The Calculating Stars (Lady Astronaut, #1)(125)

We walk away from the reporters and get into the van that will drive us to the rocket. It stands like a vast monolith, a testament to the persistence of mankind. That. I am going to ride that.

There is, of course, the possibility that we won’t go today. Launches get scrubbed all the time. A faulty wire. The weather. A man with a bomb … We might have to go through all of this again tomorrow. I’d been in Mission Control often enough when we had to scrub.

When we get out of the van, there are technicians waiting for us by the bottom of the elevator leading up the gantry. Terrazas stops me with a hand on my arm and points up.

I lean back, the only way to look up in the suit. The sound of my gasp echoes against the sides of my helmet. The Artemis 9 steams in the morning sun like a living beast. Intellectually, I know it’s because of the super-chilled oxygen, but … my God, she is beautiful.

When I look back down, Terrazas is still looking up, and so is Lebourgeois. Both men are grinning when we finally finish gawking like tourists, and walk into the elevator. It rattles and shakes as we ride up, and the vast prairies of Kansas spread out at our feet.

Without being told, I stop on the gantry before I climb into the capsule. We all do. Inside, the windows face straight up. This will be my last view of Earth until I am in space.

The high, clear silver of the sky lays over the Earth like a blanket. In the distance, a pair of T-38s circle the perimeter of the IAC to keep our flight path clear. We’d once had to delay a launch because some tourist decided to fly in to watch the launch from the air.

The grasslands have just begun to turn green after a too-short winter with barely any snow. A patch of pink shifts in the breeze as early wildflowers greet the dawn.

I inhale, as if I could breathe in the fragrance of the Earth one last time, but all I get is more canned oxygen. I turn to face our craft, one glove against its side. Terrazas gets to his knees and crawls inside.

I give the crew time to get him settled, and then it is my turn. I’ll be in the center bench for the ride up. Lebourgeois will have the left, as is traditional for the commander of a mission. The seat cradles me, with my legs up in the air. The crew tightens down the straps that will hold me firmly in place as we launch, and switches my oxygen over to the ship’s source.

It is still metallic, but less tinny than the little portable pack. That might be my imagination, though.

Lebourgeois is settled, and then sound comes back into my world as our comms are patched in.

Lebourgeois says, “Kansas, Artemis 9. We are in position.”

Parker’s voice crackles into my ear from his seat at CAPCOM. “Position confirmed. Welcome aboard.”

The hatch closes, taking away the last view of Earth. All I can see now is the silver sky above us. All of us have checklists to run through, and I do, making sure that all the gauges and switches that I am responsible for are in the correct position. For the trip up, I will have very little to do. I am a passenger, while Lebourgeois is the pilot. Even that is mostly in name, because he will only need to take the controls before we are in space if something goes wrong.

And even then, the list of survivable errors is short. When we get into orbit, we have only two hours to prep for the transition to the translunar insertion. In theory. Everything we can do now to prepare for the TLI will buy us time, which is why we practiced this until we can do the checklist by rote.

There is something about having your legs over your head that makes you need to pee. This makes it into none of the press releases, but every single astronaut talks about it.

The men have complicated condoms and catch pouches. I have a diaper.

Two hours into our three-hour wait, I use it, sure that the urine will overflow its confines and spread up the back of my suit. It does not, but I am once again enthralled by the glamour of being an astronaut.

And then, somehow, we are in the last six minutes before launch. I have gone through my checklist four or five times, certain that I’ve missed something. Outside our tiny capsule, my family is being led to the roof of the IAC to watch the launch.

Before I was assigned to a mission, I thought that this was a kindness, to give them a spectacular view. I thought that, right up until I was asked to pick an escort for my family from among the astronauts. Benkoski’s wife once made a joke about her “escort to widowhood.” Our families were on the roof, isolated from the press, so if something went wrong …

So if we died during launch, the IAC would have control over them. The media would get no pictures of the moment grief set in.

We projected the appearance of triumph.

Parker’s voice crackles in my ear. “York. The engineering desk says to remind you of prime numbers.”

The engineering desk. He can’t say “your husband,” or just give Nathaniel a moment with the comm? On the other hand, Nathaniel should be able to hear me at this point. “Please thank engineering, and say that I’ll continue work on my theorem regarding divisibility when we return. Pending a successful rocket launch.”

“Message confirmed.” And without a pause, he returns to the technical jargon. “Engine test is Go.”

The ship shudders and lurches against its bolts. Beneath us, the two massive Sirius engines swivel, to test their range of motion. We’d been told to expect this, but they couldn’t get the simulator to mimic the moment when the engines first got power.

“T-minus sixty seconds and counting. We have passed T-minus sixty. Fifty-five seconds and counting.”