Atmosphere(5)

“Copy that, Navigator,” Joan says on the loop, each word feeling heavy in her mouth. “We read you.”

Jack: “Keep Danes on the leak. But she also has to make sure the N2 is all the way up. Keep Ford on Griff in the airlock.”

“Roger,” Joan says, and then she gets back on the loop. “Navigator, Houston. Danes, we need you to find that leak as soon as possible. We are reading that the N2 is funneling in, but we are not seeing an increase in cabin pressure.”

“I think I—” Lydia’s voice cuts out.

“Navigator? Navigator, this is Houston, do you read?” Joan says.

Nothing.

“Lydia Danes, do you read me?”

There is no answer. This feels inevitable to Joan now, even though just one second ago she would have said it was nearly impossible. Losing all three in the cabin was something to pretend was a real fear, but it would never actually happen.

Joan leans forward. “Navigator, this is Houston, come in.”

Ray: “Flight, this is Surgeon. Given the rate the pressure has been dropping, Hagen, Redmond, and Danes are certainly unconscious, suffering from the bends. But, given the length of exposure, I believe they may be dead.”

Joan can feel the mass of this moment as it takes hold in her brain stem, making her neck stiff, her head heavy.

Greg: “Flight, EECOM—the cabin pressure is rising.”

Jack: “Rising? Confirm you said rising.”

“Rising, sir. PSIA returning to normal levels.”

“Danes found the hole,” Jack mutters.

Joan gets back on the loop. “Navigator, this is Houston. Can you confirm you have found the hole and patched it?”

Ray: “She’s not going to be able to answer.”

“Lydia, come in,” Joan says again.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

And then Vanessa’s voice.

“Houston,” she says. “I think I am the only one left.”


Seven Years Earlier


Joan’s younger sister, Barbara, had called her one morning to tell her about a commercial she’d seen on TV late the previous night.

“It said, ‘This is your NASA.’ ”

“What?” Joan said. She was in her kitchen, pouring herself a cup of coffee, the phone held between her shoulder and her ear. She was about to head to the car. Her first class of the day at Rice University was a survey course on the cosmos, offered to freshmen of all majors. Although she had a PhD focusing on an analysis of magnetic structures in the solar corona, she was spending her expertise teaching eighteen-year-olds the definition of a parsec. But, as her department chair had pointed out when she’d gently asked for a different assignment, “someone has to do it.” Apparently that someone just so happened to be the only woman in the department.

“What do you mean, ‘This is your NASA?’ ”

“That’s what she said, the woman from Star Trek. Hold on, I wrote it down somewhere. I saw the commercial just before putting Frances to bed, but I was able to grab a pen before it was over. Here it is: ‘This is your NASA, a space agency embarked on a mission to improve the quality of life on planet Earth right now.’ It was Nichelle Nichols—that’s her name! That was driving me crazy. They are recruiting astronauts. Scientists. To go up into space. They specifically said they wanted women.”

Joan put the lid on her coffee. “They said female scientists?”

When Joan was twelve, she had read a newspaper article mentioning the FLATs—First Lady Astronaut Trainees, involved in what was known as the Women in Space Program. That group of thirteen women had been privately tested and trained by William Randolph Lovelace II, the same physician who had helped select the Mercury program astronauts. He’d done it on his own, outside of NASA, in hopes that the organization might recognize the potential of female candidates.

But the article where Joan first read about the program was the same article in which she learned of its demise. The FLATs needed NASA’s approval in order to be granted permission to complete their testing at the Naval School of Aviation Medicine. Days before they were scheduled to arrive, they were notified that NASA would not approve the request.

A congressional hearing in which many of the women testified about gender discrimination did nothing to change the NASA administrator’s mind. John Glenn had even been quoted as saying that women not being accepted as astronauts was “a fact of our social order.”

Joan had spent a lifetime of looking up at the stars, but had not imagined herself in a space suit in a very long time.

“They definitely said ‘scientist’ and they definitely said ‘women,’ ” Barbara told her.

Joan put down her coffee and took the phone from her shoulder into her hand. “You really think I could be an astronaut?” Joan said.

“You study the stars. Who else could they possibly be asking for?”

“I don’t know. I . . . You really think I should apply?” Joan asked.

Barbara sighed. “Oh, forget it. You’ve zapped all the fun out of it,” she said and hung up.

As the dial tone kicked in, Joan took the phone from her ear, slowly put it in its cradle, and kept her hand on it for a moment, staring at the receiver.

Two weeks later, without telling Barbara, she requested an application.