Kaz spooned a mouthful of his soup, nodding. “Do you have a map that shows exactly where these are?”
“I thought you’d never ask.” From the 3-ring binder next to her she unclipped a printed page, spun it around and set it beside the photos.
“The green triangles are the Apollo landing sites. The red ones are the Russian Luna landers. The yellows are where our unmanned Surveyor probes are.” She touched a red fingernail to each. “And the black hand-drawn squares are the locations of the holes.”
One of them was not too far from where Apollo 17 had landed. “Is that as close to the 17 site as it looks? Did the crew see anything?”
“It’s many tens of miles from the farthest point the crew reached in the rover. Too bad we hadn’t spotted these before they went.”
She took a bite while she waited for Kaz to ask the obvious question.
“How close is it to where 18 is scheduled to land?”
“Close enough that Tom and Luke could maybe check it out if we give them enough time on the surface.” She looked up at him. “Are we going to give them enough time?”
Kaz looked around pointedly at the lunchtime crowd. “That’s up to the DoD to disclose, if and when they decide to. Sorry.”
Laura stared at him for several seconds, and then shrugged. “We can wait.” Then she smiled. “We’re geologists.”
Kaz decided it was time to change the subject. “What brought you to NASA?”
For a moment she hesitated, then met his eye. “I want to be an astronaut. And this place is astronaut mecca.” She paused for a moment, clearly considering what more she would say. “I was still an undergrad when Kennedy made his Moon speech. I knew that girls weren’t allowed to be fighter pilots, but I figured that other skills would be needed on the Moon too. While there are still no women in the astronaut corps, the fact that Dr. Schmitt flew on Apollo 17 shows I’m at least half-right.”
Kaz knew that Schmitt, a geologist, had been selected in a new category of scientist-astronaut in 1965. He listened to the undercurrent of fierceness in her voice as she continued.
“Valentina Tereshkova flew in space solo for three days a decade ago. She showed that women can perform as well as men. The 1964 Civil Rights Act gives us legal protection against sex discrimination, so eventually NASA is going to be recruiting female astronauts. I intend to be one of them.” She smiled then, and raised her eyebrows at him. “Well, you asked!”
Kaz knew what she was feeling. He’d been driven by the desire to fly in space ever since Gagarin and Al Shepard had opened the door in 1961. It was the main reason he’d gone to Test Pilot School, and only the accident had stopped his trajectory. But Laura was the first woman he’d met who felt as passionately as he did about the idea, or at least the first who’d told him about it.
He said, “It’s been over a year since Nixon announced the new Space Shuttle. I understand it’ll have a crew of seven, and I think I remember him saying ‘men and women with work to do in space’ in his speech. Bound to take longer than they’re predicting, but I bet that’s your chance. And I’d vote for you.”
“I’ll take all the help I can get,” she said, and laughed.
“Jack Schmitt had to learn to pilot NASA jets before they’d let him fly on Apollo,” Kaz added. “And it looks like the Shuttle is going to be more of a pilot’s machine than Apollo capsules ever were. Have you done much flying?”
Laura looked rueful. “Not yet. I got some scholarships, but I still had to pay my own way through nine years at UCLA. I’ve started flying lessons here, but they’re expensive. And with all the Apollo missions back to back, there hasn’t been much time.”
“Don’t forget I asked you to go flying. The house I’m renting comes with a little Cessna trainer in the garage, which my landlord is happy for me to fly. The street at the end of my driveway doubles as the runway. I’d be glad to take you up.”
Laura’s gaze involuntarily flicked from his good eye to his glass one and back. She realized what she was doing, and looked down.
“Let’s tackle this issue of me only having one eye,” he said, not wanting to embarrass her, but also wanting it out of the way. “I’ve been flying with the Navy since college, fighters and test, and NASA’s letting me into the back seat of the T-38s sometimes. You can trust me to fly a Cessna. We can go over all the basics you’re getting in flight school.”