Page 139 of Atmosphere

But maybe they’d both been wrong.

Joan pulled Vanessa toward her and kissed her up against the door.

“We’re idiots, you know,” Joan said.

And Vanessa smiled. “I know.”

“So what’s your plan?” Joan said.

Vanessa shook her head. “I don’t have one. Yet. But I will figure it out.”

“Oh, you will, will you?”

“I will.”

“Well, why don’t we start with this?” Joan said. “Sneak out of here quietly. Don’t call me while you’re in quarantine. That way, they won’t have any good reason to stop you from getting on LR9. Then, once you’re back, we will find a way.”

“Okay,” Vanessa said, kissing her neck. “At least you’re CAPCOM. So pretty soon I’ll be able to hear your voice.”

“I’ll be waiting for you,” Joan said. “On the loop.”

December 29, 1984

“Houston, do you read? Iasked how much time does Lydia have,” Vanessa says from the payload bay. She is counting her breaths to keep herself calm. But the realization that the payload bay doors may not fully close is bearing down on her.How. How. How did we get here?It was only hours ago that Hank and Steve were joking about who had a better barbecue smoker. And Griff had been complaining about drinking breakfast from a pouch. And now everyone is gone but her and Lydia.How?

“If we miss our deorbit opportunity, can Lydia survive?”

Joan does not respond. But Vanessa knows the answer. They all know the answer.

Finally, Joan speaks up. “We do not know if Lydia can survive,” she says. Then, lower, in a tone that feels to Vanessa like Joan is confessing: “But the flight surgeon does not believe so.”

Fuck.

Vanessa slams her hand against her helmet.Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud.

“So Griff is gone,” she says. “And if I spend any more time trying to fix the payload doors, I may lose Lydia, too.”

“Yes,” Joan says. Vanessa can hear how much Joan is straining to keep her voice level. “But we believe it is the only way for you to survive.”

“But we have no guarantee that I can fix the doors,” Vanessa says.

“Understood. But we also do not have firm testing on how many open latches the shuttle can maintain through reentry. And we cannot risk losing you.”

Vanessa shakes her head.How the fuck can this be happening?

“Do you read, Ford?” Joan says, her voice rising. “I said,we cannot risk losing you.”

“I want to get something very clear,” Vanessa says. “If I stay and try to fix the doors, there’s still an excellent chance the shuttle will not make it. Is that your estimation as well?”

“We believe our best chance of landingNavigatoris for you to attempt to fix the doors.”

There’s an excellent chance, Vanessa understands, that she is going to die here in orbit. On the space shuttleNavigator.

She thinks back to every single moment of her teenaged years when she thought she was courting danger, daring God to take her. What a little snot she’d been.

In this moment, she is closer to death than she has ever been. And she wants to fight against it with every fiber of her being.

When she’d been messing with drugs and flying planes too low across the mountains, her mother had once asked her if she was trying to die. She’d sobbed one night at the kitchen table and begged Vanessa to care about her life, begged her not to leave her childless.

---