The Calculating Stars (Lady Astronaut, #1)(126)

Lebourgeois says, “Thank you, Mission Control, for the smooth countdown.”

“Confirmed thanks. We’ve passed the fifty-second mark. Power transfer is complete.”

The last of our gauges leaps to life, needles spiking like my heart.

Lebourgeois nods, watching the gauges. “Confirmed internal power.”

“Forty seconds away from the Artemis 9 liftoff. All the first-stage tanks now pressurized.”

“Confirmed pressurization.” Lebourgeois is the French priest in our tiny chapel, reciting the litany of space.

“Thirty-five seconds and counting. We are still Go with Artemis 9. Thirty seconds and counting.”

“Everything is very good here.”

“Twenty seconds and counting. T-minus fifteen seconds, guidance is internal.”

“Confirmed internal guidance.” Lebourgeois lifts his hand to rest it over the clock, waiting.

I clench the arms of my couch, counting with them in my head.

“Twelve, eleven, ten, nine. Ignition sequence starts…”

The engine roars to life beneath us and the entire rocket shakes like a cabin in an earthquake. It’s always been quiet at Mission Control during this moment, but now, sitting atop the rocket, there is no delay between ignition and the sound.

“Five, four, three, two, one—zero. All engines running. LIFTOFF.”

The rocket thunders beneath us and pushes me deep into my couch. The acceleration pulls me back, as if the Earth is trying to keep us from leaving.

Lebourgeois pushes the clock start. “Roger. Clock.”

“Tower cleared.”

“Roger. We have the roll program.”

Clouds spin past the windows as we roll into the right attitude for our orbit.

“Confirmed roll program.”

We rip clear of the clouds into startling blue.

Abruptly the ride smoothes out as we push through the sound barrier, and the thunder of the rocket falls away behind us faster than we are traveling. We’re on our own now. There’s nothing that Mission Control can do until we are in orbit.

“ Artemis 9, this is Kansas. You are Go for staging.”

Now Lebourgeois’s voice sounds strained by the G-forces pressing us into our seats. “Inboard cutoff.”

“We confirm inboard cutoff.”

The blue of the sky grows deeper, into a rich velvet, then darkens to black. It is so dark that it is not a color but an absence. Ink. Velvet. Dark. None of these give the sense of the depth of space.

“Staging.” His hands move over the controls, flipping switches.

The G-load vanishes and I fly up against my restraints. Past our windows, the dark sky flares red and gold. Pieces of housing whip past, trailing sparks.

“And ignition.”

And then silence.

Beneath us, the smaller engine pushes us higher, out of the Earth’s influence. But without an atmosphere it is largely silent, letting us know its presence only through the vibrations of the ship. We are technically in space, but if Lebourgeois and Mission Control don’t get us into the right orbit, we’ll fall back to Earth.

A loose end of my harness floats up in front of me. Up.

I turn my attention from that and watch the gauges, doing the first task of the navigation that will be my job for the next eight days. “SECO. We are showing 101.4 by 103.6.”

Parker replies with the same calm he has for everyone. He’s probably tossing his tennis ball in the air. “Roger. Shutdown. We copy 101.4 by 103.6.”

The capsule is silent, save for the sound of my breath and the hiss of the oxygen fans. One hundred and one miles below us, the tracking stations are following our flight path and sending numbers through the Teletype to a table in Kansas City. Two computers are there, Basira and Helen, who will convert those numbers into elegant equations.

“ Artemis 9, this is Kansas. You are confirmed Go for orbit.”

Lebourgeois turns his head and grins at me through his helmet. “Congratulations. You are officially an astronaut.”

My face hurts. I’m smiling so hard that my cheeks are tight balls of joy. “We have work to do, right?”

“No shortage of it. But, wait—” Terrazas puts a hand on my arm and then gestures to the windows. “Look.”

There is nothing to see but that vast blackness. Intellectually, I know that we’ve passed into the dark side of the Earth. We slide into her shadow and then magic fills the sky. The stars come out. Millions of them in crisp, vivid splendor.

These are not the stars that I remember from before the Meteor. These are clear and steady, without an atmosphere to make them twinkle.

Do you remember the first time you saw the stars again?

I am sitting in a capsule, on my way to the moon.