Star Dust (24 page)

Besides, it would have made him think too much on Anne-Marie. He didn’t want to face her hurt, and his own guilt in causing it.

Because she had been hurt. He’d seen it in the way her expression had dropped when he’d said
no distractions
. But with the kids watching and the mission right around the corner, he couldn’t explain. He only hoped it wasn’t too late when he came back.

If he came back.

He tried unsuccessfully to not think about all the rocket fuel beneath him.

“T minus five minutes.”

He wanted to move, to settle himself more securely in the seat. Had they designed this chair for him or the monkey? But he willed himself to be calm. Temperature, respiration, heart rate—all of it was being monitored. No response of his would be hidden from the men in the control room. They knew if he was taking a piss; he didn’t want them to see his stress.

But he’d hidden Anne-Marie, hadn’t he? Parsons had given no indication that he found Kit’s focus lacking in the past three days, even though Kit himself had felt as if it were.

He was going to the stars. He needed to focus on that. The trouble was, after a lifetime of dreaming of a trip to space, there was only blankness now where a thousand fantasies had once been.

This trip would be like nothing he’d ever imagined. It was as if his mind had carved out a space for this mission and was simply waiting for the experience to fill it. The romance of Mars had been replaced by a checklist. The real romance was across the country in a Houston suburb.

“T minus one minute.”

And now the countdown began in earnest. The voice in his helmet counted off every second. It seemed to go both too slow and too fast. He couldn’t wait for the rocket to lift off. He wasn’t ready for the rocket to lift off.

But his heart remained steady, his temperature normal. He was an aviator and an astronaut. Nothing ruffled him.

“Ten, nine, eight…”

He counted off silently with the voice.

And then…
ignition
.

There was an almost deafening burst of noise as the rocket lit, something large and white and blank. Bodily and aurally. Total. Was he moving? Was the rocket lifting like it should?

The clouds began to slip past the window, and he realized that he was. The acceleration was much smoother than in the simulator, so easy as to be almost gliding.

He hadn’t suspected that liftoff would be anything but a jerking, shuddering bronc ride. But a man could get used to this.

Up and up and up he went, traveling at speeds men had never seen before, the sky darkening as he rose.

A shudder then—the rocket detaching, having done its job to push him beyond the atmosphere and into the reaches of space. The capsule was now free. And Kit could begin his work piloting it.

His training took over as he fired the thrusters, moving the capsule into position, readying it for the orbits it would make. He looked out the window, intending to use the stars and the Earth below to confirm his position…

And gasped. He’d left Earth while the sun was out, its light obliterating that of the stars. But here—here there was nothing to dim them. They burned bright and cool even in the middle of the day.

He was seeing the stars in the middle of the day. A spill of diamonds in a sea of endless black. He couldn’t wait to tell Anne-Marie.

Below, the Earth glowed green and blue and white. He could see the planet’s curve, as if it would fit against his palm. He hadn’t expected it to be so beautiful.

He noticed then that he was straining slightly against his seat restraints. Straining upward, against all the laws of gravity.

He was weightless.

In the “Vomit Comet,” weightlessness wasn’t very fun at all. There, he was getting dropped from a very great height, and his stomach knew it.

But this kind of weightlessness was fun. He loosened the restraints and let himself bob upward, a smile splitting his face.

“What’s it look like up there?” Parsons radioed. Of course Parsons would cut in right as he was starting to enjoy himself.

Kit looked out the window, at the stars and the planet spinning beneath him. Parsons wanted him to describe this? He wasn’t certain he could. But he wanted to capture it, if only to be able to share what he could with Anne-Marie later.

“I can very clearly see the star field,” he said carefully, “and can ascertain my position and attitude with it quite easily.” Mission Control would need to know that for future flights. “The Earth looks… it looks beautiful.”

He wanted to say more, to capture what it really looked like, which was so much more than beautiful. But the words wouldn’t come.

Was Anne-Marie listening? He wasn’t certain what exactly was being broadcast on the television. If she were, perhaps she’d hear this next and know that he was thinking of her, even now.

“I can see Mars,” he said. “It’s not as impressive as I expected.”

A beat of silence as Parsons digested that. “You can’t see Mars,” he said irritably.

“Can’t I?” Kit smiled, although there was no one but himself to see. “I must be mistaken then.”

Parsons’s sigh was loud even over the radio. “Start going through your checklist,” he ordered.

Kit went back to work, hoping that Anne-Marie had heard his message to her across the thousands of miles between them.

The morning of the launch, Anne-Marie paced some. Then she fretted. And when that failed, she might have pulled out a copy of a certain issue of
Life
and stared at Kit’s picture. He looked so competent and at ease. She hoped he felt that way with whatever he was doing right now.

Before she could get truly maudlin, pounding sounded on her front door. She cinched her robe more tightly around herself and looked out the peephole.

What were they doing here? She pulled the door open to reveal Margie, Frances, and Betty. Their arms were filled with food.

“We’re so relieved the press aren’t outside,” Margie said. “Take this.” She handed Anne-Marie what appeared to be a frozen lasagna and strode in. “Where’s your kitchen?”

“Some trucks drove by earlier,” Anne-Marie said, trailing her. “But they left after getting pictures of Kit’s house.”

The other women began arranging things on the counter.

“And probably yours too,” Betty said with a wink.

There had been rumors after the
Life
story about the dinner, but things had quieted down—probably because Kit had ignored her so fastidiously. Hooray.

“Where are Freddie and Lisa?” Margie asked.

“My mom took them to school. I called in sick.” While things had been better since her conversation with Roberta, she couldn’t handle booking reservations. Not today. She hoped the kids would be okay at school. If something went wrong… she’d need a plan to get them in a hurry. But Margie probably had something worked out.

“The launch is supposed to be in ten minutes, but I…”

“Oh no, it’s delayed,” Frances said.

“What?”

“Parsons told me. There are clouds, but they’re supposed to clear up.” Margie was filling the coffee pot. “Do you mind?” she asked, gesturing to what she was doing. She didn’t wait for a reply before going on, “He said Kit is focused and calm.”

All Anne-Marie could say, quite stupidly, was “Oh.”

Frances cupped her cheek. “We’ll stay as long as you like. And I think your robe is… charming, but in case the press show up, maybe you should put on a dress.”

“I’d make it green,” Margie put in.

“Okay.” Anne-Marie stood there for a moment, watching them. They were her friends. They were here for her not because they thought she was going to fall apart, but because they cared. How so many things had changed since she’d left Doug.

She headed for her bedroom to put a dress on and some curlers in.

“Who knows,” Betty called after her, “when you come back, we might even play some bridge.”

They didn’t find time for cards. They watched Walter Cronkite, drank three pots of coffee, and ate enough deviled eggs to strangle a horse. And every twenty minutes, Margie called someone named Bill.

“Parsons told me that I couldn’t keep bothering him all day,” she explained. “So he gave me Bill’s direct line.”

“But what reason did you give for bothering anyone at all?” Anne-Marie responded.

“Parsons is many things, but he isn’t an idiot. I told him I’d be spending the day with you.”

And after that, there wasn’t anything to say but “Oh.”

Margie sat on the phone with Bill during liftoff and gave a live report. “The oxygen parameters look good,” she said when the final countdown had started.

“What are oxygen parameters?” Betty whispered.

“He’s away,” Margie interrupted, meaning Kit. “And everything… everything looks good.”

Anne-Marie dropped her face to her hands and released the breath she’d been holding.

Frances stroked her back. “We’re through the hardest part.”

Anne-Marie rubbed her cheeks. Her hands were numb—but it was fine, because she could scarcely feel them on her face. Joy, exhaustion, sleeplessness, and stress were rioting in her. They muddled together into detachment and shock.

“I need… Just give me a moment.”

She walked through the house and out onto the patio to stare up at the sky. Right now Kit was somewhere up there. Thousands of miles, tens of thousands of miles away—Bill would probably know. However far it was, he was screaming overhead, strapped to a rocket. He was literally out of this world.

“Please come back,” she whispered. “I need to tell you I love you.”

Seconds became minutes. Soon she was dazzled by the brightness of the sky and had to look away. A bird sang in a tree. A car drove down the street. Her pulse thundered in her wrists. He was thousands of miles away, but he was coming home. And if she were very lucky, he might just be coming home to her.

Kit watched Australia slip away beneath him, the coastline glowing. An entire continent, ringed with light. For him. Because he was flying past.

It was heady stuff.

He’d thought he’d only want to watch the stars while he was up here. That he’d never be able to look away from those bright jewels.

But after the first orbit, he found himself looking back at Earth more than the stars. There were more clouds than he’d expected, a tattered veil of white encompassing the entire globe. He saw a thunderstorm at one point, lightning flashing throughout the clouds like sparks from a Roman candle.

The ocean was the most beautiful blue from here, a pool of melted sapphires. He could see deserts and forests and mountains striping the continents. He’d passed over Texas twice now, and each time he’d looked very carefully for Houston, wondering if Anne-Marie and the kids were looking up at where he was that very moment.

He couldn’t wait to tell them about everything he’d seen. Hawaii was coming up again soon, pass number three. One or two more orbits and he’d come down. Safely, most likely. So far, everything had gone textbook perfect.

“Perseid Two, do you read?” Carruthers’s voice broke through Kit’s thoughts.

“Roger.”

“They’re bringing you in early.”

The radio was too tinny to let the nuances of Carruthers’s tone come through. But to come home early meant something was wrong.

“Why is that?” he asked, keeping his voice level. “I’ve got at least one more orbit planned.”

“Well…” Now the tone came through—Carruthers had some bad news coming. “The heat shield might have come loose.”

The heat shield might have come loose?

That wasn’t bad news. That was the worst news. Without the heat shield, he was dead. He’d burn to a crisp on reentry. He’d never be able to tell Anne-Marie and the kids about all the wonderful things he’d seen, because he’d be nothing more than ashes in the atmosphere.

Would never have the chance to tell her how much he loved her.

He blew out a breath, stared sightlessly at Hawaii slipping past. “You said might?” he radioed back.

“One of the clamps is signaling as deployed,” Carruthers said. “But only the one. The plan is to get into reentry position and hope that the force of deceleration keeps the shield in place. If it really is loose.”

Kit wasn’t asking the odds on that working. Either it did or it didn’t. He had no other choices. Not if he wanted to get back to that beautiful blue and green globe floating beneath him. And a certain red-haired lady he was in love with.