Up and Down (36 page)

We broke below the cloud cover and Orlando bloomed below. Without warning, Landon knocked me out of my romantic reverie with a hard elbow jab to my chest, nearly winding me.

“Wake up!” she said. “We are T-minus three minutes to touchdown.”

“And I am T-minus two minutes to normal respiration,” I wheezed, rubbing my ribs.

“Come on, I barely touched you.”

As soon as we reached the Kennedy Space Center, Landon and Eugene joined Commander Hainsworth, Martine Juneau, and the rest of the crew of the Space Shuttle
Aeres
, and my responsibilities as Landon’s chaperone effectively ended. It felt weird.
I’d been attached to her for more than two months. Now she was gone, off with her fancy new astronaut friends, and I was all alone, kicked to the sidelines. I felt a little bereft. I know. I’m pathetic. I knew it was going to happen, and intellectually, it all made sense. They grow up so fast. But it did feel strange to be on my own as the launch loomed.

The next afternoon, Kelly Bradstreet stood at the podium and introduced each mission crew member as they filed in and took their places along the table at the front. Their official mission crest served as the backdrop. The news conference was set up like every other pre-launch mission briefing, except this time, two civilians were up on the risers as full members of the
Aeres
crew. The room was packed with reporters and camera crews. Many of the networks had sent their heavyweight reporters and even a few anchors to cover the news conference and subsequent launch. Kelly introduced Scott Chandler, and the aging rocket jockey mounted the steps and stood at the microphone.

“Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for coming,” he began. “As you can see, our crew for this important mission, under Lee Hainsworth’s command, has a slightly different composition from our typical lineup. I am very pleased to announce formally what you probably already know. Both of our citizen astronauts, Mr. Eugene Crank from Wilkers, Texas, and Dr. Landon Percival from Cigar Lake, Canada, have successfully completed our training program and have been officially cleared for the mission. They have not had an easy ride. The training program is
challenging, demanding, and at times even gruelling. I’m impressed with their tenacity, their energy and enthusiasm, and their dedication to the mission. As one of the original Apollo astronauts, I freely admit that I was skeptical that civilians could be, or even should be, trained to the required level to fly such a mission as this. Mr. Crank and Dr. Percival have altered my view. I wish them well on their once-in-a-lifetime voyage. And it should be noted for history’s sake that tomorrow, Dr. Landon Percival will become the oldest woman and the second-oldest human being ever to venture into space. Godspeed.”

Landon’s eyes were glistening but she was calm and still smiling. On instinct, I started to applaud. Eventually, Kelly, the mission crew, and one reporter joined in. I felt like a bit of an idiot. Journalists don’t attend news conferences to clap. It wasn’t a pep rally or an awards show.

Kelly bounded back up to the mike as Scott Chandler stepped down and took a seat in the front row.

“We’ll hear now from the mission crew,” she announced.

In turn, each member of the
Aeres
crew pulled the table mike in front of them closer and said a few words. The real astronauts all spoke beautifully about what the mission meant to them. Martine Juneau delivered part of her remarks in French. I thought the Radio-Canada camera operator at the back was going to have some kind of an excitement-induced seizure. French was rarely spoken at
NASA
pre-launch briefings. Then Landon spoke.

“I have a few more miles on me than my crew mates, so I am just so grateful for the rare chance to fly this mission and fulfil what has been a lifelong dream. I’ve been a pilot since I was thriteen years old. I learned how to fly from my father, Dr. Hugh Percival. He often called me ‘Sky’ because I was seldom looking anywhere else. To this day, whenever I fly my float plane through the remote reaches of British Columbia, I want to fly higher. Tomorrow it looks like I will. And I expect it will be the single greatest moment in what has been so far a wonderful and rewarding life, with few regrets.

“I want to thank Scott Chandler, Kelly Bradstreet, and
NASA
for putting up with an old broad in orange coveralls, and for having the courage to train and clear me for this mission. They certainly did not take the easy way out. And I like to think I know a thing or two about rejecting the path of least resistance. But I know they chose the right path. I’m sorry if it put several
NASA
lawyers on stress leave, but they’ll be fine when we’re back safely on the ground in nine days. I’d also like to thank my friend and shadow, David Stewart, who, for some reason, had faith in me, almost from the very start. I don’t think I’d be sitting here this afternoon were it not for him.

“I think I’ve taxed your time enough. May I just say that I’ve really enjoyed working so closely with my friend and fellow traveller, Eugene Crank. And I am more grateful than I can ever express to be warming a seat on the
Aeres
alongside such an impressive group of men and women.”

On her closing line, she reached over and grabbed Eugene’s hand, lifted it up in the air, and gave it a little shake. I withdraw my earlier statement that reporters don’t clap at news conferences. It seems they do sometimes.

When the room settled, it was Eugene’s turn. He pulled the mike so close to him you’d think he’d mistaken it for an ice cream cone. Then he blew into it to make sure it was on. The screaming feedback from his mouth-to-mike resuscitation answered his question and he pushed it back a bit until the squeal was squelched. Poor guy.

“Um. Hi, y’all. I just wanted to say that other than getting shot at by some punk robbing a gas station in ’07, this is the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to me. The training wasn’t that tough but there were a couple of rough patches. Sometimes you get surprised by who helps you out. Um, I guess I’ll see y’all on the other side … I mean when we land.”

He eagerly pushed the mike away from him. Landon patted his hand. Kelly then opened the floor for questions. No one asked Eugene anything. A few reporters asked the mission commander about the launch and the work they’d be doing on the space station. But most of the questions were for Landon. Even though I’d warned her, I’m not sure she was expecting to be the focus on attention. But she handled it all like a pro. I wondered again how someone who had lived alone for most of her life could seem so at ease and be so articulate. When I asked her later, she wasn’t really sure but credited her daily one-sided conversations with her
missing father, and her love of reading. She also reminded me that she had briefly practised medicine in Vancouver in the late sixties and so had daily contact with lots of patients. Right. The late sixties, when she was not yet thirty years old. Right. I just figured it was an innate gift.

Kelly called for a final question and pointed to
CNN
’
S
Ali Velshi. He rose.

“Dr. Percival, in your comments earlier you said you’d lived, and I quote, ‘a wonderful and rewarding life, with few regrets.’ What are those regrets?”

Landon’s near-permanent smile seemed to me to turn wistful, and she nodded her head almost imperceptibly.

“Well, I don’t have many,” she responded. “It’s simple, really. The regrets I carry revolve around people I’m missing. And I’ll just leave it at that.”

Commander Hainsworth and the rest of his crew were whisked out. Landon looked my way but I was on the other side of a very crowded room. She smiled and waved. I waved and mouthed “Good luck” in return. She gave me a thumbs-up and was out the door, dwarfed by Eugene Crank walking in front of her.

I helped Kelly mop up from the newser, providing background info to a few reporters still in the room as they pieced their stories together.

“Nice job, Kelly,” I said when the reporters had all left. “Who wrote Chandler’s remarks?”

“Who do you
think
wrote them?” she said, grinning.

“They were nice words and he read them well. He almost sounded as if he meant it.”

“Thank you. I worked hard on them. They were even better before he toned some of it down,” she replied. “You did a nice job on Landon’s.”

“I take no credit for her words. They were all hers, and extemporaneous too, I think.”

Kelly smiled and shook her head. She looked over my shoulder towards the door.

“Gotta go. Have a good time tonight,” she said with a wink and a wave, as she hustled to catch up with the crew for a final communications briefing. Good time?

The technicians were almost finished their tear-down, coiling cords and stowing microphones.

“Well, I guess my work here is done,” I said to no one in particular. I grabbed my papers and turned for the door.

“Hello, stranger,” she said, standing in the doorway. Her smile was one I hadn’t seen before. Of course I’d often seen her smile, but this one was somehow different.

“Amanda! What are you doing here? How did you get here? Is anything wrong?” I spewed.

“Whoa. You got to read me my rights before the interrogation.”

She was still smiling.

“Sorry. I’m just shocked, and, um, and happy, to see you,” I sputtered, which was a small step up from spewing.

“I figured after what you’ve been through for the last couple of months, you deserved some company for the launch,” she explained. “Diane suggested I come down to lend a hand. So, I just landed, dumped my stuff in my room, and here I am, a hand ready to lend.”

“Well, this is great. It’s really nice to see you, and to have you here,” I rambled, another step up from sputtering. “And your timing is impeccable. We’re off the clock now. With the crew finally all together, the
NASA
communications team takes over. I’ll be in Launch Control in the morning in case Landon has any last-second issues, which she won’t. But other than that, we’re done. I can see if I can get you into Launch Control, too.”

“I already spoke to Kelly. No dice. We’re lucky to have one person in there. But she got me a spot in the
VIP
viewing box outside.”

“I’m envious. You’ll get a better view from there. In fact, you’ll actually be able to feel the launch from there. I’ll be watching it on a computer monitor in a windowless room in what kind of looks like a concrete bunker.”

“Yeah, but not many people can say they’ve done that.”

“So, how about dinner?” I asked, wondering if I sounded like a work colleague.

Without a rental car, our dining options were limited at the Kennedy Space Center. We rejected the G-Force Grill, Space
Dots, and the Moon Rock Café (I kid you not), and opted for the nicest of the bunch, the Orbit Café. There were lots of tourists and school tours still milling about when we headed in for an early dinner. I briefly worried that the entrées might come in squeeze tubes. They didn’t. Actually the menu wasn’t bad. But I really don’t remember much about the food. Amanda and I just started talking again as we had almost every night for the past month. Except, this time she was sitting directly across from me, not sitting on the phone thirteen hundred miles away. Being able to look at her as we chatted was nice. Very nice. We talked and laughed, then talked and laughed some more. We covered a broad range of topics from Canadian politics to cooking, world travel to favourite comedians, the skin-shedding habits of the albino leopard gecko to Sherlock Holmes. The three and a half hours we spent in the Orbit Café passed in a blur. The next ten hours we spent in my room passed a little more slowly.