'I have to go, Jack.'
'What time are you leaving for the Cape?'
'Six in the morning.'
'All your cousins flying out for the launch?'
'Of course.'
She paused. 'You won't be there. Will you?' The Challenger nightmare was still fresh in his mind, the angry trails of smoke etching across a blue sky. I can't be there to it, he thought. I can't deal with the possibilities. He shook his head.
She accepted his answer with a chilly nod and a look that said, I can be every bit as detached as you are. Already she was withdrawing from him, turning to leave.
'Emma.' He reached for her arm and gently tugged her around to face him.
'I'll miss you.'
She sighed. 'Sure, Jack.'
'I really will.'
'Weeks go by without a single call from you. And now you say you're going to miss me.' She laughed.
He was stung by the bitterness in her voice. And by the truth of her words. For the past few months he had avoided her. It had been painful to be anywhere near her because her success only magnified his own sense of failure.
There was no hope of reconciliation, he could see that now, in the coolness of her gaze. Nothing left to do but be civilized it.
He glanced away, suddenly unable to look at her. 'I just came by to wish you a safe trip. And a great ride. Give me a wave so often, when you pass over Houston. I'll watch for you.' A moving star was what ISS would look like, brighter than Venus, hurtling through the sky.
'You wave too, okay?' They both managed a smile. So it would be a civilized parting after all. He held open his arms, and she leaned toward him for hug. It was a brief and awkward one, as though they were coming together for the first time. He felt her body, so warm and alive, press against him. Then she pulled away and started toward the Mission Control building.
She paused only once, to wave goodbye. The sunlight was sharp in his eyes, and squinting against its brightness, he saw only as a dark silhouette, her hair flying in the hot wind. And knew that he had never loved her as much as he did at that very moment, watching her walk away.
July 19.
Cape Canaveral Even from a distance, the sight took Emma's breath away. Poised on launchpad 39B, awash in brilliant floodlights, the shuttle Atlantis, mated to its giant orange fuel tank and the paired solid rocket boosters, was a towering beacon in the blackness of night.
No matter how many times she experienced it, that first glimpse of a shuttle lit up on the pad never failed to awe her.
The rest of the crew, standing beside her on the blacktop, were equally silent. To shift their sleep cycle, they'd awakened at that morning and had emerged from their quarters on the third floor of the Operations and Checkout building to catch a nighttime glimpse of the behemoth that would carry them into space. Emma heard the cry of a night bird and felt a cool wind blow in from the Gulf, freshening the air, sweeping away the stagnant scent of the wetlands surrounding them.
'Kind of makes you feel humble, doesn't it?' said Commander Vance in his soft Texas drawl.
The others murmured in agreement.
'Small as an ant,' said Chenoweth, the lone rookie on the crew.
This would be his first trip aboard the shuttle, and he was so excited he seemed to generate his own field of electricity. 'I forget how big she is, and then I take another look at her and I think, Jesus, all that power. And I'm the lucky son of a bitch gets to ride her.' They all laughed, but it was the hushed, uneasy laughter of parishioners in a church.
'I never thought a week could go by so slowly,' said Chenoweth.
'This man's tired of being a virgin,' said Vance.
'Damn right I am. I want up there.' Chenoweth's gaze lifted hungrily to the sky. To the stars. 'You guys all know the secret, I can't wait to share it.' The secret. It belonged only to the privileged few who had made the ascent. It wasn't a secret that could be imparted to another, you yourself had to live it, to see, with your own eyes, blackness of space and the blue of earth far below. To be pressed backward into your seat by the thrust of the rockets. Astronauts returning from space often wear a knowing smile, a look that says, I am privy to something that few human beings will ever know.
Emma had worn such a smile when she'd emerged from Atlantis's hatch over two years ago. On weak legs she had walked into the sunshine, had stared up at a sky that was startlingly blue.
In the span of eight days aboard the orbiter, she had lived one hundred thirty sunrises, had seen forest fires burning in and the eye of a hurricane whirling over Samoa, had viewed an earth that seemed heartbreakingly fragile. She had returned changed.
In five days, barring a catastrophe, Chenoweth would share the secret.
'Time to shine some light on these retinas,' said Chenoweth.
'My brain still thinks it's the middle of the night.'
'It is the middle of the night,' said Emma.
'For us it's the crack of dawn, folks,' Vance said. Of all of them, he had been the quickest to readjust his circadian rhythm to the new sleep-wake schedule. Now he strode back into the O and C building to begin a full day's work at three in the morning.
The others followed him. Only Emma lingered outside for a moment, gazing at the shuttle. The day before, they had driven to the launchpad for a last review of crew escape procedures.
Viewed up close, in the sunlight, the shuttle had seemed bright and too massive to fully comprehend. One could focus on only a single part of her at a time. The nose. The wings. The tiles, like reptilian scales on the belly. In the light of day, had been real and solid. Now she seemed unearthly, lit up against the black sky.
With all the frantic preparation, Emma had not allowed herself to feel any apprehension, had firmly banished all misgivings. She was ready to go up. She wanted to go up. But now she felt a twinge of fear.
She looked up at the sky, saw the stars disappear behind an advancing veil of clouds. The weather was about to change.
Shivering, she turned and went into the building. Into the light.
Half a dozen tubes snaked into Debbie Haning's body. In her throat was a tracheotomy tube, through which oxygen was forced into her lungs. A nasogastric tube had been threaded up her left nostril down her esophagus into the stomach. A catheter drained urine, and two intravenous catheters fed fluids into her veins. In her was an arterial line, and a continuous blood pressure tracing danced across the oscilloscope. Jack glanced at the IV bags over the bed and saw they contained powerful antibiotics. A bad sign, it meant she'd acquired an infection -- not unusual when a patient has spent two weeks in a coma.
Every breach in the skin, every plastic tube, is a portal for bacteria, and in Debbie's bloodstream, a battle was now being waged.
With one glance, Jack understood all of this, but he said nothing to Debbie's mother, who sat beside the bed, clasping her daughter's hand.
Debbie's face was flaccid, the jaw limp, the eyelids only partially closed. She remained deeply comatose, of anything, even pain.
Margaret looked up as Jack came into the cubicle, and gave a nod of greeting. 'She had a bad night,' said Margaret. 'A fever. They don't know where it's coming from.'
'The antibiotics will help.'
'And then what? We treat the infection, but what happens next?' Margaret took a deep breath. 'She
