Up and Down (28 page)

“Coming through. Sorry, plane to catch. Pardon me. Coming through!”

When I’d last seen her, she’d been dwarfed by a de Havilland Beaver. So standing there on her own, she now seemed physically bigger than I’d remembered her. I understood why when I got a look at her from the side. She was wearing a bright yellow rain poncho that didn’t quite cover the old green canvas backpack slung over her shoulders. From the front, the ensemble kind of made her look like a giant yellow pepper or perhaps the peanut M&M character.

When she finally broke free from the crowd, aided by how
quickly the crowd was trying to break free from her, she rushed over to me, sporting a broad smile. She wrapped her arms around me and squeezed all the air out of my lungs with a Hulk Hogan bear hug. It was a submission hold, and the pressure on my spine ricocheted the word “paraplegia” through my mind.

“Mr. Stewart!” she gushed, holding me out at arms’ length for just a second, before pulling me back in for a second bear hug. “You have made me happier than I think I’ve ever been. You did it. Your media manipulation turned the trick and flicked the switch.”

“Whoa, Landon! Always with the jokes!” I said in a loud voice for the sake of the hordes watching us. Then I leaned in to whisper in her ear.

“Keep your voice down. And please, ‘media manipulation’ is a phrase that should never cross your lips again, or the closest you may come to the space shuttle is on a guided tour of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum.”

I glanced around the departure lounge in case she’d been trailed by some photogs or vidcam shooters, which was a distinct possibility, given her newfound fame. But thankfully, everyone else seemed preoccupied with their own travel plans.

I pulled back to look at her. She nodded quickly with very wide eyes, her entire countenance exuding contrition.

“Sorry,” she hissed. “I’m still new at this.”

We both relaxed.

“It’s great to see you,” I said, genuinely pleased. “How was your flight?”

“Well, I really just wanted to get there, I’m just so tickled. But the flight was fine. It’s always a bit strange flying as a passenger in somebody else’s plane,” she replied. “But I have to say that the wings of my old baby are a lot more rigid than the ones on that Airbus.”

“That’s quite the carry-on bag you’re lugging around,” I observed. “I can’t wait to see what you checked.”

“I decided not to check my bag,” she replied. “This is the only one I’ve brought.”

“You certainly travel very light for an eight-week trip,” I said, trying not to think of the two large suitcases I’d already checked.

“Well, as I recall, the
NASA
folks make you wear their fancy astronaut jumpsuits from dawn to dusk anyway, so I only brought along a few changes of clothes.”

I helped her lower the backpack to the ground, nearly dislocating my shoulder in the process.

“Is it an entirely chainmail wardrobe? This thing weighs a ton,” I complained. “Why didn’t you check this and save the strain on your back?”

“Check it? Not on your life. I’m carrying precious cargo in here. I don’t want Air Canada rerouting it to Kuala Lumpur by mistake,” she declared, patting the side of the backpack. She unlaced the top, reached in, and pulled out a magazine. “I decided to bring along my first twenty years of the
Baker Street Journal
for you, 1953 to ’73. I haven’t looked at them for years and thought you might like them.”

“No way! Landon! That’s amazing!” I shouted, completely forgetting our “keep your voice down” rule. “You lugged eighty issues of the
BSJ
all the way from Cigar Lake for me?”

“Well, you’ll need something to read while I’m studying and being poked and prodded and spun,” she commented. “I think you’re going to be bored silly.”

Diane had briefed me fully the week before. I was to be attached to Landon at the hip for the duration of the training and until the mission itself was over – that is, if she passed through the program and was cleared to fly. The only time we’d be apart would be during the shuttle mission itself. My job was simply to make sure Landon did nothing or said nothing to imperil the program or tarnish the
NASA
brand. This had required an unanticipated increase to the budget that
TK
shared with
NASA
. While I’d be with Landon every waking hour in the coming couple of months, we’d bill
NASA
for only five hours each day, which conveniently coincided with my daily billable target. So I’d spent an hour or so on my computer the night before I headed to the airport, pumping five-hour days into
PROTTS
so Amanda could invoice
NASA
even while I was gone.

Houston was hot. And I don’t mean the famous Texas “dry heat.” This was full-on humid hot. Every time I breathed, it was like
inhaling the exhaust of one of the shuttle’s solid rocket boosters while swimming in a pool of my own perspiration. We’d just walked out of the air-conditioned comfort of the airport into the blast furnace of just another day in Houston. I looked up and I saw, shimmering faintly like a mirage at the head of what seemed an endless line of taxis, a limo parked at the curb. A uniformed chauffeur held a sign that featured what looked like the
NASA
logo, but I was too far away to make out the name beneath it.

“That’s it,” said Landon, staring at the sign in the distance. “Percival.”

“You can read that from here?” I asked.

“Of course. Can’t you?”

I pulled my two wheeled suitcases towards the limo, losing ground with every step to Landon as she race-walked ahead, shouldering her backpack that weighed only slightly less than a standard refrigerator. When I caught up to her, I’d sweated off about five pounds and was delirious with dehydration. Landon seemed unaffected by the trek and the temperature. She grabbed and loaded my suitcases before the chauffeur could even put away his sign.

“Let’s go! We’re burning daylight.”

The Johnson Space Center is a sprawling complex with heavy security. We were granted entry courtesy of our passports and the close scrutiny of a beady-eyed marine at the gate. It felt like
Checkpoint Charlie in the years before the Berlin wall came tumbling down. But we were in. Landon was like a schoolkid on her first field trip. She gawked out the windows of the limo and kept whacking my leg to point things out to me.

They gave us adjoining rooms, which I thought was taking my minder role a little too seriously. The rooms were quite nice, configured not unlike a high-end motel. There was a queen-sized bed, a spacious closet and dresser, a very nice flat-screen
TV
, a bar fridge, a desk, high-speed Wi-Fi, and a view of the next building. My newly acquired vintage
Baker Street Journal
copies were stacked precariously on my bedside table, ready for reading.

There was a knock on my door. When I opened it, in the corridor stood a teary-eyed Landon wearing
NASA
orange astronaut-in-training coveralls. Official patches for
NASA
, the Canadian Space Agency, and the upcoming mission itself were sewn over her heart. A Canadian flag and “Percival” in upper-case letters were embroidered on the left side. Clothes really do make a statement.

“There were five pairs of these in my closet,” she whispered, almost overcome with emotion. “It’s really happening. I can’t believe it’s really happening. I’ll never wear anything else again.”

“You look very much like an astronaut,” I said. “I only got this very official-looking lanyard. It won’t get me onto the shuttle, but I’m told it’ll get me everywhere else around here.”

She leaned in to eye the photo on my card.

“Why didn’t you at least smile?” she asked. “You look like you just robbed a train.”

A door opened farther down the hall, and out stepped Eugene Crank, decked out in his orange coveralls. I recognized him immediately from the photos I’d seen in the media coverage. Landon did too, and pulled herself together.

“Mr. Crank, I presume,” said Landon stepping towards him, her hand extended.

He looked our way, gave a little smile that seemed close to a smirk, shook his head, and walked over.

“Well, well, Mrs. Percival. I figured you’d be holding a news conference by now, to keep up with your clippings,” he said.

He reached down to her to shake her hand, but his heart wasn’t in it.

“I’ve never been married, actually, and I’d be quite happy never to see another reporter or photographer in my life,” Landon replied. “Congratulations on winning. I’m looking forward to sitting next to you for lift-off.”

He smirked again. It was definitely a smirk.

“Well, Ma’am, there’s a lot of sheep to shear before you’re on the launch pad. Good luck. I’ll see you at the news conference.”

He turned and walked away from us.

“Well, he seems nice enough,” Landon said when he was gone.

“You think so? I thought he was a bit of a jerk.”

Kelly Bradstreet ended up chairing the official news conference the following morning to introduce the two citizen astronauts. She’d told me in confidence that Scott Chandler,
NASA
’
S
head of astronaut training, was supposed to run the newser but had refused, calling the whole program a sideshow. It gave me a glimpse into what her life was like trying to drag the reluctant
NASA
old guard into the new millennium. Eugene Crank and Landon Percival sat alone at the blue-skirted table with the mission crest on the backdrop behind them. The room was filled to capacity with about fifty reporters, including twelve cameras perched on a bank of risers along the back. I stood at the rear, next to a
CNN
camera, and even got to meet fellow Canadian and famed
CNN
host Ali Velshi when he came back to chat with his vidcam shooter.

Kelly introduced herself and then walked the reporters through the Citizen Astronaut program and the goals that underpinned it. She reviewed how popular the program had been with Americans and Canadians, noting the impressive number of entries in each country. Then she introduced, first Eugene Crank, running through his bio, and then Landon Percival. Kelly joked that because Landon was somewhat older than Eugene, it would take her a little longer to get through her bio. Everyone chuckled except for Eugene. Finally Kelly made a big deal of reminding us all that the two contest winners would not be flying the shuttle unless and until they successfully passed the training program and were approved for launch. Both Eugene and Landon nodded.