Page 141 of Atmosphere

What Vanessa is about to do will end her NASA career, if it does not end her life. But Joan’s life will go on. And Joan is great as CAPCOM. She can’t ruin that for Joan now.

So instead, she says, “Houston, I deeply regret any pain that will be caused by what I must do.”

There is no immediate response, so she keeps going: “But I could not live with myself if I didn’t try to get Lydia home in time to save her.”

If she has secured the payload bay doors just enough, she can save them both. If she keeps trying, she can only save herself.

“Navigator,” Joan says. Her voice sounds strong, but Vanessa can sense that it is cracking at the edges. “We are asking you to please continue to work on the payload bay doors in the hopes that we can at least get you home. That is what Jack is commanding right now. Do you read, Vanessa Ford? This isJack’s command.”

Vanessa nods to herself and closes her eyes.

The way Joan says it reverberates in her mind.

This isJack’scommand.

Vanessa begins gathering the tools and securing them in the tool kit. “Roger that, Houston. Understood,” she says. “But I believe that trying to land the shuttle with the doors as they are now is Lydia’s best chance of survival.”

“Navigator,the entire—”

“Tell NASA to do whatever they have to do to me if I survive,” Vanessa says. “Censure me, fire me, arrest me. I do not care. I’m going back into the flight deck, and I’m starting deorbit procedures.”

“Navigator,you do not have the approval—”

“Everybody down there, listen to me. It’s not a discussion,” Vanessa says.

She needs to make Joan understand that there is no way to change her mind, or else Joan will blame herself for everything that happens today. She will replay it in her head for the rest of her life to see if there was anything she could have said to convince Vanessa otherwise. Vanessa cannot allow that to happen.

Vanessa needs Joan to understand that this was always inevitable.

From the moment Vanessa was born, this moment has been inevitable.

“I know a lot of people are listening right now,” Vanessa says. “I know you all know that I’m breaking protocol. For anyone reviewing this later, the transcript will show that I am doing this alone: I’m making this decision. Joan isn’t. Jack isn’t. No one at NASA is.

“There is one person who can land this thing and potentially saveany of the lives on board. And that’s me. So I will be deciding. And what I am choosing to do is to attempt to save the life of Lydia Danes. This decision has already been made. I will not consider any other arguments.”

Joan is crying now. Vanessa can hear her gasp.“Navigator—”

“Joan,” Vanessa says, her voice soft. “We do not know what is going to happen, okay? We don’t know what the next few hours hold. We do not know the aerodynamic effects of the warp in the payload doors. We do not know, for certain, what will happen on reentry. The shuttle has withstood plenty of things we didn’t believe it could. That’s my gamble right now. Because I will not tinker away back here when Lydia needs me to get her home. I won’t do that. So do not ask me again. We have less than a rev to get her home. If you take any more of my time, you threaten both of our lives even further.”

She waits.

“Roger that,” Joan says, finally.

Vanessa knows that it is not Joan making that call. She knows that in Mission Control, Jack looked at Joan, and nodded.

Still, Vanessa knows it killed Joan to say the words.

And that Joan did it for her.

Joan is sitting at herconsole in Mission Control and she cannot breathe. Her body has stopped taking in air as an involuntary process. Instead, every few seconds, she gasps and abruptly exhales. And then holds her breath again.

It’s been happening for the past half hour, as everyone in Mission Control has tried to figure out how to address the unprecedented insubordination of the only conscious astronaut aboard a damaged shuttle.

Jack and the rest of the team have resigned themselves to what Joan knew well before Vanessa said it.

“We have no choice but to support the premature deorbit,” Jack announced when Vanessa got into the airlock against orders. “And do what we can to ensure thatNavigatorsurvives reentry under the current conditions.”

Right now, there are teams of engineers trying to calculate to what percentage the shuttle can withstand reentry with the vague specs Vanessa has reported.

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