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Moving right along . . .
SEP-010, Epilogue, Part 1.
Friday, 19 June 2020.
League City, Texas.
Jamie Cunningham closed the door to her apartment and locked it. Sighing as she turned to walk the short distance to her car through the stifling heat and humidity of the Texas air, she got in and sat in the driver's seat, closing the car door with a slightly effete slam. Rolling her eyes as she pulled the belt buckle out of the way of the door's A-frame, she pulled the door shut again and buckled herself in.
The short distance to the Johnson Space Center took up most of her thought process. Occupying the seat next to her was an enveloped piece of paper she'd tossed as she got in.
She drove into the Administration Building's parking lot and parked her car, and she passed through the security screen with ease. Everyone knew her name now; it took no effort at all to get to where she wanted to go.
She knocked on the door as memories of the last week flooded her brain once more. When she got home after the short ride from Ellington Field, she'd been treated to a hero's welcome. Her neighbors had watched over her flat, and there was tater tot hot dish waiting on her stove for her, her first night back. The meal was delicious, of course, but it couldn't quite make her forget about why she was feeling so despondent since before she'd boarded the airplane that took her away from Florida.
Brian Adkinson was completely incognito, and--
"Come in!"
Edward Foulkes sounded his usual self, she observed dryly as she opened the door with the envelope in her hand. Her other hand -- the one she used to open the door -- had a betraying case of the shakes.
"Ahh. Jamie. Have a seat," He prompted, and she dutifully sat.
"How are you doing today, Mr. Foulkes?" She mumbled as her heart pounded inside her chest.
"Just fine. What can I do for you, today?"
Jamie shut her eyes as she thought about the multitude of reasons why she was sitting in his office.
Part of her problem was on the surface: the fact she was no longer in a position to see the Earth's beauty for what it really was . . . and the other part was that it looked, for all intents and purposes that she had personally well and totally screwed the Manned Space Program into oblivion -- first by critically damaging a spacecraft, second by chewing out the people watching over her, over the air, and thirdly by being part of a mission where an astronaut had fallen seriously ill. And it did sound serious; she could have heard more than a faint mumbled whisper that he was doing OK by now.
She spent many hours jogging around the streets around her apartment in her spare time to come to the decision she made. With a sense of trepidation, she laid the envelope on Foulkes' desk, and he opened it. Pulling out the piece of paper, he read it:
"What's this?" He asked flatly.
"My resignation," Jamie said numbly.
Foulkes froze, and his eyes hardened immediately.
"Jamie, I'm speaking to you not as Director of Flight Operations, but as a fellow human being. Are we clear?"
"Perfectly," Jamie replied quietly.
"Good," Foulkes growled. "I have to say I'm not a big fan of a couple of things you did up there, but . . . having said that, there's something I want to show you." He swiveled his chair, picked up a box, and swiveled back to face her.
"Open it," He commanded.
Jamie hesitated only for an instant. She pulled the top off the box and peered inside. The box was filled to the top with--
"Those are cards for you," Foulkes explained. "Cards . . . correspondence . . . fan mail, even."
Jamie cocked her head, and her eyebrows narrowed.
"I don't understand," She murmured.
"There's also this," Foulkes said as he pulled another box onto his desk from the floor. He pulled out a newspaper and set it in front of him.
"That's you," He said, pointing to the large headline from the New York Times: "ASTRONAUT LANDS CRIPPLED SPACECRAFT AT KENNEDY." He placed another newspaper onto his desk; this one from USA Today.
"That's also you," He said. He placed a third newspaper on the desk.
"That's you . . ."
And a fourth . . . and a fifth . . . and a sixth.
"Wow," Jamie breathed as she stared at the pile on the desk.
"The, uh, issue from the Minneapolis Star Tribune was the most flattering, I think," Foulkes said. His expression hardened again, and she wiped her hand across her nose.
"Are you willing to re-think your resignation?" He asked directly. His eyes burned into hers, and she tore her face away from his deadly serious expression.
"I don't know," She admitted. "I screwed up really badly, you know."
Foulkes smiled, and she looked again into his eyes as he held his expression. The thought occurred to her just then that he didn't look like the director of operations for one of the more prestigious government agencies in the United States of America; he looked more like her grandfather just then.
"We never expect any flight into space to go perfectly," He said.
There was a knock at the door.
"Come in!" He barked.
The door opened, and James Ahern walked in, followed by two other people. Jamie Cunningham's heart immediately raced when she saw the first of the two enter; she decided long ago that she could never forget Svetlana Zaytseva's face.
Svetlana smiled broadly as she entered the office, and Jamie shot to her feet.
"Svetlana!" She cried out.
"Hello!" Svetlana said as they embraced.
"What are you doing here?"
"I asked them to come here," Foulkes said, and Jamie let go of Svetlana to turn towards the desk.
"It's true," Ahern said. "He said we should hang around the office for a few days after you got in town."
"I didn't want to leave certain details of your mission debriefing unsettled," Foulkes explained. "Won't you all have a seat, please, while I clear off my desk?"
"Sure," Jamie said.
As Foulkes labored to remove both boxes of fan mail while the rest of the group filed into their seats, Jamie's attention turned to the man who sat to Svetlana's left. He was tall, had dark brown (almost black) hair, blue eyes, a severe nose overlooking a bony, yet muscular face. His body reflected that same leanness; that same efficiency of build: like a panther coiled to strike. He returned her scrutiny with a curious gaze of his own, and he cleared his throat.
"K'to onnah?" He asked quietly, pensively, and Svetlana turned her head to address him casually.
Jamie tried hard to catch the next snippet of conversation. She really did. Unfortunately, Russian was not one of the language skills she picked up either in high school or at the university, and Svetlana spoke too quickly for her to pick up anything intelligible.
It was a moot point; he heard what he needed to hear, and he nodded smartly to her, which only made her even more uncomfortable than she just was.
The side conversation attracted Foulkes' attention, and he cleared his throat.
"I'm sorry. Forgive my manners. Svetlana, would you?"
"Certainly," Svetlana replied. She turned her head to address Jamie. "Jamie Cunningham, this is Aleksander Andreyevich Zaytsev; my brother."
Jamie nodded. "A . . . pleasure?" She ventured.
"We have heard all about you," Zaytsev said. His accent was heavy, but understandable. "Thank you for saving my sister."
"You're welcome," Jamie murmured quietly.
There was another knock at the door.
"Come in!" Foulkes barked again, and the door opened.
"Sorry I'm late," Jamie heard, and for a moment akin to Planck time, her heart stopped beating. She knew that voice. Her head shot to the door, and Brian Adkinson beamed at her.
His face immediately put her at odds with the sudden overwhelming joy she felt. There were fresh lines in his skin, his eyes looked sunken in slightly, and he wore a hat.
"Hiya, kiddo!" He said as Jim Ahern stood up to vacate the seat next to Jamie, and he took it.
Jamie found herself suddenly speechless. She thought Brian Adkinson never wore hats; the one he wore was the standard chapeau one could pick up at the tourist trap on the way out of the visitor's complex. Her eyes hardened slightly as she scrutinized his face, and his happy expression started to drain.
"What happened to you?" She finally had the strength to say, and it came out of her mouth from the basement of her feet.
"Chemotherapy," He said softly, and Jamie swallowed hard. "I, uh, lost all my hair. At least the part that means something." He reached for his hat. Jamie shot her hand out, grabbing his wrist, and she held it steady.
"Don't," She whispered as the room became uncomfortably silent.
"I'll be okay," He said. "The doctors said I've got some sort of low-grade leukemia; probably picked it up in space. I'm on the best medical insurance the government can afford, of course, and I'll be getting the best care I can get until I beat this thing."
Jamie's eyes shut hard. Did he have to use that word?
"So yeah. I'll be out for a little while; the doctors said we caught this right away, and that's a good thing."
Foulkes nodded. "Which, incidentally, brings me to what I wanted to talk with you all about."
"I'm all ears," Adkinson said.
"Aleksander, could you shut the door, please?"
"Yes."
As Zaytsev stood, and crossed the room to shut the door, Jamie worked hard at keeping her heart from racing, and she felt her eyes glassing over.
"Oh my god," She muttered coldly under her breath. She already lost one best friend in her life . . . and now she found the knowing worse than the not knowing. Brian Adkinson was alive . . . and not well . . . and she felt extremely conflicted in her heart. She felt . . . anger . . . well up inside her.
Rage was more like it.
It was insidious. It was unstoppable. And it was coming from her core.
She knew her motives for going into the space program . . . knew the things that were keeping her going, and she knew that they did not come from within. She knew that she was too weak to continue on her own in this lofty profession. Especially alone. The fact she abjectly needed people to support her and hold her stinking hand at all times galled her just then, and she glanced at Edward Foulkes and silently cursed him for refusing to let her go.
He had played a dirty trick to try to distract her . . . to keep her from just walking away.
And the hell of it was, it worked.
She glanced at the floor . . . at the boxes representing the thoughts of literally thousands of people . . . all of whom had taken the time out of their own busy lives to actually write her . . . and it frankly pissed her off.
She had no business being an astronaut. She'd already screwed up her own life -- spending so much time eating up the federal budget pretending to be someone she wasn't -- and the fact she'd been a part of screwing up someone else's life scared the hell out of her. She--
"Jamie, are you aware you're thinking out loud?" Adkinson demanded.
She froze. Glancing around the room at everyone staring at her, she swallowed.
"I was?" She blurted dumbly, and Foulkes nodded slowly. His fingers were steepled under his chin as he watched her carefully, and she cleared her throat.
"Now that Jamie has voiced how she's really feeling," Foulkes said lowly, "I think it'd be a wonderful time to discuss what we're all doing here today. Svetlana?"
"Certainly," Svetlana replied. "As many of you know, I was tasked to come to Florida before this mission went underway. I almost did not make it."
Jamie snorted as she remembered the meeting more than a month ago.
"I came here under the guise as a medical adjunct," Svetlana continued, "though I wear many hats."
Jamie's eyes narrowed. What was she getting on about?
"Continue," Foulkes said.
"As many of you know, our own agency has been trying to develop their own space plane for many years," Svetlana continued. "For many reasons, development outside of the drawing board has not been possible. We have been working on realizing several projects at the same time, while fighting a bad economy, poor infrastructure and undisciplined workers," She finished sourly.
"Which brings us into a new international project," Foulkes said. "I know the outcome of mission ten wasn't as optimal as everyone had hoped. I can tell you that we are going to spend some time grounded while I try to convince the Senate that this is a worthwhile project."
Jamie guffawed in disgust.
"It will get easier," He intoned his words at Jamie, "once certain items in our deck fall into line. I'm authorized to tell you all that Astronaut Group 21 has been selected, and you all are going to participate in training the new recruits. All of you."
Jamie stared at Edward Foulkes dumbly. She remembered not that long ago just graduating from her training, and she suddenly felt too green to take this on. He smiled at her.
"Jim Ahern will head the training department along with Kyle Martinson; you all will report to him here," He said. "Jamie, I want you teaching aerial skills . . . and work on getting the best leaders out of this class. You had one hell of a run up there, and people are going to be looking up to you. You no longer have an option to screw this one up."
She shot him a defiant glance, and he smiled softly at her.
"Brian, I want you teaching classroom theory, and I want you to get a few of the more capricious ones drunk at least once a week so you can babble on about the good old days," Foulkes continued.
"Not a problem," Adkinson said.
"Good," Foulkes said. "Now the meat of the story that I'm authorized to tell you about is this: The Russians are going forward with building their own space plane. They're going to replace their Soyuz rockets with that. We're going to continue using Constitution and Enterprise, and we're all going to build another station."
Jamie cocked her head inquisitively, and her pique suddenly vanished.
"That's right," He said to her. "We've been working on this one for a while now, and we're confident assuming no more Acts of God happen, we can start laying the core modules in a couple of years. In Lunar orbit. Jamie," He pitched his voice lower as he leaned forward to address her more personally, "do you think you can stick around long enough to help see that happen?"
* * *
SEP-010, Epilogue, Part 1.
Friday, 19 June 2020.
League City, Texas.
Jamie Cunningham closed the door to her apartment and locked it. Sighing as she turned to walk the short distance to her car through the stifling heat and humidity of the Texas air, she got in and sat in the driver's seat, closing the car door with a slightly effete slam. Rolling her eyes as she pulled the belt buckle out of the way of the door's A-frame, she pulled the door shut again and buckled herself in.
The short distance to the Johnson Space Center took up most of her thought process. Occupying the seat next to her was an enveloped piece of paper she'd tossed as she got in.
She drove into the Administration Building's parking lot and parked her car, and she passed through the security screen with ease. Everyone knew her name now; it took no effort at all to get to where she wanted to go.
She knocked on the door as memories of the last week flooded her brain once more. When she got home after the short ride from Ellington Field, she'd been treated to a hero's welcome. Her neighbors had watched over her flat, and there was tater tot hot dish waiting on her stove for her, her first night back. The meal was delicious, of course, but it couldn't quite make her forget about why she was feeling so despondent since before she'd boarded the airplane that took her away from Florida.
Brian Adkinson was completely incognito, and--
"Come in!"
Edward Foulkes sounded his usual self, she observed dryly as she opened the door with the envelope in her hand. Her other hand -- the one she used to open the door -- had a betraying case of the shakes.
"Ahh. Jamie. Have a seat," He prompted, and she dutifully sat.
"How are you doing today, Mr. Foulkes?" She mumbled as her heart pounded inside her chest.
"Just fine. What can I do for you, today?"
Jamie shut her eyes as she thought about the multitude of reasons why she was sitting in his office.
Part of her problem was on the surface: the fact she was no longer in a position to see the Earth's beauty for what it really was . . . and the other part was that it looked, for all intents and purposes that she had personally well and totally screwed the Manned Space Program into oblivion -- first by critically damaging a spacecraft, second by chewing out the people watching over her, over the air, and thirdly by being part of a mission where an astronaut had fallen seriously ill. And it did sound serious; she could have heard more than a faint mumbled whisper that he was doing OK by now.
She spent many hours jogging around the streets around her apartment in her spare time to come to the decision she made. With a sense of trepidation, she laid the envelope on Foulkes' desk, and he opened it. Pulling out the piece of paper, he read it:
Friday, June 19, 2020.
From Jamie Cunningham, Astronaut Group 20.
To Edward Foulkes, Director of Flight Operations.
Dear Mr. Foulkes,
Please accept my notice of resignation from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, effective immediately.
I am no longer capable of carrying out my duties as astronaut in a professional, detached manner, as I feel personally responsible for the wrecking of such an expensive machine as Constitution is. Please understand that I hold the space agency in the highest regard, and I do not wish to besmirch such an impressive, historic organization with my presence and antics anymore. I will continue to watch and support NASA's developments with the utmost interest and support that I can deliver, though I feel I no longer have any place participating in developing the agency's future personally.
With highest regards, and with the deepest thanks for every opportunity this agency has bestowed upon me, I must now bid farewell.
Sincerely,
"What's this?" He asked flatly.
"My resignation," Jamie said numbly.
Foulkes froze, and his eyes hardened immediately.
"Jamie, I'm speaking to you not as Director of Flight Operations, but as a fellow human being. Are we clear?"
"Perfectly," Jamie replied quietly.
"Good," Foulkes growled. "I have to say I'm not a big fan of a couple of things you did up there, but . . . having said that, there's something I want to show you." He swiveled his chair, picked up a box, and swiveled back to face her.
"Open it," He commanded.
Jamie hesitated only for an instant. She pulled the top off the box and peered inside. The box was filled to the top with--
"Those are cards for you," Foulkes explained. "Cards . . . correspondence . . . fan mail, even."
Jamie cocked her head, and her eyebrows narrowed.
"I don't understand," She murmured.
"There's also this," Foulkes said as he pulled another box onto his desk from the floor. He pulled out a newspaper and set it in front of him.
"That's you," He said, pointing to the large headline from the New York Times: "ASTRONAUT LANDS CRIPPLED SPACECRAFT AT KENNEDY." He placed another newspaper onto his desk; this one from USA Today.
"That's also you," He said. He placed a third newspaper on the desk.
"That's you . . ."
And a fourth . . . and a fifth . . . and a sixth.
"Wow," Jamie breathed as she stared at the pile on the desk.
"The, uh, issue from the Minneapolis Star Tribune was the most flattering, I think," Foulkes said. His expression hardened again, and she wiped her hand across her nose.
"Are you willing to re-think your resignation?" He asked directly. His eyes burned into hers, and she tore her face away from his deadly serious expression.
"I don't know," She admitted. "I screwed up really badly, you know."
Foulkes smiled, and she looked again into his eyes as he held his expression. The thought occurred to her just then that he didn't look like the director of operations for one of the more prestigious government agencies in the United States of America; he looked more like her grandfather just then.
"We never expect any flight into space to go perfectly," He said.
There was a knock at the door.
"Come in!" He barked.
The door opened, and James Ahern walked in, followed by two other people. Jamie Cunningham's heart immediately raced when she saw the first of the two enter; she decided long ago that she could never forget Svetlana Zaytseva's face.
Svetlana smiled broadly as she entered the office, and Jamie shot to her feet.
"Svetlana!" She cried out.
"Hello!" Svetlana said as they embraced.
"What are you doing here?"
"I asked them to come here," Foulkes said, and Jamie let go of Svetlana to turn towards the desk.
"It's true," Ahern said. "He said we should hang around the office for a few days after you got in town."
"I didn't want to leave certain details of your mission debriefing unsettled," Foulkes explained. "Won't you all have a seat, please, while I clear off my desk?"
"Sure," Jamie said.
As Foulkes labored to remove both boxes of fan mail while the rest of the group filed into their seats, Jamie's attention turned to the man who sat to Svetlana's left. He was tall, had dark brown (almost black) hair, blue eyes, a severe nose overlooking a bony, yet muscular face. His body reflected that same leanness; that same efficiency of build: like a panther coiled to strike. He returned her scrutiny with a curious gaze of his own, and he cleared his throat.
"K'to onnah?" He asked quietly, pensively, and Svetlana turned her head to address him casually.
Jamie tried hard to catch the next snippet of conversation. She really did. Unfortunately, Russian was not one of the language skills she picked up either in high school or at the university, and Svetlana spoke too quickly for her to pick up anything intelligible.
It was a moot point; he heard what he needed to hear, and he nodded smartly to her, which only made her even more uncomfortable than she just was.
The side conversation attracted Foulkes' attention, and he cleared his throat.
"I'm sorry. Forgive my manners. Svetlana, would you?"
"Certainly," Svetlana replied. She turned her head to address Jamie. "Jamie Cunningham, this is Aleksander Andreyevich Zaytsev; my brother."
Jamie nodded. "A . . . pleasure?" She ventured.
"We have heard all about you," Zaytsev said. His accent was heavy, but understandable. "Thank you for saving my sister."
"You're welcome," Jamie murmured quietly.
There was another knock at the door.
"Come in!" Foulkes barked again, and the door opened.
"Sorry I'm late," Jamie heard, and for a moment akin to Planck time, her heart stopped beating. She knew that voice. Her head shot to the door, and Brian Adkinson beamed at her.
His face immediately put her at odds with the sudden overwhelming joy she felt. There were fresh lines in his skin, his eyes looked sunken in slightly, and he wore a hat.
"Hiya, kiddo!" He said as Jim Ahern stood up to vacate the seat next to Jamie, and he took it.
Jamie found herself suddenly speechless. She thought Brian Adkinson never wore hats; the one he wore was the standard chapeau one could pick up at the tourist trap on the way out of the visitor's complex. Her eyes hardened slightly as she scrutinized his face, and his happy expression started to drain.
"What happened to you?" She finally had the strength to say, and it came out of her mouth from the basement of her feet.
"Chemotherapy," He said softly, and Jamie swallowed hard. "I, uh, lost all my hair. At least the part that means something." He reached for his hat. Jamie shot her hand out, grabbing his wrist, and she held it steady.
"Don't," She whispered as the room became uncomfortably silent.
"I'll be okay," He said. "The doctors said I've got some sort of low-grade leukemia; probably picked it up in space. I'm on the best medical insurance the government can afford, of course, and I'll be getting the best care I can get until I beat this thing."
Jamie's eyes shut hard. Did he have to use that word?
"So yeah. I'll be out for a little while; the doctors said we caught this right away, and that's a good thing."
Foulkes nodded. "Which, incidentally, brings me to what I wanted to talk with you all about."
"I'm all ears," Adkinson said.
"Aleksander, could you shut the door, please?"
"Yes."
As Zaytsev stood, and crossed the room to shut the door, Jamie worked hard at keeping her heart from racing, and she felt her eyes glassing over.
"Oh my god," She muttered coldly under her breath. She already lost one best friend in her life . . . and now she found the knowing worse than the not knowing. Brian Adkinson was alive . . . and not well . . . and she felt extremely conflicted in her heart. She felt . . . anger . . . well up inside her.
Rage was more like it.
It was insidious. It was unstoppable. And it was coming from her core.
She knew her motives for going into the space program . . . knew the things that were keeping her going, and she knew that they did not come from within. She knew that she was too weak to continue on her own in this lofty profession. Especially alone. The fact she abjectly needed people to support her and hold her stinking hand at all times galled her just then, and she glanced at Edward Foulkes and silently cursed him for refusing to let her go.
He had played a dirty trick to try to distract her . . . to keep her from just walking away.
And the hell of it was, it worked.
She glanced at the floor . . . at the boxes representing the thoughts of literally thousands of people . . . all of whom had taken the time out of their own busy lives to actually write her . . . and it frankly pissed her off.
She had no business being an astronaut. She'd already screwed up her own life -- spending so much time eating up the federal budget pretending to be someone she wasn't -- and the fact she'd been a part of screwing up someone else's life scared the hell out of her. She--
"Jamie, are you aware you're thinking out loud?" Adkinson demanded.
She froze. Glancing around the room at everyone staring at her, she swallowed.
"I was?" She blurted dumbly, and Foulkes nodded slowly. His fingers were steepled under his chin as he watched her carefully, and she cleared her throat.
"Now that Jamie has voiced how she's really feeling," Foulkes said lowly, "I think it'd be a wonderful time to discuss what we're all doing here today. Svetlana?"
"Certainly," Svetlana replied. "As many of you know, I was tasked to come to Florida before this mission went underway. I almost did not make it."
Jamie snorted as she remembered the meeting more than a month ago.
"I came here under the guise as a medical adjunct," Svetlana continued, "though I wear many hats."
Jamie's eyes narrowed. What was she getting on about?
"Continue," Foulkes said.
"As many of you know, our own agency has been trying to develop their own space plane for many years," Svetlana continued. "For many reasons, development outside of the drawing board has not been possible. We have been working on realizing several projects at the same time, while fighting a bad economy, poor infrastructure and undisciplined workers," She finished sourly.
"Which brings us into a new international project," Foulkes said. "I know the outcome of mission ten wasn't as optimal as everyone had hoped. I can tell you that we are going to spend some time grounded while I try to convince the Senate that this is a worthwhile project."
Jamie guffawed in disgust.
"It will get easier," He intoned his words at Jamie, "once certain items in our deck fall into line. I'm authorized to tell you all that Astronaut Group 21 has been selected, and you all are going to participate in training the new recruits. All of you."
Jamie stared at Edward Foulkes dumbly. She remembered not that long ago just graduating from her training, and she suddenly felt too green to take this on. He smiled at her.
"Jim Ahern will head the training department along with Kyle Martinson; you all will report to him here," He said. "Jamie, I want you teaching aerial skills . . . and work on getting the best leaders out of this class. You had one hell of a run up there, and people are going to be looking up to you. You no longer have an option to screw this one up."
She shot him a defiant glance, and he smiled softly at her.
"Brian, I want you teaching classroom theory, and I want you to get a few of the more capricious ones drunk at least once a week so you can babble on about the good old days," Foulkes continued.
"Not a problem," Adkinson said.
"Good," Foulkes said. "Now the meat of the story that I'm authorized to tell you about is this: The Russians are going forward with building their own space plane. They're going to replace their Soyuz rockets with that. We're going to continue using Constitution and Enterprise, and we're all going to build another station."
Jamie cocked her head inquisitively, and her pique suddenly vanished.
"That's right," He said to her. "We've been working on this one for a while now, and we're confident assuming no more Acts of God happen, we can start laying the core modules in a couple of years. In Lunar orbit. Jamie," He pitched his voice lower as he leaned forward to address her more personally, "do you think you can stick around long enough to help see that happen?"
* * *
