CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Long after the wine wore off, Elsa lay awake, staring at the ceiling. It had been, without question, the second-worst Christmas of her entire life.
The worst, the very worst had been the first Christmas in America, when she had huddled in her bed in the tiny room she rented twelve blocks from Columbia, crying her nineteen-year-old heart out into the pillow, so lonely that she couldn't even breathe without pain. At home, in Hungary, Christmas had always been a family time. Even when she was small and there were no presents and no pretty lights and very little food, there had still been Mama and Papa and her brothers, and singing and happiness. That first Christmas alone, she had wished that she could die.
After that, it had gotten easier. She had made friends and found company. She had never had a completely solitary holiday since.
Even today, she had roused herself to go back to the old apartment building and join in Assony Badea's celebration. But all that anyone wanted to do was talk about Al and watch the broadcast of the moon landing, and so she had left. Last night's broadcast had been dreadful enough, but she had felt compelled, nonetheless, to watch. It was in part her accomplishment, after all. Had she not worked the simulator for these astronauts? Had she not had input into the wiring of the computers on their craft? Had she not forced the Mission Commander to confront his fears and persevere?
Clearly they could not remain wedded to one another. He loved Elisabeth, and she loved Andrew. Though for a time they had each found comfort in other arms, they could not live forever like this, held together only by lust and pain. What would happen when they began to get old, and her breasts lost their firmness, and his dark hair paled and thinned and receded, and the lust was gone? Then there would only be pain—and resentment.
There was only one way, and to ensure that neither were tempted to cling to an illusion of happiness the division had to be as ugly and as painful as she could make it.
Her mind at last made up, and her course firmly set, Elsa closed her eyes. She was about to drift off into a deep and dreamless sleep when the telephone rang.
Her eyes shot open in the darkness and her hand flew to Andrew's dog tags where they hung about her neck. There was only one reason that anyone should call her at this hour of the morning.
Something had gone wrong with Apollo 20.
The thrill of fear she felt was not for herself. It was not for Al. It was for poor, young Lauren Taggert and her handsome baby boy, whose father was in that capsule three hundred and eighty thousand miles away. Elsa snatched up the bedside receiver.
"Hello, Elsa Orsós," she said hastily.
"Mrs. Calavicci, please?"
She recognized the voice. It belonged to Gene Kranz, who was breaking with tradition to direct the last mission even though it was even-numbered. The reminder that he was in command eased Elsa's empathic anxiety. She remembered the disastrous flight of Apollo 13, when the one force holding all of NASA together was this man's ironclad determination not to lose the astronauts.
"For the time being, yes," Elsa said.
"Can I please speak to Mrs. Calavicci?" Kranz repeated.
Elsa rolled her eyes. "For the time being I am Mrs. Calavicci, though not for any longer than I must be."
There was a beat of bemused silence. Then someone muttered, "Let me!" and there was a crackling on the other end as the phone changed hands.
"Elsa, it's Yardley."
Oh, her absolutely favorite person!
"What is it?" Elsa asked, hiding her annoyance in brisk professionalism. "What has gone wrong and are the men all right?"
"Yes and no," Yardley said.
"Well, are they or are they not?" Elsa demanded.
"Everyone is still alive," Yardley said, in a voice that told Elsa this was his idea of good news. Which, if this was the only positive thing he could say, was not good at all. "We need you down at Mission Control. There's a car on the way and a plane waiting on the runway at the Cape."
Elsa's very being rebelled. "No!" she cried. "No, I am not coming all the way to Texas to play the grieving little woman! You ask too much! If this is the price for remaining with NASA I shall find something else!"
The moment the words were out she felt a pang of desolation. For so long, NASA had been the one thing she cared about, the one thing that had given her reason to wake up in the morning. She had sacrificed love and a life with Andrew for NASA. If she lost it she did not know what she would have left, but what they were demanding of her wasn't right! It wasn't right!
"Damn it, Orsós, I said we need you out here!" Yardley snapped. "Get a kit bag together: that car's going to be there in fifteen minutes. "Maybe we can work this out before Ramona and Jim's wife and the entire Western world wake up and have to be told that something's wrong!"
Elsa's mind arrested itself mid-rant. "What?" she breathed. They were not calling the other wives now?
"You heard me! The computers on the LEM blew and they can't dock. You're the best damned programmer we've got out there, and Calavicci seemed to think you were the man for the job. Says if anybody can talk him through resetting those things it's you. The guys out here sure aren't having any luck."
Elsa felt her jaw going slack. They wanted her in her professional capacity. Not because she was Commander Calavicci's ornamental bride, but because she was the best damned programmer in Florida. They needed her at Mission Control to talk the astronauts—not "her husband", but the astronauts—through a difficult procedure. Without the computers Al might be able to manually align himself to the capsule, but the clamps would not engage. How stupid! They had reprogrammed the capsule for higher automation, but they had neglected to leave ample fail-safes… Computers were delicate instruments, and you couldn't depend upon them—this was what happened when you farmed out your production contracts and did not show the specs to your own scientists first!
Her mind whirring, taking in the problem and already formulating possible solutions, she acknowledged Yardley and hung up the telephone. She switched on the light and began to dress.
MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWM"Is it just me, Jimbo, or is it hot in here?" Al asked with a nervous laugh, rubbing his left hand up and down his right arm.
"Hot as hell," Jim agreed.
"Excelsior, your orbit's deteriorating again," Clem's voice said. "Houston recommends a three-second burn at half power to compensate."
"Heading?" Jim asked, swallowing hard. They had been up here for the better part of four hours now, since the sparking tremor that had torn through the Lunar Module during the ascent and taken out their computers.
"Seventy-one degrees, two minutes," Clem answered.
"Roger, Enterprise," Jim said. He cupped his hand over his microphone and turned to Al, his young face a mask of anxiety. "This is the fifth one," he said softly. "You—you think maybe we're just gonna keep doing this until we run out of fuel and crash?"
Al forced a smile. " 'Course not, pal. Now c'mon and let's do that burn."
Jim reached for the control stick, but his hands were shaking. The subtle sign of the boy's terror was not lost on Al. He squared his shoulders, trying to ignore the pressure on the back of his neck. "Enterprise, commencing burn in five, four, three…" As he had hoped, Jim's expression hardened with resolve and he took a firm hold on the joystick. "Two, one, burn…"
The module shuddered and Jim manipulated the stick carefully. He had no guidance computers to help him, and had to rely on his own gauging of what constituted seventy-one degrees two minutes in the circle of the control stick's bed. It was imprecise, but it was sure as hell better than thundering down towards that mass of milky rock below them.
"Three! Disengage!" Clem said. Al cut out the thrusters and the LEM began to slow as the moon's gravity pulled upon it.
"You look good, Excelsior," Clem informed them. Something in the tone of his voice made Al look out the narrow triangular porthole. He could see the Enterprise—just. Their imprecise burn had moved them farther off target.
"How're we hanging?" Jim asked, his voice tinted with anxiety.
Al grinned. "Couldn't be better!" he said. "You're one heck of a pilot."
"Lauren always said it was too dangerous," Jim said, now taking on a haunted lilt. "She wanted me to give it up and become a commercial pilot instead—"
"Hah! An airborne bus driver? That ain't for you, kid!" Al exclaimed bracingly.
There was a silence. Then a timid voice echoed in the tiny space of the cabin.
"Al?"
"Yeah?"
"I gotta tell you, right now I'm not so sure of that."
MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMMission Control was in shambles. It wasn't that these people weren't prepared to cope with a crisis. It was simply that when emergency situations rolled around all attempts at neatness and the niceties of organization flew out the window in favor of frenzied though still tightly controlled attempts at rectifying the situation. There hadn't been a true crisis at NASA for years, not since Thirteen. Even then, all three men had been in a viable space craft. Two of them weren't stranded in a tin foil globe about to fall out of its orbit like the rock-laden sphere that it was.
Elsa strode between two spectacled young men, their ties flapping and their coattails flying as they briefed her in brisk technobabble. Now and then she would deal out a sharp question no less succinct and jargon-riddled than their chatter. Her rich contralto voice inspired confidence to those around her as she strode into the Control Room and moved to Cap Com, where Colonel Simmons was on the wire to the Command Module.
"Well, Clem, looks like the cavalry's arrived!" Simmons said.
"Thank God for that, Houston," Jacobs said. "Put her on and I'll patch through to the LEM."
"Here," Simmons said, indicating the empty chair next to him and handing Elsa a headset. "Anything you say in that microphone while the green light is on goes straight up to our boys, so for God's sake don't tell them we don't think they've got a chance in hell."
"And there is no way to activate those clamps without the computer?" Elsa demanded.
"We've got the men from Grumman working on it," one of the men—one of her colleagues—said. "So far, it's a no."
Elsa scoffed. Leave it to engineers to place too much faith in computers. "All right," she said firmly. "And do we know why they blew?"
Head-shaking all around. Well, that was the place to start, then.
"Houston, this is Excelsior. Do you read?" Al's voice crackled across the intercom.
"I read you, Excelsior," Simmons said. "How's things in the little bird?"
"A little warm, Houston, but otherwise dandy," Al replied.
Elsa frowned. Warm? It couldn't be warm: they were in space! Was he having an attack of claustrophobia?
"That's great, Excelsior," said Simmons. "Say, Al, I've got somebody here who wants to talk to you."
"Elsa? She came?"
Elsa put her hand on the microphone. "Yes, I came," she said.
"Whoa, gorgeous, is it good to hear your voice!" Al cooed.
She wanted to snap at him, especially when the chuckles from the men around her filtered to her ears. But then she thought about how Al must be feeling, dead in the water for seven hours, trapped in an unstable orbit with no computers and no idea what had gone wrong, sitting in a small space that was probably closing in around him. He was making a joke because he was scared and uncomfortable and trying to hide it.
"Now, Excelsior, we have a problem," she said. "You do not have my knowledge, and I do not have your eyes. This means that you will have to tell me, in detail, what you see, and I will have to tell you, in detail, what to do. Do you understand?"
"I copy that, Houston," Al said. "Let's get this show on the road."
Elsa closed her eyes and tried to envision the inside of the simulator, where she had spent so much time duplicating the upgrades that Grumman Aerospace had made to the LEM after the Apollo 18 flight. "To the right of the pilot's seat, there is a panel approximately eighteen inches across, just above the floor," she said. "You need to take the cover off that panel."
"Starboard," Al said.
"What?" Elsa asked.
"In the Navy we say 'starboard', not 'right'. See 'right' also means 'correct', and that can get pretty confusing."
Elsa pursed her lips. This was no time to be funny… but she reminded herself that he was just trying to lighten the mood and don a façade of control. "Take the cover off of that panel," she repeated. "There is an indent behind the lower left-hand corner. It will stick, but if you pry hard enough—"
"Got it!" Al said.
"Good. Now tell me what you see."
"A mess of wires, some circuits—"
"No, truly?" she retorted. "Does there seem to be any physical damage? Is anything loose or burned?"
"Not that I can see," Al said. "Jim?"
"No, ma'am, nothing looks damaged to me," Lieutenant Taggert said.
"There's dozens of those panels," one of the men behind her said. "He's not gonna be able to find the problem."
"Excelsior?" Elsa said. "What happened just before the computers died?"
"There was a jolt and a popping noise. Jim and I kinda figured we got dinged by some space junk," Al answered.
Elsa frowned. "A popping noise?"
"Yeah, like a champagne cork."
"Where did the sound come from?"
"I dunno… aft? Yeah, Jim agrees it had to be aft. My side of the cabin. Why?"
Elsa's mind worked at a frenzied pace. Aft of the copilot… aft of the copilot…
"Excelsior to gorgeous, come in gorgeous," Al said.
"Be quiet!" Elsa snapped. "I'm trying to think!"
"Don't pull a muscle," Al said dryly.
Before she could retort, somebody on the far side of the room stood up.
"Gene, we've got a yellow light on the LEM's coolant pumps!" he cried.
"Coolant pumps?" Kranz cried, turning on the man from Grumman. "Don't tell me the computer regulates their coolant pumps, too!"
A helpless look was his only answer. There was a long silence as the room full of experts took this in.
"Houston? Houston, do you copy?" Al asked. "Elsa, what the hell do you want us to do, here?"
Simmons leaned into the microphone. "Al?" he said. "I'm just going to take you guys off of vox for a minute, okay? Houston out."
MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMThe moment of jocularity past, Al turned to Jim. He knew his face was going grey, but he couldn't do anything to stop it. "You heard that?" he asked hoarsely.
"They're taking us off of vox?" Jim said. "W-what does that mean?"
Al closed his eyes over his splitting headache. "It means there's something they're not telling us." He floated back to the ship-to-ship. "Enterprise, are you there?" he asked.
"I'm here, buddy," Clem Jacobs said. "What can I do for you?"
"You still on vox?" Al asked.
"Nope. Simmons cut me off just after he did you."
"No idea how we're sitting, here?" Al glanced at Jim, who was biting his lower lip.
"None. You look fine from here."
Damn. So whatever it was it wasn't obvious, but it was bad. Bad enough that Houston didn't want to tall them what was going on. Well, they couldn't just sit here—but on the other hand, what the hell else could they do?
MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWM"Options, people!" Gene Kranz demanded. "What are we up against, here?"
Elsa pressed her fingertips to her temples, but it just wasn't coming to her. A popping sound aft of the copilot… it meant something, but she could not remember what. Again, she ran through the litany of the procedures that they had tried before her arrival, all ineffectually. The disorder around her was making it difficult to think.
"We keep doing these burns, and they're going to superheat within four hours," one of the engineers said.
"That's not going to be a problem," a medic said.
"Why not?" Gene demanded, frowning.
"They're on their last cylinder. Never mind superheating in four hours: the carbon dioxide in the LEM will reach toxic levels inside of two."
Elsa glanced at the large clock hanging over the wall full of monitors. Nine hours now since they had left the moon…
It hit her abruptly. The air scrubbers were right next to the aft processor, behind the copilot's seat.
MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMJim unzipped the front of his space suit and scrubbed the back of his neck with his hand. "Damn, Al, it's hot in here!" he gasped.
"Yeah," Al grunted. God, it was hot, and there wasn't enough room in here. He was having trouble breathing. A shudder ran up his spine, and he closed his eyes, trying to fight off the feeling. It was all in his head. It was all in his head. There was plenty of room, there was plenty of air, and—
"Houston to Excelsior, come in Excelsior!" Simmons called. Al dove for the radio.
"Exclesior here. What's the word?" he asked.
"Just dandy, Al, but to be honest everyone down here would feel a lot better if we could get your computers back up," the Colonel said.
"Yeah, well, that makes two of us," Al said.
"Excelsior," Elsa's voice intoned. "Excelsior, open the panel over your oxygen scrub."
"Roger that," Al said, floating towards the appropriate panel. It came off easily. "Now what?"
"To the r—to starboard of the filter, there is a little hatch," Elsa instructed. "Open that."
Al complied. "Damn!" he exclaimed.
Inside was a series of glass bulbs like radio tubes. Four of the seven were blackened.
"Hah! What do you see?" Elsa cried.
Al described it. The revelation was met by a protracted silence.
"Houston?" he said. "Houston, do you copy?"
"I copy," she said. "They tell me there are no spares. They were not supposed to malfunction. A fene egye meg! The men at Grumman are bena hapsis!"
"So you're telling me we can't fix it?" Al asked.
"You can, you must be able to," Elsa snapped. "There must be a way. It will only take time to figure it out."
"Okay," Al said, dragging in a deep breath. God, he had such a headache… "Okay. You work on it, Elsa, all right? Time we've got."
Again, silence met him.
MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMDirk Simon was not a drinking man. A cocktail, maybe. Wine on a special occasion, a gin and tonic when he was out with the guys. When he woke up in the predawn prairie darkness, however, lying on the couch with the knowledge that Liz was in their bed dreaming of her first husband, he realized he needed a drink.
There was some old whiskey in the sideboard, and he poured himself a slug. It wasn't supposed to be like this. Al Calavicci was a ghost he had expected to haunt his marriage forever, but like all ghosts Calavicci was supposed to stay dead—not appear out of nowhere one afternoon in Washington, and refuse to be forgotten from that moment on.
He knew that part of it was envy, because obviously Lizzy still felt something for the man who had once been her husband. Part of it was guilt, because he knew what kind of a hell it must have been for Calavicci to come home and find out that his wife had given up on him. Part of it was regret, because he knew that the man was a nice guy and a genuinely decent human being, and he wished they could be friends. That refugee from Florida, the woman with the three kids, did nothing but talk about how wonderful and kind Calavicci was. From her Dirk had learned some of the sad details of Calavicci's past, filling in the gaps left by the press. If anybody deserved happiness it was a guy like that.
Still, there were moments when Dirk felt selfish enough to wish that he hadn't come home. It was hard when your little boy thought some other man was the greatest—especially when that other man was your wife's ex-husband, a man for whom she still had deep feelings, though she tried to hide it. Dirk had scorned marriage and fatherhood in his youth, but Beth was the one woman for him. He had been so happy with her, so in love, so proud of their sons, and now… now he was genuinely afraid that Calavicci the Wonderful was going to ruin it all.
What would he do if Liz ran out on him and the kids? Or worse yet, if she ran off and took the kids? Nothing was more important to Dirk than his little men. He would die for them. He would kill for them. And he wasn't going to lose them.
But he was so scared. If Liz still loved this astronaut…
Morosely, Dirk switched on the television. It was just about time for the morning news…
"…hovering over the moon, helpless without the guidance computers," the anchor said. "NASA is not releasing details, but sources indicate that it is a race against the clock for our valiant astronauts…"
Dirk flipped the dial, changing the channel. There, too, were images from the Command Module and talk of malfunctioning computers. Dirk felt a jolt of conflicting emotions. He could keep it from Liz. She'd never forgive him…
She had taken Dougie to bed with her. She looked so peaceful lying with her arms curled around her baby. Dirk felt a surge of protective pride. He couldn't lose her. He loved her. God, he loved her.
He bent down and kissed her. She mumbled something, and opened her drowsy eyes.
"Dirk, baby?" she murmured, reaching to wrap one arm around his neck.
"Liz… Something—" He faltered a little. Did he really want her thinking about Calavicci? Worrying about him again? But he had to tell her. "Something's gone wrong with the moon mission."
She was definitely awake now. She disentangled herself from the sleeping child and followed her husband into the den. For a long while she sat silently, staring at the television and taking in the words. Then suddenly she leaned over and rested her head on Dirk's chest, hugging him. He wrapped a shielding arm around her.
"He'll be okay," he said. "If anybody can get out of it, it's him."
"I know," she whispered. "Thank you."
"For what?" he murmured.
"Letting me worry about him," she said. "I do love you, Dirk."
Those simple words eased his soul. "I know, baby. I love you, too."