Zero-G

by Alton Gansky

  Tuck and Roos were alone.

  “Do you want to sit?” Roos motioned to one of the chairs.

  “I prefer to stand.”

  To his credit, Roos remained on his feet too. “I take it you’re a straight-to-the-point kinda guy.”

  “Yup. You said you know my business?”

  “No, I said I know the kind of business you’re in and that you’re probably not satisfied.”

  Tuck removed his pilot’s gloves. “That’s a pretty bold statement.”

  “Let’s see if I’m right. In the last year, the year since the accident, you’ve been traveling around the country shilling for NASA, doing air shows, talking to schoolkids. Right so far?”

  “Shilling is a harsh word.”

  “But accurate. Let me ask a pointed question. When do you plan to go into space again?”

  “That’s hard to say.”

  “No it’s not, Commander. It’s not hard to say at all. NASA isn’t going to put you up again, are they?”

  “It would be inappropriate for me to discuss any future missions I might have.”

  “Then I’ll discuss it for you. You’ve been grounded. Not formally, of course, but the suits aren’t going to put you back in orbit. Too many questions.” He raised a hand. “I know you’ve been cleared of any wrongdoing or error. In fact, the world thinks you’re a hero. They should. I do too; otherwise I wouldn’t be here right now.”

  “Still, it’s pretty cocky to say you know what NASA will or won’t do.”

  “Have you been getting odd looks from others on the astronaut corps? Do they look at you like you’re a Jonah?”

  Tuck didn’t answer and he hoped his face didn’t tip his hand. He would never admit it to anyone — never admitted it to himself — but he had caught a few questioning stares. Worse were the fleeting looks that broadcast doubt or pity.

  “I know your kind is the best and brightest. You’re not only superjocks but brainiacs too.”

  “You may be exaggerating.” Tuck tossed his gloves on the table.

  “Only to a point. Let’s face it: you guys breathe a different air than the rest of us mortals.”

  “I’m just a man like you, Roos. I have a family. My back hurts if I work in the yard too long.”

  Roos laughed. “Three times you let them harness you into a vehicle strapped to thousands of pounds of explosive fuel. Before that, you flew fighter jets. In between you were a test pilot.” He laughed again. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure your kind is different.”

  “Normally, I’m a patient man, Mr. Roos — ”

  “I want you to work for me.”

  Tuck’s mind chugged to a stop. “What?”

  “I want you to quit NASA, retire from the Navy, and join me on the front lines of space. I want you to help turn humans into a space-faring people.”

  It was Tuck’s turn to laugh. “NASA has been doing that for decades.”

  “One time, maybe, but not so much now. Look, Commander . . . they call you Tuck, right? May I call you Tuck?”

  “No.”

  “Fine. Have it your way, Commander. You know as well as I do that NASA has been tasked to go back to the Moon and then on to Mars. President Bush laid that down in 2004. All well and good. And they’re planning to do it in the same fashion they’ve gone about everything else, chained to big businesses as contractors. They will spend billions upon billions. The estimated cost of sending astronauts to Mars is five hundred billion dollars.”

  “And you don’t think we should spend that kind of money.”

  “Of course we should. I think we should spend more. It’s not as if NASA is breaking the US budget. Their percentage of the national budget is little more than a sliver. Less than seventeen billion dollars. The National Institute of Health gets twice the funds.”

  “Most people think NASA gets too much money.”

  “I’m not one of them. Let’s get down to it, Commander. The Shuttle program is on the way out. In a few years, its budget will be less than 1 percent of all NASA dollars. How many orbiters do you think will be riding the flame into space? Not many.”

  “Work on the ISS continues and will continue.”

  “Sure it will, but who cares? It took thirty years and a hundred billion dollars to get it to this point. For NASA, low-Earth orbit is passé. Good work has been done. Worthwhile experiments have been performed. But near-Earth work is now on NASA’s back burner.”

  “There’s plenty of excitement with the effort to reach the Moon again and Mars.”

  “Like I said, I’m all for it, but with the end of near-Earth missions, a vacuum has been created. If you’ll pardon the pun.”

  “And you want to fill it?”

  “Me and others like me. I plan to put people in space.”

  “Rich people.” Tuck knew where this was going.

  “At first, but the dream is to make space available to almost everyone: carpenters, educators, and business people.”

  “Sounds noble but not practical.”

  Roos leaned forward. “More practical than you think. Spaceports are already being built. Last count, there were eighteen such efforts underway, including those in New Mexico, Alabama, Washington, Russia, Singapore, Tasmania, Australia, and Canada. Space tourism is almost here. I need someone like you to make sure we lead the pack.”

  “So I just up and quit. Do you realize what you’re asking?”

  “I do and I can make it worth your while. If you agree, you’ll sit on our board of directors. I’ll arrange for you to sit on the board of a few other corporations linked to entrepreneurial space travel. Your income will be in the solid six figures.”

  “So I sit in a boardroom from time to time?”

  “You’ll do much more than that, Commander. You’ll work with our engineers developing innovative flight tech. You’d also be our public face. I don’t make a good spokesperson. I prefer the background.”

  “Still, I’d be flying a desk.”

  “Which is pretty much what you’re doing now. However, you’ll do more than fly a desk, Commander. I want you to be our first pilot.”

  Tuck didn’t know whether to laugh or not. “You want me to fly a homemade spaceship? Into space?”

  “Suborbital at first, then orbital. And Legacy is hardly a homemade spaceship.”

  “And you think that comment should make me feel better?”

  “When you see it, you’ll know I’m right.”

  “I can’t decide if you’re mad or laboring under the self-delusion of genius.”

  “Commander, you know this can be done. It has been done. Burt Rutan’s company Scaled Composites won the X-Prize in 2004 by flying into space twice within fourteen days. SpaceShipOne reached three hundred twenty-eight thousand feet. Earned them ten million bucks. Michael W. Melvill was sixty-three when he reached space.”

  “I’m aware of all that, Mr. Roos, but I’m just not interested.”

  Roos pulled a card from his front pants pocket. Unlike most business cards, this one was made of plastic. “I hope you change your mind.”

  “I doubt I will.” Tuck took the card.

  “Oh, one other thing. Lance Campbell signed on last week. You’re my choice for lead pilot, but if you decide to stay your course, then I’ll offer him the position.”

  “Campbell? You’re kidding, right?”

  “I know you two have a bit of history, but I figure you can work it out.”

  “History? Yeah, you might say we have history.”

  Roos smiled. “Odd, he said the same thing.”

  SIX

  Grass had covered the gentle mound, its boundaries marked off by a border of flowers. A six-foot-high black marble monolith stood like a sentry over the spot, casting a long, thin shadow that bisected the manicured spot and fell upon the man who stood at the other end of plant-bounded ground.

  Had an observer been present, he would have seen no more movement from the man than the stone marker. Overhead, a coagulated bank of clouds stumbled across
the sky. A churning breeze tugged at the man’s leather newsboy cap. The cap refused to yield its spot. The wind did manage to brush the white beard that hung from sagging cheeks and pointed chin.

  Protected by a black leather coat and thick corduroy pants, the man ignored the wind. Other images filled his mind. Images of a spaceship, of a man in a space suit, of a funeral.

  Vincent Pistacchia clenched his fists, released them, and then clenched them again as if each were a slowly pumping heart.

  It had been a year and more since they brought his son home from space, dead and cold. He arrived on Earth, not like the other astronauts, but in the cargo bay, his feet still strapped to that blasted mechanical arm.

  “All dead but one.” He spoke to the grave as if its contents could hear and reply. “I told you flying was not the work of men. Space travel? Never should be. We men have enough to do here on the ground.”

  Tears rolled, twisting and turning as they followed the crags of the seventy-year-old’s face.

  There had been a big funeral in the United States. Leaders from around the world went to the memorial ser vice; many others visited Arlington to stand by the graves of the dead astronauts. Funerals for heroes.

  Not Vinny. Not his Vinny. Pistacchia insisted his son’s body be returned to Italy where he could bury him on the property of the Pistacchia estate, the largest in the small country.

  NASA offered to pay for the trip, offered to fly Pistacchia to the US so he could return with his boy’s body. He would have none of it. He didn’t need their charity.

  “They said it would pass, Vinny — that the pain would go away and life would go on even though you lay here in the ground. I knew then they were wrong. I knew . . .” More tears. “A year, my son. A year and now all the investigating is over and they say it is an accident — a mixup in the medication on that patch they forced you to wear. No one is guilty. No one, they said.”

  He turned his head and spit on the ground.

  “Criminals investigating criminals. Murderers pretending to care.”

  A light rain began to fall, each drop whispering a sound as it struck the grass-shrouded ground. The wind picked up. The old man didn’t move.

  “I grieve for you, Son. Day and night, I cannot forget what happened. I have been robbed of you. First your mother so many years ago, and now you. Dead and in the ground. A man should not live beyond his only son.”

  The image of Vinny trapped in his space suit, dead and brought back to Earth in the payload bay like a sack of onions dug at him, chiseled his granite heart like the mason had chiseled the black marble that bore his son’s name.

  “There is more to be done, Son. What days I have left, I will spend making sure the responsible pay.”

  Soft footsteps approached from behind. A gentle, polite cough. Pistacchia didn’t bother turning. “This is what I wanted you to see. This is what I want you to avenge.”

  “I understand.” The voice came in a calm baritone. “Are you sure this is what you want?”

  “Yes. He is out there — the one who did this. I will have my payment. Do you understand?”

  “I do.”

  Pistacchia tilted his head enough to see the man who stood by him. Tall, thick, head shaved, and eyes dark as a moonless night. He gave a short bow, then left.

  A tiny flame of regret sparked in Pistacchia’s soul. He looked back at the grave. The flame died.

  When Garret Alderman first met Diane Melville, CEO of MedSys, he thought of Lauren Bacall. Not the lithe, give-a-man-shivers looker from the old Bogart movies, but the aged beauty that time had created. Diane Melville wore her hair parted in the middle, letting the gray locks frame her lined face, and still projected a hypnotic beauty that mesmerized even a midthirties man like Garret Alderman. Today, she exuded that same beauty, but he could also see the anger simmering behind her tired blue eyes.

  “Sit down, Garret,” Diane said. She motioned to the foot of the table in the large board room. Seated to her left was the short, balding president of MedSys, Burt Linear.

  Garret sat as ordered. He knew the drill. Diane was a master of dominating her space and using everything, including furniture, to gain an advantage.

  “I received your message. You found him?”

  “No, not specifically. I think I know his basic location.” Garret placed a small laptop computer on the table and opened it. “As you know, this guy is as slippery as an eel — ”

  “And far more dangerous.” Linear looked nervous. Perhaps eager. It had been ten months since MedSys hired Garret’s security firm to track down the man responsible for making alterations in the drug composition used on the dermal patches that killed all but one of the Atlantis crew and nearly brought down MedSys.

  “As you know, he set up a false ID, false bank accounts, false names, and more. What he did took a lot of planning, and unlike most people of his ilk, he planned a nearly foolproof escape plan.”

  “But you kept telling us that you could find him.” Diane leaned forward.

  “Indeed, I did.” Garret adjusted his glasses. He knew he looked like a dot-com geek. He cultivated the image. Corporate security involved more electronic work than muscle these days. “I’m confident to the point of cocky and I’m highly motivated.”

  “Five million should be motivation for anyone,” she said. “You still must locate him — down to the address.”

  “I understand. We’ve been over this.” Garret regretted the words as soon as he spoke them.

  “And we’ll go over it every day if I so choose. One man almost ruined fifty years of pharmaceutical business.” Diane’s words were as hard as ice cubes. “My father put his life in this company and so have I. Millions of people are better off because of what we do here. I will not let one mistake doom us.”

  “With all due respect, it’s more than one mistake. Your personnel department hired a man who used a false identity. A better background check might have saved you a lot of money.”

  “All old news.” Linear’s jaw tightened. “You can be replaced.”

  “Yup, you could do that.” Garret didn’t flinch. He never showed weakness. Bad for business. “In fact, feel free to do so.” He closed the laptop and rose. “If you want to bring in one of my competitors, then just tell me. I’ll disappear and let you explain to the new guy how you’ve covered up a crime committed on your premises, how that crime led to the death of some really good people who Americans consider heroes, and how you managed to cover it up. Oh, don’t forget to tell them the man responsible has been running free for the last year.”

  “You want more money, is that it?” Diane’s frown deepened, something Garret thought was physically impossible.

  “No. The retainer you pay every month is adequate and the five-million-dollar carrot you keep dangling keeps me interested.”

  “It also keeps you from milking the 50K retainer we pay, not to mention the massive expenses.”

  “If I could have nabbed this guy the first week, I would have. Now, do I leave or stay?”

  Silence hung heavy in the room. “Sit down, Mr. Alderman. We don’t want to bring in anyone else.” Diane leaned back. “It wouldn’t be prudent.”

  Garret returned to his seat and reopened the laptop. “I know it’s been a rough year for you. Frankly, it’s never taken me this long to pin anyone down. Your man is smart. Worse, he’s clever and apparently has monetary resources. No one can hide for long without a way of sustaining themselves.”

  Garret already knew a lot about his target. The man had been a troubled teenager but showed enough promise to make it into a four-year college, finishing in only two years. He had spent three years in the Navy before his superiors booted him out. Free of the military, he returned to school. Several misdemeanors later, he left with a BS degree in biochemistry.

  Alderman had yet to understand what drove the man. For years, he seemed a model citizen working at some of the best research facilities and companies in the country — not as a scientist, his creden
tials didn’t allow that, but as a master technician. He knew how to make the machinery and electronics do what was demanded of it.

  Something in the man drove him to do more, and that “more” puzzled Alderman. He had become a “biohacker” — a term that didn’t exist ten years ago. What Alderman learned about biohackers from his clients and his own research chilled him.

  Biohacking was a new term. Ask a group of a hundred for a definition and maybe one or two would have an answer. Computer hacking was well known; biohacking was almost invisible.

  Among biologists and medical researchers, a debate raged. Synthetic biology promised what all edgy science offered: cures for diseases like AIDS, malaria, and more. Synthetic biology researchers based their ideas on engineering principles and thinking. Researchers approached DNA as a mere string of building blocks they could separate and recombine to do new things or — maybe someday — make new creatures. Many believed they could repair genetic disorders and extend life by rearranging genetic matter in ways Nature hadn’t. Food products could be improved by such strange engineering processes as taking “antifrost” genes harvested from a squid and mixing them with tomatoes, making them more resistant to cold snaps.

  It was brave-new-world thinking at its best, but all such dreams have dark corners where nightmares reside.

  Those dark corners chilled any thinking person. Any virus customized to help could be customized to harm. Just like a computer virus spread between computers on a network, so a bioengineered product might spread through a population of humans, weakening or even killing entire communities. A runaway, artificially created organism might not make as much noise or generate as much heat as a nuclear bomb, but the devastation in lives could be several orders more severe.

  The kicker for Alderman, the thing that made his blood thicken with cold, was that someone with minimal training could create such things. Just like computer hackers and computer virus creators need not be computer scientists, so a biohacker may have nothing more than a basic college education. An especially bright person might not even need that. All that the would-be terrorist needed was access to a synthesizer.