The doctor scribbled on his prescription pad. “Take two of these as necessary,” he said, tearing off the prescription and holding it out across his desk to Jake.
Tami sat at Jake’s side. Her examination had shown everything was all right.
“It’s just a slight sprain,” the doctor said, sounding bored. “Tension. It’ll go away in a couple of days.”
Jake got to his feet shakily and took the prescription in one hand. “Thank you, doctor,” he said.
Nick Piazza appeared at the doorway. Looking at Jake and Tami, he asked, “You’re both okay?”
“Nothing but shattered constitutions,” Jake said. Gripping Tami’s hand as she stood up, he added, “I never want to go through anything like that again.”
Piazza nodded.
“Where’s Billy?” asked Tami.
Pointing along the corridor outside the physician’s office, Piazza said, “Down there.”
“How is he?”
“He seems okay. Quiet. I think it’s just starting to hit him, what he tried to do,” Piazza said, leading them to the door. He pushed it open and the three of them stepped into the smallish room. Jake closed the door firmly behind them.
Before anyone could say anything, Piazza looked at Trueblood and said mournfully, “This is all my fault.”
Trueblood got up from the chair he’d been sitting in and said, “It sure is.”
Billy stood facing Piazza, but didn’t move an inch toward him. Jake saw that Nick towered over the younger man, as he did with almost everybody.
With a pitiful little shrug, Piazza admitted, “I treated you like shit, Billy. What can I do to make up for it?”
“Make sure they don’t lift my license,” Trueblood said.
“Yeah, sure. But there’s got to be more.”
Nodding, Trueblood said, “I guess we should both get some counseling.”
“I’ve been thinking,” Piazza said. “NASA runs the astronaut training center. How’d you like to become an astronaut?”
“A gay astronaut?” Trueblood almost laughed. “I don’t think so.”
“There’s got to be something!”
“I’ll think about it. I’ll let you know.”
“But where will you go? What will you do?”
Trueblood stared down at his shoes for a moment, then brought his eyes up to stare into Piazza’s. “I’m going back to the reservation. Talk to the medicine men there. See what they have to say.”
“Anything, Billy. I’ll do anything.”
“To keep this all a secret? Yeah, I know.”
“To help you find your way!”
With a curt nod, Trueblood said, “That’s what the medicine men are for. They help a man find his way.” Then he added, “Sometimes.”
The four of them agreed that what had happened between Trueblood and Piazza would remain their business, no one else’s. Tami promised that she wouldn’t tell a soul. “This is between the two of you,” she said, then added, “But don’t go buzzing into buildings again, Billy. Not ever!”
He actually managed a smile. Raising his right hand in a three-fingered Boy Scout salute, he swore, “Not ever.”
Piazza instructed his personal driver to ferry Tami and Jake to the DoubleTree hotel in Albuquerque.
“What about you?” Jake asked Piazza as they approached the black sedan.
“I’ve got to talk with my people here, make sure this story doesn’t get spread to the media. A lot of fences to mend. Jerome will take you to the DoubleTree and then come back here for me.”
As he followed Tami into the car, Jake realized that Jerome’s name in Spanish was Geronimo.
* * *
Jake found it hard to sleep. He kept seeing the Spaceport buildings flashing past, hearing the roar of the Citation’s engines as they dove toward the ground. Time and again he sat up in bed, soaked in cold sweat.
Next to him, Tami’s sleep was troubled too; she tossed and moaned but she didn’t wake up. It’s going to take a lot more than a few pills to get us over this, Jake told himself.
As dawn began to ease the darkness outside their hotel window, Jake finally gave up all pretense of sleeping and went to the bathroom. By the time he came out Tami was standing at the window looking out at the slowly brightening sky.
“A new day,” she said, turning toward Jake.
He folded her into his arms. “The nightmare’s over. Time to get back to work.”
They grabbed a quick breakfast down in the hotel’s lobby, then drove out to the Spaceport. It felt eerie: almost every one of the Astra employees knew that the building had been buzzed by the boss’s Citation, although only a few knew who was flying the plane and what his original intention was. Piazza had called the whole team together and told a half-truthful story about Billy’s “escapade.” He never mentioned attempted suicide or the reasons for it.
At last Jake and Tami went out into the chilly early morning to watch the launch. The sun was just over the horizon, already starting to warm the desert. Waiting out in the grandstand as the countdown ticked away, Jake felt his pulse quickening, as it always did at a launch. I wonder how many of these things I’ll have to watch before they become humdrum? he asked himself.
And the answer came to him. It’ll never happen. Every launch is a drama, a contest between human willpower and the forces of nature.
The thought calmed him. Standing there in the open grandstand with a few dozen other onlookers, Jake felt not calm, far from calm, but ready to face whatever came, willing and even anxious to see this latest step in the settlement of the new frontier.
Turning toward Tami, he slid an arm around her waist and pulled her close. Inanely, he said, “We’re on our way.”
She smiled up at him. “I just wish they wouldn’t schedule these launches at the crack of dawn.”
Jake laughed. Tami’s sense of humor had returned.
The countdown proceeded smoothly. As the loudspeakers counted, “… THREE … TWO … ONE—” Jake suddenly wished he was in the spaceship perched up on the rocket’s nose. He wanted to be going into space himself. He remembered an old line that somebody had written long ago:
“When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.”
Smoke billowed, the rocket engines lit off, their hot flame burning through the steam, and the Astra Super began to climb into the bright morning sky.
“There they go!” somebody hollered.
The meager crowd cheered, and the rocket rose smoothly across the heavens. The sound from the launchpad finally reached the spectators, wave after wave of thunder rattling every nerve in the body.
“ASTRA SUPER IS ON ITS WAY TO THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION,” the launch announcer said. Jake let go of a sigh of relief. And he saw that Tami did, too.