The Calculating Stars (Lady Astronaut, #1)(92)

Mrs. Rhode, the nurse from the day before, gestured me over to the chair.

Did Aunt Esther look the same? She had sounded the same, certainly, but how had the five years since the Meteor treated her? Wait—Mrs. Rhode had just said something. “Sorry?”

“I need you to take your shirt off so we can monitor your heart.”

“Oh—” The orderly had left the room so we were, in fact, the only people here. I fumbled with the top button of my blouse. “Of course.”

As she pasted discs to my chest, her hands were cold. Goosebumps rose on my arms, and I had to fight not to cross them over my chest. With wires trailing over to one of the machines, I settled into the chair. The cold metal stung my back, which really wasn’t used to being exposed like this.

“All right, Mrs. York. I want you to keep your eyes open for this procedure. Tell me about how you met your husband, and be sure to keep talking for the next five minutes.” Behind me, metal clanked against metal. “No matter what, keep talking and keep your eyes open.”

“All right … I met Nathaniel three times before we started seeing each other—” Something cold brushed my ear. “The first time was at Stanford. I was assigned to tutor his roommate in—ohmygod what—”

Freezing liquid filled my right ear, and my equilibrium was suddenly gone. The room spun around me in frantic circles. I clenched the seat of the chair with both hands. Eyes open. Keep talking.

“Tutor … I was assigned to tutor his roommate in math. Differential equations. But the fellow wasn’t always there when I came and … and…”

This was worse than being in a tailspin. There, at least, you could do something to pull out of the spin.

“… and so Nathaniel and I would talk. A little. About rockets, mostly. The next semester, his roommate had a different roommate.” God, I was barely making any sense. “I didn’t see him—Nathaniel. I didn’t see Nathaniel again until the war. I was a WASP. I ferried some planes and did some training in New Mexico. He was there. He remembered me. I was less shy. We talked about rockets again.”

I couldn’t get my eyes to focus. Even keeping them open took effort as the room whipped around me.

“The third time was Langley, at NACA. I was visiting with my father—I mean, my father took me with him to visit NACA. Nathaniel was there. We talked about rockets. And he asked me a question about trajectories. I answered…”

The edges of the chair dug into my fingers as I fought to stay in my seat. Had other women fallen out? Had the men?

“I answered and he offered me a job. He shouldn’t have—I mean. Computers weren’t his department. Engineer. He was the lead engineer.”

They’d done this to Stetson Parker. Whatever she’d stuck in my ear was something that had happened to Stetson Parker. The one thing I knew for certain about the test ing was that we were being subjected to the exact same tests as the men. If he could survive this, so could I.

“He later said that he had wanted me for the engineering department, but then he couldn’t have asked me out.”

The doorknob had a beam of light shining on it. I fixed my gaze on that and tried to let the room swing around that point. It helped. A little.

“It never occurred to me that a woman could be an engineer, and the computer department was all women, so that seemed like a natural fit. I was there for two months when he asked me to go to the Christmas party with him. I told him I was Jewish. It turned out that he was too, but it was the company party, so—”

Mrs. Rhode stepped in front of me and clicked a stopwatch. “Very good, Mrs. York. Four minutes, thirty-eight seconds. That’s quite good. You may close your eyes now.”

The darkness was a welcome relief. The room still spun, but not as badly.

“What was that?”

“Super-chilled water to freeze your inner ear. It’s an equilibrium test to see how well you can function when unbalanced. We look to see when your eyes stop rolling as a sign that you’ve gained a measure of control.”

“And I could only focus after four minutes and thirty-eight seconds?” In a plane, it would have killed me if it had taken me that long to pull it together.

“Yes, but you were able to function the entire time. You may put your shirt on, but we’ll leave the heart monitors in place for the next test.” Something cloth, presumably my shirt, landed in my lap. “And thank you for not vomiting.”

The rest of the day followed similar baffling and unpleasant lines.

There was a table that they strapped you to, turned you upside down for five minutes, and then jerked it upright to see if you’d faint from the sudden change in orientation. A treadmill that rose at a steady rate as you ran to simulate a run up a mountain.

There were other examinations, some of them less dignified than a trip to the gynecologist, which is saying something.

When I was sweaty, tired, and annoyed, they gave me written tests about orbital mechanics. With each round, there were fewer and fewer of us. Some hadn’t been able to get through a crucial part of the testing—I nearly didn’t make it through the run “uphill”—and other women changed their minds. Those of us who stayed, though, had an odd mix of camaraderie and fierce competitiveness. We were, after all, pilots.





THIRTY