and Peo wouldn’t accept anyone else’s name in nomination. He had been Peo’s command module pilot for her own ill-fated mission in 2022. “Jake deserves to be part of a moon landing,” she said, and that was that. He had been thirty-one the last time, and he would be forty-three when he reached lunar orbit again.
Peo still needed a woman. She was effectively shut out from any astronaut currently employed by NASA, the ESA, or Roscosmos, so she turned to her private network and signed up Ashlyn Flaherty. Flaherty was NASA-trained with less time in space than might have been ideal, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. Peo had used her before, as a contractor who helped test and refine new equipment in Brownsville and at Gasoline Alley. Flaherty had worked for both Roscosmos and the ESA as a contractor, too, always going where she needed to go and doing what she needed to do to get into space.
Before the announcement, Conn said to Peo, “Seriously. You won’t think about going yourself?”
“No,” Peo said. “I barely survived the training at forty-nine. Ten years and one cancer later, I just won’t be able to do it right.”
Flaherty became a household name, an instant celebrity: soon to be the first woman on the moon.
Peo put Hunter Valence in charge of the moon mission—on paper. His name went on a lot of memos and reports, though everybody understood that it was really Peo calling the shots.
Conn started to lose herself in the Saturn mission. She could hardly believe that she was playing a part in a moon landing. But a part of her was so disappointed she couldn’t go herself that she often didn’t even want to think about it.
If Peo couldn’t give Saturn her undivided attention, that shouldn’t mean that Skylar Reece had carte blanche to do what she wanted. Conn spoke up more frequently, many times just to get the room thinking about things in a different way than Skylar. She knew Skylar complained to Peo about Conn not toeing the line, though Peo never said anything about it. The implicit support made Conn smile.
EIGHT
Graduation
June–December, 2032
After the moon shower, in March, 2024, the teenage Conn’s eagerness to meet the presumptive aliens who had apparently surveyed the moon wasn’t universal. A name that appeared often in Conn’s moon shower m-files was that of Glenn Bowman. Bowman was a former Catholic priest turned lifestyle coach, who became famous as a counterpoint—whenever the feeds had someone on to provide reasonable insights on the moon shower, they could count on Bowman to give them the opposite. He warned that the event was an ill omen. It had been but a prelude to the evil the monsters behind it would visit on the human race in due time. He was fundamentally antiscience. No technology he could imagine could create the effect of the moon shower. It was a display of otherworldly power, a demonstration meant to intimidate and make people feel helpless and hopeless. His point of view was sensational, while he himself was articulate and engaging, and he didn’t lack opportunities to hold forth. As the moon shower receded in time and no alien activity followed it, Bowman went into hibernation, but he never really went away.
Now, as the three missions to the moon took shape, Bowman was again wherever any feed or channel needed him, predicting doom. If anything, he had become more vitriolic since the moon shower. The world didn’t know why there were three missions going to the moon at the same time, but Bowman blamed it on his evil aliens from the start. And the number of people who took him seriously slowly grew. And the more people who took him seriously, the more dangerous he was.
# # #
On the eve of graduation in June, Conn took Grant out to dinner.
“Time to go back to Texas,” Grant said. He would return to where his two crewmates were elbow-deep in designing the Saturn spacecraft.
“I’m going to miss you,” Conn said, and she would. She had given it a lot
Peo still needed a woman. She was effectively shut out from any astronaut currently employed by NASA, the ESA, or Roscosmos, so she turned to her private network and signed up Ashlyn Flaherty. Flaherty was NASA-trained with less time in space than might have been ideal, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. Peo had used her before, as a contractor who helped test and refine new equipment in Brownsville and at Gasoline Alley. Flaherty had worked for both Roscosmos and the ESA as a contractor, too, always going where she needed to go and doing what she needed to do to get into space.
Before the announcement, Conn said to Peo, “Seriously. You won’t think about going yourself?”
“No,” Peo said. “I barely survived the training at forty-nine. Ten years and one cancer later, I just won’t be able to do it right.”
Flaherty became a household name, an instant celebrity: soon to be the first woman on the moon.
Peo put Hunter Valence in charge of the moon mission—on paper. His name went on a lot of memos and reports, though everybody understood that it was really Peo calling the shots.
Conn started to lose herself in the Saturn mission. She could hardly believe that she was playing a part in a moon landing. But a part of her was so disappointed she couldn’t go herself that she often didn’t even want to think about it.
If Peo couldn’t give Saturn her undivided attention, that shouldn’t mean that Skylar Reece had carte blanche to do what she wanted. Conn spoke up more frequently, many times just to get the room thinking about things in a different way than Skylar. She knew Skylar complained to Peo about Conn not toeing the line, though Peo never said anything about it. The implicit support made Conn smile.
EIGHT
Graduation
June–December, 2032
After the moon shower, in March, 2024, the teenage Conn’s eagerness to meet the presumptive aliens who had apparently surveyed the moon wasn’t universal. A name that appeared often in Conn’s moon shower m-files was that of Glenn Bowman. Bowman was a former Catholic priest turned lifestyle coach, who became famous as a counterpoint—whenever the feeds had someone on to provide reasonable insights on the moon shower, they could count on Bowman to give them the opposite. He warned that the event was an ill omen. It had been but a prelude to the evil the monsters behind it would visit on the human race in due time. He was fundamentally antiscience. No technology he could imagine could create the effect of the moon shower. It was a display of otherworldly power, a demonstration meant to intimidate and make people feel helpless and hopeless. His point of view was sensational, while he himself was articulate and engaging, and he didn’t lack opportunities to hold forth. As the moon shower receded in time and no alien activity followed it, Bowman went into hibernation, but he never really went away.
Now, as the three missions to the moon took shape, Bowman was again wherever any feed or channel needed him, predicting doom. If anything, he had become more vitriolic since the moon shower. The world didn’t know why there were three missions going to the moon at the same time, but Bowman blamed it on his evil aliens from the start. And the number of people who took him seriously slowly grew. And the more people who took him seriously, the more dangerous he was.
# # #
On the eve of graduation in June, Conn took Grant out to dinner.
“Time to go back to Texas,” Grant said. He would return to where his two crewmates were elbow-deep in designing the Saturn spacecraft.
“I’m going to miss you,” Conn said, and she would. She had given it a lot
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