Fault Line (35 page)

Authors: Sarah Andrews

Surprised at the scale of her anger, she blinked, trying to snap her mind back to her carefully ordered world of science, of a
+ b = c,
of practicality. She drew in a ragged breath, let it out, the sound of it lost in the wind.
Focus harder.
The wave she had been watching began to rise, the lioness heaving her body into a self-sacrificing pounce. Lucy gritted her teeth, forced her mind to imagine the oscillatory circle of its individual molecules stretching into ellipses as they intersected the slope of the beach and tripped bottom.
Now the axis of that ellipse flattens with the drag of the undertow, now the wave oversteepens and collapses â¦
The chaos of tumbling water churned up the beach. More powerful than most, this wave kept coming, swept clear up to where she stood, snatched at her feet, wiping out her footprints with one jealous swipe of its paw. Lucy felt its sucking caress pull at her ankles and shuddered, her mind suddenly free of words. Tears burst from her eyes as she released herself into the tide of her emotions.

Springing into a run, Lucy dashed along the swash line, pounding a string of footprints into the sands. She ran hard, filling her lungs with salt air, raising her face to the north, drinking in the privileged privacy of this farthest reach of the Space Center. She felt her well-trained muscles respond with grace, raising her above the bonds of earth with every stride, carrying her northward with the long-shore wind. The mists clung to the waves and sand and beach ridge, almost obscuring the launch pad that towered ahead of her. Yes! This was her destiny, to rise above the Florida peninsula once and for all! As her breathing deepened rhythmically into her belly, she regarded the rocket that waited for her upon that pad: four and a half million pounds of rockets and fuel, and mounted on its side, space shuttle Endeavor, one hundred and twenty-two feet of technologically marvelous craft. It hugged its boosters like an emerging butterfly clinging to its cocoon, as if hanging there in wait for its stubby wings to pump themselves to a fuller potential. Lucy shook her head ruefully, again defying such imaginings.
A butterfly's gossamer wings would
snap under the stresses of launch, she told herself. Or fry to a crisp in the heat of reentry. Better these laughable little tile-encrusted planes that protrude from Endeavor's chubby tail!

Once again assured of her rationality, Lucy fairly flew up the beach, her hands describing the same circles as the waves, her feet making a dance with the sands, here sinking in a little deeper, there barely digging in a toe. Her mind wandered outward, keeping a ledger of observations, jotting down variations in the packing of the grains of sand
âIs it the waves that determined the softness and hardness, or is it also grain size, roundness, and sorting?
âno matter, years of fierce training had brought her to this moment, to this opportunity.

The launch delay was agony. Some little quirk in the vast, ultra-sophisticated assemblage of machinery, calledâpedantically enoughâ“the shuttle,” had nudged the schedule past its safe launch window. Her crew had stood like stone, each looking at the other when the word came, “Sorry, we'll have to start offloading fuel, and with this weather coming in â¦” NASA was rolling back the shuttleâshe could see it go, sliding dumbly along on its crawler, a butterfly not yet ready to emerge from its cocoon, creeping meekly back toward the safety of the assembly building. She had been all suited upâso close!âand the countdown had stopped and â¦ but with luck, it would be only two weeks' delay. Get the flaw in the machinery fixed, get these storms past, roll the shuttle back out â¦

Surely she could endure that much more. Two weeks before the fulfillment of her life-long dream. She, Lucy of all Lucys, would snap loose her tether to this earth, ride that rocket to the sky, the thundering pressure of five gravities pressing at her slender back like the fist of God.

In ecstasy, she arched her neck and threw her face open to the heavens. Yes, yes, yes, her feet chanted to the sands, her angry dash transformed into a swell of victory. Yes, I have made it.
Yes, I have prevailed. Yes, I can do this, I can make it at last, I can rise above this groundâ

A sea gull glided into her field of vision. Mottled with dark feathers. It swooped closer, eyed her coldly. An untamed corner of Lucy's mind saw something all too familiar its primitive gaze.
He sent this birdâno, worse yet, he has climbed inside the creatures of the sky!
With this thought, her adrenal glands jolted their chemical stimulant into her unwitting blood stream, ramming her heart against her ribs like a trapped animal trying to escape its cage.

She wanted to scream, No! Not here! Not now! Someone might be watching, someone might see, and even now shake his head, say Lucy is weak, and scratch me from the duty roster. Oh, God â¦

The worst part of waiting is I have to go back to Houston to wait, where he can find me â¦

Her gait fumbled. She slowed for a moment to correct it, bring it back under control. Forcing herself not to look over her shoulder, forcing her vision instead to the far horizon, away from the evilness of gulls and those who would inspire rage, Lucy forced the shot of adrenaline into an even faster gallop. Yes, that was good; anyone watching would think she was simply forwarding her training, and never know what truly chased her up the beach. In fact, yes, she could now already slow her pace, move it back into an easy lope.
Easy now, remember where I am, remember that I am the predator here, not the prey. No matter that the Space Program puts its scientist astronauts at the bottom of the food chain, and treats those women among them even worse; money is the bottom line here, and they have invested plenty in my training. I am part of a team. An essential part of a team, a team that has prepared rigorously to do a job.

Lucy pounded on up the beach, building her future one footprint
at a time. NASA would not fail to use her now, and, she assured herself, when she rode that thrumming monster into the sky, no adolescent gull, or any of the searing memories it unearthed, could possibly reach high enough to find her.

This is work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

FAULT LINE

All right reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever wihtout written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010

Grateful acknowledgment is made to Edward Christopherson to quote from
The Night the Mountain Fell: The Story of the Montana-Yellowstone Earthquake,
copyright 1962.

St. Martin's Paperbacks are published by St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

eISBN 9781466818026

First eBook Edition : May 2012

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2001048664

ISBN: 0-312-98445-6

EAN: 80312-98445-8

St. Martin's Press hardcover edition / January 2002
St. Martin's Paperbacks edition / January 2003