At that moment, Hank pulled out his aviator sunglasses and put them on. He then pulled out another pair for her.

“Pilot to pilot,” he said. “You need to look the part.”

Joan took them and laughed. “Oh, this is great,” she said. She slipped them on and then tightened her face, clenched her jaw, and removed all hint of a smile from her face.

“Atta girl!” Hank said.

Joan put her helmet on and, later, took over the controls as they flew home. She got them back to the base, and then Hank took over and landed them.

After she had gotten in her car to drive home that day, she’d picked up the glasses again and put them on. When she had looked in the mirror, it had no longer seemed like a joke.

“Coors Light for Goodwin,” Griff said now, as he handed Joan a beer.

Everyone beat their hands on the tables to thank Hank for circulating another round. Joan started moving through the crowd toward an open window for some air.

She watched as Donna hung back, across the room from Hank. Vanessa was laughing with Steve about something, and Joan wondered what it could be that made Vanessa laugh that hard. She wondered if maybe Vanessa had a thing for Steve.

“Do you think Hank’s in the lead to get the first assignment out of our group?” Lydia asked. Joan had not realized Lydia was behind her.

Vanessa caught Joan’s eye and smiled. Joan instinctually looked away. Did Vanessa know how beautiful she was? Her beauty seemed so obvious to Joan, but no one ever reacted to Vanessa the way they reacted to most beautiful women.

“Are you listening to me, Goodwin?” Lydia asked. “Hank seems like the favorite out of the Group 9 pilots, don’t you think?”

Joan turned to her. Lydia was dressed for a party—she was wearing a blue dress and the sides of her hair were pulled back with two tortoiseshell combs—but her eyes were narrow, her lips pursed tight. Joan realized that being at a party and partying were two different things. “I don’t know,” Joan said. “It’s hard to gauge.”

Once NASA had one successful shuttle mission, they were going to start scheduling many more. Everyone wanted to be chosen for a crew as soon as possible.

Already there seemed to be an unspoken hierarchy emerging, with favorites and leaders, long shots and outsiders.

Hank, Teddy, Duke, and Jimmy were training to fly chase—to be the pilots who guided the shuttle to the landing site once it reentered the atmosphere. Vanessa and Griff were spending a lot of time in the dunk tank, experimenting with what was possible on spacewalks.