Velocity (4 page)

‘They handed me the keys to the castle and I dropped them in the moat.’

Severson exhales. ‘Pretty much.’

Today had been Judd’s final latte at the last-chance cafe. The crew for the last mission, slated to launch in mid-2013, won’t be announced for another two weeks. The end date for the shuttle program had originally been late 2011, but the Obama administration had extended it for two years. There were ‘misgivings’ about relying on the Russians to safely transport NASA astronauts to the International Space Station, considering the countries’ strained relations over the US-backed missile shield in Poland and Putin’s predilection for rigging elections. But now Judd’s final opportunity had evaporated because he’d screwed the pooch.

He flips opens the zippo, dinged and scarred so the brass shows through. It had belonged to the legendary Deke Slayton, one of the original Mercury 7 astronauts. At least that’s what the description said on the eBay auction.

Severson looks at him. ‘Thought you quit?’

Judd slams his thumb down on the zippo’s wheel but it doesn’t ignite. He tries again. No sale. Not even a spark. No sign of life, like his career. Judd snaps the zippo’s lid shut, frustrated. ‘I did.’

**

Judd stares at the ceiling. He can’t sleep. He blames Richard Nixon.

Judd’s paternal grandfather, who lived alone, deep in the woods of upstate Michigan, and never met a conspiracy theory he didn’t like, once told his young grandson that if he ever needed to discover the root cause of a problem he should examine every step that lead up to it and ‘work it backwards’.

Grandpa Bernie swore by ‘work it backwards’ and used it to answer all manner of questions, from who’d been siphoning gas from the tank of his Chevy pick-up (the Johnson kids from down the way), to who really shot John Lennon (novelist Stephen King, apparently).

So, as Judd tries to work out why he can’t sleep, he dusts off Grandpa’s old chestnut and decides to work it backwards.

So why is Tricky Dicky to blame for his sleepless nights?

Work it backwards.

Judd can’t sleep because his career is on the skids. Actually, that’s too kind. His performance in the simulator today was the straw that gave the camel lumbago.

Why is his career on the skids?

He lost his nerve.

Why?

Backwards once more.

He saw his best friend die as
Columbia
broke up on that brisk February morning and now he’s afraid. The fear crept up on him, slipped in through a side window, just a little at first. He became used to it, made allowances for it, didn’t realise it was growing, infecting his every decision, until he could no longer make one. It’s a surprise to him because he’s never felt anything like it before.

Why is Judd afraid?

Backwards.

He doesn’t trust the machine.

Why?

The shuttle is unsafe. He watched it break apart and kill his best friend.

Why is the shuttle unsafe?

It is a flawed design.

And why’s that?

Backwards once again.

Because Richard Nixon made it that way. After basking in the success of the Apollo moon landings between ‘69 and ‘71, gladly accepting plaudits for something he had nothing to do with, the president felt, incredibly, that the public had grown bored by the feat of safely transporting human beings to and from another world and that the political advantages of manned space flight had been exhausted. Simply, he didn’t think space travel was worth the money.

So he made a decision that, at the time, was obscured by the fog of the Watergate investigation and allowed the Senate to slash the NASA budget.

Nixon also thought he might have trouble with McGovern in the 1972 presidential election. He felt he needed votes in the Sun Belt, where most of the aerospace industry was located. Without a new NASA mission there would be no new technology to design and build and test. Massive job losses, and the attendant political fallout, would follow.

So he decided to spend the minimum necessary on NASA’s next endeavour: the space shuttle. Instead of an intelligent design that would cost more to develop but would be cheaper and safer to use, he allowed Congress to choose the opposite - a design that was cheaper to build but more expensive and dangerous to operate. So the space shuttle, complete with solid rocket boosters and an expendable external tank, was born.

The alternative - a totally reusable space plane that would fly the shuttle close to orbit, launch it, then return home under its own power, just like a passenger jet - didn’t employ the frail solid rocket booster that could burst an O ring and burn a hole in the external tank (the cause of the
Challenger
explosion), and it didn’t use a fragile external tank that could shed foam at lift-off and punch a hole in the shuttle’s wings (the cause of
Columbia’s
break-up), but it wasn’t the one chosen.

So it’s Richard Millhouse Nixon’s fault Judd can’t sleep.

But is it really? How did Nixon even become president? Wasn’t there a viable alternative?

Yes.

Backwards one last time.

Chappaquiddick.

Ted Kennedy’s failure to navigate a wooden bridge while driving a young teacher home on Chappaquiddick Island. His inability to save her from the upturned car in Poucha Pond. And his decision not to alert police about it for ten hours.

Without Chappaquiddick, Teddy would have run for president in 1972 and won. As president, even considering the Senate’s pressure to cut NASA’s budget, he would not have skimped on the funding NASA needed to build a safe spacecraft. After all, NASA’s challenge to land on the moon by the end of the 1960s was his brother’s greatest legacy.

So Judd blames Ted Kennedy for not being able to sleep.

He pulls himself up in bed and looks around. He knows that wasting time with idle conjecture is just his way of distracting himself from the truth of his life. Just enough moonlight steals in through the blinds to illuminate the bedroom he’s shared with Rhonda for the last decade. He finds no joy in the pictures and commendations proclaiming his past success. He wishes he did.

Rhonda. She’s working late tonight, won’t be home for a while. He takes a swig of water from the bottle on the bedside table, grabs the remote control and flicks on the TV. CNBC news flickers. The voices, like white noise, sometimes help him fall asleep on nights like these. He turns over, buries his face in the pillow. He hears fragments. A jet was stolen from an air-force base in Arizona. He doesn’t think anything of it as he closes his eyes and wills himself towards the land of nod.

**

Rhonda quietly eases open the front door, then just as quietly eases it shut. The Ghost and The Darkness greet her and immediately slump onto their sides in a plea for affection. She’d heard ragdoll cats had a dog-like demeanour but she’s constantly amazed at how gregarious they are. She kneels, tickles their bellies and does her best cat-lady whisper: ‘Ooo, hello there, my little fatties.’ She checks they have enough food and water in their bowls then turns to climb the staircase.

‘Hey.’ Judd stands in the half-light on the landing above.

‘Hey. Didn’t wake you, did I?’

‘No, no. Couldn’t sleep.’

Couldn’t sleep.
She knows that’s code for
I want to talk.
She lets the words hang, unaddressed, then climbs the stairs. As she passes by she leans in and gives him a kiss-hug. ‘I’m bushed, got a killer day tomorrow. Up at four-thirty. I might sleep in the guestroom. I need a solid five and you were a bit restless last night.’

‘Was I? Sorry ‘bout that.’

She continues up the stairs.

‘Things didn’t go too well in the sim today.’

She stops, breathes out, turns to him with a sympathetic expression.

‘You know, it’s just, I can’t seem to get it right. I used to be really good at this stuff.. .’ He trails off.

‘I want to hear all about it, sweetie, but I need to get some sleep. Can we talk about it tomorrow?’ She stifles a yawn.

He looks at her, then nods. ‘Sure. That’s fine.’

That’s not fine, she can see that much even in the half-light. ‘Okay. Night.’

‘Night.’ Rhonda continues up the stairs, feels awful at blowing him off, but relieved too. She has not the time nor energy for another extended dissection of his career tonight.

Judd watches her go. She pulled the ‘sleepy face’, the one where she crinkles her mouth into a yawn, one eye half-shut, and feigns tiredness. It didn’t look anything like a genuine yawn but it served its purpose. It was her I-don’t-want-to-talk expression and when she flashed it Judd knew better than to attempt conversation. It hadn’t always been this way. There was a time when they would stay up half the night talking about anything, everything. That hasn’t happened for a long while.

When Judd first met Rhonda, during a NASA ‘meat & greet’ barbecue, she was the toothy young blonde student from Caltech. She asked Gordo Cooper, another of the original Mercury 7 astronauts, a vexing question about fluid dynamics and their application to the design of the Mercury capsule. Judd was instantly smitten. Lucky for him, once they’d had their first date, so was she.

They worked well as a team, shared information freely, filled in each other’s knowledge gaps, bolstered each other at every turn. They were the epitome of one plus one equals eleven. That their work schedules were extreme beyond anything they’d previously experienced only made the relationship more intense.

Even though Rhonda had started at NASA before Judd, his career ascended first. She was sure, and he agreed, that it was because he’d been a naval aviator - a bias carried over from the early days of NASA, when every astronaut was a male from the service and the idea of a female civilian scientist like Rhonda flying into space was only possible in the realms of science fiction. That Judd was chosen ahead of her to pilot the mission to the International Space Station only fired her up, motivated her to do better. The competition between them was cordial yet fierce and added a similar, not unwelcome frisson to their bedroom. It was the best time of his life.

That all changed in 2003. One of the astronauts aboard
Columbia
had started his NASA career at the same time as Judd. The two had worked side by side for three years and bonded during the shared experience of doing something only a handful of people ever do. They were each other’s confidants and comrades and then
Columbia
broke up and, just like that, Judd had lost his best friend.

Judd slides back into bed and stares at the ceiling. It wasn’t long after the loss of
Columbia
that he first noticed Rhonda would periodically drift away from him, become remote in mind and spirit, if not body. It didn’t happen that often, and when it did she wasn’t gone for long. He attributed it to the stress of work and didn’t worry too much about it. She always found her way back to him.

But over the past few months her remoteness had become more frequent and lasted longer. Whatever kept them connected - a shared history, a shared ambition, a shared house, a shared bed -it now stretched longer and thinner with each absence. As he rolls over to find sleep he wonders how long it will be before it breaks.

**

3

‘You. Stay. Here. This is very important so let me repeat it so it’s perfectly clear. You.
Sta-a-ay.
Here.’ Corey Purchase sits in the doorless cockpit of the small, beaten-up Huey OH-6A Loach helicopter and stares at the passenger in the seat beside him. ‘Don’t give me that face. I can’t have you in there making a scene, okay?
Sta-a-ay
here. Are we clear?’

The recipient of the lecture is not a wilful child or a recalcitrant teenager but a strikingly homely blue heeler named Spike. He’s a large white dog who looks like he’s been splattered with navy-blue paint but never hosed off. He barks.

‘Okay. Good.’ With a nod, Corey turns to exit the cockpit, then stops. ‘I don’t need to tie you up, do I?’

A bark.

‘I’m not having this conversation now.’ He points at the animal. ‘
Stay
.’

The tall Australian pilot slides out of the day-glo-yellow, teardrop-shaped chopper and turns to a small, decrepit building at the edge of a desert. A single-engined Beechcraft and an old Bell Jet Ranger helicopter are parked in a sandblasted hangar nearby. In the middle distance, two passenger jets, a Boeing 737 and an Airbus A320, are parked beside a runway near a simple terminal building. This dusty little aerodrome is Alice Springs Airport, gateway to Australia’s Northern Territory.

Corey does his best to pat off the fine film of red dust that covers his clothes, which include a faded blue T-shirt, Levi’s 501 and black Justin boots. He pushes his Randolph Engineering sunglasses to the top of his head, revealing blue eyes, then enters the building through a grubby glass door, propped open with a milk crate in the hope of encouraging air circulation in the sweltering heat.

The building doesn’t look any better on the inside. At the rear of the long, basic office three men play poker around a small card table, the ceiling fan above working overtime. Corey forces a grin and approaches the warped and buckled reception desk that cuts the space in two. ‘Fellas.’