex?

Or you could just blurt it out while brushing your teeth.

“Parker’s trying to blackmail me.”

Nathaniel pulled the floss out of his mouth and turned. “What?”

“He knows about the Miltown and wants my help with something.”

“What.” Same word. Totally different meaning. His hands were clenched so tightly around the floss that it cut into the sides of his fingers, turning them dead white.

I swallowed, and the minty freshness made my stomach turn over in sour knots. I drew a full breath that burned cold. The knot of anxiety in my chest would have sent me reaching for a Miltown, but not now. Damn Parker.

“You can’t tell anyone.” This is why I hadn’t told him at work. If I had, he would have stormed into Clemons’s office and made demands about Parker’s attempts at blackmail.

“Clemons has to know.” The tips of his fingers, past the floss, had begun to go purple.

Setting my toothbrush in the holder, I sighed. “Let’s sit down.”

Nathaniel looked down and blinked at the floss. He uncurled it, flexing his fingers, and dropped it into the waste bin. “Okay.”

By the time we got to the sofa, trembles shook my arms and sweat coated my back. I swallowed and stared at my hands, which I held in a relaxed and ladylike posture on my lap. Mama would be so proud. “If you tell anyone, then Clemons will know about the Miltown and my anxiety and the vomiting, and then what will he think? That I’m fit to go into space? That I’m even fit for the program? He already thinks I’m a publicity stunt.”

“Who told you that?” The sofa creaked as he leaned forward. “Parker.”

I nodded.

Nathaniel pushed himself off the sofa and paced to the Murphy bed and back. He stopped in front of the coffee table, legs spread and hands on his hips. “Tell me what happened.”

“Promise me that you won’t tell anyone.” Tendons jumped under the skin on the backs of my hands, but I didn’t clench them into fists. “Or do anything.”

His body stayed rigidly still, but he turned to stare out the window at the lights of Kansas City. “I can promise you that I will talk with you before doing anything. I can’t promise to do nothing, because that is a promise I won’t keep.”

I rubbed my thumb on one of the muscles that kept twitching. Why I bothered, I don’t know, since my entire body was trembling with stress. “He’s been having trouble with his left leg. Pins and needles, he says. A couple of months ago, I caught him in the stairwell and he couldn’t stand. Asked me not to tell. Later, it looked like it had gone away, so I thought it was temporary.”

And it had felt safer to keep waiting for someone else to see his symptoms. I could chalk my silence up to prudence or compassion, but it had been largely fear.

Drawing another breath, I told Nathaniel about the flight, and the request, and then the demand. “He took me with him to the clinic. I think he didn’t want me out of his sight.”