The Calculating Stars (Lady Astronaut, #1)(79)



Oh God—that was Wernher von Braun, rocket genius and Nazi scientist, sitting in a chair by the window. Nathaniel had worked with him years ago, but I knew him only by reputation.

They’d brought me into a room with a literal Nazi. Had that been Parker’s idea? Probably.

“How do you do?” Saved or damned by social niceties, I was able to make it through his response, which I barely heard, and even shake his hand. Yes, I’d heard the stories about how he wasn’t “really” a Nazi—about how he had been “forced” to use Jewish prisoners or risk losing his own life. But he’d made that choice. 1, 3, 6, 10, 15, 21, 28 …

“Colonel Parker suggested that we might need some assistance in understanding your report.” Clemons waved at the chair in front of him. “Have a seat.”

Did Clemons even know I was Jewish? I sat and smoothed my skirt as if I could rub the taint of von Braun’s touch off my hands. If I walked out of the room, my chances of convincing Clemons were over. “I take it that you were concerned about Nathaniel’s impartiality?”

“Exactly so.” He leaned back in his chair. “Now, explain it to me very slowly, like I’m a congressman.”

Wetting my lips, I nodded. “I hope you’ll bear with me if I start with a history lesson, which is not in the report. It will give some context.”

Clemons waved his cigar, smoke trailing it like a plane going down. “Go ahead.”

“When sewing machines were first introduced, people were frightened because they were new and moved with an unprecedented speed. There was concern that you could go blind from watching the machine. So the manufacturers made them beautiful: they added gilding and floral motifs.”

Parker snorted. “So you want to send some Lady Astronauts up as decoration?”

“As we explained to the congressional hearing, our goal is to expand humanity to other worlds. You will need women on those worlds or they will never be self-sustaining colonies.” I glared at Parker. “I trust you don’t need me to explain the biology of babies?”

“Babies or no, it’s not safe.” Parker shook his head and smiled. “I appreciate your ambition, I really do, but surely the Orion 27 accident demonstrates that we can’t put women in the line of fire.”

“No. That is the wrong tactic to take. If you point to the explosion as a sign that rocketry is not safe, the space program will fail.” I looked back at Director Clemons, but with the cigar in his mouth, it was hard to read his expression. “You know it will. If you want to demonstrate that the program is safe, then you need to demonstrate that these rockets are safe enough even for ladies.”

Parker shrugged, as if none of that mattered. “And we will … after the moon base has been established.”

I pressed my hands flat against my skirt to keep me from balling them into fists. “If you refer to page six of my report … After World War II, there is no shortage of women who flew as WASPs and have the right skills. But if you wait too long, those women will be too old, which will raise the barrier of creating the colonies.”

“She has a point.” Wernher von Braun, of all people, stepped into Clemons’s smoke cloud to support me. “The Russians used their Night Witches in the war to devastating effect.”

Parker tilted his head at the mention of the Russian women’s air squadron. “I always thought they were propaganda.”

“Propaganda, perhaps to begin with. But real and effective.” Von Braun shrugged. “And even propaganda has its uses. We want the space program to continue, yes?”

Propaganda. Yes. I was well aware of what propaganda could do.

Clemons grunted and tapped his cigar in the brass ashtray on his desk. “All right … so let’s go through this point by point.”

I took a breath and stood to join Parker behind Clemons. I kept both of them between me and von Braun. Not because I thought he was going to pick me up and haul me off, but because it sickened me that people forgave him for what he’d done simply because he was a brilliant rocket scientist. A “nice” man. A “gentleman.”

Yet here I was, giving tacit approval to his presence by saying nothing. Because if I did? Then Parker would use that to talk about how hysterical women were.

And worse … if the space program failed, then humanity was going to be trapped on Earth as it got hotter and hotter. So I leaned over Clemons’s shoulder and turned to the first page of my report. “Right … We begin by looking at the budgetary benefits of using women as astronauts, due to our lower mass and oxygen consumption.”

And from there, it was all about numbers, and I was home.





TWENTY-SIX

ROBOT DESIGNED TO EXPLORE MOON

6-Legged Crawling Device Would Report Over TV

March 22, 1957—What has six legs, one claw, television, and sleeps sixteen hours a day? It could be a robot exploration vehicle small enough to be landed on the moon in a Project Reconnoiter package, according to a report to the International Aerospace Coalition yesterday. A working model of the proposed moon crawler has been built. The full-sized object would stand about five feet tall on its walking shoes, weigh 110 pounds, and be powered by little more than a square yard of solar cells.

The first launch after the hearings was unmanned.

It was a requirement that came out of the hearings and a smart thing to do when you’re still trying to make sure that your system is robust. In our department, we computers had always employed a safeguard procedure, in that any calculations intended for a rocket were looked over by two other women. In the past, we had sent it to the Air Force, and they had used one of their men to transfer it to program cards. And that was that.

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