Across the world that Christmas Day, people either went to their houses of worship to pray or stayed close to home. In Atlanta a minister told his congregation that the pulse had been the first sign of the Apocalypse. In California people gathered around the Hollywood sign with banners welcoming the aliens. In London a man stood outside Westminster Abbey in the freezing rain holding a sign that read “Jesus Is an Alien.” In Washington, DC, a protest was quickly organized on the Mall to denounce any military action against the aliens. In New York a fire broke out at an electrical station, knocking out power in northern Manhattan, and five hundred people were arrested for looting. In Vatican City a man was arrested for attempting to break into the pope’s residence because he believed that the Catholic pontiff was an alien. Every news report seemed to indicate that a worldwide panic was imminent.
In Houston, Texas, Lieutenant Commander Thomas “Moose” Mosensen, United States Navy, nursed his first beer of the holiday and watched the television mounted on the wall of O’Driscoll’s Pub with his friend and fellow astronaut, Lieutenant Commander Anthony “Benny” Benevisto. The bar was empty. The tinsel and the “Merry Christmas” signs decorating the dark-mahogany interior looked painfully depressing. Old man O’Driscoll was walking around the place in a Santa Claus hat and a dirty apron, shaking his head over the news. Benny was also shaking his head but was just a little more vocal about the situation.
“Fucking bullshit,” Benny said. “It’s all fucking bullshit.”
Moose looked over his pint glass at his wiry little friend. “What makes you say that?”
“What makes me say that?” Benny laughed, lifting his pint of Guinness. “Oh my friend, are you kidding? I mean, wouldn’t we know about it? I mean, we’re astronauts after all. Don’t you think that maybe NASA would let us in on this EMP business if we hadda go up there and look for little green men?”
“I’m an astronaut. You’re just waiting by the phone.”
“Whatever, Mr. I Went Up And Fixed A Busted Air Filter On The Space Station. I’m telling you we’d know. They’d haveta tell us.”
“You’ve heard the reports, Benny. They haven’t finished analyzing the data.”
“And what’re they gonna find when they analyze that data? Not that it’s the precursor to some War of the Worlds invasion. It’ll just be some bullshit. Trust me.”
Moose scratched his blond buzz cut. “Seems to me you might be a little more hopeful about this pulse really being something. It might get you up there finally.”
“Months of waiting for the go call is not gonna get me to pin my hopes on some crummy little EM pulse from space. Oh I’ll go up all right. Fix a satellite or something. But to go looking for space invaders? Forget about it.”
“You’re a fatalist, Benny.”
“I’m a realist, pal. It’s not aliens.”
Moose sipped his beer. “Maybe so.”
“You’re not telling me that you really buy into all this alien-invasion crap?”
Moose shrugged his thick shoulders. “I’m not ruling it out. If you were going to plan a global invasion, knocking out power all over the world would be the way to prepare for it.”
Benny waved at him. “Aw, come on, that’s your Cub Scout preparedness training talking.”
“Eagle Scout. I was an Eagle Scout.”
“Whatever. All that means is that you wore short pants and a sash until you were eighteen and still believe anything anybody in a uniform tells you.”
“How’d you ever get by in the navy with that kind of attitude?”
“Simple, Moose. I followed your golly-gee-whiz lead and faked it.”
Moose and Benny were known around the Astronaut Office as the Dynamic Duo, after the old Batman and Robin comic book characters, though Moose was hardly any vengeful Dark Knight Detective and Benny was no cheerful Boy Wonder. In fact, their roles were quite the opposite. Moose was very much the all-American boy, blond haired and blue eyed, six feet two and weighing in at an even two hundred pounds. He had grown up in a small town in Kansas on a farm owned by his family for four generations, the eldest child and only son out of five siblings. A high school honors student and football star, Moose missed his shot at playing for Notre Dame because of a debilitating knee injury suffered in his senior year. But Moose took the injury in stride, as he did any setback he experienced in life, and managed to regain the full use of his knee after a series of operations. At the same time the War on Terror had flared up again after the bombing of an American embassy in Cairo, so he joined the navy to serve his country. He became a pilot and flew bombing missions over a number of terrorist camps in the Middle East. While assigned to the USS George H. W. Bush he met Benny, who became the closest thing he ever had to a kid brother.
No one really understood why the good-natured Moose took to Anthony Benevisto, a dark-haired, scrawny little wiseass from Brooklyn who did nothing but brag about what a great pilot he was and break chops wherever he could find chops to break. Benny had joined the navy not out of any sense of patriotic duty but because no one in his family had left Brooklyn since they had arrived there from Italy in the early twentieth century. Like a lot of people from New York, Benny thought he knew everything about anything; he prided himself on his street smarts. He always felt someone somewhere was trying to pull a fast one on him and never took anything anyone ever said at face value. Every order was followed by a muttered wisecrack; every boast by a fellow pilot was met with cynicism. And then of course there was Benny’s own bragging, which made him few friends among his fellow pilots.
Moose always felt that the source of Benny’s arrogance stemmed from the fact that he had been a sickly child with an overprotective mother who never let him out of bed for fear that he would “catch his death.” His mother also never let him play with the neighborhood kids—those kids were “up to no good.” So Benny spent most of his childhood alone, taking apart old computers he found on the street and reassembling them into working order. Not only did he teach himself about computers, he also taught himself everything he could about airplanes. For as long as he could remember, he dreamed about being a pilot like the ones he had seen at all the air shows his father had taken him to as a kid. When he turned eighteen, he joined the navy and never looked back. Everyone in his family figured he wouldn’t survive with his sickly constitution. He graduated at the top of his class in flight school just to prove them wrong.
When Moose applied for the astronaut program, Benny laughed, claiming that all he would be doing at NASA would be fixing a lot of busted satellites. He’d never get a mission to the space station. He’d be a space mechanic. He was throwing his career away. When Moose wrote him that he had been assigned to a repair mission for the ISS, Benny put in his application to NASA the next day. Now Benny strode around the Astronaut Office with his silver astronaut pin, pouncing on anyone in sight about getting a mission so he could earn his gold one.
On the TV behind the bar, the news was broadcasting a report about the scores of downed aircraft all over the world. Analysts remarked that the sheer number of damaged or destroyed planes might very well bankrupt several major carriers based in the United States, despite the White House’s assurances that the airline industry would be bailed out by the federal government. This story was followed by an update from Taiwan, whose forces were on full alert as the Chinese armada was reported in firing distance of the island nation. Taiwanese officials were asking the American government for aid in the event of an attack.
Benny sipped his beer. “Dollars to donuts, Moose, that we’ll be called back to active service to deal with that shit before I get a prime crew mission. Guaranteed.”
“I hope it doesn’t get down to shooting over there. I’m sure the President has people looking into the situation.”
“Sure she does,” Benny said. “And I’m sure ETs from the Moon really just sent that pulse to tell us to stop fighting and embrace the brotherhood of man.” He polished off his beer and tossed another twenty on the bar.
“Let’s have another drink. It’s Christmas.”
Moose kept his eyes on the television. “Maybe we better.”
December 25
The Empire State Building
New York City
2:15 p.m.
“So that’s the long and the short of it, Cal. We could really use someone with your experience right about now.”
Cal Walker sat back in his deep leather desk chair and glanced out at his panoramic view of midtown Manhattan. Though past his eightieth birthday, Walker was still very much the same steely-eyed missile man who had helped America reach the Moon decades earlier. His thin frame was still erect and strong, his ice-blue eyes still pierced fiercely whenever he caught someone’s gaze, and his swept-back silver hair betrayed no sign of a receding hairline. Few men of his age could claim to feel and look so good. Since moving out of NASA and into the private sector in the mid-1970s, Walker had not only prospered financially but had also found a number of ways to keep himself feeling youthful.
“Thank you for contacting me, John,” Walker remarked into his telephone. “I’m grateful I managed to catch your call. I’d be happy to help you in any way possible, though I doubt someone with my antiquated experience could help your young go-getters at NASA.”
“You’re being modest, Cal,” Deke said. “No one here has your expertise with a moon shot. I don’t know what we’d do if we couldn’t get you on board.”
“I just wish my return to space, as it were, were under better circumstances. I imagine that the President must be very upset with the most recent casualty reports.”
“I can only imagine she is. That’s why we’re glad to get your help on the Phoenix redesign. The President’s concerned that complete anarchy might be imminent now that the source of the pulse has broken on the news. She wants us up there investigating it ASAP.”
“Understandable, of course. As I said, I am at your service. I’ll see you in Houston after the new year.”
“Thanks, Cal. I look forward to it.”
Walker hung up the phone and turned his chair to face the man sitting on the opposite side of his desk. “Well, NASA’s called me in.”
The man gave an almost imperceptible shrug. “We were expecting this once the source of the EMP was analyzed.”
“The President’s put a rush on the mission. She wants a team to be on the Moon by the summer. Sometime in June, no later.”
“That may work to our advantage.”
“That’s what I was thinking.”
“Rushing to space can be a dangerous business.”
“I know. But the President fears a worldwide panic if the source of the pulse goes unexplored.”
“Then NASA has to attempt a mission.”
Walker smiled thinly. “My thoughts exactly.”
December 28
The White House
Washington, DC
5:43 p.m.
The President stood at the windows of the Oval Office with her hands clasped behind her back. She thought of her many predecessors, who had contemplated equally difficult problems. Harry Truman said he never lost a night’s sleep over using the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Ronald Reagan navigated the end of the Cold War in this very room. Barack Obama made the decision to take out Osama bin Laden right here. She wondered what advice those men would give her regarding the current situations involving the Moon and Taiwan.
The casualty lists were almost more than she could bear. Thousands upon thousands of innocent people had been killed, most in transportation accidents as power cut off worldwide. In fact, power was still spotty across the country, and more people could die from contaminated water supplies or other such problems. The economic damage alone could plunge the world into a massive depression.
People had been trying to get their lives back to some semblance of normalcy over the last few days, but since the news about the pulse’s source had broken, there had been an uneasiness in many American cities. The spike in crime alone indicated that. The populace was afraid of what all this news could mean, terrified that the warfare that had engulfed parts of the world since the turn of the century could be dwarfed by an imminent attack by alien invaders.
And even if she could convince Americans that there was no imminent threat from space, the report from the East was not good. The Chinese fleet was building in strength and numbers off the coast of Taiwan. Chinese rhetoric had been growing in recent weeks about the island nation, which they considered to be a breakaway province, rightly theirs. Generations of American presidents had supported the one-China, two-systems policy, and China in turn had left well enough alone.
Why are they doing this now? What’s to gain from further provocation?
The President had ordered the Pacific Fleet to stand ready in the event of an invasion by mainland Chinese forces. Though the Cold War was long over, the policy regarding containment of Communist forces remained in place, if for no other reason than to protect viable new democracies like Taiwan from aggressive neighbors. But the world would not tolerate such a blatant act of aggression. She would not tolerate it.
So what do I do? Engage this country in yet another war while our forces are spread across the globe combating terrorism? When the threat of a full-scale biological or chemical attack is still possible?
A knock on the door stirred the President from her thoughts. In walked her private secretary, a step behind her General McKenna and John Dieckman. The President gestured for the two men to sit as her secretary shut the Oval Office door. She leaned against her desk but remained standing as they spoke. She liked to hear bad news standing.
“Madam President,” the general began, looking somewhat embarrassed, “according to our latest intel, we believe that the Chinese maneuvers near Taiwan are a diversion.”
“A diversion? A diversion from what?”
“Madam President,” Deke said calmly, “the Chinese launched a rocket within the last hour. Everything indicates that it will head toward the Moon. The booster has almost twice the thrust of the old Saturn Vs that took Apollo to the Moon.”
“My God. Is it manned?”
“We don’t believe so,” McKenna said, shaking his head. “We believe that it’s an unmanned orbiter designed to study the source of the signal, similar to the one we currently have in orbit. But the booster’s the real issue. If they’ve got a booster with that kind of thrust, then we have to assume it would be capable of sending a crew to the Moon.”
The President rubbed her chin. “What’s our probe telling us now, Deke?”
“The source of the pulse is definitely the Ocean of Storms. The fissure itself is pretty tremendous—a mile across, ten miles long. We haven’t yet been able to ascertain its depth. We might not even be able to without readjusting our orbit.”
“Do we have any clue what’s inside it?”
“No, ma’am, not yet. But something’s definitely down there. We’re still picking up residual electromagnetic energy, but it’s diminishing by the hour.”
“General, what’s the current status of the Chinese space program?”
“Fairly advanced, ma’am. Since putting up their first taikonaut back in ’03, they’ve fine-tuned their Shenzhou capsules considerably. Most experts believe that their latest capsules are designed with the capacity to travel to the Moon. We believe that the Chinese have put a great deal of money into their program in the hopes of achieving a manned lunar mission by the end of next year. This probe gives every indication that they are attempting to accelerate that program in light of the recent developments in the Ocean of Storms.”
The President sat down at her desk. “Are you telling me that they can get to the Moon before we do?”
“It’s possible, ma’am,” McKenna remarked. “They have a heavy booster and a working command module. Present intel indicates that they’re having some troubles with a landing module, but we know they’ve been giving it a vigorous shakedown over the last two years.”
The President turned to
Dieckman. “And the status of our lander?”
Deke made a face. “Still in development, ma’am. We haven’t yet had the funds to get it past the R&D phase.”
“General, how do we know that the maneuvers are a diversion?”
“We have two subs shadowing the fleet, plus a Skystalker satellite over its position. It appears they’re going in circles and making a big show of it but haven’t made any further advances toward Taiwan in the last week.”
“Okay, so we know they’re not planning to attack Taiwan.”
“Not yet, Madam President,” the general added.
“Deke, what’s our mission’s status?”
“We’re crunching numbers now, ma’am. But it looks as if our best bet to get to the Moon in the time period you’ve indicated is to modify our Phoenix capsules and copy Apollo ourselves.”
“Can we beat the Chinese?”
Dieckman and McKenna looked at each other. Deke spoke up first. “I believe so, ma’am. I’ve just received a classified document from the air force regarding an experimental booster they tested in the early part of the century. Provided we conduct the operation as a crash program using modern modifications on Apollo’s design specs.”
“We can beat the Chinese, ma’am,” the general said. “After all, we’ve done this before—they haven’t.”
The President nodded. “Fine. Just get us there before them. You’ll get all the money you need.”
“Madam President,” McKenna said, clearing his throat, “I must strenuously disagree with a part of NASA’s current plan.”
“Oh what’s that?”
“Ma’am.” McKenna gave a sidelong glance to Dieckman. “They want to send civilian archeologists on the mission to dig up the damned thing.”
The President leaned her elbows on her desk. “Archeologists, Deke?”
Ocean of Storms Page 4