Girl on the Moon (7 page)

Grant looked stricken, and Conn realized her staying would be awkward. So she got up and left.

Conn graduated with barely acceptable senior year grades, other than her A in Professor Haskell’s Heat and Mass Transfer class and her required Interprofessional Project, which was, in her case, credit for working at Dyna-Tech. It didn’t matter—she had her degree in aerospace engineering, and already the best job someone her age and in her field could hope for, as far as she was concerned.

Other than Grant’s. She would rather have had Grant’s job, all things being equal, but she tried not to dwell on that.

Peo fully supported her in her breakup with Grant, which surprised Conn a little—she half expected Peo to be mad that she had emotionally harmed her star astronaut.

“With everything else he has going for him, it’s not fair if he has you, too,” Peo told her. It made Conn smile, a rarity right around then. The women were spending some time with Frappuccinos in a sleepy Starbucks.

“I felt like I couldn’t be jealous of Grant,” Conn confided. She wasn’t sure why she was talking about it with Peo, but it felt good to talk to somebody. “Like I was obligated to be happy for him, and that was it.”

“Now?”

“Now I’m almost beside myself. If I’d gone to NASA, I would so ace their training. I’m in amazing shape, I know my science, I’m twenty times more confident than I was before you hired me. I’d be young, smart, spaceworthy, borderline attractive—”

Peo tsk’ed.

“I could have everything he has. But my brain is broken, so I can’t. I try not to let it upset me, but now that Grant and I are broken up—”

“You’re more free to feel sorry for yourself.”

Conn blinked. “I might not put it that way, exactly...”

“No criticism intended,” Peo said. “I know from not being able to go into space for health reasons. Only in my case, I got to go several times before God came to collect His fee.”

Conn sighed. “I wish you would think about going to the moon,” she said.

“And I wish thinking about it didn’t make you so glum,” Peo said.

Conn now worked full time for Dyna-Tech—but school wasn’t over. Peo had Conn take classes toward a certification as a paralegal. “I need someone who can do routine legal things without charging me nine hundred dollars an hour,” Peo said. Conn privately didn’t want to bother with paralegal training, but grudgingly found she had an aptitude for it.

School wasn’t over in another sense: Conn remained at Peo’s right hand in Chicago. The Illinois Tech MMAE Department turned a blind eye to the arrangement. They’d known they were getting somebody who ran an aerospace company when they hired Peo, and had promised her the freedom to keep doing it.

November, 2032 arrived, the tenth anniversary of Peo’s mission to the moon. Conn handled requests for interviews with Peo. When Peo was on her game, like now, she was a master at ingratiating herself with an interviewer, making her points and avoiding questions she didn’t want to answer. Conn wished she could teach people how to do it because she’d get rich if she could.

Conn always found herself enjoying public and media relations work. It couldn’t be a priority for her, but she felt comfortable doing it, and she always had success at it. It was one more way, along with the paralegal training, that she was branching out, contributing.

As attention turned to Peo and her company for the anniversary of her moonshot, Peo authorized interviews with the Saturn astronauts, but not the moon astronauts, on the grounds that the latter were training more intensely. Really, it was Conn’s suggestion to get the Saturn mission more airplay. None of the three Saturn astronauts were terribly charismatic, but their excitement and deep belief in their mission came through as though in large print.

On November 15, ten years after the liftoff of Peo’s trip to the moon, Callie Leporis spacewalked to the Saturn spacecraft at Gasoline Alley and mimed breaking a bottle of champagne on its hull, christening it the
Bebop
. Peo held her tongue at the name, which was inspired by an anime series the three astronauts had all loved as tweens, teens, and even adults.

“Go watch whatever they’re talking about,” Peo told Conn. “Make me not hate the name, somehow.”

“I’ve seen it already,” Conn said. “
Cowboy Bebop
. A bunch of coolly disinterested characters mope around the solar system. I don’t get the big deal.” Peo just sighed. The crew was entitled to name their spacecraft, and Peo wouldn’t veto it just for being stupid.

In December, the sixtieth anniversary of the last steps on the moon—which was also Peo’s sixtieth birthday—gave the media another excuse to come calling, this time almost exclusively about the moon mission. Conn screened interview requests, wrote press releases, and did her best to keep the coverage on message: a historic three-craft trip to the moon, one of them privately funded. Without her guidance, the favored spin was that Dyna-Tech was stealing NASA’s thunder. And they were, to some extent. But all NASA had to do was send up a female astronaut of their own and they would have gotten exponentially more coverage, if that’s what they were after.

December, 2032

Conn and Peo celebrated Peo’s sixtieth birthday with dinner at Franco’s. Conn had fettuccine Alfredo. Peo, on a no-wheat diet, had London broil, with garlic mashed potatoes. The food was rich and delicious, lending a sense of indulgence to the occasion.

“I didn’t know what to get you, so I didn’t get you anything,” Conn said, as she had on Peo’s last two birthdays. In reality, Conn had learned over the years that Peo didn’t like or want birthday gifts.

Peo just looked at Conn. Glasses clinked at another table. Conn put her fork down. “What’s the matter?”

“You’re a remarkable young woman,” Peo said, and her eyes sparkled—tears, near to brimming over. Conn frowned, and put her hand on Peo’s as Peo continued. “You’ve been an asset to my company and a good friend to me. I’m very fortunate to have hired you, those three years ago.”

“I’m the lucky one,” Conn said, and gave Peo’s hand a squeeze. “Times about fifty. You let me do what I always wanted to do, before I even graduated from college. Do you know how rare that is?”

Peo dabbed the corner of her mouth with her napkin, then quickly each of her eyes. “I have something to tell you, and I want you to promise you won’t get upset.”

Peo looked anxious. Worse, she looked lost. Conn withdrew her hand and took a nervous sip of water.

Now Peo reached across the table and held Conn’s hands in her own. She shook them a few times, as though it would help her get the words out. Finally, she said, “My cancer has come back.”

Conn was sure she looked like she felt, startled and worried, but Peo had just said she didn’t want Conn to get upset, so she recovered herself. “So, you beat it again. You’re already one-and-oh.” At another table, mock cheers for some ordinary accomplishment.

Peo smiled and withdrew her hands. “I’ll fight it,” she said, “but I can’t tell you how exhausted I get just thinking about it. Ten years ago, I killed myself training to go to the moon, and I was in outstanding shape. And fighting this damn thing almost did me in then. I’m ten years older, and it seems like my only exercise lately has been walking to dinner with you.”

“You jog three miles four times a week,” Conn reminded her. “You always walk when it’s walking distance, never a cab, and I’m not sure when the last time was you were in an elevator.” She heard the desperation creeping into her voice. She had to hold it together.

“Still. I don’t know if I can do it again.”

Conn could smell fresh coffee, as it was poured at a nearby table. “If I know you, though,” she said, carefully, “ten years ago, you gave fighting everything you had, twenty-four-seven, without let-up. You’ll use more cunning and guile against it this time.” Peo smiled, on the brink of a laugh. “Cancer used to be a death sentence. There’s a lot they can do now, even for sixty-year-olds who aren’t in astronaut shape.”

“As I said, I’ll fight it. I’ve lived years longer than I expected to, and I’ll scratch and claw for more—”

“That’s the spirit,” Conn said.

“But, well. I thought you should know.”

The rest of Conn’s fettuccine looked like it would be dry and chewy. “I’m glad you told me,” she said, but she wasn’t.

The return of Peo’s cancer was not news for general consumption, and Peo even withheld it from her C-level executives. Conn respected her choice, in turn not telling her friend Jody, with whom she was glad to keep in touch after college, or Pritam, whom she saw every day. Peo’s radiation therapy meant Conn was also in the office without her more frequently.

Chemotherapy used to leave a person exhausted and sick. They’d beaten that with the advent of Regrupin, but it still wore Peo down enough that she worked shorter days.

“See?” Conn said, one cold winter day. “They didn’t have Regrupin ten years ago. That’s going to help you keep your strength up. This time, fighting isn’t going to almost kill you.” Peo smiled, but Conn had the sense she wasn’t that convinced.

One day in February, shortly after the
Bebop’s
maiden test flight, Peo shut her office door and swept her hand over where one of the Chinese bugs had been. Peo didn’t want to be overheard, then—it signaled to Conn that something important and secret was coming. Her stomach clenched at the thought that it had to do with Peo’s cancer.

“Two things,” Peo said, all business. “Number one. My negotiations with the agencies evidently weren’t done.” She rolled her eyes. “The Russian, Eyechart, needs some boot camp to get spaceworthy again after seven years on his living room couch. Roscosmos wants me to pay NASA to train him. All the very basics, starting from square one. Fitness, pressure suit, neutral buoyancy pool, survival training...”

“What the hell?” Conn said. “What happens if you don’t?”

“It doesn’t matter. That would be several moves down the line,” Peo said vaguely. “What prompted me to agree to pay for the training is the second thing I have to talk to you about. For now, suffice it to say I’ve agreed to pay NASA to train Eyechart for six months, starting from the beginning, and that will start in mid-May.

“Number two is unfortunate, but we’ll make an opportunity out of it. Ashlyn Flaherty neglected to mention when I recruited her that she had trigeminal neuralgia.”

“What’s trigeminal neuralgia?” Conn had written it down phonetically.

“An incredibly painful disorder that comes and goes, randomly, without warning. There’s nothing they can do about it but prescribe painkillers.”

“That’s awful. She can’t—I mean—”

“No, she can’t. If it was something we could manage with drugs, that would be one thing. But if she has an ‘eruption,’ as she calls them, on the way to or from or on the moon? She’ll be in agony beyond the point where she could still do useful work, or else stoned out of her mind. She’d be a danger to her crewmates, herself, and everyone else on the moon, including our new friends, whoever they are.”

“She must feel awful.”

“It’s a conversation I never want to have again.”

“So, OK. Who takes her place?” Conn said. “Obviously a woman—did you pick somebody already, or are you searching?”

“I’ve picked someone. She hasn’t accepted yet. She’s going to need the same training as Eyechart—everything, from the beginning. That’s why I don’t mind paying for him.”

“We keep it quiet till she says yes, obviously. OK, I think I’ve got—”

“Constance.” Conn was brought up short by the use of her full name. Peo had used it the day they met, but not since.

“Yes?”

“You’re one of the brightest people I know, so I must be giving out the wrong hints. Conn, I want you to take Ashlyn Flaherty’s place. I want to train you as an astronaut, and I want to send you to the moon.”

If they could offer up a way to go to the moon that wouldn’t kill you, I’d sign up. First in line.

— Tom Hanks, “Tom Hanks wants to spread optimism with his new movie ‘Larry Crowne,’”
Orlando Sentinel
(June 24, 2011)

May, 2033

“Why the moon?” Conn asked. It was a chilly May afternoon. “I mean, you’re a species that can travel from star to star, you did that thirteen-second survey of the moon however many years ago, you’ve probably studied the Earth even more thoroughly and in ways we can’t even comprehend. Why set up your first meeting with the human race on the moon? Why not New York? Why not Medicine Hat, Alberta? I bet getting to Medicine Hat is slightly easier than getting to the moon. They have to know enough about us to know we don’t go to the moon anymore. Or we didn’t. I wonder if it’s like
2001: A Space Odyssey
and they want to make sure we can get there before we’re allowed to take our next step in joining the community of starfaring civilizations.” Conn was babbling a lot lately. She knew it annoyed Erik Tyzhnych, who had enough English to be dangerous but not enough to follow Conn when she went off on one of her vocal adventures.

The bulky, creaky Russian had t-shirts older than Conn, and he said so. He stood no more than five-foot-eight, but he carried the three or four inches he had on Conn like it was a foot. His face was chubby under a dust-colored receding hairline. He looked like he was used to being top-heavy—wide shoulders and chest. They still were beefy, but he’d gotten thick around the torso, dampening the effect. With the height and girth differences, there was a great deal more of him than there was of Conn. And all of him deeply resented sharing his retraining with a recent college graduate—he didn’t even bother to hide it. The first week of “boot camp,” Conn used that as motivation.

Astronauts trained for years for a single mission. Eyechart and Conn would train for months. It would be all Conn would get to prepare her for the moon, while Eyechart had first gone into space before Conn was born. He had probably spent as much time in space—no, on space
walks
—in his lifetime as Conn had spent behind the wheel of a car. As much as they said Eyechart needed total training from start to finish, he had obvious advantages over Conn. Conn would just have to work harder than he did.