1. December 13, 1964
CHAPTER 1
December 13, 1964
DEREK TRAGER
“Good morning, good morning, it’s time to reach for the moon,” Maxine Trager sings to her husband in her slightly off-key, warbling voice. “Good morning, good morning, my love will be home sooooooon.”
Derek laughs at this and reaches for her in their bed, pulling her warm body closer to his.
“Did you sleep at all?” Maxine asks, snuggling into the spoon of his body with the back of hers.
As Derek reaches around his wife’s body, he can feel the swell of her stomach and he lays a palm flat, waiting to see whether or not he’ll get the light quickening of tiny hands and feet from inside her belly. He hasn’t yet, but Maxine can feel the baby moving inside of her, and so he places his palms on her stomach each day, hoping for a greeting from the tiny astronaut who is currently floating around inside the universe of Maxine’s body.
“I slept a bit,” he lies, kissing the back of her neck. In truth, he did not sleep a wink. Being chosen to lead the Gemini orbital mission in Bill Booker’s place had been unexpected, and Derek feels as if he’s been given a gift that he isn’t sure he deserves.
“Let me make you a good breakfast,” Maxine whispers. She turns her body around in his arms until they’re nose-to-nose, and she kisses him gently. “Unless there’s something else you’d like to do first.”
A slow smile spreads across Derek’s tired face as he returns her kiss in a way that lets her know exactly what it is that he’d like to do.
When the Tragers finally emerge from their bedroom—Maxine wrapped in a satin robe, Derek wearing a thick cotton robe and leather slippers—they can hear small, happy noises coming from their daughter’s bedroom. Their son, Ryan, who is a seventh grader, is still asleep.
“I’ll get Wendy up,” Derek says, kissing Maxine on the forehead one more time before he heads to the nursery.
“Dada,” Wendy says, jumping up and down inside her crib. She’s got a stuffed teddy bear in the bed with her, but she’s thrown her favorite blanket over the railing and onto the carpeted bedroom floor. “Night-night,” she says, pointing with one stubby toddler finger at her pink blanket with its satin edging—the blanket she’s referred to as her Night-night ever since she could form the words. “I want.”
“Well, if you want Night-night, you shouldn’t have thrown it, missy,” Derek says, stooping over to scoop up the blanket. He puts it over his shoulder and then holds out both hands, reaching into the crib to take his eighteen-month-old from the bed. He holds her warm, squirming body in his arms and walks over to the bedroom window to open the curtains. “Look what’s outside,” Derek says, smiling as Wendy nuzzles her face against his shoulder, which is really just her nuzzling up to Night-night. “The sun is up.”
Wendy turns her head to look. “Sun,” she says, pointing at the blue sky the same way she’d pointed at the blanket on the floor. “Down.”
Derek puts her down on the floor, and she pulls her blanket off his shoulder so that it’s clutched in her tiny fist and dragging on the carpet behind her.
“I go Mama,” Wendy says, toddling off in her footie pajamas like she’s the boss of her own world.
Derek stays in the nursery for a moment, inhaling the sweet scent of baby powder, lotion, and of his own child. Being an astronaut is exciting and rewarding and fulfilling in all the ways a person would imagine it to be, but being a father, well…that’s something else. The moment his son—his first child—had been cleaned up, bundled, and handed off to him, Derek realized that he’d never known true love before. Ryan’s big, searching eyes followed him everywhere from that very first time he’d looked at him. His reliance on Derek as sole protector, as guide, was absolute—and it’s a feeling that Derek cannot compare to anything else.
And now: a third baby. He stands there as the sunlight streams through the window and warms the shag carpet beneath his feet. Of course, he and Maxine might have waited a bit longer before giving Wendy a little brother or sister, given the choice, but it had taken longer than expected to have another baby after Ryan, and the magic of life has sparked between them again. He couldn’t be happier. So far, they’ve kicked around a few names: Michelle, Matthew, Bridget, maybe Brock. It almost doesn’t matter, because this baby will arrive and announce him or herself to the world, coming into their family with its own personality, forging its own path through life.
It fills Derek with wonder.
“Hon?” Maxine calls from the kitchen. “Coffee.”
Derek straightens the afghan on the back of the rocking chair in the nursery and gives the room—with its pink walls, its pictures of moons and stars and balloons hung over the changing table and the crib—one last glance.
But now it’s time for coffee; he’ll need a lot of coffee to get through this day after a night of no sleep.
* * *
After Derek is showered and dressed, he walks down the hallway to find his wife and daughter in the middle of the living room, still in their pajamas.
“Lazy morning for my girls?” he asks, surveying the open boxes that Maxine is sorting through.
“I wanted to get the ornaments and decorations out. We’ve got less than two weeks until Christmas.” Maxine stands up, one hand on her hip as she turns around in a circle. “I can’t find the tree-topper anywhere.” She frowns and then looks at Derek. “Have you seen it?”
“I have not.” Derek reaches down to touch Wendy’s white-blonde hair as she clings to his leg and looks up at him. “I was just about to ask you if you’d seen my navy blue tie.”
This snaps Maxine out of her decorations dilemma and she claps her hands together just as the telephone rings. “Oh!” she says, stepping over a box and holding up the long skirts of her nightgown and robe as she does. “I have it. Let me get it.”
As she hurries to the laundry room, Maxine stops and lifts the phone from its receiver in the kitchen.
“Hello?” Derek can hear her say, with that little questioning lilt at the end of the word. There’s nothing that he loves more than calling his house to check in on her in the middle of his work day and hearing that soft, precious, “Hello?”
“Oh, Jude,” Maxine says. “Good morning. I’m good, how are you? I know, very exciting. Yes, yes.” Derek can hear the distraction in his wife’s voice as she chats with their next door neighbor, Jude Majors. Jude’s husband, Vance, is one of his coworkers, and the women have gotten closer to one another over the past year or so, though Maxine is always quick to say that while she loves Jude, no one is actually close to Jude Majors; you have to know a person before you can actually get close to them.
“You’re so right,” Maxine is saying into the phone. Her voice filters out from the kitchen, and Wendy runs around, poking her head and hands into the boxes.
Derek keeps an eye on his little girl closely so that she doesn’t pull out anything she shouldn’t be playing with. How does Maxine do this all day—watch a toddler and keep her safe every moment she’s awake? It seems like an impossible task, and rather than admonish his daughter as she reaches for a glass ornament, he takes three big steps in her direction and lifts her up, turning her upside down to her great joy and amusement.
Wendy whoops with laughter as Maxine comes back into the room holding Derek’s necktie.
“That was Jude,” Maxine says unnecessarily. “She called to wish you good luck, and to ask if I wanted to go with her tonight to Jo Booker’s reading at NASA.”
Derek sets Wendy on the floor again, her face now pink and her eyes dancing from the physical play. He stands still as Maxine puts the tie around his neck, pulling one end longer than the other, folding it over the other side, looping it, knotting it, tugging it into position.
Derek pretends to cough like she’s choking him and Maxine laughs, swatting his arm.
“Are you going?” he asks her.
Maxine shrugs, admiring her husband as she swipes a hand down his arm and then over his chest, brushing off invisible lint.
“I might,” she says casually. “I have a sitter lined up in case I feel like it, and it might be something fun to do. It’s impressive anyway, isn’t it?”
“Hmm?” Derek is straightening his own tie now. “What is?”
“You know, a woman raising three kids, writing stories like she does.” Maxine walks back over to one of the open boxes and bends awkwardly at the waist, digging through it as she looks for the star that goes atop the tree. “Most of us just make dinner and raise the kids, but Jo really does it all. And can you believe she named one of her characters Maxine?”
Derek walks up behind his wife, putting his hands on her behind; she straightens up in a hurry, laughing in surprise. “Derek!” she shouts, looking at Wendy as she pulls herself up onto the couch with her Night-night tucked in next to her.
“Oh, all she knows is that her father is making her mother laugh,” Derek says as he leans forward and puts his lips to his wife’s ear. “And as for naming a character Maxine, why wouldn’t she? Only pretty girls are called Maxine.”
Derek smiles as his wife blushes and turns her face into his neck.
“I’ll miss you today,” she whispers. “You smell nice.”
It’s Derek’s turn to laugh. “Does the way I smell have an impact on how much you miss me?”
Maxine stands up on her toes and kisses him fully on the lips. “No, it’s just a nice bonus.”
Derek accepts one more kiss from his wife, picks up Wendy for one last cuddle, and then sets her back down on the couch.
He revs the engine of his white Corvette in the driveway just for good measure and then pulls out onto the street just as Vance Majors opens up his own garage next door. The men exchange a quick wave, and then Derek steps on the gas.
He’s got a mission to lead.
* * *
The day is full of anticipation. Derek drinks too much coffee, listens to everyone intently, and tries to keep his head in the game. He is hyper-focused, but also exhausted from lack of sleep. Still, he will not get a second chance to make a good first impression on Arvin North and the bigwigs at NASA, and he wants this to go well.
It has to go well.
“Trager,” Bill Booker says. It’s late afternoon, and the men are in the preparations area where they suit up for missions. They’ve done a dry dress rehearsal, they’ve gone through all the procedures. They are as ready as they possibly can be for this first space orbital mission.
“Booker,” Derek says in return. Both men put their hands on their hips and face one another. It’s like looking in a mirror.
Bill had been a lieutenant colonel in his previous life, as had Derek. They both wear their hair short, neat, close to the scalp. At about six feet tall, they are both among the tallest of the astronauts, and their personalities are even similar. When Arvin North had taken Bill from the position as lead astronaut and subbed in Derek instead, the switch had made perfect sense.
“Talk to you for a second?” Bill asks, his brow furrowed.
Derek follows him across the high-ceilinged, cement floored space, and they find a quiet corner to talk.
“I have some concerns,” Bill says, running a hand over his face as he talks. His eyes shift around the large room, taking in the astronauts and engineers as they bustle around under the fluorescent lights high above.
Derek feels the bubble in his chest start to deflate; of course Bill Booker has some concerns. Why wouldn't he drum up some concern that might alter the course of this mission now that he's not sitting in the lead seat anymore?
"I'm listening," Derek says gruffly, folding his arms across his chest. In the way that humans tend to mirror one another, Bill does the same.
"Listen, you're not going to like what I'm saying here, but I think it's important."
Derek continues to stare at Bill with a firm look. "Okay."
"There's an issue with the bolts on the door. I don't like the way the latch sticks, and I think if there were any sort of hazardous leak or anything happening inside the capsule, the bolt could be a serious detriment. I'd like to push for postponing and have it looked at."
Derek hears the words, and he understands the severity of the issue. But there's something bothering him about the way that Booker has left this concern for the day of the mission. Couldn't he have brought this up way sooner--even while he was still assigned to lead the mission? Why wait and dump this on someone else?
"We're not even leaving the atmosphere," Derek counters. "This is suborbital. We're testing for different things, and I highly doubt that we'll face anything that even compares to what we'd face once we hit 330,000 feet."
Bill lets his arms fall and he puts both hands in the air, waving them back and forth like an air traffic controller. "No, no, no. You misunderstand me, Derek. This isn't me trying to kill the mission because I'm envious. I can assure you of that.”
Derek lifts an eyebrow, but wisely stops it mid-arch and continues to listen.
"I'm not trying to throw a wrench in this because I think it should be me on that flight," Bill goes on. "But I won't be able to live with myself if I don't point out the questions and concerns that I have right now. Trager, I need you to hear me out."
Derek desperately wants to walk away from this conversation and pretend that Bill has said nothing. A bolt? Really? A loose bolt...a bolt that sticks...a latch issue. It all sounds like the kind of thing that could seriously derail the mission, and, in this moment, there is nothing Derek Trager wants more than to be the commander of the Gemini orbital mission.
Derek exhales loudly. "I hear you. And your concerns have been registered. But if Arvin North says all systems are go on this, then do you really think I'm the guy to put a halt to an entire mission?"
Bill looks around in a way that borders on frantic. "I think the two of us bringing our concerns to North would carry some weight."
"And just your word alone wasn't enough?"
It's Bill's turn to exhale. "I didn't talk to him yet."
Derek gives a huff of a laugh as he looks at his silver wristwatch. "We're less than three hours from liftoff, Bill, and you haven't even brought this up with him yet? Instead you came to me?"
"I couldn't sleep last night," Bill admits. "I wanted this to come off without a hitch, even if I'm stuck here on the ground. Believe me," he implores, "there's nothing I want more than to see this mission be a raging success. But I tossed and turned and thought about the things I know and the tests we've run, and I can tell you one thing, Trager: even more than I want Gemini to be successful, I want to avoid a catastrophic event of any kind."
It's this--this right here--that finally does Derek in. The use of the word "catastrophic" feels to Derek like a gross overstatement of the issue. He would never intentionally brush off a major concern and put the lives of himself and his fellow astronauts at risk. No sane person would. But is he willing to throw the whole mission at this point on a hunch that kept Bill Booker awake last night? It's a predicament. He knows that his response here matters.
"Bill," Derek begins, feeling resigned. "You know that I care about safety as much as you do--as much as any of the other guys do--but I can't help wondering how much of this is tied up with your own ego."
Bill takes a step back as though Derek has slugged him. "What?" he booms. "You think that this has something to do with my own ego? That's crazy. And selfish. I would never--"
"Bill," Derek says in a low voice, motioning with his hand for Bill to bring the volume down, as his words are echoing throughout the cavernous space. "Everyone knows you've had a tough go of it this year, okay? We're all aware of your ex-wife," he says in a near whisper, referring to Margaret, Bill's first wife, who had taken her own life on the Fourth of July. "And we know that you've been under some...stress."
"Stress?" Bill says, not replicating Derek's lowered voice. "This has nothing to do with my personal life, or my ego," he splutters, "this has to do with the safety and integrity of this mission and nothing more."
Derek can feel himself closing down internally. This has gone far enough. He holds up one hand to stop Bill. "I've heard you, and your complaint is noted, as well as your apprehension. I hear you, and I feel that you do care, Bill. But I still think that I'm going to do whatever Arvin North says. If he pulls the plug on this, then so be it." Derek throws both hands in the air. "Otherwise, I'm going to get suited up and ready to go. Is that fine with you?"
The shutters have closed behind Bill's eyes and he nods now, looking distant. "Fine. You should do that."
As Booker strides away, Derek stands in the corner a moment longer, watching his colleague push at the heavy metal door angrily. It slams against the wall outside, sending the loud echo of Bill's discontent ringing through the enormous room.
Derek shakes his head. He'd never intentionally ignore danger. He just wouldn't. But he's the commander of this mission, not Bill Booker, and his gut says that it's time to press ahead, not pull back.
* * *
“Propulsion?” Bob Young says, holding a checklist in hand as the three astronauts sit in the cockpit.
“Go,” Derek responds.
“Life support?” Young says in an almost mechanical voice. Derek can both hear and feel the excitement and the nerves in his copilots’ voices and body language.
Murphy Hendricks leans over to check the various switches and stats in front of him. “Go,” he responds.
“Communication?” Young says.
“Ground control,” Hendricks says into his headset.
“Ground control, check,” comes the slightly scratchy reply from someone inside of the NASA mission control center.
“Go,” Hendricks replies.
The men proceed to check the environmental controls, the emergency procedures, and mission objectives, and then they verify the functionality of all their tools and the instruments they’ll utilize for the mission. Finally, with system checks done, they review the launch procedures and settle in to mentally prepare themselves for the countdown.
For some of the men, this moment of quiet reflection is best spent praying to or communicating with their higher power. For Murphy Hendricks, it’s a time to close his eyes and look like he’s sleeping, but Derek knows full well that Hendricks is singing the lyrics to a song from start to finish in his head, imagining himself on stage with his drum kit as he performs for a crowd. Bob Young is definitely someone who prays, so Derek leaves him to it. And for himself, Derek prefers to think of the faces of the people he loves.
Maxine appears before his eyes, resplendent in her frothy robe and nightgown. The gentle swell of her belly is visible as she leans forward to pick Wendy up from the couch and hold her on one hip. He’s loved Maxine since the moment he’d first laid eyes on her, but never more so than after she became a mother.
Ryan, their firstborn, is everything a father could want from a son. He’s polite, but with a sharp mind that’s always working. In the first thirteen years of his life, he’s given both of his parents a real run for their money, asking the kinds of questions that make adults look at one another with raised eyebrows, as if to say: How on earth do we answer that? Ryan, as a small boy, was king of inquiries like: Who puts the sun away at night? Who is Santa Claus’s boss? Why are there both sharks and alligators? Good questions, all, and ones that Derek replays in his memory now as he smiles at the blinking lights on the panel before him.
Wendy, his baby girl, light of his life…her small, adorable features swim before him as he thinks of the way she waits at the screen door for him to come home, calling out, “Dada! Dada!” with such excitement that his heart nearly explodes. And this new baby—whoever he or she turns out to be—will complete their family in ways that none of them can even anticipate.
“Mission control to Gemini,” comes a voice through their headsets. “This is Arvin North.”
Derek snaps to attention, leaving the reverie of his family behind for the moment. He’d expected Bill Booker’s voice.
“Gemini to mission control,” Murphy Hendricks responds for them. The three astronauts look at one another with curiosity.
“Men, I’ll be replacing Booker on this mission. All systems are go on this front. On-board checks completed?”
“Checks completed,” the three men say in unison.
“Good. Countdown starts in five minutes.”
The men exchange another look, but none of them bring up the topic of Booker’s removal; there’ll be time to discuss that later.
When the countdown begins, Hendricks and Young stay focused on the panel before them, and Derek runs through the mental checklist of his own responsibilities, preparing himself for what’s to come. Space. Leading his first real mission. This is the start of something enormous.
“T-minus ten seconds,” comes the voice from mission control. Derek braces himself. His heart begins to race. “Nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. And, liftoff!”
“Godspeed, men,” a second voice crackles over their headsets. It’s Arvin North.
It’s the last thing Derek Trager, Bob Young, and Murphy Hendricks hear as the shuttle bursts into flames.