Page 43 of Across the Universe

Jeanie Florence approaches them with a scroll tucked under one arm, and a no-nonsense look on her pretty face.

“Gents,” she says, nodding at each of them. “I wanted to show you a few things before you all take part in today’s training. Got a second?”

Bill sips his coffee and keeps his eyes focused just over Jeanie’s right shoulder. “Sure,” he says mildly, working to keep his tone and reaction to her presence on an even keel. “Lead the way.”

Jeanie strides right over to a long table, her heels clicking on the cement floor. She sets down the scrolled poster and unrolls it, smoothing it flat with her hands as Vance, Bill, and Todd gather around.

“So the propulsion system is going to be isolated from the retrorocket section of the capsule by a fiber-glass blast shield,” Jeanie explains confidently. “The retrorocket section will hold the re-entry rockets for the entire capsule.” She points at the front of the drawing of the shuttle. “The nose-mounted docking collar right here,” she says, tapping the image, “and the target docking adapter on the other craft—also known as the TDA—will come together, resulting in the very first docking of two spacecraft while in Earth’s orbit.”

Todd gives a low whistle as he leans over the table in his flight suit, one hand on his hip. He looks young and eager. “What if the docking collar and the TDA don’t interface correctly?”

Jeanie is wholly lost in the moment and in the conversation, and Bill watches her as her brow furrows. She explains to Todd the precautions that are already in place if they encounter trouble, but Bill isn’t zeroing in on the technical jargon. Instead, he’s watching the way Jeanie’s long hair, which is pulled back from her face with a brown clip, falls forward and brushes the table as she leans over the drawing of the space shuttle. She’s wearing a light, flowery perfume that sits around her like a delicate cloud, and the tiny gold hoops in her ears catch bits of light from above, glinting as she turns her head to look right at Todd.

Bill steps away from the table and turns his back. He can’t be doing this—standing around thinking about Jeanie’s hair and about the way she smells. He tips the paper cup of coffee back and drains it, crushing the cup in his hand when he’s done and walking over to a large, silver aluminum trash can by the double doors. Bill chucks the cup into the garbage and glances back to where Todd is still engaging Jeanie in a discussion, but striding right in Bill’s direction is Arvin North.

“Booker,” North says crisply. “You’re up first.”

Bill had been about to duck out of the large warehouse-like space to hit the men’s room, but instead he claps his hands together, forgetting all about nature’s call.

“I’m ready, sir,” he says, following North to the simulator that’s set up under a heavy canvas tent. Beneath the flaps of the cover, several engineers with clipboards and serious looks on their faces inspect the simulator, bending down, looking at its underside, and testing the knobs and controls.

“We’ll strap you in here,” one engineer says to Bill, waving him over. “And as soon as you hear the command to dock, we want you to use the levers and knobs to direct the docking collar. It’s going to take a few tries,” the engineer, a man named Sheldon, says, pushing his thick glasses up the bridge of his nose, “but after some maneuvering, you’ll get the hang of it.”

Bill is confident that he can master this task in a fairly short span of time, so he allows himself to be settled and belted in with the three-point harness, then he slips on the headset that allows the pseudo-mission control staff to talk into his ear.

“Mission control to Booker,” says a voice over the scratchy air in the headset.

“This is Booker,” he says, twisting the mouthpiece so that it faces his lips. “I read you loud and clear.”

A quick click-click comes across the line. “We read you as well. Are you settled in, sir?”

“I am,” Bill confirms, pressing the buttons on the machine in front of him. A small television screen sits directly in front of him, and on it, Bill can see the to-scale model of the nose of a real spacecraft, its tip poised to make contact with another to-scale model of a target docking adapter.

“We’re not running a clock on this, Lieutenant Colonel Booker,” says the voice in his ear. “The first time is just an attempt to see whether you’re in the neighborhood of the TDA.”

A small wave of nervous laughter fills the space as the other engineers, who have stepped back to the recesses of the tented area, wait anxiously for Bill to test the equipment. He glances out at the space beyond the tent and sees Vance and Todd watching in their matching flight suits, and Jeanie next to them, arms folded across her chest as she bites on her lower lip with anticipation.

Bill takes a series of slow breaths, forcing himself to calm down and get into the right head space.

“Let’s proceed,” Arvin North says, standing under the flaps of the tent as he observes Bill.

Bill grips both the lever and the knob in front of him, giving each a gentle movement so that he can gauge how much pressure results in how much movement. The system is highly and delicately calibrated, and he quickly realizes that it will take very gentle pressure to get the nose of the craft to move.

“Go on, Bill,” North says, nodding at him. “Give it a shot. No clock, no timer, no pressure.”

Bill gives a quick laugh at this. “No pressure whatsoever,” he says as he manipulates the knob and lever. “None at all.”

The small audience that’s gathered to watch does so silently, holding its collective breath as Bill does his best to match up the nose and the TDA. He’s millimeters away from having the hardware connected in precisely the right way when he makes the slightest movement, jarring the apparatus and sending the nose off course.

Everyone gathered makes a stifled sound in tandem, and Bill cringes inwardly. He’s realizing now how difficult this will be to execute under different circumstances, and he grits his teeth, realigning the nose and the TDA to make another pass at it.

This goes on for what feels like hours as Bill sweats under his flight suit. Each time he misses the docking, he can feel a trickle of wetness run down his spine, and more than once he has to pause and swipe at his brow so that sweat doesn’t run right into his eyes.

On what has to be the tenth or eleventh miss, Arvin claps his hands together, startling the entire group, including Bill, who fumbles the lever and swears under his breath.

“Let’s have Roman give it a shot,” Arvin North says, waving Todd over.

Todd, all Golden Retriever eagerness and joy, comes bounding in from the outskirts of the tent, nodding at Bill as he unhooks the harness and steps out of the seat. Bill’s muscles have cramped as he’s tried to work the delicate machinery, and his shoulders have grown rock hard with tension. He stretches his neck from side to side and motions at the seat he’s just vacated.

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