by Homer Hickam
The weathered signs posted at various locations around the battered pad read ABANDON IN PLACE. NASA had saved money by simply walking away from the old facilities rather than tearing them down. But the signs had a larger meaning too—an unintended, ironic truth. “Doc?”
“What is it, Jack?” Perlman sighed.
“The first time I ever came here, Kate brought me. We were down to supervise a shuttle main-engine test firing and she dragged me here as if it were a holy shrine. You know what she did? See what that sign posted on the blockhouse says? She did that.” Jack gazed at the sign with a sad smile, gratified that someone, perhaps a Cape worker, had refreshed Kate’s message: ABANDONED AND BETRAYED IN PLACE.
“Betrayed, Jack?”
“That’s what Kate thought.”
Jack remembered the way Kate had looked that day. Even though she had a tomboy figure, and a face best described as vaguely elfin—she hated being called cute but she surely was—he had always thought of her as the most beautiful woman he’d ever known. He had simply adored her, had known from the moment he met her that she belonged to him, and he to her. He savored the memory of how she’d stood on her sneakered tiptoes that day to reach the sign with her paintbrush, how she tilted her head, and the way the sun turned her cropped hair into golden straw. He could almost smell her. She never wore perfume but always smelled so clean, of white soap, as if she’d just stepped from a shower of rainwater. Involuntarily, his hand went to the horrible red scar that ran along his jawline and down his neck. When he realized what he was doing, he dropped his hand away. It made him ashamed. She had suffered so much more. He wondered if his unborn child had felt the fire, too, and then, with a shudder, drove their memory out of his mind. It did no good to think of them. Not now.
Perlman noticed the movement to the scar. “Do you hate NASA so much then, Jack,” he asked quietly, “for what it did to you?”
“I don’t hate anything or anybody, Doc,” Jack said grimly, “except for maybe little physicists who follow me from my hotel room when I try to get some time to myself.” Jack walked under the huge “milk stool,” the massive concrete pedestal on which a Saturn 1-B had once sat prior to launch. He carried a coil of rope over his shoulder. Just beyond, the Atlantic Ocean grumbled and groaned, as if providing a perpetual chorus of mourners at the tragic site.
“I forbid this... this”—Perlman sputtered—”madness .”
“Go home, Doc,” Jack replied calmly. “Wait for me to bring you your dirt. Then fire up your machine, show the world what you can do.”
Jack had cast off his worry. If the January Group wanted a return on their huge investment, they needed Perlman to get his dirt. And if they knew about MEC’s plan and hadn’t done anything about it, they apparently approved. Jack looked up at the milk stool, then stepped back, whistled the end of the rope around, and then threw it up and over the curved track high above. The free end came down and Jack tied it off. He gripped the rope and pulled, took a breath, put one hand up, and heaved with all his might, wrapping his feet around the rope. It swung as he climbed toward the clear blue and the blackened concrete circle in the sky. His shoulder was completely healed. He felt exalted by the effort. When his hand gripped the slick, moldy concrete of the track, he easily pulled himself over the edge and then knelt atop the ring, feeling the sweat run down his chest and his back. The sea breeze blew over him, cooling him. He stood, his silhouette against the clear sky.
He had come to LC 34 to clear his mind, to prepare for the next day’s events. But this had been one of Kate’s favorite places and he couldn’t stop her from flooding his mind. Jack caught his breath, let the memories come. He thought of what Kate had told him very soon after they’d met, of the day when she was only ten years old and had lain in front of the television set in her parents’ living room, watching astronauts walk on the moon for the last time. On that same day the great rocket scientist Wernher von Braun had stopped by to talk to her about the wonderful thing he had helped her do. She’d explained what the two of them had done for Jack, a man neither one knew—the man who one cold night would kill her just at the moment of her greatest success.
Jack took a deep breath, smelled the ocean, the musty smell of the wet sand. Close to the beach lay the pad’s massive flame deflectors, a tangled heap of curved pieces of corroded steel that looked for all the world as if some ocean beast with gigantic twisted tentacles had crawled up out of the Atlantic and died. To the south were the skeletal remains of the old launch pads abandoned by the Air Force and NASA over the years. They almost seemed to be ancient sentinels standing guard against an unseen enemy. To the north behind a line of low dunes that marked the beach’s gentle curve Jack could see the two launch complexes that serviced the space shuttles. Both complexes were active, the shuttle Endeavour on Pad 39-A, getting ready to fly up a node for International Space Station Aurora. Columbia was on Pad 39-B, her primary task a tether satellite experiment. It was just low earth orbit stuff, routine work.
Perlman had stayed back near the blockhouse, the sand too soft for him to try to get nearer. “What do you see up there?” he called.
“Time, Doc.”
“Time?”
Jack checked his watch, looked down the beach. “Time!” The klaxon was right on schedule. There was a flash of light at the base of the launch tower a half mile away to the south, then a funnel of smoke. A Titan IV, an Air Force vehicle, rose majestically, gathering velocity, a wall of sound moving out from it in every direction until it enveloped Jack as if trying to tear him from his precarious perch. Jack stood up against it, yelled at it as it roared over him, shook both of his fists at it, danced beneath it on the narrow track. The giant rocket, carrying a secret Air Force payload into orbit, lashed him, scourged him of doubt and fear.
For the benefit of all mankind, that was the NASA motto and also what the ugly short man in the yellow shirt had said when Jack had asked him why he’d destroyed Prometheus. The man was being snide, Jack knew, but somebody had put that phrase in his head. Jack had gone over it a thousand times, with himself, with his lawyer, with Sally and Virgil, all his MEC people. Jack was certain whoever had destroyed Prometheus had done it to stop Perlman. Perlman was right. Energy was the most important product on the planet. Perlman’s fusion plant could change who controlled that product. There were probably a lot of corporations and countries that wouldn’t like that. It would take a desperate and unexpected act to defeat Perlman’s foes, whoever they were.
High above and already a hundred miles out over the Atlantic, the Titan IV soared toward space, its bellowing engines receding to a distant rumble. Jack let a grin slide across his face as he admired the Titan IV ’s exhaust, a grayish wisp across the sunlit sky.
Kate’s spirit was so strong here. Jack could almost hear her talking to him. Go on and do it. You know you will anyway. She had said that the night she had died. “I am, Kate,” he whispered. He was going to complete the circle she and Wernher von Braun had begun. Along the way he was also going to get Isaac Perlman his damned dirt and perhaps change the destiny of the world. Wasn’t all that worth nearly any gamble?
Perlman. Jack had forgotten him. He looked over the ring, saw the physicist struggling to get up out of the sand. The Titan IV launch had bowled him over. “Hang on, Doc,” Jack called. “I’ll help you.”
Jack went hand over hand back down the rope. His mind was clear. He was ready to do what had to be done. For Kate, for himself, for MEC, for Perlman, for the benefit of all mankind.
LAUNCH MINUS 0 DAYS, 5 HOURS, 4 MINUTES, 8 SECONDS, AND COUNTING . . .
THE VULTURE
Shuttle Mission Control (SMC), Building 3-B, First Floor, Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas
The flight director for STS-128 was Sam Tate, a thin-skinned results man who accepted nothing but perfection from the people who manned his consoles. He was considered by his console jockies a walking, talking legend because he was the only remaining active NASA controller who had been on consol
e during Apollo 13. Someone back then had called him a steely-eyed missile man for the gutsy decisions that saved the crew of that nearly lethal mission. He’d worked his way up to assistant flight director for the last mission to the moon, Apollo 17, and then stayed on to become a full flight for over forty shuttle missions. If it had happened in flight ops, Sam Tate had been there.
Sam used his legendary status to maximum advantage to keep his young troops respectful and in line. He knew discipline was the only way to get them through both the long periods of boredom and the tense moments that occurred during every shuttle mission. When there was a problem, he made a practice of standing so his people could see him, his lanky frame leaning forward, his head thrust out, his eyes sweeping the trenches while one hand pressed a communications headset to his ear. His people described him as “vulturing” when he did that. On the morning of the scheduled launch of STS-128 (which stood for the 128th flight of the Space Transportation System—popularly known as the space shuttle), Sam had been playing the vulture all morning, popping antacid pills like they were candy to coat what he feared was a flare-up of an old ulcer. He switched his video monitor to the Cape. “Aaron, what the hell’s going on over there?” he growled. “The cryos should be loading by now.”
Aaron Bilstein, the launch director at Kennedy Space Center, leaned back in his chair, grinning. Bilstein gave Sam a cheerful thumbs-up after shaking his head in mock despair. “You’re still an old worrywart, aren’t you, Sam?” He chuckled. “We’ve been loading cryos for two hours. Good morning to you, too, by the way. Sorry I didn’t call you when we started.”
“No glitches?” Sam demanded.
Bilstein shrugged. “Just a Space Camp bus with a misguided driver. Got halfway down the crawlerway before they got stopped. Security’s going nuts. The Camp kids are having a ball.”
Sam almost smiled, a rare event on the day of a launch. Guards worrying about a bunch of Space Campers or anybody else assaulting the shuttle struck him as amusing. The enemies of the space program were not terrorists who lobbed bombs but bean counters who lobbed budget numbers. Bilstein kept talking, advising Sam that a NASA inspector general team had suddenly appeared and was on the pad. “IG on a launch day?” Tate questioned. “That’s damned unusual.”
Bilstein sighed. “I know, Sam. It’s Mickey Mouse. But I figure if I complain about it, HQ might think we’ve got something to hide.”
Sam knew that Bilstein had another reason to worry. Endeavour, carrying a Space Station node, was stacked on nearby Pad 39-A. The reason why shuttles were on both pads at the same time was because of Columbia ’s primary payload, an Italian tethered satellite experiment called the ATESS (Advanced Tether Experimental Satellite System). ATESS had been delivered late to the Cape and had since proved a cranky fit in Columbia ’s cargo bay. The Endeavour stack had crept forward on its integration schedule while Columbia fell behind. Now, both stacks were on the pads and KSC management was under the gun not to delay either launch. Gross amounts of overtime had been the result and it was an open secret that Bilstein’s workforce of Cape Apes were exhausted. There was another reason for worry too: this was the last flight of Columbia.
Tate munched another handful of antacids. The decision to retire Columbia had been made by Vice President Stuart Vanderheld. Since the President hadn’t bothered to appoint a new NASA administrator following the last one’s death in office, the veep, as the head of the Space Council, had the power to piddle around in NASA’s business. Vanderheld had been a thorn in NASA’s side for over thirty years, starting when he’d chaired the old Science and Space Committee back in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He’d always been against the space program, took every opportunity to denounce it as a waste of the taxpayers’ good money. His surprise vice-presidency in the Edwards administration, and his position as chair of the Space Council, had given him a new lease to bash NASA. Still, Sam had to admit the vice president’s reasoning on Columbia couldn’t be entirely faulted. International Space Station Aurora was in a high inclination orbit to accommodate Russia’s northerly launch facilities. That had meant Columbia, which had been built heavier than the other shuttles, lacked the lift capacity to carry any useful payload up to the station. Aurora was eating NASA’s lunch. Every available dollar had to be used to support the thing.
Scowling at the thought of the International Space Station, a political program he’d never liked, Sam signed off to let Bilstein get back to his job. At least Columbia was going to fly one more time, and, by God, Sam was going to see her and her crew safely into space and back again. Still, it was a crime to turn Columbia into a damn tourist attraction. Damn stupid politicians. Damn stupid Americans who built magnificent spaceships and then just threw them away! They’d done that with Apollo too!
LAUNCH MINUS 0 DAYS, 2 HOURS, 3 MINUTES, AND COUNTING . . .
HIGH EAGLE
Operations and Control Facility 302-A, Astronaut Prep Room 1-D, Kennedy Space Center
Dr. Penny High Eagle irritably tugged at the tight rubber neck seal and squirmed in the heavy folds of her launch-and-entry suit. “Shit. Is this thing really necessary?” Because of the heavy public-relations schedule Penny had not had time to properly train in the LES suit, and was unfamiliar with its weight and strangling seals. “I feel like a deep sea diver,” she added, fixing her big brown eyes on the suit technician.
“Sorry, Dr. High Eagle,” the man replied, fussing with her wrist seals. “If the shuttle loses pressure on ascent, this suit’ll keep you alive.”
“Quiet, please,” Colonel Olivia Grant ordered. Grant, the commander of STS-128, walked down the line of her crew, stopped in front of each of them for a personal word, a quick check of their garish orange suits. She held out her gloved fists and Tanya Brown, the pilot, did the same, thumping their fists together in sisterly solidarity. Grant moved to Betsy Newell, Mission Specialist 1, inspected her, tightened her suit harness, went through the fist routine. She repeated the exercise once more with Janet Barnes, MS-2. Then Grant stood in front of Penny. Penny was a payload specialist, not a real astronaut, as she’d constantly been reminded by the rest of the all-female crew.
Penny took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Grant made her nervous. The woman had never made any secret that she resented Penny’s late assignment. She clutched each of Penny’s arms with her powerful hands, checked the wrist seals of her gloves, but avoided eye contact. Olivia Grant, called Ollie by the others, wasn’t a bad-looking woman, Penny thought. She shouldn’t wear her brown straight hair pulled back so tightly, that was all. She had too much forehead and her ears were too large to be so exposed. And a little blush color on her cheeks wouldn’t have hurt either. Penny had brought her own makeup man for most of her expeditions. He could have done wonders for Grant. The astronaut commander darted her gray eyes at Penny as if she’d heard her thought. “You drink plenty of water this morning, High Eagle?” she demanded. “Got to make sure you’re not dehydrated.”
One of the other three women snickered and Grant shot them a dirty look. “Knock it off.”
Penny nodded dutifully. She was determined to be a good trooper on this flight. “Four glasses, Olivia.”
“Good.” She glared at the others, then beckoned them to follow her. “All right, ladies. Let’s go to space.” Grandly, she burst through the swinging doors of the suit room and into the hall that led to the waiting crew transfer bus. She nodded to the applause of admiring engineers and raised her hands aloft in a triumphant gesture.
Penny dutifully trudged along behind until she spotted the reporters shouting questions outside. All of them were calling to her, so she stopped and pirouetted as gracefully as the LES suit and the heavy black boots would allow. Playing to the press was such a natural thing for her that she didn’t even notice the sour faces of her fellow crew members waiting impatiently at the bus door. She believed the press existed for one reason: publicity. Her job was to keep them interested, keep the publicity flowing. The day before, on the tarmac afte
r the T-38 jet ride from Houston, Penny had shown them a glimpse of the frilly white bra she wore underneath her flight suit. She thought it was pretty funny when a reporter asked Ollie Grant to show what she was wearing under her flight suit too. For a moment Penny thought Grant was actually going to coldcock the reporter.
“Dr. High Eagle,” a reporter shouted at her, “are you scared?” He was a handsome young man, obviously one of the fluffball anchors on local television.
“Of you?” Penny grinned, her perfect teeth flashing. “Petrified!”
The anchor laughed appreciatively. “No, of flying into space!”
The NASA publicist, a shrill-voiced woman dressed in a severely tailored gray suit, stepped protectively in front of her. Penny wanted to shove her out of the way. “Dr. High Eagle is prepared,” the publicist told the reporters in a boring monotone. “She has trained diligently.”
“Yeah, right,” Janet Barnes gibed from the bus door.
A female correspondent waved her hand. “Dr. High Eagle, how do you justify going into space? According to my estimates it will cost the American taxpayer one million two hundred thousand dollars to send you into orbit. Considering all the problems here on earth, does it make sense to keep spending money on space?”
Penny pushed past the publicist so she was in front of the cameras again. “One million, two hundred thousand dollars is about what Americans spend on cat litter in a week,” she said, adding a dazzling smile. The reporters wrote her comment down. She waited—timing being everything—and then got serious. “I am, as you well know, a qualified biologist. I have a series of experiments that I will be performing in the microgravity environment of space that may very well have practical applications in the medical field. My seat on the space shuttle has been paid for by a one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, which is intensely interested in the results of these experiments. I believe the American taxpayer is going to get a good return on the investment of flying me into space.”