Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

August 10th, 1958 — Outside Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia

Christ, it was hot.

The humid air was unbearable, cloying, sticking to every centimeter of his exposed flesh. What had earlier this morning been a crisply ironed white button-down was now transparent in places, clinging to his underarms and the back of his sweaty neck. An inelegant display. To make matters worse, Xeno had ordered alongside his lunch a black coffee in the largest mug the café could find. It had been served with the steam still crawling towards the atmosphere and had burned his tongue at first sip.
But he very resolutely continued to drink it — to keep himself occupied as the man across from him talked on.

Equally sweaty, and occasionally mopping his brow with a used napkin, was Maxime Faget. Max Faget was a little man with big ears and small eyes. His trademark bow tie was drooping in the heat, and if he wasn’t clearly about to present Xeno with a career on a silver platter, Xeno might have laughed at him for it. But that wasn’t fair to him. As far as colleagues went, Faget wasn’t the worst. The best of a bad lot. Overly friendly, yes, but he was enthusiastic and more importantly, smart.

Faget fiddled with the crust of what used to be his tuna on rye — he ate fast for such a small man, Xeno was only halfway into his cheeseburger — before looking up at Xeno and sighing.
“Well, you’ve read the news. No use beating around the bush, huh?”
“I don’t think so, Dr. Faget.”
“Listen, with NACA dissolving and getting wrapped up in NASA, people are getting laid off. I mean, you know this. It’s a madhouse over at Langley,” said Faget. Xeno hastily took a sip of coffee to avoid smiling. He was enjoying seeing his colleagues at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics scurry around in panic, knowing they could be next on the chopping block. Like rats trying to flee a sinking ship, all of them. After putting up with their idiocy for so long it was funny to see them squirm.
Xeno, on the other hand, knew he’d be fine. He was irreplaceable, a fact that Faget was no doubt about to confirm.
“That is terrible,” Xeno agreed smoothly. “But what can we do?” And then, humbly, he added: “I’ve been looking for work as well. I was thinking about taking a professorship back home in Houston.”

(Now that was a lie. He would sooner choke than take a professorship — devoting all that time to slack-jawed, smooth-brained students! — but Faget didn’t have to know that.)

As predicted, Faget perked up at that. He wiped at his head again.
“Say, Dr. Wingfield, that’s exactly what I’m here to talk with you about.”
“A professorship?” asked Xeno, raising an eyebrow. Another polite sip of coffee scalded his palate.
“No, work. A job. Nothing’s confirmed, of course, but Gilruth and I are helping Glennan budget everything out, and you know they’re letting me pick some of my staff. The best guys from NACA.”

And there it was.

“Are you offering me a job, Dr Faget?” Xeno smiled. As if he didn’t already know the answer! The best of NACA. Yes, that was him.
Faget grinned back at him. At 37, the man was Xeno’s senior by twelve years, but he still looked like a kid on Christmas morning with that big grin of his.
“If you’ll take it. You’re one of my best engineers. This little crack team we’re trying to build — we need you.”
Xeno liked hearing that. He was, by far, the smartest of his colleagues, and he would be lying if he didn’t preen at the acknowledgment of that fact. He liked being needed.
And yet he needed more than that.
NACA had been hell on earth for him. Putting aside the matter of his imbecilic coworkers, the whole operation had been bloated, overly bureaucratic and underfunded. The same problems crept into any sort of government job, really.
If NASA was the same way…

Well, he was going to need a guarantee that Faget’s little project would put his name in the history books.

“So this role…”
“You’ll be working directly under me, in engineering. We think it’ll be a small team. Much smaller than NACA, real secretive. Top secret.”
“And what is this mission of this little ‘team’ of yours?”
“Well, we don’t have an official mission yet. It’s all unofficial… all off-the-books stuff.”

As he feared. He took another sip of coffee: something to stabilize himself. Then he stared Faget directly in his excited little eyes. Faget met his gaze, for once entirely serious, and Xeno leaned forward.

Everyone at NACA knew that NASA’s goal was to beat the Soviets to space. That was why it had been formed — a response to Sputnik. Christ, the press had a field day with that. Xeno didn’t care one iota about international politics or the specter of communism or the USSR, but he knew one thing: Americans were a prideful people, and if the ‘Ruskis’ had beat them to unmanned spacecraft, they would demand the logical next step.

“Dr. Faget. Can you guarantee me that my work will be focused on manned spacecraft?”

“No, I can’t guarantee anything.”

Well. That was disappointing. Xeno sat back in his seat, suddenly deflated.
Undeterred, Faget continued.
“Nothing’s ever a sure bet when it comes to the government. But listen, Dr. Wingfield, right now everyone in Washington’s raring for it. If there was ever a time, it’s now. And I’d like you to help us. With man in space, that is.”

The sweat cooled on Xeno’s nape as a sudden chill overtook him. He found himself sitting up again, eyes wide despite himself. Faget had said it! He’d acknowledged the rocket-sized elephant in the room, had uttered the words that were locked behind security clearances and classifications.

They were going to put man in space.

And he’d like Xeno to help them.
Such a gentle way of phrasing it, as if it were a request. As if Faget were asking Xeno if he would kindly fetch him something. As if Xeno could ever refuse! Man in space! It was the stuff of science fiction: the setting of those shitty dime novels he had poured over as a kid and the plot of the movies he’d sneak into the theater to see for free. It was the thing that had permeated every waking dream and every sleepless night.

Man in space! It was a part of him, and he, naturally, would be a part of it.

He willfully silenced the rapid pulsing of his heart at those three words — ‘man in space’ — with another burning sip of coffee and a magnanimous little half-smile.
“Of course I accept, Dr. Faget. How could I not?”

*

The two of them finished out their lunch leisurely. There was no need to rush back to work. With the news of NACA’s dissolution, lacklustreness had infected its employees. In the lazy heat of the dog days of August, the symptoms had only worsened. It had gotten to Faget too. Now instead of going back to work, Xeno and Faget were leaning against the side of Faget’s modest car as the air shimmered off the asphalt parking lot.
Faget was smoking, much to Xeno’s irritation. All the engineers at NACA were smokers, and the entire facility reeked with the stale scent of tobacco.
Christ, how Xeno hated that smell.

“How’s that girl of yours?” asked Faget. “The general’s daughter… Laura?”

He had to stop himself from rolling his eyes. Categorically, he hated all small talk — especially the fixation his colleagues seemed to have with each other’s love lives. Although love in the purest sense had very little to do with it. The game was all about conquest, about comparing notes on how soft a girl’s skin was and how shapely her figure. It was a game Xeno had no interest in playing.
But Faget had just guaranteed him a job. Had penciled in a spot in history for him, really.

He could play along with the small talk for now.

“Luna,” Xeno corrected. “Luna Wright. And she’s all right… I’m sure she’ll be happy to hear that I’ll be at NASA. That we’ll get to stay in Hampton, really. You know she’s never left Virginia?”
Faget whistled at that.
“And she was willing to follow you back to Houston if you took a professorship? That’s a good girl there.”
“She is.”
“When’s the wedding?”
“I don’t know. We haven’t planned it yet.”
There was a long pause. Xeno turned to look at Faget, to gauge the source of his silence. The man was actually gaping at him. “What?” asked Xeno, defensive despite himself. “We only got engaged four months ago.”
“Don’t you know anything about women?” said Faget, practically yelling. “She’s already got the wedding planned down to the menu! Hell, probably had it planned the day after you two met!”
“Well, we haven’t discussed it.”
“That doesn’t mean anything! Listen, Dr. Wingfield, you’ll never meet anyone with as strong an opinion on anything as a woman on her wedding. You know when Nancy and I got married I couldn’t even pick out my own shoes. She insisted on doing everything.”
“Luna isn’t that sort of girl,” said Xeno. And thank god she wasn’t. He would never have proposed otherwise.

Xeno liked Luna because she was understanding, easy to influence, and too nervous to interfere with his work. She had been enamored by him since they had met a year ago at a NACA event. Of course she was a nice girl outside of all that, and widely considered to be quite pretty (if the wolf whistles he got from colleagues upon announcing their engagement were to be believed). Things with Luna were convenient and reasonably pleasant. And it didn’t hurt that her father was a wealthy general. Influence was currency at any government job.

Faget looked unimpressed by his defense.

“Well, Dr. Wingfield," he said, “it’ll be slow until NASA officially starts in October. And even after that this little man-in-space cabal we’re forming… well, it’ll be a while.”
Xeno said nothing. The small talk was beginning to grate on him, his respect for Faget aside. His attention focused on a small dark dot circling around Langley. Some kind of transport aircraft, probably getting ready to land at the Air Force base. He squinted. A Convair Samaritan, probably. Langley had a few of those. Big fat things. They had been designed to carry civilians: men on their business trips and stewardesses hawking orange juice and coffee. Then the military got its hands on them and gutted them for storage.

Next to him, Faget continued, breaking Xeno’s concentration. “What I’m trying to say is, take a break. Once the press gets wind of man-in-space it’ll be a madhouse. You’ll be thinking, eating, and breathing rockets. But you have time now. Relax a little, take a trip. Get hitched to that girl of yours before she thinks better of it.”

The advice was sincere, from a good place. Xeno disregarded it immediately. Faget was a coworker, not a friend, and his own philosophy had always been that professional and personal matters were not to mix.

“Thank you, Dr. Faget,” Xeno said politely. “I’ll be sure to keep that in mind.”

October 1st, 1958 — Outside Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia

“How do you like the casserole?” said Luna, her eyes tracking the fork currently entering Xeno’s mouth with pinpoint accuracy. “It’s my grandma’s recipe.” Her voice was pitched even higher than normal. She was nervous.

Xeno smiled ingratiatingly. “It’s delicious. It was very nice of you to bring me dinner, Luna.” Neither of those statements were true, exactly. The casserole was so woefully undersalted that it could have passed for dessert, and he would much rather be working than entertaining Luna at his messy apartment.
But Luna had insisted — “Oh, but surely you need to celebrate your first day at NASA!” — and Xeno was a good fiancé. He knew the rules for this sort of thing. Be polite, compliment her appearance, spend time with her when possible.
That was the sort of romance a man like Xeno could provide.

Months ago, way back in January before they got engaged, the two of them had gone to the movies on a date. He had paid for their tickets and even let Luna pick out the film. She decided on the new MGM musical, the sort of colorful schlock he had to pretend he didn’t like. In return, he chose two seats nestled in the respectable center of the theater. (Xeno liked the middle row; the spot precluded the sort of teenage amorousness that might occur in the dark back row). The film was alright. Louis Jordan was starring as some kind of devil-may-care playboy, and even in the darkness, Xeno could see Luna swoon.
He had been blunt with her before — the way he was with everybody — but after that date Xeno had decided to treat Luna differently. He could never emulate the suave flirtatiousness that Luna so clearly fawned over, but he could do the next best thing. He could act the gentleman.

So regardless of the objective reality that the casserole tasted like raw flour, Xeno smiled and ate it dutifully. Every bite secured the future of their engagement.

Luna beamed at him. There was a bit of lipstick stuck to her teeth, in the coral color she favored but saved for ‘special occasions.’ (What constituted a special occasion, he had no idea. He’d seen her wear it equally to galas and to the public pool). She had clearly put a bit of effort into her hair and makeup today. Her strawberry blonde hair had been carefully curled and set so that it brushed across her forehead in one grand sweep.
Xeno spotted an easy opportunity to gain favor.
“You look beautiful, Luna. Have you done something new with your hair?”

As expected, Luna flushed and patted at her hair, knocking it a bit askew in the process. “Um, well — yes — I picked up a magazine and they had a tell-all about how Jayne Mansfield does her hair, and I tried to follow it… it took a long time, but I figured it’s a special occasion.”
There she went again with that ‘special occasion’ nonsense.
“Not that special. I expect work at NASA will be very similar to how it was at NACA. Even the staff is largely the same.”
“Oh, but it’s only NASA’s first day! You don’t know that at all. Maybe things will be more… interesting.”
“We’ll see,” said Xeno. Really he knew what Luna was hinting at — she wanted to know more about the man-in-space program.
There was no doubt that it was happening now. Today, on NASA’s inaugural day, Bob Gilruth had started everything off with an extensive presentation on his plans to put man in space. Yes, it was still highly classified, but Luna’s father was in the Air Force, where the program had originated. It was basically an open secret to her. Still, he had his orders: he was not to divulge any information about the program.

Luna seemed to sense his reluctance and changed the topic: “Uh, you said the staff was mostly the same?”
“Yes, they’ve recruited a lot of us. The big boss — Glennan — isn’t from NACA, but most of the scientists are.”
“And… do you like them?”
“They’re alright.”

She sighed a little and went silent, the sound of her fork scraping against her plate suddenly noticeable.
“I wish you would tell me more about your work,” Luna said after a prolonged moment.
“You know it’s classified,” responded Xeno. This here was the one glaring flaw with his fianceé: her insistence on knowing every little detail about his life. Wasn’t it enough for him to have dinner with her every so often and make conversation? Did she have to be involved with everything he did?
“I know, but even my father tells me more about his work than you do! And he’s a general!”

Xeno put his fork down.

“Don’t make a fuss, Luna.”
“I’m not! But we are engaged, you know, and —”

Ah. That was what this was all about. Faget’s conversation with him from a month ago floated through his mind. Xeno was a smart man, and unlike some of the pathetic excuses for scientists floating around NASA, he could admit when he was wrong. Perhaps he had underestimated Luna’s desire to get the wedding over and done with. She was twenty, after all, and most of her friends were already married. A few of them were expecting children. One, the wife of a dashing pilot, was already a widow.
“Luna,” Xeno interrupted. The woman immediately froze. “I know you’re worried about the wedding. I’m sorry we haven’t begun planning yet.”
His fiancée flushed again. Her hands made their way between her knees, like a child caught scribbling on the walls.
“I know you’re busy, Xeno,” she said quietly. “But it’s been six months.”
“I’ve told you before that when work settles down we can begin planning.”
“But it sounds like work won’t settle down for years! I really don’t mind something simple… a courthouse wedding or even an elopement would be awfully romantic… and we could do a real wedding later when you have time for it.”
Xeno attempted to interrupt her, but this was one of the rare occasions where the normally nervous Luna was confident and talkative. She steamrolled over his words without even noticing.

“I just want to be married,” she continued. “Then when we’re husband and wife I can move out of my parent’s house and in with you, and we can buy a little house somewhere near here with a picket fence, and while you’re at work I can shop for curtains and pillows and things — and I know you don’t like pink but maybe just one or two things could be pink, like a lamp — and then I can cook dinner for you every night and I won’t need to make stupid excuses to come see you like celebrating your first day at NASA.”

Incredibly, Luna had managed to say all of that in one breath. A distant part of Xeno’s mind thought that she ought to be put in a fighter jet with that lung capacity. The rest was politely trying to ignore the fact that everything Luna had just stated sounded like his own personal hell, all the way down to bland casserole for dinner every night and a pink lamp.

Adjusting the position of his fork and knife so that they formed an ‘X’ on the napkin, Xeno began his rebuttal. He made sure to adopt a gentle tone of voice, the sort a farmboy would use to comfort an injured cow.
“Luna, I’ve explained everything to you. Your father would never accept an elopement or a courthouse wedding. He’d probably block me from getting any sort of government job ever again.”
“But if I just talked to him, I’m sure he’d understand —”
“When I proposed, did I or did I not tell you that this relationship might be difficult at first?”
“... You did,” Luna said. She looked sad. That was unfortunate. Luna was a sweet girl, and Xeno really did want her to have her picket fence and pink lamps. But work came first, and he had to make his point.
“And what did you tell me?”
“I told you that I was a cool-headed and capable gal and I didn’t mind any of that.”

Another point in Luna’s favor — she had an excellent memory. She had, in fact, said exactly that. Xeno wasn’t sure if she’d picked it up from a movie or a magazine, but she had a tendency to refer to herself as a ‘capable gal’. It was a mildly endearing habit of hers.

“A capable gal. Tell me, Luna, are you still a capable gal?”
Luna looked more determined now. Her brow was furrowed and her jaw was set — an imitation of her father’s stern military demeanor. The look was disharmonious with her round face and big blue eyes. Like a puffed-up kitten playing at being a tiger.
“I am! I’m capable — I’m a smooth operator!”
“And can you deal with being a fiancée and not a wife for a few months longer?”
“I— I guess so!”

Well, that was not quite what Xeno wanted to hear, but it was good enough. He picked up his fork again and took another bite of his casserole.

November 5th, 1958 — Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia

The Space Task Group.

The STG, for short. It was an elegant little moniker. Much better than the way Faget had phrased it — “an off-the-books man-in-space cabal.”
And Xeno appreciated how… selective the group had been. (No dead weight, not like NACA.) Here they were, every single member of the newly-minted Space Task Group, all shoved in one little room at Langley for their inaugural ceremony, and they fit quite well. There were only 46 of them.

And in front of them, commanding very little attention but flanked by Charles Donlan and Faget — their leader, Bob Gilruth. Gilruth had been at NACA too, of course, and Xeno had always liked him well enough. He was an older man, mid-forties, with thick black eyebrows that made a sharp contrast to the monk-like arrangement of receding white hair. Like Faget, he was intelligent, but unlike Faget, he was quiet. That put him leagues ahead of his loud, nosy colleagues in Xeno’s estimation.
Donlan, his de facto deputy and a MIT alum like Xeno, gave Gilruth a nudge.
They wanted Gilruth to give a speech.
It only made sense, Xeno supposed. Normally he found these things trite, but it was the STG’s founding hour. If ever there was a time for a speech, it was now. Gilruth coughed a bit and stood up straighter. He was a tall man, but in the cramped room, his shiny bald head was nearly blocked from view.
“Well,” said Gilruth, and even if he was hard to see, the whole room quieted and turned towards him. Xeno had never considered Gilruth a particularly mesmerising speaker, but right now, there was some kind of primal magnetism surrounding him. The excitement of a shared mission — of man in space, suddenly so real and at their fingertips.
“We’ve gone over it already… I’m sure you all understand the gravity of what we’re doing here today.”

Looking around at the grave faces of his new colleagues, Xeno was, for once, sure that they all understood. There was Glenn Lunney, the youngest of them all at 21, adjusting his tie and standing firm. He was sweating bullets. Chris Kraft and Chuck Mathews, both in flight operations, stood ramrod straight next to each other. The head of Public Affairs, John “Shorty” Powers, was standing near Gilruth and looking smug. Probably thinking that he could give a better speech.
And clustered together in the back corner of the room were the Negro women who made up the former West Area Computers. NASA had been established as an integrated facility, but still they instinctively stood together. He picked out the determined face of Katherine Johnson in the crowd.

Gilruth continued. “This is a rare moment where the government is determined to put man in space. What we once thought was a pipe dream is, for the next few years, our new reality.”
This was a better speech than anyone had expected of Gilruth so far.
“You are all making history by being here today, and, uhm…” he began to trail off. Evidently he had run out of inspiring grandeur. “We’ll be starting right away.”

He had almost turned away from the crowd before he remembered to look back at them for a final, “Thank you.”

Shorty Powers looked displeased with the speech, but the rest of the room went wild for it. All of a sudden there was a roar of cheers that could rival a ticker-tape parade. Someone threw their pen in the air.
Uncharacteristically, Xeno found himself cheering too.

December 8th, 1958 — Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia

Just last week, after a very long debate, they had settled on the term ‘astronaut’ for those brave men they were about to strap to a rocket and shoot off into the atmosphere. It came from the Greek terms for ‘star’ and ‘sailor,’ and had a ring of authority to it. Even Public Affairs had been pleased with it.

And now, with the title newly minted, they were searching for the men who would bear it.

“We have to limit it to military pilots,” argued Kraft. “No question about it.”
“But the psychologists are saying they’re too impulsive. They’ll want to do things,” said Faget.
“Don’t we want them to do things?”
“No! Their job is to sit there and wait while we do all the navigation. A fighter jock couldn’t stand that, all the sitting and waiting. We should be looking at people who are used to that!”
“Who’s used to sitting in a tin can all day? Cubicle workers? Should we be recruiting from Wall Street?”
“We could get submariners,” interjected Xeno, but he was waved off.
“I’m telling you, test pilots. That’s the way to do it.”

Faget leaned back in his seat and groaned. Xeno almost wanted to join him. The STG had been bickering over this for days now. Who was deserving of the title of astronaut? So far the only piece of criteria they had been able to agree upon was that they had to be 5 '11 or under, in order to fit into the capsule. And even that had taken a full day to settle.
A brave fighter jock? Faget was right that they were far too cocky for what this mission required of them.

“A chimp is going to make the first flight,” Xeno said, trying to keep the urge to throttle Kraft from bubbling over into his words. “A fucking chimp. We don’t need pilots.”

“Well,” started Shorty Powers. Xeno hadn’t even realized he was here. Wonderful. Now Shorty Powers, a man who wouldn’t know a rocket if it launched with him on it, wanted to lecture them. “Well, you have to think about the optics. The press wants to see brave young men up there. They want to know that we’re picking the best of the best.”
Xeno massaged his forehead, fingers pressing hard against his browbone. “Optics are not nearly as important as mission success.”
“Without optics there’s no funding,” said Kraft from across the table. Xeno had to concede that was a fair point. God, how he hated this little song and dance — putting on a show and begging for funding when they could be moving ahead with science! Real science was on the line!

“Well, say we do go with pilots,” said Faget. “Are we only picking military pilots? What about commercial pilots?”
“Military’s better for optics,” said Shorty Powers.
“But commercial pilots might be less impulsive. Used to carrying passengers, and all that.”
Now Warren North, another — higher-ranking — ex-NACA engineer, wanted to say his piece: “And even if we limited it to only military pilots, should we select only for those with combat experience?”
“Maybe —”

The room burst into quick discussion again, a slurry of voices blending together until Xeno felt like he was sinking down into a very noisy bog.
He massaged his forehead again.

It didn’t help.

December 17th, 1958 — Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia

In the end, Eisenhower had stepped in to settle their discussion. There was really nothing anyone could do to resist the will of the President, and so when he had told them to select from the pool of on-duty military test pilots, that was what they did. The call went out immediately.

Xeno was still complaining fruitlessly to Faget about this decision when one of the secretaries approached him.
“Dr. Wingfield?” she asked hesitantly. Xeno paused mid-rant, his mouth still open, and turned to her. He vaguely recognized the mousy brunette as Connie. She’d been at Langley since the NACA days. God, those days seemed so long ago already.
“Yes, what is it?”
“You have a call from a Miss Wright. She says it’s urgent.”

Faget whistled long and low. “Someone’s in the doghouse,” he said. Glee was clear in his voice. Xeno restrained the urge to snap at him like the dog he was being compared to.
“Lead the way, Connie,” he said instead.

*

Luna’s call was not urgent. Nor was it an emergency. Xeno had assumed as much, but now, listening to Luna’s excited squeals with the phone to his ear as his colleagues craned their necks to look at him, a surge of irritation overtook him.
“I just can’t believe it! How exciting!” she crowed.
“Luna,” said Xeno, trying not to betray his annoyance. “You have been talking about how you can’t believe ‘it’ for over a minute and a half without ever once mentioning what ‘it’ is. What are you talking about?”
There was a pause on the other side of the line, and then a nervous giggle.
“Oops, I guess I did forget to say… well anyways, of course I mean Project Mercury! What else would I be talking about!”

Project Mercury — the official mission to put a man in space — had only been publicly announced that very morning. As useful as it was having a fiancée whose father could pull weight in the Air Force, it did mean that sometimes Luna wanted to discuss things that no normal woman would ever know about. Things that Xeno would rather talk about after work. Without the prying eyes of his coworkers.

“Yes, I should have guessed you’d heard about it.”
“I just can’t believe it! Man in space! I mean, I knew my father was talking about it, and he said they were working on that already at Edwards and those are actually manned missions, not just glorified tin cans, but still, it sounds so much more official coming from NASA.”
The other thing about Luna’s father being in the Air Force meant that she had inherited some of his prejudices. The higher-ups there were mad. They’d been working on their own program — MISS, Man In Space Soonest — for a while now and suddenly here was NASA stealing their glory. Xeno knew Luna didn’t really care about inter-agency politics, and she clearly liked the idea of being associated with Project Mercury, but it still stung hearing her refer to his work as a ‘tin can.’
“It’s very exciting,” he agreed dully. Maybe if he didn’t offer up anything exciting, she’d grow bored and hang up soon.
“So, who are they?”
“Who are who?”
“The astronauts, silly!”
“Well, we haven’t selected them yet.”
“Oh, I don’t believe that! You must have people in mind!”

People in mind? Already? Xeno was still hung up on arguing against fighter jocks. They were an unreliable, inelegant, egotistical breed. And there were 509 of them! It would take another few months before they were whittled down enough to start testing them — hell, it would take a week just to filter everyone for height.

“It’ll be quite a while before we start to put anyone through testing. There’s all sorts of boring stuff we have to do first. Make sure they’re college educated, the right height, the right weight, all that.”
There was a disappointed crackle of breath from Luna’s end of the phone.
“Oh,” she said. He could hear the downcastness in her voice. “But don’t you have any idea of the type of person you’ll select?”
“Someone cool and capable?” Xeno joked. He heard her giggle and smiled.
“I’m serious,” Luna insisted. “You know a lot of my friends, their husbands want in.”
So she wanted gossip, something to report back to her social circle. Well, he supposed he could do that.
“I won’t have the final say in selection, of course,” he started. “Gilruth gets to make the decisions. But physically, we’re looking for someone healthy. Good eyesight. In shape. Someone who can withstand a great deal of G-force and who isn’t claustrophobic.”
“Well, we knew that,” said Luna. “I mean, who are you looking for? What type of man?”

That, Xeno had to think about. Psychologically, there was a lot to ask of the astronauts. Their physical condition almost took second priority to their mental state.
“Someone obedient,” he decided eventually. “A man who is extremely loyal to the commands of Mission Control, and who will execute them without fail. But someone who has good judgement and can make the correct decisions on his own if he has to. He won’t cause scandals and will keep to himself. None of the drunk driving and reckless living that most fighter pilots exhibit. Overall… a truly elegant person.”

Luna was quiet again for a moment, and Xeno knew she was sizing up the handsome young pilots she knew, weighing this friend’s husband against that friend’s husband.
“I don’t think such a man exists,” she said eventually.

Xeno leaned his head into the phone and laughed. “I don’t think so either,” he said.

February 2nd, 1959 — Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia

The final count was 111.

After they had been filtered for height, and college degree, flight hours, all of it — the list had been narrowed from 506 men to only 111. 58 from the Air Force, 47 from the Navy, and 6 from the Marine Corps. Of those men, the Space Task Group had divided them up into three arbitrary groups, the first of which was here at Langley, now.
Now was when the selection really began.
Xeno had been briefed on it all. Over the next three weeks, he would help narrow these men down into a core group of thirty or forty. Those men would then be sent off for physical and psychiatric evaluation elsewhere, and from there, the doctors would recommend a few. The real cream of the crop. Then it was back to the STG to pick out their astronauts. Gilruth had told them that they were aiming for 12 — there would probably only be six flights, but they anticipated half of the astronauts giving up.

Looking at the men now, Xeno couldn’t imagine any one of them giving up.

A few paces in front of him, George Low — one of the NASA bigwigs — was giving a short, uninspiring speech. He was explaining the dangers of this role, and its importance, and all the other dull things the pilots didn’t care about. They were staring at him with a bright, shining hunger in their empty eyes. There was only one thing they were interested in: the glory.
Fighter jocks were an interesting breed. Xeno didn’t like them, generally. Egotistical didn’t begin to cover it — they thought they knew better than the scientists and engineers who had built their planes. Some of the cockiest had died believing that very thing. They had crashed to the ground in a flaming hunk of steel, foolishly thinking they could command it without understanding what made it tick. And yet the survivors remained just as cocky. They assumed that there was something unique about each death — that the pilot had made a rookie mistake, was undertrained, unqualified, hadn’t kept a cool head under pressure — some quality the dead man lacked that they had. Never had it crossed any of their minds, even once, that it was their own ego, that obsession with pushing the clearly defined limits of their planes, that was killing them in droves.

They were like lemmings, rushing to be first to dive off a cliff. But he had to admit that lemmings were exactly what they were looking for right now.

Low finished up his speech with a question: who among them, in face of such dangerous odds, would volunteer for such a task? Which of these brave men would be willing to be that lemming willing to fall to his death?
And Xeno watched as nearly every single one of these men, these fighter jocks, these lemmings, put their hands up and volunteered.

*

They were sitting in one of Langley's hangars, behind a desk that had only been dragged there that morning. Xeno had nothing but a pencil, a clipboard, and a manilla folder of military records. The young pilot in front of him had even less. He was fiddling with his watch — clearly much more expensive than his shabby civilian suit — not out of nervousness, but out of boredom as Xeno scratched down the date and time of their interview.
“Name?” Xeno asked at last.
The pilot looked up at him. “Pete Conrad,” he said with a big grin.
“Full name,” Xeno clarified.
“Charles Peter Conrad, Jr.”
“And how old are you, Charles?”
“It’s Pete, and I’m 29.” He looked younger than that, with his Boy Scout-ish smile and wide eyes. But Xeno disliked the authority with which he had corrected him almost immediately.
“Where were you born, Charles?”

*

“I was born in Cleveland, Ohio, sir,” said Jim Lovell. Xeno dutifully scribbled that down. His eyes were beginning to blur. Why had they saddled him with all these intake interviews? He was an engineer, for Christ’s sake, not a secretary. Surely there was a lower-ranking employee that could be doing this.
“And what motivated you to join the Navy, Mr. Lovell?”
“Well, it gave me the money for college. And I was always interested in aviation. I used to build model rockets as a kid.”

That was something Xeno could empathize with, although his childhood inventions were much more advanced than model rockets. His had been perfectly designed, highly functional scale models with a success rate of just over 68%. And on one occasion, he had attempted to build a railgun, but the local police had become involved and the project had to be stopped.

“That’s very nice… and would you tell me more about your service career?”

February 9th, 1959 — Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia

“I started out with the 84th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron out of Hamilton, then to the 57th all the way in Iceland — the wife didn’t like that — then back to Hamilton,” finished up the candidate Xeno was interviewing now. He couldn’t remember his name. He didn’t care enough to check. This was the second round of interviews now, and it was somehow more boring than it had been during the first round a week ago.
“Wonderful. I see you were given a medical discharge in 1956?”
“Yeah, um… I had an issue with my heart. The doctors called it an arrhythmia.”
Xeno checked something off on his paper. Unbidden, the pilot continued: “But they cleared me for flight last year! Really, I’m fine now.”
“I’m sure you are,” drawled Xeno. “But look, we have to be careful here. If a condition like that comes back while you’re in the capsule — if you die up there — well, we’d never get a penny of funding ever again. You might as well be ushering in the Soviets. You understand that, don’t you?”
“... I understand,” agreed the pilot.

“Then can you promise me that won’t happen? That the condition won’t return?”

The pilot hung his head. Xeno raised an eyebrow. They really got so sad when the reality check came. So pitiful as soon as they were reminded that they were mere humans, fallible, and not some new breed of golden fighter-jock gods soaring high above the rest of humanity.

“I can’t,” said the pilot.

“Then I think that we’re done here,” said Xeno, and without waiting for the dejected man to leave of his own accord, called out loudly, “Next!”
The pilot got up and left, suddenly looking like he had shrunk three feet in height.

The next man walked into the hangar. The late afternoon light at his back made it hard to make out anything but his silhouette. Xeno squinted at him, scrutinizing. Almost exactly 5’ 11. Well, he met the height requirement, at least.
The man stepped up to the desk, and his face came into view. He was smoking a cigarette. Xeno wrinkled his nose at the smell.
“Snuff that out,” he said.
The man obliged, tossing it onto the concrete floor of the hangar and grinding the stub with his dress shoe. Without the offending cigarette to distract him, Xeno allowed himself a better look at his features. He was wearing a decent blue suit, without the ostentatious watch that some of the other fighter jocks favored. He didn’t need an ostentatious watch, really, because his face naturally drew the attention for him. The man had very fine, feminine features. He looked a bit like the actress Marlene Dietrich, only with thicker eyebrows, longer eyelashes, and a distinctly masculine body.
“Name?” Xeno called.
“Stanley Earl Snyder.” Xeno nodded and started flipping through his folder, searching for the accompanying record, but Snyder continued: “And you are?”
It wasn’t common for the pilots to ask for his name, but a few of them liked to be polite.
“Dr. Wingfield will do,” he answered automatically. He had found his file. “Where are you from, Lieutenant Snyder?
“Corpus Christi, Texas.”
“Not far from me,” Xeno said, still somewhat absentmindedly looking through the record.
“Where are you from, Doctor?”
“Houston, although I haven’t been back there since I went to college. And what motivated you to join the Marines?”
“I come from a military family. My father was in the Navy, stationed on the USS Arizona during the war.” Xeno looked up sharply. Snyder’s expression was completely neutral, but Xeno decided to test the waters.
“He was at Pearl Harbor, then?”
“Yes, and he died there.”
“I’m sorry.”

Snyder just gave a little half-shrug. Xeno noted it down.

“And it was his death that got you interested in serving the country?”
“That, and I wanted to fly.” Blunt, but the honesty was appreciated. He continued on with the questions.
“You went to college at Del Mar University in Corpus Christi and pursued an engineering degree?”
“I wanted to stay close to my mother before I left for the Marines.”

Another respectable answer. That was the sort of story Shorty Powers would appreciate — an all-American boy just trying to take care of his mother. And according to his record, Snyder had done quite well in the Marines. He had made his way into the Naval Test Pilot School out in Maryland barely a year after enlisting.
“Project Mercury is a dangerous enterprise. Is your mother concerned about it?”
“Not anymore. She died three years ago.”
“Oh. I’m sorry,” Xeno said, rocking his pencil between his fingertips. But Snyder again seemed unfazed. He continued his line of questioning. “Is there any other family who are worried for your safety? A wife, perhaps?”
“I’m not married, Doctor,” said Snyder. Now that did surprise Xeno. Snyder was a very handsome man, and one Xeno’s age — 25. Most military men tended to get married much earlier than that. He should have a wife, two kids, and a third on the way by now.
“Any particular reason for that?”
“Haven’t found the right girl.”
“Then tell me about your health.”
“It’s good.”
“Be a little more specific.”
“I have good eyesight. Never had a heart condition. A family history of cancer, I guess. That was what got my mother. I broke my nose when I was thirteen and my left tibia when I was fourteen. Haven’t had a serious injury since.”

Xeno nodded and made a note of that on his clipboard.
“Tell me more about your military record.”
“I entered the US Marine Corps in 1955, as soon as I graduated. I demonstrated exceptional flight skills and went on to become a test pilot a year later, which is the position I remain in. I have over three thousand logged flight hours,” said Snyder without taking a breath. Good lung capacity. Xeno filed that away mentally. He liked this man so far. Unlike many of the other potential recruits, he wasn’t wasting Xeno’s time with jokes or ego-fueled stories of bravery. If Xeno asked a question, Snyder answered it.

“Let’s talk a little more,” said Xeno, and he put aside his clipboard. He didn’t need it now. They had passed through the authorized preliminary questions, but Snyder was willing to talk, and Xeno had more assessments to make.
“If that’s what you’d like,” said Snyder. He looked down at the cigarette he had crushed, clearly a bit regretful of its loss.
“You’re a heavy smoker?”
“Yes. Isn’t everyone?”
“I personally detest the smell. You can’t take cigarettes in space, you know.”
“Is chewing tobacco allowed?” He had Xeno there.
“The Space Task Group hasn’t discussed that yet,” Xeno deflected. “Most likely not.”
“More’s the pity,” said Snyder, leaning back in his chair. He was looking at Xeno intensely — studying him, just as Xeno was doing. His eyes were a very rich brown, almost the thick color of honey.
“All the signs point to a great career ahead of you as a test pilot. Why risk your life with Project Mercury?”
“I risk my life every day as a test pilot. This hardly seems different.”
“And that doesn’t bother you?”
Snyder shrugged, considering it. “No,” he said eventually. “I know I won’t die up there.”

Great. A hint of that fighter jock ego, that sense of immortality that ran through their blood. And here Xeno had thought he might have found the perfect candidate. Somewhat sourly, he asked: “How can you be so sure?”
“Well, I can’t explain it. I just know that it’s true.”
“You think you’re better than the other men that have died out there? There’s plenty of young, genius young pilots out there.”
And now, Snyder leaned in again, looking at him. His eyes were hard. Maybe a lesser man would have been intimidated, but Xeno straightened his back and looked right at him. They stared at each other for a beat, each trying to get the measure of the other.
The cold breeze washed into the hangar, disrupting the stillness, and Snyder’s back met his chair again. The posture was relaxed, but his gaze burnt with the same intensity.
“I don’t think I’m better, Doctor. I know I am.”
Not breaking eye contact, Xeno folded his arms. “You’re dismissed, Lieutenant Snyder. Please send in the next man.”

Snyder stood up without complaint. Almost immediately he reached into his pocket for a pack of cigarettes and a matchbox, and in one fluid motion there was a lit cigarette in his mouth. He took a long drag as he began to walk back towards the hangar door.
Xeno was busy writing down the remainder of his notes from their interview when Snyder called out to him.
“I think you know it too, Doctor.”
“Next!” Xeno called louder.

*

Gilruth himself came up to him after the last interview, patting Xeno on the shoulder. It was awkward for both parties.
“Well, thank you for running the interviews,” he said. “We needed another engineer to help us out. Just Donlan wasn’t enough.”
“It’s alright,” sighed Xeno. “Am I doing this for the third group next week too?”
“That’s just it. We got more than enough volunteers from the first two groups. I’ll put out a memo later today saying we don’t need any more.”
Xeno’s heart leapt into his throat. No more interviews! Thank God, he could go back to the engineering department and do something that actually mattered. Something he had a college degree in.
“When will the twelve astronauts be selected, then?”
“Hopefully by the end of March. We’ll have all their written tests reviewed by Wednesday, and once we pick out our top candidates the Lovelace Clinic and the Wright Center shouldn’t take more than a few weeks to finish up their testing…” Gilruth trailed off and frowned. “But we’re thinking we might do less than twelve now. I mean, with so many willing to volunteer, I doubt we’ll get many dropouts.”

Fair enough. Xeno had thought the same thing himself.
“How many, then?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Seven?”

March 13th, 1959 — Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia

Two quick raps on Faget’s door. That was the way Xeno always did it. Polite, effective, and efficient. An elegant callsign.

“Dr. Faget? You were expecting me?” he called through the wooden door. Sure enough, it swung open to reveal Faget’s tired face. Not a good sign.
“Dr. Wingfield, just the man I wanted to see. Come in, come in.” Faget beckoned Xeno into his office and gestured at the chair across from his desk. Clearly he had been having nonstop meetings, because the chair was still pulled out from the last man who had sat there. Xeno sat down and crossed his legs.
“What is this about?”
“You know where the candidates are now?”
“For Project Mercury? Well, all 36 of them should have finished up their physical testing. They ought to be in Dayton by now.”

Faget leveled his exhausted gaze at Xeno. “How would you like to join them there?”
“What? But I’m working here. On the capsule.”
“I know that,” said Faget. “But listen, the boys over there are saying they want one of us. One of our engineers.”
“Don’t they have engineers? They’re a damned Air Force base!”
“I know! I’ve tried telling them that! But they want someone from NASA, someone to consult with about the tests they’re running.”
“Have they heard of the telephone over there?” asked Xeno dryly. “It’s a wonderful invention made exclusively for that purpose.” Faget snorted at that, but he still looked serious. Too serious.

Christ. Xeno didn’t want to go to Ohio.

“Dr. Faget, you can’t seriously be expecting me to drop everything and go over there.”
“They’re insisting on it. It would only be for a week. All expenses covered.”
“Can’t someone else do it?
“You’re my best guy, Dr. Wingfield. I’m too busy to go over there. You’re the only other person I’d trust.”

… Faget really was a brilliant engineer. He knew exactly what buttons to push and which knobs to turn to get Xeno to fall in line. He could never resist an appeal to his ego.

“Fine,” Xeno sighed. “When am I leaving?”

March 17th, 1959 — Wright Aeromedical Laboratory, Dayton, Ohio

The flight had been pleasant enough. Xeno had spent half the time asking technical questions about the plane — a Douglas D-7 — to the squirming stewardess. It was only when he’d arrived at the airport that the real issue had risen. They hadn’t bothered to send a car! Here they were, begging for his expertise, and yet they’d made him take a commercial flight and now a taxi in order to deliver it!
It was utterly inelegant.

Xeno had eventually made it into the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, but not before a humiliating encounter with the idiot security guard outside the facility. Some choice words were had. Xeno had raised his voice.
But now he was here, in the Wright Aeromedical Lab — no relation to the General Wright who had spawned his fianceé — to oversee the astronaut candidates.
Right now he was standing with Dr. Gladys J. Loring, one of the resident psychologists. She was a harsh, reserved woman who seemed utterly disgusted with the vast majority of the candidates. Xeno liked her immediately. They were watching in silence as one of the boys exited the sensory deprivation chamber. Each candidate was to be held there without knowing how long they'd be sitting in the dark, noiseless box (three hours on the dot). It was the sort of test that would help isolate the fraternity of egotistical fighter jocks from the men they needed.
The man currently stumbling out, his wide blue eyes trying desperately to readjust to the light, was Pete Conrad.
“I did his intake interview,” said Xeno. Dr. Loring nodded.
“I’m not fond of him,” she responded.
Conrad spotted them and flipped them off weakly. Neither scientist graced him with a response.
“I understand why,” Xeno said, and then, unable to help himself, he asked “Are there any candidates you plan to put forth?”

Loring gave him an appraising look, as if it wasn’t her department that had asked for his help designing test parameters.
“There’s still a lot more to do,” she said. Xeno would have left it there but mercifully she continued: “Some of them are testing much better than the others, though. Carpenter, Snyder. Glenn. Shepard.”

Interesting. Carpenter had struck him as a good man, very genuine. Glenn was the same way, albeit a little more enthusiastically all-American farmboy about it. Shepherd, he didn’t know about. He had tried to intimidate Xeno in their interview. (It hadn’t worked). And Snyder — that was the question. He had seemed perfect until he had revealed that sudden streak of reckless self-assurance.

But it was here that Snyder and the others could prove that their confidence was earned.

He followed Loring around the facility as she showed him the different tests. Really, he had no idea why he had been called to Wright-Patterson. They seemed to know exactly what they were doing. Still he offered the occasional piece of advice — in the capsule, for example, they would have no control over their movement. Perhaps the lab techs could adjust their ‘training module,’ which was designed to ensure failure no matter what, to reduce the amount of actions the candidates could take. Let them understand that they were nothing more than a glorified lab rat. A chimp would make the first flight — these men were no better than a trained monkey. If only they were forced to realize that, well, the issue of their cockiness might be solved.

Aside from the training module, which the candidates had apparently begun to call the ‘idiot box,’ — they had these stupidly trite nicknames for everything — Loring showed him the centrifuge. They watched in impassive silence as a young man was spun around by the machine, during which he promptly vomited all over the seat. The centrifuge was stopped and immediately the man was escorted away by a group of masked, white-clad scientists. Xeno watched as they scrubbed the seat before ushering in the next pilot.

Some of the tests were downright ridiculous to watch. Loring and Xeno waited patiently, clipboard in hand, for a decorated combat veteran to blow up a balloon. The pilots kept their balance on tilt tables and were forced to stand in ice cold water. Every mere twitch of a muscle was immediately noted, categorised, and filed away by a team of whitecoats moving so uniformly that they blended together into one lumpy, cloud-like formation.
Whether it was out of spite (such as in Pete Conrad’s case) or out of a genuine desire to make a good impression, the men seemed to perform better when they were being watched by Xeno and Dr. Loring. Currently they were standing side by side in matching white coats, watching Stanley Snyder run on the treadmill. Wires attached to his temple bounced as he moved. He had been running at a respectably fast pace before, looking very bored, but as soon as they approached he had picked up the pace.
Dr. Loring craned her neck to look at the stopwatch one of her assistants was holding. Satisfied, she wrote something down in her clipboard, and they left. As they walked away from the treadmills, Xeno took a quick look behind him.
Snyder hadn’t relaxed his pace.

*

They observed the interviews next. All of the tests ran at Wright-Patterson were to some degree psychological, but the interviews represented a unique torture for the pilots. Forced to sit still in a cold metal chair and answer inane questions — well, these were men who longed for action, and this drove them crazy.
It brought a smile to Xeno’s face.

Alan Shepard, the hotshot Navy jock, was currently puzzling over a piece of paper. He flipped it over in his hands. Nothing. The paper was blank on both sides.
“And what do you see?” droned an attendant. Shepard scratched his head.
“A piece of paper,” he answered.
The attendant made a little note and then asked, “Describe exactly what you see.”
All of a sudden Shepard seemed to wisen up to the idea that this was some arcane type of personality test, and the confusion dissipated from his form. Xeno watched as he snapped into perfect military form, back straight and eyes cold. He regarded the attendant like a worm beneath his boot.
“I see a piece of paper,” Shepard said again, gritting his teeth and forcing the words out between them. An intimidation tactic — the same one he had attempted on Xeno during their intake interview.

Unfazed, the attendant made another note.

Loring beckoned Xeno away, and he followed her out into the white hallway.
She walked briskly down the hallway for a minute. Xeno followed her wordlessly, stopping as she took a hard turn into the breakroom. Immediately Loring went over to the cabinet above the sink and began to rifle through it. Producing two mugs, she went over to a chipped coffeepot hiding in the corner. The noise of steam meeting air as the bubbling river of coffee hit the cool ceramic mug was the only sound in the room.
Breaking the silence, Loring asked, “Cream or sugar?”
“Neither, thank you.”
Loring nodded — “I take mine the same way” — and Xeno, feeling like he had passed his own evaluation, took the coffee from her hands. A burnt smell drifted up his nostrils. Clearly the staff of Wright-Pat did not often clean their coffeepot.
“I have to say, Dr. Loring,” started Xeno, emboldened, “I don’t know why you needed someone from NASA out here. Your testing seems… thorough.”
“Our testing was designed to train fighter pilots. There’s a specific set of qualities that a fighter pilot requires: courage, quick thinking, obedience, serenity. A lack of fear of death.”
“It’s not so different for Project Mercury.”
“But it is. You said it yourself. These men will be mere lab rats for you and your team. Courage and quick thinking are not optimal qualities for a man sitting helplessly in a tin can. I wanted you here to pinpoint what qualities are truly necessary for this program.”

Turning that over in his mind, Xeno sat in silence for a moment. Automatically he took a sip of coffee. The dirty taste of the unwashed pot mingled with the coffee’s natural bitterness.
“And you, Dr. Loring?” he asked after a beat. “What qualities do you think will be necessary?”

It was the same conversation as Luna and him had over two months ago. Back then, she had asked him for his opinion. What had he told her? Certainly all those things that Dr. Loring had mentioned — bravery and intelligence — were important. But more than that…

“Loyalty,” said Dr. Loring. “This is a person that must have complete faith in NASA.”

“I agree,” said Xeno. “And based off your psychological testing, which of these men seems right for the job?
Loring had a swig of her coffee before unclipping the papers from her clipboard. Leaning down, she spread the files out over the coffee-stained countertop. Thirty-six potential astronauts stared up at Xeno.
Pointing at this man or that, Loring began to shuffle the papers, stacking them into neat little piles. “I like Glenn for it,” she said, a well-manicured finger tapping at the corresponding photo. “He’s very enthusiastic about the whole thing. Very friendly with the technicians as well.”
She put Glenn’s profile into one stack. “Carpenter, too, is a good man. He’s less talkative than Glenn, but very used to keeping calm under pressure. I like Lovell as well. Some of them are good fliers, in great physical condition, but they’d rather put their faith in themselves than their scientists.”

Xeno nodded. “People like Shepard, Conrad.”
“Conrad’s just a troublemaker. Schirra is too, but unlike Conrad he knows not to take it too far.”
“Is there anyone else you favor?”

“Sure,” said Loring, and she picked up another piece of paper and put it into the same pile as John Glenn and Lovell and Scott Carpenter. There was no need for Xeno to squint at it. He instantly recognized the pretty face of Stanley Snyder.

“Snyder,” Loring continued. “He’s shown great physical potential. Beaten half a dozen of our records already. I would go so far as to say he’s the best of the candidates in terms of skill and endurance.”
“He told me as much during his intake interview.”
“And he wasn’t lying. Speaking psychologically, my team can’t quite get the measure of the man, but he seems determined.”
“I see,” said Xeno.
“The one issue is that he’s unmarried. A very asocial man in general, really. None of the psychs have come up with a reason for it… I don’t know if that would cause problems at NASA.”

Xeno mumbled, “Well, Shorty Powers would be against it,” but Loring continued speaking. It was the most words he’d ever heard come out of her mouth.
“Of course, I’m not the only one responsible for the final list sent over to Langley. This is just one woman’s opinion.”
“It’s an opinion I happen to share,” said Xeno. “The marriage aspect isn’t ideal, but I’m sure Gilruth will be able to overlook it.”

He caught a slight smile from Loring and met it with one of his own.

There was a rushed patter of feet against the linoleum hallway, and all of a sudden a panting technician materialized in the breakroom doorway. He wiped a bead of sweat off his red face before choking out, “Snyder just beat our breath record!”
Loring looked up sharply, immediately focused. “What? Carpenter’s record?”
But the technician was too out of breath to respond. Xeno took the opportunity and turned to Loring.
“What record? What breath test?”
“We have them blow into a tube with mercury in it. We time it, see how long they can hold the mercury up. The previous record was 91 seconds. But Glenn beat it with 150 and Carpenter got up to 171.”
“How elegant,” said Xeno. Not even Luna could talk for so long without running out of air.
“What was Snyder’s time?” asked Loring again, harsher this time.

The technician took a big gulp of air before weakly responding: “221 seconds… he held it up for 221 seconds.”

March 27th, 1959 — Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia

The whole of the Space Task Group — all eighty-something of them, counting the new group of Canadian engineers — was crowded around the largest conference table in all of Langley. Thank God Xeno had made it here early enough to get a seat at the table. He was sandwiched in between Faget, of course, and Glynn Lunney.
All eyes were on Bob Gilruth at the head of the table.

The scientists from Dayton had finished testing, and with it, had finished their selection process. That flimsy sheet of paper in Gilruth’s hands was the result of two months of refinement: on it were the names of those worthy ones. The candidates who truly had the right stuff.
Naturally, everyone wanted to hear the list read.
Gilruth cleared his throat before starting, “The boys from Wright narrowed it down from 35 to 19 for us.”
No one moved.
“I guess I’ll read them out for you,” said Gilruth. He seemed a little nervous. Sweat was shining off his bald head.
The silent room was filled with the sound of crumpling paper as Gilruth unfolded the list and held it up to his face. “Dear Director Gilruth, on behalf of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, we would like to recommend… yada yada —” he found the part of the page he was looking for and skipped ahead — “Ahem. Malcolm Scott Carpenter.”

The crowd burst into hushed whispering. Xeno raised an eyebrow at Faget, still sitting next to him. He shrugged. Faget had barely been involved with the selection process — he’d foisted all that onto the other engineers, like Donlan and North. And Xeno, of course.

Gilruth read out a few more names — clearly, he was going in alphabetical order. Xeno’s attention drifted in and out. Most of the names he recognized by now, but now he was only waiting to ensure that his candidate had made the cut.

Finally, Gilruth got to the ‘S’ part of the alphabet. With that deep voice, he announced loudly, “Walter Marty Schirra. Alan Barlett Shepard, Jr.”
Both good pilots who had tested well, even if Xeno was less than fond of their personalities.
“Donald Kent Slayton.” That was one of the men he hadn’t been responsible for interviewing. He couldn’t recall his records. They must have been good, if he had made it into the final 19. But where was —
“Stanley Earl Snyder,” said Gilruth, and Xeno sank back into his chair.

The rest of the names were read off the list, and just as the tense crowed was about to snap into lively conversation, Gilruth spoke up again. Now the silence was uneasy, not reverent.

“Well, you all can get going now.”

Everyone looked around at each other, unsure. Xeno stayed planted into his seat. Gilruth saw their unwillingness and reluctantly clarified, “It’s just me, Donlan and North who’ll be doing the final selection.”

Noisy protests sprung up all around him. Xeno turned to Faget, incredulous — surely this was a joke! Relying on only three men’s opinions for the greatest scientific milestone of the century? — but Faget just shrugged. He had known about this! Heat rose up Xeno’s collar. He could feel his blood boiling.
“This is outrageous! You can’t mean —” But his gesturing arms were caught by the firm grip of Dr. Faget, attempting to drag him away. Other people in the room, too, were guiding away the friends and coworkers still shell-shocked.
“Come on, Dr. Wingfield, let’s get going,” said Faget. His tone, meant to be gentle, was saccharine. Xeno was sickened by it. Looking around wildly, he saw a red-faced Shorty Powers arguing with Charles Donlan. Spit flecks were flying through the air as Powers screamed. Clearly, he had been expecting that his opinion would be sought after. The sight somehow calmed Xeno down. His pulse slowed, and he pushed Faget’s arms away.

“It’s not right!” he argued, even as Faget shepherded him away.
“Calm down, Wingfield,” Faget hissed as they made it through the doorway, pushing through the shifting throng of people.
The rest of the Space Task Group was now crowded outside the door, staring through the still-open entryway as the three men inside prepared to make history. Gilruth stared at them, wide-eyed — and everyone else stared back, incapable of movement, only able to watch as Donlan slowly approached. Deliberately, decisively, he shut the door, and then they were all blocked away. Xeno looked blankly at the door. Nondescript, hardwood and much like every other door at Langley. It was impossible to imagine that this was the door separating him from the elite decision-makers, relegating him back into irrelevancy.

Faget patted him on the shoulder, harder than need be. “Take it easy! Go home, rest. They’re smart men, they’ll make the right decisions. Calm down.”

March 28th, 1959 — Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia

Xeno hadn’t calmed down.
He had woken up at the crack of dawn that morning, skipped his usual breakfast — a sunnyside-up egg on buttered toast – and had driven like a madman to get to Langley before Gilruth and the others did.
(He hadn’t skipped his pomade routine, however. His white hair was as neatly styled as ever. Some things were too important to neglect.)
His plan had been to ambush them as soon as they headed into Gilruth’s office. In his mind, he would burst out of a dark corner, startling the coffee cup out of Charles Donlan’s hand, and then he would begin his impassioned speech.
Perhaps because he rarely respected his audience enough to try, Xeno had never been an inspiring speaker, but just this once he would be. On behalf of himself, Dr. Loring, the American public, and science itself, he’d tell Gilruth exactly which candidates to pick. Which men to elevate from ‘candidate’ to that already-exalted title of ‘astronaut.’ And of course, in this fantasy of his, Gilruth and Donlan and Warren North would all sit there and take it. They’d listen to him.

In reality, by the time Xeno arrived at Langley, the door to Gilruth’s office was already locked. He could hear the low thrum of voices. Pathetic though it may be, Xeno pressed his ear to the door. There was passion in the quiet, indistinct speech: a suppressed argument. Clearly they were wary of prying ears.

That was fine. Xeno could wait.

The men in the engineering department would be fine without him. They were still reviewing designs for the booster rocket that would be used for the test of the capsule’s escape system that summer. ‘Little Joe,’ the men in engineering were calling it. Faget had come up with the name. Really, the whole project was Faget’s baby. Xeno’s presence was not needed. If Faget actually needed him for something else, like a discussion of the Atlas rocket that would be propelling the capsule itself, well — he could probably guess where Xeno was.

He began to count the seconds. Ten minutes passed, then an hour, then two. By now people had begun to filter into Langley, ready for their workdays. A few joined him outside the door. Shorty Powers came by and knocked. Xeno wasn’t surprised when Powers left after just a few minutes of no response. That was not a man who could handle the waiting game.
At some point, Connie, the secretary, passed by, and Xeno flagged her down with a wave of his hands.
“Can I do something for you, Dr. Wingfield?” she asked politely. Her enormous brown eyes kept sliding away from him and towards the door. Evidently she too was interested in the secret machinations going on in Gilruth’s office.
Without losing his mental count, Xeno asked her to bring him a mug of coffee. “Black,” he clarified. “And as hot as you can get it.”

A minute and a half later, Connie returned with a steaming mug of coffee. She asked if she could do anything else for him. Xeno waved her off. He took a deep breath.
The smell alone was enough to fortify him. It also provided him with a distraction — in between sips, he attempted to determine how long it would take for the coffee to settle at room temperature.

Forty-two minutes later. The coffee had cooled. Xeno’s calculations had been off by 53 seconds.
He had also, in order to limit confound factors, not taken so much of a sip of his coffee. Now he was left with a lukewarm mug in his hands. As he attempted to take a sip, some splashed onto the bottom of his shirt. With gritted teeth he watched as the liquid slowly spread, infecting the pure white fabric. As soon as Connie walked by, he would return the offending mug.

*

It was around four in the afternoon when the door finally creaked. Xeno nearly jumped, his internal stopwatch suddenly coming to a halt. After all this time! The door was opening!
Warren North was peering out. As if expecting to be mobbed by a horde of screaming engineers, he looked cautiously in the direction of the main hallway. Xeno, standing flat against the wall, held his breath.
North stepped out of the doorway, readjusting his loosened tie and fixing the badge that identified him as NASA staff. Xeno peeled himself off the wall — the sweat that had been pooling on his lower back leaving behind a wet splotch — and spoke.
“North,” he said. The unsuspecting man yelped.
“Jesus Christ, Wingfield!” North hissed, wanting to yell but conscious of the need to keep his voice down. “The fuck are you doing standing there?”
“I wanted to make my opinions known,” said Xeno smoothly. North began walking briskly away from him. Xeno followed, continuing, “Regarding the astronaut selection, that is.”

North made a wild, irritated gesture in the air and came to a sudden stop in the middle of the hallway. He wheeled around in his dress shoes and stared at Xeno.
“We’re not doing this, Dr. Wingfield. Gilruth said only the three of us are doing the selection. No more, no less.”
“That doesn’t mean I can’t tell you what I think about it, though,” Xeno rebutted. North squeezed a groan out between his gritted teeth.
“You’re not involved in the selection process! It’s top secret! How can I possibly be any more clear?”
“I am the only one who actually observed the candidates during testing, North, and my opinion —”
“Is just that! An opinion! We have all the test results anyway.”

Warren North started walking again, faster this time. He was trying to leave Xeno behind. Well, Xeno had already been left behind yesterday when Donlan had shut that door. He wasn’t about to let it happen again.
Speeding up, Xeno ducked around North and got in front of him. North tried to dodge, but exhausted as he was, Xeno was faster.
“If you would just listen to me —”
“Dr. Wingfield. Move.”

North actually looked like he might shove Xeno out of the way. A vein was throbbing in his temple. Still, Xeno held firm. “I will not move, North, not until you hear me out.”
Disregarding whether or not he was noticed, North let out a keening groan. “We’re already almost done! By tonight we’ll have a formal consensus. You’re wasting your time, Wingfield.”

That stopped Xeno dead in his tracks. His strings had been cut. A consensus already? All of the evidence he had — the speech he had rehearsed — it had all been for nothing.
North, taking his silence as defeat, went to start walking again, but with desperate instinct Xeno grabbed at his shoulder.
“What,” said North, but the fight had left his voice.
Xeno looked at him, still lost for words. North stared up at him, equally dead-eyed. He frantically tried to recalibrate. With great effort, the wheels began to turn again.
“At least tell me you’re advancing Snyder,” Xeno said at last. “He’s the best candidate by far.”

Now North’s expression flickered, a momentary twitch of guilt replacing the slack-jawed exhaustion. The pool of cold coffee sitting in Xeno’s stomach churned.

“I’m sorry,” he said, surprisingly even. “I wanted him too. But Gilruth said no.”

It was like the floor had dropped out from under him. All of a sudden, it was Xeno in that human centrifuge he had observed only a few weeks ago. He felt sick.
“What?” he managed. “But — he’s the best candidate. He has an outstanding flight record, he beat six endurance records at Wright-Patterson — no issues with the psych evals —”

“I know,” said North, a little louder this time. He held up his hands. Placating. “I know. And I told Gilruth all of that. But… he doesn’t like that Snyder’s unmarried.”

“That’s ridiculous. What impact does that have on his flight skills?”
“Nothing! But Shorty Powers has been talking his ear off for the past two weeks about how important it is that the astronauts are, and I quote, ‘all-American small town boys.’ He wants them all married with three kids and a loving wife and going to church every Sunday.”

Slowly, the nausea that had been crawling up Xeno’s windpipe was reforging itself into red-hot anger. But North kept talking.
“Good press is important for Project Mercury. If the media turns against us, then so will the government, and we’ll be out on the street without a dollar in funding. An unmarried man is a liability. What if Snyder knocks up some girl while in training? We’ll be a national disgrace!”
“But that could happen with any one of the astronauts!” yelled Xeno. “You think they’re all faithful to their wives?”
“The point is, it’s suspicious. Your average American finds an unmarried man of that age suspicious. The media will be looking for any hint of a scandal, and if Snyder so much as toes the line —”

“I’ll talk to him,” Xeno interrupted. His brain caught up to his words a second later. “I’ll talk to him.”

North stared at him for a beat, uncomprehending. “Who? Gilruth?”
“Snyder,” said Xeno. “I can find his phone number — I’ll talk to him, let him know how important this is —”
But North was already shaking his head. “It’ll never work, Dr. Wingfield. These fighter jock types, they’re full of empty promises. I should know. I used to be one of them.”
“Please,” Xeno begged. “Just — just hold Gilruth off until tomorrow. Let me talk to Snyder. Then I can talk to Gilruth, try to reason with him. Please, North, you know how important this is. We need the best of the best. Can you just try?”

North’s face went through a series of rapid shifts, his eyebrows conducting aerial maneuvers across his broad forehead, before he eventually settled on resignation.
“I’ll try,” he said. “I’ll see if I can get Gilruth to wait. But this better work, Wingfield, or else I’ll look like a goddamn idiot.”

“It will,” said Xeno, and even he almost believed it.

*

The sun was already half-sunken into the trees around Langley by the time Xeno stumbled to the phone booth outside. There were phones all over the inside of the building, too, but somehow the conversation that was about to happen felt too sacred to be overheard.
Fumbling through his pockets, he pulled out a scratched nickel and deposited it in the awaiting slot. Then it was a matter of sliding the rotary from number to number until the phone number he had found in Snyder’s file was dialed. Xeno pressed the phone between his ear and his shoulder, waiting. Praying for Snyder to pick up. The beat of his heart found rhythm with the phone’s ringing.

After the fourth ring, Snyder picked up.

“Hello?” came a smooth voice, distorted and staticky from the payphone. That was it. No self-identification, no demand to know who was calling. Xeno took a moment to breathe before responding.
“Is this the home of Stanley Snyder?”
“Yeah,” came that same voice.
“This is Dr. Xeno H. Wingfield… we’ve met before, though you might not remember it, I work for the National Air and Space Administration —”
Snyder’s voice cut him off. “No, I remember you. Tall guy with a big forehead and prematurely white hair.”

Well, that was unflattering, but Xeno supposed it was true. “Yes, um, that’s me. Listen, Snyder —”
“Please, if you’re calling with good news, then you can call me Stanley. Let me guess: I made it into the astronaut program.” Xeno could almost hear the languid smile in Snyder’s voice.
“Quite the opposite, in fact. That’s why I’m calling.”

The other end of the line went silent for a moment. Xeno almost thought Snyder had hung up on him, but then he heard the tell-tale scratch of a match against a matchbox. Even through the telephone’s distortion it was clear. The man had lit up a cigarette.
Snyder’s voice eventually came on again. To Xeno’s ear, he sounded unaffected by the news. “NASA always call to tell a man he didn’t make the cut?”
“This isn’t an official call. Please, Mr. Snyder, listen to me.”
“I’m all ears.”
“I’ll be blunt here. You’re our best candidate. By far. The rest of the men — they’re good pilots, great, even, but there is only one candidate who is truly elegant in every respect. That person is you, and myself and the other engineers know it.”
Xeno could hear Snyder’s steady breathing quicken.

“Then if I’m so good, why wasn’t I picked?”
“It’s all optics,” said Xeno, and the rage began to bubble up again. Outside, the setting sun bled crimson over the horizon. The little phone booth was drenched in red light. “Stupid goddamn optics. Public Affairs doesn’t like that you’re unmarried. They have everyone worried that you’ll cause a scandal.”
“Me being unmarried is none of NASA’s damn business."
“But it is. Whether any of us like it or not, for the next few years, the astronauts of Project Mercury are the face of NASA. And if any one of them has so much as a finger pointed at them — well, all of NASA is tarred with the same brush.”
“So what? What do you want me to do?”

Xeno twirled the plastic phone cord around his finger, his eyes tracking the rise of the moon in the east.
“How badly do you want to be an astronaut, Snyder?”
“I told you already, call me Stanley.”
“Alright then. Stanley. I believe that you’re the best. I’m willing to fight for you. I’m willing to storm into Langley and march straight up to Bob Gilruth and demand that you be accepted into the astronaut program.”
Stanley remained silent. Xeno could just pick out a long breath amidst the static — an inhale of his cigarette.

“But in return,” Xeno continued, “I need you to do something for me. I need you to promise me, right now, that for the next few years, you will do nothing to endanger this project. You will have no affairs, engage with no women. You’ll leave those inelegant, base needs behind. There will be no drinking or driving recklessly. All earthly desires banished from your mind.”

“From now on until the end of Project Mercury, you will be like a knight whose sole purpose is to carry out the orders of his king.”

Silence. The moon was bright now. The pale phone cord, connecting Xeno and Stanley across hundreds of miles, seemed to glow in the moonlight.

“Can you do that, Stan?”

Xeno heard a sharp crackle of breath coming from the phone, and then:

“I can.”

March 30th, 1959 — Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia

Gilruth hadn’t known what hit him. This time around, Xeno had picked the lock and slunk into his office long before his arrival at Langley. The poor man had probably suffered heart palpitations when he walked in to find Xeno sitting on the edge of his desk.
But it was worth it. Xeno had said his piece, had pleaded his case. Gilruth, trapped in his own office, had been forced to listen.
“I know that you’re worried he’ll invite scandal,” Xeno had begged. “But I’ve talked to him —”
“What? You shouldn’t be contacting any of the candidates.”
“It was unofficial. Think of it as a social call. Dr. Gilruth, please. He promised that he would keep clean while the project’s running, and you know he’s the best.”

Eventually Gilruth had forced him out — as soon as Donlan arrived, he expelled Xeno with the excuse that the two were scheduled for a private meeting — but Xeno had worn him down until he promised: “I’ll consider it.”

He’d consider it.

With those three words, Xeno already knew that he’d won. He could be convincing, when he wanted to be. Now it was a matter of sitting and waiting for the official announcement to come. It would take a few hours. Donlan would have to call each of the astronauts and again confirm their willingness to volunteer. Then the list would make its way up to Keith Glennan, the head of NASA. It was Glennan’s final stamp of approval that would finally, after months of work, set Project Mercury in motion.

Xeno went back to the engineering department to wait. Most of the men there were sitting together in a large clump, reviewing the plans for the upcoming test of the Little Joe rocket. Faget was standing over them, fiddling with his bow tie. He was visibly nervous. Little Joe would be supporting the Launch Escape System — and the escape system was Faget’s pet project. He’d been working on it for over a year. But when he saw Xeno his face brightened and he scuttled over.
“Dr. Wingfield!” Faget exclaimed. “Look what the cat dragged in. Where were you yesterday?”
“I had… matters to attend to.”
At that, Faget folded his arms and gave him a wry look. “You were bothering Gilruth, weren't you?”
Shrugging, Xeno smiled. “That’s top secret, Dr. Faget.”
Faget laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. “Well, we’re glad to have you back where you belong. Don’t forget you’re an engineer, not a flight director — not yet, anyways.”

*

The rest of the day rolled by in a pleasant daze. For months now he had been utterly absorbed by astronaut selection; it was nice to finally get work on something else. He and Faget spent a good few hours discussing the cant of Little Joe’s exhaust nozzles. If they were somehow off-kilter, the rocket could destabilize and crash, and then $200,000 dollars would be down the drain. (Still much cheaper than a Redstone or Atlas rocket, though.)

The two of them were deep in discussion about the nozzles when all of a sudden a murmur began to rise among the engineers. Xeno dragged his attention away from Faget and looked around.

North was standing there, his tie askew and a million-dollar grin on his face.

The men began to surround him eagerly, until North’s smiling face was drowned in a sea of identical white shirts and crewcuts. Faget, too, left Xeno’s side to approach him.
But Xeno was stuck in his position. His feet were anchored to the linoleum floor. There was one reason, and one reason only, why Warren North would be down here.

“Gilruth’s approved the final list!” crowed North, and instantly a cheer went up. Cries of “Who,” rang out among the engineers. Xeno took an automatic step forward.

“Ahem,” said North. “The men who have been selected, in alphabetical order, are as follows.
Malcolm Scott Carpenter of the US Navy. Leroy Gordon Cooper, Jr., of the Air Force. John Herschel Glenn of the Marine Corps. Virgil I. Grissom of the Air Force. Walter Marty Schirra, Jr., and Alan Bartlett Shepard, Jr., both from the Navy. Donald Kent Slayton of the Air Force.”

Now North’s eyes roamed the crowd, searching. They landed on Xeno. North grinned.

“And lastly, of the US Marine Corps, Stanley Earl Snyder.”

The crowd of men began cheering again, a deafening noise that could match a rocket engine. Xeno just stood there dumbly, the roar pulsing in his ears, an open half-smile etched on his face. He had done it.
He had done it.

Truly, this was elegant.