LITMIR.BIZ

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the Bahamas.

      And now here came images from the flight deck of the Shuttle’s reentry and landing. Geena’s favourite showed a view from the rear windows of the plasma trail stretching behind the orbiter, a pink road reaching all the way back to Mach 25 and orbit …

      The time came for questions for the crew. Most of them came from the journalists, but given the nature of the event these were mostly harmless lobs.

      Sixt, how do you feel about your career now? Do you want to fly again? Do you have any regrets?

      Sixt Guth prepared his answer. He was an Apollo-era relic still flying at sixty-four, who seemed to be trying to defy age. It was incredible to think he was actually older than Harry Maddicott, she thought.

      ‘I was recruited, in the 1960s, as a scientist-astronaut,’ Sixt said. ‘You have to understand I was actually recruited to go to Mars, maybe in the 1980s. That was what I expected, and so did everyone else, and it was the ultimate purpose of my job. But it didn’t pan out that way. At least I got as far as LEO, low Earth orbit, and I enjoyed my time there …’

      Sixt had actually completed seven flights already and was hoping for more. He was an obsessive learner, having taken at least five degrees in with his two-year stretches of Shuttle training. He was undeniably old: he was totally bald, his head and face seemingly polished smooth. He moved with an odd gait, as if awkward in Earth’s gravity, and – like others of his generation – he was, Geena thought, rather clumsy and too brief in his public pronouncements, not so articulate and media-friendly and practised as the rest of them, even Geena. She wondered briefly how they must all look to outsiders: like younger, slimmer, ethnically mixed versions of the Center director maybe, sleek and rich-looking and confident and articulate. The epitome of space travel as a career move.

      It was for the sake of this corporate cosiness, she thought with uneasy regret, that Henry’s mission had been broken.

      Sixt fumbled with his lapel microphone. ‘You ask me about regrets. We weren’t ready to go to Mars, I understand that now. Spaceflight is not easy. I don’t know personally how I would have fared, psychologically, if, in some other universe, I had ever gotten to do that hundred-million-mile trip to Mars. Months of isolation from my family and home, not just days …’

      Sixt, do you still think we should go to Mars?

      ‘Well, I guess so. But it remains a heck of a long way to go. I’ve come to think we should put our hearts into a return to the Moon. Sure, the Moon’s not an ideal destination. It’s a desert compared to Mars. It would be better if Mars was in orbit around the Earth, just three days away, but it isn’t, and we ought to make the best of what we got. But even on the Moon it might be possible to live off the land, if we’re smart enough.’

      And then came the questions for Geena. The first couple were about her last flight but two, the first by an all-woman crew in US space history. It seemed to have aroused as much interest and curiosity as if NASA had appointed a team of chimpanzees to make the flight. But Geena had gotten used to handling those questions now.

      After that, they got tougher.

      Your husband thinks there’s an ocean on the Moon, doesn’t he?

      Gentle laughter.

      ‘Not an ocean.’

      But enough to flood the Moon, if it was all melted. Is that right?

      ‘It’s a possibility.’ She smiled tightly. ‘I don’t pretend to understand the theory of how it got there. But it seems possible.’

      Geena, do you think NASA should have brought the astronauts home from Station?

      ‘No. The evidence we have is that the radiation pulse from Venus was transient. The danger’s already over …’

      Geena, I can’t help notice Dr Meacher isn’t here.

      Sixt tried to help out. ‘Nor are my ex-wives. Attendance isn’t compulsory, thank God.’

      That got a laugh. But the questioner, a journalist, was persistent. You didn’t back his Shoemaker proposal. We hear he’s leaving NASA over it. Is there any bitterness between you?

      She was aware of a shift in the body language of the crew up here on the stage, the managers, the rest of the audience. Everyone was quietly waiting for her answer, as always fascinated by some other poor sap’s domestic difficulties.

      ‘There’s no bitterness. Henry and I have our separate careers. Even when we were married, that was so. And now our marriage is over, but the break-up had nothing to do with our differences over Agency policy. I hope that answers you.’

      It was, at least, enough to shut him up. But she knew – and everybody else in the room seemed to know – that it wasn’t the truth.

      The briefing broke up, and they were led out to an autograph session.

      

      Later in the day, on impulse, she phoned Henry, at his hotel in Edinburgh.

      ‘I’ll help you,’ she said.

      What? How?

      ‘I’ll find out the context. Of your rock.’

      He paused. She thought he was gathering his strength, as if he was about to come back with another put-down. But then he said, tenderly, You do that.

      Tenderly. But, she saw clearly, without love.

      7

      Mike Dundas picked Henry up from the Balmoral.

      It was a balmy Saturday evening, at the end of Henry’s first full week in Edinburgh, and Mike had asked Henry over for dinner. Henry had accepted uneasily. He still didn’t feel much like being sociable; and besides, he wondered what horrors of northern British cuisine he was going to be subjected to.

      But he couldn’t see any way out of it, with grace. Mike seemed pathetically grateful to Henry for giving him the chance to work on the Moon rock. Maybe this would let the kid get that out of his system.

      They drove south for a mile or so, and arrived at a small estate of identikit houses. Mike pulled up in front of one house, maybe 1960s vintage: a nondescript box, a small garden to front and back, like, Henry sensed, millions of similar suburban homes all over Britain. A little further away there were rows of tower blocks, the result of some misconceived housing policy of the recent past. Not a great place to live.

      But it was redeemed by one hell of a view of Arthur’s Seat, to the east.

      This was actually his father’s house, Mike said; his mother died a few years before.

      ‘So who’s cooking?’

      ‘Dad. With a little help from me.’

      ‘Oh, shit.’

      Mike laughed, and locked the car.

      A plastic soccer ball hit Henry in the nose.

      A kid came running around the side of the house: a boy maybe ten years old, all stringy muscle and energy, his elbows and ankles sticking out of his clothes. ‘Oh, bugger,’ he said.

      Mike said, ‘Jack!’

      ‘Mister, I’m sorry.’

      Henry had to stand there and wait while the blow’s effects worked their way along his nervous system, and when it reached his pain centre the agony was disproportionately huge.

      Holding his nose, he waved his free hand. ‘Forget about it.’

      The kid retrieved his ball and ran off out of sight.

      ‘Who the hell was that?’

      ‘Jack. My nephew. Come on, I think you deserve a beer.’

      ‘Damn right.’

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