Back to the Moon

by Homer Hickam

  Department of Justice, Washington, D.C.

  After an FBI jet dropped Cecil off at Ronald Reagan, an agent drove him to the Justice Department, brusquely directed him to a conference room, and left him alone. Cecil sweated out the silence for an hour and then a heavyset woman—Cecil recognized her as Attorney General Tammy Hawthorne—came in, followed by a retinue of dark suits. The AG wore a flowery print dress, big bug-eyed spectacles, and was clearly irritated. She snapped her fingers, directing the lawyers to the table and then motioning in quick choppy movements for them to sit down. Hawthorne was as formidable as he had been told.

  She eyed him through her thick glasses. “My boys tell me you’ve been cooperative, Mr. Velocci. That is wise. I’m just a shit-tick from having you put into the dungeon we keep under the Washington Monument.”

  Cecil squared his shoulders. “I’ve tried to be helpful, Miss Attorney General.”

  Hawthorne harrumphed and consulted a sheet of paper one of her lawyers handed over, the list of the MEC employees Cecil had given the FBI. “Which of these bastards is on board the shuttle?”

  “Jack Medaris, Virgil Judd, and Craig Cassidy,” Cecil replied, wondering why it had taken so long for anybody to ask him that question. It was a relief to get the information out. “According to the contract between the Department of Transportation and my clients, they are conducting a commercial enterprise. Admittedly, there may have been some communications problems with the ground crews at Kennedy Space Center, but if you will read the contract, you will see that DOT had the responsibility to inform NASA of our plans.”

  “Yeah, right,” Hawthorne grumped. “I’m not buying it, Velocci. We’ll be specifying the charges on your clients soon. Except for Cassidy. I don’t think he’s your client anymore. We hear he’s dead.”

  This was news to Cecil but he kept his game face on. Jack had told him there would be some rough spots during the mission, no matter how well he planned it. This sounded as if it was the roughest spot of all. “You say you’re specifying charges?” he asked, his voice just shaky enough to betray him. “Have you determined what those charges might be?”

  Hawthorne seemed to be studying Cecil, to perhaps find the lie. “You mean other than treason?” she said. “We’ll go for murder of Captain Cassidy, and skyjacking, I’m sure. And kidnapping. That would be of Dr. High Eagle.”

  Cecil kept his composure. “I believe I’ll be able to show that Captain Cassidy was a bona fide employee of the MEC company. If he’s dead, it must have been an accident. As for the skyjacking and kidnapping charges, could I ask you what evidence you have of either?”

  The AG’s eyes narrowed into two thick lines behind her glasses. If she had eyelashes, they were invisible. “Well, for one, NASA’s missing a space shuttle, Mr. Velocci. For another, they’re missing an Indian princess astronette. Your clients will be lucky if all they get is the death penalty.”

  Cecil was beginning to believe this attorney general really did have a dungeon beneath the Washington Monument. “Ma’am, I can only restate that MEC has a legal contract with the government. And as for Dr. High Eagle—perhaps she went along to help.”

  Hawthorne leaned forward, shook her finger at Cecil. “Let me advise you of something, boyfriend. President Edwards and Vice President Vanderheld are a couple of swell fellows, all gooshy and kind and worried about the poor people. Me? I’m the bitch witch in this administration. I’ve been a prosecutor my entire professional life. You break the law, I don’t care who you are, I’m gonna come after you, make you wish you never crawled out of your dung heap. You want to bandy words with me, be my guest. In the end it won’t matter. I’m gonna have my size tens up your ass. Got it?”

  Cecil grimly nodded. He’d gotten it, loud and clear.

  Hawthorne stood up. “I just wanted to lay my eyes on you, bud. I’ve done that, so now you can go as long as you stay within ten miles of this building. Bill Miller”—she nodded to one of the suits at the table—”will be your contact. Now get out of my Justice Department!”

  HIGH EAGLE’S DECISION (1)

  Airlock, Columbia

  Jack was neither awake or asleep. He was in some sort of half-world, caught in a web of space and time, adrift in a current carrying him across the sweep of the galaxy, past giant red-hot stars, immense cold planets striped by streaks of gold and silver.. . . Then he was in a control room, the night outside cold and bitter, the consoles glowing, his team hunched over them. Kate was there. “No...” he said but it was unstoppable when it began. It had to play itself out. They’d all had launch fever that night, even Kate. Maybe especially Kate...

  “What are you waiting for?” she said. “Go on and do it. You know you’re going to anyway.”

  The plan that night had only been to run software tests. But everything had gone smoothly, including the propellant loading. It would save them a week’s worth of preparation if they just kept going. They were desperately short of funding. A week of work was a lot of money. Jack nodded, ordered the countdown to continue all the way through engine activation for a five-second hot fire test. With a clap and a cheer his team jumped to do his bidding.

  There was still an hour to go before the hot fire when Jack heard a steady tone in a nearby monitor. An engineer ran his finger down his screen, tapping it twice. “We have an automatic hold on the TCDC,” he said. “The oxy FDP is showing a vacuum.” Jack puzzled over it. The FDP was the fine distribution pump. “I don’t see how that can be. The FDP’s wet. I can see it spiking but going negative isn’t an option here.”

  The TCDC was the terminal countdown clock, the computerized clock and operations software that monitored and controlled the steps toward ignition. Jack knew there was trouble but he couldn’t identify what exactly it was. If the TCDC sensed an anomaly, it was supposed to put itself into an automatic hold, alerting the TCDC operator. A loss of pressure was the likely reason the TCDC had shut things down. But Jack was still puzzled. The weight of the propellant alone should have resulted in at least some pressure.

  Kate brushed by Jack, sitting down at her monitor, her fingers playing staccatos on her keyboard. “Sensor problem, I think,” she said. “Need to replace number two dot six oh four three seven. On my way.”

  “Send Joel,” Jack said as she stood up, pulling her headset off. “That’s what he and the test stand people are paid for.”

  “Joel’s busy on the signal generators,” she replied. “No time. I gotta go. Won’t take me a sec.”

  “Be careful.”

  She touched his shoulder lightly. All it took was a touch from Kate to stir his soul. She gave him a quick smile. “I will, Jack,” she said quietly, and then she was off, snapping her fingers at another engineer to follow her. Jack watched her plop on a hard hat as she went out the door. “Be careful,” he said again but she was gone, the door slapping shut behind her.

  Jack turned to her monitor, to see what she had seen. There was an analysis of pump pressures. The points on her graph were distributed erratically. He accepted her conclusion. A bad sensor. Had to be.

  “Hey, we’re still counting,” he heard the TCDC engineer say excitedly. “That can’t be right. The TCDC shut itself down.”

  Jack leaned over the man’s shoulder. “Show me,” he said.

  He called up his previous displays. “See, a hold mode right there. Now everything is active again. The code jumped over the hold. It’s not supposed to do that.”

  Jack thought of the people out on the test stand, including Kate. “Shut it down,” he ordered harshly. “Now.”

  Penny swung open the airlock. Medaris was inside, mumbling something about a shutdown. She grabbed a leg and pulled him into the middeck. His lips were cracked and dry. She handed him a water bottle but all he did was bat at it. She held it for him, squirted water in his mouth. It bounced off his tongue, little crystal spheres. “Drink it, damn you,” she ordered. “You’re dehydrated.”

  Penny had watched the entire five-hour spacewalk. Medaris had tak
en six large sausage-shaped packages from the external tank and moved them to the payload bay, bungeeing them behind the tether satellite rig. She had listened to him breathing, gasping at times, the work with the uncooperative cargo apparently more difficult than he had planned. He had stopped between each of his trips down to the base of the tank to let the cooling capacity of his suit catch up but he kept sweating, he reported, his eyes stinging from it. She had watched him keep going, doggedly retracing his path back and forth to the tank and the payload bay. As soon as he got back into the airlock, she’d watched him get out of his suit, saw the color of his face, and knew he was in trouble. It occurred to Penny again that she had yet another opportunity to end the spacejacking. Virgil had taken his SAS medicine and strapped himself into his bag on the wall. Medaris was close to collapse. She could tranquilize them both, get on the horn, end this thing, and be America’s hero forever. Something kept her from it. She didn’t know what it was but whatever it was, it was frustrating.

  Penny strapped Medaris to the floor and washed him down with damp towels. He fought her lightly and she slapped his hands away. “Stop it, Medaris! I’ve got to cool you down or you could die. Stop it!”

  He subsided and Penny continued to wipe him down. She had noticed a small battery-operated fan in a locker. She got it and clamped it to an overhead panel, directing it on him. He had gone to sleep, his breathing deep and steady. She ran a wet towel over his chest, along his shoulders, then each of his arms and legs. Although it irritated her to do so, she couldn’t help but notice that Medaris was a fine-looking man. His shoulders were wide, with muscles that rode along the surface, a swimmer’s look to him, or maybe a climber, she decided, although his packed leg muscles indicated that he was a runner too. When she dabbed at his face, she noticed for the first time that the scar tissue along his jaw pulled down one corner of his mouth, giving him the sardonic look she had thought was always deliberately aimed at her. She used her long, delicate fingers to touch the scar, trace it down his neck. It ended abruptly halfway down it as if there had been something protecting him there. Penny thought of his wife, wished that she had asked Virgil more about her. What kind of woman designed rocket engines? What kind of woman had made this man love her so much that he would enter fire to save her? There had been a lot of men in Penny’s life but not one of them, she thought, would have been willing to so much as wave his hand over a match for her. She doubted that she would ever inspire such love. She found herself incomprehensibly envying someone who had been burned alive. She felt Medaris’s scarred jaw, ran the palm of her hand along it....

  The SAREX suddenly rang and Penny jerked as if she had been shot. She felt embarrassed, caught. She carried Jack to the shortwave instrument so she could tend to him while answering. Everything was already set up. Virgil had recently been using it, probably asking MEC about his family.

  WAITING FOR A REPORT ON ET UNPACK EVA.

  Penny exploded. She was angry and ashamed at the confusing emotions she was feeling. “I’ll give you a report, you bastards!”

  IT’S OVER. BOTH YOUR BOYS ARE OUT OF COMMISSION. CALL HOUSTON. BRING US IN.

  Penny glared at the screen, waiting. A minute passed, then another. Jack groaned. She used the plastic bottle to squirt more water into his mouth. The SAREX whirred.

  YOU MUST HELP.

  Penny’s hands leapt to the keyboard.

  GIVE ME ONE GOOD REASON.

  The laptop whirred.

  FOR YOUR COUNTRY.

  Penny studied the screen. She identified herself firmly with the Native American movement, had called for reparations and special consideration for all the tribes. She’d lobbied personally with President Edwards for an apology and she had heard it was in the works.

  MY COUNTRY IS THE CHEROKEE NATION. TRY AGAIN.

  The SAREX sat silently for a moment, then clicked and whirred.

  BECAUSE IF YOU KNEW ME WE’D BE FRIENDS. MY NAME IS SALLY LITTLETON AND I’M FOND OF THOSE TWO BIG LUGS YOU’RE WITH. TAKE CARE OF THEM FOR ME PLEASE PENNY HIGH EAGLE.

  Penny was startled by the reply. She stared at the screen for a long time. Despite her fame, friendship had always been difficult for Penny. Her father had died a drunk in a ditch before she was born, and her mother had died of tuberculosis a few years later. Her grandmother, a sour old woman who had never shown her a moment of affection, had taken her in, raised her, was forever quick to tell her how much of a burden she was, and how ugly she was. Penny had been a gawky, geeky child until she’d blossomed when she hit puberty. Then the boys were after her like bees to honey, but all they wanted was sex. Her grandmother was always quick to point that out. The other girls in her class were jealous of her, kept her at arm’s length, made up spurious stories about her. Not much had changed since. The truth was, Penny High Eagle, one of the most famous women in the world, was profoundly lonely, would have done almost anything to find a friend.

  The words kept hitting Penny between her eyes.

  TAKE CARE OF THEM FOR ME PLEASE PENNY HIGH EAGLE.

  Penny High Eagle. The truth was, there was no Penny High Eagle. She was an invention, created the day after Penelope Ingle, an insecure high school girl, had won a local 10 K road race. FIRST NATIVE AMERICAN FEMALE WINS RACE, the headlines had screamed. The importance of that headline kept growing to that girl. She desperately needed to have the attention it had brought. That was when Penelope Ingle realized there were lots of things that hadn’t been done by a “Native American Female.” After she’d gotten her education through a series of scholarships, she found an agent—Oscar Pennington—and convinced him that she could turn “First Native American Female” into a profession.

  Penny hesitated, then typed:

  YOU DON’T KNOW WHO I AM.

  The laptop whirred again.

  PENNY. I CAN’T BELIEVE IT. THIS IS WONDERFUL. WE’LL MAKE MILLIONS ON THE BOOK.

  Penny stared at the screen, slowly pecked in her response.

  OSCAR?

  SOME WONDERFUL PEOPLE BROUGHT THIS DELIGHTFUL MACHINE TO MY OFFICE. THEY ARE HERE WITH ME NOW.

  HOW DO I KNOW IT’S YOU?

  THE FIRST THING I EVER SAID TO YOU WAS THAT YOU OUGHT TO BRAID YOUR HAIR INTO PIGTAILS, STICK A FEATHER IN YOUR HAIR LIKE PRINCESS SUMMERFALL WINTERSPRING. YOU TOLD ME TO STUFF IT. PENNY THE NEWSPAPERS AND TELEVISION ARE GOING NUTS OVER THIS THING. BUT THEY DON’T KNOW WHAT I KNOW. KEEP YOURSELF SAFE DARLING BUT GO ALONG ON THIS JOURNEY AND KEEP WRITING! IF YOU DO THIS, YOU’RE GOING TO BE THE BIGGEST SUPERSTAR ON EARTH!

  “What are you going to do, Dr. High Eagle?” She turned, saw Virgil peering over her shoulder at the screen.

  Penny turned back to the SAREX, her fingers poised over the keyboard. But she was at a loss what to type. It wasn’t Oscar’s hide hanging out in orbit with a couple of loonies. Penny moved away from the keyboard, squinted at Virgil. “Why are we here?” she demanded.

  Virgil hooked his foot through a footloop and settled in beside her. “We have a contract.”

  Penny’s eyes flashed. “I know you have a contract, you big idiot. But who with and to do what?”

  “It’s around here somewhere,” he said. “I’ll look for it.”

  “Do that, Virgil. And while you’re at it, see if you can round me up some other fiction too. I always enjoy a good read.”

  An hour later, with both Virgil and Jack sleeping soundly, Penny found Paco and took him in her arms and went to the cockpit and strapped herself in. She watched the earth turn below, the beautiful blue, implacable earth. She couldn’t think clearly no matter how hard she tried to order her mind. She had never been so confused and yet so strangely excited. And as much as she hated to admit it, no small part of that excitement was caused by the strange, handsome, scarred, obviously disturbed man she had stripped, washed, and put away in a sleeping bag as if he were her child.

  MET 2 DAYS AND COUNTING . . .

  THE PEG

  OSC Manufacturing Plant, Dulles, Virginia

  Joe Rodriguez was the
Orbital Science Company group leader assigned the task of rapidly preparing a Pegasus rocket for the Air Force’s “demonstration” in space. The point of the demo wasn’t exactly clear to Rodriguez, but in any case it was above his pay grade to worry about. He just had the job to do. Rodriguez and his people were working on “Peg” in a clean room of the plant just twenty miles from downtown Washington, D.C. Because of its proximity to the Pentagon, it didn’t take long for General Carling to dispatch a team of Air Force inspectors to Dulles to bird-dog Rodriguez and his troops. Rodriguez was not surprised. He was used to having government inspectors looking over everything he and his team did, often as they were doing it. Rodriguez was just sealing a Peg electronics test and checkout panel when he heard a whoosh of air and saw six Air Force officers, all dressed in “bunny suits”—clean-room uniforms—enter the room. Rodriguez and his team were dressed the same, white full-legged smocks, legs tucked into white shoes, arms with elastic bands at the wrist, collars buttoned up to the neck, a white surgeon’s mask, and translucent latex gloves. A clear plastic cap pulled down to the ears completed the outfit. Only the eyes of the engineers were left uncovered. Moisture and dust, including dandruff, hair, and flakes off human skin, were all potentially cloggers of the delicate internal Peg mechanisms.

  OSC had chosen a Pegasus- E (E for “enhanced”) launcher. The trim little rocket with wings sat on its trunnion support. Rodriguez directed his techs to keep working and walked over to meet the Air Force cohort. After introductions all around, the leader of the inspectors, a Colonel Ted Wingate, wanted to see the payload. Rodriguez led him to one of the tables that had been set up around the Peg. He gestured toward a thick aluminum cylindrical canister, covered with a dozen intricate devices that looked a bit like claws, each of which had a bundle of cable leading to it. “This is our small assembly deployment device. We’ve had SADD under development for some time. It’s never been used in space but it’s passed all its design reviews.”