The Tranquillity Alternative (4 page)

There was nothing unusual about the house except for its location on Merritt Island, near the southern perimeter of the Robert F. Kennedy Space Center. Within sight of the porch were the old ICBM test pads, now either dismantled or used primarily for sounding rockets; gantry towers for
Hercules
- and
Titan
-class cargo rockets rose from the coastline a little farther north, while farthermost in the distance, near the giant white cube of the Vehicle Assembly Building, were the twin Atlas-C launch complexes.

Once, during the fifties and sixties, there had been dozens of houses like this one, built by the Army Corps of Engineers to house military and civilian personnel who had worked countless millions of man-hours building those launch pads. When the space program started winding down in the seventies and the U.S. Space Force was phased out and gradually replaced by NASA, almost all of those cottages were destroyed, most by bulldozers or the occasional hurricane, a few by prototype Tomahawk cruise missiles during offshore Navy tests. Only this lone house was allowed to remain standing, for although no one had lived here year-round in quite some time, it had earned a small place in history, eloquently summarized by its name. It was called, very simply, the Beach House, and it was the last place on Earth where many astronauts stayed the night before they left home for outer space.

The traditional pre-launch barbecue had been held out on the porch earlier that evening; as usual, it drew a small group of invited guests—senior pad technicians, launch controllers, the mission director, and so forth—and for a little while it almost seemed to Gene Parnell as if the good old days had returned. Virtually everyone at the barbecue was an old China hand from way back when the space program was young and the new frontier was there for the taking; they all had tall stories to tell, and they loved to party.

Yet as the sun set and the last few beers were cracked open, a full moon began to rise above the gentle Atlantic surf and it seemed to Parnell that everyone was reminded of just how much had been lost already, and how much more would be lost tomorrow. The jovial atmosphere became sullen and morose and, finally, just a little ugly when Joe Clark and Keith Baldini, two firing-room techs who had worked alongside each other at Launch Control since the Project Luna days, got into a political argument which soon disintegrated into a shouting match that got dangerously close to being settled with fists until the mission director separated the two men and told them to go home. They weren’t drunk—they were too professional to get ripped the night before a launch—only angry at the Moon and what their old dreams had bought them, and their demoralization was quietly shared by many there.

At any rate, the fight effectively ended the party. Everyone left shortly after that, stopping by to shake hands with Parnell and give Judith a quick hug before climbing into their Jeeps or sports cars or family vans and blowing the hell out of there, because the Beach House harbored just one too many ghosts for anyone to hang around the place for very long.

This left Gene and Judy alone in the place for the night. In days past, they might have been joined by another astronaut and his or her spouse; they would have shared the Beach House, sleeping in the separate bedrooms until a few hours before dawn when someone drove out to fetch the crewmates and bring them to Operations and Checkout for breakfast, the final mission briefing, suit-up, and walk-out. But Jay Lewitt, the
Conestoga
’s flight engineer, was the only other crew member who had made an appearance, and he and Lisa had left long before the party had broken up. Cristine Ryer didn’t come at all, though, and the absence of the mission pilot was noted by Judy as they cleaned up the paper plates and empty beer cans left on the porch.

“She’s not a big favorite around here, is she?” Judy was in the kitchen, scraping gummy baked beans and gnawed pork ribs into a compost can before tossing the plates into the recycling bin. “I mean, nobody seemed particularly upset when she didn’t show up.”

“What, honey?” Gene Parnell pretended not to hear by dumping an armful of Bud Light cans in another recycling bin near the sink. How everything had changed; he remembered when, during another Beach House party many years ago, the pilot of Eagle Four had provided entertainment by lining up empty beer cans on the porch railing and inviting everyone to pick them off with his favorite Smith & Wesson deer rifle. That type of thing didn’t happen anymore, now that NASA had been dragged, kicking and screaming, into the era of environmental consciousness…. “I didn’t quite hear you.”

“You heard me.” Judy dropped the last plate into the bin and turned to the sink to wash her hands. “No one likes Ryer, and I don’t think she likes them either, but nobody wants to tell me why.”

“That’s because no one likes Cris,” he said, hoping that would get her off the subject.

“Don’t play stupid with me….”

“I’m not playing stupid, babe,” he insisted, lying for all he was worth. “Cris just isn’t … I dunno, she just isn’t much of a team player. She follows her own drummer and people know it. That’s all.”

Judy didn’t say anything for a few minutes. She picked up a box of detergent and carefully poured a handful of powder into the dishwasher, which was filled with pots and skillets. Watching her, Parnell was suddenly struck by how much older she now seemed, how gray her hair had become. In the thirty-four years they had been married, he had never really perceived his wife as anything except the sexy college girl he’d met shortly after graduating from Annapolis. But that was 1961 and this was 1995; their daughter Helen was now older than Judy had been when they walked beneath the crossed swords of a Navy honor guard on their way out of the wedding chapel. Judith was no crone, but neither was she the lithe Wellesley student he had met at a long-forgotten mixer.

Without realizing he was doing so, he found himself contemplating his reflection in the louvered glass of the kitchen window. Yeah, he had grown old, too. Despite a lifelong regimen of jogging two or three miles each morning before breakfast, there was a small pillow beneath his T-shirt where his waist had once been. His crew cut was salt and pepper, and the short beard he had cultivated years ago was now as white as beach sand. He made the pillow disappear for a moment by sucking in his gut, but nothing could be done about the crow’s-feet that appeared at the corners of his eyes when he did so. The last time he looked in a mirror, he saw Cary Grant; now George C. Scott was staring back at him.

“I’ve heard things about her,” Judy said as she latched the dishwasher door and pushed the button; the ancient Maytag grumbled like a freight train leaving a siding. “I’ve heard she’s … ah, one of the boys. Is that true?”

It took Parnell a moment to realize that she was still talking about Cristine Ryer. He shrugged as he turned away from the window. There was still some beer left in the fridge; he had had only two this evening and, what the hell, he wasn’t the guy doing the flying tomorrow morning. “Been listening to the grapevine again, haven’t we?” he said as he pulled out a can. “Want one?”

“Sure.” Judy caught the Budweiser he tossed her; even at fifty-four, she was still quick on her feet. Leave it to all those tennis games with other NASA wives to keep her body sound and her hearing sharp. “And don’t try changing the subject.”

“I’m not.” He leaned against a counter as he popped open a can for himself. “I’m just avoiding it, that’s all.”

“Gene …”

“Look, babe …” He sighed. “Remember Tommy Sidwell? The guy who rescued twelve men aboard the Wheel when that blowout happened in … what was it, ’66? The press made him into a hero back then. Cover of
Newsweek
, lunch at the White House with Nixon, the whole bit. Then some asshole from the
Chicago Tribune
discovered that he had a boyfriend and put it all over the front pages.”

Judy nodded, her face somber. “I remember.”

Gene nodded. “I knew Tom … and, yeah, I knew he was queer. So did a lot of other guys who worked with him. It didn’t change things for us, because he was a good astronaut and … well, when you’re up there, that’s all that really counts. But after the press blew his cover and Carson started with the jokes, the Space Force threw him out so fast he didn’t have time to empty his locker.”

Judith didn’t say anything. She recalled Tommy Sidwell; once on the short-list for Luna One, reduced within a year to making cameo appearances on
Laugh-In
. He had died of acute alcoholism ten years ago, his obituary a footnote in the same newspapers that had brought him low. “So you don’t ask questions like that,” Gene went on, “because it’s nobody’s business what people do when they’re not on active duty. What Cris does on her own time—”

“Is her own business,” Judith finished, nodding her head. “I understand.”

Parnell stared down at his beer. There was more to Cristine Ryer’s situation than Judith could have possibly picked up from the tennis court backscatter … but this was none of his business, even if Ryer was scheduled to be his left-seater a few days from now. It was all NASA internal politics, anyway, and he didn’t want to ruin his last night on Earth for a while by talking about it.

He took a deep breath. “Hey, what do you say we go down to the beach for a while? Catch a little moontan?”

Judy made a face. “Aw, Gene, c’mon … I hate it when you want to …”

“Just for a walk. Leave the blanket behind.” She had resisted making love on the beach ever since the second night after they moved into their house on Captiva Island, just a few years ago. Despite the romantic allure of that interlude in the Gulf Coast dunes, she had been itching for days afterward. “C’mon, babe,” he said, stepping closer to her. “My intentions are strictly honorable …”

“I bet.” She grinned as she pushed him aside and headed for the porch door. “If I get another rash, I’ll send my gynecologist to beat you up.”

“Deal.” Gene glanced through the open door of the master bedroom as he followed her toward the porch. The den chandelier cast a ray of light across the sagging mattress on the king-size bed, and he smiled to himself.

He hadn’t made any promises about what he might do later.

In many ways, it was a night like many other nights: moonlight rippling upon the low tide, casting silver highlights on the waves as they crashed onto the beach; the distant lights of freighters and passenger cruisers, the smell of salt air and brine and seaweed and, just a few miles up the shoreline, the rocket itself, temporarily captured within angled searchlight beams, a tiny silver-blue dart poised on its fins.

None of this was unfamiliar to Parnell. In fact, it was almost akin to
déjà vu
, although the last time he had gone up was for a short visit to the Wheel in connection with his duties as the Flight Director of the American half of Project Ares. That had been back in ’74; three months later he had resigned from active flight status, and in the twenty-one years since, he had reported to work at an office which wasn’t inside a pressure compartment. Sometimes he had actually relished the fact that he didn’t have to subconsciously worry about the source of every breath he took, or that the food on his plate was what he wanted to eat today and not part of a rigorous menu, or that he could take a shower every morning or flush a commode as often as he wanted without having to fret about water conservation.

Sometimes … but not always. Walking along the beach, shells crunching beneath the soles of his moccasins, cold ocean surf occasionally washing up around his ankles, he looked up to study the familiar winter constellations—Virgo rising from the east, Leo almost directly overhead, a thin ring around the Moon which almost touched Mars, hinting at rain showers later tonight—and yet his gaze kept returning to the distant rocket.

It had been a long time. Maybe just a little too long.

“Penny for your thoughts?” Judy asked.

He shrugged. “A nickel will buy you my life story.”

“Heard it already. Been around for most of it.” They had been silent since they left the Beach House, walking side by side along the dark shore. “Scared about tomorrow?”

“Uh-uh. Not about tomorrow.” Nor was there any reason for him to be scared. The
Constellation
was a reliable old workhorse; it had made at least three or four dozen orbital missions in its lifetime, and Atlas-C’s dated back to 1967. It wasn’t like the Atlas-B’s, whose third-stage nuclear engines had frightened the piss out of everyone who had ever ridden in them, until they were finally decommissioned in ’65 following not-unjustified protests by Barry Commoner and Common Cause. And it sure as hell wasn’t the
Discovery
, but then again the
Discovery
had been permanently grounded by White House directive after her sister-ship, the
Challenger
, had exploded shortly after liftoff. That was back in ’86; since then no one had even suggested using solid-rocket boosters for man-rated spacecraft.

The Atlas-C ferries, though, had been built to last. Although they were now somewhat obsolete, no one had ever been killed riding one of them. Better safe than sorry: so went the general consensus. On the other hand, the Atlas-C represented the last time anyone within NASA had seriously proposed trying anything new at all….

“Not worried about tomorrow, huh? Well, I suppose that’s good.” Judy took a deep breath as she folded her arms across her chest. “Got a letter from Gene Jr. yesterday. He says he broke up with his old girlfriend but now has a new one.”

“Uh-huh,” Parnell said. He was still gazing at the distant launch pad. “What’s her name?”

“Her name’s Spike,” Judith said calmly. “She’s the lead singer with an L.A. band called The Doggy Position. Gene says she’s got some interesting tattoos … oh, and he says he wants to quit his job and open a porn shop in Hollywood. Isn’t that nice?”

“Well, yeah, I guess he … what?”

Judy punched him in the arm. “Sucker!”

“Jesus, honey …” He rubbed at his biceps where she smacked him. Their younger child had been a constant source of worry to them since the age of fifteen, but after being expelled from two private schools, dropping out of one college, being busted for selling marijuana at another, hitchhiking across the country behind a Moby Grape concert tour as a self-proclaimed Grape Nut, and finally cleaning up his act to settle down in Los Angeles and manage a retro-sixties boutique, there was little the kid could do anymore that would surprise Gene. Except maybe this … “You’re not serious, are you?”