The Astronaut's Wife

1

The firm and authoritative voice came through a crackling cloud of static.

“Victory, we are at T-minus thirty-one seconds, your onboard computers are functioning. Start auto sequence.”

Mission Control was talking to the space shuffle Victory. The great pile of vehicle was standing straight up on the launch pad, ready to blast off and head for space. The whole machine was made up of several components: the familiar and elegant winged orbiter, two solid rocket boosters, and a giant external tank.

Despite all the talk about onboard computers, for the next few minutes the Victory would be dealing with a technology as complicated as an ordinary bottle rocket. Spencer and Alex Streck and the rest of the crew were strapped into the orbiter fifteen stories above the ground, the larger portion of which was stuffed with hundred of tons of volatile fuel. In a moment or two, someone would set fire to it and they would be on their way.

The voice of Mission Control seemed to pervade the very air of the Cape. Jillian Armacost had been through it so many times she could imagine every order, every check, every response as they went over the air between Mission Control and the shut-de itself.

Jillian stood at the open French windows of her house. Far on the horizon, thrusting up into the blue of a Florida morning sky like a skyscraper, was the shuttle and the ugly steel fretwork of the attendant gantry. She stared out through the humid air, not quite able to believe that her beloved husband was strapped into a seat atop that strange, rather alien contraption.

The countdown to liftoff had started and was well along. Jillian could imagine the voice. “T-minus 14, 13, 12, 11…”

Suddenly Jillian felt a chill and she wrapped her arms around herself. She trembled slightly.

“Ten, ignition on. T-minus 9, 8, 7…”

From far off came the sound of a low rumbling. “Six… Engine start…” The rumbling grew in intensity as the sound waves moved across the flat landscape.

“Four, 3, 2, 1. Zero and liftoff…”

The window in front of Jillian vibrated slightly as the sound ricocheted off the thin panes. She reached and touched the trembling glass, as if connecting herself to the sound connected her to the craft quivering on the horizon. It was as if the shuttle was anxious to be gone, desperate to shake off the bounds of tiresome gravity.

Spencer spoke for the first time. “Mission Control, this is Victory. We have left the pad…” It was a remarkably prosaic way of saying that tons of volatile fuel were burning up, pushing another huge hunk of metal into the sky.

“Roger that, Victory,” Mission Control responded. “You are go for throttle up…

“Mission Control,” Spencer answered, “we have throttle up. It is a fine day for flying, Houston…”

Jillian watched as the shuttle emerged from the vast blizzard of smoke, its snub nose pointed straight toward the sky. No matter how many times Jillian had seen a launch, this great eruption of smoke and steel, she always felt that the module rose out of the dramatic upheaval slowly and tentatively, as if straining to make it into the sky like a weak fledgling new from the nest. It seemed to move so slowly that she half expected the entire contraption to fall over, sloping to one side like a tottering drunk, unable to stand the forces of staying upright for another second. She did not know she was holding her breath, but she was.

Two minutes into the flight, the boosters were used up and separated from the craft. Whle they appeared to float gracefully away from the main body of the vessel, the separation was actually a gut-wrenching yank that no matter how many times Spencer felt it, it seemed as if the whole ship was being ripped apart. You never got used it.

“Mission Control, we are standing by for SRB separation,” said Spencer, bracing himself for what came next.

Even worse than that first separation, though, was the next phase of the flight which came a mere six minutes later. After about eight minutes of flight the shuttle was shaken by a terrifying explosion, and the huge external tank separated from the main body of the vessel.

“Separation confirmed,” said Spencer. The trim of the vessel changed dramatically. It seemed to have been shot out of a sling, picking up speed at a dramatic rate as it lost weight. “Houston, we are at eighteen thousand knots and accelerating.”

The fire was blinding. The roaring of the engines deafening. The sky had changed in color, from dark blue, then pale, then darkness. Houston came up: “You are go for main engine shut-off.”

Abruptly the overwhelming roar of the engines vanished and there was no sound. No sound at all. The silence was so complete and so sudden you could almost feel it.

The silence was pierced for a moment or two as Alex Streck fired short burns from the shuttle’s pair of maneuvering engines. Those small blasts pushed the craft over the momentous hump, the amazing transition from earth to space.

Spencer’s voice was conversational in tone, as if he had nothing more important to announce than what was for lunch. “We have main engine shut-off,” Spencer calmly informed Mission Control. “We are now in orbit…” Jillian spun the globe. The orb whirled around, the countries and the oceans blending together until the whole world seemed to be a multi-colored mass. Then she put her hand out and stopped it abruptly. She looked around the room and down at the bright faces of her second grade class. Twenty-four boys and girls stared back at her, each one hanging on her every word.

“What do they have in Kansas?” Jillian asked. Instantly, there was a chorus of voices responding to her question.

“Corn!”

Jillian thought for a moment to think of another question. “And what do they have in… Georgia?”

“Peaches! “the class answered instantly.

Jillian jabbed a tiny portion of the globe. “And what do we have right here in Florida?” she asked.

Everyone in the class responded with alacrity. “We have oranges in Florida!”

Well, all but one said that. A lone little boy answered, “We have rocket ships!” His eyes were bright at the very thought of such magical contraptions.

Jillian smiled at her space-obsessed pupil. “Yes, Calvin, oranges and rocket ships.”

Just then the door of the classroom opened and young girl, a child a little older than the pupils in Jillian Armacost’s class, came bustling, bursting with self-importance, into the room.

“What is it, Lynne?” Jillian asked.

“Mrs. Whitfield sent me here with a message for you,” the girl said excitedly. Mrs. Whitfield was the formidable principal of the elementary school.

“What’s the message?”

“Mrs. Armacost, you got a phone call!”

Phone calls at school were so out of the ordinary daily routine of the day that it was with a mixture of apprehension tinged with a distinct sense of curiosity about who might be calling her in the middle of the working day.

The secretaries in the school office were full of inquiring looks, consumed, as Jillian was, by curiosity.

She picked up the phone. “Hello?”

The response was a man’s voice, a voice she did not recognize. “Is that Mrs. Armacost?”

“Yes,” she said, her heart sinking. She knew the voice of NASA when she heard it. She could not help but wonder if something terrible had happened to her husband. “Yes, this is Jillian Armacost.”

Jillian had guessed correctly. “This is NASA communications,” said the man. “We have your husband for you.”

The man made it all sound so simple, as if he was putting through a call from somewhere nearby—across town maybe—as opposed to from high up in outer space.

Jillian felt a tremor of excitement flash through her body. “You…, you have my what?”

“Stay on the line please…”

There was a crackle of static on the line, then Jillian heard the man say, “Go ahead, Commander.”

There was another burst of static, as if the atmosphere was clearing its throat, then to Jillian’s astonishment, she heard Spencer’s voice come on the line. “Jillian? Are you there?”

Jillian seemed even more surprised than she had been a moment before. “Spencer? Is that you?”

“Can you hear me?” It was definitely Spencer’s voice, but there was an aerated, hollow quality to it, as if they were on a very long distance call. Which, Jillian thought, was exactly what they were doing.

“Spencer, I can’t believe this,” Jillian ex-claimed. “How did this happen?”

Through the ether, Jillian heard her husband laugh. The sound made her shiver with delight. “I told you I’d call you,” he said, continuing to chuckle. “It’s amazing isn’t it.”

As if to compensate for the immense distance, Jillian could only shout into the phone, her voice seeming to ring through the entire school building. “Yes, amazing,” she yelled.

There was a moment of silence as they listened to their connection, each straining to hear the other breathe.

Finally Spencer broke the silence. And he did it in a typically Spencer fashion. “Hey, Jill?”

“Yes?”

“Tell me something. It’s really important, okay?” There was a note of urgency in his voice that sent her levels of anxiety skyrocketing once again.

“Yes, Spencer,” she said nervously. “What is it?”

“You have to tell me…”

“Yes?”

“What are you wearing?” She could hear the laughter in his voice and she wanted to slap him and kiss him at the same time. “I have to know, Jillian.”

“Spencer…” said Jillian reprovingly, as if she was threatening one of her little students with a time-out.

“Come on,” Spencer replied. “no one else is listening… C’mon, tell me. It’s just you and me.”

An apologetic-sounding male voice broke in on the line. “Uh, not exactly, Commander,” he said a touch sheepishly. “Including Houston and Jet Propulsion Labs, there are about three hundred folks on the line just at the moment.”

Spencer ignored the caution. “Jillian, are you wearing that black skirt of yours? The tight one?”

In spite of being embarrassed Jillian laughed loudly. “Settle down, cowboy. This is a school teacher you’re talking to, you know?”

Spencer laughed and paused a moment before continuing. “Nice day down there, huh?” he asked. “Not a cloud in the sky, right? One of those perfect Florida days…”

“It’s beautiful here,” said Jillian. Then a weird sort of dread overcame her, a panicky feeling that needed to be quelled immediately. He had spoken so wistfully about something so mundane, so workaday, so not Spencer. Why would he be interested in the weather? It was as if he was asking her about something he would never see again, something deep in his past.

“Spencer,” she asked quickly, “where are you?”

Before he could answer, the voice of officialdom, the NASA voice, came back on the line abruptly. “Thirty seconds to go, Commander,” he cautioned.

Jillian felt her panic ratchet up a notch. “Spencer, where exactly are you?”

There was a pause, the briefest delay. It could have been due to the distance of transmission, it could have been reluctance on Spencer’s part. Jillian did not know. She did not care. The hesitation had not lasted a second, not a half second, but it seemed to Jillian to have played out over an hour or more.

“Can you see outside, Jill?” he asked finally.

“Yes, Spencer.” Jillian glanced out of the window in the office. The day was bright and sunny, the sky blue, just as her husband had described it to her a few moments before.

“Fifteen seconds, Commander,” said the guy from Houston.

“Jillian…” said Spencer wistfully. “I am right above you. Right over you now.”

Jillian knew it was foolish, but she couldn’t stop herself. Without thinking about it she pulled the phone cord as far as it would go to the farthest extension of the wire. Then she threw open the window and looked into the sky.

“You looking up?” Spencer asked.

“Ten seconds, Commander…”

“Jillian, smile for me, huh? Okay?”

Jillian gazed into the sky, a smile on her face, but with tears in the corner of her eyes. “I already am.”

“Five seconds, Commander Armacost.” You could almost see the guy with his eyes glued to the digital clock on his console, counting off the seconds.

“Jillian, I—” That was all he managed to say before his voice was lost in a sea of static.

“Spencer?” Jillian sounded as if she was demanding that her husband not leave her.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Armacost,” said the voice of NASA. “We lost the link. But he’s talking to Mission Control right now. Everything is fine. We’ll take good care of him.” That was NASA all over, don’t worry, your kindly old uncle is here, always on the job, taking care of the boys up there in space.

“Thank you,” Jillian whispered. “I know you will.”