“I guess we’re kind of privileged,” Priest said. “Nobody in the history of mankind has ever gotten up so close to an exposed nuclear reaction before. The victims of the Jap bombings were killed by heat and the shock wave rather than by radiation…”
Jones cackled, and he closed his eyes. “Another first for the space program. Oh, thank you, Lord.”
Wednesday, December 3, 1980
Gregory Dana found it a scramble to get out of JSC. Dozens of TV, radio, and print reporters were turning up at the security blockhouse, requesting clearance and asking for access to whatever briefings NASA was planning. The parking lot opposite Building 2, the Public Affairs Office, was one of the busiest on the campus.
It was pitch-dark by the time Dana arrived at the ranch house in Lazywood Lane.
Jim and Mary lived in a pretty place. Timber Cove was a development that had sprung up in the 1960s, a couple of miles from JSC. Around the tidy, manicured streets the ranch houses were sprinkled in the greenery like huge wooden toys, individually styled, encrusted with stone cladding. The grass was rich and cool-damp, and the cultivated pine trees on the lawns were a dark green, almost black in the low lamplight.
The area was soaked with NASA connections. Once, Jim liked to boast, no less than Jim Lovell had lived next door, with his family. On happier days, Dana had come to throw baseballs with Jake, and to make paper airplanes for little Mary, and to argue the politics and engineering of spaceflight with his son…
For a few minutes Dana sat in the car. He felt as if the strength had been drawn out of him. He rolled down the window and let the cooler air waft over his face.
He could hear water lapping at the back of the house, the clink of the chain that tied up Jim’s little dinghy.
He took off his glasses and wiped them on his crumpled tie.
Later tonight Gregory was going to have to fly up to Virginia to be with Sylvia, and bring her back. He’d spoken to her on the phone several times already — the Mission Control people had given him a line — and she’d sounded calm enough. But Dana couldn’t begin to imagine how she was going to react to this.
Well, how am I reacting? Do I even understand that? My son, my only son, is in orbit right now — perhaps trapped up there — with his poor, fragile body irradiated by Marshall’s hellish abortion of a nuclear rocket. It was a situation, he thought, which the human heart simply wasn’t programmed to cope with.
And, under all his grief, he felt the dull, painful glow of anger that none of this need have been so — that it wasn’t, never had been, necessary to build nuclear rockets to get to Mars.
He pushed his glasses back on his face, shoved open the car door, and got out.
There was a Christmas wreath on Jim’s front door.
It was physically hard for him to walk up the drive, he observed, bemused. He watched his feet, his shoes of brown leather, as they lifted and settled on the gravel path, as if they belonged to some robot.
He reached the door.
He felt exhausted, as if the path had been a steep climb. It won’t be so bad, he told himself feverishly. Just ring the doorbell; that’s all you have to do. Seger had said someone from the Astronaut Office would have been there already. So you won’t have to give her the news, at least. And besides, Walter Cronkite was probably already intoning gloomy predictions on CBS.
You won’t even have to break the news. So ring the bell, damn you.
His hands hung at his sides, heavy, weak, useless.
Wednesday, December 3, 1980
“Apollo-N, Houston. We’re going to bring you home. Just take it easy, and we’ll bring you down. The Command Module systems are looking good at this time. You might want to dig out the medical kit—”
Natalie’s voice remained calm and controlled, and Priest, through the mounting pain in his chest and eyes, felt a surge of pride. Good for you, rookie. “I think we’ll have to pass on that,” he said. “I doubt if any of us could reach the kit, Natalie.”
“Just hang tight, Apollo-N.”
“Hey, bug-eyes,” Jones said to Priest. “I’ve got Jim’s pin in my pocket.”
“What pin?”
“His flight pin. The gold one. He’s no rookie now. I was going to give it to him after the burn. You want to reach over? He might like to see it.”
“Maybe later, Chuck. I think he’s sleeping.”
“Sure. Maybe later.”
Donnelly, listening to the clamor of voices on the loops, felt numb, unreal, as if all that radiation had gone sleeting through his own body.
The reentry was going to be a mess. The systems guys were hurrying through an improvised checklist, designed to get the Command Module configured to bring itself home. At the same time, the trajectory guys were figuring out where they could bring the bird down; it had to be near enough to a Navy vessel that could effect an emergency recovery and offer medical facilities…
He became aware that he’d said nothing, even in response to direct questions from the controllers, for — how long? A minute, maybe.
Christ, what a mess.
At the end of her shift York turned and looked for Mike, but his seat at the Booster console was already occupied by somebody else, some Marshall technician she didn’t know. He’d left, and she hadn’t realized — and nor, she thought, had he chosen to seek her out.
She considered asking where Mike had gone, but the new Booster guy was already immersed in his work.
Some of the controllers coming off shift were going to the Singing Wheel, a roadhouse near JSC that was a traditional hangout. They invited York, but she refused.
When she got out of JSC she drove quickly to the Portofino. Mike wasn’t there.
She prowled around the place, restless; she felt caged in by her few possessions, depressed by the images of Mars taped to the walls.
She took a bath and lay down on the double bed to try to sleep. It was past 11 P.M. But sleep wouldn’t come; she seemed to feel the pressure of the headset around her skull, see the numbers glowing on the screen before her, hear the voices whispering on loops in her head.
She tried the TV news; every channel was full of Apollo-N, of course, but there was no substantive information.
Ben’s up there.
Mike still hadn’t shown up.
She got dressed again, picked up her purse, and drove out to the Singing Wheel.
Some of the Indigo Team controllers were still there. The Wheel was usually a venue for bright, noisy conversations; it was a redbrick saloon crowded with dubious antiques, and the Mission Control staff went along to wind down after simulations or to celebrate milestones, like splashdowns. But tonight nobody was rowdy. They just sat around a cluster of tables, drinking and talking quietly. In that regard, York knew, the controllers had a lot in common with flight jocks, when they lost one of their number: their reaction was just to sit and talk about how and why it happened, and get drunk while doing so.
York stayed with them until the small hours.
When he finally got away from his desk Donnelly pulled his flight log toward him. He checked the clock on the wall to fill in the Mission Elapsed Time column, and signed himself out. His hands were trembling, and the signature was shaky.
He flipped back through the log. The last few pages were all but illegible.
Thursday, December 4, 1980