Powersat (The Grand Tour)

by Bova, Ben

  “That’s not a form of energy technology,” said Jane coolly.

  Zisk changed his tack. “Word we get is that Astro’s going to sell out to Tricontinental Oil. Or maybe Yamagata. Looks to me like they won’t need your help, after all.”

  Jane had a technique for hiding her surprise. She took a sip of the drink she’d been holding, then smiled as pleasantly as she could manage for the reporter, all the while thinking furiously of what her reply should be.

  At last she said, “If that’s the case, then Astro won’t need the assistance my bill offers. But there are other new, sttuggling high-tech companies that will.”

  Zisk nodded, his grin wider than ever.

  That evening, Dan was sitting in a booth at the Astro Motel bar with Claude Passeau. They had shared a mediocre dinner and decided that some strong drink would be better than the desserts the restaurant offered.

  “You must come to New Orleans,” Passeau said. “The food is infinitely better than here.”

  “At least I got them to put in a halfway decent brandy,” Dan said, swirling his tumbler of El Presidente.

  Passeau shook his head. “You should try Armagnac, Dan. Much better.”

  “Armagnac?”

  “It comes from the region of France next to Cognac, but it’s smoother and better tasting.” Passeau placed a hand on his chest. “That’s my opinion, of course.”

  “Armagnac,” Dan muttered. “I’ll have to remember that.”

  Passeau looked around the place. A couple of Hispanics were at the bar, quietly drinking beer. The barmaid was on the phone, talking intently, her free hand gesturing as if she were being hysterical in sign language. Country music seeped from the speakers set into the ceiling, some guitar-strumming lament about lost love.

  “Whatever made you decide to build your headquarters here?” Passeau asked. “It’s like the end of the Earth.”

  Dan sipped at his brandy. “We can launch over the Gulf of Mexico from here. And I had an uncle who was able to sweet-talk the parks department into letting us lease this half of the island from the sovereign state of Texas.”

  “Ahh,” said Passeau. “Money talks.”

  “Especially when it’s in unmarked bills being passed under the table.”

  Passeau laughed. “You’re really something of a scoundrel, aren’t you?”

  Feigning surprise, Dan replied, “I didn’t bribe the parks people. My uncle did that.”

  “And look where it got you.”

  “It’s not exactly a tropical paradise, is it?” Dan admitted.

  “I’ve been to Cape Canaveral,” Passeau said. “I thought that was run-down. But this …” He waved his hand vaguely toward the bar.

  “This will be a metropolis someday,” Dan said, grinning.

  “Not in our lifetimes.”

  With a shrug, Dan conceded, “Maybe not.”

  “You worked for the Japanese, didn’t you?”

  “Yep.”

  “Up in space?”

  “I wasn’t an astronaut, technically. I was what they call a mission specialist. In my case it meant being a construction worker in zero gravity.”

  “Hmm. Did you like it?”

  “Loved every minute of it.” Touching his nose lightly, “Even the fights.”

  The look on Passeau’s face was somewhere between disbelief and fascination.

  Dan let him take a swallow of the scotch he was drinking, then hunched forward slightly on the booth’s table and said in a lowered voice, “Claude, we’re ready to fly the backup spaceplane.”

  Passeau backed away slightly. “I can’t authorize another test flight until we definitively prove what made the first plane crash.”

  “We know what made it crash. Sabotage.”

  “You may believe that, Dan. As a matter of fact, I believe it myself. But we haven’t any proof.”

  “That’s because the proof isn’t in the wreckage.”

  “Then where is it?”

  “In Pete Larsen’s skull.”

  Passeau pulled in a breath. “Then it’s permanently beyond your reach.”

  “Look,” Dan said, hunching even further over the table. “Pete had access to the command codes for the plane’s control systems. And he knew the ground track. He sold that information to somebody. That somebody operated a radio transmitter that sent the command to fire the nose thruster. They knew how to activate the plane’s control system and they knew where and when to do it:”

  “But the pilot could have overridden the command.”

  “Not during reentry!” Dan whispered urgently. “Every microsecond is crucial at that point in the flight. Hannah had just started the pitch-up maneuver that angles the plane so the heat shield on its underside takes most of the reentry heat. Firing the thruster that pushed the nose down knocked the plane out of control. No pilot could’ve recovered. The plane was doomed.”

  “Why didn’t she eject?”

  “She probably tried,” Dan said.

  “This is all conjecture,” Passeau said.

  “If we flew the backup and nothing went wrong, that would prove that the crash was caused by sabotage, wouldn’t it?”

  “No, it wouldn’t. There could be—”

  “I want to fly the backup.” Dan insisted. Then he added, “Unmanned.”

  “Without a pilot?”

  Dan said, “Completely automatic. But this time we keep the command codes to ourselves and we don’t tell anybody what the ground track’s going to be.”

  “You can’t fly like that, even unmanned,” Passeau objected. “There are other planes in the sky, you know. You’ve got to clear a flight path, get the FAA to allow—”

  “That’s your end of the game, Claude. I need a big swath of airspace, wide enough so the murdering sons of bitches won’t know exactly where the plane’s going to be on reentry.”

  “That’s impossible. You’re asking the FAA to clear half the continent of North America for you.”

  “Just for half an hour, during the reentry phase of the flight. While the bird’s in orbit she’ll be all right.”

  “It can’t be done, Dan. I’m sorry, but it can’t be done.”

  “You mean you won’t—”

  Dan’s cell phone began playing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” He grimaced., plucked the phone from his shirt pocket and flicked it open.

  Jane’s face was on the tiny screen. She looked decidedly unhappy.

  Before Dan could begin to say hello, she said, “Dan, we need to talk.”

  With a glance at Passeau, he asked, “Face-to-face?”

  “Yes.”

  “I could fly up to Washington for the weekend, I guess.”

  “No, not here. At the ranch.”

  Dan hesitated and looked at Passeau again. He was making a great show of trying to catch the eye of the barmaid, who was still gesticulating with the bar phone pressed to one ear.

  Lowering his voice, Dan asked, “Will Scanwell be there?” Jane said, “No. He’s got to run up to New Hampshire.” Breaking into a smile, Dan said, “I’ll be there Saturday in time for lunch.”

  Jane said, “Come alone.” And abruptly cut the connection.

  THORNTON RANCH, OKLAHOMA

  The Staggerwing was too slow to suit Dan for this trip, and from the way Jane had looked on the phone, he figured that she wanted this meeting between them to be kept as secret as possible. So Dan unlocked his bottom desk drawer and fished out the driver’s license, Social Security card, and credit card for Orville Wilbur, a phony identity he had established years earlier, when credit card companies were hounding him to become their customer. He found it ridiculously easy to establish a false identity. No wonder terrorists can sneak around the country at will, Dan thought. It had started as a lark, but Dan found times when it was convenient to have an alternate persona. Such as now.

  That Friday night Dan drove to Corpus Christi. Orville Wilbur registered at a motel near the airport and from the phone in his room purchased an electronic t
icket from Southwest Airlines, round trip from Corpus Christi to Oklahoma City on the earliest flight out, with a commuter link to Marietta. When he got there, Orville Wilbur rented an SUV and drove out to the Thornton ranch.

  As he drove through the fancy carved wooden gate of the Thornton ranch, well before noon, he saw another van some distance behind him spurting a rooster tail of dust as it followed him along the road that led to the ranch house. Security? Dan wondered. Hope it’s not news media.

  Pulling up in front of the low, sprawling house, Dan stepped out into the late morning sunlight. It was hot and dusty, the Sun high in a bright blue sky that had hardly a wisp of a cloud in it. Squinting, Dan saw contrails etching across the blue, people on their way somewhere, six miles above the ground. Then his eye caught the faint, ghostly image of a crescent Moon, just a trace of its lopsided smile visible.

  I know, Dan said silently to the Moon. I’m an idiot for coming out here. But what the hell.

  His SUV was the only car parked in front of the house. No one seemed to be stirring; the house seemed silent, empty. Dan rapped on the door and waited for someone to answer. Turning, he saw the van that had followed him growling up the gravel driveway. It crunched to a stop in a swirl of gritty dust.

  And Jane got out.

  She was dressed in jeans with a white blouse tucked into the waist, decorated with a trio of cardinals across its front. Her hair was pinned back, off her neck. Wide leather belt with a silver and turquoise buckle. Well-scuffed cowboy boots.

  “You got here before me?” Jane said, surprised.

  “I camped overnight,” Dan joked.

  She stepped toward him. He wanted to take her in his arms but she walked swiftly past and pulled an electronic key card from her jeans.

  “Nobody’s here,” she said as the door clicked open. “I gave the staff the weekend off.” No smile, no warmth, no hint of a suggestion of any kind. Just a statement of fact Jane seemed as cool and businesslike as a stranger. Hell, Dan grumbled to himself, our two vans are parked closer together than her and me.

  “Come on in,” she said.

  “What’s all the secrecy about?” Dan asked as he stepped into the cool shadows of the entryway.

  Heading down the corridor toward the kitchen, Jane said over her shoulder, “I’ve introduced a bill that is clearly intended to help you, Dan. The news people are sniffing around, trying to find a personal link between us.”

  “They don’t have to look all that far,” Dan said, following her.

  “I’ve made no secret of our past relationship,” she said, flicking on the fluorescent lights set into the kitchen ceiling. “But I can’t afford to be seen with you now.”

  “Unless Scanwell’s around,” Dan muttered.

  She turned to face him. “That’s right: unless Morgan’s around.”

  “Is he your chaperon or your bedmate?”

  Jane’s eyes flared angrily, but she quickly regained control of herself. “He’s a candidate for president of the United States, and I’m not going to do anything that might damage his chances.”

  Dan grunted. “Spoken like a lawyer.”

  “That’s what I am, Dan. A lawyer. You knew that … in the old days.”

  There were a million things he wanted to say. Instead, he went to the breakfast bar and perched on one of the stools.

  “Are you going to cook lunch for us?”

  “I can cook,” she said.

  “I can help.”

  She seemed to relax a fraction. “All right. Let’s see what’s in the fridge.”

  As they pulled eggs and sausages out of the refrigerator, Dan said, “So why’d you ask me up here, Jane?”

  “How’s the accident investigation going?” she asked.

  “Slow. Too double-damned slow. I’m pushing the FAA honcho to allow us to fly the backup spaceplane—”

  “I understand the FBI is involved also.”

  “If they are, they’re invisible.”

  “They’re good at that,” she said.

  Dan waited until the eggs were sizzling in the skillet and two places had been set on the small table in the breakfast nook. Jane was setting down two glasses of orange juice. The aroma of brewing coffee wafted through the kitchen as the coffeemaker gurgled busily.

  “So why’d you ask me here?” he asked again.

  She took up the spatula and shoveled eggs and sausage onto a serving platter. Dan waited until she set the platter on the table, then he took her by the shoulders and turned her to face him. Those cool and limpid green eyes. He always recalled the line from the old song when he looked into her eyes: A pool in which my heart lies.

  “Jane,” he said, holding her, “for god’s sake—”

  She brushed his hands away. “I asked you here to talk politics, Dan. Nothing else.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “Politics. That’s all.”

  “All right,” he said, with a theatrical sigh. It was pretty much what he had expected of her. He pulled out a chair for her. “So talk.”

  “You’re making a deal with Tricontinental Oil.”

  “Against my gut instincts,” he said, sitting down opposite her.

  “Don’t do it, Dan.”

  “And what should I do? Make a deal with Yamagata?”

  “Give me a chance to get this bill through the Senate. We want you to raise the money you need from American sources.”

  “Tricontinental is American.”

  “Garrison is an American—”

  “A Texan,” Dan pointed out, managing to grin.

  “—But Tricontinental is a multinational corporation. You know that. It’s as much Arabian and Venezuelan and even Dutch as it is American.”

  “What of it?”

  “Garrison isn’t interested in energy independence. He’s going to fight Morgan every inch of the way.”

  Dan nodded.

  Ignoring the food cooling on the platter, Jane said earnestly, “Dan, the reason for my bill is to get American funding for you. It’s part of Morgan’s energy independence program.”

  “I don’t give a hoot in Herzegovina about Scanwell’s energy independence program! I’m trying to save my company!”

  “And we’re trying to help you!”

  “But I need help now,” Dan insisted. “Not after the Senate finishes tinkering with your bill. Not after Morgan Scanwell becomes president, if he ever does. Now!”

  “You could put your operation in low key for a year, couldn’t you? Lay off some of your staff? Mothball your equipment.”

  “Jane, I’ve got a two-mile-wide satellite hanging up there in orbit, doing nothing but soaking up money and getting dinged by orbital debris. I can’t just let it hang there for a year.”

  “Why not? It’ll still be there a year from now, won’t it?”

  “Yeah, and Yamagata will own it. Or Tricontinental.”

  “Not if you don’t make a deal with them.”

  “And what am I supposed to do for a year? Sit around with my thumbs up my butt? Besides, the election’s more than a year off.”

  “Fourteen months.”

  “I can’t lay off my staff and expect them to come back fourteen months later. They’ll find other jobs.”

  “Please, Dan. Be reasonable.”

  “Reasonable? You want me to put my whole operation in suspended animation for more than a year in the hope that your dark-horse candidate will get himself elected?”

  “Yes. That’s what’s best for all of us:”

  Dan took a deep breath. Then he counted to ten. At last he said quietly, “It might be best for Scanwell. And you. But not for me or the people who’re working for me.”

  “Dan, the country needs Morgan Scanwell in the White House. You don’t know him, he’s a great man, a wonderful man.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Okay, I like him, too. He’s a very likeable guy. What of it?”

  “If you only knew the pressures he’s under, the battles he’s fighting. The oil interests are dead-set
against him. Even in his own state he’s fighting an uphill battle.”

  “And you’re sleeping with him, aren’t you?”

  Her chin went up. “That’s got nothing to do with it.”

  “The hell it doesn’t.”

  “Please, Dan. Wait. Let us get Morgan into the White House and then you’ll be able to do everything you want to do. He’s a great man, he really is.”

  “I don’t care about him! You’re the only one I’m interested in.”

  She didn’t seem surprised. Or angered. Or even distressed. “No, Dan,” she said, very softly. “That was finished a long time ago.”

  “I’ll drop the whole double-damned project. I’ll sell it off to the highest bidder. I don’t care about it anymore.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “The hell I don’t.”

  “Dan, that project is your life, your work.”

  “And what’s it got me?” he answered bleakly. “Three people killed and the project’s going down the toilet. What good is any of it? I don’t want to bury any more of my friends. I want out. I want you. Nothing else matters. You forget Scanwell and—”

  “Don’t!” Jane snapped. “We’re talking about the future of America, Dan. The future of the world! Can’t you understand that? Can’t you see? The future of the whole world is at stake!”

  “Your world, Jane. Not mine. I don’t give a damn about any of it if you’re not part of the deal.”

  She looked at him, her cool green eyes steady, clear, dry. “I’m working to save America from being bound hand and foot to the oil interests. I thought you were, too. It seems I was mistaken”

  “No,” he said, low, defeated. “I’m working for that, too. It’s just … I love you, Jane. Nothing else makes any sense to me if we can’t be together.”

  For long moments Jane said nothing. Then, with a slow shake of her head, she replied, “We can’t be together, Dan. That’s over and done with:”

  Dan realized that she was very, very sad. And so was he.

  HOUSTON, TEXAS

  Dealing with any government agency usually drove Dan slightly crazy. The Houston field office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation was no different.

  He had spent the Sunday after his brief, bitter meeting with Jane back at his office at Matagorda Island, going through the motions of catching up on his work, but actually mulling over his options. Accept Tricontinental’s offer? Al-Bashir seemed decent enough, genuinely interested in the powersat. Okay, so I sell Garrison fifteen percent of the company’s stock. At a billion five, that drives up the stock’s price very nicely. What have I got to lose?