Late at night, I’d sneak into Dr. Q’s room and warm my hands over the algebrator’s tubes, breathe deep its ozony breath. Whispering, I’d ask, what lay ahead? Did happiness wait for me? Regarding my fate, the algebrator held its silence. The fastest mathematical device in the world would not say. I’d admire the neat rows of toggles, let the copper coils ionize the hair on my arms, and then wander off to my quiet bunk.
The command nodule was the first hardware component to be finished, and when Scotty debuted it, we drank Mooseheads all the way around. Dr. Q put some Latin music on the reel-to-reel, and Vu killed us with his cancan. I did a merengue with Dr. Q, and I tell you, I was zany, I wasn’t myself. It must have been the bubbles in the beer. Palm to palm, we held our arms high, poised and steady, while below, our hips flashed like solid-state diodes — one two three, cha—and I was feeling quite heady. I let Q lead.
But then, in the conga line, I had to endure the wafting smells of gin and starch coming off Mansoor, while Vu’s sweaty hands on my shoulders brought me down to earth. As we snaked around the heli-arc welder and acetylene torches—cha, our legs would fly in unison — I began to wonder which one of us would be making the moonshot. Dr. Q was too important, Scotty was prone to drink, and of course, I had my allergies. Secretly, I was for sticking Vu in the darn thing.
Just then, Mansoor led the conga line up to the command nodule and stopped in front of the canopy. The capsule was beautifuclass="underline" anodized alloy frame, gold-plated com links, fireproof Perspex windows all around. The tiny nodule’s infrastructure alone contained fifty kilometers of wiring, enough that Scotty had to train two snow ferrets to pull the cables through the complex web of conduits.
Mansoor opened the hatch and moved to step inside like he owned the thing, like he had just crowned himself moon pilot. Part of me really wanted Mansoor to go, except for the fact that there was an outside chance the whole dang thing might work, that he might make it to the moon and return a hero. But Mansoor couldn’t squeeze in through the hatch. None of us could, not even Vu! Scotty had made the nodule too small. When we cornered him behind the central shop-vac unit, his desperate margarita eyes passed over all of us. “There must be something wrong with my slide rule,” he said. “It could have happened to anybody.”
Furious, Dr. Q called an emergency meeting, right there in our sombreros. Mulroney listened in on the scramble phone. “What we need,” Q said, “is a candidate who can withstand intense G forces, high levels of radiation, and long periods of cold and dark. He must be able to entertain himself and also be under 150 centimeters tall.”
Mulroney assured us the CIA would find our man, so there was nothing left to do but get back to work and trust in Canadian Intelligence.
Three nights later, Mulroney was back. I was shaken out of a dream about submarines: when I raised my periscope, I could see Jacques on the shoreline, racing his luge up and down the hills in a perfect sine wave.
“Gentlemen,” Mulroney announced. “I present your Canadanaut.”
“Canadanaut?” I asked. “What the heck are you talking about?”
“It means ‘Canada-voyager,’” Mulroney said. “The boys in PR cooked it up.”
Mulroney then pushed forward a tiny, emaciated man with a skin condition. He was blindfolded and probably drugged.
Dr. Q asked him his discipline. Aeronautics? Vector Analysis?
“I’m an English teacher from Edmonton,” he squeaked.
I nearly laughed up my cocoa.
Vu rushed him. “Did the Oilers make the Stanley Cup playoffs?” he asked.
Such was our seclusion. But this guy didn’t know anything.
I walked over and poked him in the chest. He almost fell down. What a puss. I didn’t even want to know his name. How were we going to beat those Communauts into space with a bookworm at the wheel? Did I have to remind everyone of the grave military implications of failure?
Dr. Q and I decided to get right to work, right there in our nightshirts. The first thing we did was irradiate our Canadian hero with uranium isotopes. I set the dial at 500. Q shrugged, so I cranked it up to 650 rads, a dose that made our subject turn pink and swelly. The procedure also loosened his teeth, and the diarrhea would not stop. As if you could fly to the moon with a case of the dribbles riding shotgun. On the master clipboard, Q marked his radiation tolerance as “moderate.”
Next, we stuck him in the centrifugal chamber, an event that pulled his arms out of his sockets, and that was it, we were back to scratch.
I was relieved that our so-called “Canadanaut” was gone, but something was still bothering me. All day, the numbers wouldn’t add up, and I kept spilling the hydroxinum crystals. What I wouldn’t have given for one rabbit to calm my nerves. This mission wasn’t about Canada. This flight was about one man, leaving the world of men, making a sacrifice for the love of mankind. It seemed to me that our pilot should be called a “man-voyager,” or Homonaut, a name that suggested fellowship and unity.
At dinner that night, it was Scotty who snapped. “I’m tired of all these military figures telling us what to do.” He slammed his fork down. “The whole point of this enterprise is exploration. I say our man is a Star Jockey and should be referred to as such. In a certain sense, we’re all Star Jockeys.”
“I’m partial to Empyreal Cosmoteer,” Q said, “but you can’t fight the boys in PR.”
“What about Sky Musher?” Vu asked.
We pretended not to hear him.
“If we’re being open, sirs,” Mansoor said, “I prefer the title ‘Qamar Musafir’ or perhaps ‘Kaukab Tayyar.’”
Steaming, I tore my bib off and blurted, “We’re Homonauts or nothing at all.”
Dr. Q waved his hand. “Pull yourselves together, men.”
Scotty, in a temper, grabbed his ferrets and stormed off in a Sno-Cat to hunt for possible launch sites. Vu wanted to go after him, but Q said no, “Let him cool down.”
Days passed, long and cold. When would I find someone special?
I was dreaming of submarines again when I felt something warm on my chest. Dr. Q suddenly joined the dream in a gold-braided hat. In a deep voice, he gave the torpedo coordinates. But then I felt that the warmth under my covers was furry, and it was Jacques, who entered my dreamy nocturnal vision. He wore a skin-tight wetsuit, complete with a diving helmet. Jacques stuck a breathing tube in his mouth, and then launched himself out of the sub’s conning tower on a secret mission to mine an enemy harbor.
I woke suddenly and found myself alone. When I came to my senses, I realized Chilly and Willy, Scotty’s snow ferrets, were under the covers with me. They had climbed in through a storm window that Vu had accidentally left open. I had a bad feeling. Scotty wasn’t in his bunk, so I woke Vu, who knelt down to the ferrets.
“Is something wrong?” he asked them. “Is Scotty in trouble?”
Chilly and Willy just gave us stupid chatter. I knew a couple ways of getting ferrets to talk, but that would take precious time, and we needed to find Scotty.
“This is no use,” I said. “Come on, Vu. Let’s mount a rescue.”
We hopped into the Sno-Cat and headed out to scour the frozen wastelands. The narrow cones of our headlights were the whole universe as we drove and drove. Vu picked up where he’d left off last time, a chronological listing of inductees into the Hockey Hall of Fame in Winnipeg. As the night wore on, Vu described the gear — the helmets, the shin guards, the supporters — and by the time he explained face-offs, checking, and that darned icing rule, I’d begun to develop a fondness for the sport. My favorite part was the penalty box. God, if that didn’t sum up life.