Riding Rockets (47 page)

The class of 1987 gave Dan the list of questions he was required to ask of the prospective dates. Since the military personnel from the new class were also from Planet AD, many of the questions were sexually suggestive. One was an obvious play on the psych questions being asked in the astronaut interview. Apparently those hadn’t changed in the past decade. “If you died and could come back as any animal, what would it be?”

Mario appeared to fall into deep thought on such a complex question. Finally he answered, “I would like to come back as…a beaver.” As if the double entendre needed emphasis, he casually spread his legs. It was a move Sharon Stone would make famous years later in the movie
Basic Instinct,
but Mario did it first. It was also a move that is irrevocably burned into the synapses of my brain, where memories of my Most Terrifying Sights are stored. Even today, when I look at a blank white wall, I see that hair-way up his skirt and shiver in terror.

The remaining questions and answers were scripted to ensure Dan selected Mario’s character as his date. When Mario came from behind the screen, he went to Dan, grabbed him, twirled so that his back was to the audience, and planted a kiss on Dan’s lips…or so it appeared. Actually he clamped his hand over Dan’s mouth and kissed the back of it. Mario was a hell of a thespian.

The skit continued with a “word from our sponsor.” Two members of the 1987 class came onstage dressed as the hayseed spokesmen for Bartle & James wine coolers. The real B&J television advertisements were laugh-out-loud funny. They featured one character with a boring, monotone voice explaining some bizarre use of the product beyond its intended purpose as a beverage. As he did so, his doofus-looking silent partner, Ed, would give a demonstration in the background.

The B&J advertisement the class of 1987 presented was definitely not ready for prime time. One astronaut adopted the deadpan voice and mannerisms of the B&J protagonist and explained how the wine coolers could be used to prevent the spread of STDs. Silent Ed rolled a condom onto a B&J bottle and vigorously shook it. The carbonation in the drink inflated the latex into its hotdog shape. Ed peered closely at the phallus, searching for leaks. As if that weren’t suggestive enough, the advertisement spokesman continued, “The alcohol in Bartle & James wine coolers can also be used to disinfect body parts that might be exposed during intimate relations.” Ed used that as his cue to pour some of the B&J into his palm and splash it on his face like aftershave. Political correctness might have subdued the office parties of the rest of the country, but it had yet to wet-blanket astronaut parties.

The following Monday I walked into my office still thinking about the skit. It had been a great party and I intended to tell the new arrivals how much I enjoyed their antics. But those thoughts evaporated when I arrived at my desk. A note from my secretary read,
Please meet Dan Brandenstein at 8:15
A.M.
My office mate, Guy Gardner, had the same note on his desk and I quickly discovered three other astronauts were also notified of the meeting: Hoot Gibson, Jerry Ross, and Bill Shepherd. With two pilots and three MSes, the notification certainly suggested a flight assignment announcement. But I wasn’t about to cheer yet. John Young had never announced flight assignments. That had always been exclusively Abbey’s job. The fact that Dan Brandenstein’s office, and not Abbey’s, had called put a lid on my simmering anticipation. There were certainly other things Dan might want to see us about. Again, I prayed it wasn’t anything associated with Dr. McGuire, as in, “Which one of you idiots has been talking to the shrink?”

We walked into Dan’s office. It was still strange to see a TFNG in the big-time. As a navy pilot, Dan had been firmly in the grip of Planet AD’s gravity. No more. His new management position had blasted him to escape velocity. We would all miss him.

Dan welcomed us with a smile, which I immediately interpreted as a good sign. “Abbey wants to see you guys. I’ll walk over with you.” There it was, the Abbey connection. More and more it was looking as if September 14, 1987, would be a special day for me. As we walked to the JSC HQ building my heart was a-flutter. It had been three years since I had stepped from
Discovery.
By far, the last twenty months had been the worst in my life. I had buried four TFNG friends killed in a preventable tragedy and had endured John Young’s abuse. I couldn’t wait to get back in space.
Please, God,
I prayed,
let this be what I think it is.

Abbey, too, was ready for us with a smile. After a moment of small talk he relieved our suspense. “I was wondering if you guys would like to fly STS-27?”

Is a crab’s ass watertight?
was one rejoinder that came to my mind.
Hell, yes
answered both questions.

Our group immediately broke into jokes and giddy laughter. No one really answered Abbey’s question, but, of course, we didn’t have to. He was offering us gold and nobody ever turned that down. I was now officially a crewmember for the second post-
Challenger
mission. It was a classified Department of Defense mission so nobody yet knew exactly what we would be doing, but it didn’t matter. We were an assigned crew. That was
all
that mattered.

As I floated in weightless joy back to my office, I considered for the billionth time that strange man known as George Washington Sherman Abbey. He defied analysis. To borrow a quote from Winston Churchill, George was “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” It seemed he went out of his way to drive astronauts to loathe him. Even in this STS-27 crew assignment some would be rightly embittered. Bill Shepherd was class of 1984 and would be flying his first mission before two mission specialists from the class of 1980, Bob Springer and Jim Bagian, would fly their rookie flights. And STS-27 would mean Hoot Gibson would be flying his second mission as a commander before eight other TFNG pilots had yet to command their first mission. The STS-27 crew assignment press release was going to be a bitter pill for many in the office to swallow.

Hoot would later tell me Abbey had informed him several weeks before the official announcement that he would be the CDR of STS-27. Hoot had replied, “George, it’s not my turn.” Abbey had said, “Turns have nothing to do with it.” He might as well have said, “I don’t give a shit about astronaut morale.” The statements were identical.

While sitting in Abbey’s office, though, I had never seen him as jolly as he had been while telling us of our new mission assignment. It was as if he was high on our happiness. Why couldn’t he understand it could be like that 24/7/365? All he had to do was understand that turns did matter, that visibility into flight assignments mattered a hell of a lot, that open communication mattered, that being positively stroked once in a while mattered…hell, being
negatively
stroked once in a while, getting
ANY
performance feedback once in a while, mattered. During those ten minutes in his office I loved George Abbey, but the moment passed. Now, if there were conspirators somewhere in NASA’s hierarchy preparing to strike, I wished them all the luck in the world.

That evening, as I told the kids about the flight, my sixteen-year-old daughter, Laura, said, “You’re not going to die on me, are you?” She said it with a smile, trying to make a joke out of it—a chip off the old block—but I knew she was worried. So were Donna, Pat, and Amy. And I knew, as soon as STS-26 was on the ground, I would be worried. Just as it had been with STS-41D, I knew Prime Crew night terrors awaited me for STS-27. But I had to do this. I couldn’t stop or turn away from a flight into space any more than a migratory bird could ignore the change of seasons. It was in my DNA, beyond rational understanding.

Chapter 31

God Falls

We were the last crew ever to receive news of our mission assignment from George Abbey. On October 30, 1987, George was reassigned to NASA HQ in Washington, D.C., to assume the job of deputy associate administrator for spaceflight. Hoot would later tell me Abbey had hinted he didn’t want the “promotion.” That was easy to believe. For ten years George had wielded enormous power at JSC and now it was being taken from him. His loftier-sounding HQ title came with about as much power as one of those twenty or so vice president positions on the staff of a local bank. Every astronaut was of the opinion that this had been an assassination. But by whom? Many astronauts suspected Admiral Dick Truly. Dick was now the number-two man at NASA HQ and being groomed for the NASA administrator position (which he would assume in 1989). As a former astronaut, he certainly knew of George’s leadership style, so he had motive. I wasn’t about to ask Dr. McGuire if he had a hand in it. I doubted he would have told me and, besides, I didn’t want any further association with the matter. It was the kind of office intrigue that could only hurt a career.

I didn’t struggle with my emotions when Young was removed, but, with Abbey, it was different. Abbey had raised me from the huddled masses to be an astronaut. He had picked me to fly on two space shuttle missions. Besides my own father, no other man had influenced my life as much as George Abbey. And any unbiased outsider would say he had treated me fairly. He had selected me to fly my first mission before seven other TFNG MSes got their rookie rides. He had selected me to fly my second mission before eight of my peers got their chance at a second mission. With STS-27 I was assigned to an important flight with a robot arm task. Yes, I was definitely conflicted about Abbey’s bureaucratic demise. I was disturbed enough to wonder if it had really been
my
problem all along. Maybe a tougher man could have accommodated Abbey’s Machiavellian managerial style. But deep down I knew that wasn’t the case. McGuire had said I wasn’t the only astronaut to have come to him, and given the time it would have taken him to acquire the data and write his astronaut leadership document, he must have been talking to astronauts who had “lost it” long before I did. Even as I questioned my emotional mettle as the source of my Abbey problem, other astronauts were celebrating. One commented, “If we had any lamp shades in our offices we’d be running up and down the halls with them on our heads.” Another celebrant was heard in the hallway singing, “The wicked witch is dead. The wicked witch is dead.” Still another bitterly offered, “I hope one day to see Abbey working as a grease monkey on the flight line at the Amarillo airport. It’s all he’s good for.” I doubted there were any astronauts, even those who had benefited most from his largess, who were sorry to see Abbey go.

No, the problem wasn’t mine. But, still, I didn’t like the way I felt. I had wanted to love this man unconditionally. Like Donna, he had been integral to my dream fulfillment. If somebody else had been leading astronaut interviews in October 1977, would I have made the cut? I doubted it. Just as a different wife would have meant a different life, I suspect a different chief of FCOD would have had a different criterion for astronaut selection, most likely one I wouldn’t have met. I had wanted to render Abbey a lifetime of fealty. At our welcome to JSC in 1978 there had been no more loyal TFNG on that stage. But over the years, his Stalinist-like secrecy, his indifference to the fear that dominated the astronaut office, his unfairness to the air force pilots, his gross inequities in flight assignments, and his abysmal lack of communication had drained my allegiance completely.

As the office celebration continued, one astronaut commented, “Until someone drives a wooden stake through his heart, I won’t believe he’s really gone.” The comment proved prophetic. Abbey’s JSC days weren’t over by a long shot. He used his time at HQ to ally himself with Dan Goldin, who, in 1992, would become NASA administrator. In 1996 Goldin appointed George director of Johnson Space Center, arguably the most powerful position within NASA. Ultimately, George got it all, proving what every TFNG had believed for so many years, that Abbey was unsurpassed in his ability to manipulate a byzantine organization like NASA’s. It was a talent the CIA could have employed. If, during the darkest days of the Cold War, they had parachuted Abbey into Moscow’s Red Square, naked, not knowing a word of Russian, and without a single kopeck in his hand, George still would have become a member of the Politburo within a year and Soviet premier within two. We could have ended the Cold War decades earlier.

On December 5, 1987, the astronaut office held a going-away party for Abbey at Pete’s Cajun BBQ. It was billed “George Abbey Appreciation Night.” About a third of the office were no-shows. Two astronauts told me they were boycotting the event. I suspected some of the other absentees were of a mind that they would rather fly a night TAL into Timbuktu than show any appreciation for George. I attended merely to celebrate the fact he was gone from our lives. There would be no weepy singing of “
Auld Lang Syne”
at this party. Mark Lee, class of 1984, was the MC and did a terrific job, donning a buzz-cut wig to mimic Abbey. It was obvious Mark was of the opinion that George was forever powerless over astronauts, because his humor was “I’ll-neversee-this-man-again” acidic. He made reference to Abbey’s preferential treatment of the navy astronauts, of Dick Truly’s suspected role in removing him from the FCOD position (Dick Truly and the new JSC director, Aaron Cohen, were both noticeably absent from the event), and of George’s tendency to suffer episodes of narcolepsy when he didn’t want to hear an opinion contrary to his. Then, to everybody’s astonishment, Mark took off his wig and grew sentimental. “You can’t have a boss for so many years and not be choked up about his departure.” I couldn’t believe it. Others around me held similarly incredulous looks.
Choked up about George’s departure?
Only if one of Pete’s Cajun rib bones got caught in my throat. But Mark continued his endearing comments, glibly flowing to a conclusion, “And for those of you who might be feeling a lump in the throat and getting all misty-eyed thinking about George leaving…just remember what an asshole he can be!” Mark had flown well beyond the edge of the envelope. Everybody cheered and applauded. Abbey smirked. What was behind that smirk? I wondered. It could have been anything from
I’m proud of these guys
to
I’ll get even with these traitorous dickheads if it’s the last thing I ever do.