“Why, how could you even think I would want you to do something even for a second?” Stephanie asked in mock surprise. “You are my number two on the Ad Astra project. I’m going to spend a couple of days expanding on the initial plan, working with you to do so. Then I’m going to spend a couple of days making some progress on my bet with NASA.”
“Was it a bet? I never heard him agree.”
Stephanie grinned like a cat with a mouthful of feathers. “And you didn’t hear him say it wasn’t a bet. A little secret, if you should ever take up gambling: the time to say ‘no’ is when the bet’s made — not a month later when the handwriting’s on the wall.”
“There’s still this,” Anna said, hefting the patent again.
“Oh yes, of course. Get to know the people you’re working with. You’ll need a good engineer, a couple of good technicians. A good scrounger. I showed the VW to my father and explained my reasoning behind the choice of vehicle. He went on the web and a few minutes later, he handed me this.”
Stephanie handed Anna another sheet of paper, this one with a picture.
“Good God! That’s the ugliest car I’ve ever seen!”
“My father thinks the Yugo was actually worse, but as near as I can tell, there are none left. So, in a couple of months, set up the Top Secret Kinsella team, have them procure the vehicle and modify it. We’ll be able to afford more capable instruments this time.
“No one outside of the project team needs to know anything about the vehicle, except Captain Gilly. You may answer any question he asks, just don’t volunteer anything. Don’t give him any flight time estimates. Mention how far and fast you can go accelerating at one gravity for a couple of days.”
“Why?”
Stephanie smiled slightly. “Within six months they will call a meeting. They will congratulate us on our wonderful progress, but they’ll tell me that they think I’m stretched too thin, and they don’t want me distracted by secondary issues. So they will tell me which Air Force officers they’ve picked to command the ship and the expedition.”
Anna frowned, then brightened. “That’s why you did that thing with the ship name. You wanted Ad Astra, but wanted to keep the option open to add ‘Per Aspera’ to the name up to a year before launch.”
“Well, actually, no. One of the problems that top-level government bureaucrats and politicians have is their desire to see ‘the big picture.’ The problem with the big picture is that they leave the research to lower level people who are there because they aren’t very smart. One hallmark of such people is that they don’t understand the importance of the question ‘why?’”
“So, I asked already. Why?”
“Simple sleight of hand. They will be so focused on the idea of the name change that they will not ask the most important question of all: why that name in the first place?”
Anna sat staring at Stephanie for several seconds. The time stretched and stretched. “There are times, boss, when you’re more than a little scary.”
“Why is that, Anna?”
“If I build the ship, and you have to kiss enormous amounts of bootie just to hitch a ride... I’m not going, am I?”
“No, I don’t expect you will be,” Stephanie said evenly. “Not on the first expedition.”
“I figured,” Anna said. “For a second I was angry. Then I asked myself why was I angry?” She grinned at her mentor. “My answer was really a completely different question — do I really want to be that far out on the cutting edge of science?
“The answer to that is maybe someday. But not the first trip. That’s going to be just a little sporty for my blood.”
“And to me, it will be the most wonderful, the greatest imaginable, challenge in my life. The reason I wanted to do what I’ve done up until now.”
“Boss, I’m here to do whatever I can do to get you there, okay? But I don’t want to be at your side when you put your foot down out there.” Anna laughed. “But you knew that, didn’t you?”
“I was pretty sure.”
“Someday I’ll write my memoirs, and I’m going to be telling the truth.”
Stephanie chuckled. “By then I will be beyond caring.”
“Not like that!” Anna said, serious. “You’ve always reminded me of my grandmother. She’s eighty-one, a healthy, active pain-in-the-butt.”
Stephanie nodded. “Everyone tells me how much I remind them of my great-grandmother. She’s more than ninety, a little frail but a big pain-in-the-butt to everyone. She writes the President a letter every day, telling him what he’s done wrong in the last twenty-four hours.”
Stephanie waved towards the elevator. “Now, get some sleep. Tomorrow will be a day of i-dotting and t-crossing. They’ll boot us out before lunch, and sometime in the afternoon we’ll get a copy of an Executive Order authorizing us to start the project. Then we kick into high gear for the next few months.”
“You make it sound so simple!”
“Oh, it is, it is!”
Chapter 6 — Top Secret Kinsella
Stephanie Kinsella shook hands with the President who promptly strode to the window of her office and looked out over the ocean to the ship being built a mile offshore.
He didn’t waste any time getting down to business, even if he wasn’t looking at her. “You’ve already completed the hull?”
“It’s about 94% complete, sir,” Stephanie replied. “We have filled in some of the larger hatches for the time being, and only open them up when we need to move in large pieces of equipment.”
The President turned to John Gilly who was standing next to a table piled high with blueprints. “You’re looking very fit, Captain. The climate here must agree with you.”
“That and the surfing every day, the long naps and the tiki parties at night, sir.”
“Are tiki parties anything like a luau?” the President asked with a grin.
“They are a luau you can invite the wife and kids to, sir.” Then Captain Gilly added with a straight face, “of course, everyone still gets leid.” He gestured at the garland of flowers around the President’s neck.
“I can’t repeat that; every Hawaiian in the Islands would be up in arms.”
“They’re very similar, yes, sir.”
“In a few minutes Professor Kinsella, the Air Force Chief of Staff, NASA Administrator Michaels and a few others will arrive. You said you wanted an hour or so first.”
“Yes, sir. I checked with your Secret Service advance party and they’ve okayed the use of our media center for a short briefing.”
“And it’s not something you want those other people to hear?”
“Sir, that decision isn’t one I’m comfortable making at my pay grade. I was chastised by some in your administration the first time for not running things past the establishment. I’m not eager to repeat the experience.”
Captain Gilly snorted in derision. “You loved it and wouldn’t miss doing it again for the world! Which is exactly what you’re doing!”
“Well, let’s see what Professor Kinsella has cooked up, then,” the President said, cutting the discussion off short.
There were two Secret Service agents in the back of the room, another in front. Anna, Stephanie, Captain Gilly and the President were seated in front of a screen.
“This, sir,” Stephanie said as the first slide flashed on the screen, “is a copy of the Benko-Chang patent. Please note the math outlined in yellow.”
“I haven’t a clue what it is,” the President replied. “Captain Gilly, any ideas?”
“I’ve read the patent several times, sir. I’ve seen those lines before. They seem to be very esoteric. I never pursued the matter.”
“Nor,” Stephanie added, “has anyone else on the planet. Don’t beat yourself up, Captain. In math, when you deliberately want to be obscure, you can be very obscure indeed. Besides, this is just the key. The door requires about a week of time on a super-computer to open all the way.”
The next slide was the venerable VW Beet
le that had gone to the moon.
“This was my first entry in the space sweepstakes. I picked it for its basic lack of aesthetics and our ability to quickly and cheaply modify it. This, Mr. President, is my latest entry.”
The second vehicle pictured was a dull, rust-colored Citroen of perhaps mid-50’s vintage. “This car, my father assures me, is beyond ugly. He said to remind you that no one has mentioned that the first Benko-Chang vehicle was made in Germany. He suggested that you remind them and mention this vehicle is French. Perhaps you can pick up a little positive Euro-sentiment.”
“I was twenty-two,” the President said. “I was an Air Force first lieutenant on my first overseas assignment and I had a day to spend in Paris. It was my first venture outside the US. That was one of the first cars I saw. Five minutes later, I saw my first Parisian urinating on the side of a building. Ever since, my attitude towards the French hasn’t been an asset to my political career.”
He smiled again at his memories. “But, please, another vehicle? Why?”
“Top Secret Kinsella,” Stephanie told him. “You have your secrets and I have mine.”
The scene shifted, this time a movie. The Citroen lifting off from what was clearly a parking lot at Caltech, with the Von Kamen Auditorium in the background.
“Because the launch was secret, we didn’t have a radio or other device working at launch. Those cranked up when we got to high orbit and ran throughout the rest of the experiment,” Stephanie reported.
“Here we are on station, rather closer to the moon than the Earth.”
The shot was looking past the moon, at the blue and white globe beyond.
There was a series of twists and turns, and then the camera was fixed on a bright star. That was for a second, then a zoom took place, which ended showing Saturn, its rings and several moons.
“That’s Saturn, sir, at the start of the experiment. And this is Saturn at the end of experiment.”
The President watched the screen and then shrugged. “Professor, I’m at a loss, I don’t see anything.”
“That is proof, Mr. President, that even I make mistakes. I got my sums wrong. The Citroen was too close to the Sun; it was almost too close to the Earth. I should have taken into account their gravity wells, but I forgot.
“Here we are the next day, after I rethought my premises.”
The Earth was significantly smaller in the frame, and the moon smaller yet. “And here is Saturn again,” Stephanie explained as Saturn reappeared, looking no different than it had in the pictures from the day before.
“At this point, sir, Saturn was eighty-three light minutes from the vehicle. A billion and a half kilometers, roughly a billion miles. And here the experiment commences.”
The picture blacked out.
“Did the camera stop working?” the President asked.
Stephanie’s response was measured. “No, the camera was no longer in a position to see Saturn. Sir, in the lower right corner are the time codes from the film. We’re coming up on the moment, sir.”
Abruptly, the scene changed. The camera was now pointed at what looked like a flat sheet, with light and dark streaks of varying widths. The picture bounced around a bit as the auto focus tried to set, then it steadied. Everything was at infinity, so far as the lens was concerned.
“Those are Saturn’s rings, sir. The vehicle went from the vicinity of Earth to the vicinity of Saturn in fifteen and a half seconds.”
Stephanie turned to Captain Gilly. “So, Captain, tell me how well did Top Secret Kinsella work?”
“I knew about the Citroen, I knew it was going up. I knew it went up, I knew about the delay, I knew it finally got where it was going and I knew where it went.”
Stephanie smiled when he stopped. “And did your information extend to what happened to the Citroen next?”
“No.”
“The project engineer was ex-NASA. While he holds his former employer with no great regard he did make a valid point about contamination of objects in the solar system. We made no attempt to decontaminate the vehicle, so...”
The camera swept around, finally stopping on a yellow star. “That’s Vega, sir. About twenty-five light years away. It’s supposed to be a younger star than our sun.” The picture blanked out.
Stephanie returned her attention to the two men. “So, Captain Gilly. Any further comments?”
“I’m not sure what the point of more comments would be. You sent a Citroen to Saturn. I understand one of your modified Gulfstreams went to Mars.”
“And I fired the two pilots the instant I found out where they’d been. They had not been careful about contamination; they hadn’t been careful about a lot of things. Mr. President, one of them has a crush on your eighteen-year-old daughter. It was his intent, he told me, to present her with the first Mars-made homemade ice cream cone.”
The President nodded. “I heard about that. I thought it was quaint. My wife heard about the contamination issues and I’m afraid she wanted to do something terrible to the young man. You fired him, eh? The first man to set foot on Mars?”
“Yep! It was right there in his employment contract. No side trips without prior permission. I’d have given it, you understand, if he’d asked, but neither pilot asked. Had they asked I might have warned them about the difference between frozen CO2 and frozen H20 is not readily apparent at Mars temperatures.”
Stephanie turned to Captain Gilly. “I have to admit to a considerable disappointment here, John.”
“Why is that, Stephanie?”
“Do you really want me to spell it out for you? In terms a twelfth grader would understand?”
“So far, I’m mildly unhappy with you too, for being so mysterious.”
“What’s mysterious? Light to Saturn, eighty-three minutes. Citroen to Saturn, fifteen, nearly sixteen seconds.”
“Obviously that’s significant to you, it’s not to me,” the captain said.
“Think of it in terms of a horse race. Which is faster? The Citroen or light?”
You could easily see the exact instant understanding came to Captain Gilly. He choked, started to gasp for air, and one of the Secret Service agents rushed to his assistance.
It took a minute to return to the discussion.
“Mr. President,” Stephanie said. Her voice trailed away.
“Obviously I read more science fiction than Captain Gilly, plus I would wager he’s had a terrible time in the Navy because he has no poker face at all.
“My, my, Professor Kinsella! Your Citroen can go faster than light, and oh, by the way, that just happens to be covered in the original patent.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And the reason you’re hitting me up with this modest extension of the capabilities of Benko-Chang turbines, before I actually announce who will command Ad Astra and who will command the expedition, Mars, I believe was the mooted destination, for the mission?”
“Sir, I keep hoping you’ll realize where your best interests lie. I don’t actually expect you to go where I want you to go, but I can hope.”
“You think I’m a fool.”
“Sir, I know you’re the President; what I think beyond that is of little consequence compared to that objective fact.”
“So, will you exercise your option to change the ship name when I don’t put you in command?”
Stephanie smiled thinly. “Like I said, there’s a difference between where I think your best interests are and what I think you’re going to do. For instance, the whole point of the exercise was to make the ship’s name literally true, not to change the name.
“Anyone, sir, who knows the first two words, knows the rest of the quote.”
The President opened his mouth to speak, and then shut it again. His jaw set tightly. “You’re not going to command the ship or the expedition. You will be permitted to go along, however.”
“And me?” Anna asked, interjecting herself into the conversation.
“No,” came the President’s flat reply.
“One person capable of building a ship like that is all I’ll risk on the first trip.”
Anna sniffed in derision. “Well, guess what, Mr. President? My boss is smarter than you; she’s smarter than me. Did you know the two of us agreed not so long ago, that the first time Ad Astra lifts, she’ll be watching on the ground, while I command the test crew aloft? And that the Air Force agreed in advance that they would only accept the ship after two successful test flights?”
The President looked at John Gilly who in turn tried to look innocent. “It’s part of that institutional difference I was talking about, Mr. President. A Naval officer, given command of a ship, would take command and be present from the very first day it was possible, most likely for a ship like this it would be a senior Captain or a Rear Admiral who would watch the construction from the moment there were lines on blueprints. The Air Force waits until a test pilot clears their aircraft to fly.”
“And who is here from the Air Force?”
“A first lieutenant, sir.”
“I want to see him.”
John Gilly exhaled. “Sir, you understand that because of the arrangements you made, I’m not in the young man’s chain of command? Sir, right now he really is surfing. We make jokes about it — and him.”
“I just stepped off Air Force One and the senior Air Force officer present is at the beach, surfing? And he’s a lousy first lieutenant?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Holbrooke!” the President said, pointing to one of the Secret Service agents. “I want to see that Air Force Liaison, ASAP. Find him and bring him here at once. I don’t care if he’s in his skivvies!”
He turned to John. “Dammit! You knew about this! You could have picked up the phone and called me!”
“Surely, Mr. President. You want to hear about Air Force first lieutenants who don’t measure up to Navy standards each and every day. You just sit by the phone, waiting for those calls, sir!
“On the other hand, sir, I’ve made that call four times to the young man’s superior, back in Colorado Springs and four times I’ve been told I’m ‘too overzealous’ and that I need ‘to lighten up.’ In fact, the Air Force captain on the other end told me the other day that speaking ‘captain to captain,’ she shouldn’t have to explain these things to me.”
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