The Calculating Stars (Lady Astronaut, #1)(21)

Pushing back from the desk, I stood and paced around the study. A casserole sat congealing on the table next to me. Myrtle had brought it in at some point. Part of it was gone and the fork was dirty, but I had no memory of eating anything.

An ache ran from my right eye and over the top of my head. I needed Nathaniel. I gathered the pages together, both my original calculations about the meteorite impact, and the tidier sheets where I’d reworked them. He would still be at HQ. I could … what? Pull him out of a meeting? Nothing on these pages would change if I waited for him to come home.

But I needed my husband, and I needed him now. Rubbing the ache above my eye eased it a little. If my math wasn’t wrong, then some of the original data must be. One of the reports probably exaggerated numbers. I must be wrong.

I snatched the plate off the table and carried it into the kitchen. The house was dark, except for the light over the stove. Nathaniel needed to come home. And he would, probably in not too much longer. I could be patient.

I scraped the rest of the casserole into the garbage then stood at the kitchen sink to wash the dish. The Lindholms had a shiny new dishwasher, but the water running over my hands calmed me. After I put the dish in the rack, I stood for a moment and let the water trickle through my fingers.

The front door opened. Thank God. I wiped my hands on the dish towel and ran to meet Nathaniel. He smiled when he saw me, and leaned in for a kiss. “Hello, beautiful.”

“I need to show you something.” I winced. “Sorry. I mean, how was your day? Convince them that the Russians aren’t after us yet?”

“Not quite. And now President Brannan wants to restart NACA and have us look for other asteroids.” He loosened his tie. “What did you want to show me?”

“It can wait until morning.” This was me trying to be a good wife despite my anxiety, because, truly, showing him tonight would accomplish nothing beyond making him as sleepless as me.

“Elma. No. I don’t want to be kicked all night.”

“Kicked?”

“Yeah. When you’re this worked up, you toss and kick in your sleep.”

“I—” How do you argue about what you do when you’re asleep? “Do I hurt you?”

“Let’s just say that I’d like to see whatever it is.”

Really, I needed no convincing at all. I grabbed his hand and pulled him into the study. “I was trying to calculate how much energy it would take to move the Meteor to prove that there was no way the Russians could have done it.”

He stopped in the doorway. “Please don’t tell me that they could have done it.”

“No.” In a way, that would have been better. I stood next to the desk and looked at the pages covered with calculations. “No, but I think this could be an extinction event.”





EIGHT

FEED GRAINS PRICES CRASH





CHICAGO, March 26, 1952—(AP)—Feed grains dropped significantly on the Board of Trade today in a continuation of the preceding session’s crash. Brokers thought the downturn, both today and yesterday, was based largely on the fact that export of corn and oats were blocked due to harbor damage on the East Coast ports.


God help me, I wanted to be wrong. Nathaniel sat at the desk in the Lindholms’ study and worked his slide rule, double-checking my calculations. The desk was scattered with encyclopedias, almanacs, atlases, and newspapers from the last week with reports of where damage was showing.

I leaned against the wall next to the window, chewing on the inside of my lip. The night outside had started to turn silver, and if I had any more coffee, I would vibrate through the ceiling.

He hadn’t asked me any questions for the last hour. Every time his pencil scratched against the paper, I hoped it was an error, that I’d forgotten to invert a differential or square a root or something. Anything.

Finally, he set the slide rule on the desk and rested his head on his fingertips. He stared at the last page. “We have to get off this fucking planet.”

“Nathaniel!” Why I was chiding him about language, I couldn’t tell you.

“Sorry.” He sighed, sliding his hands over his head until his face was hidden between his arms. His voice was muffled against the table. “I really wanted you to be wrong.”

“My starting numbers might be off.”

“If they’re that far off, someone at Encyclopedia Americana should be fired.” He sat up, still scrubbing his face and squinting. “I thought we had gotten lucky that the meteorite was a water strike.”

“It’s the steam that’s the problem.” I crossed the room to sit on the desk, but Nathaniel caught my wrist and pulled me down onto his lap. I leaned against him and rested my head on his. “Things are going to get cold for a bit, and then all that water vapor in the air…”

He nodded. “I’ll see if I can get you a meeting with the president.”

“The president?” Heart kicking sideways, I straightened a bit. “It’s just … I mean, a lot of this involves stuff that’s not in my field of study and … maybe we should talk to other scientists.”

“Sure. But … right now, they’ve got me and Wernher von Braun working on a program to spot other potential asteroids and blow them up with rockets.” He leaned back in the chair and scratched one of the scabs on his chin. “You know military bureaucracy as well as I do.”