Margo Cooper – Scientist!
A Novel by Heather Galovan
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2011 Heather Galovan
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Table of Contents
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part One
Margo Cooper remembers in first grade when she first learned what an astronaut really was. How they left earth and went into orbit in space shuttles or rockets. Her life before that had been all about jump rope, coloring books, fairy tales, silly songs, and her bicycle. Her interests started to change. She still liked to color but when they other kids drew rainbows and puppies she drew Saturn surrounded by stars. Her dad had bought her a poster of the solar system and she’d look at it each morning as she got dressed and tried to remember the names of all the moons and what planets they belonged to.
The summer after kindergarten she started her own project to make her own poster of the solar system. Her mom got her a long roll of butcher paper. She put the sun on one end and she put Pluto and Pluto’s moon Sharon on the other end. There was plenty of room to draw and label all the planets and asteroids and moons in between, instead of just listing them like the other poster did. She had to look up each planet in the encyclopedia to get all the information right. She tried to draw details on all the planetoids that she could. Mercury was half yellow and half black to show that one side always faced the sun. Earth got the continents with oceans. On Mars she put in the great Valles Marinaris Trench and the Olympus Mons volcano. She drew the great red spot on Jupiter, the volcanoes on the moon of Io and the ice on Europa. She got the ring of Saturn and Neptune with its rings facing the opposite way from Saturn. She put in Haley’s comet and most of the asteroids they had names for. It kept her busy for long periods of time between when the family went to play at the park or go to the grocery store or went swimming.
She finished it before school started and her mother, an artist, gushed at all the details and colors and effort Margo had put into it. She got the camera and had to take photos of each section of the poster, especially ones with more tiny details. And then they took a photo with Margo and her masterpiece together. Her dad looked over each part reading the names and facts she’d put next to them and quizzed her on where she found the information and what made her put each part of the paper. Then he’d cover some section and see if she could remember what was there. He’d laugh when she got it right or when she got it wrong but was still very close. Her mom found a big picture frame it put it in and they hung it on the living room wall next to the family photos and her mom’s paintings. Sometimes when she’d come inside from playing she’d see her mom standing in front of it, head tilted to the side and fingers outstretched as if to trace a line of stars or the contours of a planet, and she’d smile before heading to her room.
Then when she was in second grade she saw the Challenger Space Shuttle explode. They were watching the launch on TV in class just like the rest of nation and then they were shocked just like everyone else as well. She remembers watching the news with her parents and all the reports on what happened. That was when her view of astronauts changed from them as people with a neat job to people who were heroes.
The books at the elementary school library had interviews of astronauts and other scientists. They said you needed to be a really good student especially in math and science, to have a job like they did. The rest of the year and during the summer Margo worked really hard to be a really good student. And a few weeks after third grade started they moved her to the fourth grade class.
Over the next few years she read every space book and magazine she could get her hands on. Their family’s World Book Encyclopedia had permanent creases on the pages for NASA, astronauts and galaxies. She had her parents check out every book and documentary from the library. At first she read just the kids books. Once she had read those enough times she ventured out to the adult non-fiction section and started on all their books about astronauts and astronomy. It was her own personal space mission boot camp.
Margo was dropped off at the Public Library with her library card in one pocket and two quarters in the other in case she need to use the pay phone. Her mom was going to the grocery store so she had about an hour of time all to herself before she came back. She returned the books and videos that were due soon and went downstairs to the children’s library. She browsed the non-fiction section, looking at the books on astronomy and space shuttles, and biographies of astronauts and other scientists. She’d read all the ones on the shelf already: Galileo and Yuri Gagarin, Sally Ride and Buzz Aldrin.
She headed to the shelf where new books were displayed. A few story books looked interesting but the only new science book was one her school library had got last week, it was on her nightstand at home right now. She picked up the new chapter book to take home and spent some time on the floor of the science aisle flipping through the picture book of constellations. She put the book back and checked the clock. She still had a while left till her mother came back. Standing under the clock she was next to the stairs and decided to explore a little. The grown up part of the library was so much bigger and was sure to have more books she had not read yet. Her purple jelly shoes squeaked on the stairs so she had to step slower than normal. Her mom always told her to never leave the library when she dropped her off. She wasn’t leaving the building but she was going to a section her mom normally didn’t go to pick her up at. She stepped behind the new book displayed trying to read the section words hanging from the ceiling. Non-fiction was at the back of the library. Margo looked down each aisle before she passed threw to make sure it was empty. Sometimes she had to wait a bit at the end till she could cross the empty space between. She finally saw the row with “500 – Science” wrote on the end. The aisle was empty. She grinned as she walked in and scanned the rows of books. The ones on the top shelf she couldn’t read the words on the spines, even when she stood on the little step stool – she decided to focus on the ones she could reach. There were at least five books on each planet or the moon, several on spaceflight, the Apollo Program, and the space station and the Soviet space program. There was a history of NASA and Haley’s Comet. She picked up the book on the Apollo program and one about the moon. The Biography section was not far away. They had books on Newton and Galileo but these were much thicker than the ones in the children’s section. She added them to her stack of books.
She carried them up to the front of the library stopping every once in a while to straighten them back up so they wouldn’t fall. When she put them on the checkout counter the librarian raise her eyebrow but said nothing. She just scanned her card and stamped the checkout date on the cards inside the books. Margo balanced them again and went into the lobby where she could be inside and see out the front doors. Her mom walked in soon after stopping to sigh and say “Margo” before she took her books to carry out to the car. After months of Margo checking out the adult books on space and the solar system her parents decided she needed a telescope of her own. They gave it to her with a big book on the constellations. That night they set it up and sat on the grass looking at the moon and stars while drinking hot chocolate.
If she knew a space related episode of NOVA was coming on she made her parents record it and she watched it again and again like other kids watched Snow White or Star Wars. She learned about each Apollo mission and who was on it. She looked at photos of the moon and mission control, and all the launches. She learned all the space probes and satellites and planetary rovers. Between her time in school and playing with friends she read about the Mercury and Venus missions and then there were the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft sent to the outer planets to look at Neptune and Saturn and Uranus and Jupiter. When she was 10 years old the Hubble Space Telescope was put into orbit. She had seen the mentions of it on the evening news and watched one documentary. Her Dad found out about a presentation at the local planetarium and they made it a family activity to drive out there and hear all about the space telescope. Margo felt so excited at the prospect of new photos from space and a whole big telescope in orbit just to look at the stars.
They had been to the planetarium before. They made a few trips the last summer and Margo was just as excited the third time as she was the first time. This time her excitement level was even higher. She was tapping her feet on the car floor and kept asking her parents the same questions over and over. “Do you think they’ll have real photos of the telescope? Will someone who made the telescope be there? Can we sit on the front row? Do you think I can ask questions? I have things I want to ask.” and on and on.
There was a visiting professor in their area. He had spoken at the university and the high school and now at the planetarium for the public. His specialty was deep space imaging and telescope engineering. So his whole presentation was on how telescopes worked and what the Hubble Space Telescope was and what it will be used for. They got there twenty minutes before it started because Margo couldn’t stay home any longer, so they had left. They were the first in line for the dome theater and she chose seats right on the front row in the center. After the presentation by the professor they would be shown a constellation show. Margo kept turning in her seat to be able to spot him as he came in. He finally walked in with someone from the planetarium staff. He was kind of tall and pretty skinny with hair that was half grey. He wore khaki pants and a blue button up shirt with a black tie that had Saturn on it. He rolled up his sleeves and walked back and forth as he talked. During his talk she watched him half the time and the slides he had prepared the other half. He showed the plans for the telescope and some photos of them building it. She tried to remember the explanations of how the lenses in the telescope worked and got excited when the professor described what they would be able to see and discover. He showed some pictures from current telescopes and some others done by artists of what they could be able to see with this new telescope. When she saw one she really liked she would bounce a little on her seat and tap her Mom’s arm. When it was question and answer time at the end of his presentation she nearly forgot all her questions she had in trying to absorb all that he said and the answers to other people’s questions.
Finally she raised her hand and got to ask her own question. “If the Hubble telescope works really well will they build more to put in space?” she asked. The professor smiled and looked at her as he answered, “I don’t know of any plans right now. Part of that will depend on how well this one does, how much we can see with it, and if we think it would be worth it to build another one to place in orbit somewhere else.” She was so happy she got to ask her question and he picked her over whoever else may have been raising their hand. On the ride home she looked out the window at the stars and imagined the space telescope up there taking pictures. She tried to picture in her mind the space shuttle taking it up into space and the astronauts that would get to set it up and watch it fly for the first time.
The next day she tried to remember what she had heard and draw a picture of the Hubble telescope orbiting Earth. She tried to get every detail she could think of and when she was done she hung it up on her wall next to her poster of the solar system. On the day the telescope did go into orbit she watched the news with her parents to see what they would show about it. They then let her stay up to see the 10 o’clock news too to see if anything new would be shown. The public library had a new magazine and children’s book that month that featured the telescope and Margo used them to perfect her drawing and learn more about all the parts and pieces.
The summer geology workshop at the college Margo had been in when she turned fourteen was a community education class for teens. All the other students were her age. The class was an introduction to all you needed to know about rocks. They met twice a week for a month and a half. They also had several field trips. The thing about studying geology in the western desert is that you can drive for twenty minutes or an hour and find any formation or type of rock in nature that you had read about in the textbook. The field trips were a chance to indentify types of rock on sight and see how they may have developed at each location.
She would go walking in the desert near her house and try to think like a robotic rover or a future astronaut on Mars. But she would be brought back to Earth when she’d hear a passing airplane or see a patch of cacti. She started paying more attention to the degrees listed under the names of people interviewed in documentaries and in her Planetary Society magazine. Things like Physics, Astrophysics, geology, astronomy, computer science, mathematics, robotics etc. She needed to be like them so she could see what they had seen. She had to be the best so she could be the first. The local community college had a summer geology workshop – she went. Then she found the math text book from the year she had just finished – she checked it out and did all the problems again, then went on to volume two. She had her Dad teach her more about their computer, all the programs she wasn’t sure of and the ones she never knew they had.
The next summer when she turned fifteen her parents help her sign up for a class that wasn’t a teen workshop, but a real college class from the geology department. It met four days a week for two months, and Margo was the only one under eighteen in the class. It wasn’t a big class, less than thirty students, but she felt outnumbered. Half were sophomores and half were juniors. She hadn’t signed up for the intro class since she had taken the workshop before and then read the college geology 101 textbook for the rest of that summer. When she came to class the first day half the seats were already taken. She sat near the front, in the second row middle, so she’d not miss anything. She could see all the other people glance at her at various times. Some who didn’t care, some who seemed confused to see a new girl, and some trying to place where they may have seen her before.
This was her first adult class and she not only spent the time taking down notes on geology by also on comparing it to her high school classes. People seemed more willing to comment and she could tell many had taken classes from their teacher before. She had empty seats on either sides of her but then someone had sat down in the ones after that. It seemed the pattern to sit every other seat and leave a space between unless you were friends with someone and so they could sit right next to each other. From the intro in the first class Margo thought she could understand all the stuff to be covered without too much help. She looked at those sitting on her row again. Unless it ends up being harder than I think, and I have to join a study group she thought. A classmate caught her eye, she smiled to be nice and then they ended up being friends. They next time they had class she sat down right next to Margo and introduced herself.
“Hi I’m Jessica, and you? Are you a freshman?”
“I’m Margo, and um… kind of.” She said.
They did their homework together after class and Jessica gave her tips on all the professors and how to get around campus. Jessica actually told her a lot of things, she was a talker and Margo was always surprised how she was even quiet for class. But as soon as class ended she started chatting. “What do you think about that volcano stuff? Cool, right? I love lava rock. What are you doing on Saturday? We should go for a hike. My favorite hike is…” and so on and so forth. But it was fun and it was nice to have a friend in the class full of older kids. She got an A in the class and she was sure not all of it was from her own smarts. Jessica’s optimism helped as well. Since that class ended up much nicer than she thought it would on the first day she decided to go ahead and take a class for the summer second term as well. This one was a beginning class, Physics 101, so she still was the youngest one; but most of the class were real freshman, and many much more baby faced than she was. She went in feeling confident and experienced. She didn’t hold back in raising her hand and turned in all her quizzes first on test day.
She ran into Jessica a few times after or before class and it made her feel all grown up, like a read college student, talking to a friend on the way to the parking lot or the science building. It was a great summer. The physics class was a little more challenging that her geology class but she still got an A. When high school started again she had honors and AP classes. She might not be taking history or English in her summer classes but she was doing AP classes for those subjects so she could get college credits for those anyway.
She looked at her high school years as her preparation time before she could join a space mission of her own. She took as many science classes as she could and spent the summers in workshops or classes at the community college. Her geology was good enough that she could identify almost any rock she saw and would test herself on her way to and from class. She had to leave a half hour earlier than normal to give herself time to stop and pick up interesting rocks and dirt or to make detours threw empty lots or open construction digs where she could see more of the earth exposed.
The summer when she was turned 15 years old she got to see some astronomy adventures happen in her lifetime. In her voracious searches for facts she had run into the Planetary Society magazine and came up with the money to join and get a subscription. So she got all the current news from NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and articles on all kinds of astronomy related subjects. She got excited learning about the kind of people who designed the deep space probes and giant telescopes. She got to learn in live time about new missions, the Hubble space telescope repairs – and the Shoemaker Levy comet that collided with Jupiter. For all of July 1994 it was on the news and she watched every night. She got updates on TV instead of having to search threw magazines or internet pages that took forever to upload. She felt validated. “Something I love is being looked at by everyone, and not just me.” She thought. She would check every day to see all the new photos and information.
Then she realized that it wasn’t all the information. Those people sitting at NASA or JPL were getting all the information; thousands of photos or radio signals, and only a sweet few were making it to her TV. Just like the with Venus probes and Mars Landers someone was back on earth in front of a computer sending commands out into space and getting precious data back. Their team was seeing it all firsthand. They were the first humans on the planet to see the side of Jupiter explode or the tail of the commit evaporate. Just like all those other teams were the first to see the grey dust of the moon or the ice of Europa. She wanted to be one of those few privileged human beings. She didn’t want to see the discovery second or third hand from some editor or TV reporter. She wanted to be in the room and watch the photo be unveiled pixel by pixel and be amazed and be an explorer, a space explorer. The moon was being left to its lonesome and a man on Mars was at least 50 years away. So she couldn’t do it as an astronaut but she could do it as a scientist, as a member of JPL or NASA, and it was something she wanted very much. She would print photos of stars and nebula taken by the Hubble space telescope and imagine being the first one to see them but knew she was not.
She had gotten a more advanced telescope as she had gotten older, way better than the children’s one she had before. She’d sleep out on the lawn and set her alarm clock to ring so she could see the constellations that came out later in the night.
Many weekends she had a camping sleep-over with friends out in the desert and after they had roasted marshmallows and sang songs and the others went to sleep she would get out her telescope to make use of the darkness of the desert to see more stars than were visible from her house. The fire was burned down to a few coals and everyone else was asleep in their sleeping bags. They had no tent because it wasn’t going to rain and it was a warm night. Margo had taken a nap in the afternoon so she could stay up later. Right after all the girls had laid down and finished all their giggles and prolonged good nights she had gotten up and got her telescope from Maggie’s car. She had a little light on her keychain to see by and set it up. The sky was perfect, no clouds and the city lights were far away. At first she pointed it at regular constellations like the five sisters or the dragon. Then she picked a random direction to look and see what she might discover. She drew her own lines to connect the stars and guessed if some of those lights may be not stars at all but galaxies just so far away that they appeared smaller.
She jumped back when she felt a hand on her shoulder. “What, who?” she said.
“It’s just me: Maggie.” Her friend replied, and Margo covered her heart to recover from the surprise. “So you finally got it out. Anything good to see?”
“I’ve not looked at the moon yet.” Said Margo, and she repositioned her telescope and focused it. “Take a look. You can see the craters and shadows really good.” Maggie spent a few minutes with her eye to the lens and Margo looked at the moon with just her naked eyes.
“I loved that there is a whole other world up there. I can imagine someone hiking across those sands of the moon just like we had our hike today. The telescope makes it so close, just like it only on the other side of that mesa or behind that big hill, exciting. Well I think so.” Margo said to her.
“Yes, it’s beautiful. Now it’s your turn to look.” And they traded places on the rock they were sitting on.
When the movie of Apollo 13 came out she went to see it on opening day. She paid extra attention to the mission control team and all their staff. It was that summer when she again started reading all the details of the Mars missions and she really started to fall in love. She had flirted with the other planets and had a few crushes but she found her true love in Mars. She saw all the photos from the Viking Missions in 1976 and all the great things they had found with the Landers. They got a chance to look up close and not just from far away earth; the craters and canyons and Lowell’s channels that were more like dried riverbeds, the polar caps and the sand dunes. She loved looking at the great Valles Marineris trench that was a mile deep and as long as the United States or the Olympus Mons volcano, the largest shield volcano in the solar system. The books and videos of Mars she renewed so many times she finally had to take them back – and the next week she checked them out again. Eventually she felt like she learned it all. There were no new Apollo missions or new books on space probes or telescopes.
She started to turn more to science fictions books. First were all the novels in the library about Mars that she could find. The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury, Journey Between Worlds by Sylvia Louise Engdahl, Mars by Ben Bova, then the Red Mars, Green Mars books by Kim Stanley Robinson. She found a biography of Percival Lowell who first saw the Martian canals threw his telescope and she looked at his hand drawn maps and compared them to the photos from the Viking Missions. She enjoyed the stories of space adventures and interstellar flights, and aliens and space colonies and terraforming. Margo started changing from just recalling all the facts she had learned to really imagining herself in a space ship, or on another planet or in mission control. Growing up in a desert she was surrounded by red dirt and lava rocks and sandstone. It was easy to imagine her town as not a city in America but as a Martian colony. Of course the constellations seen from her hometown were different than those she’d see from Mars but it was still fun to imagine at night as she lay on her front lawn in her sleeping bag.