Read Online The Only Words That Are Worth Remembering by Jeffrey Rotter - Free Book Online

prime, Cape Cannibal must have been alive with music. How the Doctors of Astronomy would have danced to the rhythms of jet propulsion and stepped to the red pulse of countdown clocks. I saw their spirits sway among the treadmills and Pilates balls.
    The cardio room contained its usual implements of false hope, a bike with no wheels, sandbags to be toted from here to there and back again, a rowboat that went nowhere. (Sylvia drew a circle on the wall in front of the rowing machine and wrote “yourope” underneath. You could pull till you shat your uniform but that Moon never got any closer.) There was one device I could not identify. It looked like the sort of kinetic sculpture you find in an outlet mall food court. Terry called it his Gyro, like the sandwich. Three rings as wide as Pop’s outstretched arms were hitched together with gimbals to allow free motion in all directions. Nested inside them was a padded black throne with straps and grips.
    â€œCustom-built,” said Nguyen, “from a three-hundred-year-old blueprint.”
    I have before me on my desk at Paranal a textbook plate depicting a similar device, though much older and more artful. Léon Foucault designed his gyroscope to measure the Earth’s rotation. Terry’s contraption gauged the limits of human nausea.
    He asked if anyone wanted to take a spin. Bill Reade looked at the rest of us and sucked his teeth. I wasn’t about to sit inside that thing until I’d been forced to. Bill, however, was emerging as our alpha, our rock, a role Pop seemed content to let him fill. Faron snorted out a laugh when Bill stooped inside the Gyro. He was cinched into the shoulder harness and it was suggested that he keep his hands on the grips. “There is a minimal risk of limb loss,” said Terry.
    When the hoops were given a spin, Bill’s body whirled in three directions at once while his expression held fast, a smirk tight enough to contain the vomit that had no doubt accumulated behind his lips. He turned green and then white but did not demand to get off. Here is all you need to know about Bill Reade: that man was only satisfied when the world was spinning around him. And in his eyes, at that moment, we were only satellites of Bill.
    On the third floor we received a tour of Launch Control proper. The old key-card box had been hammered flat. Terry opened a padlock and a heavy chain slid to the floor. Inside the room called to mind a burnt-out House of Jesus me and Faron ran across in a weed field. Launch Control had pews, an altar, and a rose window of sorts to gaze out upon the immortal. The lower clergy would have sat behind the banks of telephones and computer screens. Blue placards identified each Astronomer by rank and purpose: PAYLOAD MANAGER; PURGE, VENT, AND DRAIN; HAZ GAS .
    Their consoles faced a carpeted dais upon which sat the High Astronomers. On either side were glass enclosures that Terry called the Bubbles, and they were reserved for only the guntiest of Gunts.
    But the holiest of holy? That happened out there, beyond the impact-resistant windows. Down the Crawler Road you could see clear to the Launchpad. LED clocks set in every wall ticked off the inevitable red seconds till liftoff: WINDOW REMAINING, COUNTDOWN, POST LOX DRAINBACK ELAPSED TIME . With the push of a button, Terry started our clock right then and there: 304:00:00:00. The Julian calendar: no months, just an endless scroll of days.
    Back in the van I was seated beside Bill, so close that the hairs on his arm tickled mine. I felt them work inside me, the cilia of a caterpillar. I thought then that it was his bravery trying to penetrate my skin. He wanted to infect me with his manly substance, overpower me with it, and thereby harden my resolve for what lay ahead. I shrank against the door. I wanted to be brave like I wanted to be dead.
    Bill stared ahead into Terry’s rearview mirror and by process of reflection into my eyes. Under the brim of his