Which turned out to be the real point. Raoul was torn.
Katherine told him that evening. The father was yet again the last to hear.
To her amazement, Julia heard all about his reaction the next morning.
Now that Katherine was not going, she opened up. Became a babbler. Told Julia how Raoul had been made speechless and round-eyed the night before, gone out, slammed the door. Had come back two hours later, confronted her. He had the same conclusion: “For an astronaut, there are no accidental pregnancies.” Meaning that they all kept precise track of their bodies, the sometimes errant machines that carried them inside other machines into the black sky.
Julia had the bad luck to be alone with the two of them that morning. Raoul both wanted to talk and didn’t, starting to edge up on the subject, then sliding away. Katherine was going to tell Axelrod and stand down from the mission. “But that’ll scrap the whole flight,” Raoul said at last.
“Possibly,” Julia said carefully. “We could find a replacement pilot.” Though she had no idea how.
“I will not consider an abortion,” Katherine said.
They all stared miserably at the floor of their small coffee lounge. Between Katherine and Raoul hung the air of a played-out argument, nothing left to say.
“I’ve got to tell him.” Katherine hauled herself to her feet.
“Let me think,” Raoul pleaded.
“Got to,” Katherine said forlornly, and left.
When he heard the news, Axelrod just gaped. Katherine described to Julia the man’s stunned silence, his inability to muster any of that rogue charm. She had delivered the news and walked out, leaving him staring blankly at his magnificent view of the Johnson Space Center complex.
Raoul spent the day in his training exercises, not far from Julia. She understood him and wondered what she could do to help. Like them all, he wanted Mars, bad. More importantly to his crewmates, he was a master mechanic who had worked on Mars technology development constantly since his first missions to the space station. Without him their chances of survival were significantly worse.
Julia told Viktor, of course. “He must go,” Viktor said. “Pilots are easier to replace than Raoul.” He included himself.
Axelrod came and hauled Raoul away, brushing aside flight director Brad Fowler’s objections to any interruption in the training schedule. For an hour Julia labored away at her tasks, knowing that up on the top floor Axelrod was attempting to persuade Raoul. Imaginary dialogues ran through her head while she toiled at integrating electronics and analog/manual systems, the legacy of the digital age. On Mars, brute force might well be more reliable than the latest snazzy chip from a hot manufacturer—but try to tell that to the whiz kids designing stuff these days.
Word had spread somehow among the crews and she could feel the unease in all the teams around her. The afternoon wore on. The PR people heard of it. She wondered who told them, then guessed that the savvy publicists had created a secret network of informants inside the Consortium, both to head off bad news and to ferret out the good. Nobody worked merely through channels, not in a seat-of-the-pants operation like this.
To Julia’s amazement, Raoul came back to the training modules around six P.M., just as everybody was starting to show signs of wear. He had found Katherine and had it out. Unbidden, Julia and Viktor went to the coffee lounge and joined Raoul there. He wasted no words. “I will remain on the crew.”
“My…” was all Julia could muster. “Axelrod—”
“It was not his arguments that made me stay. He even offered money, but no—it was the mission. I could not be who I am if I did not go.”
Julia saw what he meant, something in the crinkled eyes and twisted mouth. Between him and Katherine things could not have worked. This way, though he would not see her for two and a half years, they would still have goals in common—the baby, and Mars. One goal each. Somehow this delicate equilibrium had been worked out during the long, bone-wearying day. She did not truly want to know how they had done this; some things were better left forever private. He would be gone before their child was born, and might never see it. But he could do nothing else.
For some reason, Katherine could not do otherwise either. Why had she precipitated this crisis? Some mysterious chemistry of motherhood, Mars, and…what? Julia had often wondered about this element in herself, the unlit cellars of her mind. Women astronauts usually had decided long ago not to have children. They had unbearably complicated careers. Katherine was mid-thirties, her clock ticking loudly. Had it simply swamped her other voices?
That evening Julia tried to talk to Katherine, more out of curiosity than any impulse to help the mission. But Katherine would not come forth. From that day on, she would not speak to the press or to the Consortium team. For all purposes, she simply vanished from their tracking scope, a fallen flyer.
A day later she ran into Raoul outside the simulator quad. He glanced at her, away, back. “Julia?”
“Hey, hi.” She felt awkward and started to walk on.
“Uh, got a minute?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Come in here.”
Into an alcove for suit-up prep. With all the work suites and suits, there was only room to stand. He turned and his eyes were big, brown pleas.
They were alone because the techs and support staff were off fixing some sudden glitch in the electronics, a colossal board malf nobody understood. Old boards, not the new top-of-the-line antimonide layers Axelrod was springing for, of course. They were going to Mars first class. Especially if it saved weight.
She waited and finally realized that he wasn’t going to say anything. Couldn’t. Maybe shouldn’t.
“So, uh, how’d it go with her?” That was as much as she was going to give him. He had to come some of the distance himself, for Chris-sake.
“I…we talked. You know, I know, everybody knows that…that she had to know.”
“You said that.”
“Yeah.” A sigh of release, head lolling back.
“And she said…?”
“She wouldn’t really say, not right out.”
“Uh huh.” God, other people’s relationships.
“But, I mean, we knew what we were saying.”
More than I can say, but keep it coming, kid. “She admitted that she got pregnant knowingly? Even though it meant Mars was out?”
“Like I say, she never said it clear like that. But I got her meaning.” He was opening now, his face less constricted, voice rushing on, tones more earnest yet less fevered. “Way I figure it, she was an astronaut all along, childhood dream and all that, like the rest of us. Only now she’s done that. So it’s a baby or Mars, and she wants the baby.”
