A Trip to the Stars (72 page)

The flight to the moon would take 66 hours. Half the time required for a transatlantic voyage by ocean liner. Or the time it would take to drive nonstop from Miami to Anchorage.

To enter lunar orbit, they would decelerate to 3,700 mph. On the far side of the moon, whether orbiting or on the surface, they would lose all radio contact with mission control. During their third revolution, Cassiel and one of the other astronauts would board the lunar module, detach from the command module, and descend to the surface. Landing on the far side, in pitch-darkness, would be treacherous. To be sure they touched down on clear, level ground, Cassiel would override the onboard computer and navigate manually, scanning quickly with infrared viewfinders. The only natural source of illumination on the far side is starlight, and Cassiel said it would be strong enough to cast his shadow—something that had happened to him only once on earth, in the Sonora Desert on a moonless night.

On the near side of the moon, the temperature varies wildly, from 225°F in full sunlight to -240° in darkness. On the far side, it remains -250°. Cassiel and his partner would set out a semicircle of high-intensity lights beside their module and work with powerful helmet lamps, like coal miners. They would assemble the twin
120-inch refracting telescopes, gather geological specimens, and take seismographic readings. For four nights, until their work was done, they would sleep in their space suits in net hammocks suspended within their module.

When they returned to the command module, the
Constellation
, they would immediately leave lunar orbit. The
Constellation’s
engine had no fallible moving parts—no fuel pumps or ignition system. Pressurized helium forced the propellants into the combustion chamber. In the icy prison of lunar orbit, this engine—and its backup—were the crew’s lifeline. It would launch them into space for another 60,000 miles before carrying them the 300,000 miles back home. The amount of fuel they could carry on such a long mission left little margin for error; and the same went for air, food, and water. If they should veer off course for very long at any point—and this would be Cassiel’s responsibility—they wouldn’t be able to return to earth.

From the moon to Nova 1, a point in space that would be roughly in line with Mars and Jupiter when they arrived, was two days’ flying time. Each mile they traveled beyond the moon would put them farther into space than any astronauts had ever been. At Nova 1 they would take hundreds of telescopic photographs of the larger stars and the closest galaxies, including Andromeda.

Five days later, the three astronauts would reenter the earth’s atmosphere at 25,000 mph along an angle of entry just 2° wide. Their projected landing point was at 148°20’E, 12°6’N, in the South Pacific between Guam and Saipan.

Their estimated time in space: 527 hours, 12 minutes, 56 seconds.

I reviewed the facts of his mission many times, and in the end was comforted by one thought above all others: the sky was Cassiel’s element, whether it was earthly, lunar, or interplanetary. He had come to me from the sky, in Vietnam, and when he took leave of me someday—as he had once before, but this time forever—I was certain it would be the same way. I could live with that. But in my gut I didn’t think that day had arrived. Not yet. Not even with this mission, filled with so many perils.

By the time of my visit to Houston, alone together for the last time before the mission, we had stopped talking about the perils. The launch date was fast approaching, it was going to happen; any abstractions attached to it were quickly evaporating. In Cassiel I sensed no
fear whatsoever, despite the fact that at the Space Center, where he was now spending practically every waking hour, they were focusing on everything that could possibly go wrong, ironing out kinks. When he came home, we talked about other things. We still had plenty of the past to catch up on, and it was easier to do so now that the wounds of our long separation had begun to heal. He liked hearing stories about my own travels and, especially, my days in the mind-reading business. We cooked together—neither of us very good at it—and shot pool and made love and listened to his jazz records lying on the living room carpet. Each morning before dawn we took the speedboat out and went for a swim.

For much of my visit in Clear Lake City I stayed around the house. I tinkered in the small garden or canoed alone on the lake. I culled a chronology of Cassiel’s mission from the briefing books, so that back on Kauai I could follow his progress each day. A couple of times I accompanied him to the Space Center and he led me on a tour that was off-limits to ordinary tourists: up into the gleaming rocket gantries and through the labyrinthine chambers of the flight simulation center. He took me into the simulation models of his command and lunar modules. In the command module I was most drawn to the small triple-layered convex window from which Cassiel would view the moon, the stars, and finally the earth, the size of a nickel, from deep in space.

I also went into downtown Houston several times while Cassiel was at the Space Center, to go to the movies or wander through a museum. To my surprise, on the last of these solo outings I ran into an old acquaintance.

I had just bought a green dress with a flowered print—so much like the one I had worn for Cassiel in Manila that I couldn’t resist it—and then worn it out of the store. Next I picked up the Christmas present I had ordered for him at a map store, a highly detailed topographical globe of the moon, three feet in diameter, with his projected landing site marked by a gold star.

At five o’clock I went to the natural-science museum where I spent the next hour and a half before meeting Cassiel for dinner. After exploring an exhibit about ancient deep-sea creatures, I took a spin through the entomological wing, where there was a new selection of South American jungle moths and giant mountain butterflies. I was at
the last display case when a slight, stoop-shouldered man with a white goatee hurried by, steering a pushcart through the narrow aisle. I don’t know if it was his thick, wire-rimmed spectacles or the spider terrarium perched on the pushcart that registered with me first. But the moment he passed me, I realized the man was Zaren Eboli, my onetime employer in New Orleans. It took him a bit longer to recognize me after I called his name. When he did, he turned ashen. I thought he was going to faint as he approached me, taking his furtive, pigeon-toed steps.

“Mala? Mala from the morgue at the Saint-Eustace parish library?”

“Yes.” I hadn’t thought of myself in those terms in some time, and for a moment I felt a twinge of regret for having stopped him.

“My god. I often wondered over the years what happened to you.”

I flushed, for it was a painful memory. “You mean, after I got myself bitten by one of your spiders.” I shook my head. “The
Ummidia Stellarum
. I hope I didn’t kill it.”

He smiled ruefully, and I saw just how much older he looked, how time had deepened the creases in his brow and the crow’s-feet beside his eyes. His nervous voice and polite manner, however, were just as I remembered them. “No, the spider survived,” he replied, “but I wasn’t sure that you had.”

I extended my hand. “Well, here I am. And I must apologize, however belatedly.” His hand, with the missing pinky, was small and dry. “You were so kind to me back then.”

He scoffed at this. “No apologies necessary. But what happened to you after that day?”

“Oh, the venom didn’t affect me much,” I said drily. “I just drove up to Savannah and enlisted in the Navy Nursing Corps and was shipped off to Vietnam.”

“Really. I remember you being very much against the war.”

“Oh, I remained so, more than ever. But things worked out unexpectedly for me in the end. I wouldn’t be here in Houston right now if your spider hadn’t bitten me.”

He cocked his head.

“I met someone in Vietnam,” I said, “we fell in love, met again after many years, and I’m here with him now. He’s with NASA.”

He seemed taken aback by my directness. “He’s a scientist?”

“An astronaut.”

“Well, I’m glad for you.”

“But tell me about yourself,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

“Oh, I’ve just finished cataloguing the spiders of the southwestern states. 2,942 of them, to be exact. The head curator gave me an office here. You know, I’m doing what I’ve always done.” He cleared his throat. “Do you have time for a cup of tea, perhaps, in our modest cafeteria?”

“I’d love to, but I have to run.” I peered into the terrarium: there was a lone spider, silver-green, with black markings, which I tried to identify. “A lynx spider? Female?”

“That’s good!” Eboli exclaimed. “Yes, she’s a particularly beautiful example of the
Peucetia viridans
. I found her near Yuma, Arizona. The lynx flourishes all across this region, into Mexico.”

“Lays her eggs on cactus plants, right?”

“For protection, yes. On the spiny pads of the prickly pear cactus or the leaves of the jatropha plant.” He smiled. “I must have taught you well back then. You know, I hired you for your proficiency in Latin, but you turned out to have the makings of a first-rate arachnologist.” He hesitated. “You didn’t by chance go into that line of work yourself, did you?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Well, maybe you’ll give me a rain check on that tea.” From his vest pocket he took a card. “Will you call me tomorrow?”

I did, only to find him extremely agitated. Packing his suitcase. Trying to get the airline on the phone. He had to fly at once to Las Vegas, he said. A dear friend of his had died several days earlier, and he had just been informed of it. “He was my patron for many years. Living at his hotel, I did some of the best research I’ve ever done. He was like family to me.” Through the phone I heard him stifle a sob. “I’m sorry, Mala, but I won’t be able to meet you just now.”

I gave him my address and phone number in Hawaii and told him I hoped we’d cross paths again. I felt so bad for him because I knew that, like me, he had no real family. That is, until Cassiel came back into my life.

After leaving Zaren Eboli at the museum, I drove in Cassiel’s
Corvette to a Vietnamese restaurant he frequented. It was surrounded by shade trees and had a rock garden at its center with a carp pool. Cassiel’s motorcycle was parked in front and he was waiting for me at a corner table. His face lit up when he saw the green dress. He had already ordered appetizers and, unusual for him, he was drinking a champagne cocktail. Also unusual, he seemed a bit nervous. I found out why when he put a small velvet box and a large sealed envelope on the table before me.

I opened the envelope first: inside it, enfolded in tissue paper, was the pale, leathery leaf from the playing-card bush on which I had inscribed our names, alongside a pair of stars, in Manila in 1969.

“I told you I’d save it,” he said.

I nodded, biting my lip. Then I opened the box and found a diamond ring, the diamond cut into a seven-pronged star that matched my pendant. Inside the gold band was inscribed a single symbol, no words:
. The symbol for a celestial fix.

“For when I get back,” he said, slipping the ring onto my finger. “If you’ll still have me.”

I had never in my life worn a ring. But, as always, I was wearing my pendant and my star bracelet. Raising my left hand, with both the bracelet and the ring, up beside the necklace, I leaned over to him. “I’m covered with stars,” I said, kissing him.

The morning I left Houston, he had one last thing to give me. After getting up early, we barely said a word around the house. I packed my bags while he made breakfast. It was a sunny day, with a damp wind blowing off the Gulf of Mexico. Though I knew he had settled into a zone of serenity with regard to the flight, Cassiel had slept badly the night before. I had barely slept at all. It was December 4. The next day he would fly to Cape Canaveral. Eleven days later, at 9:42
P.M
. EST, he would be launched out of the earth’s atmosphere.

As the time approached for him to drive me to the airport, the silence in that house had become deafening. Cassiel had gone for a short walk along the lake, and when he returned, it was he who broke the ice, sitting me down on the patio while he poured himself yet another cup of black coffee.

“There’s something I have to ask you to hold for me, for safekeeping. I don’t want to leave it here when I go to Florida.”

He handed me a small metal box; no bigger than a matchbox, it slid open like one, revealing a silver key with complex teeth and a circular black stone inlaid below the key-ring hole.

“The key with the black stone,” I exclaimed.

He smiled faintly. “That’s right, it’s the one you saw in the X ray in Vietnam.”

“I can’t believe I’m holding it now,” I said. Studying the stone, I guessed it was onyx.

“Up until three months ago, nobody could hold it,” he said, patting his abdomen. “I had it in here for twenty-five years. It’s one of a kind, impossible to duplicate. It opens a box that will probably never come into my possession. But until I’m sure of that, I must know that the key is in a safe place. I didn’t want to take it into space with me, either.”