Voyage (28 page)

‘Is that a yes or a no, Doctor?’

‘Huh?’

‘I asked you a question. Would you take the trip to Mars?’

‘I guess so. Yes.’

‘Doctor York. Suppose I tell you that the chances of surviving the trip are one in two. Do you go?’

‘You can’t know that. The statistics are so uncertain, the analyses –’

‘Assume I know it. Do you go?’

‘One in two?’
Tell the truth, Natalie
. ‘Absolutely not. I might accept, say, one in twenty, if it could be demonstrated.’

‘One in ten?’

‘If it could be demonstrated.’

‘How are you going to balance your two careers, as an astronaut and a scientist? Won’t there be incompatibilities?’

‘Sure. But the opportunities are so great.’
On Mars, you would only have to look around to make discoveries. You’d be Darwin in the Galapagos …
‘But I need to keep some momentum in my career. I’d be looking for some kind of split.’

‘What kind of split?’

‘Maybe one third to one half of my time should be spent on my own research.’

Chuck Jones leaned forward. He had black eyes that seemed to peer right into her. ‘Doctor York. You aren’t married.’

What the hell now?
‘No, I’m not.’

‘What is your view of the forthcoming National Women’s Conference?’

‘… What about it? I’m sorry, I don’t follow –’

‘You must know it’s coming here to Houston, in November. I understand there’s going to be a parade through Houston – the First Lady, Billie Jean King … If you’re here then, working with NASA, will you be attending?’

‘Perhaps. I doubt it. I’m a little passive about such things, I’m afraid.’

‘Will you be supporting it –
passively
or not, Doctor York?’

Are you one of these new-fangled feminists? Jesus Christ. Do I have to answer this?
She let her anger show in her voice. ‘I support the Equal Credit Act of 1974, and I’d like to see it enforced. I support full employment, flexible child care, other basic provisions. Hell, yes, I’ll support the Conference, if you want to know.’ She glared at them, challenging.
And if that counts against me, to hell with you, you assholes
.

‘Would you like to tell us about your relationship with Michael Conlig?’

She felt a cold sweat break out across her palms.
My God. It gets worse
. This was just outrageous. For a half minute, she considered walking right out of there.

Then, slowly, she gave them a brief, factual account of her on-off relationship with Mike.

‘And you’re together now?’ Jones asked.

She thought of bluffing through. What would be a better answer? Yes or no? She could probably get Mike to back her up later …

Ah, the hell with it
. ‘I don’t know, sir. It’s complicated.’

Jones held her stare for a few seconds. Then he leaned back in
his chair. ‘Okay, Doctor. Michael Conlig works for one of our main contractors, on the NERVA 2 project. As you know. You could well find yourself working together.’

‘I guess.’

‘Do you feel your
complicated
relationship would cause you any problems?’

Her anger flared, and she let them see it. ‘No, I don’t. Frankly I resent the implication, sir. Mike is dedicated to his work. In fact he has tunnel vision about it. As I do about mine.’

Jones’s eyebrows went up. ‘Is that the source of the complications?’

Screw you
. ‘We both have goals to pursue. We would both do our jobs, to the best of our ability, whether we worked together or not.’ She glared around at the panel defiantly, as if daring them to ask more follow-ups.

But that seemed to be an end of it. The next question was for more detail about water on Mars.

When they were done, she felt a cold satisfaction.

She had no idea whether she’d won through or not. There were too many factors here beyond her control, including the culture and politics of NASA; too many things over which she, with all her qualifications and experience and persuasiveness, could exert not the slightest influence. But she felt, at least, that she’d done her best.

She felt kind of soiled, though. Those damn questions about Mike. She wished she’d found some way of not answering.

But the only choice had been, answer or quit right out. She’d chosen to answer. Now, as the adrenaline rush faded, she felt as if she’d somehow let herself down. She’d made the first of many compromises she’d have to accept, she suspected, if she got into NASA, and she was to survive here.

As she got up to leave, the moonwalker winked at her, long and slow.

The response from NASA arrived – at last – just after Christmas.

She stood in the hall of her Berkeley apartment, looking at the crisp white envelope, with its blue NASA logo.

This, suddenly, was one hell of a moment in her life. A real branch, a fork in her destiny. One way lay the space program. Maybe even Mars. The other –

Somehow she couldn’t visualize what might lie down the other
track, what might follow if this letter, this slim, high-quality white envelope, turned out to contain a rejection.

She put it down on her desk, unopened.

She went to make coffee, to open her other mail. Somehow it didn’t seem right to open The Letter just like that.

Mike was out at Santa Susana, buried in the latest test runs. York hadn’t even heard from him for a couple of weeks.

His absences seemed to matter less and less to her. They’d never finished the conversation they’d started, that night in the LA motel.
Christ, it was January. Nearly a year ago
. She didn’t know where her life was going. York hadn’t even told Mike about this application to join the corps, her visit to Houston, her ordeal at the Air Force Base. Ben Priest knew, of course, but she’d asked him not to mention it to Mike. Ben had been puzzled – in fact, she was a little puzzled at herself – but she’d insisted.

She didn’t expect her application to succeed. Not really. But she wanted to see how far she could get. And in the meantime she wanted this to be something she achieved for herself, without the approval, or otherwise, of Mike or anyone else.

She’d tell Mike all about it, when she failed.

If
she failed.

And if she succeeded? How would she raise the subject with him then?

Oh, hi, honey, it’s me. Oh, nothing special. Uh huh. Uh huh. Yeah. I miss you too. Oh, by the way. I’ve had a complete career reversal, I’ve joined NASA, and I’m going to Mars, and my ovaries will be zapped by cosmic rays in outer space. Why didn’t I tell you about it? Oh, you know how it is. We’re both so busy busy busy! … Mike? Mike? …

She opened the envelope.

She’d failed. She wasn’t going to be selected. In the end, she’d failed the damn NASA physical.

She groped her way to a chair, and sat down. Something melted inside her, softening and guttering and flowing away.

It’s not going to happen. Maybe I’ll get to look at a couple of pounds of samples, under glass, in some sterile receiving laboratory in Houston. But someone else is going to walk on Mars, to run their hands through the rusty dirt. Not me
.

Now that it had happened, it was remarkable how much she
cared
. Looking back, she saw that the dream of Mars had been
like a beam of ruby-red laser light lancing through her life, linking everything she’d done, She’d clung to her cynicism about the space program: its culture, its impact on the society of her country. Well, hell, she
did
disapprove of it. The whole thing was crass and wrong and a waste of money, and there were much more effective ways of achieving the scientific goals without sending up ill-trained human beings, in overweight craft riddled with leaky plumbing …

But as long as it existed, this precarious ladder off the Earth, she’d wanted to climb it.
Yes! I admit it! I wanted this! I wanted it more than anything!

She crumpled up the letter and threw it to the floor.

She was glad Mike wasn’t here.

Ben Priest phoned a couple of times, leaving messages on the answering machine. He was sympathetic.

She didn’t return his calls.

Jorge Romero called. He was boiling mad.

‘Do you realize that not one geologist made it through the final cut? Can you believe that? Jesus Christ. How can you go to Mars and not take a single geologist? I’m telling you, Natalie, I’m going to fight this.’

York didn’t really want to hear this.

It had been a week now, and she’d been trying to put the whole thing behind her. Mostly she preferred her own company, but this was one time she’d have kind of liked someone to talk to. Even her mother might have served.

Well, maybe not.

She suspected she was in a mild state of shock: it was as if she had gambled everything, invested all her emotional energy, in planning for a future which contained Mars.

But the dream of Mars was a kind of adolescent fantasy, she was starting to tell herself, something she was going to have to grow out of at last. She felt vaguely ashamed of playing the crass games of the selection panel. And it was surely true that she could achieve far more – even in terms of Mars studies – right here on Earth, rather than waste a decade of her life on the vain hope of getting a spaceflight.

It was time to be mature.

The last thing she needed was a siren voice like Romero, now.

But he was still talking. ‘Of the geologists, you came closest to passing, Natalie. There were no women in the final cut either. My
God, what do those guys in Houston think they’re doing? It isn’t a boys’ flying club. I don’t want to give up. I want to appeal this decision, challenge them.’

‘I don’t know, Jorge …’

On and on. But she didn’t hang up.

And, eventually, she agreed that Jorge could put her name forward again.

Romero pulled in a lot of favors. She suspected he’d even spoken to Ben Priest.

She had to fly back to San Antonio, and undergo some of the tests again. Romero brought in senior aerospace physicians, the best in the country, to look over her case. This time the tests were even harder to bear, so tense did she feel about the whole situation.

She went along with it all. She went through the motions of the tests and reviews, as if numb; she figured she must be in some kind of state of denial.

In the meantime she tried to make plans for the rest of her life, here on Earth. And she tried, unsuccessfully, to figure out some way to talk to Mike.

A month after the revised medical reviews, the phone rang. When York picked it up, she recognized Chuck Jones’s voice.

‘Natalie?’

Her breath caught in her throat.

It had been an ordinary day, one among thousands, soon to recede from her short-term memory and become lost in the blur of time; now, she realized, whatever Jones said, she would remember this day as long as she lived.

‘Yes. York.’

Jones said bluntly: ‘The new medico stuff is fine. How would you like to come fly for us?’

My God
.

‘Natalie? Are you there?’

‘Uh, yes, I’m here.’

‘Are you going to accept?’

… Is that it? But what about all the normal things that come with a job offer? Salary, reporting date, duties? What about the pension plan, for Christ’s sake? Am I just supposed to leap in gratefully, blindfolded?

‘Well, I guess there’s a ninety-nine per cent chance I’ll accept.’

There was a long silence. When Jones came back his voice was
stern. ‘We need a yes or no, Natalie. What’s with these shades of gray?’

She took a breath.
What the hell. Geronimo
. ‘You got a yes.’

Phil Stone hadn’t slept well. It was almost a relief when his intercom started piping out some kind of music, gentle elevator stuff with guitars.

He closed his eyes and buried his head in his sleeping bag; perhaps he could grab a couple more minutes.

He heard thumps, bangs and suppressed curses from the sleep locker next to his. A fist slammed into an intercom control panel.
Shut the fuck up
.

Ralph was awake, then.

He could hear Natalie sneezing. That would be the dust. It was a problem; dust didn’t settle under microgravity, and, despite the circulation and filtering of the air, there was a lot of it in the atmosphere: from the food, from hair and whiskers being shaved off, from epidermal flaking.

The music cut off.

Now Fred Haise, working as capcom, came on the line. ‘When you’re ready, Ares, I’ve got a couple of flight plan updates and an update on your consumables, and the morning news, I guess.’

‘Give us the news, Houston,’ Gershon growled.

‘Surely. What have we got … The Lakers have beaten the Boston Celtics four to two for the NBA title. Natalie might be glad to hear that. Or she might not. The TWA hijack continues. It looks as if the passengers have been moved out and dispersed around the Beirut slums … Here’s something for you, Ralph; I know you’re a sci-fi buff. Gene Roddenberry has said he’s scrapping the treatment he’d prepared for a new
Star Trek
series. It was going to be like the first, with the huge space cruiser
Enterprise
with massive phaser banks, bigger and more powerful than anything they’re likely to encounter. But he’s changed his mind; he’s been inspired by you guys, apparently. Now, Roddenberry says he’s aiming for something called
Star Trek: Explorer,
about a small, pioneering band of humans and aliens in their fragile craft, going much further than anyone has gone before … How about that, guys. Science fact changing the face of science fiction. It says here.’

Gershon laughed. ‘Who’s playing me? And which one of us is the alien?’