“Apparently, my father had a pretty good sense of humor.”
“Anyway, inside the case,” she continued, “were the essential components of your father’s time-messaging experiment.”
“The AWX,” Stephen said under his breath. “Interesting.”
“We took those components to Los Alamos the following day and, shortly after that, they were stolen.” She watched for his reaction. “In broad daylight. From a federal lab.” Nothing.
“Well, I certainly didn’t take them,” he said. “Is that what you were thinking?”
“We’re just trying to figure out who would have motive,” Lauren said.
“And that search led you to me?”
“Well… yes.” Lauren took out her tablet and referenced her notes. “First, there are some interesting investments that you and your mother have made—starting with Space America Corp., the company formed from the ashes of JL Aerospace—”
“I’m quite aware of Space America’s history. That was an investment made by my mother for personal reasons. She just couldn’t bring herself to let go, not entirely. But, not wanting to make a big public deal about it, she invested through one of our holding companies—”
“Yes, AXI Corporation,” Lauren said.
“That’s right.”
“And another company that you and your mother are invested in is Accel-X Industries?”
“Yes. It’s one among many.”
“Weird coincidence, though. Don’t you think?” Lauren studied her notes.
“What coincidence?”
“AXI Corporation and Accel-X Industries—you don’t see the similarity?” Lauren looked at him.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“I just said it was weird, that’s all—no need to get defensive.”
“I’m not.”
“It’s also an odd coincidence that this ‘Accel-X Industries,’ a company that you and your mother randomly invested in, also happens to be located about twenty miles from your house.”
“There’s nothing ‘random’ about our investments—and we certainly wouldn’t rule a company out because it just happens to be in our neighborhood.”
“So, would it be possible for us to see inside Accel-X’s facility?”
“Don’t ask me,” Stephen said. “I have nothing to do with their day-to-day operation.”
“What about this philanthropic group, The Eastern Way?” Lauren read from her notes. “After your father’s death, your mother poured nearly half of his money into it.”
“First, it was her money. Second—you’re really going to question her motives because you think she donated too much money?” Stephen ran a hand through his thick black hair. “The Eastern Way funds many exceptional causes—like scholarship programs similar to the ones that helped my mother and father. You have to understand, my father was never about the money, and neither is my mother—nor am I.”
“We’re just covering all the bases,” Lauren said, trying to sound reassuring.
She certainly didn’t want to insult the man’s mother. He seemed nice enough, and perhaps, if it turns out he was telling the truth and she wouldn’t have to shoot him, he really could be a consultant on her movie. Now she wasn’t sure if it was going to be a documentary or a drama, but either way: Dr. Stephen Lee, Historical Consultant. That would look pretty impressive.
“You’re divorced?” Lauren asked.
“Yes.”
“Two kids?”
“Yes.”
“What does your mother think about the Helios discovery?”
“About the same as me. But, listen, the last thing she needs is the FBI bringing this all up again. So, if you would, please direct all your questions to me.”
Lauren pulled out the “Your Move” index card and showed it to him. “We found this inside the case with the Advanced Wave Experiment components.”
“That was part of his experiment. It had to do with how they communicated—”
“We’ve been told. But it was inside the case. Do you think it could have been a message for whoever was supposed to have found it?”
“If it was, it was a pretty vague one. Oh, wait a minute, has George sold you on that—George, what do you guys call that theory?”
“The Intervention Theory,” George said.
“Right. The crystal has to come back so that someone in the future can send my father the message that causes him to blow up the space station. Congratulations, George, you now have two FBI agents believing your malarkey.”
“It doesn’t matter what we believe,” Lauren said. “It only matters what whoever stole the components believes. Someone went to some pretty extreme lengths. They stole the components from a federal lab and tried to kidnap us in Houston.”
“Kidnap you? Well, you’re really barking up the wrong tree here. I’m not exactly the robbery or kidnapping type. And, think about it. If the Intervention Theory was true—or if I thought it was true—there’s no way I, or my mother, would ever try to send a message back to my father. For God’s sake—we could very well be the cause of his death. You’re wasting your time here. Who else do you have on your list of suspects?”
It was true, Lauren thought. Stephen would have never taken the chance of trying to contact his father. But that meant—assuming that he was involved and that the Intervention Theory was true—that he was the Receiver. But that seemed even less likely. He would have been only five years old when Helios fell from the sky. Someone older, perhaps his mother, could have found the capsule, extracted the Message, replaced everything nice and neat, and then gotten him involved many years later. But all that was a stretch.
She was certain he was involved though, or at least hiding something. But with no proof, and no avenues toward deriving any proof, it seemed she had hit a wall.
Lauren looked at Ellis.
Ellis shrugged.
She looked at her HoloWatch. Only twenty-eight hours remaining.
“Stephen,” she said. “Have you ever heard of the Iceland Group?”
Chapter 16
Two hundred miles outside of Mojave, California, on a “burner” phone supplied by Coop Dixon, Nate and Jan call JLA’s Director of Launch Operations, Oren Fields.
Oren informs them that he’s on schedule and doesn’t want to hear a word about whether or not he’s on board with their plans. He was, after all, the one who had been warning Jan about the inevitability of governmental meddling in the first place. A libertarian at heart, Oren would fight to the death to keep the feds’ undeserving hands off this new technology.
As Jan had requested, Oren tells them that he has the JLA staff believing that they’ll be doing a “hot” rollout of a manned, heavy-lift Falcon 3/Sage IV configuration as backup for the NASA/GalactiTrek mission. So far, no one’s questioned this strategy.
Apparently, however, due to an electrical systems failure, Chronos is out; Helios is in. But with no backup.
“Too bad about Chronos,” Jan tells Nate after they hang up with Oren. It’s late afternoon and they’re sitting on opposite sides of the couch in Big Kenny’s sleeper cab. Passing cars periodically flash by in the porthole window above Nate’s shoulder. “Chronos had seemed like a good omen.” Jan sips his 7-Eleven coffee.
“If you ask me, Helios moving to the primary slot is the good omen,” Nate says. “Chronos has been yanked from the lineup twice in the last year alone. Believe me, we’re much better off with Helios.” Nate sets his coffee in the cup holder beside him. “I was wondering, what if you had decided not to go visit that kid back at the Days Inn? Couldn’t that have changed how the kid remembered the event and maybe even stopped him from sending the Message?”
“Believe me, all Tyler Cipriani remembers about that event is some soaking wet Chinese guy. This was—is—thirty years ago for him. There’s no way he’s going to remember the delivery man’s face. And that’s why he chose it as a possible intersection. If I hadn’t shown up, then the guy at the restaurant would have.
It could have gone either way. It’s like the event, to him, was in a kind of superposition of states.”
“But what if you had done something crazy, like lit the room on fire?”
“I didn’t.”
“But what if you had?”
“Then that would have been his memory.”
“But it wasn’t. I’m saying, what if you’d actually tried to change what he remembered?”
“I couldn’t—well, unless his memory was faulty. As in, because I lit the room on fire he was traumatized and went into a state of denial. But the more likely scenario would have been that I would have failed in my attempt. In other words, if I had attempted to change what he remembered, I probably would have met with some horrible fate before we even made it to the Chinese restaurant.”
“But doesn’t that sound a little like nature is purposefully working to keep you from messing things up?”
“If you switch doors with Monty Hall, you increase your chances of winning by a third,” Jan says. “Does that mean that nature is conspiring to help you win? No, it just means that you have more information about the current state of reality—which happens to be tied directly to your future state of reality. The car you’re trying to win doesn’t move around behind the doors as your odds change—it’s just that your knowledge about the car’s position improves.
“Reality is fixed. The mind moves.
“So, if I had never made it to the Days Inn, it wouldn’t have been because nature had intervened to stop me. It would have been because that’s the way it had always been. I just didn’t know what was behind that particular door.”
“But…” Nate considers this. “That makes it sound as if the only reason we have free will is because we don’t know what happens next.”
“The only reason anything changes or evolves or grows is because we don’t know what happens next. God doesn’t play dice; people do.”
They sit there a while just listening to the rumble of the road and the growl of Big Kenny’s engine.
“I don’t see how this is going to work,” Nate says. “If I blow up the experiment in space, how can Monty Hall get the crystal in order to send you the Message in the first place?”
“That’s one of the problems with Plan B,” Jan says. “Of course, Plan A doesn’t even seem possible. I just don’t see how I’m ever going to end up in a position where Monty Hall would think I’d be able to pull off their requested task.”
“Maybe you don’t pull off their requested task.”
“Maybe, but Monty Hall certainly must believe I could—otherwise what’s the point?” Jan sets his coffee into a cup holder. He looks at Nate. “You know, I’m beginning to think they can’t possibly know what I’m up to at the time they send the Message. Think about it. They certainly knew about my experiments on the space station, because they somehow got their hands on one of my crystals. But their task will take decades to complete, so they can’t possibly know that I died—certainly not any time soon after receiving their Message. But, if I remain who I am, president of JL Aerospace and all that, I’m way too public to accomplish their goals in secret.”
“So, what are you saying?”
“I’m saying, I don’t think they know if I’m alive or dead.”
Chapter 17
Three hours later, Coop drops Jan and Nate off at the entrance to Rosamond Skypark, an airport community about ten miles south of the Mojave Spaceport.
“You two have a nice vacation?” Oren asks as Jan and Nate enter the hangar that’s attached to Oren’s house. The three shake hands as Oren’s German shepherd, Kaiser, hops about looking for attention. Nate plays with the dog beside Oren’s blue and white Cessna 172, while Jan brings Oren up to date.
Oren, a wiry, hollow-cheeked man with bright, inquisitive eyes, listens to Jan’s story about the F-16s while packing a cooler with sandwiches and bottled water, moving back and forth from the hangar’s small refrigerator to a picnic table. He stows the cooler in the back of the plane, along with Jan’s and Nate’s duffel bags, then loads Kaiser into the backseat and, keeping the conversation going, motions for Nate and Jan to board. Minutes later, they’re airborne and heading north toward JL Aerospace’s Mojave launch facility.
After they land, Oren taxis the plane into JLA’s general aviation hangar and kills the engine. He climbs out and closes the hangar door.
Jan and Nate, having kept their heads low in the back seat, look out the window at JLA’s lineup of private planes: a Gulfstream V, two Cessna 172s, and, at the far end of the hangar, Nate’s favorite toy, a Sukhoi Su-27 Russian fighter jet—basically a Russian F-15.
Fending off Kaiser’s unrestrained excitement, Jan and Nate exit the plane. The late day sun is beaming in through the windows atop the hangar doors, and the air is rich with the flavors of aviation fuel, hydraulic fluid, and solvents.
Nate and Jan take deep breaths.
“Good to be home, gentlemen?” Oren asks. He hands them their duffel bags and takes the cooler.
Jan and Nate follow him to Kaiser’s fenced-in area, Nate running his hand over the nose of the Su-27 as they pass. Once Oren has Kaiser situated, they climb the stairs to the flight prep room, a sparsely furnished perch overlooking the hangar.
“Okay,” Oren says as they take their seats at the table. “If you don’t mind, I’ll just jump right in. There’s a lot to cover and very little time.” He rolls over a blackboard and erases a few notes. Then he writes: “23:51 – 23:57 GMT.”
“Our launch window?” Nate asks.
“That’s right,” Oren says. “Tomorrow night. And, if you ask me, I’d say the gods are favoring us.”
“That’s about twenty-five hours from now,” Nate says.
“It is,” Oren agrees. “So I’m confident we’ll beat GalactiTrek’s launch—probably by a day. Not to mention the fact that they’ll take at least a day longer than us to reach the station. The Russians, on the other hand, could launch tomorrow afternoon and are fully capable of a fast rendezvous. But, given the fact that they don’t know about us, and since they have GalactiTrek easily beat, I think they’ll go for the safer, more-relaxed launch in forty-eight hours. But there’s an even bigger reason why the gods are favoring us.” Oren chalks a circle around the times.
“We’re launching at midnight,” Jan says. “The crew will be asleep.”
“More precisely, they’ll have just gone to sleep right as we’re counting down to launch.” Oren writes “5 hr. 41 min.” on the board. “That’s our fast rendezvous launch-to-docking estimate. Which puts Helios at hatch opening at roughly fifty minutes before they wake up.”
“Except for the fact that NASA will wake them the second we launch,” Nate says.
“That’s where Dimitry comes in. I took the liberty of contacting him about this via our anonymous email account, and he’s agreed to mute all communication channels after he gets André sufficiently drunk. He says pretty much everyone else is taking melatonin or some other kind of sleep aid. Of course, he’ll be monitoring these channels for emergencies.”
“You know what this means?” Jan pushes his chair back. “This means Plan A is now possible.” He looks at Nate. “I know there’s still no way to get back without getting caught, but maybe something’ll fall into place on that end, too. Oren, this is excellent.”
“Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Oren says. “For the fast rendezvous to work—given our geographic location and the fact that we can’t request the ISS to make any orbital adjustments—we’re going to need to expend a tremendous amount of fuel. Even using the Sage IV heavy-lift launch vehicle, with its large fuel tanks, and with Helios stripped down to essentially a tin can, this low-altitude maneuver is still barely manageable.”
He draws the flight profile from launch to lineup with the space station’s orbital plane—a 670-kilometer corrective arc—and then draws the eighteen-degree sliver of pie—the phase angle—they need to be within at orbital insertion in order to catch the space station a
s it comes around the Earth.
Normally, the chaser spacecraft, Helios in this case, launches up to an orbit of about 145 miles above the Earth (about 80 miles below the space station’s orbital path). At this height, it travels faster than the space station due to its need to overcome the lower orbit’s extra gravity and the fact that a lower orbit means a shorter trip around the Earth. So, at a closure rate of about 560 miles per hour, the chaser spacecraft gradually catches up to the space station from its initial position of 16,000 to 18,000 miles behind.
However, in Oren’s fast rendezvous profile, Helios will have to fly like an airliner to a location where it can line up with the space station’s orbital plane, accelerate into a mesosphere-scraping 105-nautical-mile orbit, then begin its phasing maneuvers—stepping up to the space station—from less than 1,400 miles behind.
“Other than a few final yaw steering corrections that’ll also be made programmatically”—Oren taps his chalk on the board—”I think we might just pull this off.
“Now, as for the launch crew. We’ll have ten men in the field, six in the control room—which is a suspiciously small crew—but, let’s face it, nobody’ll complain until next week anyway.”
“At twenty-one hundred, three hours before the launch, I’ll inform the crew that this is actually a government-planned, secret flight. I’ll order a company-wide lockdown, and with all the rumors in the air about the GalactiTrek and Russian flights, I think they’ll buy it.”
Oren takes the sandwiches and water bottles out of the cooler and hands them out. “You two, of course, need to stay out of sight throughout. This building is completely unoccupied due to some testing I’m supposedly conducting down in the lab, by the way.” Oren bit into his sandwich. “Eat up. You’re going to need your energy.”
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