Earth Bound (13 page)

She grimaced. That bickering had started during the early morning debriefing and would doubtless continue for several weeks. She wondered if he regretted reaming her out over the exit angle confirmation, given that some people had truly screwed up, but she knew that he didn’t, so she didn’t press the question.

“Whose fault was it?”

He gave a morose shake of his head. “Six of one, half dozen of the other. They both fucked up.”

She huffed out a laugh. That response was so like him. “Isn’t the real problem the leadership?”

He almost smiled at that. “Isn’t the real problem
me
?”

“Not to put too fine a point on it, but yes.”

For a moment, the half-smile threatened to become a full one, but then the corners of his lips fell and he went pale. “I swear to God, Charlie, that’s what keeps me up at night.”

He looked genuinely pained, and she wanted to pop up and do…
something
, but that was a fruitless impulse, especially since she was no good at comforting gestures. It was unprofessional, and it wouldn’t help, and he’d probably be horrified if he knew what she was thinking.

So what she did instead was distract him. “I can tell you one thing you could do that would make a difference. Well, not with the heat shield switch, but with everything else: You can help me convince Hal we need to go digital.”

This did help, at least with Parsons’s color. At her pronouncement, one of his feet began to tap on the floor. “Resisting, is he? Well, that’s Hal for you. What have you tried?”

“I haven’t tried anything yet. I talked to Dot and Beverly, some of the computers, about it, but they seemed skeptical.”

Parsons nodded. Then he turned, poured some coffee into his mug, and pivoted back to her. He held the carafe up, but he wasn’t looking at her anymore. He was staring hard at the wall and chewing on his lip.

Charlie got up and took the coffee from him to serve some to herself.

“When you decide on an approach, write up some notes,” he said. “I’ll see what I can do to help you. Try to echo your ideas to Stan, that sort of thing.”

“That’d be great. Thank you.”

Hal had resisted her, but Parsons would help. An outside observer might say Hal had the better management style, but when it came down to it, Parsons was the one who was here for her. And the mission.

He started for the door, still lost in thought, but he turned just before he left. “I’ll work to get you whatever you need, Charlie. You know that.”

She watched the doorway for several long beats, wondering if he’d understood what he’d said.

May 1962

Parsons opened the door and took a look around. Mission Control was quiet. It was as if everyone at ASD was accustomed to sending men into space—which, given that this was only their second manned orbit, was a dangerous assumption. Joe Reynolds was on hour thirty-two of his orbital flight, though, and since it was also close to midnight, the calm made a certain sense.

They’d sent up two men now, Campbell and Reynolds, and it looked like both missions would be successful. But Parsons wasn’t going to let anyone rest on their laurels after this—they still had a long way to go to the moon. Even so, the Memorial Day party at ASD was going to be extra jubilant this year, he suspected.

Parsons made his way past the controllers sitting at their consoles as they monitored every aspect of the man and machine flying so high above them, and headed toward the flight surgeon, sitting at his own console.

“Is Reynolds asleep?” he asked in a low voice.

“According to the sensors, yes,” Dr. Sanders said. He looked exactly like the kindly family doctor in a Norman Rockwell print. He twisted in his chair to look Parsons over. “Shouldn’t you be off duty?”

“I’m leaving right now.”

“Good. Go home, take a shower, and get some rest. Doctor’s orders. We’ll need you bright and chipper for reentry tomorrow morning.” Sanders turned back to his console to watch Reynolds sleep through a computer link.

Parsons didn’t plan on going home, but he would close his eyes on his office couch for a few hours. On the way there, he stopped in the bathroom, splashing some cold water on his face. Once he'd dried his hands and face and replaced his glasses, he took a moment to study himself in the mirror.

He looked exactly like what he was: an overworked, under-rested, middle-aged engineer. There wasn’t much he could do about most of it, although he could do something about the under-rested bit.

But as he made his way to his office, the thought of sleep didn’t appeal. He was tired, yet restless, his fingers twitching against his will. Instead, he found himself going straight past his office to wander the halls, looking into empty, quiet workspaces, studying the leavings on the blackboards, and poking at half-finished projects.

If he believed in ghosts, he might say he was haunting ASD.

The place was very different without people—the silence was a living thing, something that might creep like fog into the machines and suddenly animate them. The notion didn't frighten him.

As he made his way past the computing department, already resolved not to go in and be disappointed when Charlie wasn’t there, he heard some rather inventive swearing coming through the open door.

One corner of his mouth ticked up when he recognized the voice. His heart lightened, his fingers finally stilling.

Might as well go in, then. He’d only resolved to stay away if she wasn’t there.

“Shouldn’t you be at home?” he asked.

Charlie looked up from a pile of paper and punch cards. A curl that had slipped from a pin fell along her neck. “There’s”—she jabbed at the papers—“a catastrophic error in this code somewhere. I’ve been through it three times and while I’ve found many
other
errors, I haven’t found that one.” She made a growly noise and shoved the stack away. “It’s going to bother me all night.” She flicked a look at him. “Since you’re down here, I assume the mission is going well.”

He pulled out a chair and straddled it, linking his arms across the back. “So far it’s been perfect. Reynolds is asleep right now.”

“And the capsule? All systems running as they should?”

“According to the computers, yes. But they could be lying.”

She smiled, and he felt a pulse of pride that he’d amused her. “And the heat shield?” she asked.

“Holding this time. We aren’t worried about Reynolds burning up like we were with Campbell.” He set his chin on his folded arms. “Everything seems to be holding. So my day was rather… uniform. Serene. Except for fielding a few phone calls from Margie Dunsford.”

“The astronaut’s wife?”

“That’s the one. She’s the unofficial leader of the wives. She wanted an update to pass on to Frances Reynolds. Mrs. Reynolds is too well bred to ever call us.”

“I’ve never met them—only seen them in
Life
. I wouldn’t know.”

No, Charlie wouldn’t have met the wives. Strange she’d worked with Dunsford on the simulators before, but only knew his wife from a magazine. The fame surrounding the astronauts was a funny thing.

“Do you dislike her?” she asked.

“Oh no, I quite like her. She’d have made an excellent project manager. Or general.”

Or even astronaut. She’d always struck Parsons as cleverer than her husband.

Charlie smiled again. “So, you had to speak with someone you very much like, several times. And the mission is going well.” She pointed to his hands, which had begun to tap against the chair. “But you seem anxious. Unhappy.”

He made a pointless gesture, if only to stop tapping. “Look, I don’t want anything to go wrong with the mission, God forbid. But when everything is going right, there’s nothing for me to do. If something’s wrong, I can fix it or at least try. If everything’s fine, I just sit and wait for it to go wrong.”

Perhaps that was why he couldn't sleep: He was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“But isn’t that a testament to the team you’ve built here? That you can do nothing when things are going well?”

He shrugged. “I suppose so.” But his fingers itched to keep tapping.

There was a beat where they simply stared at each other. A moment that was free of anxiety about work or wound-up need for her. Parsons realized then he
had
subconsciously sought her out, the one person who wouldn’t expect him to yell or find fault or demand more, now.

He simply wanted to talk, and she was the one person he wanted to talk to.

“So,” he said finally, “do you like baseball?”

Her expression twisted skeptically. “Do you?”

“No. I’m trying to make conversation. I'm not very good at it.”

“Me either.”

They shared a half smile.

“I suppose this is where I ask if you’ve read anything interesting lately,” he said. “I haven’t.” He couldn’t remember the last book he’d read that wasn’t a technical manual.

“I read
The Agony and the Ecstasy
.” There was hint of embarrassment to the turn of her lips, which was odd. “I liked it.”

“I’ll have to read it.” His fingers went
tap-tap-tap
in the silence.

She tilted her head, the loose curl dragging along her shoulder. Her gaze was assessing, as if she were trying to puzzle him out.
 

“You know,” she said, “my parents used to tell me when they did the first test at Los Alamos, everyone was so worried the device wouldn’t work. That they’d hit the ignition button and… nothing.” She spread her hands as if to mark off the size of the failure. “But there was another worry—a small one—that if the device should work, the chain reaction would be unstoppable. That they’d hit the ignition button and… poof. The world would disappear.”

A chill ran over his skin at the thought. “Really?”

And still they’d hit the button and run the risk. Parsons didn't think he could have.

She nodded, her expression solemn. “So take comfort in the fact that a successful mission here doesn’t carry the very slim chance we’ll end the world.”

He’d wandered down here, past midnight, during a mission, too keyed up to relax—and she told him a story about the bomb possibly ending the world.
 

He relaxed then, his mouth tipping into not-quite-a-smile. “Strangely, that does make me feel better.” In fact, he might even be ready to catch some winks on his office couch. Apparently all he needed was a few moments like this in order to unwind. And a reminder that mutually assured destruction wasn’t a possible outcome here.
 

He wondered for a moment at her childhood, at the kind of parents who’d tell their young daughter stories about unstoppable chain reactions, stories where the successful test of a nuclear weapon was the happy ending.

Perhaps that partly explained why she was here at ASD. But he couldn’t ask something so personal.

He cleared his throat. “I’m going to go try to sleep in my office.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“By myself,” he clarified. “But first, I'm going to walk you to your car. You shouldn’t be walking out there alone this late.”

“I don’t see the point in going home. I still haven’t found the error.” She gave the stack of papers an unenthusiastic look.

“Get some sleep, come back at it in the morning.” He rose and gestured for her to grab her things. “You’ll find it then.”

She didn’t move. “You seem so sure.”
 

But
she
wasn’t, and he didn’t understand why; she never failed to give him excellence.

“I always have faith in you.”

She swallowed hard, her expression twisting for the barest moment. But then she was rising, fetching her purse, and going for the door, leaving him to wonder if he’d only imagined the emotion crossing her face.

June 1962

Charlie spread her hands wide on the bathroom vanity, until the bits of skin between her fingers were nearly translucent against the tan and white faux marble of the countertop. Then she closed her eyes and rested her head against the cool tiled wall. She focused on her heartbeat, which was slowing to its normal rate within her chest, and filling and emptying her lungs.