The Calculating Stars (Lady Astronaut, #1)(63)

“Maybe you could at least come back to the 99s?”

“Hey!” A voice from the front of the crowd cut through the murmur of conversation. “It’s starting.”

I rose onto my toes to see over the heads of the other folks, using the motion as an excuse to step away from Helen, who really did mean well. Betty had just been interested in breaking into Life magazine, which that visit had done for her. Bless her heart.

But none of that mattered today. Today was all about the moon. I took another sip of the sparkling blackberry concoction and let the excitement of the group pervade me. This kind of group I didn’t mind. It was just being the center of attention that distressed me.

The room quieted, and we began to hear the voices of the people in the main control room. It was like being at a launch run by ghosts. It was weird being on the outside of the main Mission Control. I was so used to being in that room and doing the math. I closed my eyes for a moment and listened for Nathaniel’s voice among the others.

Beside me, Myrtle inhaled sharply. “What is that?”

I opened my eyes. There, on screen, the first grainy images had appeared. It took me a moment to make sense of the grays and blacks flickering on the screen.

Over the loudspeaker, Nathaniel’s voice resonated through the room. “What you’re seeing, ladies and gentlemen, has been rendered in ones and zeroes, transmitted through the depths of space, then translated back into an image. This is the surface of the moon.”

And, like a magic trick, I could see the curve of the horizon.

Joy erupted out of me in a cheer. Around me, people jumped into the air like we’d won a race. I guess we had, or at least the first heat of it. I raised my glass to the success of the Friendship probe and the team who had planned the mission.

Malouf raised his hands in triumph. Mrs. Rogers danced like a girl. Parker punched the air with a hoot. Eugene lifted Myrtle off the ground, spinning her around in a hug. And I laughed and laughed.

“Me next!” Helen punched Eugene’s arm and he chuckled.

Eugene picked Helen up and spun her around and around. I stared at the screen, grinning so hard my cheeks hurt. The moon. Someday. Someday, I would go there. Someday, I would walk on the moon.

*

Funny how seeing your goal made manifest can change things. When we started to get the higher-resolution images in, the stark beauty of the moon became even more real. Yes, it was forbidding, but there was also a majesty to the austere landscape.

I think everyone at the IAC felt a renewed energy for the project. I put my head down and buried it in calculations. But there was another thought that kept running through my mind.

It turned out that Bubbles’s figures were correct. The change in interior structure of the fuel core made it significantly more stable, which in turn allowed it to generate more thrust. With that, we’d be able to increase our payloads by a good 23.5 percent, which would drastically reduce the number of launches needed for the moon base.

Nathaniel was working on a new scenario with those numbers. It was complex enough that he was running our calculations through the IBM, no matter how much he hated it. The program would take hours to run and he liked to babysit the machine, even when Basira, its actual programmer, was there. It’s not like he could fix anything if a punch card failed to feed or something, but … men.

“So … I got another invitation to go on Mr. Wizard.” I fiddled with the edge of a discarded punch card I’d pulled out of the trash. When you stacked a couple of them together, the holes from the punch cards let specks of light through and almost sparkled.

“Is that so?” Nathaniel looked up from the abstract he was reading. “Have you responded?”

I shook my head.

“I haven’t been to Chicago in a while.” He shifted in his chair. “Maybe we could take a vacation?”

“You keep using that word. It wouldn’t be a vacation if I were working.”

“Well, a vacation for me, then.”

Smiling, I tore the edges of the card into little strips. With the notched corner of the card, the strips almost looked like feathers on a wing. “I haven’t said yes.”

“Whatever you decide, I’ll support you. No matter what.”

“I know.”

He meant it to be supportive, I know he did. But it put the decision squarely on me. Either I would cause strife at work if I continued fighting for women’s inclusion in the space program, or I would disappoint Nathaniel. Oh, he would never say that, but if he was proud of my success, then it followed that he would be disappointed if I quit.

I know. I know that’s not a logical progression. I do. I just …

Basira sat on the other side of the room, oblivious to our conversation, as the compiler rattled. The cards ran through the feeder with a thwick, thwick, thwick as each hit the metal guard. I pulled out another card from the trash and flipped it so the notch mirrored the first one. Wings. That was the crux of the matter, wasn’t it? Wings and flight and space, and I wanted to go into space in ways that did not make sense, even to me.

I had a life I should be content with. And I was. I liked being Mrs. Nathaniel York. If I turned down Mr. Wizard and the interviews and the invitations to dinner parties, then I could go back to concentrating on my husband and my job. I loved both, and … and I could do more.

Was I really going to be content running calculations for someone else’s ideas? It would remove the immediate stress, true, and leave … what?