Spacefunk! Anthology

The Right Stuff

By
Lynette S. Hoag

Senator Lyndon took a seat behind the enormous mahogany desk. The desk wasn’t his. It belonged to the Head Administrator of NASA Launch Operations. Unlike Senator Lyndon’s desk, this one was barren except for one low-watt lamp, a phone, and a manila folder marked “Confidential: For Your Eyes Only!” The smell of fresh furniture polish hung in the air, cloying. He preferred to be at his own desk in moments like this, despite its disarray. Moments when his decisions impacted national security. Moments that were ‘first’ for Americans; for humanity; for history. Suppressing his disdain for the polished, neat mahogany desk, Senator Lyndon lit his pipe, loosened his tie, and opened the manila folder.

Today was December 25, 1961. Two years earlier a message had been received from extraterrestrials via an eighty-five-foot radio telescope located in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The message had finally been decoded. It read:

We will visit your planet when the moon passes between the Earth and the sun. The visit will occur on July 31, 1962. Our ship will be located between the moon and the earth. We will find you if you are there. Send only your best space traveler to meet us. We are eager for this meeting. We will not tolerate a substandard space traveler.

With little time to spare, NASA began the frantic search for an astronaut to meet the extraterrestrials. The Mercury Program was in the process of sending men into space. However, only one astronaut in the Mercury Program had expressed an interest in this new project. The remaining astronauts, the ones who had failed to qualify for The Mercury Program, were perceived as “also-rans.” No one at NASA wanted an “also-ran” for this project. It was a ‘bad look’ politically. Surely America had other men with the right stuff to go to space. The right stuff for the project at hand: Extraterrestrial Eclipse Encounter or E3.

Tasked with approving the final astronaut chosen by NASA to fly the E3 rocket, Senator Lyndon puffed on his pipe behind the strange mahogany desk. He opened the manila folder marked “Confidential: For Your Eyes Only!” blinked his eyes hard, then refocused them. What in tarnation? He pressed the intercom button on his phone and yelled into the speaker. “Samuel Ezra Smith! Get in here this instant!!”

Moments later, the senator heard a tentative knock. The door opened a crack and swung fully agape. A tall, thin, flustered man in a dark blue tailored suit, spit-shined black wing tips, and crisp white shirt entered the room. He walked quickly to the front of the mahogany desk and stopped.

“Senator Lyndon. How can I be of service?” He smiled, showing all his perfect teeth. He appeared to be somewhere in his late twenties. His deep brown hair was combed straight back away from his face, plastered to his head with Brylcreem. The style made his face appear pale, skeletal, and strained. He wore thick horn-rimmed glasses.

“Is this your idea of a dramatic hoax? Wasting my time with this malarkey? And on Christmas Day. I should have you fired for cause.” Senator Lyndon snarled. He turned the folder around to face Samuel. Samuel looked at the 8’ x 10’ glossy black and white photograph. “A Negress in a flight suit? Part of the space program? Has this agency gone completely insane?”

“Senator, if I may, that’s Maryam Joie Miller. She’s a test pilot, sir, and our best by far. Did you read the rest of her file?” Samuel gestured eagerly to the “Confidential” manila folder. “She’s passed every test. Technical interviews, psychiatric interviews, physical examinations, and so on, multiple times. She is triple-verified,” he said, breathlessly.

“Triple verified? What in hell’s bells is that?”

Samuel took a deep breath that visibly filled his chest, then let it out through pursed lips and continued. “They kept testing her because, well, NASA’s administrators didn’t believe it either. A Negress, right? So, they tested her three times, every test, with a different proctor each time. She passed every test with a perfect score three times. Triple verified. As far as we can tell, she’s never made a math error of any kind!” Samuel spoke with an excited energy that animated his face and body. Realizing this, he paused and calmed himself before he continued.

He held his hand up to the senator as if to say ‘stop.’ “Sir, I understand your apprehension and all. Don’t get me wrong. For my part, I think coloreds were appointed by God himself to be domestics and sleeping car porters. Nothing more. Ever.”

“Yet, you brought me all the way down here, from Washington, D.C. on Christmas, away from my family, to vet a negro for space travel,” the senator said flatly. “And a girl at that! Is she even twenty?”

“There’s something in her blood we can’t identify that seems to enhance her abilities. She’s human, but different from everything we know about… everything.”

“You will pardon me if I can never believe that, Samuel,” the senator replied.

“Now hold on, Senator. You’ve heard of the infinite monkey theorem. If monkeys can write Shakespeare eventually, it certainly follows that a single-colored person might be remarkable enough to be an astronaut. Maryam certainly is.”

Senator Lyndon huffed and pushed the file away. “Not. A. Chance.” He pounded the desk with his fist to emphasize each word.

Frustrated, Samuel held up both of his hands in a ‘stop’ gesture. “She’s here! You should at least talk to her before you decide. After all, you have traveled this far. I would be remiss in my duties as Secretary to the Head Administrator of NASA if I let you leave without at least talking to her. In fact, with all due respect, Senator, I cannot let you leave without meeting her in person, if just for a few minutes.” Samuel resisted the strong urge to bow that overcame him out of nowhere.

* * *

The fluorescent lights reflected off the white halls at NASA Launch Operations headquarters. Maryam Joie Miller thought the halls gleamed like a full moon on a starless night. She sat on a hard metal chair between her parents across from a large room that, on days other than Christmas, contained the secretarial pool. There were typewriters as far and deep into the room as she could see. Do secretaries dream of outer space? Maryam smiled to herself because she thought this of everyone. Of every profession. She had never had a desire other than space travel. Her first words after ‘Momma’ and ‘Daddy’ were: Do airplanes fly to outer space? She was elated to be here, waiting to be interviewed by Senator Jon Lyndon. Electric prickles of anticipation zipped through her body. She was at the final hurdle of hundreds she had leaped or pushed down on this journey. A journey Maryam had been on since her first memory.

“We are so proud of you, Maryam,” her mother said, squeezing her hand. “You have all the right stuff for the E3 mission. You’ve got stardust in your blood.”

“Momma, you’ve told me that every night since the one you found me in the field of wildflowers behind our house.” Maryam gave her mother a wide smile.

“You were in a little capsule in our backyard, shaped like a giant Christmas ornament. I was scared to touch it. But I heard you crying. Screaming. You were wrapped in a foil blanket, shivering and cold. My beautiful, peanut-butter brown baby girl with doe eyes wide as saucers. Shiny black hair, covering your head. The moment I lifted you from the capsule, it vanished.” Mae Jean sighed aloud. She loved telling this story to Maryam.

“Don’t make her cry now, Mae Jean,” her father admonished, then winked at his twenty-two-year-old daughter. “Maryam knows she was born for this.”

For as long as her parents could remember, Maryam had been obsessed with everything in the heavens: sun, clouds, moon, stars, planets. The Universe. They had sacrificed much to make this moment happen. Sacrificed everything really. The penance began with the purchase of an eight-inch deluxe treckerscope, a fortune on teachers’ salaries. When her parents couldn’t pry Maryam away from gazing at the stars each night, they felt gratified. She cut planets out of old magazines and pasted them to her walls. She made mobiles of the planets from tennis balls. She learned the names of stars, near and far, and repeated their names in her sleep.

Then, her parents left everything. Left their jobs as professors at comfortable negro universities. Left their small, middle-class community where they were respected and surrounded by other colored professionals. Left Washington D.C. and moved to NASA Launch Operations in Florida. There, they were offered jobs sweeping floors, emptying trash cans, washing dishes, and chopping endless mirepoix vegetable mixes. Left everything to get their daughter close to helicopters, planes, and rockets. To get her next to astrophysicists, aeronautic engineers, and astronauts.

It had been worth the sacrifices. Maryam soaked in the information surrounding her at NASA, like rays from the sun. She retrieved books and discarded worksheets from the trash. She devoured the books and solved the math problems. Maryam sat alone in the back of lectures until she was noticed and shooed out or reluctantly welcomed. She strolled in the airfields and through the hangars at night, taking in the atmosphere, the flying machines. Maryam washed dishes and chopped vegetables in the kitchen with her mother. Swept floors, cleaned windows, and emptied trash cans with her father. She was an unofficial member of NASA Launch Operations and its Aeronautics and Pilot Training School until an aeronautics professor discovered her brilliance. A German immigrant, who took up her cause in earnest, though enigmatically.

“It’s unusual, I know, to allow a colored girl into the space program. It’s true that she can be uppity. She is wunderbar at mathematics and that’s a byproduct, I suppose. But we can segregate her from the regular students, as any negro would be. She can sit in the back of classrooms, and be tested alone at the convenience of the professors or pilots. Most importantly, she can be kept off the record. Classified,” the professor argued. “We won’t let a word of her existence get beyond this island. Besides, we can use her knowledge and skills to improve our programs.”

When Maryam graduated from the Aeronautics and Pilot Training School a few months later, flew the required 1,500 hours, and became a qualified jet pilot, only her instructors knew of her existence; of her skill; of her triple verification. Her instructors and her parents.

* * *

Maryam stood in front of the polished mahogany desk, eyes front, hands clasped behind her back, standing at ease, as instructed. She stood five feet ten inches tall. Skin, medium brown and clear. Hair, black, curly, and cropped close. Maryam cut an elegant, authoritative, and undeniably feminine figure in her flight suit. The intelligence behind her eyes illuminated her handsome face. The dark green flight suit had been tailored by her mother to hug her slim figure and accentuate her athletic build. When prompted by the Senator, she stepped forward and shook his hand firmly.

“Thank you for your time and consideration, Senator Lyndon,” Maryam said, meeting his gaze briefly. She averted her eyes to look straight ahead and returned to an ‘at-ease’ position. She could hear her father in her ears: “Don’t look into the face of a white man, Maryam. Especially one that holds your fate in his hands.”

Senator Lyndon looked down at the file on his desk and made no response to her comment. Without looking at her he growled, “Samuel, you insisted that I see this Negress um, Astronaut-trainee or whatever you call her. I’ve seen her. If there’s nothing else…”

“Senator, if you please, there is a tennis ball-sized canister in the top drawer of your desk. It contains metal balls. May I have it please?” Samuel held out his hand. He stepped to the desk, took the canister from the Senator, and turned to Maryam as he opened it. “If you would kindly step back a few paces, Pilot Miller, let’s show Senator Lyndon one of your highly classified, extra-special gifts.”

Maryam complied, closed her eyes, and held her hand, palm up waist high, in front of her body. Samuel tossed a metal ball in front of her face. Maryam caught it with one hand, eyes still closed, and tossed it above her head where it began to rotate clockwise around her head like a halo. Samuel tossed the rest of the balls to her in the same manner. Soon the entire canister of metal balls was rapidly spinning like a crown around Maryam’s head. Then, she opened her eyes and made a counterclockwise motion with her hand. The halo of balls slowed to a stop, hung in the air, then began to spin in a counterclockwise direction. She opened her hand palm up, closed her eyes, and each ball in turn dropped out of its orbit and into her hand. Samuel carefully took each metal ball from her and returned it to the canister.

When he took the last ball, Maryam opened her eyes and smiled. “I love doing that. The energy of the universe flows through me like electricity,” she said with too much excited energy. She spoke despite being repeatedly admonished by her parents not to speak to a white person until prompted to do so.

Senator Lyndon sat stunned behind his desk. “What in tarnation? It must be some kind of trick. I don’t believe it.”

“It’s true,” Samuel said. “And she understood that strange alien message before we translated it. Maryam overheard one of the engineers playing it. But of course, we didn’t believe it. We wasted two years deciphering it when she was right the first time she heard it!” Samuel made a sound, like an uncomfortable laugh. “Anyway, she’s our ‘Best Space Traveler’ by miles. And, if you recall, the alien message requested our best space traveler.”

Senator Lyndon grunted.

“Take all the time you need to read her file, sir. Ask her any questions. But we here at NASA think we should send her, despite her race, despite her gender. Perhaps secretly if …”

“Samuel. You’re in no position to make that decision,” Senator Lyndon barked, cutting the secretary off mid-sentence. He stood, stepped from behind his desk, shook Maryam’s hand, and clapped her on the shoulder. “That sure was something to see. You know, that thing with the metal balls. I’ll admit that. You’re quite a specimen for a colored girl. A credit to your race, perhaps. But you see, I have to run this by my sub-committee on space exploration. That’s political you know. It’s about how it, um, looks to other Americans. My hands are tied. The decision is theirs. You understand, of course.” He shrugged without apology, dismissed her with a shooing motion, returned to the mahogany desk, dropped into the seat, and resumed puffing his pipe.

“I would love to serve my country in this manner,” Maryam implored, against every racial and gender protocol she’d been taught. “I was born for this mission. I was born to pilot the E3 rocket.”

The senator frowned pointedly at Maryam’s break from the understood protocols.

Understanding that Maryam had gone too far by speaking out of turn, Samuel rushed to her side and led her from the room.

“And she’s uppity?” Senator Lyndon said to Samuel when Maryam had left the room. “That’s unforgivable.”

“If the committee chooses Maryam, I will personally see to it that she begs your forgiveness, Senator,” Samuel said. Finally, he gave in to the urge to bow his head in submission to the senator’s authority.

* * *

Maryam sat on the porch in the chilly Florida night air staring up at the stars. She wore her flight jacket and maintained a ramrod straight posture. Her face was staunch, emotionless. She cradled a rare alcoholic drink, a hot toddy. Her parents sat on either side of her. Her father with two fingers of whiskey, and her mother, with a cup of tea.

“Baby,” Mae Jean said as she stood, resting her hand on her daughter’s shoulder. “You’ve been so resilient through all of this. You’ve weathered storm after storm. Overcome barrier after barrier built or thrown in your path. If they don’t send you …” Mae Jean’s voice broke and trailed off. She couldn’t finish the sentence. Not for herself. Not for Maryam.

Maryam made no response.

“Maryam …” Her father, Neal, sought to finish the thought his wife couldn’t. To explain away the inescapable despair and depression that flowed in the wake of a dream deferred; a dream that hovered like an invisible, floating demonic creature taunting the dreamer.

“I was born for this. There’s stardust in my blood,” she whispered.

Mae Jean could hear her daughter’s voice catch on the tears in her throat. Maryam never took her eyes from the night sky. Mae Jean burst into tears and ran into the house. Neal wiped his hands down his face, disconsolate, and followed his wife without looking back at their daughter. Inside their tiny two-bedroom home, he took Mae Jean in his arms and rocked her gently. Her tears mirrored his sense of hopelessness and he felt the urge to give in to his own feelings of despair. He squeezed his wife, hugging her tight.

“Mae Jean, Maryam has stardust in her blood. No white man can take that from her. Even if they keep her here. Grounded.” He said, then thought, Ad astra per aspera, my amazing daughter. Even if only in your heart and mind.

* * *

Launch day arrived. Neal and Mae Jean Miller looked up at the sky from their porch as the rocket blasted upwards toward the heavens. Senator Lyndon and Secretary Smith stood motionless along with every soul at NASA HQ. Each person crossing their fingers, expecting the worst, hoping for miracles as the E3 rocket blasted into space. The launch was flawless. The rocket escaped Earth’s atmosphere and fell into perfect geosynchronous orbit on July 31, 1962. Senator Lyndon took every opportunity to gloat about the successful launch to the press, to his sub-committee on space exploration, and of course, to Secretary Smith.

On the E3 rocket, Captain Gus Glennon searched the heavens through the porthole in his rocket ship, looking for the aliens. Instead, he was greeted by the sun approaching the dark disk of Earth from the moon’s nightside. Earth’s atmosphere, lit from behind, created a reddish ring around it that glowed brighter as the eclipse proceeded.

Breathtaking. Captain Glennon thought. Simply breathtaking.

He wouldn’t have missed this moment for a lottery win; for permanent happiness; for the universe. Though he had placed second behind Pilot Maryam Joie Miller in every test relative to the E3 mission, he was the better man. It was right for him to be here. Here, making historical contact with aliens. Here, representing the human race. The white race. The superior race. That was all there was to it. Even if Pilot Miller had been a strangely capable astronaut. In his smug estimation, he was second to no one.

I’m the red-blooded American hero people want to see on this trip. That’s what it means to have ‘the right stuff.’ That makes me right for this mission. And I’m a crack pilot too! he reassured himself.

“Wait. What the hell is that?!” he said aloud as he felt his ship jerked and pulled out of its comfortable orbit. He looked out the porthole. His heart raced, beating so rapidly, it felt like a heart attack. “Holy shit! I’m being towed by aliens.”

His eyes came to rest on an enormous ship, one hundred times bigger than his. The extraterrestrials’ ship was a perfect sphere. Like a Christmas ornament. It was iridescent in appearance, glinting red, blue, and green in the filtered light of the sun. It appeared to spin at hyper speed as it towed his ship toward itself. When his rocket slowed to a stop, Captain Glennon blacked out.

Wake yourself, earth being.

Captain Glennon heard the voice in his head. He shook off the haze in his body, in his mind and sat up sharply. He peered out of the porthole. His eyes went round and his mouth dropped open. The spherical alien spaceship hung before him, big as a skyscraper. The top and bottom third of the ship still appeared to spin at hyper speed. But the center third of the ship was motionless. It contained a single grand porthole that encircled the ship. In its brightly lit windows sat five, seemingly human negro women, on high-backed throne-like seats. Their skin was brown and their hair appeared to be in braids piled high on their heads like thick, black, woven crowns. The braids were bejeweled with bright silver threads that almost blinded him. Each glowing entity was attired in a shiny, foil monochromatic flight suit: purple, pink, red, yellow, and blue.

Speak your name, earth being.

The sound vibrated in his brain, between his ears. It seemed that all five were speaking simultaneously with one stentorian voice. He covered his ears with gloved hands and grated out: “Captain Gus Glennon. American. Astronaut.” Then added, “Greetings from America.”

You? You are the best space traveler?

Captain Glennon gulped, feeling the menace and incredulity behind the question.

“Yes,” he said confidently. “You are the ones that sent the message to Earth about this meeting. Right?”

We sent the message. But you are not the best space traveler. We are certain because you are not the Sixth Sister of Space, Time, and the Multiverse.

“Who is that?” he said, gut churning, hoping they did not mean Pilot Maryam Joie Miller, the colored woman who had bested him at every turn. “How could anyone possibly know who that… who she is from among the millions of women on Earth? We are seeing you for the first time.”

The Sixth Sister is not possible to mistake! She is a child of the multiverse sent to your planet twenty-two Earth years ago. She was born for the stars. Her heart desires only space travel. She does computations without error. She speaks our language as we are speaking yours. We sent the encoded message for her ears! You would know her by this.

“Oh,” he said aloud, understanding pricking at his consciousness. “Maybe I can still be of assistance,” he added, in an effort to buy time to craft a better response or convince the aliens of his worthiness. But before he could think of what else to say, there was roaring in his head that could not be drowned out by covering his ears.

We did not make this journey, for centuries by speed of light, to be toyed with. To be lied to! Where is the Sixth Sister of Space, Time, and the Multiverse? Why isn’t she here? We know she was on Earth. We know she is the Best Space Traveler.

Captain Glennon felt blood seeping out of his nose. His head pounded like he was being repeatedly pummeled by heavyweight boxing champion, Floyd Patterson. He felt himself losing consciousness, slipping away into darkness.

* * *

Maryam looked up from her position on the floor of her bedroom in response to a knock on the door.

“Come in, Momma,” she said.

Mae Jean entered the dimly lit room carrying a tray with a light dinner of meatloaf, potatoes, and tea spiked with whiskey. Her daughter sat on the carpeted floor of the bedroom, metal balls, painted like planets, spinning in an elliptical orbit above her right hand. Maryam did not look at her mother when she entered but continued to gaze at the spinning orbs.

Mae Jean placed the tray on the bedside table, then sat on the floor, facing her daughter. “How do you feel today, Maryam?”

“Empty. Lost. Without purpose, I suppose.”

“The world misses you while you hide in this room. Your intelligence and wit. Your laugh and beauty.”

“You mean you and Dad miss me,” she said, raising her hand, making the planets spin faster. “No one else knows I exist. I’m NASA’s Darkie Secret,” she snorted.

“I’ve never seen you sulk so,” her mother reproached gently.

Maryam shrugged and made no further response.

“I know you haven’t heard the news, so I’ll tell you. That astronaut they sent to space instead of you…”

“Gus Glennon,” Maryam finished the sentence.

“He’s dead. They found him after splashdown the other day. He looked alive. But he wasn’t.”

Maryam let the planets fall, one by one, into her hand. She placed them gently in her lap and looked at her mother. “I never wished anyone dead,” she said.

“There’s more,” Mae Jean said, and pulled a letter from her pocket and handed it to her daughter. “It’s from Senator Lyndon. Personally delivered by that Samuel fella. Today.”

Maryam took the letter. Her name was written in large, black calligraphic letters on the front. She carefully opened the back, sealed with red wax bearing an eagle. She cleared her throat and read aloud:

Dear Pilot Maryam Joie Miller,

I hope this letter finds you well. Let me start, humbly from my knees, begging your forgiveness…