Authors: Emma Barry & Genevieve Turner
Earth Bound
ONTENTS
Earth Bound (Fly Me to the Moon, #3)
Houston, Texas, 1961
The race to the moon is on, and engineer Eugene Parsons has two enemies: danger and distraction. Nothing is more distracting than his attraction to the brilliant, beautiful computer scientist on his team, but he’s determined to overcome it since he needs her to help America win.
Charlie Eason is used to men underestimating her. It comes with being a woman in engineering, but it’s worth it to join the space race—even if she can’t figure out what’s behind the intense looks one tightly wound engineer keeps sending her. But life isn’t as unemotional or predictable as code, and things soon boil over with the intriguingly demanding Parsons.
With every launch, their secret affair grows thornier. The lines between work and play tangle even as Parsons and Charlie try to keep them separate. But when a mission goes wrong, they’ll have to put aside their pride for the greater good—and discover that matters of the heart have a logic all their own.
For C, who asked for it
ROLOGUE
February 1962
Charlie Eason hadn’t been able to eat that morning, and the shakiness of her hands was the result.
She’d told all her colleagues to eat a proper breakfast, to get a decent night’s rest, to go easy on the coffee—to be as ready as they could for the launch today. But she hadn’t been able to follow her own orders. Her eyes hadn’t closed once last night, she couldn’t bring even a spoonful of grape-nuts to her mouth, and the refills on her coffee had been endless today.
The countdown clock told her it was T minus five minutes.
Charlie had spent a decade and a half making herself into one of the preeminent computer scientists in the country. She’d been at the American Space Department for a year. And in five minutes, she and everyone else were going to find out if they could put a man into orbit.
She did yet another check of her things—pencils, notebook, slide rule. She looked to the dark data board that would relay the information coming from the capsule. Attitude, altitude, and speed would light up the analog display once the capsule began to move. The data was also being fed into the electronic computer via the cable snaking across the floor. Her own stopwatch was set next to her notebook in case the main countdown clock failed.
She poked her head into the simulation room. Behind a glass door Dave, the operator, waited next to the room-sized electronic computer he ran.
“Ready?” she asked.
He gave a jerky nod, looking as jittery and sick as she felt.
Great. The computing department was ready for launch then.
She turned back toward the main floor, finding Dot and Beverly. “Are you two ready?”
They nodded, their expressions more resolved than Dave’s had been. They would be doing a manual backup calculation along with the electronic computer.
“T minus one minute,” came over the loudspeaker.
She clapped her hands for everyone’s attention. “It’s time.”
Charlie took up her own position at a desk next to Hal Reed. Hal was the Director of Computing for ASD. Officially, she was the deputy director. Unofficially, she was in charge of the female computers and programmers, and she was a damn sight smarter than most of the men they’d brought on.
If there were any justice in this world, she’d be the director instead of his underling. But there wasn’t, and they were thirty seconds from ignition—she needed to focus.
“Ten. Nine. Eight…”
With each count that rapped out of the loudspeaker, the tension ratcheted up yet another notch. Sweat bloomed on her palms.
And then: “Ignition.”
She couldn’t hear the roar of the rocket fuel as it ignited, since she was in Houston and the launch was at the Cape, but it felt as if the floor were vibrating beneath her feet.
“We have lift off.”
The observers on the ground at the Cape would be smiling and applauding. She did neither of those things. Her gaze flicked from the clock to the dark data board and back again.
Almost time. It was almost time.
The board lit up, flashing the capsule’s information to the entire room.
“Is this coming through?” she called to Dave.
A pause, long enough to have her heart stopping.
Dave finally said, “Yes.”
She pressed the button on her own stopwatch, the hand starting its revolution. She began to calculate madly, trying to beat the electronic computer as she traced the flight path of the capsule.
This was the most critical part of the entire mission. If the capsule wasn’t traveling fast enough, wasn’t flying straight up, the massive hand of gravity would catch it and pull it straight back down. It could crash right into a place filled with houses and families.
They had only a few seconds to do the calculations, to ensure the capsule was on the correct path. If it was, the mission was go for orbit.
If not, the mission had to be aborted.
“Done,” Dave called from the simulation lab right as the printer began to spit out paper.
Hal pulled it out and handed it to her. “All good?”
She double-checked the printout against what she’d calculated as allowable paths several weeks ago—and had calculated again yesterday—then checked those numbers against what she’d just calculated.
Dot came up behind her and set her own sheet of calculations next to Charlie’s. A quick check of those numbers, and then Beverly’s.
“Good.” She met Hal’s eyes. “We’re go.”
Hal cupped his hand over the microphone of his headset. “We’re go for orbit.”
She hit the button on her stopwatch, stopping the sweep of the hand. A few seconds longer than she’d anticipated. Not bad. Well within the time limit.
The most critical moment was over, but there was still plenty to be done, all the million and one things necessary to keep the capsule in orbit and Kit Campbell from crashing down to earth.
She let herself sag in her chair, while relief filtered through her body. This first mission was going to work out, but they had so many steps, so many missions, to go before they might get to the moon. She pulled her spine straight and shoved her shoulders back. Time to return to work.
“Let’s review the programming sequence we were working on yesterday, Jack.”
Jack was a good-looking kid and computer engineer a few years out of MIT. He thought he knew a great deal more about programming than he did, but she liked him in spite of his arrogance.
His brows knit together. Obviously he’d thought they’d take a moment to celebrate—but they didn’t have an extra moment. Not if they were going to beat the Soviets.
Jack swallowed his disappointment. “Sure. Let me get my notes.”
Two hours later, she was fully in the rhythms of her work when Hal interrupted her.
“
He
wants to see you.”
She set her pencil down with slow deliberation. She didn’t ask who
he
was—only one person at ASD was ever referred to like that. “What does he want?”
Hal merely shrugged.
She probably shouldn’t have expected more of an answer.
He
never called people up for anything good, but she couldn’t think of what might have set him off. The calculations were all correct, the mission was a go… What had she missed?
She stopped in the ladies’ room on the way to his office, studying herself in the mirror. A tweak here and a tuck there so her curls looked perfect. She shifted her hips and settled her dress more smoothly into place. Her makeup looked fresh, but a touch of lipstick never hurt.
Graduate school had taught her an important truth about being an intelligent woman, one she hadn’t been able to learn growing up in Princeton: It helped to be stunningly beautiful, especially when dealing with the Zeppelin-like egos of scientific men. They never saw her coming; it was only after she’d outthought them that they realized they’d been flanked.
Not that her beauty, cultivated as it was, ever seemed to help with
him
. But it couldn’t hurt, so she checked the mirror anyway.
Satisfied, she went down the hall to his office.
Eugene Parsons, Director of Engineering and Development.
If it weren’t for the name on the door, she didn’t think she would have ever discovered his given name. He was either
he
or
him
or simply Parsons—no first name required.
Or any name at all, most of the time.
She kept her knock brief but firm, then opened the door before he could summon her.
“You wanted to see me?”
Perhaps that was what irritated him the most. She didn’t cower before him like the other engineers, or defy him like the astronauts. She met his every sharp remark or cutting word with the coolest of aplomb.
Parsons looked as he always did, the sleeves of his white button-down shirt half rolled up to his elbows, the thick frames of his glasses framing his intense gaze. With his dark coloring, the shirt and glasses only just kept him from being swarthy.
She didn’t want to parse all the things that went through her at the sight of him.
He studied her for a moment, never offering her a seat.
“Why did it take you so long to confirm we were go for orbit?”
Uninvited, she crossed over to one of the chairs, studiously arranging herself in it. Once she was situated to her advantage—legs crossed at the ankles, arms draped casually—she answered. “I confirmed the mission status within the established time parameters.”
“Yes, the absolute safety parameters.” He adjusted his glasses, the movement somehow ominous. “But you promised you’d have the calculations done in twenty-two seconds. Not thirty.”
She wanted to clench her jaw, the arms of the chair, his throat—but she didn’t move a millimeter. “I
projected
I would complete the calculations in twenty-two seconds. But the safety limit for aborting the mission was determined to be thirty-five seconds. I was well within the range.”
“Why did you take longer than twenty-two seconds?”
This was the problem with working with engineers. Scientists were precise, yes, but there was room for improvisation. An engineer took precision and turned it into torture.