“I saw John Duffy is the flight commander for Sag II,” she said. “I couldn’t believe it. Don’t tell me he’s grown up and gotten all responsible.”
“Listen, I still can’t believe he made it through training,” David said with a snort, giving her the crooked grin that had first stolen her heart. “He was so busy playing pranks and chasing tail I didn’t think he was actually learning anything.”
“Oh come on, he wasn’t that bad.”
“You only think so because you were one of the tails he was chasing the hardest, ‘Catherine the Great,’ ” David teased.
Too late, Catherine realized that despite David’s grin, she’d stumbled onto a sore spot. Duffy had been in their training cohort, and despite his antics and David’s quiet, intense dedication to learning everything he could, Duffy went on to finish the program and David hadn’t. The two men were nearly diametric opposites, and given Duffy’s tendency to flirt as easily as he breathed, the tension between them was unavoidable.
“Ugh, I forgot he used to call me that.” She tried to find a way to recover. “I guess I’ll find out today if he’s changed or not. I’m meeting with him and the rest of the crew this afternoon for the simulation test.”
“Yikes, that’s today?” David looked at her closely. “Are you ready for that? What time?”
“May as well jump in with both feet,” Catherine said, trying to smile for him. “It’s early this afternoon, after that planning meeting.”
“Which planning meeting?”
“The one at eleven, with Aaron Llewellyn. It’s not on your calendar?”
David’s smile was still firmly in place, but even after more than nine years apart, Catherine could see the strain beneath it. “Nope, that’s the weekly meeting for department heads and up. You’re in that one?”
“Yeah… it’s probably a one-time thing, to talk about my mission.”
When David let go of her hand to put both hands back on the steering wheel, she tried to tell herself it was because freeway traffic was getting heavier, and she wrapped her fingers around the stainless steel of her cup, staring straight ahead.
“Maybe not,” David said, a little too casually. “You’re a superstar now, kiddo. I’m just a grunt in the trenches.”
She was right back in the moment they’d learned that David had washed out of the program. He’d had that same casual, too-faint smile on his face then. If she asked him, he would say he was fine, and that he was excited for her. It was probably true. But it wasn’t the whole truth.
“Yeah, well, you’re my grunt, and I love you.”
“Love you, too, Cath. I’m proud of you.” Now when he looked over at her, the smile looked a little more real. “Always have been.”
JSC was one of those places that never changed, even while in a constant state of flux. The displays were different, the faces were different, but even if she’d been dropped in the middle of a hallway, Catherine would have known where she was. She found her office without difficulty, a small, blank space with a desk, a computer, and a decent-sized window. Tomorrow she’d bring in a few personal things.
The planning meeting was something new, a glimpse behind the scenes she’d never had before. The only crewman there was John Duffy, and he gave Catherine a quick wave as they sat down.
She knew, of course, that immensely detailed logistics went into every NASA mission, but listening to the others go over the minutiae of weight limits, fuel calculations, supply needs, etc., it seemed a miracle they’d ever gone into space to begin with.
When the meeting ended, Duffy made his way over to her before she could leave the conference room. He came forward with an outstretched hand and, when she took it, he pulled her into a hug. “Here’s our hero,” he said with a grin.
“Oh God, no,” Catherine said, grimacing. “Don’t start that.”
“I damn near did a dance in my living room when I heard you’d come back,” he said, finally letting her go. “Bad enough to lose Ava and the others, but not Catherine the Great.” Duffy eyed her closely. “How is it? Being home?”
“It’s… weird, but good.”
“Come on. We’ve got time for a cup of coffee before we have to meet the rest of the crew.”
Over coffee he filled her in on some of the agency gossip she’d missed out on: who was jockeying for a promotion, who was probably sleeping with whom, all the things the briefings left out.
“We did learn a few things from Sagittarius I before the Event,” Duffy said. “Mike Ozawa figured out pretty quick that we were receiving the data but you weren’t getting our return messages, so he got the engineers working on it. They think they’ve got it resolved. Guess we’ll find out in a couple of years.”
“Road testing new equipment is always exciting.”
“Tell me about it. That’s the problem with what we do, Cath. There’s only so much they can do to re-create actual conditions on the ground.”
“You know, it’s nice talking to another astronaut again,” Catherine admitted. “Someone who gets it.”
“Catherine, I don’t know if any of us can really get what you went through,” Duffy said, playing with the stirrer in his coffee.
“You’ve been out there, though. You get that. Being alone.” Catherine had expected that the feeling of aloneness would stop once she was home, but it lingered like a bad smell. Even though she was home, sometimes it felt as though David and Aimee weren’t really seeing her when they looked at her. Maybe that was because she still didn’t quite know who she was now. Here at NASA, she’d been part of a unit, her crew, for so long. It felt weird to make a decision without running it by Ava, or to get through a day without Richie’s saying something to make her laugh. It was like missing limbs.
“Yeah,” Duffy said quietly. “I do get that. I’m sorry.”
Catherine smiled at him with a tight expression, fighting to keep her eyes dry. “Yeah. I am, too.” She changed the subject. “How is it being flight commander? How’s your crew?”
Now it was Duffy’s turn to grimace. “Oh God they’re young. They’re so young. I hate them.” She laughed, then listened as he went on to give her some background on each of them. By the time they walked toward another, smaller conference room together, she felt as if they were already familiar to her.
Her first thought on entering the conference room was Oh, they are young. Had she ever been that fresh-faced? Llewellyn wasn’t there, and she and Duffy alone didn’t do much to raise the average age of the room.
Some of the faces she’d seen around JSC. Duffy, she knew, of course, and Cal Morganson, in his role as flight activities director. That ought to be fun, Catherine thought dourly.
John squeezed her shoulder and brought her in to face the rest of the room. “Y’all know Catherine, I’m sure. Catherine, this is my crew.” He indicated a woman with a close-cropped Afro and a flyboy smirk. “Leah Morrison’s our pilot.” Catherine recognized a kindred spirit right away. She would bet money that Morrison had been a test pilot once, too.
“I was there the day you took the B-87 prototype for its test run,” Morrison said, standing and offering her hand. “I’m glad it was you flying that day and not me. I was barely out of Basic at the time.”
Catherine laughed and shook Morrison’s hand. “Yeah, they had to go back to the drawing board with that one. I’m just glad both engines didn’t go out.”