People

By Guy D. Garcia

"It's the ultimate field trip," remarked Sharon Christa McAuliffe, who had just been chosen to be the first teacher to voyage into space. "It's not often that a teacher is at a loss for words," she said after Vice President George Bush pronounced her "the teacher with the right stuff." A field of 10,000 applicants for a seat aboard the space shuttle Challenger was narrowed to ten educators, who apparently became a close-knit group during testing early this month in Houston. "When that shuttle goes, there may be one body," said McAuliffe, choking up, "but there are ten souls that I am taking with me." McAuliffe, 36, married to a lawyer (they have two children), teaches social science at Concord High School in New Hampshire. To "humanize the technology of the space age," she is planning to bring back a diary for her students (and the rest of the country). "I'm still kind of floating," says she. "I don't know when I'll come down to earth." According to the schedule, that will be on Jan. 28, six days after blasting off.

It is popular, gets great mileage and goes from 0 to 60 in 341 pages. Published last October, lacocca was parked at No. 1 on the best-seller list for 36 weeks. Last week the 2 millionth copy came off the press, a feat bettered by only a few books, including Gone With the Wind and Jonathan Livingston Seagull. The author, who has not promoted the book and assigned most of its profits to charity, is still "awestruck" by the success. "I'm told America loves listening to me, but I love listening to America," says lacocca, who receives about 500 letters a week and reads 100 of them a night. "I think the book just hit a responsive chord." Does that mean there will be a sequel? "No, I did one," he says. "That's enough."

Back home the newspapers call her the Queen of Fire and Water because a fire broke out during one preliminary pageant and it rained heavily in San Juan on the night she was named Miss Puerto Rico. Deborah Carthy-Deu, 19, paid no attention to those omens. Like any self-respecting teen, she was impressed with the fact that the last of her facial marks from a bout with chicken pox cleared up two days before the deciding pageant in Puerto Rico. From there she was on a roll, and last week in Miami she became the 34th Miss Universe, the second time a Puerto Rican has won the crown. "I used to sit in front of the TV and dream about becoming Miss Universe," recalls the 5-ft. 8-in., 118-lb. hazel-eyed brunet. "Last year I wanted to give it a try, but my mother told me, 'Wait, just wait, you need more poise.' This year, all of a sudden she told me, 'You have to do it now.' " The victory was worth $175,000 in cash and prizes. Next morning, with just two hours of sleep, Carthy told reporters, "It's heaven. I dreamed all night."

Their bedroom banter was a hit in the racy-sounding but ultrachaste movie Pillow Talk. Twenty-six years later, Doris Day and Rock Hudson are still chatting about petting--petting animals, that is. Last week Day, 61, and her "old pal" Hudson, 59, were in Carmel, Calif., to start filming the first episode of Doris Day's Best Friends, a half-hour weekly show about pets for which she will be host on the Christian Broadcasting Network starting in October. Hudson will be followed by celebrity guests like Merv Griffin, Eva Gabor, Robby Benson and Barbara Walters. Day will mix some talk and song, notably, she promises, animal anthems, including Octopus's Garden, Talk to the Animals and Crocodile Rock. Remember Doris and the elephant in Jumbo (1962)? Or her well-bred English sheep dog in Please Don't Eat the Daisies (I960)? She is still enthusiastic about both animals and her career. "I never retired," she explains. "I just did something else." --By Guy D. Garcia