The Calculating Stars (Lady Astronaut, #1)(65)

“Well, Lynn Bromenshenkel, now.” She turned, reaching for the man she’d been standing with. “Luther? This is Elma Wexler—”

“York, now. We lived next door to each other for two years.”

She jumped right in, the way she had when we were kids. “It was the longest I’d lived in one place, on account of Daddy moving around.” When she smiled, I could see her ten-year-old self buried under the intervening years. Her nose always wrinkled when she smiled. “Do you remember the ‘Mud Pie Incident’?”

“I got in so much trouble for that. And then the Glass House Affair, when Hershel tripped and split his knee open?”

Lynn’s laugh hadn’t changed at all. It burst out of her like the sonic vibrations of a rocket. “Oh, the blood.” She put her hand on her husband’s arm. “Honest, it’s not as bad as it sounds. It’s just—honestly, I don’t know why I’m laughing. I’m just so happy to see you.”

Neither of us asked about the other’s parents. It had stopped being a thing one did at some point.

Nathaniel turned from the ticket booth, then, our tickets in hand, and we had to do introductions all over again. One of the boys was hers, but he had his nose in a book the entire time, and even if he had seen me on Mr. Wizard, he didn’t see me on the boat.

As we pulled away from the dock, Nathaniel and I found a space in the inside cabin with Lynn and her husband. I settled into the crook of Nathaniel’s arm and watched Chicago roll past outside.

The captain’s voice crackled over loudspeakers set into the ceiling of the boat. “Afternoon, folks. Take a look on your right and you’ll see the Hotel Murano, designed by Jette Briney. All those round balconies are supposed to remind you of the petals on a tree. And, like a tree, it goes underground, with a whole network of bunkers that are designed to be warm and inviting. Mind you, I’ve never been in there, ’cause you have to have a whole lot more ready cash than a boat captain makes.” He laughed at his own joke.

I leaned my head back to look up at Nathaniel, who was shaking his head slightly. Probably at the same thought I had, which was that underground bunkers were all well and good if you were worried about another impact, but right on the river? When the temperatures went up again and the water table rose, that was going to be a disaster.

“Now, we have a real treat for you today: we’ll get to go out and cruise around the lake.” The boat slowed as we reached the locks out to Lake Michigan.

Nathaniel shifted in his seat to peer out the window to watch the locks in action. He was never going to stop being an engineer. “Huh … I wonder if—” His jaw snapped shut.

“You wonder if…?”

He cleared his throat. “Ah. I wonder … if we should have Myrtle and Eugene over for dinner when we get back.”

“That is not what you were going to say.”

The corners of his mouth twisted into a wry smile. “No. But allow me this course correction.”

Which meant it had been something about rocketry. I patted his thigh in appreciation. “That would be nice. Maybe we could have—”

The captain’s voice cut in with just enough volume to make conversation difficult. “Last year we weren’t able to go out at all because the lake was frozen solid, but this winter is mild enough that we’ll be able to give you a good view of Chicago and cruise around Navy Pier and Adler Planetarium. Interesting trivia: Did you know that the astronauts are using our planetarium to practice navigation?”

Nathaniel and I met each other’s gazes and I started to giggle. “There’s no escape, is there?”

In mock tones of horror, he said, “The space program is everywhere.”

Across the cabin, Lynn’s husband grunted. “And a damn foolish thing it is, too.”

“Luther.” Lynn smacked her husband’s arm. “Language.”

Nathaniel stilled beside me. “What do you mean?”

“A couple of years of bad weather, and they’re telling us we have to go into space?” He shrugged, the flesh of his neck bunching over his collar with the movement. “Even if I believed this nonsense, why not spend the money making things better here on Earth?”

“They are.” I rested my hand on Nathaniel’s knee to let him know that I would take this one. “That’s why we have rationing—they’re trying to eliminate anything that will add to the greenhouse effect. The space program is just one aspect of it.”

“Eternal winter. Please.” Luther waved his hand toward the front window, where we were starting to draw level with the top of the lock. “You heard the captain.”

“I think you’ve misunderstood. The winter was temporary. The problem is that the temperature is going to start rising soon. ‘Eternal summer’ is what we’re actually concerned about.” Being in Kansas City, at the IAC, we were surrounded by people who understood that, and were all striving for the same goal. “Besides, it’s not a good idea to keep all your eggs in one basket, right? All the space program is doing is making another basket for eggs.”

“Ma’am. I appreciate your thoughts, but there are economic forces at work here that I don’t expect you to understand. This is all about big business seeing an opportunity to make a buck off the government. It’s conspiracies and shadows all the way down.”