Riding Rockets

At an Outpost Tavern welcoming party for this class, I ended up alone with George. I turned from getting a beer and he was approaching me with purpose.Uh-oh, I thought.I sure hope he doesn’t ask me about a document bearing Dr. Terry McGuire’s name. I was still terrified that Abbey had hidden cameras around JSC, or had somehow put a homing device on all of us so he could keep track of where we went and who we talked to. Maybe he had listening devices in every office, including the ones that McGuire used. I regretted ever having seen that astronaut leadership document. Whether I liked it or not, it made me a co-conspirator in any possible plots against him.

From his mumbles I thought I heard “How are you doing, Mike?”

“Fine, George.” My heartrate was atGo for main engine start –speed. That’s what happens when God is speaking to you and you’re hiding a mortal sin.

“Are you going to be around this week?”

Here it comes,I thought. He wanted to see me in his office…with McGuire’s treatise in hand. I was ready to blurt out, “I’m innocent! I didn’t have anything to do with it! McGuire wrote it before I ever spoke to him. The others are evil, not me. Kill them. Mercy, my liege, mercy!” But all I croaked was, “This week? Well, yeah…I’ll be here.” At the moment I was very glad George never made eye contact with his audience. If the conversation continued in the direction I thought it was going, I wouldn’t have to worry about him discovering any lies in my eyes. We were both talking to our shoes.

“That’s good. There are some things we need to discuss.”

Oh, God. I’m screwed.

Abbey continued. “The SRB testing is going well. More flight assignments will have to be made. We’ll need to talk about that.” I almost dropped my beer. The topic of conversation wasn’t McGuire! While I couldn’t be certain (nobody could be certain with Abbey about anything), I sensed he was teasing me about an imminent flight assignment. I looked at him and sure enough there was a coy smile on his face. He was actually relishing his godly role as the bearer of good news.

I immediately went to Donna to tell her about the exchange. I could see she was conflicted. She was happy that I might be on the verge of drawing a second space mission, but terrified I would die flying it. Several of theChallenger widows were at the party and every spouse, Donna included, was watching them and thinking,That could be me.

The next week I sat in my office, snatching up the phone on the first ring hoping to hear Abbey’s voice, but the call never came. My paranoia began to ratchet upward. Maybe I had read too much into Abbey’s words. Maybe the coy smile I thought I had detected had been nothing more than a gas pain grimace. Maybe George knew of my treasonous McGuire visit and was playing with me.

The week after also came and went with no call, and I was certain I had been toyed with. If a bomb went off under his car now, I would be alone at the top of the suspect list.

Finally, on September 10—my forty-second birthday—I landed from a T-38 mission and found a note on the crew lounge door asking me to call Abbey…at home. I was sure this was the call in which I would learn of my assignment to a second mission. Why else would Abbey want me to disturb him at 10:15P.M .? What a birthday present this was going to be! I dialed the number.

But it was another disappointment. George acted as if there had been no reason to call him at home. All he wanted to know was if I had seen a letter written by a New Mexico congressman on the shuttle program. I was certain, now, that Abbey was the cat and I was the crippled mouse. He was playing with me. There was no pending flight assignment.

On Saturday night I was able to momentarily forget about mission assignments. The class of 1987 hosted its first party and provided some great escapism entertainment in the form of a skit modeled after the TV showThe Dating Game. Dan Brandenstein played the eligible bachelor. He was onstage and screened from several women…or rather class of 1987 men in drag, who were vying for his affection. The only real female participant in the skit was Mae Jemison, the first black woman astronaut. She was introduced as “celebrity host Vanna White.” I’m sure Johnny Cochran could have found a lawsuit in that. One of the men in drag was new astronaut Mario Runco. Imagine a tall, muscular Klinger fromM*A*S*H and you have an image of Mario. He had a classic Roman nose, a perpetual five o’clock shadow, and a regional New York accent—Mario spoke Bronx. For the skit he squeezed into black fishnet stockings, a low-cut dress, and high heels. It was an ensemble that revealed enough hair to have generated a Sasquatch sighting. He was, without question, the ugliest drag queen to have ever put on lipstick.