Note: A huge thank-you to the intrepid PippinDuck, who helped me work out a very serious snag in Chapter One, and heavily influenced the NASA subplot from this point on. I owe an enormous debt of gratitude here.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The hangar was empty, as well it should be at six o'clock on a Saturday morning. Al closed the door carefully behind him and stepped forward, past the control consoles and towards the spidar-like LEMS. He stared at it. From here it didn't seem anything like threatening. It looked like a challenge. It looked like the future. Why, then, had he melted down like that?

Doctor Wagner had given him a thorough checking-over, and then one of the psychiatrists had sunk his meathooks into the specimen. Al shuddered at the recollection of that session. Sick and twisted people, shrinks. In the end, however, even Al hadn't been able to dispute the diagnosis.

He was claustrophobic. Confined spaces brought on fits of panic. Cars, closets, shower stalls, space capsules. Presumably even cockpits.

Al felt himself trembling. They might as well have told him they were going to amputate both his legs at the hip. Flying was his life. It was the only thing he cared about, except maybe making love to a beautiful woman. It was the only thing he still had to live for, and now they told him that whenever he entered an enclosed space he would be in danger of having a spell like the one he'd had yesterday. It was devastating.

What shamed and galled him even more than the humiliation of his performance in front of the other astronauts and the simulator crew yesterday was the shattering knowledge that Major Quon had won. He hadn't been able to lick him over there. The unending torture, the near-starvation and the perpetual degradation hadn't done it, but years of confinement in tiger cages and tiny bamboo hovels and deep, narrow pits had taken their toll in the end. Now any small, hot and enclosed space brought back the memories of terror and desperation, and with that panic and absolutely inability to function. Quon hadn't been able to turn him into a slave or a sycophant as he had wanted, but in the end he had stripped away everything Al cared about. He had lost Beth, who had never heard that he had survived the crash because Quon had never let the North Vietnamese government list him as a prisoner. Now he couldn't fly because of Quon's creative methods of incarceration.

Doctor Wagner had done his best to cushion the news. Al had been overtired yesterday, at the end of a week of strenuous simulations and sleep deprivation. It could even be that he had been having hallucinations. Maybe it would never happen again. Al knew better. Now that he thought back he could recall dozens of spells over the last two years: moments of anxiety, the feeling that he couldn't breathe, the haste to move to a larger space.

A shudder of despair ran through him. There had only been three terrors that had held him prisoner in Vietnam, if you didn't count the constant and very rational fear of the next torture session. He had been afraid that he would die out there, deep in that godforsaken jungle, and that no one would ever know the truth about what had happened to him. That one had, in the end, come to nothing. Then there was the dread that he would come home to find Beth gone. He couldn't even think about that. The last nightmare was that the neverending stresses placed on his sanity would one day prove too much, and he would lose his fragile grip on reality. And in the end that, too, had come to pass.

The LEMS blurred and faltered before his eyes. He pressed the palm of his left hand to his mouth to fight against the nausea rising in his throat. It had finally happened. He had lost his mind.

MWMWMWWMWMWMWMWM

After a weekend of frantic distraction that would have put the old days with Dave Heeley and the other like-minded cadets to shame, Al reported for duty on Monday morning far less rested than he had intended to. He checked his roster for the day, and his heart sank as his fear was confirmed. They had wiped it clean. They weren't going to trust him in any simulators: his performance on Friday had seen to that. The dread that had tormented him in every vacant minute since the attack returned full force. If he couldn't stand enclosed spaces, then he was useless. He couldn't go into space. He couldn't fly. He wasn't even fit for the drudgery of sea duty.

They had pencilled him in for an oh-nine-hundred meeting with Yardley.

John Yardley was the Associate Administrator for Space Flight. Al had only met him once, when he had reported on the first day. He was more involved with Skylab and the development of the Shuttle than he was with the Apollo program, but apparently astronauts with a few screws loose were his problem, too. Al stood outside his office, sweaty-palmed and giddy with apprehension. He knew what was coming. They had never wanted him for the space program. Everyone from Elsa Orsós and her acerbic tongue to the flight surgeons with their unrealistic weight-gain goals wanted him out. His collapse into dysfunction and terror had given them the excuse they needed to cut him.

Finally, he was ushered through. The middle-aged man with graying hair and thick, dark-rimmed glasses behind the desk looked up, his expression grave and businesslike.

"Calavicci," he said. "Good morning."

"Good morning, sir," Al replied.

"Please have a seat." He drew a manila folder out of his desk drawer and glanced at its contents.

Al sat, less than reassured.

At least the older man had the decency to look him in the eyes as he spoke. "You've caused us a lot of trouble this weekend," he said. "We've all been doing some pretty heavy soul-searching."

Al didn't trust himself to comment.

"Calavicci," Yardley said; "I want you to know that your progress over the last month has been excellent. You've shown an extraordinary capacity for adaptation, and I'm sure I don't need to tell you that you were our top performer last week, before that last simulation."

"With all due respect, sir, I doubt that."

Yardley frowned. "I never lie, Calavicci. If I say you were the best, you were the best. I've never seen a man function that well on so little sleep."

Until his meltdown of nuclear proportions.

"You have excellent technical skills, and you seem very capable of functioning as a part of a team. You need to work on communicating seemingly inconsequential anomalies, but that's a natural by-product of being a pilot. It's something most of our astronauts struggle with at the beginning. On the whole you are an excellent candidate for this program."

Al had to bite back a bitter laugh. The hell he was.

"I'm going to be honest with you, here," Yardley said; "and I need to trust you to keep what I'm about to say strictly to yourself."

"Aye-aye, sir," Al said, noting the flicker of bemusement that flitted across the civilian's face.

"Good. The roster for Apollo 19 has just been finalized. In fact, we had it ready on Thursday night, but Friday's events necessitated an alteration." Yardley folded his hands on top of his blotter. "Calavicci, I wanted you on this mission. Congress wanted you on this mission. Admiral Holloway wanted you on this mission."

"Admiral Holloway?" Al echoed, his disbelief overriding his grim resignation. The Chief of Naval Operations wanted him on Apollo 19? Like hell.

"He's been more involved in your reassignment than you might think," Yardley said. "He was very eager to see you go up in May. We were all hoping that you would prove yourself up to the task, and during last week's crisis training you did."

Here it comes, Al thought. He braced himself, determined not to show any of the desolation he was feeling.

"But we can't put a claustrophobic man into space, Calavicci. I'm sorry. We just can't."

Al couldn't help it. He closed his eyes.

Yardley went on with explanations. "It would be unforgivably irresponsible. Even if you didn't endanger the mission or your crewmates as you would have done if you had actually been in space on Friday, it is unethical for us to subject you to that kind of torture for eight days."

The word "torture" sent a shiver of misery down Al's spine. "I understand, sir," he said, with enormous effort.

"Good," Yardley said. "Now, I understand that you won't want to come to a decision about your future right away, and I want you to know that nobody is going to force your hand. We're more than willing to keep you on the payroll for as long as it takes for you to consider your options. You haven't done anything wrong, and there aren't going to be any disciplinary actions. It's simply that you're medically unfit for the kind of service you've been assigned to."

Al felt his head moving in a nod, but he had no control over it.

Yardley's expression softened from one of businesslike regret to one of genuine sympathy. "God knows I'm sorry, Calavicci," he said kindly.

"Yeah," Al said, his voice rasping as he got to his feet. "Me too."

MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWWM

New-forged habits were surprisingly strong, and Al found himself at the door to the cafeteria before he realized where he was going. He halted. He was out of the space program, he thought bitterly. There was no reason to force himself to eat. He didn't need to bother with maintaining his weight anymore.

He recognized the vacuum in the center of his chest, the one that made it feel as if his ribs were going to implode. He knew this sense of profound weariness, too. Despair. The all-too-familiar feeling that there was nothing left to live for.

Not sure were he was going, but certain that he had to get away from here, Al wandered out of the building. It was overcast today, the sky oddly evocative of his own internal landscape. The activity on the asphalt was a burden on his senses. He made his way past the animal-testing laboratories towards the gravel road leading to the perimeter of the compound, his Navy-issue boots scuffling against the ground as he failed time and again to lift his feet.

There was green space here, not pretty, but open. It was undeniably easier to breathe near the chain-link fence, with the broad, cloudy sky above him. The day was cool, and Al was grateful for small mercies.

There was a narrow, grungy lake along the berm that the fence was set on. Al had wandered past it a couple of times before, when he had felt the need for fresh air and freedom. A broad steel pipe spanned the length of the lake like a perilous bridge. It occurred to him now that it would feel good to sit out there, suspended between sky and water, and he stepped carefully onto the pipe. For a second he had to sway from side to side with arms extended to keep his balance, but then he acclimatized himself to the rounded surface under his boots, and stepped out, carefully placing one foot in front of the other as he moved towards the center of the pipe.

He sat carefully, his legs dangling over the murky water and his hands splayed on either side of his hips, pressing on the pipe for support. He curved his spine forward until he was satisfied that he wasn't about to fall in. Falling in would be terrible: he knew how to swim.

He wasn't sure how long he sat there, but it was long enough for his feet to grow heavy as the blood slowly pooled in them, unable to return properly through the vena cava constricted by the pressure of his buttocks on the pipe. His hands were cold, too, and his back began to ache. He was just contemplating returning to land when an exasperated voice cut through the air.

"A fene egye meg!" it exclaimed. "So much for my plans for aquiet lunch!"

Al turned his head. On the bank, hands on her hips and a satchel slung over her shoulder, was Elsa Orsós. Lovely.

"Go ahead and have your quiet lunch," he called back. "I'm not in the mood to talk."

"What are you in the mood for?" she shouted. "Sulking?"

"I'm not sulking," Al muttered.

"The heck you say!" She set down her satchel on the sandy edge of the lake. "Sitting out there feeling sorry for yourself. Serves you right!"

"Serves me right for what?" Al demanded. If she wasn't going to go away the least he could do was put up a good fight.

"I told you, you didn't have what it took to be an astronaut! Now you sit out there and you prove it!" Elsa called, tossing her head so that her red hair rippled and her earrings shook.

"Yeah, good for you. You were right. Now leave me alone."

She laughed haughtily. "You're pathetic!" she said. "Pathetic and stupid. You think I'm talking about your little show on Friday?"

What else could she be talking about? Al glared blackly at her. "Why don't you go find someone else to snack on?"

"Because you're an easy kill," Elsa retorted. "Are you going to get off of that pipe, or will I have to go out there after you?"

Al looked sceptically at her sensible black pumps. The walk had been tricky enough in boots. She'd never make it in heels.

Seeing the direction of his gaze, Elsa scoffed. She slid out of her shoes and rolled down her knee-high nylons, slipping them off and tucking them into her satchel. Then with all the affect of a soldier marching into battle, she crossed the sand bar and mounted the pipe.

Her agility was embarrassing as Al recalled his own efforts to keep upright. She tripped along the pipe without so much as a pause, and sat next to him, straddling the metal cylinder and smoothing her skirt to compensate for the awkward position. Her hands returned to her hips.

"So what do you think you're doing?" she demanded.

"I was sitting here enjoying the solitude," Al said sourly.

"Hah! Enjoying, sure." She swung her legs and crossed her arms over her chest, studying his face in mild disgust. "Tell me, Albert Calvichy, why are you giving up?"

"I'm not giving up," snapped Al. "Yardley's done the giving up for me."

"Oh, he's holding a gun to your head and making you wash out?" Elsa demanded.

"Who said I was leaving?"

"Who wiped your duty roster? You were supposed to be in the capsule this morning."

"Yeah, well, obviously I'm not capable of doing that," Al muttered, turning his head away to stare at the fence.

"Why? Because little spaces frighten you?" she taunted.

He turned back, eyes flashing. "I'm not afraid of anything!" he snapped.

"Well, then, deal with it," Elsa said coldly. "Or quit and walk away, but remember nobody did it to you but yourself."

"What are you, a programmer or a psychologist?"

"It's the same thing," she said, curling her lips. "You tell the computer what it should think, or you tell people what they do think. I knew you didn't have what it took. There's no place in the space program for people who give up so easy."

"You have no idea what it's like," Al said, his mouth working faster than his brain or his pride. "I couldn't breathe!"

She shook her head and looked at him in contempt. "How did you make it through the war?" she demanded. "Stupid luck?"

"Dumb," he corrected. Then he realized what she had just said. "What the hell do you know about the war?" he demanded warily

Elsa laughed a little. "How hard do you think it is for me to get into your records?" she asked. "I know everything. What I don't know is what happened to the person in those files. Look at you, letting your own mind take you over, and you just sit here feeling sorry for yourself."

"Mind your own damned business," Al snarled.

Elsa got nimbly to her feet. "I knew it," she said scornfully. "I knew you would never be an astronaut."

So saying, she skipped down the pipe, stepped back into her shoes, and strode away. Al watched her go, his chest heaving with bewildered and yet indignant rage. So he was a quitter, was he? He didn't have what it took, did he? Well, he was going to show her. He was stronger than this, and he wasn't going to give up so easily.

He scowled fiercely as he got to his feet, shuffled down the pipe to shore, and took off at a dogtrot for the infirmary wing.