Contingencies
18 November 1993
University of Cincinnati
Corbett Center for the Performing Arts
39° 07' 42" N 84° 30' 59" W
Thomas Wheaton stood behind a massive red curtain and wondered for the thousandth time whether the good people of Cincinnati, Ohio were just messing with him.
Despite his New Hampshire upbringing, Wheaton had spent the last three decades in Houston, which did not feature temperatures in the low thirties before Thanksgiving. Not that he was blaming the University of Cincinnati for the local weather, but their stubborn refusal to crank the heat up had gone from mild irritant to minor outrage. He shivered again as he peeked at the crowd from behind the curtain.
“How does it look out there, Mr. Wheaton?” a friendly voice asked, startling Thomas, as he never saw the man approach.
“Should be a good crowd tonight, Professor,” Wheaton replied, turning to face the moonwalker.
Neil Armstrong looked over Wheaton’s shoulder at the steadily filling seats of the house and was pleased. “It’s a bit more attention than I prefer, but it’s for a good cause,” Armstrong said.
“Hear, hear,” said Boston Low, coming to join them. “So glad we could do this, Neil.”
“I am too. Should be good for the engineering department. Lots of young kids out there tonight. And no one ever complained about good press. Are your slides all ready?”
“They’re on CDs actually, now, Neil. But Tom here assured me they’d be ready.”
“We’re go on that,” Tom chimed in. “I went through the photos myself this afternoon.”
“’Go on that,’” Armstrong said, “Listen to him. Tom, you’ve been around astronauts so long, you’re starting to sound like one.”
Tom blushed slightly, “There are worse things, Professor.”
“Agreed. Okay, I’ll head on out there and warm up the crowd. See you in a few minutes,” Armstrong said, making his way past the curtain. A light smattering of applause announced the arrival of Neil Armstrong to the stage.
“Welcome, welcome. Hello everyone. For those of you not in my Aerodynamics 201 course I am Neil Armstrong. Uh...” Armstrong paused, noticing the large photograph of him standing on the Sea of Crises which was currently being projected on the large screen behind him. “Yeah, that’s me. About twenty years ago, my friend Mike and I spent a few days on the Moon. I’ll tell you a little more about that later on, but for now, let me introduce another friend of mine. A man who has spent even longer on the Moon than I have. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome American astronaut Boston David Low.”
Boston walked out to a chorus of applause and a brief, but enthusiastic standing ovation. He waved to the audience, cutting a classic American figure in his three-button suit.
“Hello, Cincinnati. It is great to be here. I hope you don’t mind. I brought along a slideshow from my last vacation. I know how boring that can be sometimes, but I promise you, you can’t see sights like this in Aruba. Let me tell you about driving around the Moon.”
For the next ninety minutes Low and Armstrong talked as colleagues, trading stories and observations about their time in space. While they’d never shared a flight assignment, they had trod some of the same ground and spent time on the same spacecraft. Low’s charms worked wonders on the crowd and the few jokes that he tried tended to land safely. The photos, taken at all lunar latitudes, were quite impressive as well.
Tom Wheaton sat in an uncomfortable metal chair backstage, listening idly while attempting the day’s crossword puzzle from the New York Times. He’d heard all this before. Truthfully, this kind of work was better left to an intern, but his sister Peggy lived outside of town, and it had been too long since he’d seen his nieces. He was planning to stay through the weekend and use this little assignment as justification for NASA paying for the airline ticket.
Low and Armstrong were opening up the session to questions from the audience. Wheaton waved over Jim Hunley, who, despite his eight years in the Public Relations Office, Tom couldn’t help but thinking of as “the new guy.”
“Be ready to step in here. Boston has a tendency to get a little unpredictable with public comments.”
“You think that’ll be necessary?” Hunley asked.
“No, but we work for NASA. Backup plans are part of life.”
Armstrong called on a strapping young man who sat about halfway back. The young man stood, “I’m Kevin Youkilis. I’m a freshman at Sycamore High School. I just wanted to ask you, Captain Low. What are the best and worst parts about living on the Moon?”
“Great question, Kevin. As far as the best, it’s hard to beat the view. When I say that, everyone thinks of Earth, but, even beyond that. If you tilt your head to avoid the surface and let your eyes adjust, you’re sitting under this bowl of stars that, quite literally, goes on forever. It’s a powerful thing. The light that has traveled for thousands of years just to reach us. The band of the Milky Way and just that cosmic sense of how small we are, and at the same time, how grand we are when we do big things together. That’s certainly my favorite part. Oh... gosh, as far as the worst? I’d say the noise. Wherever you are, there’s a constant, low-level noise of one kind or another. In the rover, you’d have the sound of the heat pumps, or your other crew members breathing, even at night. Back at base, there’s always something running. Power cables, air pipes, water. And for privacy, about the most we can offer you is a tarp with a zipper that runs over your bunk. Use it all you want, but there’s still someone sleeping five feet above or below you. That’s just the way it is, at least until we build us a Holiday Inn up there.”
Over a mild smattering of laughter, Low continued, “That’s not to say we’re not working on a Holiday Inn, but we’ve got a few things to do first.”
Armstrong recognized a middle-aged woman three rows back, “Hello. I’m Karen Sanderson and I wanted to know about your interactions with the Russians. What’s happening with the Soviets on the Moon? Are we keeping an eye on them?”
Low gave a smile, “Yes ma’am. At least on that last part. I can certainly say we’re keeping an eye on them. No Russian comes to or leaves the Moon these days, except on an American spacecraft. You might have heard about their troubles a few years ago. And since the wall fell, it’s been... interesting... seeing how they’re getting back on their feet. But one thing they’re doing differently is space travel.”
“These days, the Russians fly a Soyuz up from Earth. They fly to our station, called Skydock, which is in low Earth orbit. From there, they board the
Orca, which is our transfer vehicle that takes us from the Earth to the Moon, and back again. As soon as they leave their Soyuz, the Russians are on American ships until they get to Moonbase. The Russian section of the base is in Dome 3. It’s mated to the reactor, which, for the moment, is a backup to the base’s power supply. For now, we use it to run the smelter and a few subsystems that don’t work well with our solar panels. Anyways, that’s a digression.”
“For now, the Russians basically have a smaller version of our base, but it’s tacked on to our base, so, worst case scenario, we can help each other by sharing resources. They have their own communications, their own airlock. We share water because it’s so precious up there. Food and other consumables are shared as well, but the Russians pay NASA to send up stuff, mostly just because it’s simpler. Their Progress flights bring up some stuff to Skydock from time to time, but not nearly as much or as often as our Clippers.”
“If you’re worried about classified technology or things like that, there’s not a lot that is critical. Most of Moonbase’s systems aren’t all that secret, and we don’t have any kind of military research at the base. We keep to ourselves, for the most part. We’ve got our experiments and so do they. They keep a rover in our garage. It’s not as impressive as our stuff, and it has a transponder, so we always know where they’re going, not just for trust, but for safety. Honestly, it’s a pretty good situation. Everyone has a backup. Everyone has an emergency contingency. It’s a bit of mutual cooperation in a world that could use more of that. That’s my read, anyway. Who’s next?”
A gentleman in his thirties on the left side of the house was called on.
“Kent Davis, a pleasure, Captain. I was wondering if the recent longer mission times, like yours, are due to economic factors, or some other reason. It used to be that astronauts would only spend a few weeks on the Moon. Now, even routine expeditions can easily stay up there for six months at a time.”
“Okay, that’s a good thing to talk about. We extended the mission stays for a few reasons. One is to test our life support systems. We do a lot of work on the edge when it comes to the endurance of the human body. A big part of that is we’re preparing to go to Mars. When the Athena missions head out, they’ll have six months in open space, then another eighteen months on the surface, and then another six months back. We want to have life support systems that can sustain people for that long, so we push and push the systems with longer stays. That’s one big reason.”
“Another aspect is that we’re able to do more with less now. I mentioned our smelter before. We burn moon rocks and that gives us oxygen. We use the aluminum in the rocks to make panels and other small items that are needed. Those panels are being used to make more domes. It’s slow work. We can only run the smelter a few times a month with how much power it draws, but we’re getting better. As we say, the second panel was free, but the first cost us about seven-hundred-million dollars.”
“That sounds like a lot, but we don’t just take all those dollar bills and burn them up in the smelter. Plenty of them go into the pockets of people here in Ohio. We pay Columbia Aerospace here in Cincinnati. Columbia pays Jane, the engineer. Jane pays Jack, the bakery owner. Hopefully, they all pay their taxes, and we start the whole process all over again.”
“I’m getting away from it now, but essentially, it’s easier to push people than machines. And as any of my friends will tell you, there’s no such thing as a bad day in space, especially on the Moon. In the astronaut corps, we like long flights because we like long flights. But it’s also a matter of dollars and cents too.”
A young woman, likely a sophomore, rose and asked her question.
“Hello. I’m Jena Harper. I was curious, do astronauts have much time for relationships on the Moon? Either long-distance back to Earth, or with other astronauts?”
“There’s a lot that you can do with c-mail. It’s not easy, but it’s manageable. I personally don’t like to strain myself emotionally with a relationship that has to cross a quarter-million miles, but plenty of my colleagues do it just fine. During my last trip, my friend Cynthia Flat, she sent c-mails every day, and she was able to call home most days. She’s got a solid marriage and two amazing children. I don’t think they were greatly injured by her time on the moon. I can’t imagine it’s any harder for astronauts than it is for deployed soldiers and sailors.”
“As far as relationships with other astronauts, well… you remember how I talked about noise and privacy earlier? That’s certainly a factor. Which is not to say it doesn’t happen. I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions from there,” Low said, smiling.
“Did he just…?” Hunley asked.
“Set fire to the room. Do it now, please,” Wheaton said.
Before Hunley could locate an ignition source, a student came from a side corridor. She was carrying one of those portable, cordless phones that had become so popular recently.
“Mr. Wheaton? There’s a call for you,” the student said.
“Is it…?” Tom asked.
“NASA Houston,” she said, nodding.
Tom walked to a far corner, “This is Tom Wheaton.”
“Tom, it’s Ryan. NORAD is tracking something following
Orion in orbit. We’re trying to figure out what’s going on. If you’re asked, I didn’t want you to have to say, you know, ‘My God, I have no idea what you’re talking about.’”
“I appreciate it. Has it leaked?”
“Not yet, but there’s a lot of people in the loop,” Ryan said.
“Has the crew been notified?” Tom asked.
“That’s the conversation at the moment.”
“Right. Define ‘following’ for me,” Tom said.
“Uh, it’s a radar signature that’s matching
Orion’s orbit. Position is a little rough, but it appears to be about a hundred yards off the tail and following.”
“Getting closer or farther away?”
“We’re working that out. It doesn’t seem to have a lot of relative velocity.”
“When we say ‘it’, how big a thing are we talking about?”
“NORAD’s tech isn’t good enough to say precisely.”
“Give me imprecise,” Wheaton said.
“Small. Less than a meter.”
“What’s
Orion doing right now?” Tom asked.
“She’s on her way up to Skydock. Mission schedule has the rendezvous around eleven tomorrow morning.”
“Okay, other assets in orbit?”
“
Independence is still servicing Locator 12,” Ryan said.
“What’s it been? Like a week now?” Tom asked.
“Twelve days. They can’t get the new gyros to align. They’re having trouble because the uh… hang on..”
Tom could hear Ryan shuffling through papers. He decided to help him out. “Because the arms we’re using are built in Canada, and the satellite we’re fixing has proprietary technology, so we can’t just show the plans to our northern friends. So now we’ve got confusion between three different engineering groups in two different countries,” Tom said.
“Yeah, nailed it,” Ryan said.
“Vandenberg, Ames, and Toronto are trying to fix a bird three hundred miles up and doing it all while playing a game of ‘guess my secret’ and somehow that’s
not my biggest problem, is it?”
“No,” Ryan said.
“The intelligence budget is money well spent,” Thomas sighed. “Okay, I’m getting on a plane. The press will have this by morning. If we’re lucky, it’ll only be in the West Coast papers. By the time I land, I want a briefing that does not include the words ‘it’ or ‘thing.’ Okay?”
“You got it, boss. Safe flight.”
19 November 1993
Johnson Space Center
Houston, TX
29° 33’ 47” N 95° 05’ 28” W
Claire Forrell’s team had collectively decided to not go home until this got resolved. It hadn’t been an order. It hadn’t needed to be. When their shift ended at four p.m. the team simply reassembled in Briefing Room 3 and started to go over the NORAD data.
That had been twelve hours ago. Fueled by good pizza and bad coffee, they had started with a blank chalkboard, slowly filled it with ideas, and then began the work of crossing those ideas out, one by one. Some of the suggestions had included: ASAT (Russia), ASAT (???), Debris (Launch), Spy Sat, Meteoroid, UFO. But the one at the top of the list, everyone’s best guess: Debris (impact).
During the night, NORAD got some better radar images, and they were analyzed. What had been a single bogey was now at least four distinct signatures. Each one no larger than a foot and spreading out and away from Orion. Another pass provided a sense of their trajectories. The numbers were taken in by the guidance folks, who were using the Cray over in 208. They came back in a little over an hour with the bad news.
“The paths trace back to Orion’s right wing and right tail section. Consistent with an impact that holed both surfaces.”
Claire took a beat to let that news ripple through the room. “Let’s not murmur here, people. Sandy, Frank, why am I not seeing a fuel leak in tank 2?”
“Tank 2 is dry. We drained Tank 2 for OMS 2. We’ve got the rendezvous burn in…,” Frank checked his watch, “About four hours. That fuel is in Tank 3. We’ll do retro with Tank 4 when it’s time to come home.”
“No, we won’t,” said Jack, from RETRO. “If we’re holed, I can’t give the ‘go’ for retrofire without knowing the extent of the damage. We can’t bring Orion back down without knowing exactly where and how bad she was hit.”
“Agreed,” Claire said. “We need a look at the damage, and we need to figure out what our limits are in terms of patch and repair.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” said Terry, from Guidance, “There’s a more urgent priority. We’re going to need to alter the rendezvous burn parameters to make sure we don’t have any more debris strikes. Right now, the debris is behind us. We need a distancing burn to get some separation, so this stuff doesn't come back at us when we slow down.”
“Copy that. Give me revised parameters. Can you do that in an hour?” Claire asked.
“Affirmative,” Terry said.
“Go,” she said, watching him leave to consult the computers again.
“What’s the best way to get a look at the damage?” Claire asked.
“We have
Orion do a backflip when she reaches Skydock. Pitch over, yaw around, whatever they need to get a good look at everything. Dean and Sally can take pictures from the station, and we’ll see what’s happening,” said Jennifer, from the Procedures desk.
“We don’t need an EVA?”
“Not for an initial read.”
“Okay, let’s get some of the Hadden folks in here as well. I want everyone involved with the thermal shielding in here by lunch. If they’re out of town, get a damn Concorde or something. We’re gonna do this thing right and we start right now. Move.”
19 November 1993
CF-432 Orion
MET: 46:32:05
Altitude: 250 mi
“Okay,
Orion. We see you pitching around now. If you could throw in just a little bit of left roll, that’d be great, over.”
Dean Spalding looked out of the cupola with binoculars. In the next module, Sally Ride was snapping away with a telephoto lens on the front of her Nikon. The station’s external cameras were recording and broadcasting a live transmission back to Houston.
The maneuver, as novel as it was, did not make for riveting entertainment. Being in no great hurry, the backflip took the better part of half an hour. It did allow for both astronauts on board Skydock to diagnose their patient.
“Houston,
Orion, this is Skydock. We’re transmitting the images now, but with the amount and size, it may take a while. What we’re seeing is as follows.
Orion has a hole completely through the starboard wing, about halfway to the wing root. Images will confirm, I read it as about seven or eight feet up from elevon 2. The hole itself looks more ragged on the top than the underside, which might indicate the path of whatever struck
Orion. It may also indicate internal damage to that section.
“We’re also seeing a strike on the starboard fin, looks like it’s holed about halfway up the ruddervator.”
Eileen Collins looked over her left shoulder. Behind her, four astronauts, all mission specialists, gave nervous glances, looking around as though they had X-ray vision that might glimpse the damage through
Orion’s titanium skin.
“Paul, I’m gonna…” she said, unbuckling her harness.
Paul Jamison, Orion’s commander, nodded, dismissing Collins to let her address the crew.
Eileen floated up and out of her chair, tucking her feet to avoid hitting any switches or screens. As she caught herself in the forward section of the cabin, she gathered the collected attention of the scientists in her charge. Silently, she gestured for them to remove their radio headsets. Silently they did so. When their conversation was guaranteed some privacy, she did her best to speak with a calming voice. Every pilot was familiar with the tone, even rookie Clipper with less than two days in space.
“Okay. Everyone all right? Yeah. Just take a beat. We’re going to be fine here. There doesn’t seem to be any issue with internal pressurization or our docking systems, so, Houston should clear us to dock in a little while unless they want to do more photos first,” Collins said.
“I don’t understand, how could we have been hit and not felt it?” asked Alex Bayer, a biologist who had only been added to the crew manifest a month ago.
“It seems to have been a clean strike. Whatever hit us must have been small and piercing, rather than big and blunt. This isn’t a great analogy, but it’s a bit like how a gunshot victim might not realize it at first. Bullets are small, people are big. This ship is huge compared to what hit us,” Collins answered.
Jim Fisher raised a hand from a chair at the rear, “So, we’ll be able to go on, right?”
Collins nodded, “Logistically, sure. There’s nothing stopping us from docking, transferring over to the
Orca, and heading on out. I’m just not sure if that’ll be their new plan or not.
“You think Houston will scrub us?” Fisher asked.
“It’s NASA. You know they’re going to talk it over,” Collins said.
20 November 1993
Johnson Space Center
Houston, TX
29° 33’ 47” N 95° 05’ 28” W
“This is a disaster,” Tom Wheaton said.
“Is it? No fatalities, no injuries. Hell, all it really amounts to is a delay and a loss of money,” Ryan said.
“Not the orbital strike. I’m talking about the papers. We needed to do this press conference yesterday. Then I wouldn’t have eighteen headlines about a crippled Clipper. I’d have eighteen headlines saying, ‘NASA handling a crisis.’” Wheaton said.
“That’ll be tomorrow’s headline. For the Sunday papers. You know, the ones everyone reads,” Ryan said.
Wheaton shrugged, “You’ve got the posters set up?”
“Yeah, boss. It’s all handled. We went through it last night and this morning.”
“Okay, have Forrell and Tony Fulton gotten here?”
“Forrell has,” said Claire Forrell, walking up behind them.
“How’s your team?” Tom asked.
“Dog tired, but better, now that we have a plan together,” Claire said.
Wheaton gave a tight smile and looked over her shoulder, “Tony, when I say that
Kitty Hawk is being readied as we speak, I’m not lying, right?”
Fulton, who had just walked in the room, nodded as he came up to the group, “As we speak, yes.”
“And there’s no problem with operations at KSC right now?” Wheaton asked.
“Not unless you count all the overtime we’re going to be shelling out to the technicians. And if we choose to push, that’s going to be overtime that includes Thanksgiving. It’ll be a great Christmas this year for any kid whose mom or dad works at the Cape. That’s a lot of time and a half we’re handing out.” Tony Fulton said.
“Don’t mention that. Not unless it comes up. I want stories about engineers, not accountants,” Wheaton said.
“Copy that,” Fulton said, nodding.
“Everyone ready?” Wheaton said.
He led the small group which included the flight director, and center chiefs for KSC and JSC out to the dais for the press conference. It took a half hour to outline the damage to
Orion and the fact that the damage would prevent her safe return to Earth.
Even for a drizzly Saturday morning, there was quite a bit of interest from the assembled press.
Tom nodded to the reporter from the
Times, “Is the
Kitty Hawk being prepared to bring down the stranded crew, or to repair
Orion?”
Claire fielded the question, “Okay, firstly, the crew isn’t stranded. The
Orca will be taking Commander Jamison and the rest of Expedition 24 to the Moon with only a slight delay.
Kitty Hawk’s mission will be to collect the current crew of Skydock and return them safely to Earth, but it will also deliver equipment and engineers who will further diagnose the damage to
Orion and, if possible, attempt to make repairs.”
“If those repairs are made, will astronauts fly
Orion back to Earth?”
“That’s a question that can really only be answered after repairs are completed, assuming it’s feasible in the first place,” Claire said.
“Can
Orion fly back uncrewed?”
“
Orion, as some of you may know, was part of the Block I fleet, along with her sister ships,
Adventure and
Intrepid. Block I Clippers do not have the ability to land autonomously. The Block II Clippers:
Orca,
Discovery, and
Kitty Hawk, have upgraded computers and can, theoretically, fly without a crew. We’ve just never had the need to do that before. The decision about
Orion returning to Earth will be based on what is safest for everyone involved. No undue risks will be taken to try to save the vehicle,” Claire said.
Tom winced and called on another reporter.
“If an emergency develops on Skydock before
Kitty Hawk arrives, will Ride and Spalding be stranded in orbit?”
“No, Skydock’s aft docking module is currently hosting both the old Apollo-R CSM and the Russian Soyuz which brought up the cosmonauts who are now at Moonbase. Either of those craft could safely return astronauts Ride and Spalding to Earth. Part of our cooperative agreement with the Russians is for use of their spacecraft in emergency situations. If any problems develop, there would be multiple options for returning Skydock’s crew safely.”
“Assuming
Orion can’t be repaired, what will become of it?”
“There are a few plans, most of which involve integrating
Orion into the overall structure and operations of Skydock itself. Remember, Clippers have docking ports both fore and aft precisely for this reason.
Kitty Hawk will be docking with
Orion’s aft port when she arrives. The versatility of the design should allow for many options, if, for some reason, repairs are not sufficient.”
“Is there any chance that the damage to
Orion was the result of a deliberate attack?”
Claire did well to hide her wry smirk. She’d doubtless seen this question coming, “No one can say for sure what hit
Orion at this time, but the odds of this being a deliberate action border are basically nil. If someone wanted to shoot down a Clipper, it’d be an enormous technical challenge, and whoever tried would know better than to use such a small impactor. I think it’s incredibly more likely that
Orion was struck by one of the thousands of pieces of debris in low Earth orbit. If not that, possibly this was a meteoroid. But either way, nothing about this event indicates human intent.”
A few more questions came up about logistics and communications with the Russians, but the press seemed to lose interest quickly. No blood, no death, no ticking clock. Ryan was wrong. This would be below the fold on Sunday. Nothing headline worthy here.
When he got back to his office, Luke McGinley from the
Houston Chronicle was waiting for him.
“Luke, I thought we went through everything. Did you have a follow-up?” Tom asked.
“Not exactly. I thought I might buy you a cup of coffee,” McGinley said.
Tom put his coat down and turned to face McGinley. McGinley gave him the faintest of nods.
“Shut the door, Luke. We can have coffee here,” Tom said.
Luke closed the door to Tom’s office and took a seat. Tom sat in his chair and tried to put on a good poker face.
“What’s going on, Luke?” Tom asked.
“I know why this crew rotation was moved from mid-December to mid-November. I know that Hayden Palmer doesn’t have a stomach virus. And I know that Nick Brand will probably never see Mars.”
Disgusted, Tom tossed a fountain pen onto his desk. McGinley had it. Someone’s head was going to roll.
“How did you get this?” Tom asked.
“Does it matter?” McGinley replied.
“It matters if whoever gave it to you draws a NASA paycheck,” Tom said.
“That’s not how I got it,” McGinley answered.
“You gotta give me more than that,” Tom said.
“I’m not giving up a source,” McGinley said.
“I’m not trying to get anyone fired, but if you got it, that means someone else can get it. You’ve got to let me play some kind of defense here,” Tom said.
“My source isn’t talking to anyone else, but that’s all I’m saying for the moment,” McGinley said.
“Does anyone else at the
Chronicle know?”
“You’ve got a pregnant astronaut on the Moon, and you’re worried about it leaking from
my office?”
“No, I’m
worried that Hayden Palmer’s baby is going to be famous before it’s born. I’m
worried that Hard Copy is going to start following around a pregnant lady just because she conceived on the Moon. I’m
worried that Tyler Palmer, who is a backup outside linebacker for the goddamn Oilers, will beat the ever-living shit out of Nick Brand for sleeping with his wife,” Tom said.
“That part will happen pretty definitely,” McGinley said.
“I know,” Tom said.
“Yeah, Nick Brand is white, so is Hayden Palmer. Tyler’s going to notice that one pretty fast when the baby comes,” McGinley said.
“Yep,” Tom said, looking out his window now.
“How long do you expect this to remain covert?” McGinley said.
“An astronaut having marital problems isn’t anything new. Hell, it’s practically tradition. I’m just trying to keep Hayden Palmer’s baby from becoming ‘Moon-Child’ – Goddess of the Cult of Whatever.”
A beat passed. Neither man knew what to say.
McGinley broke first, “There’s no possible way you can comment on the record, is there?”
Tom shook his head, “Medical records, privileged communications, to say nothing of…”
“Yeah, McGinley said.
“We’re off the record until I say otherwise. Ask your questions,” Tom said.
“Do you know if they were sleeping together during training?”
“If I did, do you think there’s a chance in Hell I would say?” Tom replied.
“Is it common practice to let recently married astronauts take eight-month long assignments on the Moon?” McGinley said.
“We don’t discriminate flight assignments based on personal activity unless someone does something reckless or illegal,” Tom said.
“Crew assignments are still from the head astronaut?” McGinley asked.
Tom nodded, “Judy Resnik, unless she’s overruled, which doesn’t happen.”
“You think Judy Resnik was playing matchmaker?” McGinley asked, facetiously.
“Oh please. I think if you lock five men and seven women in a bunch of tin cans for eight months at a time, this is the kind of thing that happens. They all have similar interests and two percent body fat and one-sixth gravity. It’s unavoidable,” Tom said.
“Is this going to affect crew assignments for Athena crews?”
“Not except for taking Nick Brand off the shortlist for the second engineer seat,” Tom said.
“Is Palmer being scratched from any lists?” Luke asked.
Tom shook his head, “Hayden Palmer is a botanist. Crew assignments for Athena I are two engineers and two geologists. Palmer isn’t on any list yet.”
“Is the agency planning any formal punishment for Palmer or Brand?”
“The agency is planning to put Hayden Palmer back on Earth as quietly as possible and then back away slowly and hope no one starts counting months,” Tom said.
“Is NASA going to encourage Palmer to...?”
“You’re not even getting an off-the-record comment on that. We are not going there,” Tom said.
Another beat passed.
“Is NASA concerned about complications from…?”
“Not going there either,” Tom said.
“How long do you expect this to stay quiet?” McGinley said, coming back to his earlier question.
“I don’t know,” Tom said.
“Did the push to launch
Orion earlier have anything to do with the orbital collision?”
Tom frowned, “I doubt that same piece of debris would have been in the same spot in orbit in December, but c’mon.”
“Tom, you know I have to ask this stuff, right?” McGinley said.
Tom wrinkled his lips, “Could you bury it if I gave you something better?”
“You have something better than a pregnant astronaut on the Moon? Sorry, an astronaut
becoming pregnant on the Moon? You may not like this story, but it’s downright historic.”
“Meet me halfway here,” Tom said.
“She’ll be showing soon! Palmer is high-profile as it is! She had that article in People last year. Wasn’t she Miss Connecticut or something?”
Tom shook his head, “She was Miss Syracuse. She was first runner-up to be Miss New York.”
“Hard to blame Nick Brand,” McGinley said, shaking his head wistfully.
“Can you bury it, Luke? For the child?” Tom said.
McGinley sighed, “Make me an offer.”
“I can give you the name of the commander of Athena I,” Tom said.
“You’re going with Fletcher. Too easy. Try again,” McGinley said.
“No one’s said we’re going with Fletcher,” Tom said.
“He’s qualified, experienced, and popular. And you don’t want another Frank Borman who’s going to retreat to the Montana wilderness when he gets back home. You’re going with Fletcher. Don’t talk to me like I’m other people, Tom. I’m the guy who’s trying to do you a favor. What else have you got?”
“
Kitty Hawk’s mission is bullshit,” Tom said.
“What do you mean?” McGinley asked.
“There’s no possible way we’ll bring
Orion down with a crew onboard. And we can’t bring her down without a crew onboard, at least not anytime soon.”
“Is it that bad?” McGinley said.
“There’s just no way NASA okays a deorbit with a heat shield that’s been even a little bit compromised. Not after
Constellation. We can’t lose another one. Congress would barbecue us and kill the Athena program,” Tom said.
“So, what
is going to happen?”
“One of two things. Most likely, we’ll just have her be an extra module on Skydock. Shouldn’t hurt operations too much and we’d give crews a little more living space,” Tom said.
“What else?”
Wheaton flipped over his Rolodex and turned it a few times. He took out an index card, wrote down a name and phone number, and slid it across the desk.
McGinley picked it up, “Andre Rodman?”
“He’s the Mars version of John Houbolt,” Tom said.
McGinley looked up, “That’s not a name you toss around lightly.”
“Talk to him. If you think it’s not worth it, then come back and I’ll give you a comment on the Palmer story.”
“Ames Research Center? He’s not even here. Are you sending me on a wild goose chase to buy time?” McGinley asked.
“I’m buying time, but this is a goose worth chasing,” Tom said.
“If somebody else puts out a Palmer story before we talk again…”
“You can burn my house down with me inside it,” Tom said. “Please, for the child.”
McGinley gave a small chuckle. He held up the index card between two fingers, “This guy had better be the Mona Lisa, or you’re going to spend the next seven months fielding calls about sex on the Moon.”
“Agreed,” Tom said.
McGinley walked out of the office and Tom crumpled into his chair. After a long beat to remember how his arms worked, Tom Wheaton fired up his computer. He began to compose a c-mail to the director of JSC.
20 November 1993
Ames Research Center
Mountain View, CA
37° 24' 55"N 122° 03' 50"W
Andre Rodman put down the McDonalds bag and withdrew the somewhat flattened bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit. He leaned down to fire up the computer under his desk and waited the customary four and a half minutes for the computer to go through its startup checks. NASA’s funding might be on the rise lately, but that didn’t translate to a new computer for a mid-level engineer at a second-tier facility.
As the computer chirped and clicked and hummed its way to coherence, Hector and Dave came in. Neither looked all that pleased to be here, but it was a matter of duty.
“Day 2 of the wild goose chase?” Dave asked, “It’s a Saturday, Boss. You’re sure this can’t wait?”
“Judy Resnik called me last night. After close of business. She called me at home, guys.”
That perked them up.
“You don’t think…” Hector said.
“She told me to gather my team and be in the office at eight,” he pointed to the clock on the wall which was showing 7:57 at the moment. “Dust off the hangovers. They’re about to call our number.”
The three of them gathered around Andre’s desk phone. Nothing happened.
Hector broke the silence, “Are we supposed to call them or are they…”
The phone rang. Instinctively, the three of them flinched at the sudden burst of sound. Andre hit the button to activate the speakerphone.
“Hello, this is Andre Rodman,” he said.
“Mr. Rodman, this is Judy Resnik. Nice to talk to you again. Is your team assembled?”
“Yes ma’am. You’re speaking with David Page and Hector Towson. They were co-authors on the Cruiser report.”
“Good morning, gentlemen. In fairness, please know that you are speaking with myself, Tom Wheaton, who is our head of Public Relations, and Luke McGinley, of the
Houston Chronicle.”
Andre’s eyes went wide, “I’m sorry Miss Resnik. It sounded like you said we were on with someone from the
Houston Chronicle.”
“That’s affirmative. For reasons that you don’t need to know, Mr. McGinley has been granted full access to what I’m about to tell you and what happens from here. You’ll be getting to know him pretty well, I expect.”
“Uh, okay,” Andre said.
“I’ll come to the point. A few years ago, you wrote up a report about how to convert a damaged Clipper into a cruiser that could go to Mars. Jack Crichton spoke highly of your presentation down at the Cape. As I’m sure you’ve heard,
Orion was damaged on orbit the other night. Now, nobody knows what’s going to happen to
Orion, but we want ideas ready to go if we can’t fix the problem at Skydock. Now, the three of you had an interesting thought on how to handle this very situation. JSC brass is now asking you to flesh it out for us, soup to nuts, based on the current situation,” Resnik said.
“Uh, okay,” Andre said.
“Can you take me off that damn speakerphone, Andre? I’m starting to feel like Baby Jessica here,” Resnik said.
“Uh, yeah,” Andre said, picking up a phone. He held up two fingers and Hector and Dave grabbed their desk phones and opened line 2.
“That’s better,” Resnik said. “What we want is a complete layout of your proposed spacecraft; design and construction. How we modify
Orion, what we need to do after that, all the way to ninety-eight. If you can find a way to use this to our advantage without delaying existing launch windows, then you’re getting a seat at the table. My office will get you any information you need. Hadden, Columbia Aerospace, anyone you need to talk to will take your call. If they don’t, call me. If I can’t get through to them, Director Krantz will crash-tackle ‘em.”
Andre gave a small laugh, “Yes ma’am.”
“How long do you need to get this together?” Resnik asked.
“Can you give me ninety days?” Andre asked
Resnik sighed, “That’s all I can give you. We’ve got to get moving on this. I’m calling a review for the last week of February.”
“Okay,” Andre said.
“Breathe regular, fellas. Take a beat. Get yourselves together, and then work. We’ll be seeing you,” Resnik said.
The line cut out. Before they could collect their thoughts, it rang again. All of them eagerly picked up.
“Andre, sorry. One more thing,” now they heard the voice of Tom Wheaton, who none of them had met, but who, like Resnik, they’d seen on TV.
Wheaton continued, “Mr. McGinley will be there in the morning. He’s going to shadow your team off and on until the big review. Best of luck. We’re all rooting for you.”
Wheaton also didn’t wait for an answer. They heard dial tones as they put the receivers down.
“Uh, okay,” Andre said.
Andre took a bite of his biscuit as he went to the bookshelf in the corner of the bullpen. The black binder hadn’t been touched in probably three years, but it was now more needed than ever.
Back in 1988, the three of them had written a white paper called “The Cruiser Contingency: Mars Orbit Rendezvous with Existing Resources”. The paper, amongst other things, outlined how NASA might repurpose a damaged Clipper on-orbit to become a long-haul crewed vessel for transport to Mars. The paper laid out how a Clipper could be modified by astronauts to strip out extraneous systems, then mated to modules that could be used for logistics or crew housing, then the entire assembly could be mated to a Zeus engine, just as the
Orca had been.
Included in the 857 pages of the report were blueprints for the additional modules, stress and strain calculations for mating a Zeus nuclear motor to the crewed structures, transfer orbit calculations, schedules, budgets, in short, everything you’d need to get to Mars and back.
The proposal had been modified since the first edition to factor in Zubrin’s fuel converter and had an appendix that showed a twenty percent cost reduction in a side-by-side comparison to Zubrin’s Oregon Trail plan. Not needing to develop a new long-haul crewed vessel from scratch was helpful in terms of time and budget. A Clipper came equipped with central computers, life support management, docking ports, crew quarters, even a small airlock.
Since the adaptation of Zubrin’s plan, Columbia Aerospace had been working on both a Habitat vessel that would house astronauts on the outbound trip to Mars and serve as their surface base, and an Earth Return Vehicle that would convert local gas to fuel and deliver astronauts back to Earth.
Last month, Columbia had subcontracted Hadden Industries for some systems integration work. Scuttlebutt said that they were behind on the Habitat requirements due to challenges with the ERV. In their defense, only one other crewed ship in the history of humanity had been able to descend from orbit, land, and return to orbit without some kind of ground support, and that craft only had half the gravity to deal with, and not so much as a teaspoon of atmosphere.
Rodman logged in to his c-mail account and saw that Resnik was already sending files to his group. He began to download the
Orion photos. It took several minutes to get the images to appear on his screen, but, when they did, he realized that
Orion was now the best option to get to Mars.
The damage had been confined to areas that a Mars cruiser would not utilize. The wings and tail fins of a Clipper were only used for approach and landing maneuvers. They were useless in open space. The damage to the heat shield was meaningless since a Mars cruiser would not use aerobraking. Consulting with the original Block I engineering schematics, he mentally diagnosed the issues that a repair crew would face. The most daunting was the heat shield.
Orion’s heat shield now sported a hole large enough to put a boxing glove through and never touch the sides. The heat shield, a complex layering of varied heat-resistant sections, could handle the occasional scratch or scrape, but a complete penetration was generally considered lethal.
If
Orion came back to Earth as she was, the gases of the upper atmosphere, heated to several thousand degrees by the dissipating energies required to slow the ship down, would quickly broaden the hole, warping the wing and compromising the overall airframe. Under the increased drag,
Orion would start to roll and yaw, presenting her softer upper skin to the intense heat. At which point, her destruction would be imminent.
Repairs might minimize that risk, but they could never eliminate it. NASA was nothing if not cautious.
Orion would never come back to Earth, but she could go to Mars.
20 December 1993
Private Compound
Elohim City, OK
35° 38′ 30″N 94° 30′ 52″ W
It might be a Christian community, but there was still plenty of tobacco and beer to be had. Bob held a can in his left hand and a cigarette in his mouth, looking over this young petitioner like he was choosing a cut of steak.
“And you think you can pull this off?” he asked the young man.
The skinny kid nodded, leaning forward to push away some of the photographs and point to spots on the map.
“The fuse needs to be lit. If I can do this, can your people carry it through?” the young man said.
“God knows they’re ready. And the Zionists must be dealt with,” Bob said.
“I think I can be the one to bring it down. Bring it all down so we can start making something better,” the young man said.
“Are you ready to give your life for this cause?” Bob asked.
“Yes, sir. I am.”
Bob nodded. He looked back at the map with its five circled targets.
“Forget Dallas. It’s too risky for what it is. No good access from the street. And the building is hardened. We’ve looked into it,” Bob said.
“So that leaves…” the young man said.
“Houston and the two capitals. Those are your best bets,” Bob said. “Should get a lot of attention. Might help grease the wheels when we go to work.”
The young man nodded again.
Bob handed him a stack of hundred-dollar bills, “Use that wisely. When it’s gone, call me and tell me where it went. Do it right, and I’ll give you more.”
The young man accepted the cash gratefully and stowed it in an old Army backpack.
Bob pointed to one side of the map at the farthest target, “Don’t do this one yourself. Make someone else do it. Everyone loves the Turner Diaries, but it’s suicide.”
The young man nodded, “I’ll need someone reliable for it,” he said.
“I’ll find a patriot. Someone you can rely on. Someone expendable. A true believer,” Bob said.
Together, the two men stood and shook hands.
“Thank you for the help, sir,” the young man said.
“Thank you for the fire, son. We need that fire from every patriot. The will to win. Thank you for that. If Wayne were here, he’d thank you too,” Bob said.
Bob walked the young man to the door and watched him depart in the crappy, dark red hatchback that he’d arrived in.
Bob’s wife came in, now that the men had finished their business.
“Who was that?” she asked.
“Just a kid who thinks he can change the world,” Bob said.
“Can he?” she asked.
“We’ll find out,” Bob said.
18 January 1993
Hadden Aerospace – Houston Division
League City, TX
29° 29′ 59″ N 95° 05′ 23″ W
Luke McGinley tried to ignore the discomfort he felt wearing this suit. He’d always looked at clean rooms from the outside. Seeing moon-suited technicians traipsing back and forth in yellow shoe covers and breathing masks. Even for the most intrepid of reporters, there wasn’t much need to venture into one of the static-free rooms that housed space-going hardware.
Yet now, in pursuit of an exclusive, and possibly a Pulitzer, he found himself encased in a clean white suit and a breathing mask, staring at, as best he could tell, what might be the world’s most expensive airliner cabin.
The curved walls did most of the work in projecting the impression through his mind. You didn’t see walls like that in everyday life… unless you worked in aerospace. The structure that he was peering into had a grated floor which covered a collection of pipes and conduit. Storage cabinets, like luggage compartments, lined the top of the structure. The walls had no windows, but instead housed more cabinets and a pair of flip-down desks. Near the front was a small sink and a microwave. The whole thing had the feel of a cramped existence. Like a homeless person had found an old airplane and converted it into a makeshift home.
He was pulled from that image by the conversation between the four other men. One from Hadden, three from NASA. Andre Rodman and his team had flown in from California just to get a good look at the buried treasures of Hadden-Houston.
The Hadden engineer was speaking while Rodman’s team swarmed around making measurements. “These were leftovers. When the redesign happened in summer of 1990, these two were left by the wayside. That one over there was meant to be a backup logistics module. It’s basically just an updated version of what’s already in Moonbase now. This one,” he said, indicating the module that McGinley had been studying, “was mostly just a connector between the Geo Lab and Dome 3. But Dome 3 got retasked as the Russian section and so these two got obsoleted. Both perfectly functional, but just no longer part of the big plan. We were under contract to complete them though, so, here they are.”
“You finished working on something that would never be used?” McGinley said.
“We were under contract,” the Hadden engineer said.
“Our tax dollars at work,” muttered McGinley.
“My kids sure do like the new pool, if that makes you feel better, Mr. McGinley,” the man said.
McGinley gave a small chuckle.
Rodman cleared his throat, “All the fixtures, electrical, water, the connectors, will they mate up with the Clippers?”
“All Hadden hardware. We don’t make things any more complicated than they need to be,” the Hadden engineer said.
Rodman had a hand on the outer hatch for the logistics module, “The water recycler and the air handlers in here. Can they interface with a Block I Clipper computer?”
The man frowned, which was only visible from the wrinkles around his eyes and forehead, “I don’t know, to be honest, but I’ll have my software techs figure it out.”
“Please do,” Rodman said. Then he called loudly to one of his teammates, “David, have you got what you need?”
From across the room, David gave a thumbs up.
“We’ll send you an overhaul plan as soon as we have it. Likely week after next,” Rodman told the Hadden engineer.
“You sound pretty sure we’ll need it,” the engineer replied.
“I
am pretty sure you’ll need it. I assume Hadden is the kind of company that prefers to be ahead of schedule?”
“You assume right,” the engineer replied.
“I’d expect a work order by mid-March,” Rodman said.
“From your lips to God’s ears,” the engineer said, “My kids have been on me for a water slide for the pool.”
“Should be a good summer,” Rodman said.
22 February 1994
Johnson Space Center
Houston, TX
29° 33’ 47” N 95° 05’ 28” W
Right on cue, Hector brought up the last slide, which displayed their graphic of the completed ship assembly. Andre was desperate to sit after having spoken, almost non-stop for the last hour.
From the podium, he summed up, “So you can see here, once again, our recommended configuration. Starting at the front will be the landing module. We’ve done structural calculations based on the Aurora design from Columbia, but they can be adjusted for other contingencies.
“Nose to nose with the lander will be
Orion.
Orion’s flight deck will serve as the bridge for the complete stack. The onboard computers can already handle life support and navigation. They’ll obviously be updated during the overhaul.
“Immediately aft of
Orion is the crew module. Hadden’s unused connector module for Moonbase can be retasked as a crew galley and possibly augmented with some scientific equipment. Between Athena flights, it’s possible we may want to swap out components based on mission needs. In all honesty, it’s partly for crew comfort and partly for elbow room. In later Athena missions, if we expand to six or more crew members, then we’ll want it available.
“Aft of the crew module is the service module. This will be crew accessible. It’s got the recyclers that have already been proven on Moonbase. It’s also where we will have storage for consumables. And immediately behind it is the radiation shield, so the service module will serve as a radiation storm shelter, if and when we have to deal with solar flares. In the event of a flare, we’ll orient the stack to put the radiation shield between the sun and all crew areas.
“Behind the radiation shield is the fuel lattice. The truss will house four cylindrical fuel tanks, all of which our cargo clippers can bring up. They will serve as additional shielding and their fuel will supply our twin Zeus’s, which bring up the rear. The Zeus series, as I’m sure most of you know, has been getting progressively smaller and more efficient since the 70’s. With it being so critical to the mission, we will be using the new twin-pairing setup, which will give us a backup if either engine develops a problem.”
Krantz flipped through the massive binder that had been given to everyone at the conference room table. He looked down at Andre from twenty feet away and Rodman could feel that ineffable quality that made him one of the most respected men in the entire aerospace industry.
In that classic, clipped drawl, Krantz asked, “How many launches in total?”
Rodman steadied himself before answering. Making a point not to look back through his own data to double-check. He knew the proposal back to front.
“Ten total. Eight truck launches. Two Clipper launches. With the trucks, we’ll need one for the Zeus assembly. One for each additional module. Four for fuel. One for the truss. And obviously whichever lander design is chosen will need at least one. That’s not part of the ten. We will need to send up at least two dedicated Clipper flights to staff Skydock for construction and overhaul
Orion.”
“But all of this is with existing resources?” Krantz asked.
“Almost. Currently, only two of our proposed fuel tanks are built. They’re used to tank up the
Orca during her downtime between moon runs. We’d need to build more, but we know how to do that. As far as totally new elements, we would need to design the truss with its radiation shield and some elements of the fuel flow assembly. Other than that, it’s just a matter of shipping and scheduling.”
Krantz nodded.
Judy Resnik raised a hand, “Andre, just for clarity, and since we have a member of the press here. Can you give us the revised Athena I mission timeline, start to end?”
“Uh, sure. Assuming all goes well with construction, we can make the date of December of ’98. We start with a Clipper launch of the Athena I crew. They’ll fly to Skydock and transfer over to
Orion. Then we have two launches from the Cape. One is the lander to meet up with
Orion in low Earth orbit, the other is the backup ascent vehicle that Dr. Zubrin calls for. Assuming all goes well, that backup ascender will be the primary ascender for Athena II.
Orion and the backup ascender fly to Mars over a six-month Hohmann transfer. There’s some wiggle room depending on how much we want to push the Zeus’s. We arrive at Mars orbit in May of ’99. The crew puts
Orion in a parking orbit. They transfer to the lander. Then surface operations for, forgive me, are we still saying eighteen months?”
Resnik nodded.
“After that, they’ll transfer to the primary ascent vehicle which will have been sent to Mars in ’96. They’ll ride it up to
Orion, transfer back.
Orion ditches the empty ascent vehicle and heads back for Earth.”
Gary Winter, Deputy Director, put a hand up, “Hang on, when is the part where Gene takes the crew out right before launch and we film the whole thing on a sound stage in West Texas?”
That got a small round of laughs from the room.
Resnik pointed her pen at Winter, then over at Luke McGinley, “Can we
not make a Capricorn One joke in front of a member of the press, Gary?”
Her tone was faux-serious. This whole thing had gotten a bit stuffy now that they were approaching hour three and people could smell the end coming.
Krantz had everyone’s attention when the chuckles died, “Okay. I’ve got what I need from this. Thank you very much, Dr. Rodman. I’d like the department heads to stay for a bit. I also need Sy and Sean. The rest of you, I’m sure, want to talk to Dr. Rodman and his team, but this is my conference room. The rest of you go find another one. Good work, everyone. Dismissed.”
The gaggle of engineers, astronauts, and scientists began filing out in a slow-moving drizzle. Resnik made a point to watch Luke McGinley leave. She wasn’t wild about the deal that Public Relations had made with the reporter, but she admitted it was better than the alternative. Krantz watched as Corbin Whitehead, who was FIDO on Sy Liebergot’s team, went to the table behind the podium and snatched two slices of pepperoni, leftover from lunch. Krantz couldn’t blame him. When the door shut, he polled his ad hoc Cabinet.
“Okay, six months ago, we were all about the Oregon Trail plan. This was just a white paper from a guy in California. Clearly, it’s something worth discussing. Let’s go around the room. Gary, start us off,” Krantz said.
Gary Winter put his elbows on the table, “I don’t like it. It’s launch-heavy. That was the great part about Zubrin’s Oregon Trail. Launches are expensive and dangerous; we can all admit that to ourselves. Oregon Trail only needs three launches for all of Athena I.”
“Yeah, but launching what?” Sean Torant said. Torant was the Head of Flight Safety, a special position that hadn’t existed before Krantz’s appointment. He continued, “Columbia is in the fight of its life trying to build the Habitat and the Earth Return Vehicle. We’ve put everything on the ERV’s shoulders. It’s got to fly to Mars by itself, refuel itself, then fly home, carrying a bunch of squishy astronauts who need water and food and air. We’ve never asked that of any single ship before. You’ve all seen the reports coming out of Columbia Aerospace. They’re flailing. It’s the same thing that happened at Grumman thirty years ago. But this time we can’t fly an Apollo 8 to cover for them. Unless they get some kind of breakthrough, I don’t think they make the ’98 window.”
“It’s a little early to start writing them off,” Resnik said.
“Just giving you my read,” Sean said.
“Sy?” Krantz asked.
“I like it. My people know what to expect from a Clipper. What life support is capable of, what computer bugs crop up at LOI, what to do if we have comms issues. It’s all part and parcel for the last decade. Our people know these ships. Taking one to Mars makes a lot of sense to me.”
Krantz tilted his head slightly and pointed down the table, “Amy, what’s this going to do to Moonbase logistics?”
“We can get by with a little less. I’d like to have my folks chew on it for a couple of weeks. Figure out a revised schedule and maybe we ask for a little more from our Cyrillic friends, but I’m not the one you have to worry about,” she said, nodding across the table.
Keith Jefferson took over from there, “Eight truck launches is a gut punch. Everything through spring of ’96 has already been promised. So, it’s about who we want to bump. We can’t bump the Air Force. JPL wants to launch their Jupiter Skimmer. I’ve got a dozen commercial launches in the next twenty-four months. Maryland is going to have Hubble 2 ready in the fall. Who do we bump? Science? Revenue streams? You want to go back to the people who are about to write hundred-million-dollar checks and ask them to wait? Eight truck launches is about four months’ worth of scheduled flights that have to be pushed back or outright canceled. And we can’t push back too far into ’96 because that’s when you want to push Athena base assets to Mars. I strongly prefer we build spacecraft on the ground, not in orbit.”
“I think the costs we incur from our commercial clients would be greatly offset by the overall savings in hardware development. We have review clauses in our Columbia contracts. We’re authorized to reorient them to smaller-scale work and reduce our payouts for fiscals ’95 and ’96. Their subcontracting to Hadden says a lot about their confidence. They may even welcome a reduction in challenge,” Sean said.
“Please let me be in the room when you pitch that to Columbia and Zubrin,” Resnik said.
“You think they’ll fight us?” Sean asked.
“I think Bob Zubrin will rip the sleeve off of his tweed jacket and try to choke you with it,” Resnik said.
“Columbia isn’t going to lose a bunch of money. We’re just going to retask them into making a lander and an ascent vehicle. It’s still going to require a bunch of engineering and money. And Zubrin just wants to go to Mars,” Sean said.
“His way,” Resnik said.
“We’re still using his concepts. They’re just tweaked now. Changing circumstances. Any engineer can understand that sometimes the scope of a project changes,” Sean said.
“But no engineer likes it,” Krantz said. “It’s immaterial anyway. Zubrin works for us, we don’t work for him.”
“He works for Columbia Aerospace,” Keith said.
“Columbia works for us. I’m employing them, not marrying them. What’s best for the program is all that matters. Boots on Mars by 2000. Safely,” Krantz said. “The money will come. GPS and McCain can keep us afloat for whatever the redirect might cost us.”
“We’re still very popular with the public,” Resnik said.
“Thank you, Tom Wheaton,” Krantz said aloud to their absent friend.
“There are some other concerns,” said Dan Truman, who was overseeing the engineering section while Max Franklin was recovering from a heart attack.
“Speak on it, Dan,” Krantz said.
“The Oregon Trail plan. One of the things we liked was that we’d use the upper stage of the booster as a counterweight and sling the ship for artificial gravity during the transfer orbits.”
“Yeah, that’s one of the hundred things giving them trouble up in Ohio,” Sean said.
“We wouldn’t have anything like that on
Orion. It’d have the whole crew weightless from MECO all the way to Mars atmo entry,” Truman said.
“Our crews have done longer stays in weightlessness. We’ve spent more than a year up there in a single go,” Judy said.
“Yeah, and when we landed, we had teams of people ready to help our guys out of the ship and escort them safely to a doctor’s office if they needed it. That’s not gonna happen on Valles Marineris,” Truman said. He put his pen down next to the binder in front of him, “I’ve been on those recovery teams. Those guys come back tired and weak. We used to keep wheelchairs in the van, just in case. We do the best we can up there with treadmills and exercise bikes, but it’s a losing battle. Docs will tell you that. When Frank Borman landed on the Moon, he’d been weightless for four days. Athena I will have been that way for six months. Double lunar gravity. I’m saying it’s worth worrying about. I don’t know about anyone else, but I don’t want the first steps on Mars to look like mine.” Truman finished the thought by holding up the cane that he used since his car accident in 1987.
“That’s a good point, Dan. Sy, ask the flight surgeons to get together with Rodman’s people. See what they think,” Krantz cleared his throat and turned, “Sean, you get the fun job. I want a report from Columbia Aerospace in thirty days. An honest, no-BS assessment of where they are and what’s between them and success. I want their assessment on this cruiser plan as well. Let everybody take a swing at each other’s plans until one comes out on top. That’s how they do it in prize fights and that’s how we’ll do it here. We’ll leave it here.
“I know how smart you all are. Over the next few days, I expect you’ll think of things we haven’t said yet. Send ‘em on to me. C-mail, carrier pigeons, phone calls at 3am, whatever. I’m going to go tell that hotshot from the
Chronicle that he can publish anytime he wants, so we’ll let the world think about it too. Thirty days, we’re back in this room. Go to it.”
1 March 1994
I-40
10 miles outside Kingman, AZ
35° 07' 16"N 114° 04' 15" W
The meeting was at sunset. Any later than that and they’d have had to use the headlights on the vehicles. That might draw attention. No good for security. Meeting in what was, almost literally, the center of nowhere ensured a bit of security. If prying eyes spotted them, this would all be for naught.
The map he had received had been very specific. So many miles East, so many South. He drove around a hill and entered a clearing, spotting the other two. Each stood by a vehicle. The thinner one was next to a dark red hatchback. The fatter one stood by a grey pickup.
He brought his Chevy to a stop and turned it off. No one said anything as he got out of the car. When he came around to the front of the hood, he stood about fifteen feet from either man. They formed a triangle as they conversed.
“What codeword did Bob give you?” the thinner man asked.
“Thunder,” he said. “What was yours?”
“Flash,” the thinner man said.
Both nodded. He looked to the silent, fat man, “What about him?”
“He’s not going to talk. No need. He’s one of mine. I trust him. This is my op. That’s all you need,” the thin man said.
“Whatever you want,” he said, happy to deal with one less thing.
“For communications, I’m ‘T’. He’s ‘N’ and you’ll be ‘S’. Letters are all we’ll need,” the thin man said.
“Okay,” he replied.
Slowly, the thin man approached him. He could smell tobacco and body odor on the man, but only barely. The self-monikered ‘T’ handed him a piece of crumpled paper and a set of driver’s licenses, all from different states. He unfolded the paper and found a list of items.
“That’s the recipe. In communications, those are ‘ingredients.’ The finished product is a ‘pot of stew.’ Any questions on that?” T said.
“It’s not what I was expecting,” he said.
“You’re not building the whole pot of stew. That’s why the Feds will overlook you. No one has everything, so it looks like everyone has nothing,” T said.
“Let’s hope,” he said.
“Never shop at the same place twice. Store it in at least four different locations. Different states if you can. Take all the time you need to get it together. Don’t get noticed. We ain’t in a hurry,” T said.
“Got it,” he said.
“If you have any problems, or you run out of money, talk to Bob. Bob is the bank,” T said.
“Okay,” he said.
“Bob said your cousin has a line on uniforms?” T asked.
He just nodded.
“When the time comes, we’ll need that,” T said.
“Okay,” he said.
“That’s it,” T said.
“Okay then. Nice not meeting you,” he said.
Silently, they returned to their vehicles and drove away.
3 March 1994
IASA Headquarters
Paris, France
48° 50' 49"N 2° 18' 49"E
If one cared to ask Pierre Hidalgo about his favorite pastime, he’d likely answer with something about chess, or classical music, or his studies of Proust. On an industrious day, he may say something about engineering. On a Friday, he might be drunk enough to give an answer that mentioned his mistress. But all those responses would be in error. Pierre Hidalgo’s favorite pursuit was scoffing.
He scoffed at opponents across a chessboard. He scoffed at what the café at the end of his block called cappuccino. He scoffed at the tourists who tended to leave his beloved Paris dirtier than they had found it. He scoffed at his employer for marrying for money, just as he had, and allying itself with other, inferior space programs. His beloved ESA had allowed the Japanese, Indians, and Brazilians to latch on like barnacles and had emerged as the bureaucratic mess that referred to itself with the god-awful English acronym of IASA.
He refused to wear the new shirts, save for the required photos that occasionally came up. His office still carried a few blatant references to the ESA that had hired him so many years ago. In his communications, the new federation of space agencies was referred to by the superior French abbreviation AIEA. He held fast to his French traditions, especially in matters of language.
Like all aviators, he had, begrudgingly, learned English; and now could, also begrudgingly, admit that, two years in, the influx of resources had paid some dividends to the international space effort. French Guiana, IASA’s primary launch complex, had become overrun with customers looking for cheaper, equatorial launches. It gave Hidalgo no end of pleasure to see French rockets hurtling satellites into orbit, knowing full well that they were being financed by bloated capitalists whose money was better spent by French engineers.
Returning from lunch he wound his way through the corridors of IASA headquarters before spotting his friend Jean-Paul. Jean-Paul had his hand to his mouth, stifling what could only be described as a giggle. Quite undignified for their surroundings, but not totally out of character.
“What has you so amused?” Pierre asked his coworker.
Jean-Paul silently pointed to Pierre’s desk, upon which sat a newspaper that Pierre had not seen before.
Pierre gave his classic scoff and then sat to see what had been left so unceremoniously atop his workspace.
The paper, a copy of the
Houston Chronicle from the day before yesterday, had a headline circled in red ink. To the side, someone had scrawled over another story, “Pierre’s great American idea!”
The circled headline read: NASA Considers an Alternate Path To Mars.
The full-color illustrations
, trust American readers to not follow along without a visual, laid out the concept of reviving their wounded orbiter and outfitting her with living modules. He read with a mix of pride and anger that he simply could not articulate.
Moving to a shelf, he pulled down a box of documents labeled Buran. At the dawn of IASA, two years previously, he had lobbied the new hierarchy to make a proper bid to purchase the Soviet’s
Buran orbiter, which, all had assumed, would be relegated to mothballs by IASA’s purchase of the Energia fleet which was its only access to orbit.
All of IASA had been at work developing plans for various uses of the Energia fleet. His own had been a proposal to cut the wings off of
Buran, replace them with fuel tanks, set a living module in the cargo bay, and use the ship’s nuclear engine to fly to Mars. Staring, dumbfounded, at this American newspaper, he’d seen that the idea was more universal than he’d have preferred to admit.
His plans had eventually been foiled when the Soviets refused to sell the orbiter with its engines. Negotiations had been abandoned last year. As a result, his proposal had died on the vine, much like
Buran herself likely would.
Reading through the article, he discovered that the Americanized version of his mission plan was being criticized for a familiar reason. It did not account for the problems of weightlessness that would confront astronauts upon landing.
Pierre had seen similar arguments before. And had addressed them.
He checked his watch and reached for his phone.
12 April 1994
Johnson Space Center
Houston, TX
29° 33’ 47” N 95° 05’ 28” W
Director Krantz kept a tidy, military-style office. Andre Rodman felt rather like he’d been called in to see the ultimate principal. It was only the presence of the other familiar faces in the room that kept his stammer at bay.
“So, just to summarize, the offer on the table is this: IASA will construct the fuel truss and a thirty-meter dumbbell centrifuge and launch both to Skydock on an Energia. In exchange, we will share our nuclear engine designs with them, and the crews for Athena flights one, two, and three will include at least one member from the pool of IASA astronauts. For each flight, they supply six candidates, we’ll whittle the choice down to three, they’ll select one for the mission.”
Rodman wiped his brow. Not for the first time he had begun to wonder if it would have been better to leave that binder on the shelf all those months ago. He waited on Krantz as one might await the word of a president or pope.
“Their guys are fully qualified, yes?” Krantz asked Judy Resnik.
“Moonbase has hosted a dozen ESA people over the last few years. I’d have no problem flying with one of their folks. The office is going to riot over losing a quarter of seats on Athena I, but they’ll see reason eventually.”
Krantz nodded, then turned to Sean Torant, “And Columbia?”
“They’re on board. Their Aurora concept is a lot easier to manage. They think they can use the same basic capsule design for landing and ascent. It’s just a matter of what’s underneath the capsule. Zubrin isn’t happy, but he doesn’t
run Columbia. He’s just their Mars VP.”
“Keith, Gary. You were both no votes before. Does this change your thinking?”
“Yes,” Gary said.
“No,” Keith said. “Gene, this doesn’t do my scheduling a bit of good. And IASA will snap up those contracts and they know it and that’s why they’re agreeing to this. It’s not about a Mars seat. This is about competition for commercial launches.”
Krantz nodded again, “Keith, if I do this, how mad are you going to be?”
“Somewhere between ‘ticked’ and ‘hopping’,” Keith replied.
He took a moment. For a former flight director, that was enough time to make a critical decision.
“Make the deal.”
17 May 1994
Desert Run Apartments
Kingman, AZ
35° 11' 22'' N 114° 3' 10'' W
He opened the package that had been left at the door. The irony that it had come by FedEx was lost on him. This was simply the next step in the operation.
Inside were three uniforms. All the standard purple and orange colors. They looked authentic because they were authentic. Each uniform came with a name tag marked “C. Shaw.” He looked them over, checking for any signs of damage. They looked brand new.
At the bottom of the box was a single piece of paper. On it appeared the sketch of a truck, one of theirs. It had approximate dimensions shown. Just as he’d requested.
He picked up the phone and dialed. After speaking to one of the screeners, he was put through to Bob.
“Please send the other $500 to our contact in Kansas. He’s given us what we need.”
19 July 1994
GNN NewsNight
Good evening. Thank you for joining us. Tonight’s top story. Richard Nixon passed away last night as the result of a stroke. He was eighty-one years old. Nixon, once Vice President under President Dwight D. Eisenhower, was a twice-failed presidential candidate, running against John F. Kennedy in 1960 and his brother Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, losing narrowly on both occasions.
Shortly before his defeat in 1968, Mr. Nixon was implicated in what became known as the Chennault Affair. In October of 1968, Nixon, through his subordinates, instructed Anna Chennault to disrupt the ongoing peace negotiations during the conflict in Vietnam. Word of this tampering was broken by the Washington Post, which led to Mr. Nixon’s defeat and eventual conviction for conspiracy to violate the Logan Act.
Mr. Nixon served one full day in prison before being pardoned by the sitting president at that time, Robert F. Kennedy. In his later years, he became something of a jovial elder statesman; writing several books on foreign policy and speaking to groups of conservative voters.
In the 1980’s he took up a lifelong passion and was appointed commissioner of the burgeoning United States Football League. This was a position he held until the league’s adoption into the structure of the National Football League.
Mr. Nixon is survived by his wife, Pat, and daughters, Tricia and Julie. A memorial service is planned for Friday in California. President Robert F. Kennedy is expected to speak, as are a number of prominent statesmen, including President McCain.
In other news, O.J. Simpson has been arraigned in a court in Los Angeles County. Mr. Simpson, a Heisman Trophy winner, and star of films such as The Naked Gun and The Terminator, has been formally charged with the first-degree murders of his ex-wife and of Ronald Goldman. Mr. Simpson submitted a plea of Not Guilty. Jury selection is expected to begin in October.
From the world of science and technology,
Prometheus II, the latest NASA probe to reach the Martian surface, has successfully launched its payload off the surface of the planet. The rocket, which contains a five-pound sample of Martian rocks and dirt, is on a long orbital trajectory which should bring it back to Earth late next year. NASA scientists at Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California hailed the achievement as proof positive of the systems that will fuel and launch the Athena missions back to Earth in the coming years.
In the world of sports, Michael Jordan has continued his sixteen-game hitting streak which began last month. The basketball superstar, now turned minor league baseball player, has been showing remarkable progress on his double-A team, the Birmingham Barons. There is speculation that, if Jordan can continue showing advancement, he may reach the major leagues in the future.
We close tonight’s broadcast with this footage, shot today at the Skydock space station in orbit around the Earth. You can see here two NASA astronauts performing a spacewalk to remove the pierced heat shield from the clipper ship
Orion, which was damaged in an on-orbit collision last November. Astronauts Cohen and Bullock, both veterans of the U.S. Naval Academy, have succeeded in removing the heavy heat shield, and, in the coming days, will be disassembling the wings and main engines to modify
Orion into a long-range cruiser for the Athena mission flights to Mars.
On behalf of everyone here at GNN, we wish you a good night and good news.
27 July 1994
Johnson Space Center
Houston, TX
29° 33’ 47” N 95° 05’ 28” W
Tom Wheaton picked up the phone. It took two rings to reach Luke McGinley.
“Tom, what’s happening?” Luke asked.
“Thought you’d want to know. Hayden Palmer gave birth at 5:30 this morning at Houston Methodist. Eight pounds, five ounces. Mother and child are doing just fine.”
“That’s great to hear, Tom. Glad I’m hearing it from you and not Geraldo.”
“I just wanted to say thank you for, you know, not being a heartless cliché.”
“Why Tom, that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me,” Luke said.
They shared a laugh.
“Seriously, when all this is over, I’ll buy you a steak,” Tom said.
“Did they have a name picked out?”
“Oh, you’re gonna love this: Luna Abigail Palmer,” Tom said.
“Beautiful. I’m gonna send over a fruit basket or something,” Luke said. “Where’s Nick Brand today?”
“On a training assignment… Star City, Russia,” Tom said.
“Very clever,” Luke said. “You’ll keep me in the loop when he gets back to town?”
“I will,” Tom said. “Do me a favor. It’s been bugging me for the last eight months. How did you get on to Palmer and Brand in the first place?”
“My Aunt Grace has a weekly game of Canasta. She gossips with three old ladies from her church and they brag and complain about their children in equal parts.”
“And she’s from…” Tom said.
“Syracuse, New York. I told you no one else’d get that story,” Luke said.
“What did your editor say about all this?”
“Not a thing. Which is exactly what I told him about all of it.”
“You really are one of the good ones,” Tom said.
“Well, unlike my aunt I’m not one for gossip. Can you imagine how much I don’t give a damn who’s banging Hayden Palmer? That’s not a story for the
Chronicle, it’s a story for a knitting circle,” Luke said.
“I don’t know what to say,” Tom said.
“Just remember this when you start doing press for Athena I.”
1 October 1994
NHRA Nationals – Heartland Motorsports Park
Topeka, KS
38° 55′ 36″ N 95° 40′ 34″ W
Glynn Tipton was checking his gauge connections for the fifth time today. He just wanted to make sure nothing was gone to waste. Fuel trucks depended on gauges for safety and profit. Tipton was a man concerned with both.
A staple of the Sears Craftsman National Drag Racing Series, Tipton and his fuel truck were never short on customers in the mornings, though, as the day wore on, his schedule freed up a bit.
Now he faced this slender man with a bit of scruff who didn’t look at all like a racer.
“I’m John,” the man said, looking askance down the row of dragsters waiting to head over to the strip, “I was looking for anhydrous hydrazine. Been looking for 55-gallon drums.”
“Er… not overly familiar with that one, partner,” Tipton said, surveying his memory.
“How about nitro methane?” John asked.
Tipton nodded, “That we have plenty of. But we don’t sell it in bulk. A couple gallons at a time is all you need.”
“I like to buy in bulk. I was gonna keep a supply at my shop,” John said.
“See, there again, this isn’t the kind of stuff you just store. Very volatile,” Tipton said.
“Can you sell it to me or not?” John asked.
“Sorry, friend. Barking up the wrong tree. Best of luck out there,” Tipton said.
John walked away. Tipton wrinkled his mouth. Something felt wrong.
12 December 1994
Skydock Space Station
Orbital Inclination: 29°
Altitude: 250 mi
Julia Green stood in her EVA suit, staring out into a sea of infinite stars, with the curve of the Earth below. The scene was framed by a crisp steel circle. The circle marked the rear docking port of Orion. She thought of herself as standing, despite the weightlessness, because her feet were on the interior deck of the clipper.
The ship had been put in full vacuum for this first docking operation. She found herself playing the role of a glorified parking attendant, helping her crewmates to operate Skydock’s manipulator crane which was currently extracting the crew module from the cargo clipper
Grissom.
She could overhear the comm chatter as they extracted the module. Ken Borden was on EVA, anchored to the main truss, watching and reporting back to Dale Park. Dale, back at the cupola, had the new module gripped and was in the process of extracting it.
As Julia waited, she checked her air gauges. All green. No worries. She tugged gently on the lines that anchored her. No problems. As Houston and Dale and Ken debated the torque settings for the transition, she thought about her decision. She’d traded a stint at Moonbase for this construction mission. The hope was that making herself integral to the Orion hardware would make her a better candidate for an Athena mission.
More and more she wasn’t sure if it had been the right call. Everyone was going to want a piece of this and there were several more construction missions before Athena I.
She came out of her reverie as the module came into view from her left.
“Okay, Dale. I can see the CM now. Coming above me. We need to move it right and down.”
“Roger that, Julia,” Dale said.
For a few minutes, she steered him in, calling for fine adjustments as he incrementally brought the crew module closer and closer to
Orion’s aft docking port. When it was close enough to reach out and touch, she did so, feeling the firm metal of the hatch in front of her.
“Okay, almost there. Close at one inch increments if you would, please.”
“Copy. Houston, be advised, I’m switching to the fine-tuning knobs.”
“Roger, Skydock.”
She saw the Earthglow fade from the small space between the two components. “Contact! I think we’re close enough to try the latches now,” Julia said, “Houston, can I get a go on that?”
“You’re go, Julia. Try the manual latches now, please.”
She pulled the small levers that released the clamps on
Orion’s side. She watched as each one successively cut off a bit of light and Earthshine from the view in front of her. Four latches closed silently in the vacuum. In a bit, she would open the hatch on the crew module and close the other four from inside that section, completing a manual androgynous dock.
Tomorrow Dale and Ken would attach the stiffening ring and structural fittings to mate the spacecraft more securely to its new companion.
Orion was now, thirteen months after her accident, becoming more than just a distressed Clipper.
13 January 1995
Fed-Ex Distribution Center
Shreveport, LA
32° 34' 37" N 93° 50' 17"W
Kyle Quinton didn’t mind the graveyard shift at all. Truth be told, he preferred working at night. It kept him out of trouble. Shreveport’s nightlife wasn’t something to be scoffed at. Across town, the clubs near Barksdale stayed open late, and he’d been known to lose his inhibitions, along with his loose cash and sobriety, in ill-conceived bursts of attempted happiness.
That had been the story of his younger days. Now he was more stable, more sober, more trustworthy. He’d worked the guard shack for more than a year now, and life was getting better. His apartment didn’t seem quite so dingy as it used to. His ex-wife sometimes smiled when she dropped off the kids on Wednesdays.
The guard shack was well lit; if a bit uncomfortable. But the cool breezes of January were miles better than the humid, invasive heat of August. He took a Newsweek out of the backpack that contained his lunch. The clock above his head was sweeping towards midnight. He leafed through an article on the upcoming OJ trial.
Light flooded his eyes. He looked up. One of the company trucks was pulling up to the gate. The driver gave a quick honk. Kyle frowned. All the trucks were already inside. The long-haulers had been checked in and they weren’t expecting another truck until almost 3 am. Whoever this was, they were very early, very late, or in the wrong place. He slid the plexiglass window open.
“We weren’t expecting you,” Kyle told the driver. “Not seeing anything on my schedule. Where are you coming in from?”
“Uh, St. Louis,” the driver said. It was almost like he wasn’t sure.
“You’re awfully late,” Kyle said.
“There was a pileup on 30. Just north of Little Rock. It was pretty bad. Gummed up the works for about an hour, at least. We got a late start. Probably on your afternoon schedule. Can you open up? I really need to call in.”
Strange, Kyle thought. An hour delay should have pushed even the latest truck from Missouri to 8 or 9 pm, not midnight. Still, it was clearly a company truck, and he couldn’t very well send it away.
He hit the button to open the gate. The driver smiled.
“Thanks, friend,” he said.
Kyle turned to go back to his chair, but as he looked away, he heard a popping sound behind him. He worried that a tire might have blown out. Then he looked down.
His uniform was stained. Red splatter on the plexiglass window in front of him. He couldn’t catch his breath. Something was wrong. His clipboard fell to the floor, clattering loudly on the corrugated metal. He turned back to face the driver.
The man behind the wheel leveled a pistol at Kyle’s head.
“No hard feelings,” he said. Then aimed another shot between Kyle Quinton’s eyes.
The truck pulled into the main garage. Inside, Chet Campbell was filling out paperwork. A late Friday night had been preferable to coming in on Saturday morning. He was surprised to see the big rig pulling into the bay. There must be some kind of problem. As the assistant head of maintenance, he sprang from his seat to see if he could help.
He approached the truck from the rear, as the office door was close to the bay entrance. Before he could say a thing, the rear door of the truck swung up and two men appeared inside. Both wore all black, with vests and balaclavas. They each carried an assault rifle.
Chet Campbell was dead before he could scream.
The driver and his two accomplices conferred a few feet from the dead body. The driver, now a bit ridiculous in his own balaclava atop a full Fed-Ex uniform, pointed to a rack on the wall. The rack contained keys and one of the other men went to it. Chet Campbell’s killer stood by the truck door. The man who had driven him in now went for a clipboard hanging on the far wall.
The driver called out, “Get 29A and 32A.”
The man by the rack of keys looked over the array. He found one set quickly. The other took a moment of looking. No one panicked. Holding the keys, he walked back to the group and handed one set to the other black-suited figure, keeping the first for himself.
The driver said to both, “Spaces 37 and 39. Saddle up and meet at the rendezvous point.”
The two black-clad men hustled out of the garage bay and found their assigned vehicles. The driver reentered the cab of his truck and started it up once again. He reversed out of the garage and headed back for the main gate. Checking his mirror, he saw the two other men pulling their stolen trucks in behind his. The main gate had closed during their time in the garage. Automatic timers wouldn’t allow it to remain open.
Calmly, he put the truck into park, stepped out, and depressed the button which was stained with Kyle Quinton’s blood.
The gate opened and all three trucks exited the lot, turning right.
The driver led his convoy onto Highway 49. They went north for twenty minutes, then took an exit, a side road, and a dirt path before they found their contact.
His cousin stood by a rusted 1977 Chevrolet C10. The Chevy’s lights were on and his toolbox was already out on the hood.
“Did you set off any alarms?” his cousin asked.
“Not unless they were silent,” he replied, getting nods of affirmation from the black-clad men who joined them.
“Let’s do this fast,” his cousin said, taking a screwdriver and wire cutters from his toolbox.
It took about forty-five minutes to disable and remove the onboard tracking systems which were wired to each Fed-Ex vehicle. The three devices, each no bigger than a briefcase, were handed back to the men that had driven the trucks here.
“They shouldn’t be working anymore, but I’m not sure about battery backups. There’s a bridge over a creek as you’re going around Belcher. I’d dump them there.”
The truck thieves nodded in agreement.
“Money?” his cousin asked.
One of the men in black opened the truck door, took out a black gym bag, and tossed it on the ground.
“It’s all there,” he said.
The cousin unzipped the bag, took out a stack of cash, nodded, and went back to his truck. “Best of luck out there,” he said, before driving away.
The truck thieves dumped the trackers in the creek. By the time the bodies were discovered on Saturday morning, the trucks were parked in a lumber yard in Oklahoma.
The
Shreveport Times on Sunday morning described the police as “baffled” by the crime.
2 February 1995
Guiana Space Center
Kourou, French Guiana
5° 13′ 20″ N 52° 46′ 25″ W
The little office still smelled like sage, but since lunch, that had faded into a background scent of machine oil and welding gases. Looking through the huge doors to the horizon, he could see a storm rolling in from the Northeast. Hopefully, he could get through the standard Thursday call and get back to his apartment before the bottom fell out. Eagerly he picked up the handset and dialed.
“How’s it going, Hector?” came the familiar voice of Andre Rodman.
“We’re a little behind schedule, but they’re working hard,” Hector replied.
“What’s ‘a little behind schedule’ translate to?”
“They need another week for the truss. The tank mating won’t start until at least the first of next month,” Hector replied.
His boss sighed, “That’s the best they can do?”
“I think so, yes. I don’t want to push harder than we already are. We’re still guests down here.”
“We’re paying customers down there,” Andre replied, raising his voice slightly.
“Don’t have a cow just because they gave you a bigger office,” Hector said.
“’Have a cow?’ You’re giving me Bart Simpson right now?” Andre said.
“Simpsons is big down here. They don’t get too much American television, but they latched on to that one.”
“And the search for civilization continues. Talk about engineering,” Andre said.
“Tests are coming back well. The loads are testing out as we predicted with the models. I’m happy with what I’m seeing,” Hector said.
“How about the Zeus connections?” Andre said.
“David told me to tell you that everything was going well,” Hector said.
“If everything is going well, why isn’t David on the phone telling me that himself?” Andre said.
“He’s taking the afternoon. Got a big date tonight,” Hector said.
“David? Seriously?” Andre asked.
“What can I say? The girls down here love his accent,” Hector said.
“He doesn’t have an accent. He’s from Nebraska!” Andre said.
“What do you want from me?” Hector asked.
“I want my week back. If we push into November, Keith Jefferson is gonna walk all up and down on my ass and this time he’s gonna be right.”
“We’ll make up the time. Trust the French,” Hector said.
“’Trust the French’? When has that ever been a good idea?” Andre said.
“Washington at Yorktown,” Hector replied.
“I swear Hector, I’ve never liked you,
or your minor in history,” Andre said.
“I love you too, boss,” Hector replied. “How’s the new office?”
“Houston is weird. There’s so much Texas everywhere. I feel like I need to take two showers at night,” Andre said.
“Try to grin and bear up. It is a promotion, after all,” Hector said.
“Yes, indeed. How are you doing down there?”
“Sunny beaches, nuclear rocket engines, and the girls are pretty. What’s not to love?” Hector said.
“Enjoy it while it lasts,” Andre said.
“What’s the word on the dumbbell?” Hector asked.
“IASA’s CDR went well. They’re laying out the frame next week in Hamburg,” Andre said.
“Are you going out there?” Hector asked.
“I might. What do you think?”
“I think the girls here would be prettier,” Hector said.
“One launch delay at a time, Hector. Enjoy the weekend.”
“You too, boss.”
22 February 1995
I-40
20 miles outside Kingman, AZ
35° 07' 18"N 114° 04' 12" W
The three men watched from a ridge crest about three hundred yards away. They watched through binoculars as the fireball erupted. The boom was loud enough for each man to worry that it would attract undue attention.
“Okay, I think we’re good,” Tim McVeigh said.
“Sure you don’t want to blow up another one? Think three tests is enough?” asked Terry Nichols.
McVeigh snarled at the sarcasm, “Wiring, remotes, fusing. Three tests.”
Samuel Shaw put out his cigarette and got up from behind the rock they’d used for cover, “Did you have to make the last one so big? What was wrong with the two-pounders we used before?”
“I wanted to see what this much would do,” McVeigh said.
“So will the ATF. We need to bail,” Shaw said.
“Let’s go,” McVeigh said.
They got into the pickup and headed back into town. No one seemed any the wiser. When McVeigh got back to his apartment, he dialed the digits to reach Bob in Oklahoma.
“We’re ready.”
22 February 1995
Vehicle Assembly Building
Kennedy Space Center
28° 35′ 10.61″ N 80° 39′ 4.61″ W
Tony Fulton always came out of his office to watch this part.
He rode the elevator up to level 18 and stepped out onto the catwalk. Around him, white-suited engineers and technicians spoke quietly into hand radio sets. He tugged on his hardhat to make sure it was secure, and just watched as the sleek, grey orbiter settled onto the top of the Centaur rocket stage.
The cranes were being operated on level 22, guided by skilled personnel on each level who kept a clear eye out for any signs of trouble.
Fueling would take place later. For the moment, the only risk was prestige and money, neither of which could be spared.
Fulton gave a rather satisfied grin as
Liberty, with Orion’s logistics module safely tucked inside its cargo bay, settled down on top of the rocket assembly like an old man easing into an armchair.
When the all-clear was called, he shook a few hands and thanked as many of his people as he could. He looked up at the vehicle and, for the millionth time, was jealous that he would never get to go to space.
He let the wistfulness roll into purpose and smiled. Then he made the call to the fuel team.
“We’re ready.”
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