Chapter Text
“Deke, I need to talk to you.”
“Christ, Margo, not now.” Deke Slayton half turned, hands on his hips, as Margo Madison approached him in the hall outside of his office, “You can see we’re in a little bit of a crisis.”
“I agree, that’s why I need to talk to you.”
“I don’t know what— hold on.” From the other end of the hallway came her boss, Gene Kranz, and Thomas Paine, likewise intent on buttonholing Deke.
“Tom— for starters, what the hell is the Federal Bureau of Control?”
“I don’t know; but I just got off the phone with Shorty, and he says to let them conduct their investigation.”
“What!?” Deke growled, “Does he know they’re down there starting fights with astronauts?”
“I know, I told him, but it was the White House that sent them here in the first place. Something to do with the men who came back on Apollo 14.”
“Yeah, no shit,” Deke swung back on Margo, “Look, can this wait?”
“No!” She cleared her throat, “No, sir, it cannot wait. I don’t know who these people are, but something does seem to have happened with the mission.”
“Nothing went wrong with the mission, Margo! You were on FIDO, you know damn well…”
“Deke.” Margo fixed his eyes with hers. “Have you spoken to the men in quarantine yet?”
“Have I— These sons of bitches won’t let anyone through!”
“I don’t.. look.” Margo shoved the printouts in her hands under Deke’s nose, “CAPCOM said there were four voices on the com, Deke. Not three, four.”
“That’s right, four. Mitchell, Roosa, Shepherd and…” Deke frowned suddenly, “Wait, why can’t I remember..?”
“Because it’s not possible for four astronauts to fit in Kitty Hawk, Deke.” When he didn’t answer, she turned to her boss, shuffling though the pages in her hands, “Gene, am I crazy here? Are there four men in this flight photo?”
“…let me see that.” Gene took the print, Deke and Tom looking over his shoulder and frowning. “Deke. Tom. I think Shorty has a point. We’d better let these agents conduct their investigation.”
“Right. Margo, they’ll probably want to talk to you, GUIDO and CAPCOM also.”
“I’ll let Bill know. Thank you, sir.” She turned to head back to Mission Control, then paused, “Sir? To Deke’s point, what is the, uh… Federal Bureau of Control, though?”
“It’s… classified.” Tom sighed. “Look, just cooperate with them for now. I’ll get better clarification as to their clearance and jurisdiction tomorrow. In the meantime, we can’t have any more screwups, especially after the Patty Doyle incident. All right?”
“Right.” So Deke and Gene went down to meet the agents, and Margo Madison went back to Flight Control to talk to Bill.
The interviews lasted nearly the whole month that the Prime Crew remained in quarantine. The interviewers seemed to her in all ways indistinguishable from FBI spooks, except for their questions. Mostly they wanted to know if there were any possible way a fourth person could have been on that flight.
“No,” she told the damn obnoxious, nameless agent for the fifteenth time, “You’ve seen the flight medallion. You’ve seen the photo. You’ve seen… I’ve told you about the weight calculations. A fourth adult human would have thrown off all of our stage measurements, our fuel calculations… everything.”
“Can I see these calculations?”
Margo shrugged, “I don’t know, you think you can understand the math?”
“Try me.”
She borrowed a piece of paper from his pad and drew out the calculations, explaining as she went. Turns out, he did actually know the math, or at least the theory enough to follow her.
“All right. How about the EMUs? How many of those were on board?”
“Six—one on each of the crew, and one for backup. They’re accounted for in the calculations.”
“And no one could, say… stow away in one of the spare EMUs?”
“NO!” Margo rubbed her head, exasperated, “Not possible. For one thing, each suit is custom made to the specifications of the actual crew member. That’s part of why we have so long between launches. We’re working on reusable, adaptable suits, but we don’t expect those to be functional until… well not for a while yet. But no, that’s not possible. Also it would have screwed with the weight. Just because the mass is inside of another object, doesn’t mean the mass doesn’t count.”
“Right.” The investigator stood up, took a drink of water from a dixie cup, and leaned over the desk toward her. “But here’s why I’m confused, Miss Madison. The Prime Crew, every other technician, member of the flight control crew… hell even the Chief Astronaut starts out insisting that there were four astronauts, not three, that took off from Cape Kennedy for the Apollo 14 mission. Why is it that you, and you alone, insist that there were three?”
“Wait… what? But I showed Deke…”
“I believe you, Miss Madison. He did in fact mention that in his interview… you showed him the flight portrait—this same portrait, I believe—” he held up the picture: Mitchell, Roosa, and Shepherd, in front of the mission seal, “showing three astronauts. But Miss Madison, when we went with him down to the cape to interview the quarantined crew, he insisted that you— that this photo—must have been mistaken, and he clearly remembered four.”
“That’s impossible.”
“And yet there were four active EMU fished up out of the Pacific.”
“That’s… yes, I know about that, and I know that one of the spares seemed loose during reentry. But there was no fourth astronaut.”
“I see.” The agent drained the dixie cup, crumpled it up, and stuck it in his pocket, “for what it’s worth Miss Madison—you’re absolutely correct. Only three astronauts left Earth on January 31st. But I’d wait for a while, to mention that to your colleagues.”
“Okay.” He chuckled at her confusion, and her confusion gave way to irritation in a hurry. “May I leave now?”
“That’s all, Miss Madison. If we need anything else from you, we’ll be in touch.” He handed her a card, and she took it, reflexively.
“Wait, there’s no number on this…”
“Good day, Miss Madison.” He held the door for her, and shut it behind her. Standing alone in the hallway, she looked over the card— all it said was, “Federal Bureau of Control” with an official looking seal, and “William Kirklund, Investigations”. Nothing on the back. She stared at it for a few moments, then shoved it in the pocket of her purse, and went back to her office.