by Diane Duane
“How are you, Martha?” he said.
“Not too bad,” she said, and it was a lie, but a social one. “Sit yourself down. I would assume that this isn’t strictly a social call.”
“Not entirely. But you know I worry about you two.”
“We’re fine,” William said. This too, was clearly a lie, but his accomplishment didn’t yet match his mother’s. Still, Spidey had to give him marks for effort.
“It’s not too bad,” Martha said, “really. It’s true the work for Farrar Chemical that I was doing dried up, after Curt—left. But we’re doing all right. I’m doing temp work now: teleworking, for IBM over in Boca.”
“Mom’s a professional Web surfer,” William said with some excitement. “She gets paid to hang out on the Internet and send people questionnaires, and look at websites.”
Spidey laughed softly. “Sounds pretty good.”
“It’s a steady paycheck,” Martha said, “if nothing else. Some people still need clothes and food and books for school, after all.”
“How is school?” Spider-Man said.
“It’s a total bore,” William said, sitting back in the chair in the backbreaking posture again.
Martha looked wry. “I’m afraid he’s not exaggerating,” she said. “One of our main problems is that the local school district has run out of room in its fast-track program. Curt always did insist on making sure that William read a year or two, or three, ahead of his classmates; and he picked up so much science and math from his dad that he’s pretty, well, overqualified at the moment.”
“I want to take my JSATs this year,” William said, “and they won’t let me. They’re drainheads. I did a JSAT dry run last year and I got seven ninety. If they would—”
“William,” his mother said dryly, “don’t push it. We’ve been over this ground before. You’re just going to have to put up with the situation for another year. And anyway, you need more work on your social studies.”
“No, I don’t. It’s boring. I’m going to be a scientist like Dad; you don’t need social studies for that.”
“William,” his mother said, in a sigh. Spider-Man smiled again, but they couldn’t see it. He cleared his throat instead.
“Martha,” he said, “I see you have your work cut out for you. One thing, though. Have you heard anything from Curt?”
She shook her head. “Did Peter tell you about the postcard?” Spidey nodded. “There’s been nothing since then, unfortunately. He’s actually been here very little the last year or so. Whether that means he thinks he’s getting near some kind of solution to his problem, or he just thinks it’s too dangerous for him to be around us right now—I don’t know.”
Spidey sighed. “All right,” he said. “Will you do me a favor? Let me know if you do hear anything?”
“How?”
Spider-Man produced a small spider-tracer. “I know,” he said, to William this time, “that the last time I offered you one of these, you told me you didn’t need it, since you were going to be taking care of your mother. And you’ve plainly done a good job of it. Now, though, it’s a question of taking care of other people, who might get hurt if I don’t have all the information I need to work with. There are some things going on down here that I’d like to rule the Lizard out of, if I could, and I can’t do that without your help.”
William looked at the tracer for a moment, then stretched out his hand to take it. “This works the same as my other tracers. But there’s something added. See the little indentation on the top?” Spider-Man said. “Just enough to take a fingernail. Press a nail in there, then talk to it. I’ve got it hooked to—well, consider it a very small and stupid voicemail system. It’s good for about fifteen seconds of sound. When you activate it, I’ll be alerted, and I’ll get the message shortly.” He did not say that the tiny mobile-cell connector in it would dump the message to Peter Parker’s answering machine.
William glanced at the little thing, then pocketed it. “Okay.”
“He’s not in trouble,” Martha said, “is he?”
Spider-Man shook his head. “Truly, I don’t know. If I hear any report that I think can be depended upon, I’ll see that it gets back to you—if you want to hear it.”
She looked at him steadfastly enough for a moment, then turned her eyes away. “I very much want my husband back,” she said. “William’s father… we need him. A great deal. Lizard or no Lizard. But I understand what he’s doing. Please tell him—” she lifted her eyes to Spider-Man’s mask again “—if you see him, tell him that we love him anyway. And we miss him… and want him home again, as soon as he can come. Meanwhile… we’re all right.”
Spider-Man nodded, and swallowed, to try to dislodge the lump from his throat. “I’ll tell him. And if there’s anything I can do for you—”
“You’ve already done more than enough,” Martha Connors said. “But take care of yourself, as well, Spider-Man. We worry about our friends, too.”
He got up. “William—”
“If anything happens,” William said somberly, “I’ll let you know.”
Spider-Man turned toward the screen door. “And get to work on that social studies,” he said.
William gave him a dry look. “Puh-leeze,” he said, “not you too.…”
Spidey chuckled and slipped out into the night.
* * *
PETER met Vreni on Friday morning for breakfast, as planned. She had had little luck getting her police connections in order, as yet. “I’m going to make some calls today to some of the people down in the Everglades who claim to have seen the Lizard,” Vreni said. “I don’t think I’ll need you until Monday at the press conference, and after that we can drive down to the ’Glades and take care of whatever appointments I’ve managed to set up.”
“That’s fine,” Peter said. “I want to get out today and work with the Questar.” And here, he thought, I was worried about having to ditch her.
“Have fun with the new toy,” Vreni said, signaling the waiter for the bill.
He was loading up the rental car in the hotel’s underground parking garage, and putting the Questar into the trunk with visions of a delightful afternoon of shooting lots and lots of film on expense account, when he heard a voice yell from way across the garage, “Peter!”
He turned, surprised. Vreni was practically running toward him. “What? What’s the matter?”
“I’m so glad I caught you,” she said as she came up to him, panting. “The hotel thought you’d left already. They’ve changed the day for the press conference.”
“When is it?”
“Today! At noon. I didn’t get the message from the hotel until just now.”
“Good thing we’re both early eaters,” he said. “If we drive like crazy people, we can get there just before it starts.”
“Let’s do it,” she said, and jumped into his car.
They drove up I-95 as fast as Peter dared. Vreni wanted to drive, but Peter was fortunately able to refuse. “You’re not on this car’s insurance,” he said, and Vreni could grumble as she liked; it was true. He had other reasons, though, besides the inherent safety his spider-sense gave him. One of his newsroom cronies had told him a story about Vreni trashing a UN armored personnel carrier in Bosnia. If she can do that to an APC, he thought, no way I’m going to let her do it to this poor little Chevette. Especially since the car’s in my name, and I’d wind up paying for it.
They hit the Cocoa Beach extension to the Bee Line Expressway at about twenty of twelve. A few minutes later they were at the main gate to the Kennedy Space Center, twentieth in a line of cars which seemed to be taking a long while to get in. Armed Air Force personnel, Peter saw, were looking closely at each car as it passed the gates: NASA security people were chatting with each driver.
They slowly crept up to the checkpoint, and the young NASA security man there peered in at Peter’s car, while his Air Force buddy walked around it, examining it. “Can I see your driver’s license, sir?” the securi
ty man said.
Peter handed it over, along with his Daily Bugle ID card. “We’re down from New York for the press conference,” he said.
“Thank you. Ma’am, may I see yours, please?”
Vreni handed her license and Bugle ID to the man, throwing Peter a wordless look that said, Do you believe this security? Something’s up. Peter raised his eyebrows at her, said nothing.
The ID was handed back after a moment. “Thank you, sir, ma’am,” the security guard said. “Straight ahead, turn right at the sign for Spaceport USA, and park in the Public Affairs Office lot toward the back.”
They drove in and parked. Peter got the Questar out of the back of the car—he was not going to leave that piece of equipment out of his sight if he could help it—and they walked hurriedly to the main building. Spaceport USA was the Center’s main public facility, a long low building housing a museum, the Astronauts’ Memorial, and various free exhibits about satellites and space travel. Out behind it, dwarfing everything else, the “Rocket Garden” stood, with various old Mercury and other boosters, and the slightly sad shell of a Saturn lying on its side. “I want some pictures of those later,” Peter said as they headed in through the front door.
“Tourist,” Vreni said under her breath. Peter grinned. Indeed, the place was full of tourists, people in T-shirts and shorts, and sticky children eating ice cream and shouting with excitement at the sight of the Space Man, some probably underpaid employee walking around in a space suit in this heat, and providing photo opportunities for the visitors.
To one side was a corrugated sign with plastic letters stuck to it, saying “STS-73 Press Conference.” An arrow pointed off to the left, toward a meeting room down past one of the two I-MAX theaters. A crowd of people, some with tape recorders and cameras, were heading that way. Peter and Vreni followed them.
Inside the room was the usual briefing-room kind of seating, plain folding chairs and a long blue-draped table, with the NASA curved-chevron logo behind it. To one side, in back, was a table with press packs piled up on it. Vreni edged over there to pick up a couple of them, while Peter placed himself fairly well forward on the right side, in position to take pictures of the presenters.
The room was half full, no more, when the people running the press conference came in from a side door. One of them, Peter guessed immediately, was an astronaut: his hair was shorter than anyone else’s there, and Peter had noticed early on that there didn’t seem to be many long-haired male astronauts, at least not so close to a launch date. The other three, two men and a woman, were civil servants, NASA people. No military, Peter thought, at least not openly.
Vreni plopped herself into the chair next to Peter’s and tossed his copy of the press pack down onto the floor where he could get at it, then started leafing hastily through her own as the oldest of the men sitting up at the table, a gray-haired sort with a lined and kindly face, started testing his microphone.
“Good morning,” he said. “Or good afternoon. This is the press conference for STS-73, and we want to apologize to you for the sudden change in schedule. Unfortunately we discovered at the last moment that we had a schedule conflict with other launch-related activities on Monday which would have made this conference impossible then, and it seemed more logical to relocate the event earlier rather than later, since toward launch date, staff schedules become very harried…”
Peter thought the man, a Mr. Buckingham, who was involved with “Launch Processing” according to the kit, looked harried enough at the moment. He had the expression of a man with problems on his mind which he had put aside for the moment. Buckingham began discussing the upcoming Shuttle launch, detailing launch time and crew information. The Shuttle in question would be Endeavour; her commander this time out would be the man sitting next to Buckingham, whom Peter had spotted earlier, Commander Ronald Luks.
Peter got a few pictures of Luks, a big, tanned, good-looking man, while he spoke. Beside him, Vreni was paying little attention to this, perhaps understandably, for almost everything being discussed here was also in the press pack. She was flipping through the pack as if looking for something in particular, and not finding it. Her scowl grew deeper by the moment. Then, quite suddenly, Vreni’s eyebrows went up, and she pulled out a pen and began to scribble on the press pack in messy shorthand.
Commander Luks was now talking in an easygoing way about the mission, which would be his first as mission commander, and his third flight on the Shuttle. Peter got a couple more shots of him, and then caught a look on Buckingham’s face, a sudden flicker of concern as Luks mentioned the partially built space station, Freedom. He managed to get at least one shot of it before the expression vanished as if it hadn’t been there. Peter had little time to consider what might have caused it, for Vreni nudged him and pointed at a paragraph under the one she had been making notes on.
MPAPPS, said one of the equipment descriptions: “the Mission-Peculiar Ambient Power Production System.” Peter looked at Vreni, shook his head: what’s it mean? But she flashed him a sudden smile, that feral look she had worn when speaking of the story “running away from you.”
Another mission specialist, one of the ground scientists involved with project design, Dr. Brewer, was speaking now: a startlingly redheaded man in his early forties with more freckles than Peter had ever seen on a human being. Brewer chatted briefly about the birds and the bees—literally. Besides the school-science experiment with bees, some other livestock was being brought along: a pair of hummingbirds, to see how weightlessness affected their sense of balance (if at all) and their flight habits. These would be relocated to Freedom for long-term evaluation by the team in residence there, and would later be moved to the new space station annex, Heinlein, when it was ready to be assembled in orbit late next year or early the year after. When the description of these and other experiments ended, Buckingham finally asked for questions.
Vreni sat looking at her notes for a few minutes, while other reporters made inquiries about the change of schedule in the press conference, the health of one payload specialist who had had to drop out of the flight because of a broken leg, and other such queries. Finally there was a moment’s pause, and Vreni put her hand up.
Buckingham nodded to her. She smiled at him and said, “Vreni Byrne, Daily Bugle. Mr. Buckingham, there has been a lot of discussion by various environmental groups lately of a Shuttle payload which was originally scheduled for this flight, the CHERM or Compact High-Energy Reactor Module. A lot of people were complaining about it, saying that they didn’t want something which turned out to be a small, fast ‘breeder’ reactor containing half a kilogram of plutonium, shot off over their heads where something untoward might, God forbid, happen to it… say, a mission abort which would leave the stuff at the bottom of the Atlantic, or an explosion which would powder it all over the Southern Tier and cause deaths by cancer and mutations in the thousands. Leaving aside the thorny question of nuclear nonproliferation in space—are we to understand that the disappearance of this module from the schedule for STS-73 is a reaction to public opinion? Or has the thing malfunctioned somehow?”
A slight stir of interest went around the room. Buckingham looked completely unconcerned, an expression which Peter noted, and took a shot of. “The protests about the CHERM,” Buckingham said, casually enough, “have been a matter of public record for some months now. NASA understands the public’s concern in this matter, and everybody will understand that our concern for the safety of our neighbors on the Space Coast and elsewhere on the planet is a daily matter and something we take very seriously. It was decided that the CHERM equipment package, especially its security capsule, needed more study and a reevaluation before sending it aloft, in light of various issues mentioned not only in the press but in Congress and elsewhere in government. However, we are also investigating other venues for the CHERM equipment’s launch, since it, or something like it, is going to be needed aboard Freedom eventually.”
“I know people like to say that
we should make do with solar power,” Commander Luks said genially, “but in space, with the extremes of heat and cold we experience, and the amount of power needed to manage the backups which keep our crews safe, solar just isn’t enough. The only space-sufficient power source which can safely be lifted from Earth into LEO with our present technology is atomic. We can’t burn coal up there, unfortunately.”
A little ripple of laughter went around the room. “Yes,” Vreni said, smiling too, “Senator Lysander’s line has been quoted a lot lately. The CHERM package, then, is not going up on STS-73?”
“The CHERM package is not going up,” Buckingham said.
“Thank you, sir. One more thing, then. I note in the press pack the presence of the MPAPPS or ‘Mission-Peculiar Ambient Power Production System.’ Would you elaborate a little on the function of this, since it’s listed in the cargo bay payload manifest up front of the pack, but not in the developmental test objectives supplement?”
Buckingham looked slightly bemused at that. “Isn’t it? It ought to be. Briefly, the MPAPPS is an ancillary power generation system containing old-style fuel-cell technology. It’s being attached to Freedom as a redundant backup for other energy management systems, specifically to the computer systems which handle life support for the station. With the second wing being brought on-line after STS-72/74, and new personnel coming aboard from Russia and ESA, extra planned redundancy has to be added.”
“I see,” Vreni said, and that smile was still very much in place, the look of a woman watching a story run away from her at full speed. “The MPAPPS isn’t atomic in nature, then?”
Buckingham chuckled. “Miss Byrne, if I said that I wouldn’t be very accurate, since we are all atomic in nature—”
“Please, sir, I don’t think you mean to sound so disingenuous. I’m asking whether this new piece of equipment is indeed an atomic reactor—in fact, the same reactor originally scheduled to go up, but under another name.”
“It is not,” Buckingham said.