The Calculating Stars (Lady Astronaut, #1)(99)

“Of course.” I started up the stairs and stopped at the next landing. Even if Parker were grounded, that wouldn’t keep him from having a say in who got selected. “I won’t tell anyone, but you should see a doctor. Just, maybe, not the flight surgeon.”

I almost offered to take him, but I wasn’t that big of a person.

*

On launch days, there’s usually nothing for a computer to do until after liftoff. We’ve already done the calculations about alternate launch windows or adjusted trajectories for rendezvous so that Clemons and the launch director can make decisions based on known information if there’s a delay.

But we still have to come in to Mission Control with the rest of our team. Helen was playing chess with Reynard Carmouche, while I was looking at the places where it was possible to abort the moon mission if something went wrong.

That thing we say about how engineers create problems and computers solve them? Yeah … Nathaniel had given the computer department a list of possible failure points, and then asked how we could get the astronauts home under these varying conditions.

To put this into perspective … The Sirius has 5,600,000 parts and close to a million systems, subsystems, and assemblies. Even if everything was 99.9 percent reliable, that would still be 5,600 defects. It wasn’t a question of if something would go wrong on the way to the moon, it was a question of when and what.

And when that failure occurred, it would occur in a spacecraft that was traveling at twenty-five thousand miles per hour. We weren’t going to have time to run calculations then, so the idea was to create a library of possible answers so we could access a month’s worth of work in a few minutes.

Tonight, with three hours of waiting time before ignition, the failure state calculations were a pleasant way to pass the time. And yes, I’m aware that I’m odd. I wasn’t alone, however.

At his station, Nathaniel had a pile of reports and was gnawing his way through a pencil. Bubbles had a similar binder in front of him—though, given that it was his baby we were about to launch, that wasn’t surprising.

Not everyone was working, of course. Parker was up in the skybox with Clemons, hobnobbing with the journalists. Today, he didn’t have a trace of a limp.

What the hell had it been? Not polio, for certain. Mama would have known what it was, but I didn’t have anyone I could ask without it getting back to him. Maybe I could inquire with the doctor when I went in to see him for my Miltown refill.

“Again?!” Carmouche leaned back in his chair with a groan. “Someday … I swear that someday I will win.”

Helen crossed her arms and smirked at him. “It is only check. You still have a chance.”

He harrumphed and leaned forward to stare at the board.

I lowered my pencil. “If you just want to win, you could play against me.”

Shaking his head, Carmouche continued to glare at the board. He reached forward for a pawn, glanced at Helen, and pulled his hand back. Under his breath, he muttered in French about either Helen’s parentage or the options for play. Either way, it sounded irritable.

“Est-ce qu’elle vous bat de nouveau?” Parker walked up behind me and I flinched in my seat. I swear he did that on purpose.

“Oui. Il est l’ordre naturel, je pense.” Carmouche sighed and tapped his fingers on the edge of the board.

“Il n’y a rien de naturel.” Parker looked down at me. “York. Clemons wants you.”

“And he sent you down all those stairs for little ol’ me?” I am, at times, a complete idiot. Antagonizing him was the last thing I needed to do. I pushed back my chair, aware that Helen and Carmouche were staring at us. “Thank you.”

I followed him across the floor of Mission Control. Across the room, Nathaniel had his head buried in reports, and didn’t look up. “Any idea why?”

Parker pulled the door open, but did not hold it for me. I caught it, following him into the stairwell. He bounded up the stairs two at a time, as if he had something to prove.

“Feeling better, I see.” I chased him up the stairs, grateful for the time I’d spent preparing for the astronaut tests. Even in a skirt and heels, I could run up a flight of stairs without getting winded.

At the top of the stairs, Parker waited beside the door with a face of stone. He was a handsome man, I’d grant him that. He and Nathaniel were both blondes with bright blue eyes, but where my husband was lean and angular, Parker had the “ideal” physique of a movie star, with a square jaw and cleft chin.

When I came up alongside him, he put a hand on the doorknob and suddenly smiled as if we were the best of friends. The speed with which he turned on the charm left me chilled.

Parker threw the door open, holding it for me to walk through. Of course he would hold the door and smile, now that there were witnesses. The room was full of astronauts, their wives, and reporters here to cover the launch of a new class of spacecraft.

Clemons turned, one of his cigars smoldering in his hand. “There she is. Gentlemen, meet Elma York. One of our computers, and responsible for the calculations that identified the potential of the Sirius engine. Dr. York is also our newest astronaut.”

The room went hot. Cold. Hot. I must have misheard. Surely they would tell me that in private first.

Flashbulbs went off. Blinding me. I couldn’t breathe.

Astronaut.