Too late now. I hoped Jackson’s attention would stay on me and not on my sign, and tried not to remember he’d probably see the sign first. Sign with his name, then me, then my staggering good looks would wipe my lame sign from his memory?
I was overthinking it. Big time.
It wasn’t only about meeting Jackson. Going out to the Air Force base, seeing the gathered military honor guards and technicians and mechanics and medics all stirred up memories I’d tried very hard to bury. Once upon a time, not enough years ago, I’d imagined a tableau like this but from the other side.
Standing inside the transport. Waiting for the ramp to lower, the anxiousness for leave and for the sight of my loved one electric inside me. Watching the ramp come down, scanning the crowd, and there, the sign with my name, and beneath it-
Well. At first, I hadn’t known who to imagine beneath it. Maybe a wife assigned to me by the match program, or one I’d met while in training. Later, I had imagined Joan beneath it, in a sundress and a smile, a bittersweet daydream because by then, it would never happen. I would never go to Mars. I would never come home from Mars to someone waiting for me with a sign and an eagerness to see me again.
I’d come full circle, from dreaming of a welcome to giving one. An old wound in my heart healed as the symbolism sank home. Here I stood on the tarmac, the one with the sign and the eagerness for a happy reunion.
A cheer went up as one of the waiting spouses spotted the transport ship, or what of it they brought down to Earth. The information packet said they left large sections of ship up in space or at the docks on Luna. The rotation ring segment that provided gravity and more spacious living quarters, and the big, super-secret drives that cut the Earth-Mars travel time down to the two-and-a-half months we’d achieved, would receive fuel and maintenance there. Only the crew transport segment came down planetside.
They didn’t need more than that. It took up a big chunk of the blue sky, massive enough to look like the pilot needed to pour on more speed before it dropped like the world’s most expensive brick. It appeared to just scud along, slow enough for me to walk beside it, but it grew larger and larger in our perspective until we could really appreciate the size.
Big. And very small. Bigger than any cargo plane the military flew, but given how many people I knew it carried, it seemed like they’d have to stack the soldiers firewood-style to fit. A cost-saving measure, I knew, because pushing ships out into orbit cost approximately a metric asston (not an Imperial asston, mind you) and they had to reduce the weight as much as they could on the trips up and down.
I was a little less envious that I’d never have my own top-of-the-ramp moment. They’d crammed dozens of soldiers into that ship, sweaty and tired and ready to be done. Mister Maine might have had more leg room in economy class on his commercial flight here.
Speaking of Mister Maine, he edged closer to me, as tense and nervous as I felt. I hoped I didn’t look as nervous as he did. (Spoiler, since you’ve seen the photo: I looked worse.) “Do you think he’ll look like his pictures?” he asked.
Too nervous to infer context, I said, “Who?”
“Scott,” he said. “My match.”
Oh. That. How I’d missed jittering about that particular concern, I don’t know. Possibly some part of me simplyknewthat Jackson would, or knew that I didn’t care. The handsome face added to it, but I’d stopped caring about superficials when I watched his video. I wantedhim, however he looked.
“No,” I said, then touched Mister Maine’s arm. “He’ll lookbetter. You’ll see.”
“I hope so,” he said, then caught himself. “That sounds shallow, doesn’t it.”
I shook my head. “No. It sounds human. It’s all going to be just fine. He’ll come down that ramp, you’ll spot him, and it will all fall into place.”
He nodded, licking his lips to settle his nerves. “Do I look all right?”
Because it would make him feel better, I reached out, straightened his collar, and plucked a cat hair off his short polo sleeve. “Perfect. Now. Get ready to hold up your sign and fall in love.”
“Right,” he said, and turned back toward the end of the landing strip.
The transport behemoth had set down, light as lint, and blew off steam to vent the heat. Our crowd of onlookers milled toward the rope dividers the military had put up to demarcate the safe zone and protect us from ourselves. Almost as if they knew that we, like dumb, nervous sheep with all thoughts fried off by anticipation, would wander right over to that ship and end up scorched by the re-entry heat.
Great way to make a first impression.The ship didn’t burn up in re-entry, but the waiting spouses and future-spouses did. Film at eleven.I tried to find a position where the crowd didn’t crush me, but I could still catch my first glimpse of soldiers returning home.
We waited with frayed patience as the ship cooled to safe temperatures. One of the base personnel narrated for us. He offered factoids about the re-entry speeds the ship had endured, the current hull temperature, whatever they could dredge up that wouldn’t violate national security but would occupy a flock of anxious civilians while they pondered a cardboard sign riot.
Everyone jumped as steam puffed from the top of the ramp and indicated a breach of the seal there. A cheer exploded as the ramp began its slow descent to the ground.
A couple of armed soldiers lingered several yards out from where the ramp’s edge would touch down, an informal barricade of their own. They would discourage people from rushing the ramp but still allow for greetings as soldiers spotted their families and moved towards them. The honor guard snapped into a salute as the commanding officer du jour stepped up to the ramp to give permission for the soldiers to go the hell on leave and get the damned civilians off his bloody tarmac.
He didn’t say that. Not in so many words. I knew he meant it, though.
I saw the first boots start down the top of the ramp and almost atomized myself with nervous vibrating. Jackson? No. The sign that read, “Marry Me Henry Mooney” started bobbing and wobbling hard as the man beneath it jumped up and down. Private Henry Mooney caught the motion, squinted, then broke into a trot with a fierce grin on his lips.
The sign flew to a spot near me. As the pair collided into the most awkward but sweet kiss I have ever seen, I picked up the fallen rectangle of cardboard. Yep. Should have gone more creative.
Even as Private Henry Mooney had the first reunion of his looming marriage, more boots came down the ramp. A woman who’d already had her wedding found her husband in the crowd. A second woman found a nervous but smiling man with a “Jennifer Conyers It’s Me” sign.
Jennifer Conyers. The woman Elaine Prise had said would have been perfect for me. The wife I might have had if M4-CH+M4-KR hadn’t chosen me as an outlier. I felt a stab of – wistfulness? Fondness? I don’t know if English has a name for what I felt, an emotion between “we would have been happy” and “that’s what I expected when I signed up” and “I think I’d probably prefer what I was given”.