Atmosphere(25)

Chuck Peterson, the man assigned to extra-vehicular activity, stands. “The suits were not designed that way. But she got out of it by herself, so we believe she can get into it by herself.”

“If you tell her she has to do it,” Joan says, “she will.”

Jack nods. “EECOM, are we still at 10.2 psi?”

“Affirmative.”

“What does that give us for a pre-breathe?”

Greg does not answer Jack at first, still calculating. Jack stands up, tosses the pen onto his desk. “C’mon! What does that give us for a pre-breathe?”

Greg: “We believe seventy-five minutes. The team is evaluating whether we can shorten it.”

Jack leans onto the desk in front of him. “Either way, when you add in the time to get in the suit, and get the latches closed, and get back in and start the deorbit, we’ve lost a rev, maybe two.”

He looks across the room to Tony Gallo, the flight dynamics officer. “FIDO, get us landing site options.”

FIDO: “Copy that.”

Ray: “Flight, Surgeon. Based on Griff’s vitals, he may have more time than Danes. But if we don’t get them home in the next seven hours, one or both may not make it.”

Jack: “The shuttle cannot land without the payload bay doors shut. It will burn up on reentry.”

Ray: “Yes, but Griff and Danes may not survive the time it takes for her to get into the payload bay.”

Jack: “None of them will survive reentry if she doesn’t.”

FIDO: “We can still land at Edwards on the next rev, but then the closest opportunity after that will be twelve hours after.”

Jack closes his eyes and nods. “Then let’s hope she can do it within ninety minutes. CAPCOM, prepare her for EVA.”

Joan: “Roger that. Navigator, Houston. You will need to close the payload bay doors manually. Please prepare to get into the EMU.”

“Copy, Houston.”

And then, more quietly, Vanessa says, “I . . . I don’t know how to get into the suit without help. It was hard enough getting it off.”

“Understood,” Joan says. “Tell me what you need from us.”

“You can’t help me,” Vanessa says. “No one can.”

Joan does not know what to say. “Copy that,” she says, finally. It is so useless.

Joan can see the future for a moment—everything that happens if this doesn’t work.

“I’m going to start the oxygen for the pre-breathe,” Vanessa says. “And then figure out how to get in the damn suit again. I hope you all can talk me through how to put my shoulder back in the socket if I dislocate it.”

Joan considers how to respond, but then Vanessa speaks up again.

“I’ll have to get Hank and Steve out of the airlock. Then I’ll get in there and depressurize again. Then I’ll figure out what’s wrong with the latches and come back in here and start deorbit and land this thing. And somehow do it in less than four revolutions.”

Joan waits an extra moment, to make sure Vanessa is done.

“You and I . . .” Joan says. “We will do this together.”

“I’m . . .” Vanessa says. “I’m grateful you’re the one in that chair today, Goodwin. I’m glad it’s you.”

Joan stares forward, worried she might catch someone’s eye. She is good at this, understanding what Vanessa means. So this is enough for now.

She closes her eyes and begs the unfolding cosmos: Please. Please don’t take Vanessa.


Fall 1980


It was after eleven on Saturday night. Joan should have been in bed, but she could not tear her fingers away from the piano.

After a long week of classes, her brain was fried. The lingo at NASA was going to kill her, especially the abbreviations. OMS, RCS, EVA, EMU, FIDO, GPCs. Joan was attentive and ready. But the terms were coming at her so fast that often it felt less like science and more like French.

She needed a break. So instead of going out to a bar, she’d gone on a long run, come home, taken a shower, and sat down at her keyboard. She did not know how long she’d been at it, but she’d played so much and just kept playing. Tchaikovsky, Chopin, Shostakovich, and now, Satie’s “Gnossienne No. 1.”

It was exactly what she needed: one of those moments when she forgot where she was or even who she was. It was what she had loved about the piano as a child, why she had kept with it even after deciding she would never try to become a professional. It let her mind leave her body, let her body speak for her.

Everything else in Joan’s life was thinking thinking thinking thinking. But when she picked up that pencil to draw or put her hands on the cool keys, the thinking stopped.

The knock at the door startled her. She yelped so high and so loud that she cringed to hear it.

Two possibilities flashed across her mind of who it might be, neither good: her neighbor, angry about the loud noise, or Griff.

“Jo?” she heard through the door, just before she could unlock it.

Vanessa.

“Hi,” Joan said as she opened the door.

“You screamed very loudly just now,” Vanessa said at the doorway. “It sounded so dainty and helpless. I worry you’ll set women back centuries if any man hears it.”

Joan frowned. “Thank you for your excellent notes on how I can be scared in a less vulnerable way.”