“Hello, Lily,” Aunt Judy said. Her voice sounded a bit fuzzy over the line from Pasadena. “How’s school?”
Lily dutifully reported on what she was learning in Advanced Mathematics, the only class her aunt was truly interested in hearing about. “Oh, I also wanted to tell you,” Lily said, “that a friend of mine gave me an issue of Collier’s with an article in it by Wernher von Braun about going to Mars.” She had never before mentioned Kath to anyone in her family, and a flush of happiness rose inside her.
“I’ve seen it,” Aunt Judy said. “We were passing that issue around at JPL. I’ve seen him too, Dr. von Braun. He was at the lab recently.”
“Really! What was he doing there?”
“I don’t know. And if I did, I couldn’t tell you,” Aunt Judy said teasingly.
“In the article Dr. von Braun said that we won’t be able to go to Mars for a hundred years—not until the mid-2000s. Do you think he’s right? Can’t we go before then?”
“Oh, we’ll go before then,” Aunt Judy said confidently.
“When? How soon?”
“Well, we won’t go in that massive spaceship he envisions. He’s a brilliant scientist, of course, but it’s impractical to start with such a huge endeavor.”
There was an unusually formal tone in Aunt Judy’s voice as she described Dr. von Braun as a brilliant scientist, as if she were reading from a press release. Lily wanted to ask what her aunt truly thought of the former Nazi scientist, but before she had the opportunity, her aunt continued, “We’ll send unmanned rockets first, probably within your lifetime. And there are other things we can do much sooner.”
“Like going to the moon?”
“Yes, but even before that we’ll need to go into orbit. That will happen very soon, I think.”
“How soon?”
Aunt Judy laughed. “Well, I can’t say exactly. But 1957 will be the International Geophysical Year. It will be a great opportunity for research and exploration. Peaceful exploration. You know, there were a few other issues of Collier’s that got into some of that—a moon colony and space stations. I’ll try to find them and send them to you.”
Aunt Judy turned the conversation to Thanksgiving dinner (she was bringing hsin-jen tou-fu* to Uncle Francis’s family), and end-of-semester final exams, and then she asked, “Tell me—this friend who gave you the issue of Collier’s. Who is it? You’ve never had a friend who’s interested in these things, have you?”
Lily beamed to herself, ducking her head down to hide her smile even though she was alone on the landing. “She’s in Advanced Math with me. Her name is Kath. She wants to be a pilot—she’s even been in an airplane before.”
“Is she new this year?”
“Oh no. We’ve been in school together forever but never really been friends until now.” She added, “Maybe because this year we’re the last two girls left in math. It’s us and all the boys.”
“I’m glad you have an ally. I was the only girl in most of my college math classes. You’ll have to get used to it if you’re going to major in math or engineering, but I know you won’t have any trouble.”
Her aunt was always supportive like this, always confident in Lily’s abilities and dreams, and now she knew about Kath—her ally, what a funny way to think of her—and Lily realized how unusual Aunt Judy was. Shirley thought Lily’s dreams were ridiculous; Kath didn’t tell her parents what she wanted to do because they would think she was crazy.
“Just between you and me, I think women are better than men at math,” Aunt Judy added slyly. “Don’t tell your uncle Francis.”
It seemed like such a grown-up joke to make. Lily swelled with pride at having been allowed to hear it. “I’m sure he already knows,” she said boldly.
Aunt Judy chuckled. “You’re probably right. Oh, I’d love to talk more but we’ll have to do it later. Go and get Eddie, will you?”
Later in the kitchen, as Lily peeled potatoes under her mother’s direction, she wondered again about the tone in Aunt Judy’s voice when she talked about Dr. von Braun. Last Chinese New Year, when Aunt Judy and Uncle Francis had been visiting, they stayed up late talking with Lily’s parents about China and the Communists. Lily had gone to bed by then, and she knew they all thought she was asleep because they’d never have discussed these things in the living room if they suspected she could hear them. Her parents hardly ever mentioned politics; even when they mentioned China they didn’t address its Communist rulers.
Uncle Francis brought up von Braun first. He seemed especially rankled by the welcome that the American government had rolled out for the former Nazi. “He worked against us in the war,” Uncle Francis said in a low, tight voice. “He should be in prison, not given free rein over the army’s missile project. And yet there he is—free! While Dr. Tsien is under house arrest.”
Lily hadn’t understood the whole story the night she overheard Uncle Francis, but later on she’d learned that Dr. Hsue-shen Tsien was one of the cofounders of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and he worked for the American military during the war even though he was a Chinese citizen. Now that China had been taken by the Communists, he had fallen under suspicion and was accused of spying.
“I believe the American government is doing its best,” Lily’s father said.
“How do you know that?” Uncle Francis asked. “Dr. Tsien is a good man. He does not deserve this. It’s not fair.”