Then Will The Great Ocean Wash Deep Above (Apollo Quartet) by Ian Sales Read Free Book Online Page A

from the restless sea surface in fractured sheets of brightness, and there’s a depth—it’s not the right word but nothing else springs to mind—a depth to the colours, to the aquamarine of the water, the scuffed whiteness of the fifteen-foot boat, the implacable grey of the USS White Sands and USS Apache, the ineffable blueness of the sky...
    McIntyre stands on the Trieste II, his hand to his brow, he wants a cigarette but that’s going to have wait until he’s back aboard the USS White Sands, and he feels a bit like one of those Ancient Greeks or Romans who journeyed into the Underworld but escaped back to the surface, only he can’t remember the guy’s name and he can’t remember where he came across the story and he can’t really recall the details of it, just something about the woman he went to fetch deciding to stay with her husband...
    But he sort of feels like him, anyhow.

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
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    Cobb has missed out on the firsts so far, for all that she felt she deserved them. The Mercury 13—though there are only a dozen left in the programme, since Hart retired after her one flight to work directly for the women’s movement—was her doing, after all. She was the first American to orbit the Earth, but the Russians did that first; she was the first American to spacewalk, but again after a Russian had done it before her. The only first left, the one not even the Russians can beat, is the first human being to walk on the Moon. That’s what the Gemini and Apollo programmes are for, and Cobb is the most senior astronaut in the corps. That is her dream.
    Only now they’re taking it away from her.
    The Korean War is finally over, MacArthur chased the Chinese over the border sixteen years ago, and the war dragged on and on, lasting four times longer than the Second World War, eating up men and materiel, and through it all the USA put thirteen women into space on a regular basis. But now the soldiers are returning home, and Cobb has heard that NASA intends to train men as astronauts and rumour has it some of those will go to the Moon. She’s been doing this for seven years, this is her fourth flight into space, and they expect her to step down from the programme and let the men take the lead. She saw this happening more than twenty years ago, after the Second World War, when Rosie the Riveter had to hang up her rivet gun and put her apron back on. Cobb was too young to fly in Cochran’s WASP, but when the men came home and women went back into the kitchen, she knew it wasn’t for her and became a pilot instead—even though it was hard, really hard, for her to find jobs. Now... Now, she has flown three types of spacecraft, she has even flown supersonic jets, she’s not giving this up. God put her here on this Earth for a reason and it is not to “pick up the slack” after the men have had their go.
    NASA have already pulled back on their plans. Though they have four years to go, it’s clear they’re not going to make the president’s aim of putting an American on the Moon in time. So Apollo II has been tasked with an orbital rendezvous with a spy satellite in order to perform in situ repairs. That Gemini 10 rendezvous, that was just proof of concept, Irene Leverton and Jan Dietrich did the same in Gemini 11. Cobb had hoped to be given command of Apollo I, but that went to Cagle, Cochran’s favourite, it was just a short flight to prove the hardware. Once again Cobb is second, as she has been in everything, and she’s commander of Apollo II, with B Steadman as pilot and new recruit Betty Miller as flight engineer. Miller was one of the eighteen who took the Lovelace Clinic tests back in 1961, she failed then but the selection requirements were relaxed given the experiences of the Mercury 13. It’s not like Miller is unqualified—she was the first woman to fly solo across the Pacific, from California to Australia, six years ago, she even received the FAA