Earth Bound (16 page)

“I knew I couldn’t panic, so I didn’t,” she said. “They told me to float in the water as long as I could and call out when I wanted the test to end.”

“She never did call,” Miller said with avuncular pride. “The doctors ended the test because they wanted to go home for the day.”

They told her to float, so she did. For ten hours. She must have a very cool head—and a determination forged from steel.

Parsons leaned forward, the better to study her expression for any hint of vanity.

She shrugged, a short flick of only one shoulder. “The test never became unbearable, so I didn’t see the need to halt at any point.”

There was no pride in her voice, no ego. Just a simple recitation of what she had to do. And that she did it.

She was competent, but not cocky.

But of course, she wouldn’t be cocky; she didn’t have the necessary equipment. There was a joke for Charlie, not that she’d hear it.

“Yes, your test results are very impressive,” Jensen said. “You scored higher than many of our astronauts.”

Her mouth parted a hair and the pale hue of her eyes seemed to gleam. She suddenly became a different woman, one lit from within with hope.

She thought this meeting was the first step toward becoming an astronaut. And Jensen thought it was nothing but a waste of his time.

“Thank you.” There was a slight tremor in her voice, a tremble of excitement.

Parsons felt like the worst kind of shit watching as this quiet, composed woman let her dreams play across her face, never knowing she was cast as the fool in this farce.

Jensen’s secretary tapped on the door, then peeked in. “Your eleven o’ clock is here.”

Jensen rose and they all followed his lead.

“We’ll be on our way, then,” Miller said. “I’ll contact you about getting the girls in on some of the training equipment here.”

Parsons caught Jensen’s flinch but wasn’t certain if Miller saw it. “Of course. We’ll be in touch.” He shook Miss Brixton’s hand. “Thank you for coming to meet us.”

“Thank you.” She was smiling widely, perhaps relieved the meeting was over. Perhaps thinking she’d done well and impressed Jensen.

Parsons shook Miller’s hand, then hers. “Miss Brixton. It was a pleasure meeting you.” He meant every word.

“Thank you.”

Once they were gone, Jensen shook his head with a sheepish twist to his smile. “Well, that’s done. Hopefully it’s enough to make the castrators happy. If the higher-ups shut down Miller’s nonsense, we won’t have to waste any more time humoring him.”

Parsons didn’t say anything, since he had no intention of humoring Miller.

No, he was going to help him.

August 1962

Parsons was leading the meeting this time.

That suited him—he wasn’t anxious about public speaking, and this way he could set the tempo and tenor of the discussion. Control was always nice to have.

And this way, he could sneak glances at Charlie without it looking suspicious.

They were gathered in the largest auditorium at ASD, with every department on deck, along with the astronauts and certain VIPs in from the Cape. Jensen ought to be the one leading this meeting, but the rendezvous mission was Parsons’s idea, and he’d been pushing for it from the very beginning. Parsons knew better than to assume Jensen handing over the meeting was some kind of endorsement. The director was washing his hands of the responsibility should the mission fail.

Parsons would make certain it wouldn’t, though.

The minute hand of the clock snapped over to the twelve and he took up some chalk. Rodger from retrieval wasn’t here yet, but that was his problem. Parsons had said 2 p.m. and he started his meetings on time.

“Gentlemen—and ladies”—he nodded to Charlie, who gave him an arch little smile—“our target is the moon.”

They already knew this, but it helped him to go through the process to fit together the puzzle pieces all over again, in case there was something he’d overlooked.

He drew a circle in the top corner of the blackboard—the moon—and an arc in the furthest bottom corner—the edge of the earth poking into the plane of the board.

“As of right now, here’s how we plan to get there.” He drew a line from the earth to the moon. “We send a capsule to the moon into a translunar orbit.” He drew an elliptical orbit around the moon. “That’s the easy part. Or at least, the easiest part. None of this is easy.”

He tapped the chalk onto the surface of the moon. “But putting a capsule into lunar orbit is only the first step. We’ve got to land a man here”—he tapped again—“and bring him back. Which leaves us with a weight problem.”

He put one hand behind his back and began pacing, playing the arguments over in his head, looking for flaws. “If we send down to the moon the exact same capsule we send from Earth, we also have to send enough fuel to lift it from the lunar surface. Which is a lot of fuel and a lot of weight. Too much.”

Everyone’s attention was fully, sharply on him. Even Charlie had dropped her air of insouciance and was leaning forward in her chair, her hand at her chin. He liked that look on her.

“So what’s our solution?”

Parsons meant the question to be rhetorical, but Jefferies raised his hand. “Rendezvous. Sir.”

“Exactly.” He didn’t bother to correct the
sir
bit. “We send the capsule into lunar orbit. Then”—he snapped the chalk in half, making Hal Reed flinch—“we send a lander from the capsule to the moon. A very light one, meant only to get to the surface and back.” He spread his hands wide, a piece of chalk in each. “But the lander—and the men inside—must rejoin the capsule, which is orbiting.” He joined the pieces together once more. “Which is what we’re going to test with this next mission: Can we get two spacecraft to rendezvous and dock together just in Earth orbit?”

Everyone was silent as they pondered his question. It would be their most technically tricky mission to date. There was a lot to ponder.

“There will be two capsules launched for this mission. While they’re both in orbit, they will rendezvous and dock.” He looked straight at Charlie. “We want the capsules’ onboard computers to control the docking.”

She lit up like he'd given her an early birthday present.

The astronauts, however, were not pleased.

Storch’s hand shot up. “You can’t allow that!”

And of course Carruthers couldn’t be outdone. “We’re pilots—you have to let us pilot the thing.”

Even Joe Reynolds got in on it. “What if something goes wrong?”

“If you have a problem with this plan,” Parsons said coolly, “take it up with the Program Director.”
 

He ignored the astronauts’ continued muttering and looked to Hal. “We’ll discuss in detail what we’ll need from the computing department. And retrieval.” Rodger, who’d finally showed up, blinked at him. “We want a targeted landing this time. Within ten miles of the designated coordinates.”

Rodger nodded. Weakly, but he nodded.

Parsons took a moment, stared at the broken chalk in his hand. Now came the part he’d been dreading.

He knew Gerhardt was somewhere on the left side of the auditorium—he’d caught a glimpse of the man as he’d come in, and he’d known the German was flying in from Florida just for the meeting, but he'd kept his gaze well away from the man on purpose.

There was no avoiding him any longer.

Friedrich Gerhardt wore a slight smile, as usual. But why wouldn’t he smile? He’d escaped the war and was the darling of the American missile program. That made two missile programs he’d been the darling of so far—he’d done very well under the Germans, too. Rewarded with a commission in the SS, even.

The smile was always irritating to Parsons, but it was the tan that made his brain itch with rage. No doubt Gerhardt had been sunning himself like a lizard, basking by a pool somewhere.

So Gerhardt was here, enjoying the warmth and sunshine and life in general, while George was somewhere at the bottom of the North Sea, along with the plane Gerhardt’s Nazi friends had shot down.

Was George dead by the time the plane hit the water? Parsons certainly hoped so. Otherwise, his brother would have died of hypothermia, tossed about by the freezing waves, perhaps waiting for a rescue that was never going to come.

The fact that George—his wonderful, boisterous, heroic brother—wasn’t here and Gerhardt was was all the evidence Parsons needed to know the universe was fundamentally fucked.

“We're going to need the capsules to launch within a very strict time window,” he said flatly. He didn’t need to say Gerhardt’s name—the man knew Parsons was addressing him.

“Of course.” As if all of this was really Gerhardt’s idea, and Parsons was only acting as his proxy. “Are we abandoning the direct launch idea? If so, I must protest.”

You only want the money to build bigger rockets, you ass.
Gerhardt had been pushing for a direct shot to the moon: damn the weight problem, just load up the capsule with as much fuel as you could.

That was always Gerhardt’s approach—simply take aim and fire. Parsons preferred the more elegant solution.

“It’s been decided to test the rendezvous method with this mission,” he said. “Nothing’s been ruled out.” But if the mission did succeed, Gerhardt’s pet approach would be dead in the water.

“As I was saying,” Parsons went on, “we can’t have any rockets blowing up on the pad on this one.” He kept his voice cool and his words sharp.

The smile fell from Gerhardt’s face, Parsons’s jab hitting him right in his ego. “The rockets will be reliable, I assure you.” His accent thickened.

“As reliable as all those rockets you sent to smash into London?”

The entire room went silent. Parsons shouldn’t have said it—Gerhardt’s past was never spoken of, not ever—but he couldn’t hold his anger in. It was the tan. All of them working round the clock here, killing themselves to get this nation first to the moon… and Gerhardt waltzed in with a tan.

Jensen rose then. “I’m sure we’ll hit exactly the launch window we need. Thank you, Parsons.” He was dismissing the meeting, then—and Parsons at the same time. “Friedrich, let’s talk after this about the kind of launch window we’re looking at.”

Parsons had the sense he was not invited to that meeting. Fine with him.

Gerhardt nodded, a hint of his former smile returning. And why not? Life was good for him. Jensen would no doubt bend over backward to apologize for his subordinate’s behavior.

But if Jensen expected him to apologize… Well, he could go to hell first, and with Parsons’s best regards. Maybe even take Gerhardt with him.

“Thank you all for your time,” Jensen finished.

Everyone filed out then, their murmurs low and subdued. More than one person snuck a look back at him, as if expecting more unspeakables to come from him.

He didn't follow them, not that they wanted him to. Instead, he turned to ponder what he’d put on the blackboard.

Today had been about the lunar orbit rendezvous approach to the moon—and not his private grief. It wasn’t that he was wrong about Gerhardt, but he still shouldn't have said what he had. The mission always came first: that was his guiding principle, the ideal he demanded of everyone here. And today, he’d tossed it aside so he could swipe at someone.
 

It was the kind of stupid error he hated to make. Without powerful
, reliable
rockets, the mission wouldn’t happen. And Gerhardt
was
the rockets.

It shouldn’t matter what Gerhardt had done during the war. It didn’t matter, not for the success of the mission.

Parsons needed to let it go.

He realized he was gripping the chalk too tightly, the two pieces now fragmented into two dozen. He dumped the bits into the chalk tray and dusted off his hands.

Fine, so the German’s past did matter to him. It always would. To claim otherwise would be a betrayal of everything George had died for. But Parsons could push that away, seal it into a lead-lined box in his brain. The emotions would still be there, they just wouldn’t interfere.

He had to do it for the success of the mission.

Enough introspection. Back to work. He turned to leave—

And saw Charlie standing in one of the doorways.
 

She must have been fifty feet away, but he felt her as if she were pressed next to him.

Another thing he ought to be sealing away when he was at work.

“What can I help you with, Dr. Eason?” Curt and cutting, because he had no politeness in him at the moment, not even his usual small store.

She had a familiar tilt to her head, a set to her eyebrows that she always assumed when she was puzzling something out. For half a moment, he thought she might ask him about the spat with Gerhardt. Instead, she said, “I wanted to ask you a bit more about the onboard computers. Weight restrictions and things like that.”

Of course she would ask him about the mission. She was as focused as he was—he had no need to worry their…
relationship
would bleed into their lives here.

“Certainly.”
 

He kept his face still, his steps brisk as he came toward her, trying to be as he usually was.