Riding Rockets - Mike Mullane [206]
Back in the crew quarters the techs stripped me out of the LES. After grabbing two beers from the kitchen, I walked to the bathroom, shed my long johns (reeking of sweat and faintly of urine), unfastened my diaper, and stood at the mirror. The craters under my eyes could have hidden a moon buggy. I wondered what a decent night of chemical-free REM sleep would feel like. It had been so long I couldn’t imagine the experience. My neck was ringed red from the chafing of the LES neck dam. There were other suit tattoos: ruptured capillaries on the insides of my arms and bruises on my biceps from trying to move while the LES was pressurized. There were still multiple shaved and sandpaper-roughened hickeys on my chest from the EKG attachments applied during a prequarantine medical test. My thighs and calves had similar shaved and roughened patches of skin marking the attachment locations of sensors for a muscle-response test. The end of my penis was cherry red with what I could only hope was temporary diaper rash. Whatever it was, I wasn’t about to bring it to the attention of the flight surgeons. If I had a urinary tract infection, it would come along for the ride. I had invested far too much in this mission to be pulled from it now. I entered the shower, stood under the cascading hot water, and drank my beer.
By the time we completed our debriefings the sun had risen and J.O. suggested we meet our wives at the beach house. I called Donna and this time we agreed it would be fun to get together.
The five of us entered the beach house living area to find it strewn with clothing: shirts, shoes, socks, panty hose, bras. There was even a bra swinging from the end of a ceiling fan. It was obvious we had entered a joke in progress. Sure enough, when we walked into the bedroom we found the family escorts, Hoot Gibson and Mario Runco, lying shirtless on the bed. Crowded next to them were all the wives, clothed but for their underthings, pretending to beshocked at our appearance. Everyone laughed, something we all needed as much as a good night’s sleep.
Hoot teased us with the obvious point of the joke. “You guys are taking so long to get this mission going, your wives are developing some realneed issues.”
I threw it back in his face. “I’m not worried. You and Mario are navy officers. You have to be heterosexual to know what a woman needs. I’m surprised you guys aren’t in a bedroom by yourselves.”
Hoot and I had a well-deserved reputation for a disgusting synergy. Our exchanges devolved into more offensive comebacks and counter-comebacks until Donna finally hollered, “Enough! Will you guys ever grow up?” I had now heard that outburst from so many women so many times in my life, I thought it should be in Latin on the official shield of Planet Arrested Development—umquam grow idiotum.
The rest of the visit was relaxing. We had all been cured of the need to deliver a Bergman-Bogey good-bye at the water’s edge, so we just sat around, drank beer, and traded stories. Pepe told us of his agony during the wait on the pad. Dave Hilmers shot him a hypothetical question: “Pepe, if NASA needs someone to replace an MS on the next flight, would you volunteer?” Pepe instantly replied, “Absolutely.” His eagerness embodied the astronaut conundrum. Even as we waited on the pad, scared shitless and physically tortured, none of us could imagine not taking every offered mission.
When we returned to the crew quarters we were greeted by the local news showing a large, unmanned, French-built Ariane rocket blowing up shortly after liftoff from its South American pad. The story wouldn’t have been covered anywhere else in America, but, on Florida’s space coast, the competing French space program was news. The stations played