“Speak for yourself.” Helen ran her hands down her flight suit, which accentuated her boyish figure.
“Seriously, though. I thought they were trying to establish colonies.”
Nodding, I avoided any of the things Nathaniel had hinted at. “They’ll be doing a formal announcement of the list at a press conference next week.”
Betty perked up and grabbed for her bag. “You don’t say.” She pulled out her reporter’s notepad.
I cleared my throat. “Obviously, I don’t say, but someone with a tie to a major newspaper would probably be invited, and—”
“Nuts.” She glared at the pad. “They’ll probably give it to Hart. He’s getting all the prime international stuff. I swear to God, if I have to cover one more garden club—”
“You’ll do it, and be grateful for the paycheck.” Pearl twisted her gloves in her hands.
Betty sighed. “You could have at least let me rant a little longer before bringing reality into this.”
“The thing is—” I cut in, pointing my cookie at Betty. “Do you think he’ll notice an all-male list?”
She narrowed her eyes, and I could see her formulating the pitch she’d use with her editor. “Can I cite you as a source at the IAC? Not by name.”
“I … I don’t want to get … um … my source in trouble.”
Betty snatched the cookie out of my hand. “If you think that little of my—”
I snatched it back and crumbs went flying. Laughing, I popped the tart morsel into my mouth. “I just want to make sure the parameters are clear.”
“Parameters confirmed.” She grabbed her flight jacket and stood. “Shall we fly?”
“Absolutely.” I tucked another cookie into the pocket of my flight jacket and glanced at Helen. “Going up with me, or one of the other girls?”
“Wouldn’t miss it.”
My little Cessna 170b could carry four people. Betty had a Texan, but it wasn’t any good for conversation, so she decided that, given the topic, she’d start with us, so we didn’t have to use the radio to talk. We piled into the cockpit, and put the conversation on hold while I went through the preflight checklist.
There is something magic about takeoffs. I know people who are afraid of flying who say that the takeoffs and landings are the only hard parts, perhaps because that’s when the act of flying is most apparent. I love the way you get pushed back into your seat. The weight and the sense of momentum press against you and the vibrations from the tarmac hum through the yoke and into your palms and legs. Then, suddenly, everything stops and the ground drops away.
It never feels like I’m rising, but that the ground is falling away from me as if I were light as air. Maybe that’s what frightens people? Or maybe I’m not frightened because my dad flew with the Air Force when it was still part of the Army, and had taken me on my first plane ride when I was two years old. I’m told that I laughed the entire flight. Clearly, I don’t remember that. I do remember begging him to do barrel rolls when I got a little older.
Most kids? Their dad teaches them to drive. Mine taught me to fly.
Anyway. Once we were up in the air, I turned us in a lazy spiral away from the airfield, just to get a feel for the air today. Betty sat in the copilot seat, with Helen behind us.
Betty turned to address both of us, shouting a little over the engine. “All right. Flight Club rules are in effect. Am I right that they want to turn the moon into a military base?”
“From all the things Nathaniel isn’t saying, I think it’s actually that women are too emotional to go into space.”
Betty shook her head, and I’m fairly certain she cursed under the sound of the airplane. “Right. This is hogswallow, and we need to change it.”
“How?” Helen leaned forward in her seat.
“I can pitch this to my editor as discrimination, but that’s not going to take if I can’t also talk about some of the women who were passed over.” She looked at me. “I can do it in ways that won’t make my sources clear, and … and I can also prime Hart to ask the question and bring it front and center at the press conference.”
I glanced sideways at her. “How? I mean … that feels very direct.”
“Mr. President, with an all-male astronaut corps, is there a danger that the Communist bloc will perceive this as a military outpost rather than a colony?”
Helen raised her hand, as if to remind us that she was from Taiwan. “He’ll counter with international cooperation.”
I nodded. “We’ve got people at the IAC from Taiwan, Algeria, Spain, Brazil, France, Germany, Serbia, Haiti, the Congo…”
Helen chimed in, “Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom…”
“And the U.S.”
Betty shook her head. “And none of those are Communist countries.”
“Okay … but it still doesn’t talk about the hysteria aspect.”
“No, but it does highlight the all-male astronaut corps, and that gives us leverage for a follow-up about why there are no women.” She snorted. “And it’s an election year. Eisenhower is running against Brannan, so I’m going to bet money, right now, that a return to ‘normalcy,’ with women relegated back to being ‘homemakers,’ is going to be a key election issue.”
Cold ran all the way to the center of my body. “But … but the director of the IAC doesn’t answer to the president, he—” Even as the words left my mouth, I knew I was being stupid. The IAC might be an international effort, but because the launch center was on American soil, we had more influence on the program than other countries—even with a British director. And I’d seen the list of astronauts. Fully three-quarters of them were American or British. All of them were white. “Everyone buckled up?”
They both said yes, but didn’t ask me why. They knew me well. I pulled the plane up, gaining altitude, and looped us over. Centrifugal force kept us pushed into our seats. The Earth lay spread out below in a quilt of green and brown. There was enough haze in the sky that the line between ground and air was indistinct and the edges blurred away into the silver-white of the sky. I’d seen pictures from orbit, the Earth turned into a blue-green globe. I wanted to float weightless in space and see the stars with all their startling clarity. If these men with their constant jockeying for dominance dragged us back into the dark ages, I would … what?
Bringing the plane out of the loop, I took us into a bar rel roll. Silver and green spun about, with us as the center of the pinwheel. Behind me, Helen laughed and clapped her hands.
Coming out of the roll, I considered my next option. People were losing sight of the greenhouse timeline, since this was a slow disaster. We needed to establish colonies on the moon and the other planets while we had the resources to spare. If their excuse was that establishing a colony wasn’t safe for women, then we’d need to prove that women were just as capable as men. “Do you think your newspaper would be interested in covering an all-women air show?”
“Hell yes.” Betty jabbed her finger at me. “But only if I get to use your name.”
“I’m not anyone.”
“You’re married to the lead engineer at the IAC. That story about you flying out after the Meteor? I can use that.”
I swallowed. Being the center of attention was … necessary. And it would just be talking to Betty. “Sure. You can do that.”
TWELVE
MEN OF THE SPACE AGE
National Times photographs by SAM FALK
March 26, 1956—The rocket specialists—those who think up, design, engineer, and fire the mighty engines to carry scientific instruments aloft—are the men to whom the country looks for achievement in the Space Age. They work in many fields, ranging from fuels to computer systems and from alloys to communication techniques. The best known of these is Dr. Nathaniel York, who is the lead engineer for the International Aerospace Coalition.