The Best of Bova

by Ben Bova

Looking past her to the screens, Hazard saw that there were six of them, all in space suits, visors down. And pistols in their gloved hands.

  “Nothing bigger than pistols?”

  “No, sir. Not that we can see, at least.”

  Turning to Feeney. “Ready with the aerosols?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “All crew members evacuated from the area?”

  “They’re all back on level four, except for the sick bay.”

  Hazard never took his eyes from the screens. The six space-suited boarders were floating down the passageway that led to the lower levels of the station, which were still pressurized and held breathable air. They stopped at the air lock, saw that it was functional. The leader of their group started working the wall unit that controlled the lock.

  “Can we hear them?” he asked Yang.

  Wordlessly, she touched a stud on her keyboard.

  “ . . . use the next section of the passageway as an air lock,” someone was saying. “Standard procedure. Then we’ll pump the air back into it once we’re inside.”

  “But we stay in the suits until we check out the whole station. That’s an order,” said another voice.

  Buckbee? Hazard’s spirits soared. Buckbee will make a nice hostage, he thought. Not as good as Cardillo, but good enough.

  Just as he had hoped, the six boarders went through the airtight hatch, closed it behind them, and started the pump that filled the next section of passageway with air once again.

  “Something funny here, sir,” said one of the space-suited figures.

  “Yeah, the air’s kind of misty.”

  “Never saw anything like this before. Christ, it’s like Mexico City air.”

  “Stay in your suits!” It was Buckbee’s voice, Hazard was certain of it. “Their life-support systems must have been damaged in our bombardment. They’re probably all dead.”

  You wish, Hazard thought. To Feeney, he commanded, “Seal that hatch.”

  Feeney pecked at a button on his console.

  “And the next one.”

  “Already done, sir.”

  Hazard waited, watching Stromsen’s main screen as the six boarders shuffled weightlessly to the next hatch and found that it would not respond to the control unit on the bulkhead.

  “Damn! We’ll have to double back and find another route . . .”

  “Miss Yang, I’m ready to hold converse with our guests,” said Hazard.

  She flashed a brilliant smile and touched the appropriate keys, then pointed a surprisingly well-manicured finger at him. “You’re on the air!”

  “Buckbee, this is Hazard.”

  All six of the boarders froze for an instant, then spun weightlessly in midair, trying to locate the source of the new voice.

  “You are trapped in that section of corridor,” Hazard said. “The mist that you see in the air is oxygen difluoride from our lifeboat propellant tanks. Very volatile stuff. Don’t strike any matches.”

  “What the hell are you saying, Hazard?”

  “You’re locked in that passageway, Buckbee. If you try to fire those popguns you’re carrying, you’ll blow yourselves to pieces.”

  “And you too!”

  “We’re already dead, you prick. Taking you with us is the only joy I’m going to get out of this.”

  “You’re bluffing!”

  Hazard snapped, “Then show me how brave you are, Buckbee. Take a shot at the hatch.”

  The six boarders hovered in the misty passageway like figures in a surrealistic painting. Seconds ticked by, each one stretching excruciatingly. Hazard felt a pain in his jaws and realized he was clenching his teeth hard enough to chip them.

  He took his eyes from the screen momentarily to glance at his three youngsters. They were just as tense as he was. They knew how long the odds of their gamble were. The passageway was filled with nothing more than aerosol mists from every spray can the crew could locate in the supply magazines.

  “What do you want, Hazard?” Buckbee said at last, his voice sullen, like a spoiled little boy who had been denied a cookie.

  Hazard let out his breath. Then, as cheerfully as he could manage, “I’ve got what I want. Six hostages. How much air do your suits carry? Twelve hours?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’ve got twelve hours to convince Cardillo and the rest of your pals to surrender.”

  “You’re crazy, Hazard.”

  “I’ve had a tough day, Buckbee. I don’t need your insults. Call me when you’re ready to deal.”

  “You’ll be killing your son!”

  Hazard had half expected it, but still it hit him like a blow. “Jonnie, are you there?”

  “Yes I am, Dad.”

  Hazard strained forward, peering hard at the display screen, trying to determine which one of the space-suited figures was his son.

  “Well, this is a helluva fix, isn’t it?” he said softly.

  “Dad, you don’t have to wait twelve hours.”

  “Shut your mouth!” Buckbee snapped.

  “Fuck you,” snarled Jon Jr. “I’m not going to get myself killed for nothing.”

  “I’ll shoot you!” Hazard saw Buckbee level his gun at Jon Jr.

  “And kill yourself? You haven’t got the guts,” Jonnie sneered. Hazard almost smiled. How many times had his son used that tone on him.

  Buckbee’s hand wavered. He let the gun slip from his gloved fingers. It drifted slowly, weightlessly, away from him.

  Hazard swallowed. Hard.

  “Dad, in another hour or two the game will be over. Cardillo lied to you. The Russians never came in with us. Half a dozen ships full of troops are lifting off from IPF centers all over the globe.”

  “Is that the truth, son?”

  “Yes, sir, it is. Our only hope was to grab control of your satellites. Once the coup attempt in Geneva flopped, Cardillo knew that if he could control three or four sets of ABM satellites, he could at least force a stalemate. But all he’s got is Graham and Wood. Nobody else.”

  “You damned little traitor!” Buckbee screeched.

  Jon Jr. laughed. “Yeah, you’re right. But I’m going to be a live traitor. I’m not dying for the likes of you.”

  Hazard thought swiftly. Jon Jr. might defy his father, might argue with him, even revile him, but he had never known the lad to lie to him.

  “Buckbee, the game’s over,” he said slowly. “You’d better get the word to Cardillo before there’s more bloodshed.”

  It took another six hours before it was all sorted out. A shuttle filled with armed troops and an entire replacement crew finally arrived at the battered hulk of Hunter. The relieving commander, a stubby, compactly built black from New Jersey who had been a U.S. Air Force fighter pilot, made a grim tour of inspection with Hazard.

  From inside his space suit he whistled in amazement at the battle damage. “Shee-it, you don’t need a new crew, you need a new station!”

  “It’s still functional,” Hazard said quietly, then added proudly, “and so is my crew, or what’s left of them. They ran this station and kept control of the satellites.”

  “The stuff legends are made of, my man,” said the new commander.

  Hazard and his crew filed tiredly into the waiting shuttle, thirteen grimy, exhausted men and women in the pale-blue fatigues of the IPF. Three of them were wrapped in mesh cocoons and attended by medical personnel. Two others were bandaged but ambulatory.

  He shook hands with each and every one of them as they stepped from the station’s only functional air lock into the shuttle’s passenger compartment. Hovering there weightlessly, his creased, craggy face unsmiling, to each of his crew members he said, “Thank you. We couldn’t have succeeded without your effort.”

  The last three through the hatch were Feeney, Stromsen, and Yang. The Irishman looked embarrassed as Hazard shook his hand.

  “I’m recommending you for promotion. You were damned cool under fire.”

  “Frozen stiff with fear, you me
an.”

  To Stromsen, “You, too, Miss Stromsen. You’ve earned a promotion.”

  “Thank you, sir,” was all she could say.

  “And you, little lady,” he said to Yang. “You were outstanding.”

  She started to say something, then flung her arms around Hazard’s neck and squeezed tight. “I was so frightened!” she whispered in his ear. “You kept me from cracking up.”

  Hazard held her around the waist for a moment. As they disengaged he felt his face turning flame red. He turned away from the hatch, not wanting to see the expressions on the rest of his crew members.

  Buckbee was coming through the air lock. Behind him were his five men. Including Jon Jr.

  They passed Hazard in absolute silence, Buckbee’s face as cold and angry as an antarctic storm.

  Jon Jr. was the last in line. None of the would-be boarders was in handcuffs, but they all had the hangdog look of prisoners. All except Hazard’s son.

  He stopped before his father and met the older man’s gaze. Jon Jr.’s gray eyes were level with his father’s, unswerving, unafraid.

  He made a bitter little smile. “I still don’t agree with you,” he said without preamble. “I don’t think the IPF is workable—and it’s certainly not in the best interests of the United States.”

  “But you threw your lot in with us when it counted,” Hazard said.

  “The hell I did!” Jon Jr. looked genuinely aggrieved. “I just didn’t see any sense in dying for a lost cause.”

  “Really?”

  “Cardillo and Buckbee and the rest of them were a bunch of idiots. If I had known how stupid they are I wouldn’t . . .” He stopped himself, grinned ruefully, and shrugged his shoulders. “This isn’t over, you know. You won the battle, but the war’s not ended yet.”

  “I’ll do what I can to get them to lighten your sentence,” Hazard said.

  “Don’t stick your neck out for me! I’m still dead set against you on this.”

  Hazard smiled wanly at the youngster. “And you’re still my son.”

  Jon Jr. blinked, looked away, then ducked through the hatch and made for a seat in the shuttle.

  Hazard formally turned the station over to its new commander, saluted one last time, then went into the shuttle’s passenger compartment. He hung there weightlessly a moment as the hatch behind him was swung shut and sealed. Most of the seats were already filled. There was an empty one beside Yang, but after their little scene at the hatch Hazard was hesitant about sitting next to her. He glided down the aisle and picked a seat that had no one next to it. Not one of his crew. Not Jon Jr.

  There’s a certain amount of loneliness involved in command, he told himself. It’s not wise to get too familiar with people you have to order into battle.

  He felt, rather than heard, a thump as the shuttle disengaged from the station’s air lock. He sensed the winged hypersonic spaceplane turning and angling its nose for reentry into the atmosphere.

  Back to . . . Hazard realized that home, for him, was no longer on Earth. For almost all of his adult life, home had been where his command was. Now his home was in space. The time he spent on Earth would be merely waiting time, suspended animation until his new command was ready.

  “Sir, may I intrude?”

  He looked up and saw Stromsen floating in the aisle by his seat.

  “What is it, Miss Stromsen?”

  She pulled herself down into the seat next to him but did not bother to latch the safety harness. From a breast pocket in her sweat-stained fatigues she pulled a tiny flat tin. It was marked with a red cross and some printing, hidden by her thumb.

  Stromsen opened the tin. “You lost your medication patch,” she said. “I thought you might want a fresh one.”

  She was smiling at him, shyly, almost like a daughter might.

  Hazard reached up and felt behind his left ear. She was right, the patch was gone.

  “I wonder how long ago . . .”

  “It’s been hours, at least,” said Stromsen.

  “Never noticed.”

  Her smile brightened. “Perhaps you don’t need it anymore.”

  He smiled back at her. “Miss Stromsen, I think you’re absolutely right. My stomach feels fine. I believe I have finally become adapted to weightlessness.”

  “It’s rather a shame that we’re on our way back to Earth. You’ll have to adapt all over again the next time out.”

  Hazard nodded. “Somehow I don’t think that’s going to be much of a problem for me anymore.”

  He let his head sink back into the seat cushion and closed his eyes, enjoying for the first time the exhilarating floating sensation of weightlessness.

  PRIMARY

  We have not yet begun to feel the true impact of computers in government and politics.

  I can’t really say more about this story without giving away some of its surprises. So, since, as Polonius once said, brevity is the soul of wit, I will be brief. (And, by implication, witty.)

  Think about who—and what—you are voting for the next time you enter your polling booth.

  So they bring us into the Oval Office and he sits himself down behind the big desk. It even has Harry Truman’s old “The Buck Stops Here” sign on it.

  He grins at that. He’s good-looking, of course. Young, almost boyish, with that big flop of hair over his forehead that’s become almost mandatory for any man who wants to be president of the United States. His smile is dazzling. Knocks women dead at forty paces. But his eyes are hard as diamond. He’s no fool. He hasn’t gotten into this office on that smile alone.

  I want him to succeed. God knows we need a president who can succeed, who can pull this country together again and make us feel good about ourselves. But more than that, I want my program to succeed. Let him be the star of the press conferences. Let the women chase him. It’s my program that’s really at stake here, those intricate, invisible electronic swirls and bubbles that I’m carrying in my valise. That’s what’s truly important.

  We’re going to have a busy day.

  There are four other people in the office with us, his closest aides and advisors: three men and one woman who have worked for him, bled for him, sweated for him since the days when he was a grassy-green, brand-new junior senator from Vermont. The men are his Secretaries of Defense, Commerce, and the Treasury. The lone woman is his Vice President, of course. There hasn’t been a male veep since the eighties, a cause for complaint among some feminists who see themselves being stereotyped as perpetual Number Twos.

  And me. I’m in the Oval Office, too, with my valise full of computer programs. But they hardly notice me. I’m just one of the lackeys, part of the background, like the portraits of former presidents on the walls or the model of the Mars Exploration Base that he insisted they set up on the table behind his desk, between the blue-and-gold-curtained windows.

  My job is to load my program disks into the White House mainframe computer, buried somewhere deep beneath the West Wing. He thinks of it as his program, his plans and techniques for running the country. But it’s mine, my clever blend of hardware and software that will be the heart and brains and guts of this Oval Office.

  I sit off in the corner, so surrounded by display screens and keyboards that they can barely see the top of my balding head. That’s okay. I like it here, barricaded behind the machines, sitting off alone like a church organist up in his secret niche. I can see them, all of them, on my display screens. If I want, I can call up X-ray pictures of them, CAT scans, even. I can ask the mainframe for the blueprints of our newest missile guidance system, or for this morning’s roll call attendance at any army base in the world. No need for that, though. Not now. Not today. Too much work to do.

  I give him a few minutes to get the feel of the big leather chair behind that desk, and let the other four settle down in their seats. Treasury takes the old Kennedy rocker, I knew he would.

  Then I reach out, like God on the Sistine ceiling, and lay my extended finger on the first pressu
re pad of the master keyboard.

  The morning Situation Report springs up on my central screen. And on the screen atop Our Man’s desk. Not too tough a morning, I see. He’s always been lucky.

  Food riots in Poland are in their third day.

  The civil war in the Philippines has reignited; Manila is in flames, with at least three different factions fighting to take command of the city.

  Terrorists assassinated the President of Mexico during the night.

  The stock market will open the day at the lowest point the Dow Jones has seen in fourteen years.

  Unemployment is approaching the 20 percent mark, although this is no reflection on Our Man’s economic policy (my program, really) because we haven’t had time to put it into effect.

  The dollar is still sinking in the European markets. Trading in Tokyo remains suspended.

  Intelligence reports that the new Russian base on the Moon is strictly a military base, contrary to the treaties that both we and they signed back in the sixties.

  All in all, the kind of morning that any American president might have faced at any time during the past several administrations.

  “This Mexican assassination is a jolt,” says the Secretary of Commerce. He’s a chubby, round-cheeked former computer whiz, a multi-multimillionaire when he was in his twenties, a philanthropist in his thirties, and for this decade a selfless public servant. If you can believe that. He hired me, originally, and got me this position as Our Man’s programmer. Still thinks he’s up to date on computers. Actually, he’s twenty years behind but nobody’s got the guts to tell him. His beard is still thick and dark, but when I punch in a close-up on my screens, I can see a few gray hairs. In another couple of years he’s going to look like a neurotic Santa Claus.

  Our Man nods, pouting a little, as if the assassination of a president anywhere is a low blow and a personal affront to him.

  “The situation in the Philippines is more dangerous,” says the Defense Secretary. “If the Reds win there, they’ll have Japan outflanked and Australia threatened.”

  I like his Defense Secretary. He is a careful old grayhair who smokes a pipe, dresses conservatively, and has absolute faith in whatever his computer displays tell him. He has the reputation for being one of the sharpest thinkers in Washington. Actually, it’s his programmers who are sharp. All he does is read what they print out for him, between puffs on his pipe.