Her salary offer was on a government grade equivalent to what she would have received as a civil service scientist. She hadn’t expected riches as an astronaut, but the pay seemed lousy, actually, considering the dislocation to her life, the hours she would have to put in, the risks, for Christ’s sake.

She was concerned enough to call Ben Priest about it.

“Am I being picked on?”

“It’s nothing personal. You’ve got to remember that you’re at the bottom of an immense pecking order, Natalie. You can’t make more money than the senior military astronauts. I guess you can see that. And their salaries are rigid, because they are locked into a military pay scale.”

“Yeah, but civil service salary scales are rigid, too, once you’re inside. Promotion is slow, and—”

He cut her off. “You have to ask yourself, Natalie. Is this really an issue for you? Is the salary a genuine factor in your decision to join NASA? If it isn’t, quit beefing and move on.”

She thought about that.

She signed the forms.

She had to sort out her pension contributions. She sold her car and gave up her rented apartment. She made out a new will: her mother was the main beneficiary, and, after some thought, she made Ben Priest her executor. She bought herself a new wardrobe: slacks and light shirts, suitable for Houston. She spoke to her savings and loan and her bank, and made arrangements for her mail to be forwarded.

She even got chased by the press, local paper and radio crews looking to run comic pieces on the new lady astronaut. After the first embarrassing result appeared — “Space Beauty Is Over the Moon” — she chased the reporters away, and they soon seemed to forget about her.

There was a round of farewells, which she hated.

She took a final drive around Berkeley. She headed up Dwight Way and across Telegraph Street, passing the little shingle houses there, and then into and above Strawberry Canyon. The hills were a lush summer green. Farther off, beyond the flats of Berkeley, she could see the misty blur of San Francisco and Marin County, linked together by the rust-colored Golden Gate Bridge. The air was fine, laced with eucalyptus.

How the hell could she give up all this for the humid smog of Houston?

She hadn’t anticipated how difficult this aspect of her odyssey would be. Her workplace, the apartment she’d rented for years, Berkeley itself: all of it, she realized, maybe belatedly, made up the fabric of her life. Pursuing Martian geology, flying into space, was one thing! — but she hadn’t bargained for how hard it would be to clean out her apartment, and to accept the cards and small presents and exchanged addresses, and continually, constantly, say good-bye.

Wednesday, July 5, 1978

HEADQUARTERS, ROCKWELL INTERNATIONAL, LOS ANGELES